The early morning juxtaposition between the setup for tomorrow’s rapshoot and the parking lot is a bit Jarring. The producers had underestimated the April wind last night and half the tarps covering the equipment were either off in puddles or flapping and showing the Crucial records name in the air. I know that, In covering them 20 years ago, you left before such pageantry for them could rev up, but I know much of it not for them but for Yacht Boy. On the pole leading from Pacific to 17th street, is a poster of him, hanging by two threads at 67 to 22-degree angle depending on the wind gust. He is pointing a gun straight at the viewer, but it is made out of hard rock candy, which he acknowledges by licking its left side.
Walking past all this on the way to the Symposium, I noticed a man who saluted me for the hundredth time. As I came and went from the hotel in the last few days, he would get in a policeman’s formation, hold his hand perpendicular to his head, then scurry away from the parking lot. He wore a blue policeman’s uniform so dirty and maggot moted that it looked like he had been in a civil war reenactment. In my downtime I would observe him: first from the top of my hotel room, then the coffee house in the lobby, then the parking lot in which the Ubers picked him up to go around the city. Now, as I was going to witness a bunch of intellectuals dissect the political meaning of my brother, I decided to cross the street to talk to him.
“I’ve seen you around here, man,” I said, five feet away. “You got anything to do with all the Assassins.”
“I’m not good at this, but I have to be,” He said.
“Good at what?”
“An apology. An apology is too long coming on my part. I apologize for the argument I and my partner had about the Assassins and that boy. We were all proud young black men with strong opinions, and while we didn’t like the group, we took it too far, we took it too far in what we ignored.”
I sat down in the pavement paved to face, even more, confused than before about who my brother was. “You know who I am, man?”
“I know you’re Rodney’s brother. Rodney was a good nigga. I quit the force because of him. The lady at acme java takes care of me and makes sure I get a biscuit. People are very eager to tell me that I have lost my mind. “
“I’m confused. How do you know he was a good nigga?”
“The Hill is a different place now, and while I don’t see it as paradise, I am kind of glad to be adrift in it. The new people of the hill used to fucking boil my brain with rage, but now, outside of the tech guys, I just see a bunch of kids with off-colored overpriced clothes. If you have heard about me and drugs, I assure you I’m not on hard shit.”
“Brother, I’m sorry you’re going through it right now,” I told him. “Take a deep breath and tell me what this is all about.”
“I’m not on hard shit. Not anymore” he said. “But I do smoke weed now. I smoke it to kind of escape what I know. My mom is worried about me. She prays that I get back to academics or the force, and I understand. I just don’t know how to tell her. I’m not good at feelings, Terrence.”
“I have to go, but do you know anything about my brother?” I said, standing up and dusting my jacket and coat off.“I can buy you some food tonight. Or maybe tomorrow, if you want to talk to me about it tomorrow.”
“You want to know what happened! “He said with his hand in the air.” Hi, my name is Richie and I was a top-flight rookie cop 5 years ago with a squad that cracked up and a mission that led to me being in this parking lot.
“I have to go, but I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said, walking toward the downtown campus. “I promise to talk to you about it tomorrow.”
“They took him here.” He said.
“Took him were,” I said.
“The mob took him.” Said the man. “We could have stopped…” He looked at me, less paused then frozen. He tried to vocalize his words. He tried to force it out of his words then stopped. I nodded, crossed the road, and took a giant gulp to get the lump out of my throat
- ***
I have often gone over your last blog in regards to the Assasins, the day you spent covering their press conference at the University of Puget Sound, and quit your entire life and life before because of it. When I read it in the rehab center, I initially wrote it off to you being a snowflake. She came this far only to quit because of an argument with my brother? She’s stronger than this. Liberals have to be stronger than this. After I thought that, however, I realized I was in the second year rehab clinic whose expenses were not footed by me, so I didn’t have the right to talk More than that, It caused me to go over all your articles and realize how it broke you. You had come here from Texas taking them seriously, trying to find the political flashes between their delinquent lyrics, trying to see if they could be an entity that could affect or be affected by the history of black art and music, and you were trampled by a bunch of men who wanted to instantly put their “rape a bitch” lyrics into every single canon.
I’m half glad to tell you that the beta version of what you went through was a lot tamer. When you were having shouting matches with college students at The University of Puget Sound, the group and their dynamics were still fresh: “Stupid Bitch” had just broken the national top 10 of rap charts, there were no established patterns of such horrorcore groups fizzing or being exposed, or never growing an inch as people to make those who put noble pretense on them look foolish. Now, it a parlor game of thirty-something men trying to find meaning for their lives and passions, and young frat boys eager to affix a moral to their biases in the Assassins songs.
