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Maaannnn! I can’t wait till I get big!
I had gone back to turning circles on the sidewalk, losing myself in the endless ‘O’s when I heard his voice again. “Woman! I will fuck you up!”
“WHY?!” my mother screamed.
“Stupid shit! You better—”
“So, why then?! Why you hit me?!”
“’Cause, Woman…”
For a long second, there was silence, and then the unmistakable sound of a hard, solid fist hitting soft, pliable flesh. Plappp! I paused to look up for an instant—knowing my black-ass stepfather was beatin’ on my mother again. But I messed up when I took my eyes off the sidewalk. The bike swerved and I veered off the curb. To this day, I still don’t know how it all happened. Next thing I know, I’m rolling down Front Street, down the steepest hill I had ever seen in my life. I didn’t panic; not in my recollection. I really don’t remember panicking. I remember looking down toward the bottom of that hill and seeing the houses come rushing by me. I remember seeing there weren’t any cars in my lane, but I do recall a few cars coming toward me in the opposite lane. The bike began to gather speed and I felt soon I would be flying… and I didn’t have wings! There was no way I was going to be able to stop that bike without fucking myself up. A random thought occurred to me. There ain’t no way this is gonna end right!
In a desperate flash, Upwards Alley appeared on my right-hand side and my mind pictured the steepness of that sloping hill. If I could make that turn into the alley, I would be able to let gravity stop my momentum so I could fall off safely to the side and bring the bike back on home.
Yeah! I could do that shit! Shit?
I remember turning the handlebars to make the turn, but it was the first time I ever tried to make a real-time turn on a bicycle and I didn’t quite make it. My front wheel hit the curb right in front of Donnell Shunt’s house and I flipped. Well, actually the bike and I flipped through the air and I landed upside-down and totally! fucked! Up! My shoe had somehow come off in mid-air and my toe was smashed on the concrete. It was a pulpy, bloody mess. I felt the pain shooting up my leg so intensely, I was able to ignore the throbbing flare of the giant, knot swelling over my left ear. My head felt like someone had shoved a steel cue ball inside my head and left it there for me to grow on. I could feel it… expanding. I felt blood leaking through the cuts and scrapes on my body; my forearm had a deep gash that left a wicked-looking scar I carry to this day. My vision was colored by pain… but I was alive!
Donnell Shunt’s grandfather was sitting on the front porch, smiling. He seemed kinda far away from me, his bony body a mish-mash of angles and sticks. Now that I look back on it, he seemed like, somehow like… distant. The porch was only three steps high but his voice always seems to come out of a tunnel in my memory.
He said, “You gonna get up from there, Boy?”
Famous last words.
There was a sharp, piercing scream, a war-chant, as his wife, Jessie Mae, came sprinting up behind the old man with the machete held high. It was held back, like Thor’s hammer, and I can still see lightning in the reflection of the sharpened edge… and I can still remember when she swung it. I saw it mechanically… I saw the finer points of a perfect home run swing, the way a baseball coach would teach it. The swing started at shoulder height and went forward. Her hips opened up, building on the momentum generated… as the blade went forward. She pushed off with the speed gathered from her running start and stopped on a perfect dime, pivot and swing. It was power. Perfect execution. Pure power when the long blade of the machete sliced through the old man’s neck… flesh, blood and bone… and cut his head clean off. It just lopped off from the initial “pop” of his blood, his life force, before it bounced off the ground, like, maybe twice, and rolled a little down the street. His body… his body fell out of the chair. Plop. Dead. The old lady stood there for what seemed like a silent forever, entranced by the scene splayed out before her eyes, hypnotized as reality started to materialize to her conscious mind. She saw his spurting blood.
And she screamed. And screamed. And screamed some more. “Willie Bobo, head off, mothafucka! Willie Bobo, head off!”
I remember struggling to my feet. The pain from my injuries became a mere background hum of an ache. I remember standing there. Watching. I don’t remember any thought patterns. No fear. No disgust. No abject terror. I just stood there. My vision would register sensory images and send them to my brain, but there was no verbalization of ideas. I saw what was going on but, no, I can’t say a single thought entered my mind. I guess life can be so random sometimes, huh?
But the old lady. Jessie Mae! The old lady lost it. She screamed like a banshee until the police arrived. When they got there, she dove, threw her body, face first into her husband’s pouring blood. There was plenty of it, flowing down the sidewalk. His life’s essence paying the cost of inflicting pain on another life—with man-punches to the face. Counting the cost that life is sweet, every life, and that a soul cries out to be free… no matter the cost.
It was the ending of the cycle. There would be no more pain.
The old man’s body lay there, of course, but it looked like all of his blood and guts were rushing toward the opening where his head used to be. It looked like wormy guts and thick blood were pulsing, desperately straining to get loose, but only rivulets of brackish liquid oozed out. I stayed there, transfixed, until the firemen washed all the red fluid down the street. I looked down at my smashed and bloody toe. It didn’t hurt anymore.
The front wheel of the bike was bent so I limped, walking
the bike back up the hill, dumped it out front, and went inside our house. My mother looked at me.
“What happened to you?” she asked, mildly interested.
“I flipped my bike.” I exhaled as I flopped on the couch.
“And tore your head up?”
I nodded my head in reply.
“That’s what you get! Good for your ass, then,” she intoned. “Didn’t I tell you about that shit? You always doin’ shit. You need to learn to sit ya ass down somewhere.”
My insides were hollow as I told my mother what Donnell Shunt’s grandmother had done to her husband’s head. I had an image stuck in my mind. A picture of his guts straining to escape from his headless neck.
“She did that with a knife?” My mother looked me in the eyes.
“A machete, you know, those long knives,” I answered.
“Musta been sharp, then.”
