How It Went Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

all he wants to talk about, he rolled by for me. I don’t want anything good to come from T dying. But I can’t turn my back on this kinda opportunity.

 
    REDEEMA
    “You start running with a gang, I’ll kill you with my own hands,” I said. Them’s the last words I ever spoke on his little brown ears. He had that do-rag in his back pocket. Red, with them gourd shapes spread across it in black.
    I said it like a joke though, and he knew it, too, ’cause he was smiling. Waved his buns at me like he hot stuff.
    “Woo,” I said. “Boy, you quit dancing and get back to dusting.”
    So, I s’pose them’s the last words, really.
    His momma called him up from the kitchen right then. Tariq flashed them little white teeth at me, then go off on her bidding.
    Lord, I ain’t wanna think about it no more.
    That boy be smart. How he gonna leave the house with that do-rag still on him?
    Shoulda thrown them all away, come the moment. But we ain’t wanna put good cloth to waste. When it got real severe with the colors and the gangs around the neighborhood, we put all them things straight in the rag bin. Gathered ’em all right up, never to leave the house again. I been around a long time. I know how it goes.
    I’s the one what set him to dusting. A boy’s gotta learn to do the small things round the house. I ain’t know Vernie was gonna up and send him out. How’s I gonna know?
    Lord, I ain’t wanna think about it no more. I seen how it is, in the aftermath. How everyone be looking for the piece of the thing that they woulda done different. I always hold myself above such mess. Ain’t no use in wishful thinking. All that brain wringing don’t come to no good. But all I’m thinking now … please stop me, Lord! All I’m thinking is how I’s the one that set him to dusting.
    I can’t see nothing wrong with it, either. House needed dusting. Boy was there. Been home all afternoon, just loafing and goofing, not a care in the world. You give a boy like that a chore. That’s what you do. Every time.
    Lord, have mercy.
    I been around a long time. I lost a lot of people I love. Can’t stop myself loving, can’t stop myself losing ’em. My own ma and pops, years back. Older brother, younger sister. Handful of nephews, that sort of thing. My big son, sick with the throat cancer.
    It’s a long time I been loving folk. Long time, I been losing em. But I ain’t ever known a sorrow like this one.

 
    BRICK
    Damn right, Tariq was wearing red and black. Like any good King. Straight up.
    It’s about time, too. I’ve been ragging on him for two years. He was gonna be my lieutenant when the time was right. We both knew it. And time was coming due.
    We knew it since we was little, way back when I became lieutenant to Sciss. We knew it was gonna be handed to me one day, and then to Tariq. We used to stand out back of the church, or over in the playground, and talk shit about Sciss and how much better and stronger the Kings would be when we was in charge. Straight up.
    But you can’t walk into the job fresh off. You got to choose the life, and then you got to rise the ranks. I gave Tariq the same advice Sciss once gave me: Don’t come till you’re ready, and then come all in. T was ready. He proved that last night on the sidewalk. He was ready.

 
    TYRELL
    No, no, no, no , is all I come up thinking. Hell no. Tariq wasn’t in the Kings.
    They wanted him, of course. The 8-5s wanted him bad, but Tariq knew how to lay them off.
    Brick would come around, pressing it, and Tariq would get into it with him. All the time. He was the only one of us I knew who could stand up to Brick and his guys like that.
    The Kings are in everything. It’s real hard to get out of the neighborhood without their stink on you. But it’s what I want to do. And I got lucky, because that’s what Tariq wanted too. So we were in it together. Well, out of it together, I mean.
    I don’t know why anyone would think that Tariq was a King. I’ve seen him