Oh the program tried to give the group the same weight, but it dissolved into a shouting match. Curt Forman was debating with Billy, the cop who had accosted me two days before. “Gangster Rap In Tacoma: The Meaning Of The Assassins,” The poster said above them. Below, however, they spent an hour insulting each other’s blackness in the guise of music, environment, and history I sat in the back and refused to say anything. Ignored by both men on each side of the dais, I was almost glad that I wasn’t at the center of their wrath. I drowned the second half of the symposium as noise and started to write an outline of the article that I am behind schedule on sending you.
THESIS: The story of the 11th street assassins has no easy answers or tidy narratives to make any side feel comfortable, the only thing I can tell you is what I know
1: Paragraphs about fathers’ history.
2: Paragraphs about mothers’ history.
3: My response as a drug addict,
4: Talking to the surviving assassins about their success and their record
5: My response to go to.….
Curt interrupted me as I was typing “So what did you think, brother?
Billy fell right behind him, a little too collegial for someone who was verbally at Curt’s throat minutes ago. “Yeah, I’m interested as to what you think on this.”
“I’m interested as to how the Cannon Beach air will feel on my face when all this shit is over,” I said.
As the symposium finished, and the lights of the auditorium came on, I saw a haggard man wander toward us. He wore a fisherman’s cap and a disheveled tweet suit. He cut in the line of the kids who wanted to ask Curt and Billy more questions. Looking at him, I thought he was an old bum who slid in, but a second look at his face showed that it was more worn than aged. As a young man started to ask a question about Billy’s dissension on Black Lives Matter, the old man started laughing.
Curt grew furious at him. “Brother, we don’t want to call the cops on a black man, but please, please behave yourself,” he said. But he wouldn’t stop. The group tried to ignore him, but the man kept on in an insane cackle, getting louder after each student’s personal question.
After the fifth student, both Billy and Curt rushed him. “Brother this is a house of scholarship,” Curt told him. “We are here with the deliberate purpose to mound young minds. These young people are trying to understand their future by going deep into their past. Whatever drunken shenanigans you are pulling are reflecting the worst of us in this predominantly white institution and have nothing to do with the discussion we are having.”
“I’m a kill you, Samuel,” Billy said, putting his hands around his throat. Cops came in and separated him from him. Samuel then turned to me, not knowing I was his brother. “I listened to this 1-hour bullshit session and got nary ad word from them about telling the truth about how Rodney died. I was in the magic young squad with him. And it broke because he wanted to get that group at all cost.”
“Get that cat shit crazy street nigger out of here,” said Billy, pointing to the cops.“Your problem was you wanted to be part of the group. You started to have those social justice feelings; you bitch ass nigga.”
The cops grabbed him as the students started cheering. “You lying ass mother fucker.” said Samuel. “I hated the group just as much as you did. I just wanted to do it by the goddamn book. But no, you wanted to be the cowboy. You wanted to be the hero.” The cops escorted him to the door, and he yelled out “Y’all think I’m cat shit crazy. Oh, your niggas will find out in the wash. Mark my words. You niggers will find out what we did in the wash”
I struggled to catch my breath. The students were remaining in the veranda between the auditorium and the English hall, numb and quiet to a person. “I’m glad you saw that,” said Billy. “I told you drugs alcohol and madness was the thing that led to our team’s downfall. It is a tragedy of how social justice movements, used him to rant against me. We were friends for a long time. And the furor over the Assassins and the death of Rodney just got to their heads.”
“I would like to see my brother’s autopsy file,” I said
He kept a beady-eyed stare at me as a University of Washington TA apologized for the ruckus, then told telling the students that they had their papers due on this in a week. Curt thanked Billy “for the sporting argument” then hailed an uber back to the Luxor hotel. I stared back at Billy silently, as janitors folded up chairs and tables. We both stood up as the Janitors did their work till they were the only two things in the room.
“You don’t know how much they were in the way, Terrence,” said Billy. “I see the new kids in this neighborhood. New nerds and my heart bleed for them. Little ass lambs, my nigga. I am a lion for these lambs. Nerdy black lambs, Terrence. I was a nerd in these projects, my nigga. And niggas like Rufus took that shit away from me. And they were gonna take that shit from.”
“So, you killed my brother,” I said
“No, I didn’t kill your brother, nigga.” He said, his hands around my collar. “But you don’t understand how we don’t give a fuck about how he died”
“Fine you don’t give a fuck how my brother died. And if you don’t give a fuck about how my brother died, then give me his autopsy so I can know and get on with my fucking life.”
“What do you think you’re gonna get from it, Terrence? You gonna convince all those wannabe gangster kids who went back to their conservative daddies when a dead body showed up to get woke? You gonna convince record companies that rappers are human beings and not niggers who are a tax write off? You gonna get all the parents of high-end kids who are now grandparents to assail their children who are now parents for being involved in this shit. You don’t want to see it, Terrence. There is nothing you can do. There is too much for you to see. But I’ll send it to you. But don’t say I didn’t warn your black ass.”
He took his hands off my collar, stood up, and then walked out of the room “Don’t say I didn't warn your black ass.”
I sat slumped by the wall until the sensory system shut the lights. **
