Fist Stick Knife Gun by Jamar Nicholas

Author:Jamar Nicholas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

I did something I wouldn’t usually do in deciding to go to Luis’s wake. There are so many funerals for young men who die violently in the neighborhood that I won’t go to them unless there is some personal reason to do so. With Luis, since he had worked for me, I decided that I would stop by the wake to try to console his parents. I asked one of my staff members for the address, but ended up going to the wrong place.

When I realized my mistake I decided to go back to 108th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, where there was a small shrine in Luis’s honor. These memorials are one of the new things that have sprung up as more young people are killed on the streets. Other young people on the block put up a small shrine where people can come by and pay their last respects. A picture, candles, some mementos—each one is different from the others. I knew there would be someone at Luis’s shrine to give me the right address for the wake. Upon arriving, I looked to see if anyone I knew was there (it was close to Rheedlen and my martial arts school). I didn’t, but I asked directions from a young man who was standing by the shrine.

“Excuse me, I’m trying to find out where the wake is. Do you know the address?”

The young man turned to me with suspicion. “Who are you?”

I replied, “I knew Luis, and I had the wrong address—” Before I could finish he asked again, taking a step toward me, “Who are you? What you want here?” There was now a clear edge of menace in his voice and I began to pay closer attention to the young man before I answered. I knew something was wrong.

“I knew Luis. He used to work for me and—” Again I was interrupted. “Man, I don’t know nothing so don’t ask me any questions.” The hostility was open now, and suddenly it hit me. I realized I was in serious trouble. You see, I had forgotten a story I had heard a week before Luis was shot and killed.

Three friends from the neighborhood, all teenagers, had decided to sell drugs together. There was some dispute, and before anyone knew what had happened one of the boys had pulled out a gun and shot the other two. One boy was killed on the spot, the other faked death and thereby escaped the certain second bullet to the head he would have received if he had moved. The gunshot wound he sustained was fairly clean and no vital organs had been hit, and the boy had the misfortune to make it out of the hospital in time to attend his friend’s funeral. On the way home from the funeral, the boy who had just gotten out of the hospital was gunned down and killed. His assassins had known he would be at the funeral and had lain in wait for him. A dastardly act even for the routinely violent neighborhood these boys came from.

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.