***
Maalik Jackson’s breath was lodged in the middle of his throat like cornered wind trapped inside a balloon. He stood motionless at the top of the basement steps, staring into the blackness at the just slammed basement door. He listened intently, trying to determine if Uncle Mayo was still on the other side of the door. He could hear nothing. He could see nothing. No sound, total darkness, and no Uncle Mayo. Despite his fear, he wasn’t totally surprised with his current predicament. He’d expected the old man to do something. After all, Uncle Mayo had warned him about the drugs. But Maalik hadn’t expected this, whatever this was. What type of punishment did the old man have in mind?
Slowly his breathing returned. He swallowed hard, turned around shakily, and then proceeded down a couple of stairs into the darkness. There, he paused again and looked back up at the basement door. He could barely make out the outline of it, as it disappeared into the darkness. Only moments before Uncle Mayo had pushed him into the basement, the door quickly snapping shut behind him as if its hinges were taut rubber bands. He sucked in a long, nervous, deep breath. Once again, he turned his head back toward the basement floor. He goose necked forward, trying to peer beyond the darkened stairwell. After another breathless moment of indecision and uncertainty, he decided it was probably best to just keep moving. Haltingly, he continued downward.
Drugs are dangerous, was a refrain that he’d heard a thousand times before, at school, on TV, and here at Fathers House, a place where, ironically, most of its young inhabitants had more than a passing familiarity with most illicit drugs. Maalik had been under no illusions when he had chosen his new career path; he’d seen firsthand the ill side effects of drugs. But users and dealers generally accepted the high risk-high reward nature of the drug trade. For Maalik, it had been no different, even if it had meant jeopardizing his stay at Fathers House.
He had lived under the Fathers House roof for the past six months and had been a regular participant in the House’s afterschool program eighteen months before that. There were seven other boys that also lived at the House, and another eighteen in its afterschool program. As far as Maalik could tell, at least four of the House residents dabbled in the drug trade. And unless the old man was totally clueless to the obvious, (which Maalik seriously doubted) those four had apparently been given a pass that wasn’t being afforded to Maalik. “I don’t want you doing drugs,” the old man had said to Maalik on more than one occasion. “You know what drugs did to your mama.” It had been a needless reminder. Of course Maalik knew what drugs had done to his mama. He’d been there. He’d suffered through it. But his mama had been a user, not a seller. Eleven-year-old Maalik understood the difference. In the drug game, you were either a taker or a giver. Users were givers. His mama had given all she had, including her body, and ultimately her life, to the drug game. But Maalik had no intentions of using drugs. He was going to be a taker. He was going to make that money. He needed to make that money.
However, he had to admit to himself that he hated disappointing Uncle Mayo. The old man had been good to him. Maalik truly believed that Uncle Mayo only wanted what he thought was best for Maalik. Maybe that was why he had been tougher on Maalik than those other boys. But Maalik had been born with his eyes wide open to the real world. In the real world, money was might, and might make right. In the real world, a safe penny-ninny job wasn’t going to cut it.
It wasn’t as if Maalik hadn’t considered all his options. He had. But in his mind there were few, if any. He couldn’t sing. He couldn’t rap. So child stardom was definitely a pipe dream.
And as for society’s favorite— staying in school and getting a quality education, well that only represented an even chance to potentially earn more than the minimum wage. And even if he wanted one of those so called respectable jobs, he’d most likely need to go to college to land one. Going to college would cost money and not to mention, years away. He needed money now, lots of it. Drugs equaled now money. With it, he could pay back Uncle Mayo for all he’d done for him. And more importantly, he could get his grandfather’s farm back.
He reached the halfway point and paused again, dreading what he might find at the bottom of the steps. He had expected Uncle Mayo to do something drastic after the police had released him into the old man’s custody. As far as he knew, none of the other boys had ever been snatched up by the po-po. That he had was probably justification enough for the old man to exact some form of punishment. It had crossed Maalik’s mind that the old man may have considered giving him an old-fashioned whipping, or simply kick him out of Fathers House altogether, hurling Maalik into a careless childcare system. But now it didn’t appear as if either of those things was going to happen. The old man hadn’t even looked very upset when he’d picked Maalik up from the police station. Not a word was shared between the two of them the whole ride home. And when they got back inside Fathers House, the old man’s words were few before he grabbed Maalik by the collar, pulled him to the basement door, opened it, and then threw Maalik inside as if he was tossing a lamb to the wolves. Now that Maalik remembered it, the old man had been calm the entire time, perhaps too calm.
In the six months that he’d lived at Fathers House, Maalik had never before been inside the basement. In fact, he hadn’t known there was a basement. Now he was descending into the bowels of Fathers House. What did the old man have in store for him down here? He froze in place as a blanket of dread draped over him. He remembered that Fathers House was connected to Uncle Mayo’s funeral business. It wasn’t exactly a frightening thought as Uncle Mayo had never shown any ill will toward him, certainly not of the magnitude of causing his death or dismemberment. Still, right now, being in the vicinity of a funeral home where handling dead bodies was commonplace and its owner was more than a little upset with him was unsettling. After a moment he pushed the crazy thought aside and got his legs moving again, gingerly creeping downward as if trying to avoid possible landmines.
