Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell

Author:Brontez Purnell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558614321
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2017-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

DeShawn grew up one day, same way all little boys do. His mom had long since divorced Big Daddy, but DeShawn, just shy of eighteen, had escaped to California, putting as much distance as possible between himself and his childhood home. To go any farther you had to start swimming.

DeShawn had not been five months in the sunny state before he got a frantic call; it was early March and he was stoned in the punk warehouse where he was living. His mother was on the other end: “Big Daddy is dead, baby. You have to come home.”

During his time in the army Big Daddy had picked up a hellified coke problem, which at its crescendo turned to crack. DeShawn didn’t know his stepfather was addicted to crack his entire childhood, but this explained a lot. Why the man was so goddamn erratic all the time; why, even though he had a decent-paying job, violent fights about money dominated the household. The dead man maintained a desk job some thirty-plus years while nursing a crack cocaine addiction. Years down the line, DeShawn himself would learn the particular dance of being a high-functioning substance abuser.

They found Big Daddy’s body next to his bed. He had been smoking crack, and a blood vessel in his neck clogged and exploded. There was a spray of blood on the wall where he fell. He was fifty-two.

DeShawn remembered watching Big Daddy’s parents—two people in their late sixties—get into an argument and almost come to blows some five feet away from their dead son’s body while the preacher was reciting the burial rites. They had to be separated. He began to understand the hell that was Big Daddy’s life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.