Unlikely Brothers by John Prendergast

Author:John Prendergast [Prendergast, John; Mattocks, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-46486-6
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

8. “I Was Trying to Do the Thing”

MICHAEL MATTOCKS

I guess I wasn’t all the way into the life back then, even with all the crack I was selling. I guess some little part of me wanted to live straight, and that’s why I told Cool I didn’t want to hang with him no more. Because when they sent me back to seventh grade the next school year, I really tried to do the thing. I went to class, and showed up on time. I did the work and read the books. I remember thinking, “Okay, I can do this.” But then one day my name came up on the loudspeaker. “Michael Mattocks, please report to the office,” and I thought, what the fuck? I go down to the principal’s office, and he says, “You’re too old for seventh grade.” I was like, “What? I ain’t but thirteen!” He said, “You look too old; you got a mustache; I don’t want you to be bullying the other kids. You ought to be in vocational school.” I wasn’t bullying nobody, and I told him so. But he didn’t let me come back.

I felt so bad. Here I was trying to do the thing, and they put me out just for looking like a tough little motherfucker. My mom marched right up to the school, and the principal told her the same thing. They sent me to some vocational school, but I quit that place after two days. So I was done with school at thirteen. Nobody from the school district called, or came to the house. That was that. I ain’t been back since.

That shit crushed me. It broke my spirit. Once I finally had got my head right, I really liked going to school.

At this point my life was so fucked up I couldn’t go straight if I tried. And I was broke as shit. I was partying way too much. I was drinking and smoking weed, and all my money was going into that. Little Charles getting killed was still affecting me in ways I couldn’t even count.

One day I’m hanging out with my buddy D when this big, dark-skinned fat man walks up. He’s got glasses and a big bushy beard; an impressive-looking dude. “Son-son,” D says to me—everybody called me Son-Son on account I was the youngest dude out there—“Son-Son,” D says, “this is Fats. Fats, Son-Son here can pump.” That means I could sell drugs good. This Fats looks me up and down; he was a mountain of a man. “You like the life?” he asks me. He’s got this deep, rumbling voice and intelligent, warm eyes, as opposed to, say, Cool. I liked him right off.

“I do,” I said.

“I’ll tell you what,” Fats says. “I’ll front you five twenties and see how you work them.”

I took those five twenties out on the street, and they were gone before the big hand reached three. When I went back, Fats chuckled in a deep, proud, rumbly way that made me feel like I was his son.

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