The Dopeman's Wife: Part I of the Dopeman Trilogy (4 page)

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Authors: JaQuavis Coleman

Tags: #Fiction, #African American, #General, #Urban

BOOK: The Dopeman's Wife: Part I of the Dopeman Trilogy
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TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING
Chapter Four
“Fuck that!” Zion yelled. He sat on the sofa counting money that he’d just robbed from a hustler in Detroit. “You ain’t going to no strip club. I don’t care who birthday it is!”
“But, baby,” Nautica pleaded, “it’s not going to be like that. It’s just a little private party to celebrate Khia’s birthday.” She stood in front of him with her arms crossed, trying to sway his decision.
Zion shot a cold stare at Nautica, and if looks could kill, she would have been in a body bag.
Nautica took a deep breath and stormed into the back room. She slammed the door and flopped down on the bed. She looked around the plush room and realized that it wasn’t worth being imprisoned. She had been with Zion for three months, and it didn’t take long for his true colors to come out. She found out that he was possessive and controlling.
This nigga tripping. He doesn’t want me to go anywhere!
Nautica folded her arms across her chest and sat there sulking.
Meanwhile Loon sat in Zion’s kitchen counting up money and remained silent as he listened in on the conversation. Nautica never said anything to Loon after what she’d seen him doing with her underwear a while back and acted as if he didn’t exist when he was around. She always grew an uncomfortable feeling in Loon’s presence.
Zion looked over at Loon and signaled for him to leave, so that he could talk to Nautica alone, and almost instantly, Loon stopped counting the money and exited the house. Zion focused his attention back on Nautica. He shook his head from side to side, not seeing why she would want to be in a strip club again.
Although Zion gave Nautica any and everything she wanted, he took her life away from her, and began to exhibit his jealousy more and more each day. Zion had her trapped and made her quit the strip club and cashier job, telling her, “My woman don’t work.” But that only made her dependent on him, which was just the way he liked it.
It didn’t take long for her to realize how he got down. He would come in at night with blood on his clothes and duffle bags full of bloody money, and it scared her to death. One night she even walked in on him and Loon counting up a table full of money, ski masks pulled to the top of their heads. She always wondered when karma would get Zion, and would she suffer for his wrongdoings. She would have never dealt with him if she knew the truth, because she knew what came with being a stickup kid.
Zion came in the room and saw Nautica on the bed moping. He stood in front of her and ran his fingers through her hair, trying to change her mood. “Baby, brighten up.” He took a seat next to her.
Nautica remained silent and kept her act up, hoping to change his mind.
Zion rubbed her back. “You know how much I love you, right? I just want you to get away from that life. That strip club is your past, and I don’t want you in that type of environment.”
“But it ain’t even like that. Khia’s birthday is today, and I told her I’d be there.”
Zion stood quickly and raised his voice, “Fuck that! You can go to the mu’fuckin’ club, but after that you find you another place to live! Ain’t no woman of mine going to be in a nasty-ass strip club. Birthday party or not, I ain’t feeling the shit!” Zion said, getting more angry with each word. He had offered Nautica a place to live, so she and Khia wouldn’t be cramped up in the small apartment they’d been sharing. And once he found out that Khia’s boyfriend spent the night there from time to time, he wasn’t having it. He insisted that she move in with him and he would take care of her financially.
“Zion, I don’t want to leave here. I love you. I just thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal.” Nautica’s eyes began to water.
Zion calmed himself and gently grabbed her face. “I tell you what, I will pay for you a shopping spree for you today, okay. You will be so busy looking at all the things you bought, you won’t even be thinking about a birthday party.” Zion knew how to get Nautica to see things his way. “And I have something else that will cheer you up.” He pulled a Tylenol bottle out of his pocket.
Nautica’s eyes lit up. She already knew what it was. A new batch of ecstasy pills. She had developed the habit of rolling and loved the way sex felt while on the drug. Zion loved the way it felt too.
She quickly snatched the pills out of his hands and jumped off the bed. Then she popped open the bottle and put a pill in her mouth before scooting back to the bed.
Zion smiled as he dropped his pants. He was about to have Nautica just the way her loved her. High.
 
 
Loon sat in his small apartment in the Terrace Projects looking through the blinds of his front window at the crack-heads and nightwalkers walking up and down the block. He gripped his .45-pistol and clenched his teeth, paranoia driving him crazy. He’d done so much mischief with Zion, thoughts of retaliation from his robberies and murders bombarded his mind. He shifted his eyes nervously, as he took deep, slow breaths. He suffered from paranoia and anxiety every night, and this was a normal routine. Most nights he fell asleep by the window, two guns in his hands. Zion had manipulated his mind and turned him into a coldblooded killer with no sense of remorse.
Loon, aka Fremont Williams, had met Zion in the Terrace projects when he was twelve years old. He often wished he could go back to that time. A time when he was innocent. When he had a soul. A single tear slid down his cheek as he thought about all the murders he had committed over the years. He wiped the tear away and chuckled to himself, trying to shake the sadness off.
Loon had had a rough childhood. He lived with his father Gene, an ex-con, who was forced into single parenthood when Loon’s mother died suddenly. On his eleventh birthday Loon found his mother dead on the bathroom floor. She had gotten a bad pack of dope and died shortly after injecting the drug. That’s when he met his father, who’d just been released from prison.
Since Loon’s mother didn’t have any family, the court looked to his father’s side and appointed Loon to live with his grandmother, but at her old age, there was no way she could keep up with him, so Loon did most of his living with Gene.
It wasn’t long before Gene began to display his homosexual tendencies, which he’d developed his while incarcerated. At first he would just make Loon bathe and dress in front of him, but as time passed, things got progressively worse, and no matter how much he tried not to look at his own son in a sexual way, his sexual appetite got the best of him. Not only that, Gene also developed a bad heroin addiction.
Loon thought back to the time when he was first given his nickname “Loon.”
 
