Joey Cloudy online

TRAMP: The South Side

(South Dallas Blues) 

“You know the boys in the hood are always hard.  

Come talking that trash we’ll pull your card.  

Knowing nothing in life but to be legit,  

Don’t quote me boy ‘cause I ain’t said shit.”  

-Eazy E  

-NWA  

“What choo doin?”  

“Working.” Aaron replied. 

“No you ain’t, nigga like you could do any kinda work he wanted to, you smarter than this.”

“Nigga’ like me?”

“You ain’t hooked, you ain’t dumb, you ain’t a wanna be gangster like yo thuggish assed little brother. So, why is you here? I ain’t never hearda nobody sitting in the dope house with a shotgun in they lap and a book in they hand. I thought yo propa’ talkin’ ass was five-O at first. After a while I figured that Pony wasn’t bullshitting that ya’ll really is brothers, but ya’ll ain’t nothing alike.”

“You don’t know nothing about me or my brother.”

“Yo brother was locked down with my babies daddy for three years and he stayed with us for a little while when he first got outta the joint after his old girl kicked him to the curb. So, maybe you right and I don’t know much about you, but I damned show know that brother of yours. He used to fuck my little cousin when she worked for him at Williams Chicken. She wasn’t nothing but fifteen. So, you still think I don’t know yo sorry assed brother.”

“That ain’t my style.”

“So, why don’t you just bounce on up outta here and do something that is yo style. ‘Couse if you keep hanging around here fucking up yo narrow ass gonna wind up getting locked down.”

‘I just can’t leave my brother out here by himself.”

“You gone keep him company when he go back to the pen or Cruiser and Bruiser roll ya’ll over or when them crazy motherfuckin’ Jamaicans roll up on ya’ll one night? Ain’t you scared of going to the pen?”

“Yeah, but I’m more afraid of something happening to Ernest out here by himself. If he was to get fucked off by one of these ignorant assed mother fuckers and I could have been here… I just can’t let anything happen to him.”

Boots laughed.

‘You’s a loyal mutha’ fucka, I’ll give you that.” Her breath reeked of cynicism. “But, you ever stop to think that maybe your boy know that shit too and that he using that shit to git you to solider for him? Dope fiend don’t think about nobody but they self. Ain’t nobody smoking this shit got no honor to nothing but gittin’ more rocks. And nobody‘ll fuck you over faster than yo’ kinfolk.”  

Ten Dollars  

“Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day.  

Give a man religion and he’ll starve to death praying for fish.”  

unknown  

Ernest never worked on the streets and Aaron never worked with anybody except his little brother Ernest. And as stupid as slanging rocks was and they both veterans of the Marine Corps knew it was stupid, Ernest’s main concern was getting high and staying high while Aaron for the moment had no concerns. There being nothing more dangerous than a man who truly doesn’t care about anything in this world. They used cheap motel rooms for a trap, careful never to use the same room twice and always getting a room on the second floor.

Ernest cooked it and cut it on the dresser while Aaron sat in the chair at the foot of the bed with the French ASPA 12 gauge auto loader with the pistol grip and the wire stock folded laying across his lap, the safety off a round chambered while he doodled in his sketch book or read something by his favorite author at the time Ayn Rand ‘The Fountainhead’, ‘We The Living’, ‘Atlas Shrugged’, ‘The Romantics Manifesto’, ‘Philosophy Who Needs It’, hell he even read her play ‘On the Night of February 15th’. Autodidactic such as Aaron Moore often obsessively plowed through a writer’s entire catalogue before they moved on to the next. He was a regular at the library and used bookstores.

There was bad porn on the TV but who wanted to watch porn in a motel room with their little brother. He was bored but he wasn’t that goddamned bored. He’d drank bottles of 40 ounce malt liquor, smoked Newport 100s and enough Primos to guarantee that he stayed awake. If he had class the next morning then he would finish his homework. And if the whores kept them up all night and he was too tweaked to go to work then they would pile into Aarons faded green four door ‘68 Buick Le Sabre everybody called “Drive By” a car that was longer than most pickup trucks. They’d roll across town to a hotel where they never worked and get high and fuck dope fiend ho’s all day.

They called the girls rock stars and crack whores but they weren’t anymore pros than he was a dope dealer. Most of them also had kids, bullshit assed day jobs working as cashiers, nurses, teachers etcetera. they were still in that early phase of thier chemical romance where they could still maintain a square gig. Most were actually nice enough people once you got to know them when they weren’t too high. Ernest made it his business not to get to know any dope fiend whore too well.

