Murder Vengence Power

No power on heaven or earth
could dissuade me. No angel,
no demon could keep me from
my revenge.

-Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

PHASE I
THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNINGS

When I discover who
I am, I’ll be free.

-Ralph Ellison

CHAPTER ONE

A part of our culture should
be the successful transition
from boyhood to manhood.
I sincerely believe it takes a
man to develop boys into men

-Jawanza Kunjufu

"Albert Coltrane Jones, I am so sick and tired of you lying, and tearing up shit I don't know what to do," momma tearfully scolded while shaking me like a set of dice. I knew I was in deep doo-doo. If momma cried when I messed up, that meant it was bad, I mean real bad. As usual I made a feeble attempt to plead my case.

“Momma, I ain’t broke no.”

"You ain’t what?" she screamed.

Why did she have to scream? She done gone and scared the tears right out my eyes.

Trouble always seemed to follow me. I was the little boy who had to put his hands on or in everything and ask questions later. Well, I take the little boy part back. I had never been little. My younger brother, Miles and I would race through, not a bowl, but a box of Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries, or Fred Flintstones Cocoa Pebbles. The first thing we did upon opening a box of cereal was to reach our stubby arms down into it until we put our fat hands on the prize. If Miles were lucky enough to get to the treasure before yours truly, it wasn’t a big deal. I’d either flim-flam or beat it out of him eventually.

Dinner was another sporting event in the Jones household.

"Gentlemen start your engines." After we blessed the food, the race was on. We were two pudgy kids, heads in our plates like pigs in a trough. We were fighting to finish first so we could get seconds if seconds were to be had. Even now, I eat like every meal is my last.

At ten years old, I was a one hundred and twenty-pound butterball. The kids in my hood nicknamed me Fat Albert. Yeah, you remember the cartoon. Every time I came around the kids playing kickball, football, or anything, it was always the same.

"Hey, hey, hey. It’s Fattttttt Albert,” they’d sing. “Na, na, na. Gonna have a good time. Hey, hey, hey." Me beating somebody up usually followed the song. It seemed like them dummies would have caught on. They should have got the message: Call me names, you get beat up. Simple.

Fighting was just one reason from a never-ending list of why momma’s strong arms were so weary from beating my behind. Somebody's momma was always complaining about me picking on his or her child. Did anybody care that I was usually the brunt of some cruel, unthinking kid’s jokes? Hell, I mean heck naw. Nobody cared about that.

Food, and me, especially sweets, had a serious long-standing love affair. If it was true that sweets made kids hyper, I must have OD'd several times. I was always on the go, running my mouth, breaking the sound barrier trying to talk some kid out of a buck, to feed my sugar habit. Pretty soon, I just started walking about a mile up the street to the Village Pantry corner market. Once inside I’d look left, look right. Next thing you know, one of those sugary sweet, scrumptious, titillating, cinnamon, cake-like white iced Hostess honey buns or white cream-filled, soft yellow cake, Hostess Twinkies, found their way into the clutches of my Fruit of the Looms.

I got caught so much I was barred from the store. I was probably the reason that stores all over didn’t allow more than two kids in at a time without an adult.

Getting caught meant the wrath of momma and her switch or my belt. Momma didn’t have a bashful bone in her body. She wouldn't wait to get me home. You know how some mothers be talking ‘bout, “wait till I get you home” or “wait till I tell your daddy.” Nope, no sir-re-Bob, not my momma. The whipping started in the store, went on while she was driving home, one hand on the wheel, both eyes on the road, and one terribly aimed hand flailing away on me. The whole time she 'd be asking me the same dumb questions: “Why – do – you – make – me – do – this – to – you? When – are – you – going – to – learn?”

I’d be thinking, I – ain’t - made –you – whip – me – one – time, and I’d be thinking I ain’t never gone steal no more.

Extension cords, oh, boy. If you ain’t never been whipped with an extension cord, you ain’t had no ‘come to God’ whipping experience. Every time we had extra extension cords around the house, I went on a search and destroy mission. Talking about pain. The extension cord should have been used in wartimes as a truth serum. That thing will make a man give up his own momma. Unfortunately, I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, a time when beating your child's behind didn’t constitute as child-abuse.

