Stone Cold
The fog hangs low.
And the street sleeps on in dewy silence.
They come with the dark, the mist and the quiet.
First their signature tang of burning cigarettes.
Then their familiar forms. Three hazy suggestions in the blindsides of the lone, frost-glassed street lamp. The lamp burns a weak yellow, the color of sulfur powder kicked up to dusty plumes: weaker than a motorcycle headlight in a midnight blizzard.
Burning tobacco leans into the night. And the night thickens around the lamp's sulfuric glow. And the man. He leans on. Chest first into the driver's door of his curb-parked Renault. Counting bills into the pockets of his wallet.
They approach. Tentative. Like moths with firefly caution.
The fourth climbs down the fire escape to the sidewalk with the curb-parked cars, his descent heavy and deliberate, the sound of tortured metal yielding beneath his boots.
He knows without looking. The coalition of the neighborhood's notorious four. Barely seventeen. And slowly climbing up the crime ladder. Four ignorant fucks always sharing a smoke, mean looks on their faces. Like cigarettes are the ultimate symbols of the ruffian underground. The ring leader's old lady smokes more in an hour than all four of them hit in a day. But their heads boast more headbutts than brains to do that much Math.
He maintains posture, belly against the car door, counting greens into his billfold, his back to them---a coksure prey spotlighted by the lamp and the threat of impending violence.
They close in. A snarling pack in stalking ambush, their siege loose around a cornered quarry, sniffing out its weakness, hairs spiked in low-boiling aggression.
He counts on, lingering over each crisp note.
They stop. Flustered by his aplomb.
Notes slip-slide past thumbs in fluid motion. The bright scrape of paper against paper.
Their knuckles crack warning shots: some balls you got, bruv.
The alpha moves. The pack follows. One step. Then another.
One more.
There.
He works the inner coat pocket of his leather jacket---in with a wad, out with a Glock 22. Gun meets car roof with the click of magnet sticking to a freezer door. He stacks new bills and resumes calculation.
The fog hangs lower. The sky casts dewy spells. And the street wanders on into deep water dreams. Undisturbed by the bright scrape of paper against paper. Or the cigarette-y sensations reluctantly melting back into the night.
© Abdulqawiyu Muhammad
2017, 2023
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About the Author:
When he isn't teaching or writing, Abdulqawiyu Muhammad intimidates his middle school students into staging back alley drug deals after school so that he can look gangsta. All participants get extra grades, so it's a mutually beneficial arrangement.
