It was the dark hours of the early morning, and the car rumbled with the sound of bass. There were five of us packed into Rivy’s black Chevy Suburban, and our shoulders bumped against each other as Riv swerved around corners and let the gas guzzling horses sing beneath the wide hood of the SUV. I was in the middle, between Hank and one of his friends named Perez. Riding shotgun was my close friend and accomplice, Ben, who had many nicknames, but that night he was called ‘Blue-Bill’ or ‘BB’.
‘You motherfuckers pitiful, I’m too sick of you…’
We weren’t talking. It’s not like we could hear anything over the rumble of the New Orleans rap duo $uicideboy$, who’s song Carrollton filled the atmosphere of the car. The slow rasp of the first verse sounded like feet being dragged on gravel, and the Southern drawl in his words filled the space between us. It resonated in our bones, filling our veins, as if we were absorbing it through our skin and filling our body with the bloodthirsty undertone being spit from the rumbling speakers. Each line got me more and more excited, and it felt like my limbs were filled with thunder. Next to me, Hank gripped tightly on the Rock Cats baseball bat he held between his knees, and BB gripped the overhead handle so hard I could see his knuckles turning white.
‘I’m a walking visual, you boys refillable…’
I had found myself in the car with a group of boys hungry for violence because BB was a very high-strung person, especially when it came to his friends, or even worse, his significant others. For many days prior to being picked up from my house on a cold Tuesday morning, BB’s girlfriend Ally was having trouble with some kids that were harassing her in class and out of school. BB and I had already confronted them once, because I believed in talking problems out before jumping to violence, but after their persistent aggression towards Ally, BB decided he needed to fix her problem his own way.
‘Unforgivable, once you cross me, hoe …’
We knew that they both walked to school early so that they could hide out in the locker rooms, where they propped open the broken fire exit to smoke weed out of. We were counting on catching them on their way, since there were cameras at the school. The four passengers faced the windows, eyes peeled for Mohammad and Jackson, the two kids who talked a lot of shit with very little to back it up. They got away with running their mouths for so long because Jackson was the son of the vice principal, so he could get away with most of his behavior. They were both short, and Mohammad wore the same Punisher hoodie every day. It was ironic; he wore a skull on his chest, but he hadn’t laid a finger on anyone in his entire life, and we could all tell. We weren’t as worried about roughing up Mo, but someone had to be able to remember what BB wanted to teach them. As Riv began to slow, we could see the pair on the sidewalk to our right, walking in the direction of a stop sign. Rivy passed them, turned on his signal at the stop sign, and waited for a short time before the two reached our car.
‘Now you a motherfuckin’ stain to Lil Cut Throat… Pow!’
As they cleared the distance between us, BB pulled a black wool ski mask over his head. I donned my own mask and pulled my hood up. Hank, Perez and Riv had no worries, since they didn’t go to school with either of our targets. Once they got closer, the passenger and back doors opened simultaneously. The soundproof seal of the Suburban’s doors was broken, and war music filled the street as we rushed the two. In the seconds before we collided, the smug confidence usually plastered on their faces were soon replaced by surprise and confusion.
‘Let the guns bang, nuts hang, drug game, ain’t the same…’
Hank and I were the grabbers: we would hold the pair still for Perez and BB to go to work. Hank was much larger than Mo, and easily bowled him over, throwing him to the pavement. I clashed with Jackson, jabbing him rapidly in both sides, knocking the wind out of him, before I pulled him into a full nelson, my arms wrapping around his arms and clasping my hands behind the back of his head. I heard him wheeze, his back straining for oxygen against my chest as I pinned his arms, pulling them farther apart. We were quick, precise, and efficient. By the time BB and Perez had gotten out of the car, Hank and I were holding the pair on their feet, both of them visibly groaning, but the air was still resonating with music pouring from the open car doors.
‘Savage tatted on my face, Grey Ape, blazing while we hotbox, fuck a badge, fuck a cop…’
Hank held Mo in check with his bat. Perez let off a couple light hits to his face and chest, and the small boy was bleeding from his nose and mouth before Perez could even let loose. BB, however, was focused on Jackson, whose chest was stretched open and left unprotected by the wrestling hold I held him in. BB let loose with a flurry of movement. Chest, stomach, face, ribs. His fists pumped into his body like the arms of a steam engine, and I could feel the breath and the consciousness being forced out of his body.
