Worth Killing For?
It was a clear cool night with a full moon. I felt exposed. This was not the best way to go unseen with what we planned to do. The .380 pistol was only about the size of my hand. It felt warm as I pulled it out of my pocket and held it low in the passenger side seat and prepared myself to pull the trigger. My cousin drove slowly around the corner and glared at me before approaching the house. My eyes wide, lips tight, taking in every detail around me. The beads of dew on the grass had already started to form on the unkept lawn of the corner house where we slowed to a stop. I released the clip to check that it was still loaded for the third time.
Did I already put one in the chamber? I did. That’s why I had the safety on so that I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. A couple of days before, I was in my room with the door locked, practicing how to load and unload the gun. I was only 13 years old and had borrowed the gun from Big “E” over a week before. Big E was around 17 years old at that time, making him our oldest friend. He was considered the “OG” and the go to guy for advice and for weed, but on that day, I ran to his house in desperation when my father had tried to run me over in his car. I had never cried in front of any friend before that day. I told Big E everything, as if he was the Godfather.
My dad had a brief relapse with crack that led to a huge fight between us. He rolled up to his house erratically as though he was being chased. I was waiting for him just outside his chain-link fence. We had some plans that day, but I can’t remember what they were. As he pulled up and came to a stop, a dirt cloud arose. I looked at his eyes and saw fear. I looked down the street to see if there was somebody after him. The rest of the block was quiet and barren. The door flew open and his face was contorted as though he wanted to say something, but could not. It was the typical crack face for my dad. A cross between confusion, frustration, and insanity. It was like he was unsure who he was or what he was supposed to be doing.
I was shocked to see him like that. It had been years since he had left to apparently get clean. I was still shorter than my dad and less than half his weight, but I rushed at him. He was no longer an immovable force. I pushed him back into the side of the car I began to yell “what are you doing?!” He was unusually soft at initial impact with his body, but quite massive with dense weight beneath so he probably was only shoved a foot or two backwards into the car. Though he could have done anything in his state of mind, I didn’t believe he could hurt me. Something immediately changed in his eyes which made me step back. He got back in the car and slammed the door. I jumped in front of the car in order to stop him from driving while high. I lost all trust that my dad had any ability to be rational so I kept myself a few feet away from the front bumper and off to the side. Before I had a chance to say anything, he accelerated.
The same man that panicked after seeing me lying unconscious on the street as a young child with blood and glass around my seemingly lifeless body was prepared to drive his car into me. Like a matador, I spun backwards off of my right foot and into the chain fence just a few feet away. The old junkyard quality car sped right through where I was standing. I looked through the cloud of dust. Those dark blank eyes never looked back in the rearview mirror.
Big E listened as I pleaded my case to borrow one of his guns for protection. If my dad was to return, I would be ready. He reluctantly let me use his .380 pistol, but told me not to do anything that I would later regret. I agreed to appease him, but my intentions were not good. I was angry and still in the heat of that fury which I hid in front of Big E. Thankfully, time can lead to dissipation of even the most intense rage. Distracted in thought about what would happen if I had to pull the gun on my father the next time he threatened me, and because of my ignorance about how the gun worked, it went off. My finger must have pulled the trigger when I cocked it.
The loud bang was like a bomb exploding in my room. My grandmother screamed, “What was that?”
“Just a firecracker outside,” I said with only a brief hesitation. “It’s the neighbor kids messing around.” I don’t know if she believed me, but there was no further discussion after that.
I maintained an OCD level of caution thereafter. I would click the safety in place, then press it again even harder to make sure it wasn’t partly disengaged. Three times for good luck to be certain. Despite these safety checks, I still checked every so often when I kept the gun in my pocket, just in case the safety got clicked off while moving around. It wasn’t that easy to do and it never did, but I would still check anyways.
There weren’t many opportunities to practice shooting without fear of somebody seeing so I had no idea if my aim was good enough to hit my target. I was pretty good at shooter games like Duck Hunt, but not the best. My cousin often beat me. Besides my questionable aim, questions started to fill my mind: What was my target? Do I just aim for the window of the guy’s room? I don’t even know which room is his. If he happens to be outside, can I shoot him? What if he has his gun? Do I shoot multiple times? Doesn’t he have a younger sibling who I could hit by mistake? What about his parents? That saying of “a bullet has no name” couldn’t be truer. I was going to shoot up the house without a clear target.
My cousin was willing to be the shooter, but I needed to have control over what was going to happen. I looked over to see if he looked concerned and I saw emptiness. I tried to mirror the lack of emotion so that I could go through with it.
My cousin and I were close growing up. He would visit during school breaks and stay for several weeks at a time. We were often out running the streets, looking for opportunities to make money. There were no discussions of honest earnings like mowing lawns or getting a summer job at the neighborhood store. We were two idiots, scheming to make fast money. Although we devised big plans, like robbing a bank or one of those armored trucks, none of these schemes ever saw the light of day. There was always some aspect of each plan that seemed too risky so we never carried it out. Most of our crimes were small scale, low yield and pretty stupid. We did, however, get into a number of conflicts while running the streets, one being with this neighbor around the block who was about to be our intended target.
Like many bad encounters, this whole scheme started pretty benign. We were walking to a nearby store to buy some snacks one evening and came across a guy who was drunk and/or high, staggering away from the store. Upon closer inspection, I recognized him as a neighbor from around the block. As we stared, we must have given off a vibe that we were mean mugging him.
