The Brisk Winds Rush:
The Fall of DD
“Cut is the Branch that might have grown full straight
[…]
Regard his
hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may
exhort the wise
Only to wonder at unlawful things”
They'd rather see us locked in chains, please
explain
Why they can't stand us, is
there a way for me to change?
Or am I just a victim of things I did to
maintain?
2 pac “Thuz’s Mansion”
The blinds shuddered in the rising winds. Outside, the heavy rain drenched the ignored streets. Inside, DD cleaned a shotgun. Finishing, he pulled the dowrod stop from his uncle’s 12 gauge. DD ashed his cigarillo. Unheard, the radio pulsed ominously over his head; Unconsciously, he bobbed to the beat. Today, he thought, is the day I die. He paused, red shell between his finger tips. “Yeah.” The nature of his persona, nurtured by the street, left no other end to his being. He loaded the shotgun. Today was the day he died. He put the pumpgun down, picking up his father’s revolver. A small tube of gun oil lay discarded by his side. He slowly turned the chamber, loading the .38 special absentmindly. Without acknowledging the moot time wasted—fore he refused to see his death as being unpreventable—he gently started wiping down the revolver.
On the distant city streets, the wailing of an ambulance marked its familiar trajectory. Expected, its sister siren sung from the Firehouse. The chorus of his fall wailed in joy of its own importance. An entire city sought for his end, the product of hyped police PR. DD laughed loudly at the phrase “civil servant,” the oxymoronic nature comical even in his stoic mood. The polis was saturated with self-importance; the guise of self-sacrifice wore as thick as an insect’s wing. DD sighed loudly, the unimportance of his martyrdom hanged quietly on his breath. He refused to be hypocritical, especially so close to the conclusion of his story. Setting his revolver down, he took a sip of an insignificant drink, and dreamt of the menial rise to his menial fall.
Twelve hours past. DD sat in the café, unceremoniously eating his sunny-side-up eggs with hot sauce. He cut rather apathetically and ate with even less passion. He thought to himself, “Why this café? But why not?” and equally as unimportant thoughts. There was very little catalyst to his mind thereafter, until he eventually wound his thoughts back to their end. Yesterday’s monolithic events had ruined even the monotonous nature of his breakfast. A bead of un-intended sweat slipped slowly down his brow…Where other narrators might have started DD’s problems with his parents, DD had always seen his tragedy beginning with himself. Perhaps there will be time enough for that tale another time. In the meanwhile, DD slipped a knife violently along his uncooked egg yoke and allowed his mind to wander to yesterday’s events.
It
began, as most days did, with his trip to the café. The hub of his business, DD
kept himself a communal persona by rubbing-shoulders with the local breakfast
eaters. From PennDot creepers, to gold-chasing lawyers,
DD made small talk every morning at the breakfast bar, chatting over some
corporation’s idea of coffee. Most mornings, he smiled at the paradox of
communicating daily trivialities with a stainless-steel
9mm on his hip. Though the gun was never seen, the
permit tucked neatly in his wallet was paradoxical enough. What was a
drug-dealer doing with a legit carry permit? Shouldn’t
the government screen these people? “Why?” thought DD, “who needs more
protection than me?” Of course, the fine
His thoughts dwindled, and he forced himself back on track. That morning he had hash and eggs with a thin layer of Frank’s Red Hot. He took a sip of his forgotten, cooled coffee. The morning drug. Some PennDot creatures laughed loudly in the corner, obviously enjoying their union “breaks.” DD frowned. He heard them—though they never said—laughing at him. Perhaps not, he had thought. Perhaps they’re laughing at themselves. Over-weight, they poured from their shirts like the lard that hung on their pericardial sacks. Long hours of sitting in the sun had tanned their skin. The faded tattoos were visible in distinction to their course epidermis, but not lucid enough to be read. DD shrugged. He had no desire to read their uncreative ink stains anyway. The sight of them sickened him. He prayed rather hypocritically that they would work a day in a real worker’s shoes, perhaps sweat real sweat from labor rather than from heat. Taking a long swig, he tipped Ashley, the young waitress, and briskly left out the backdoor.
