YNs– Braids

2003

On Fifth Street in Wilmington, Delaware’s West Side, the unusual warmth from the October day prompted the girls on the corner to chew Herr’s Sour Cream and Onion chips. The boys played basketball with a crate nailed against a post.

On the steps, eighteen-year-old Minquasia Rupp twisted her fingers to form braids. The designs looked intricate.

“Alright, done,” Minquasia announced to nineteen-year-old Lernice Lumwell. Both of the two women had sun-touched brown skin and alabaster white teeth. Their figures seemed to be on the thin side and they looked proud; one the worker and the other the recipient looking forward with chins slightly canted.

Oliverio “Skipper” Bruckner ambled down the path. He walked alone. The time came for inspection. He had a slight build and a gold tooth. A twenty-two caliber pistol fit inside his back waistband. He strolled up to the block where the kids played in the street. With confidence and a matchless ego, he walked up to the two women. He looked at Lernice’s hair. No, he studied it.

“Alright. What we’re going to do is get the runners on this.” He looked at Minquasia. “You make sure you learn them something good. About everything. About it all.”

“I got you,” Skipper replied.

“You ain’t gonna say nothing to me?” Lernice mentioned, almost pouting.

“Hi. Now, you’ve got a serious role. You’ve gotta wear a bonnet to bed tonight and keep those braids together.”

“Okay.”

“Alright then.”

After that, fifteen-year-old Baylor Cerson and seventeen-year-oldFord Parkley rolled up to the scene. They had already been briefed about the braids so they readied themselves to see just what the whole idea entailed.

“Hey, y’all,” Cerson mentioned. A razor blade resided under his tongue. Parkley looked at the two women and dapped Skipper.

“This is our block. What we do here is of no one else’s concern,” Skipper announced. “I want you both to study these braids,” he pointed to Lernice’s tresses.

“Don’t touch my hair, Skip,’” Lernice protested.

“Ain’t nobody worried about your hair, girl. Be quiet. Now, all you boys need to know is that there’s a stash house, a tunnel, a re-up location and an escape route if the cops come. There’s also a round tucked underneath one of her braids.”

“Or huge orange men,” Minquasia snickered.

“Whatever. You did a good job. Don’t go ruining it with that nonsense.”

“So we’re supposed to know exactly where the drop off points are and where we should meet up for the next three days…based on these braids? I was expecting something a bit less complicated, Skip’,” Cerson admitted.

“That’s okay, we’ll learn from them. We can just use a map, though right?”

Skipper shook his head and the women giggled. “This is a specific map with actual plans for how to duck the gooses and keep moving the product.”

“Alright,” Parkley said. “But I’m still not sold. I don’t see how we can line up all of these routes.”

Skipper sighed. “It’s like football. You know how there’re routes? It’s like that. Minquasia knows, she plays Madden all the time. That’s probably why she put in so many complex details in this set of locks.”

“I know what the different lanes to do go in with all of this,” Minquasia pointed out.

“So, we’re good, right?” Skip asked.

“I mean. Yeah. We’ve got something here,” Cerson observed.

The four of them dapped each other and looked around to see if the block was hot. Only some kids passed around a football. The kids playing basketball with the crate had left and gone home. Skipper walked down the street with the confidence that befit an emperor. He forgot one thing, however. He backpedaled to the stoop where Lernice and Minquasia conversed with Cerson and Parkley.

“I meant to tell you, everyone gets a cut. That’s $1500 for everyone. Six grand split for all of you. Let’s make it happen,” Skip mentioned and resumed his egoistic march down the street.

The boys received their instruction and looked on with great enthusiasm. In them, they felt as if they had been given orders to storm Omaha Beach on D-Day. Their seriousness oozed from their body languages and their spoken words.

“Alright if I take this….And if I go along this path, you’ll be right….We can do this,” Parkley. The women stood at attention while the two boys learned the various routes to a taste of fiscal freedom.

“What we can do is just take the Dart and travel down the roads while we go the right way. That’s the safest way to ever do it. There’s no gas being run up leaving a trail from station to station. We’ll just get dropped off at Rodney Square and begin our trek,” he noted.

“That’s right. We can do all of this. These routes are simple. Really. They may seem intricate but they’re not that complex. They’re simple!” Cerson exclaimed.

The next day storm clouds brought rain and some freezing rain. That’s one thing they didn’t count on the change that remains the same: weather. Despite that, they had to work like FedEx and UPS. Those packs had to move no matter what. Cerson thought about using his cellphone but remembered his burner would be coming soon. Parkley knew that he would not use his mobile device either for the same reason. He’d receive his in due time as well. They met up at the stop on the West Side on their way to Rodney Square. They wore all black hoodies and old busted up black Timberland boots.

Once they reached their destination, they looked at each other as if about to jump into an Olympic sized swimming pool.

“We got this,” Cerson reassured Parkley.

“No doubt,” Parkley affirmed.

With precise steps, they toted book bags full of ready rock. They found their first drop off point. They lined up the baggies in an even bigger baggy. Cerson stowed the weight underneath a trash can on the East Side.

“This is easy,” Cerson declared.

“Yeah, well it gets special in a little while,” Parkley replied.