After a couple of steps, a smell assaulted his nose. The strong stench was almost recognizable, though he couldn’t quite place it. The first thing that came to mind was his grandfather’s hog farm. Those big, nasty hogs could be smelled from miles away. The hogs would spend the day rolling about in slop and their own crap, oblivious to their foulness, or simply uncaring. He had often wondered if a part of them, knowing their fate, had created such stinky chaos as a way of slinging one last odious shot at his grandfather.
He descended a few more steps. Then it hit him. He knew exactly what it was that he smelled. The thought made him as nauseous as the smell itself. Had a toilet overflowed down here? Was he expected to clean up the mess? As he continued timidly down the remaining steps to the basement floor, he began to feel somewhat better. Cleaning up crap was gross. But gross he could deal with.
He reached the last step and braced himself. He needed to stay at Fathers House and if this was what it was going to take, then so be it. But he wasn’t going to promise not to sell drugs. He still needed the money. Besides, it wasn’t something he planned to do forever. He just needed enough money to get his grandfather’s farm back. That farm was his birthright. The farm hadn’t made his grandfather rich. But it had made him free. He’d answered to no one but himself. It was the kind of life that Maalik had come to respect. He, too, would one day work his grandfather’s farm—his farm. He would work his own hours, live his own way. But first, he needed money to make that happen.
As if on cue, an intercom crackled from somewhere in front and above him, issuing a deep voice that sounded birthed from a barrel. “Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in Father. Trust in me. In Fathers House there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would tell you. A place is prepared for you. Come, trust in Father.”
Maalik remained still. The voice stopped and the room returned to an almost eerie quiet, except for a muffled creak coming from somewhere in the walls. It sort of sounded like a mouse was caught in a trap. A desire to flee surfaced, and Maalik turned his hea
d around, looking back up the stairs he’d just come down. He could barely see the steps in the darkened stairway. But it didn’t matter, since he quickly dismissed the thought anyway. He’d brought this on himself, and he would see it through to the end. Besides, running back up the stairs to pull on a door that was surely locked would be a childish waste of energy.
Out of nowhere a bit of anger bubbled within him as his thoughts turned briefly to Cain. The older boy was just as much to blame for his current predicament as Maalik himself was. If only Cain would have allowed Maalik to work for him, instead of giving him that holier than thou bullshit about the dangers of selling drugs. Cain sold drugs. Cain made money. Why wasn’t it okay for Maalik?
And it would have been, except Maalik got caught. If only Cain would have shown him the ropes, taken him under his wings, taught him the tricks of the trade. But Cain hadn’t. But that was just pissing in the wind now, he thought, his anger flaming out as quickly as it had risen. He’d been busted, fair and square. “Luckily,” Uncle Mayo had told him, “I know the officers that nabbed you. If it would have been anyone else, you could have been removed from this house and thrown into the system or worse…jail. Is that what you want?”
Of course it wasn’t. He needed to be here at Fathers House. He needed the roof over his head, and if coming down here in the basement, facing whatever there was to face would ensure he could stay, well then, that was what he was willing to do. Uncle Mayo had added, “There will always be consequences for your actions. In the basement you will face those consequences. Accept them and you’ll be allowed to stay here.”
He stepped onto the basement floor.
His heart started racing. He sucked in another deep breath, this time rushing it out. He tried to calm himself, to steel his nerves. How bad could it be down here? Surely he wasn’t the first to be sent to the basement. He was suddenly struck with the realization that the other drug-dealing boys of Fathers House had also been sent down here. He was not a trendsetter. No one had been given a free pass. And out of that realization was born another: the others had survived. He hadn’t heard of any broken bones or seen any burn marks on their bodies. He hadn’t heard of any kind of torture happening at Fathers House. That sort of thing would have surely gotten around. No, he was being indoctrinated into something. He felt it. This was an initiation of some sort. Of that, he was becoming increasingly certain. He was going to have to clean up crap or pass some other vile test. It would be nasty work, meant to be scary, but ultimately it would be harmless.
The deep voice returned, “Move forward two steps.”
Hesitantly, Maalik did as commanded.
He found himself in some sort of hallway. Ahead of him, a row of dimmed recessed lights lined either side of the ceiling from where he was standing and ending at the other end of the hallway. He had the sense of being in a narrow tunnel. At the end of it, a flat screen monitor suddenly materialized on the far wall. Onscreen, a digitalized computer head appeared. The head’s eyes glared at him. A few terror inducing minutes passed by before the digital head spoke. It was deep voice. “Turn to your left,” it commanded.