Shuffling down the alley, he stooped to brush street-slime from his Wolverine boots. He got them from a job a few years ago and didn’t have the heart to pitch them. They were, perhaps, the last reminders of his former occupation. Nostalgically he cared for them, though they wore on the soles. The fall winds picked up, and he pulled his cracked leather coat about his arms. When he bought it, it looked like Samuel’s black Shaft coat. Now, well, now it looked like a poorly aging Samuel coat. He never knew, but people noticed him by his material possessions. They knew him as the un-materialistic black man, the one without the “bling.” They thought him a nose-in-the-dirt worker, an upstanding by-the-straps black man who tipped his waitress and didn’t carry a 40 in a bag and an eight-ball under his arm.
DD never noticed them.
He sauntered down the alley with purpose. He had bags to pick up, deals to be made, money to score, so on and so forth. He never thought of it as such. No, DD wasn’t thinking much about drug dealing at all. He thought of the irritation of the nine in his pants, the way it hauled his belt lower than he wanted, and how the coat was getting snug over his belly. He paid attention to the day by the hindering ways it slowly crept onward. In this way, he knew he would someday do time. He was clean. Well, he thought he was. There was the drunken disorderly he got in the late nineties. Then again, that son of a bitch deserved what he got, DD thought.
He
rounded the corner onto
“Walk,” DD thought to himself. He knew a bad scene when he saw one. He knew it was the thing to do. Self-preservation drove him to cowardice. Then, he thought, was it cowardice to walk away from a scene that, at least for the greater public, never existed? DD felt his work boots sink into the oily water as he walked away. This was not a time to die, he thought. As a diesel garbage truck drove apathetically by, DD felt a pull at his heart. Was it a metaphor? he would later think. Was this apathetic dung beetle slouching, its trailing, encrusted abdomen to consume civilization’s filth? Perhaps the smug nature of its mechanical disposition came from some innate knowledge that, come morning, there would be another dead man to eat, to crush in its hydraulic mandibles. Although the truck would soon pass, DD was lost to inner turmoil. Why hadn’t they shot him yet, he thought to himself. How could he hope to twist back Polis churning gears?
Although we may think of it as innate hesitation, we must credit DD’s father with the moral conundrum. At the age of 10, DD watched his father refuse to sell to a man he knew was a dealer. The station was packed, a line formed behind the man, and yet, with a stoic nature reviling Seneca’s, his father refused to yield. It was the most embarrassing moment in DD’s young life. That evening, DD’s father’s scornfully confessed to DD that there were “only a damn few things worth less than that cocksucker.” The car they rode in pulled gently along their small house. “The worst part is, he fucking walked down to that fucking Shitz down the road.” DD thought his father was going to hit the dash, but his brow just ruffled even more. “Don’t you stoop to anyone or anything. You are you, and don’t let anyone take that from you.” DD objected, “I am me!” I’m not talking about you, Dwaine, I’m talking about you,” he gently touched the boys head. “I’m talking about that stubborn boy who makes his father proud.”
Thankfully the old man was dead, DD would have thought; however, in that typical city alley behind Ed’s place, DD felt the entire weight of his character and his logistical mind clash. Then, in the millisecond of idly wasted time, the garbage truck was completely out-of-view again, and a sobbing was barely audible. DD began realizing just as that nickel-plated nine was traveling out of the back of his pants, his Shaft coat caught the ethereal winds. His boot must have caught the concrete, fore the taller man on the left look nonchalantly over his shoulder. His right hand went for his gun; DD put a round just between the Filth. The recoil hit the walls like shattering light, and the sound reverberated out into the city streets.
“Get on the fucking floor,” DD yelled. The ornate pistol marched violently forward. Nothing moved. Oddly, the tentative nature of the event hung like precarious time upon the edge of the abyss. One step, one lonely unintended step, and the rest of the universe falls into oblivion. Such was DD’s finger upon the trigger. He felt the cops’ tension. He knew they wanted to go for the low-slung pistols under their waists, the black leather obnoxiously loose. With all the gun drills they did, DD knew the chances of him getting both were slim…but where the thought, the logical calculations, came in, he wasn’t certain. Instead, DD felt his heart beat through his index finger. That was all.
Then, like in all fights, the tension broke. There was only the binary path: off or on, fight or not, die or live. How life’s complexities always boiled down to yes or no was beyond the scope of DD’s concerns. Instead, he saw both cops slowly stoop. The tall man, his shaggy black beard barely emphasized on his black body, knelt down; the lanky, though shorter, white cop squatted. They both waited, saying nothing.