Aaron even met some of their kids, bought diapers and school supplies at 4:30 in the morning at the 24 hour Eckard’s drugstore once he got bored with fucking. Like a vampire he dropped them off at home before sunrise. Aaron Moore the gentleman dope dealer, it’s not like he really cared about them, if he did he wouldn’t have been there selling that shit in the first place, but more out of an unacknowledged feeling of guilt, having long ago abandoned his own family. Not out of any sense of doing the right thing.

The trembling women who left their bumpy faced men waiting in the parking lot locked in idling cars listening to 2 live Crew, DJ Quick or NWA on the cassette player, these are the real gangsters the ones who turned out their sisters are the real pimps. What else could you call a motherfucker who sat in a car chain smoking snipes fished from the astray while their girls timidly climbed the stairway to hell, heaven or limbo where tiny hands knocked softly on the hollow doors to strangers motel rooms with no money and nothing but their orifices to offer in exchange for a bump, a push, some crumbs to get them by. Maybe, if they sucked his dick hard enough, they might even get a contact high. Aaron would have felt sorry for them if he had grown a conscience instead of an erection.   

The shorty’s and young fools who worked the street corners and hustled on the streets and out of their own cribs, being too stupid to know that you never worked out of your own house, returned with the money that they owed for being fronted. They always came by with the money or the dope. One morning while the half dozen nigga’s’ milling around the parking lot smoking cigarettes and talking shit for a few minutes while Pony made sure everybody was square. Their cousin Lenny also a painter like Aaron only better, was short ten dollars. Lenny was still in laugh and joke mode, clowning in front of his friends and obviously still high.

“Yeah, I know I’m short. What you gone do about it bitch.”

He laughed. Pony kicked the door of the Buick open. The heavy steel door slammed into Lenny’s knees. Aaron kept his eye on Lenny’s crew, two high school aged boys from the same jets as Lenny, but it was obvious that they weren’t even thinking about getting into to this. Still he sat in the car with his hand on his pistol watching everyone, hoping that the Five 0 wouldn’t drive by and that this wouldn’t take too long.

“Hurry it up nigga, I’m hungry.” Aaron shouted impatiently.

Pony stepped out of the car and slapped Lenny upside the head with the butt of his Glock. Lenny’s eyes lost focus and a soft whimper escaped his lips as his legs turned to rubber beneath him and he went down like Chinese democracy.

“I’ll be right back.” replied Ernest coolly.

Once Lenny hit the concrete Pony holstered his piece as he proceeded to kick him in the gut with his Nike boots a few times before he climbed back into the car and closed the door.

“I just needed to holla’ at Cuz right quick.”

The two young brothers who worked with Lenny were helping him to his feet as Aaron slipped the bucket into drive. Pony turned and looked out the passenger window just as calm as if nothing of any concern had happened.

“Ya’ll owe me ten dollars.”

The older of the Bon Ton boys quickly reached into Lenny’s front pocket and pulled out a small roll of bills mostly ones, he quickly counted off ten singles before he ran over to the car and handed the money to Pony. Aaron let his foot off of the brake and the big green Buick rolled on outta the parking lot and weaved into the light morning traffic.

“I still got a few hours to kill until I need to get to class.” Aaron said as he maneuvered the old car through morning traffic.

“Man, I got the munchies.”

“Yeah, me too but there’s no place decent to eat at this hour on the Southside. And now that all the weird shit on let’s make a dope deal is over I gotta tell ya I’m a little pissed.”

“‘Bout what?”

“Was that bullshit necessary?’

“What?”

“That beat down on cuz back there.”

‘Oh, that yeah. Once he started bumping his gums about not having my money, nigga didn’t leave me no choice then.”

“We sitting in the parking lot of a dot head motel on the South Side in a hooptie with guns, money and dope and you mean to tell me that was best way to handle Cuz talking shit as usual.”

“No, it wasn’t the best way. The best thang to do in a situation like that would have been to put one in his chest and one in his head. But, since his ass is family an all I cut him some slack.”

Aaron sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Somebody’s seen ‘Boys In The Hood,’ ‘New Jack City’ and ‘Scarface’ one too many times.”

“Check it out. If I didn’t beat that nigga ass like we was still on the mutha’ fuckin’ plantation, then all them little nigga’s woulda thought that I was soft and that they could come at me short and there would be no consequences to suffer. Then it woulda’ been five short from Xav, then 20 short from Velt and 50 short from Stony, next thing you know I’m working for them fools instead of them hustling for me. Shit, I like Lenny but kin folk or no you can’t ever show any kind of weakness in this is business.”

Aaron drove on in silence knowing in his heart that despite all of his bourgeois pretenses, pseudo intellectualism and empty philosophical posturing that in the mad logic of poverty, oppression, and Darwinian justice that ruled this world Pony was right. The animals ran this zoo. 

-About the author 

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.