Now school was another thing. I was smart, but I always had to be the center of attention. It wasn't the teachers’ class when I was a featured student in it. It was my class. I came up with all types of nut ball antics to make kids laugh or cry. Of course, in fear of momma's switch, I practiced my buffoonery behind the teacher's back. But, it was always just a matter of time before I got caught. And when I did, it meant you know what, from you know who.

You could catch me red-handed and because of the fear I had of momma’s wrath, I’d deny, deny, and then I’d deny some more.

"Nope it wasn't me sitting at my desk flying the paper airplane that crashed into the back of April Martin’s hair.”

“Wasn’t me who wrote the note that read from Coltrane Jones to April Martin: April will you be my girlfriend, yes or no. Draw an X in the box and pass it back.”

Yeah, I was always recessing when it came to school. It was too boring just sitting in class listening to some old fogy.

So, here we go again; I’m in our two bedroom house, standing in the front room behind the couch Momma got when Grandma Mabel died last year. Momma’s on the other side. One hand on her hip, one pointing at the cracked picture window behind me. I turned my head and looked out the front window with the big spider web crack in it. Even the snowman in our front yard me and Miles built this morning was staring back at me like I was guilty.

“Boy, you hear me talking to you!”

My head jerked back in momma’s direction. I could feel my bladder weakening. I could feel sweat forming on my forehead.

"I didn’t break the window. Momma, I ain't, I mean, I'm not stupid. Miles always lyin' on me. Why I'm gone shoot a BB gun in the house, when you done already told us to um' not be playin' in the house? Miles did it," I cried while pointing an accusing finger at my younger, already crying brother, who stood a comfortable distance away from the long arms of Momma. He feared the distinct possibility of getting the backlash of a slap, or a whipping that was almost sure to follow.

"Momma, he a lie. Look Mom,” he pointed a stubby finger at me before continuing, “He wa'- he-he-was chasin' me wit'-wit’ that gun and he - he tried to kill me and he shoot at me and he missed, but- but the BB broke the window,” my little turncoat sell out brother tearfully stuttered, destroying all hopes of amnesty.

"I always get blamed for stuff. It ain't-I mean, it isn’t right. You always take his side over mine." Deep down inside I knew I was done. But I couldn’t give up. Maybe a miracle would occur. So I kept talking. But when momma dropped her head and stuck her hand out like a traffic guard it was over. Not even God could save my behind now. No need to stick a fork in me, I was done. Well done.

Her teeth tightly grinding together, lips moving in an over exaggerated motion, eyes two seconds from popping out her head. The veins in her forehead were breathing. In snap, flash, quickness momma transformed into the evil ventriloquist.

In a slow, deep, low guttural voice she said, "I do not believe you are going to sit up here, look me dead in my eyes, and lie straight through your teeth.”

And then, she drew the finger on me.

Stabbing the air right in front of my face, she continued, “You are just like your no good, good for nothin’ trifling behind daddy.”

Fear had been replaced by sheer terror. Whenever she brought my daddy’s name while I was being scolded that meant the belt or switch was not too far behind.

She raged on shaking her head tears welling up in her eyes, "I can't do this anymore. I'm sending you to live with your daddy. You don't care about me. You don’t care about nobody but yourself. No matter how hard I try to make a better life for you and your brother, you are never satisfied. You won't be satisfied until you give me a heart attack. Is that what you want? Do you hate me? Is life so bad living here?”

“Naw, Momma. I love you, Momma. I’m sorry, Ma...”

“Shut up, just shut-up. You always sorry. You are the sorriest child…”
She put her head down and shook her head. “Don't ever tell me you're sorry again. Go to your room now,” she pointed.

I dropped my shoulders tucked my chin on my chest and started to cautiously walk to my room.

“On second thought, boy look at me when I’m talking to you.”

When I looked up. I almost jumped back. Momma’s hand was up in the air and I was in her striking distance.

“Take your fat behind outside and get me a switch.”

