Yaccub's Curse (5 page)
Hopping the trains was no joke. Tulpehocken station was a shack that stood behind a plush exclusive retirement home engulfed in a mayhem of lewd, incoherent, iconoclastic, scribblings. Tremendous evergreen trees jutted up twenty or thirty feet in the air on the other side of the tracks and a carefully maintained lawn spread out lavishly from the station to the old folks’ home.
On our side of the tracks was a crumbling parking lot overlooked by dilapidated apartment buildings. White folks from Wissahickon and Black folks from G-town sat together on the benches beneath grafitti that read “Big Mike Rules!” or “Jane sucks dick and drinks cum!” casting nervous glances at one another as they waited to catch the train down to jobs as economically segregated as the neighborhoods they left behind.
It was here that we would come, scrambling over the tracks carrying backpacks filled with stolen Krylon spray paint. The train would thunder down the track with its whistle cutting the calm like a scythe and we would wait for the passengers to climb aboard before sneaking onto the back of the train and holding on for dear life. Mile after mile the train rambled along, lurching through turns with its iron wheels squealing against the rails and the wind whipping tears from our eyes and splaying them across our cheeks.
We passed through a half dozen different neighborhoods including North Philadelphia, which looked like a post-apocalyptic nightmare where the ozone layer had opened up and scorched the earth to ruin and only the melanin in black skin had allowed for survivors. As the train made its way through and the depressed weather-torn houses with sagging roofs, rotting paint, and shattered windows loomed into view looking worse than the death camps at Auschwitz, the entire train would go silent. This was the roughest, poorest section of Philadelphia marked by hills of garbage, thigh high weeds, packs of soot covered children chasing each other through barren fields of rusted cars and occasionally shooting at one another, miniscule yards filled with trash and savage, half-starved mongrels chained to rusted fences that snarled at us as we rumbled past, and tired old men rocking on front porches while nursing bottles of wine and watching the crackwhores strut past them offering their withered and diseased bodies for less than the price of a happy meal.
The graffiti in this area was mostly gravestones with epitaphs that read “Rest In Peace” and “We Miss You” followed by the names of fallen friends and sometimes graphically illustrated murals depicting the precise manner in which their loved ones had met their end. Guns, knives, needles, and base pipes, told the tale of life’s cessation in that unimaginable hell. Often these murals included threats of retaliation. The entire cycle of violence immortalized on cracked and crumbling brick walls.
As we rode through we tried to imagine living amid that poverty which seemed many times worse than our own and found our minds unequal to the task. North Philly seemed like death not life. It was amazing that anything lived there at all and each child that made it to adulthood was like a miracle. It was inconceivable how these people could survive when most of us barely had a roof over our heads and food on our tables. Silent prayers of thanks would issue from every lip.
“There but for the grace of god go I…”
It was particularly distressing to Nikky and Warlock because they had both been born there and only Warlock’s illegal business activities kept them from tumbling headlong back into that cesspit.
Finally, the train would make its final stop and pull into the trainyard. We would all creep away before the conductor could find us; pulling out our cans of spray paint eagerly hunting for the train upon which we would make our existence omnipresent.
“They want to just tuck us away in the slums and ghettoes and forget about us. But see that’s where we come in, the graffiti artists. You go all city with some dope ass mural and now they can’t forget about you. Every time they look up at a wall, a billboard, a subway train, there you are, fuckin’ up the program.”
I wasn’t really much of a graffiti artist. While they were doing burners and wild styles with all kinds of characters in them, I was writing my name in bubble letters. Besides, bombing trains was dangerous as hell. I had already gotten blasted in the back with a shotgun filled with rock salt by one of the security guards in the trainyard and even though it didn’t do any damage it hurt like a motherfucker. A kid from around the way had fallen off and cracked his skull open trying to hop a train down to the yard. And graffiti artists were getting shot by other graffiti artists for “biting their style” almost every other day. It just didn’t seem worth it to me.