Six Years Earlier
 
“Come on up in here, Fremont,” Gene called after he finished up the smack that he’d copped from one of the corner boys. He wanted to get a blowjob from his son before he slipped into one of his nods. Gene was sick and twisted in the mind and felt that what he was doing wasn’t wrong.
Fremont reluctantly inched into the room and stood before his father. Fearing that Gene might strike him for not moving fast enough, Loon’s small frame tensed up.
Gene slowly pulled out his manhood and began to stroke himself. “Come on, Freemont! Do what yo’ daddy like, okay.” He scooted down in his La-Z-Boy and threw his head back.
Tears slid down Loon’s cheek as he dropped to his knees and began to do the most horrific act that any young boy could experience.
Hours later, Gene was finally out of his nod. The combination of the good smack and an orgasm had him in a deep sleep for two hours. Once he woke, he yelled, “Freemont!” He wiped the drool from his mouth and reached into his pants to search for his last twenty-dollar bill.
Freemont, eyes bloodshot from all of the crying he’d been doing, walked into the room and stood in the doorway.
Gene waved the twenty-dollar bill in the air. “Go and cop yo’ old man a ‘doo,’” he said, meaning a twenty-dollar fix. Gene owed so many dope dealers money, he didn’t want to risk running into one. So, to be on the safe side, he always sent Loon out to the sharks for his medicine.
Loon took the twenty-dollar bill from his father and hit the streets with what seemed like the world’s weight on his shoulders. “I swear, when I get older, I’ma kill that fool!” he said to himself as he stormed down the block in search of a corner boy.
Loon looked down at his worn-out clothing and shoes and began to shake his head in embarrassment. He never had up-to-date gear or shoes, and got teased and talked about in school because of it. All of the teasing and name-calling pushed him to be a withdrawn child, so he barely even spoke. That’s why the kids in school gave him the name Loon, saying he was loony, and a nutcase.
Loon finally reached a group of young boys sitting on a stoop. He approached them, his head down, and threw up one finger, which meant he wanted one pack.
A couple of the boys in the group who went to school with him and ragged on him on a daily basis wanted to mess with him again. One of them said, “How you gon’ be on dope in middle school?” Then he laughed and slapped five with some of the others. The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a doo. “Yo’,” he said, a mischievous smile on his face, “give me the money first.”
Now the golden rule of the streets was, the product and money was supposed to be exchanged at same time, so when the boy suggested that Loon give him the money first, the other boys already knew what was about to go down.
Loon gave the boy the money, and the boy snatched it and stuffed it into his pocket. “Thanks, homey,” he said, and everybody burst into laughter.
Loon said in a low voice, “Can I please just have the doo?” He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact with any of the goons.
“Get the fuck out of here, nigga!” The boy pushed Loon to the ground.
Loon slowly stood back up. “Man, please just give me the money or the doo.” He had tears in his eyes now, more so from embarrassment than pain. Loon saw that the boys were having too much fun antagonizing him, so he turned around and headed home to “hell’s kitchen.” He cried a river on his way back, as he thought about the repercussions of returning empty-handed.
Hours later, Loon sat balled-up in a corner of the house sobbing hysterically with a black eye and a sore body. His father was upset at him for not bringing him back his dope, and showed Loon no mercy, beating him for almost an hour. At first Gene only used a belt, but the more he thought about missing his high, the more he used his fist on his son.
Loon flinched at the sound of the front door slamming. He knew that his father had left out for the night, as he did many nights when he didn’t have his fix. Loon thought about getting revenge on the corner boy who’d caused him so much pain.
All he had to do was give me the doo
.
He stood up and began to pace the room. Without even thinking, he went to his father’s room. There, he lifted up the mattress and pulled out a rusty old pistol. He gripped the metal and examined it like it was a rare work of art. A twisted smile formed on his face, even as the tears continued to flow. This was only the beginning of Loon’s madness.
The flames from a burning apartment building illuminated the projects, and the air was smoke-filled. A group of boys watched the fire like it was a Fourth of July spectacle.
Zion pressed his back against the wall and pulled the ski mask over his face. He’d been watching the corner boys make crack sales for the past hour and was waiting for the perfect time to stick them up. He was glad for the fire, because it temporarily got the corner boys off their square, which made his job a little bit easier. He gripped the .380 handgun, switched off the safety button, and slowly sidestepped toward the edge, preparing to give them a big surprise.
Just as Zion was about to rob them, he saw a young boy walk briskly past him and toward the crowd of hustlers, so he fell back.
It all happened so fast, he was caught off guard. Two gunshots rang out, and the sound of the boys scattering and scrambling for their life filled the air.
Zion peeked around the corner and saw a young boy with a smoking gun standing over a body. Zion couldn’t believe his eyes. The boy didn’t look a day over twelve.
The boy turned his head and saw Zion looking on in astonishment.
Zion studied the boy’s face and noticed the blank expression.
The boy then looked back at the dead body and he went into the boy’s pocket. He pulled at a wad of money, peeled off a twenty-dollar bill, and threw the rest of the money on top of the dead boy’s body. The boy then broke down and dropped to his knees. He dropped the gun and covered his face with both of his hands and started to cry.
Zion rushed over to the boy and placed his hand on his head. “Yo’, you gotta get out of here before the police come, young’un.” He grabbed the wad of money off the boy and rushed over to the tin coffee can where the corner boys kept their drugs at. “Bingo,” he whispered to himself when he found a couple ounces of crack cocaine and bundles of heroin within the can. He looked back at the boy and noticed that he hadn’t moved an inch. Zion said with more urgency this time, “Yo’, son, you gotta go before the police come.”

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