When we were last with Gerald in New Orleans, he was maneuvering the social circles of the streets with his two closest friends, Greg and Minew, at his side together for the first time…
I’ll tell you a story about my man Craig. Craig was a funny dude.
All of us had a little shop, a little gig where we hustled at. It was a little caper house.
A policeman called Sarge used to always come through the hood. Sometime he take his bolt cutters, cut the gate.
But Sarge is a crooked cop, so he can’t come to court and win no cases on you. His credibility is no good. But he gonna play hero, so, you know, we always keep a “hero” in the picture.
Sarge used to come because we had a daycamp school across the street from us and we had to be sure to close down. We had to close down because, yeah, we violatin’ the law, we selling drugs, but if you got caught during the school hours… 30 years.
So one day, we got a camera. It don’t record you, it video you. It can tell when somebody by the gate, or when somebody doing activity. If you have a cat, it’s gonna go “Beep!”
My man Craig used to shoot the rock, dope and stuff. So one day he back there and shot where we went out and shot at. But we had the cameras. So he called me in the alley.
He said, “Black, come back here for a minute.” He pressed the button, “Come back, let me holla at ya.”
So we chat for a minute. He say, “That’s that little n****, Shorty, out there?”
I said, Yeah!”
He say, “That n**** playin’ with me.”
I say, “Craig, he not talkin’ with ya, he ain’t ask ya nothin’…”
“I heard what he said!”
Craig thought Shorty was talking about him with me. That’s how high you can get, think people talkin’ about you, askin’ about you. Shorty ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about this dude. But this how Craig feel.
So Craig say, “Wait till I come from back here, let me clean myself up.”
He cleanin’ himself up. He come from behind. Next thing you know, I seen Shorty out in the street.
BOW! He done knock Shorty out in the street!
I say, “Man, what up?”
“I told you I was gonna get that n****!”
Shorty say, “Wha?” Then when he did got up, he said, “What you do that for?”
He said, “You was talkin’ to Black about me, plotting up on me.”
I had to laugh so much. When I told Greg about it, Greg said, “What the f***?! Craig going Hulk!” Craig was a Hulk dude, husky, like the Incredible Hulk.
Craig went over later and tell Shorty, “My bad. I’m gonna get you high later on. I just flashed out.” There’s some crazy stuff out in the street.
To be continued.
Anderson’s first book, “Still Standing: How an Ex-Con Found Salvation in the Floodwaters of Katrina,” is available on Amazon.com.