Where Nikky and I found common ground was in comic books. I had been reading comic books since I first learned to read and in fact had become such a good reader because of my love of the fantastic tales that filled those pages. I especially identified with the Incredible Hulk; a misunderstood giant constsantly persecuted by those who feared and mistrusted him because of his freakish size and strength. That’s exactly how I felt back then. At eight years old I was already five feet tall and feared by all the other kids.
Nikky and I used to sit around the house reading comic books for hours at a time and would invite other kids over to trade with us. We would steal comics from the other kids when they weren’t looking and pretty soon no one would trust us enough to trade anymore so we just started stealing them from the comic book stores. I was determined to get every Incredible Hulk comic ever made.
When Nikky and I got tired of reading comic books or didn’t have the money to buy new ones, and couldn’t steal any, we would take a trip down to Wissahickon to steal dirt bikes. Nikky rode on my handle bars all the way down through the park and into the suburbanesque white neighborhood on the other side. Over there it was easy pickings. The White kids in Wissahickon didn’t even bother to lock their bikes up and often left $500 designer frames lying on the front lawn. When we spotted one Nikky would jump off my handle bars, snatch up the bike, and ride it as fast as he could all the way back to the hood with me following him running interference in case we were chased. Most of the time we would sell the bikes, but sometimes we would keep them, at least until we came upon something better.
Nikky came up with the idea of decorating our bikes with the silver caps off the air valves on car tires. We would steal them and put them on our bike tires. We got busted for doing that more than anything else. We even got a beating from Mr. Steeltower, a huge gorilla of a man who lived next door with his three equally gargantuan and gruesome sons. All of them were well over six feet tall and two hundred and fifty pounds, black as burnt butter, with greasy Jeri curls. They looked like death on steroids.
We knelt down beside the glossy black Cadillac Biarritz that carried the tremendous Steeltower family through the hood like royalty. Nikky unscrewed the cap on the front tire and I had already removed the one from the back when I heard the wounded cat whine of the rusted screen door opening and froze like a cat caught in the headlights of a speeding semi-truck.
“You boys get up from there! What was ya’ll tryin’ to steal my rims? You know how much those things cost?” His voice was deep and gravely like the purr of a full-grown male lion. I imagined I could feel it vibrating through the asphalt up through the souls of my feet. Instinctively I braced for an ass-kicking.
“Uh-uh! We wasn’t doin’ nothing.” We replied in chorus, rising from behind the car with guilt smeared conspicuously across our faces. The walrus-like girth of Steeltower filled the doorway like a great living shadow. His massive bulk stretched the seams of a bluish green shark-skin suit. A white cotton polo-shirt open at the neck revealing a thin gold chain hung with an ornate cross covered his bloated stomach and his oily Jeri curl was mashed beneath a white sweat-stained Panama hat. In his hands he clutched a long shotgun that did not divert for an instant from its target—the center of my chest. It had never even occurred to us to take the rims. Who knows what we could have gotten for them.
“What you got in your hands, boy?”
We opened our hands and the shiny silver air valve caps plinked on the concrete at our feet.
“Ya’ll put those right back where you got them from.”
As we bent down to replace the caps we didn’t notice Steeltower creeping up behind us removing his yard-long belt from its loops until his shadow stifled the sunlight and the first stinging lashes fell across our back and shoulders.
We froze for a second, cringing against the tires of the shiny new Caddy while the belt whipped searing welts on our skin. Finally our brains kicked into gear and we ran like the devil was on our tail.
“Damn kids! Ya’ll just let me catch ya foolin’ with my car again and see what happens to you little niggas!” he yelled after us. He could rest assured that that would never happen.
We sat on the steps of the corner store comparing welts and talking about the hell our parents would visit upon Mr. Steeltower when we told them how he had beaten us with his belt in the middle of the street.
“My Mom will shoot that fat muthafucka right in his fat-ass!”
“When Warlock finds out he’ll probably get so mad he’ll cut his damn balls off!”
Nikky didn’t talk about his parents. They were both drunks and drug addicts who sat around their musty old house drinking MD 20/20 and smoking weed all day.