‘Even if the K hot, watch me bust on any block…’
The hollow thumping of punches reverberated through my body. I was glad for the music drowning out the sounds of the punches, the cracks of ribs straining under repeated abuse, the snaps of fingers breaking, the splatting of blood smearing the sidewalk as BB painted the cement, an artist of violence putting his tools to work.
‘North side naughty, scope on the shotty, semi blow your body, Tony grippin’ on a Tommy, bitch …’
We all watched BB work on the kid. It only lasted a few brief moments, but he was ruthless. BB tore into Jackson like a lion on a gazelle, and it was hypnotizing, like watching a car crash and not being able to turn away. The camouflage splatter of red against his clothes and the pavement were becoming more visible in the new light of the rising sun.
‘I bite the head off a bat like I’m Ozzy… ‘
Hank let go of Mohammad, and he fell over. Perez took hold of his arms, and Hank grabbed BB, holding him back from further brutalizing the red heap of limp, blubbering pain between my arms. Hank held BB back for a moment, still swinging, before shouting to him over the music.
“Enough, Blue! You got the message across, say some words and leave it alone!”
‘You got a problem, motherfucker come and try me…’
Hank released him, and I turned Jackson to face the curb. I loosened my hold around his arms, and he slid limply to the stained sidewalk. BB stood over him, nudging his head onto the curb, and rested his splattered black converses onto the side of Jackson’s head. He started shouting over the music as he pressed his foot down.
“You fucks know what you did, so I’m not gonna spell it out for you.”
He pressed down harder, and a gurgling gasp spewed a stream of saliva and blood onto the curb. I could see gaps in his normally confident grin, and his face reminded me of a squashed jack-o-lantern that had turned to rot months after Halloween had passed.
“Don’t fuck with people. You boys talk a lot of shit, but you gotta learn.”
‘I’m nothing like what you punk boys wanna embody, North-North, East side, Five Nine, Tony gripping Tommy…’
He pressed harder, and the creak of bone was unheard, but seen by all of us. BB growled.
“If you bark, you better bite.”
‘Fuck around, end up with your body autopsied, I be that walking zombie, bath salts, eatin’ bodies, three choppas and a shotty shootin’ everybody…’
He took his foot off of Jackson’s head, and he spluttered again, his blood pooling. BB turned to Mohammad.
“I was talking to you. When your friend doesn’t have a feeding tube anymore, tell him what I said.”
BB turned and climbed back into the car. The thunk of the door closing behind him shook me out of my stupor. It felt like the minute it took us to disassemble their tough-guy facade had stretched out for weeks. I spent a lifetime holding Jackson as blows rained on his chest, and Mohammad’s whimpers brought me back to normal speed. Perez followed BB, and I turned to the car. I could feel a crunch under my foot as I stepped over the red shape on the sidewalk. I slid to the middle seat, and Hank jumped in beside me, and the car launched forwards before his door even closed. The nylon fibers of my mask scratched my face as I peeled it off. The rest of the morning was filled with the heavy bass of Carrollton, and one by one we were dropped off. I went home and showered. As I changed my shoes for school, I could see something stuck in the grooves of the sole, and when I inspected further, I pulled a crimson-pink canine tooth out of my high tops.
‘Cigarette wet, bumpin’ Boosie Badazz! On them drugs, jiggin’, jaws locked, clinchin, trigger finger itchin’, if you think I’m kiddin’ … ’
BB and I walked to school, this time maskless. We passed the sidewalk where it happened, past a group of EMTs and police officers taking Mohammad’s statement. The dark red scar on the pavement stood out like a sore thumb. BB and I went about our normal day, and Ally had very few problems for the rest of the year. We saw Mohammad the next day, his face a palette of eggplant purple, dark black rings around his eyes, and a swollen red nose and stitched lip from where Perez split his face. Jackson returned after a month and a half, on crutches, and transferred schools after two weeks back. Mohammad was never known to say anything disrespectful to anyone after it happened, and as the school year went on, he was well respected by BB and many of his crew. They knew he learned his lesson and treated him like a different person. In the end, Mo wasn’t the only one who learned his lesson. Sooner rather than later, people began to pick up Jackson’s pieces from Mo and the sidewalk, and figured out what kind of person BB was. Anyone associated with him was left alone, treated neutrally. Because every day, you could see the stain on the sidewalk, now faded a dark brown, but still as visible as the night the blank canvas of cement was painted with skin and blood. We never talked about that night, acted like it never existed, even though we all remember the sound of bass bumping, the sight of red spewing like a sprinkler, the scabs and bruises on BB’s knuckles for days after.