“I said lay the fuck down!” He stood a foot away. Seeing the pulsing white of both their eyes, he took a cautious, but intended, step backwards. “Don’t, or I’ll vent the both of you bigots.” The words came rather sporadically out of his mouth, a stammering uncharacteristic of him. His eloquence had always came naturally to him, something people credit to his mother. In his earlier education his gift for language became a vice, a cudgel used to promote his ‘race’. Truth be told, he often destroyed sentence syntaxes, not for street credit, but in an attempt to hide his own articulate nature. Sometimes, his ability to construct impromptu rhythm or alliteration met with praise by some creative writing teacher. In a direct response, DD would have himself removed from the class. He hated the limelight, lived his life without concern for some materialistic rap career, the shining dream of so many other youths. Where did he end up? On one end of a loaded pistol about to make the biggest mistake of his life.
“In the shit. Lay in the shit, face down fuckheads.” They complied, though hesitantly. The alleyway sludge had culminate into an offensive, biological growth on the ground. With its mucus like nature, DD was surprised it hadn’t taken over the bordering buildings like some Sci-fi pudding.. DD watched in muted pleasure as both cops sat their whiskered faces in the goo.
Slowly, the forgotten victim gathered his feet under him. He too was covered in the black goo. For DD, the Alley had already begun to digest him. With a wave of the pistol, DD gestured for him to leave. The man glanced down, almost as if he expected for the prostrate police to object to his dismissal. He tilted his foot back to kick the black cop. DD waved the pistol in a “no” gesture. With his face dripping alley growth, he starred absently at DD. He looked at the prostrate cops, who suffered silently; with one last forlorn look, the older man ran fleetly away.
“I’m going to back out of the alley. You’re going to lay here until I’m in the daylight. After I am gone, you may get up and leave.” So simple, he thought, simple commands for simple people. As he phased into those other city denizens, he heard the APB going out.
DD hit the mattresses. Hiding wasn’t a new feeling for him, nor was it for any individual lost in an oppressive society. However, this was the first time he saw how transparent security and freedom really were, and forever would be. Momentously bleak, he starred at Ambrose’s wall.
As usual, Ambrose said nothing. He was mute, hadn’t spoken a word in 15 years. “It was a psyche thing,” DD had explained to his brother Tully. “His throat gears all works, just not his head.” That had marked the end of DD’s diagnosis. Ambrose was his best friend, mute or not. Together, they survived the business and, together, they’d leave it. DD had just to tell him what occurred…
It was harder than it seemed. DD had knowingly endangered the both of them. For what? For a man whose name he hoped to never know. For some homeless fuck that probably deserved to be in the alley sludge. DD knew the story the cops were cooking up. He knew what they were capable of and what they would do. It would be enough to put another poor son of a bitch in the ground. There was nothing else for it, he thought. Best to tell Ambrose the trouble they were in, to tell his silent best friend that the world, as they knew it, was falling down.
As DD stammered, Ambrose held up a long, thin-fingered hand. He shook his head. In that quiet exchanged, DD knew that Ambrose knew. “I’m sorry,” DD eventually contributed. Ambrose shook his head. DD understood he was angry, saw the grief in his evanescent eyes. Luminescent orbs, Ambrose eyes were mystical relics—totems even—of some lost age. Blurring the paradoxical lines of subjectivity and objectivity, they saw the world as it was, not as it appeared. It had gotten them wealthy.
“How is it going to help us now?” DD asked. He wasn’t a user, never touched the stuff, but he admitted he took advantage of certain people. It was part of being in control, an agency struggling with the mind’s subjective entropy. With the day slowly winding down, it seemed that the chaos had won. “This is real, Ambrose. They’re gonna come for me.” Why? Shouldn’t it blow over? The Filth was as corrupt as they come, self-serving megalomaniacs that sought to get paid like everyone else. They were just humans…and they tasted the sweetest of drugs: power. As their sickly proboscis slid down the social flower, all that wonderful puss, Societies’ malignant nectar, only teased their insatiable need. Now, they drank it dry from every carcass they could. DD shrugged his chained shoulders. He was just another criminal…
“I’m gonna go, but I want you to do me a favor. They’ll prob come for me separate. Maybe we can figure something out.” He paused, a plan slowly unweaving. “Say I resisted arrest or something…” There it was, a way to win via losing. “I want you to split the money the way we do, only give the rest to Tully. That pretentious cocksucka needs it anyway. He just won’t admit it. Ambrose,” DD looked emotionally at his friend, the quivering of his spine finally working its way into his eyes. He refused to cry. It wasn’t the time. “I’m sorry. I was stupid.”