All of a sudden, I had to pee really bad. The air was getting’ thin. I was breathing like a locomotive. What do I do? What do I say? I couldn’t think. All I could do was cry.

“Don't make me have to come out there. Stop all that dang crying. I ain't gave you nothin’ to cry for yet."

I ain't never seen momma this mad. Even my little egghead brother was still crying, and he ain't even did nothin'.

She talking bout don't cry, she ain't gave me nothing to cry for. Where do mothers get that? The anticipation is almost worse than the whipping. How about go out and get the switch? That’s a damn, I mean dang, shame. I had to go out and find the weapon I was about to get whipped with. That must be some old slave psychology. The overseer telling the slave, “Okay, boy, go out and get my whip, so I can lash your butt.”

A few minutes later after watering the yard with my tears, I came back with a slim branch from the backyard.

Momma grabbed that branch twisted and turned that thing until it broke. She made a beeline to the back door. I was good as dead, if I didn’t do something real quick.

“No, Momma, I’m sorry. I mean, gimme one more chance,” I said as I took off in an all out sprint, running around her. “I’ll get a good one this time.” I was already in the yard climbing the whipping tree before she had a chance to respond.

When we moved from the projects last year and I got my first whipping in our new house, I knew there had to be a conspiracy against me. How else could momma have chosen this house? Out of the eleventy-jillion-gazillion houses in Indianapolis she picked this one. One with a swooshing Weeping willow-whipping tree in the back yard. I even had to question if momma had the tree at my grandma's house all the way, way down in South Carolina moved up here and put in the backyard to make me do right.

A Weeping Willow's branches are thin and sturdy. As I broke off a branch, the whooshing sounds the tree’s branches made were amplified ten-fold in my head, as my sadistic mind tinkered with nightmarish thoughts of momma’s menacing retarded looking grimace as she brought the branch down on my helpless behind.

Momma snatched the switch from my hand before I made it through the back door.

"Whooshhhhh."

The switch snuck up on my unprotected behind. Just when I thought I had no tears left. The pain I felt on the back of my leg was so excruciating, I dropped straight to the dining room floor in a crippled runner’s stance, dang near killing my knees.

"You bet not break my damn door," momma hollered as she closed in on me, chasing me under the dining room table.

I screamed, I hollered, I begged. "I ain't never gone do it again, momma. I promise. Momma, please, I promise, I’ll be good.”

"I – know – you – will – be – good – cause - I'm – gone – beat – the – devil – out –of – you." She paused just long enough to add, "move your hands fore I break ‘em off."

I tried my best to use my hands as the savior for my behind and my legs, sacrificing for the greater good of my body. Momma wasn’t hearing any of that. She was an equal opportunity butt whipper. If my hands wanted in, they’d get whipped too.

After momma was sufficiently satisfied that the devil had been exorcised and whipped from my body, I painfully granddaddy-hobbled into the bed I shared with my pee - in – the – bed brother. I laid down, my mind was reeling, thinking of all types of crazy stuff.

Like why would momma try to beat the devil out of me? Ain't nobody dumb enough to stay around for one of momma’s beat down, whippings. Bilsubub, Satan, the devil, the red-horned man with a pitchfork, whatever you want to call him, would’ve jumped out my body at the first sign of momma and her switch. He knew his pitchfork against momma’s switch stood about as much chance as a butter knife at a sword fight.

And then I began thinking about that new movie, the Exorcist. Everybody know, at least black folk know, that the movie didn't need no priests. All they needed was a big ol’ ham hock and chittlin’ cookin southern big momma from the hood there to whip that girl-devil with a Whipping tree switch. Shoot, just have her to start hollerin' ‘bout whipping the devil out that little girl. That devil gone get somewhere with the quickness. If she threw up on my momma like she did those priests, it would have been no more little girl and no more devil. You would have had a real scary movie then. They’d have to call in the National Guard to exorcise Momma up off that little girl.

I didn't even know I was sleep until Momma came in to the room, waking me up talking bout, "Wake up. Wake up, boy, and help me pack your stuff. Your daddy’s coming to get you in the morning."

