Midnight Read Free Page B

need to try to look like a gorilla, Bop, unless you intend to spend the rest of your life guarding your asshole in jail. Look around you; look at the dudes with the lats ’n pecs. Most of ’em are so musclebound they can’t even turn their heads unless they turn their shoulders. If that ain’t bad enough, there are two other downsides; number one, all that excess mass is gonna turn to flab unless you pump for the rest of your life. Number two, the police are gonna harass your ass all over South Central “EL-A” and beyond ’cause they can tell, just from looking at you all buffed up, that you just got outta jail.”
    Bop’s attention was drawn to the large, neatly rounded keloid in his left side. “The bullet could’ve caused a lot of damage, a lot of damage. You could’ve suffered a spinal cord injury. You’re lucky, young man, don’t push it.”
    Twenty-one years old, been seriously shot once, been beaten and left for dead once, skull fractured, right ankle fractured by a baseball bat, in and out of some kind of penal institution for the past eleven years. Ex-drug-addict/pusher, ex-war-lord counselor of the Bricks, one of the biggest, best organized, and most brutal of the “EL-A” gangs.
    Bop threw the gang sign at himself in the minor—a Brick! How many could say that they had “retired” from the Bricks?
    He closed the passport and flopped back on the bed to stare up at the light in the ceiling. Retired. Going to Africa. It didn’t seem real.
    How can I be a “retired” Brick? What the hell am I going to Africa for?
    The two people closest to him, Uncle David and Aunt Lulu, couldn’t really figure it out either, the part about him going to Africa. They put it in the same category as noodle-and-wheat-germ eating.
    Uncle David: “Well, Bop, I tell you the way I feel about it. It’s your life and you can do what you want with it. But, for my money, I wouldn’t be going nowhere as fucked up as Africa is.”
    â€œUnc, Ghana is just one country in Africa, you can’t condemn the whole continent.”
    â€œTell me something, Bop …?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œHow many of those countries over there—’sides South Africa, and we know how fucked that was, and still is to a certain extent—how many of those countries are completely self supporting?”
    â€œUnc, that ain’t really the point.”
    â€œWell, what’s the point?”
    â€œNow, Dave, don’t be so hard on the boy. Bop, you want to go to Africa. What’re you gon’ do over there?”
    What’re you gonna do over there? What’re you gonna do over there? What’re you gonna do over there? What …? OK, Chester, answer that one for me. You told me why I should go and what I would find but you supply the answer to that one. What’re you gonna do over there?
    â€œBop, listen to me, I been around the world three times, done had six bitches, three wives, and half a dozen children. I’ve shot dope, drank all the firewater I could, overextended my spiritual credit card, felt every emotion a funky chump could feel. I have only one regret.”
    â€œChester, you have a regret? Hold on a minute, let me put this fuckin’ barbell down. Chester Simmons regrets something?”
    â€œThat’s right. I went to Ghana right after Nkrumah came to power.…”
    Chester was always dropping funny names on his head.… Nkrumah, Lumumba, Fanon, Mao, Che Guevara, Nasser, Jung, Hannibal, Nzingha, Langston Hughes, Chano Pozo, Duke Ellington, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, L’Ouverture, Jack Johnson, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Monk, Bird, Lady Day.…
    â€œI had the money from a game that I had just run and I couldn’t think of anything better to do than go check my roots. Ghana had an ancestral pull on me, you know what I mean?”
    Bop nodded. What else was there to