Ambrose only blinked his stoic eyes. He shook his dreadlocks. The titanium and steel beads of his hair, the weights JD called them, wavered mournfully. DD stood and walked to the door, only to be stopped short by a slight tug at his coat. Ambrose extended his hand. Clasped by the barrel, he extended an ivory-handled .32. It was his personal weapon, almost the emblem of his identity. The flaming Rosicrucian, some symbol he picked up somewhere, burned on an ivory background. DD knew the pistol was loaded. Mostly for Ambrose’s protection, he knew he couldn’t take it. “They’ll trace it to you. I have my own anyway.” He tapped the back of his pants in emphasis. “Ambrose, get away from this game. Go help someone or something, for my old man.” DD left knowing that it was the last time he’d see his best friend. Behind him, Ambrose watched with cool eyes.
DD sat in the café. His eggs sat idly. His coffee had a firm film over it. The café was empty except for that blue-haired poet writing his shitty poetry in the corner. Almost adoringly, Tully’s friend Kelly purred over his pen. DD dropped his knife loudly. They turned and looked at him. He stood, his coat flapping rather romantically behind him, and he walked away. In his need to leave, he forgot to tip Ashley. He made his way out the door into the brisk fall winds.
A siren rushed quickly by. DD stood watching the black-and-white daftly drive past him. He drifted towards his apartment on the Hill. They’d be there waiting for him, he thought, waiting for him to come home. They’d grab him, fire some rounds off from his cleaned weapons (with gloves on, of course) and then they’d kill him. When all was said and done, the papers would read: “Shoot out on the Hill: One dead” or some other nonsense. DD romantically imaged the event in his head so engrossingly, that he did not see the car deftly navigate the turn behind him.
They didn’t bother to turn on their lights, nor fire the siren. Instead, it was the car’s door hyper-extending that alerted DD to their presence. Thankfully, even as his mind finally realized they where on him, his wolverines were already pounding cement. He was out of shape from all the coffee and eggs, but they didn’t catch him until he rounded the corner behind the Café. He wasn’t going to make it to the apartment. He knew he’d have to make a stand in the alley, like some urban western gone awry. They rounded the corner to meet him, coat flapping idly behind him, gun drawn.
“Put it down, Dwain.” The black cop said in a gruff voice. His beard was freshly cleaned, his hair neatly cropped.
“You’re making this easy, kid.” The white cop said. Perhaps DD imagined the condescending nature to his voice. He might as well have said “boy” instead.
“Here’s an idea: Fuck off and die.” DD smiled somewhere in the back of his head. Brisk, he thought, brisk till the end. “I’m not rolling over for some pig-fucking cowboys. I’d just as soon shoot the both of you.”
The exchanged glances, a malicious smile split the black cops face. “Come on, kid.”
“Don’t push him, Robert.” The white cop was hesitant. Was it feigned, DD thought. “It’s obvious he isn’t going to roll over. Dwain, why don’t you put the gun down. You know it looks better if you weren’t pointing a gun at us.”
Robert shrugged his shoulders, “Come on you punk ass bitch. Pull the trigger, do it.” DD tightened his grip on the pistol.
Yes, it was time, DD thought to himself. It was? He smiled brightly. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was afraid.
The white cop watched him, “It doesn’t have to go this way, Dwain.” It was feigned, DD thought.
“Don’t bullshit me. It has to go this way.” He wanted to point out that they picked the path, that it was them that chose for him. Then he wanted to dig his old man up and kick the shit out of him. He chose the past too, didn’t he? DD bought precious time; the sweat poured from him. Would he remember this? When he was dead, would he remember the argument. He wondered at his funeral…
Robert pulled the hammer back on his gun.
“Wait,” DD murmured, almost whispering it to some transcendent spirit. “I’m not ready,” he said to himself. It would look better if my gun was unloaded, he thought. He consciously wavered the gun. There were so many unspoken things that need spoken; the winds pulled at the garbage of the alley. DD closed his eyes, thin drops of tears pulled at his eyelids. He didn’t give a shit about his flesh, nor the blood as it violently fell down. He saw himself drifting away, even as those pinpricks of light pierced his chest. Somewhere, his mind drifted away, free of the moral paradoxes now consuming his life. Distantly, he thought he heard them approaching. He couldn’t hear for the rushing of the winds through the urban valley. He felt the gun in his hand and, with one conscious effort, he let it fall from his fingers.