Oh-no. She was for real this time. She had called my daddy.

"Momma give me one more chance please. I'm really sorry. I love you, momma. Don't make me go live with Daddy. I'll be good. I'll wash the dishes every night. I'll make sure the glasses don't have those white rings around them. Momma, please. I won't lie any more. I-I-I'll even be nice to Miles. Momma, please. Don't send me to live with Daddy. I’ll be good."

Momma paid my cries no mind. I had broken her heart for the last time.
She didn't dare look at my young, tearing, and desperate eyes. She just started grabbing my clothes, stuffing them in garbage bags. “It’s about time your daddy takes some responsibility. All your lives I’ve had to raise you and your brother without hardly any help from that tired, lazy no-good, sorry excuse for a man. No. No. No. Not anymore, it's ‘bout time your daddy see what I have to go through every single solitary day. I work eight hours a day and come home to chaos. He has more time. And he’s a man. He'll either have to get you ready for the world or make sure the world is ready for you."

 CHAPTER TWO

When you clench your fist, no one
Can put anything in your hand,
Nor can your hand pick up anything

-Alex Haley

“Hellll-low.”

“Let me speak to Don,” momma commanded.

“Woman, don’t you ever, e-e-e-e-e-ver, never as long as you need oxygen to breathe and you live on this planet answer my phone. I ain’t bring you here for you to be all up in my bi’ness woman,” daddy scolded his current piece of the week.

“The woman’s voice on the phone don’t sound like no business to me. I was just trying to be helpful while you was in the toilet. I ain’t trying to be all up in your business. But, as long as you doing your business in me; this here,” she paused and pointed to the phone, “be my business,” the nymph said from the middle of daddy’s broke down king size bed loud enough for momma and Helen Keller to hear.

“Give me that damn thing,” daddy ordered as he snatched the phone out of her hand. He hugged it to his chest, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

He put the phone to his ear. In a professional tone he said, “This is Don.”
Before he could breathe, momma went to hollering. “You tell your funky, gutter-garbage, sewer rat I am the mother of your two sons that you don’t pay a damn dime in child support for. You need to get her in check before someone else does.”

“I got your sewer rat, bring it on grandma,” the girl shouted in the background.

“How old is the little girl, sixteen, seventeen?”

Daddy had learned to tune momma out long ago. He turned the receiver back towards his ear…

“I’ll show you little girl bit…”

While at the same time, straight-arming the hundred-ten pound woman like a wide receiver blocking off a rushing tackler.

“Who that old buzzard think she is? I’ll beat that-”

With the phone in hand, daddy cowardly ran and locked himself in the bathroom. He turned on the shower in a weak attempt to shut out his tantrum-throwing guest.

“Jill, what could possibly be so important that you have to call me and start so much trou…”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are your sons too much trouble? Do you think the judge would ask me that when I have your sorry ass thrown in jail for being an unfit, trifling good for nothing, backdoor father? What would all your little snotty-nose girlfriends do, if the mighty Dick Don were locked up? Who would give them their lunch money?”

“Jill, I am about to hang up this damn phone. Now what the hell do you want?”

“I am packing your son’s clothes. Come and get Coltrane in the morning. I am taking off work. If you are not here by ten I swear you will be locked up by ten tomorrow night. I’ll tell the police everything I know about your shadetree, jackleg hustling ass, ‘Click’ em’.” Momma almost broke the phone slamming it back in its already weak cradle.

I could see Daddy now with that what-the-hell-had-that-boy-done-got-hisself-into-now look on his face. Secretly, I was Donald Albert Jones favorite and most troublesome child. Momma always said I was just like my daddy. I ain’t saying that was such a bad thing. After all, Don, as daddy was called in the streets, was what cats referred to as a baby balla, shot calla and low level playa-playa.

Why momma thought me going to live with Daddy was the best solution, I will never know. My father’s background goes something like this.

Donald Albert Jones was raised in Detroit at a time when black folks were starting to figure out who they where. It was the fifties and sixties; civil tension was in the air. Black folk were tired of being maids, butlers, sharecroppers and bowing down to men who put on their pants the same way everyone else did.