I told my mom and Nikky told his brother, but nobody did anything. Steeltower was a notorious gun and numbers runner and all three of his sons were killers with rap sheets a mile long. Nobody messed with that family. When I got home I found out that Steeltower had already been there and spoken to my mother. When I opened the door she was standing there with her hands on her hips balled into tight little fists. The cords in her neck were bulging and the vein in the center of her forehead was pulsating. I wound up getting a second beating far more vicious than the first.
“You know that man almost shot you?” she asked as the sole of her shoe worked savagely across my thighs, back, and buttocks.
“The only reason he didn’t pull the trigger was cause he recognized you as my child! Now you march your smart ass back over there and apologize to that man!”
She smacked the shoe against my crying pleading body a few more times; holding me tightly by the arm with her nails leaving half-moons in my bicep as she jerked me around to keep me off balance and open more areas for attack. She was nearly out of breath when she finally released me to comply with her command.
I did as I was told and was surprised to find a grinning friendly Mr. Steeltower who eagerly accepted my apology. He was impressed with my politeness and humility in a time where kids my age were already robbing old folks for their social security checks though he was no doubt aware that all my cockiness had been beaten out of me prior to coming over there. Incredibly, he slipped me a five-dollar bill and told me to come see him if I ever needed anything. I left with a newfound respect for the man. I later found out he was my grandmother’s sometime lover.
Nikky and I were always getting into shit. We used to go down to the Woolworth’s on Germantown and Chelten Ave and steal Hot Wheels cars from the toy section.
In our neighborhood Hot Wheels cars were a sort of status symbol. Since nobody around the way actually paid for them, how many cars you possessed was a sign of how accomplished a thief you were. Nikky and I had well over a hundred between us. We would spend hours racing the cars down hills and betting on which ones would make it to the bottom first.
Once we walked into the Woolworth’s with the pads from our BMX bikes in our hands. We had intended on unwrapping a few Hot Wheels cars and hiding them inside the pads. We had racked up about six cars each and were on our way out when I noticed the rumpled old, gray-haired, security guard, with the skin-tight high-water uniform on, circling around to intercept us at the exit. I knew he was going to ask to check our pads so I decide to pull a Bugs Bunny move on him. I handed both pads to Nikky and just as the security guard walked up I asked him what time it was. As unbelievable as it sounds, the fool actually stopped and looked at his watch. Nikky slipped safely out the door with the contraband and I stood and waited for the security guard to reply.
“Four o’clock.” The grizzled old rent-a-cop answered and I smiled politely, thanking him for the info, and walked out the door leaving him scratching his head and trying to convince himself that he hadn’t just been scammed by an eight-year-old. Nobody likes to think they’re an idiot even when all evidence points to that conclusion.
Winters in G-town were even more fun than the summers, but only marginally less violent. Right after the first large snowfall the entire neighborhood would rush down to Wissahickon Park to race sleds and inner tubes down Tommy Hill. Tommy Hill was about the length of two city blocks inverted at a seventy-degree angle and dotted with trees and bushes both large and small. My mother would smother me in endless layers of clothing, fill a thermos with hot chocolate, jam my head into a ski mask, earmuffs, and a scarf, which I would get rid of within minutes of leaving the house, and send me off with my rusted old Red Flyer sled to brave the hill.
Beneath my goosedown winter coat, I would be wrapped in Long John underwear, two pairs of pants, a T-shirt, a shirt, two sweaters, and a nylon jacket with a fleece lining. My feet were stuffed into two pairs of socks and plastic bags to keep the moisture out and then packed into huge snow boots that looked like something you’d wear for a walk on the moon. Off I’d speed towards Tommy Hill and there I’d stay ’til I lost all feeling in my extremities and Mom would have to hold my hands and feet under hot water while I screamed and cried as feeling returned in an onrush of white hot pain.
The hill looked like a swarm of ants on an ice-cream cone as kids from all over raced down the hill. The White kids who actually lived in that neighborhood had long ago been driven off after several violent confrontations with some of G-town’s hardest. The few that did venture out were quickly relieved of any valuable possessions and sent home with bloody noses, missing teeth, busted lips, or blackened eyes, and sometimes worse. G-town had staked its claim.