Maalik turned to his left. The row of lights on the left side suddenly brightened. The sudden burst of light caused his dark-adjusted eyes to blink rapidly and water. After several seconds, his eyes re-adjusted to what was fast becoming welcomed brightness. He wiped away tears and looked. What he had assumed was a wooden wall was in fact the exterior glass wall of a room. He noticed to his right was a door slightly ajar. Inside the room, a spotlight flashed on, highlighting to his horror, Nas Robinson.
Nas Robinson was a flashy high roller, and though you couldn’t tell by his current condition, an impeccable dresser. Inside the room, he was stark naked and dangling from thick braided ropes which ran through the pulley of a long metal crane which reached up to the ceiling. His body was tilted forward slightly in a hanging fetal position. His arms were banded to his chest while his legs were folded beneath him. A bucket was placed under his head and another bucket was placed beneath his buttocks. His midsection was encased in some type of metal contraption, that judging by the pained look on the young man’s face, caused him an extreme amount of displeasure. His classmate Khali had introduced Maalik to Nas just last week. Nas was going to be his ticket to drug riches. Nas was awash in money. He drove a custom built SUV and never wore the same pair of sneakers twice.
“Do you know this man?” The digitized voice was eerily calm, but was nonetheless threatening.
Maalik blinked several times in Nas’ direction as if trying to place him. Seeing Nas hanging like that made Maalik realize that he wasn’t there to just clean up crap. His very life could very well be in danger. Suddenly he wanted to be a normal eleven-year-old kid. He wanted to be somewhere else now, anywhere else, somewhere where a young kid should be, at a friend’s house playing videogames, or even at school recess playing what he used to consider a boring game, kickball. After a moment, a desire for self-preservation made him consider lying about any connection he had with Nas. But his lips wouldn’t follow suit. He stammered, “Ye…yes sir. I do.”
“How do you know him?”
“Kh…” he started to say Khali’s name, but suddenly regained control of his lips. Khali had tried to help him get a gig, there was no need getting him mixed up in this. So he said, “I don…I don’t know. Kids at school. Dey..dey… dey said he’s a drug dealer.”
For the first time, Maalik noticed that Nas was not alone. There was another man, a rather large man, in the room with him. Though Nas, who was perhaps about ten years older than Maalik, wasn’t exactly a big fella himself; the huge man behind the glass would have no doubt dwarfed most anyone. He was wearing a black, metal studded mask that looked similar to an executioner’s mask worn by one of Maalik’s videogame characters. The gigantic executioner obviously did not like Maalik’s response to the last question, and he took it out on Nas. He turned a chrome handle that was connected by a long rod to the metal contraption. Nas grunted and then vomited in and around the bucket that was placed in front of him. At the other end of his body, Maalik saw the source of the horrid smell he’d first encountered coming down the stairs. Most of it hit the bucket, though drippings of it also dotted the floor around it. As Nas’ bodily fluids trickled to stops at both ends, a ghastly moan escaped his lips.
“Did you sell drugs for this man?” the digital head asked.
“No,” Maalik answered quickly with the thankful truth.
But the digital head’s follow up question came just as quick. “Did you try?”
Maalik hesitated, again briefly considering lying, but then with reasoning that belied his eleven years of life, he realized that if he and Nas were both there at the same time then digital head most likely already knew the answer to that question. “I wanted to,” Maalik answered in a quavering voice. “I tried to. But I was busted before I was able to make a sale. I just wanted to make some money. I just wanted to pay Uncle Mayo back for helping me, being so nice to me.” He was talking fast and heard the shrillness in his voice. He knew he sounded like a scared little kid. But he didn’t care. That’s what he was— a scared kid. He hoped digital head would see that. Understand that. Maybe Digital head was Uncle Mayo, he thought hopefully. Maybe Uncle Mayo would let him go back to just being a kid.
Digital head said, “This man has no authority to sell drugs in Duraleigh. This is Father’s territory. Understand?”
“Ye…yes sir,” Maalik replied. Tears streamed down his face. “I’m sorry, Father.”
For a few minutes, Nas’s whimpering was all that was heard. Then, the digitized voice spoke again, “This fool has taken food out of my mouth and the mouths of my children. It’s food I intend to get back one way or the other.”
Inside the room, the huge man walked over to a table that was lined against the back wall. He picked up a book from it and flipped through a couple of pages. He arrived at a spot and tapped it with his thick finger. “Nas Robi
nson,” he said as he stared intently at the book. “For the crime of encroachment into Father’s territory, your name is listed in the Book.”
Maalik shook uncontrollably as he watched the masked man hold the black, bible-thick book in his enormous hands. After reading Nas’ charges, he placed the book back onto the table and then walked back over to the metal crank.
The fused sound of metal turning, bones crushing, and Nas’ agonized shrieks soon filled the air, intensifying with each passing minute before abruptly ending, leaving only the sounds of Father’s food being returned to him, drip by drip.
Maalik dropped to his knees and vomited. His childhood was now lost forever and he knew it.