Daddy was sitting in the passenger’s seat of his father’s sunshine orange Fleetwood when Sweet Peter a rival pimp from the Westside drove up beside them and without a word stuck his arm out the window and fired three shots into the Fleetwood splattering my granddaddy’s blood and brain matter everywhere.

Daddy was a sixteen year old boy, the most important thing on his mind was chasing after girls at Washington High. At least that was most important until he sat in his father’s ride wearing his daddy’s blood and brain matter. A few hours later Daddy had went from being a boy to becoming a man, one out for vengeance chasing a cold hearted killer pimp.

Another sun hadn’t risen before the six foot six three hundred plus pound pimp, Sweet Peter was laying on the floor beside the number four pool table with his nickel-plated 38 still in his hip pocket. His lifeless eyes stared at the white speckled ceiling while blood gushed from the ear to ear smile he wore on his neck. Although Archie’s Pool Hall was packed as it usually was on a Saturday night with hustler’s, pimps, numbers runners, or any young stud trying to make a name for himself no one saw anything when questioned by the police.

It was the act of what was done to his father and what Daddy had done in retribution that gave him the resolve to make a vow to run the streets, instead of the streets running him.

He started calling himself the Black Don, for no other reason than it was catchy, and all players had a street name. The name ended up sticking, minus the Black part.

He tried his hand at running women. It was too much trouble, and he thought of himself as a romantic and pimping just wasn’t his scene, even though he possessed one of the sugary smoothest mouthpieces in the Motor City. He dibbled and dabbled with selling a little heroin, and weed. Again, he did not have the heart to be a ruthless heroin dealer.

Early one breezy March-spring morning, he packed up and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. Detroit was just too fast too cut-throat. He wanted a new playground that wasn’t as hip and as fast. He figured he could rule the streets in a small city, with his talk game and his good looks.
Indianapolis didn’t stand a chance, he thought.

It was a wintry cold November night when Don got off the Greyhound bus in downtown Indianapolis. He had a tattered brown suitcase in one hand and the wind in the other. The shiny sharkskin gray suit he took off a dead man in a casket at Grundy’s funeral home back in Detroit covered his coal black skin. The slicked back conk hairdo Daddy wore rivaled that of Nat-King Cole’s. The man was sharper than a new straight razor.

Don Looked like chocolate money, as he stood frozen in the middle of the street like a misplaced light post. His eyes were glued to the rear end of this healthy big butt, red-bone getting out of a fairly new Buick. A minute later a speeding oncoming car brought him back to reality. In no time he was on the sidewalk, one hand in his pocket and one on his suitcase as he almost broke out into a cool double-step-hop-jog to catch up to the voluptuous red-satin dress wearing, big legged, large breasted, heart bootied, cherub faced, red-haired goddess that almost cost him his life a few moments ago.

“Must be butter ‘cause skin ain’t that smooth.” Massaging the back of her hand, leaning at an angle, licking his brown weed stained lips as if she were a pork chop and he a hungry man, he continued, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Detroit Don. That is the Detroit Don, the one, the only, in ten dimensions, live and uncensored. You may have heard of me, now you see me, soon you’ll want me, later you’ll need me. Baby, babygirl call me Don for shawt not for naught.” He extended his outstretched manicured ringless hand showing all thirty-two of his baking-soda whites, and they were white, despite all the refer he smoked. He continued when her hand was in his.

“I am fresh off the Greyhound as you can ascertain. I am a friendless man in your fair city. Would you please be so kind as to let a lonely brother escort you to lunch,” he pointed a finger in the air, “That is after I extricate myself from these tired clothes, bathe, and refurbish myself in some more fitting attriments and locate a boarding house? Miss?”
Oh, yeah, daddy was a man of many words, and letters put together to make up words that sounded like they could have been real.

Kat smiled as she astutely listened to the tired, rambling, tirade Daddy went on.

“I’m Katrice Scott, but my friends call me Kat. I might have a spare room for you if you want work. A pretty Black man like yourself might do me just fine,” she said. “Well, are you coming or not?” she asked while hip-dancing back to her car.