The rain continued to fall. There seemed like there had been a switch that turned off the summer heat and clicked on the impending winter on this October day.

“We just have to make these stops…what are you doing?” Cerson asked Parkley.

“They don’t expect to have all of the work. I’m just keeping some for myself for a day like today.”

“You can’t do that. They’ll know it when they weigh it. You’re going to mess up the whole operation.”

“Hell with that. $1500 is cute, but I can move these on my own and still come up with at least double that,” Parkley replied.

“You’re not going to do it on my watch.”

“Then maybe you can choose another route. We still have to circle back and get that round out of Lerniece’s hair. That’s for our protection. That’s for our glory.”

“Ain’t no glory in it. It’s just money.” Parkley folded his arms on the bus ride.

They found another drop off point from the map on the young woman’s hair.

“I’m warning you. Don’t mess up the bag. There’s the don who will be quite pissed if we miss a brick or even a single baggy. Never mind capos like Skipper. Boss Man Tremaine is what you need to be concerned with right now.”

“Well he’s not down in the trenches with the soldiers now is he? What are you so worried about?” Parkley asked.

“What do you think? You want your finger chopped off your hand? You want to be found in a dumpster somewhere? He’s got power to do that and Skip won't be there to protect us from such street action.”

“If you’re not going to take a chance with me, then maybe you can be left behind. Maybe you can just work your own routes.”

Cerson looked at Parkley with equal measures of disdain and shame.

“What you need to do is get your head right. One false move and that’s it for this operation. We’ve been going good to have you bitching about taking your own cut. That work doesn’t belong to you. All we have to do is move it and we get paid four figures. C’mon! Some professors at UD and Wilmington University don’t even get that in a day.”

Cerson peered at his partner. “Alright, I won’t break off the work.” Parkley spoke the words but he felt as if they didn’t even ring true to himself.

“Just three more stops around the city. That’s all we have to do. Just three more. I know you can do that.”

Parkley looked out the window. The rain came down in sheets. They clutched their wares even tighter. Their heart rates remained even throughout this whole process. It felt like they were doing the Lord’s work with every drop, even if they were atheists.

They unloaded the bundles with a ferocity and spirit that helped to give them a specific understanding of the city in which they lived. They could see the breadth of the tiny metropolis within a tiny state. Some of the product came wrapped in squares, others looked like loaves of pound cake. Every space they found, sewers, within hollowed out trees, old dilapidated cars, they ensured the product got shipped. Even Parkley seemed to be on board with all of this. His hands touched the work like a magician about to perform an illusion. The way he positioned the soft and the hard cocaine brought him to new levels of awareness.

When they had looked at the time, the day’s work had just about been finished. They totaled the number up in their heads and ensured to calculate it on their Nextel phones.

Cerson and Parkley did not rest until they got to the penultimate stop. They stepped out, dodging rain drops with gusto. Cerson busied himself with the zipper. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Parkley pocket some of the product.

“Hey, man?” He threw his hands in the air and offered the international symbol for “what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m getting mine,” Parkley declared.

“No, you’re going to mess up our money.” Parkley, who had been kneeling, now stood up to Cerson. He had a brick of cocaine in his left hand. He closed in and swung at Cerson.

“Are you crazy?!” he asked. Parkley reared back and broke the bag of work over Cerson’s head.

“Now I know you’re crazy. What the hell’s the matter with you? That’s our profit right there!”

Parkley still had a fistful of cocaine in his hand; he smashed it into Cerson’s mouth. He just went for it. Cerson started to hyperventilate and show signs of a heightened heart rate right there on the street. It was a shady place and with the rain and clouds, no one could see clearly through the mist. Parkley searched Cerson for his firearm and put it into his waistband as the young man shivered and shook on the roadway. He checked the firearm. It had no rounds in it. He thought of the reason why he had no ammunition in the pistol. He then banished the thought altogether. Parkley scooped up Cerson’s bag and started to get on the next bus. He got on and tried to remember the route to the next drop off point. He couldn’t, so he traveled back to the girls on the bus headed to the West Side.

Minquasia and Lernice sat on the steps with needle like rain falling down on them. Parkley strolled up to the two women.

“Where’s Baylor?” Lernice asked.

“He went to get some clothes from his house,” Parkley lied.

“Okay, so why didn’t you go with him?” Minquasia wondered.

“He said he could handle the rest on his own after he changed his clothes,” Parkley told another whopper.

Minquasia and Lernice looked at each other like… “okay.”

“But you’ve got his bag which still has product. Something’s not adding up here,” Minquasia suspected.

“If you must know, he wanted me to sell his portion, too. He was sacrificing it for me. He wanted to do good for his fellow man by allowing me to get his cut of the profits.” More lies.

“Wait. So, he went to his house to change but before that, he just up and gave you the bag. I’m still trying my best to see the sense in all this.”

Parkley became agitated. He looked at the braids on Lernice’s head. He remembered the round embedded in her hair alongside the routes to take for the drop off points. He reached over and took the round and pulled out his weapon. The two women backed up onto the steps and put their hands to the sky.

Parkley motioned to them that they would not get hurt. He then loaded the gun and put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bag dropped before his body.