Mean mugging is a way to carry yourself while in the ghetto, to send a message that you are not somebody to mess with. This goes beyond trying to look tough while minding your business. It goes the extra mile, a hateful, intentional glare to your intended target. Over time, I learned that mean mugging was more likely to get you killed than it was to deter any trouble. Most folks would overt their gaze away to avoid trouble, but those were not the problematic people. The ones that were crazy enough to stare back were the ones that you had to worry about. It was just a matter of time before such an encounter would happen as it did.
The intoxicated guy staggered toward us, barely noticing we were there until he caught a glimpse of our stares. He challenged us with his own mean mug, but then had some harsh words to follow. “What the f*** you looking at?” he asked.
We started to argue in response, but then he motioned to the gun he was holding just inside of his jacket pocket. He spewed other words of intimidation after seeing we had nothing to say. Our words became lodged deep into our stomachs as they turned. We just stared cautiously; feet frozen to the pavement. He stared as our initial challenging glare melted into one of despondency. He moved on after he had his say without ever having to take the gun out of his pocket, but the damage had already been done— we had been disrespected publicly.
I had the .380 pistol at home and thankfully I didn’t have it on me at the time- if so, my ego may have led to a shootout in front of the neighborhood store. Instead, we walked away silently, went home and plotted for a few days. We initially planned to find the guy later that night, but after the anger and embarrassment had settled, it seemed foolish to look for trouble. My cousin disagreed, but it was my butt on the line if something went wrong. He’d return home after the summer break while I remained behind, vulnerable. He wanted to make an example of him, but there were several problems with this idea. The most obvious dilemma was that there were witnesses at the store who could identify us as being the ones who had a negative interaction with the guy. The cops would have no trouble figuring out who did it.
A few more days went by before we saw the guy again. We immediately recognized him as we walked past at the same store down the street, but he didn’t seem to notice us. We thought he probably didn’t remember us because he was so drunk or high. Instead of being thankful for this and moving on, we used this as an opportunity to plan our revenge; our logic was that if he didn’t remember us, then he wouldn’t know it was us that shot up his house. This could have been false logic. This time the guy wasn’t drunk and may not have had his gun with him. There were two of us and he was alone. He may have recognized us, but being sober in that moment, had enough sense to act like nothing ever happened. None the less, we began to strategize.
I had never done a drive-by shooting or ever shot at another human being before. Even though I was still pissed at the guy, I was not prepared to potentially take his life over this. Enough time had passed that my anger and shame from the public disrespect had dissipated. We thought we had a reputation to protect. We were a couple of dumb teenagers who thought we were the center of the universe. What happened did matter to us and if left unreconciled, there would be future turmoil in our world. His actions against us could not go unchecked.
We waited until after midnight in the early hours of the next day before moving forward with the plan. After ensuring the gun was loaded, I clicked the safety off and nodded my head toward the direction of the guy’s house. The whole neighborhood was quiet with only the sound of crickets. I was on the passenger side with the window open and sat on the door with my top half outside of the car and out of view from my cousin as he slowly drove towards the house. I made sure the passenger door was locked and then wedged my feet between the seat and the door to make sure I wouldn’t fall if my cousin freaked out and slammed on the gas. I faced the guy’s house on the opposite side of the street and steadied my aim. I braced myself in anticipation of the car to suddenly accelerate and then opened fire.
I had no intention to shoot at the house or anybody in it, but I wanted my cousin to believe we had accomplished our goal and gotten revenge. From his angle, he couldn’t see the direction I pointed the gun as I aimed to the sky. As he drove by, I shot into the air a few times as he sped off. I slipped back into the passenger seat and slid half way down the seat as though expecting return of fire. My cousin followed suit, crouching down while gripping the steering wheel, tires screeching while the car hauled down the street. Pretty stupid and risky, but thankfully no one was hurt. My cousin believed I shot into the home and I got to save face.
There is no excuse for the blatant disregard I had for others, but there must be a reason that so many people share a similar path and so many go as far as to murder. Why do some go from cute little kids in elementary school to aspiring thugs at some point in their adolescence? What happened to my childhood innocence? While I take responsibility for all my actions, there must be a reason that this unfortunate transformation happens to so many kids who live in poor neighborhoods. I’m certain that the environment has an impact, but there must be more to it. I was bussed away from the ghetto for elementary school through middle school, but the negative transition still happened to me. I was surrounded by well off, privileged white people and I still became corrupt. I never felt like I belonged on the good side of town. My neighborhood followed me to school like a puppy. In the beginning, I tried to hide it. After a few years of unsuccessful acclimation, I learned to embrace my differences and wear the hood as a badge of honor. I was that kid who was bussed from the hood and got sent back to the hood because he was a bad person. This persona was counter-productive in the classroom. Teachers vested little interest in me nor I in them. My grades in high school continued to decline and I was no longer the smart kid, but the trouble maker.
Despite the heavy influence that society has on the image that some adapt to, I believe that one’s moral compass can be greatly influenced by love. Regardless of how I looked or acted as a teenager, I had a deeper set of guiding principles that were instilled earlier in my childhood that directed me. It is never too late to have a positive influence on an individual, but the earlier in childhood one starts, the more likely you are to shape their direction before society does. Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Perhaps there are critical moments in our childhood where we can be significantly influenced in such a profound way that it starts us on a path that is difficult to change.
There were many opportunities in my teenage years where I could have gone too far and seriously hurt or killed someone. That inner voice that was always in the background of my mind took over when I needed it to. I thank God for the love given to me by my grandmother early in my childhood. I fear that if I had not been shown love at that critical stage of my development, I very easily could have stepped over the line and ended up on a different path.