It didn’t take long for Daddy to lose control of the situation. Hell, he didn’t even ask what kind of job. He would find out soon enough. Later that night, Don started work as an enforcer for the biggest cathouse on the Eastside. Katrice Scott was nine years older than Don. She was into everything from dope, to numbers, to vice. Don was eager to learn and learning came easy. He didn’t use nor drink; his only problems were the Kitty-Kats on the sweet young nubile kittens that were ripe for the plucking. Kat cured his addiction, at least for a while.

Whenever he went to shave, painful memories assaulted his consciousness. Memories of that horrible morning when Kat caught him reviewing the quality of the services that her girls provided. There would always be a mark at the top of his neck where Kat tried to slit his throat with a four-inch stainless steel, pearl handled switchblade. I mean she worked that blade like a Ginsu chef and would have had perfect aim if it weren’t for one of her girls grabbing her arm.

The girls did not fear Kat’s wrath. They knew Kat would never turn on them in favor of a man. One of Kat’s rules to live by was don’t bite the hand that makes you money, but when that hand stops putting money in yours, then bite the shit out of it.

In fear of losing his cash cow, Don decided to get some real life insurance. He married Kat two weeks later. Everything was fine for the next five years until Kat popped-up pregnant.

Kat was a completely different woman while she was pregnant. She became immersed in books. The more she read, the more she started to think that the games she was playing were the wrong games and she didn’t want her child exposed to the type of lifestyle she and Don had grown accustomed to. Kat was being enriched by the likes of Dubois, Hughes, Hurston, Barnett, Ellison and many more. Her mentality had been transformed in such a short time that Don had no idea what the heck was going down. He didn’t know if she was getting religion on him, squaring up, or coming up with a new scheme. And frankly, he didn’t care.

The more Kat read, the further Don fled. No longer just Kat’s man, he’d established his own identity and had grown into a seasoned hustler and was known around town as a mover and shaker. A man who could make anything happen – for the right price. But like most young men, money and the poo-nanny was his kryptonite.

Before the baby came, Kat closed the cathouse – her heart just wasn’t in it. She even turned to the church, and worst of all she blew up like a Sumo-wrestler on steroids. Mind you, she was never small. But she was as big as a house now. I mean a mansion. And, she got bigger by the Bon-Bon.
After the birth of their daughter, La-Shl, Don started to stay in the streets more and more. He hustled stolen goods that he took off trucks at night and sold weed by day. The girlfriends he acquired on the side, as well as his other activities, helped to support Kat and La-shl.

One day in sixty-eight, while cat-daddy strolling down the block, a man with a voice almost as smooth as Don’s drew him into the local record store. David Ruffin was talkin’ ‘bout having sunshine on a cloudy day, being cold outside in the month of May. And, then he made a smooth transition from the weather to his girl. You already know Don had a weakness for big, pretty, shapely redbone women. Don called them fat-fine. Sure enough, one was behind the register, lip-synching along with the vinyl on the record player.

She was one of those college girls. You know beorgeefied and thangs. She wouldn’t give Don the time of day…at least not at first. He slowly wore her down. He brought her roses, compliments of Theresa Grant, May 18, 1932 – June 3, 1968 – that’s what the headstone read at Crown cemetery. He even brought her the good Spumante wine, fresh off the truck he’d helped hi-jack. He talked a local band into playing in front of the store while he crooned his own rendition of My Girl. For some reason, both times the band played Barry Gordy didn’t show, as Don promised he would.

When Don sang, it was all over. The man was more a poet than a singer. He made words dance. They came to life when they were released from his baritone voice. He invented words like ‘beautifical’, and ‘organasmic’ and brought them to life. They were his creations and they rolled off his tongue with the style and grace of a ballerina walking on a tightrope.
Jill Andrews, music major at Marion Anderson School of Performing Arts, had never heard anything like the velvety-smooth, iron-piped, silk-tongued voice. She was hooked.

They started dating and two seasons later, Kat was a discarded memory. And, Jill was Don’s new tomorrow. Soon after, God said let there be life and I was born.