Nasty Read Free Page B

He’d fallen from a high of organizing creative art projects in African villages when he was with the Peace Corps to a new low of conspiring with common criminals.
    He couldn’t help it. He needed money. Dope wasn’t free and the waiting lists for drug rehab centers in the city were longer than all the tracks on his arms combined. With a big hit of cash, he could buy his last stash and then enter a good clinic. He wanted a clear exit out of hell. He was getting too old.
    The irony of the whole affair was that on the day he committed the crime, Al Montana had opened a new drug treatment center in memory of his daughter. If he’d only set pride aside, he could have been in that first group of patients in the new state-of-the-art drug rehabilitation facility, instead of a Riker’s Island prison cell.
    Damn that Badheart
, he thought. It was supposed to be a simple robbery. Nobody was going to get hurt. He told him to leave his crackhead brother, DJ, out the plan. He hated crackheads with a real passion. They weren’t cool at all. Garbage fried their brains or something. With Lady H, you just get mellow; not so with that wacky smack.
    Why did DJ bring the gun? It wasn’t part of their plan. And why did he shoot the Arab in the neck? Why? Because he was a fuckin’ crackhead, that’s why.
    Even though he didn’t pull the trigger. Even though he stayed behind to help the dying Arab out. Even though the store’s video camera substantiated all his claims, the court-appointed attorney could not get the self-righteous, junkie-hating judge to set bail at a reasonable level. A hundred thousand dollars! Hell, if he had that kind of money he wouldn’t have had to hold up the damn store. But if bail was a dollar, it wouldn’t have done him any good. He didn’t have that either. Nor did he have a place to stay. On second thought, mused Eli, the judge had done him a righteous turn.
    Finally, they gave Eli his methadone. He swallowed the liquid and smiled to himself, knowing that soon, very soon, the razor scraping his insides out would soon be so dull, he wouldn’t feel anything at all.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    A
fter a month of regular methadone and nutrition, Eli started feeling human again. Eli eventually ventured into the showers. He might as well get used to them. This would be his second time in jail and his public defender told him to expect some real hard time. Ten years or more. Why so much time? He quickly learned that the combination of robbery, homicide, and drugs made all the difference.
    As he became more aware of his surroundings, his personality returned. His natural outgoing nature forced him to try and make small talk with the mostly younger inmates. It sickened him to know that the prison population could have doubled for a huge dormitory at any of the predominantly Black universities. Instead of spending time learning and expanding their minds to do something truly revolutionary and positive, society and the power elite had imprisoned his brothers and sisters when they were in the prime of their lives. Imprisoned like animals. The best and the brightest could be behind this wall, and nobody would know it. Nobody cared.
    But who was he to look down on society’s corruption and its oppression of his people? He had a college degree. Was only a thesis away from a Masters. How many of his brothers and sisters had he inspired or helped to do better? He had spent thelast twenty years of his life looking for money to support his drug habit. The fact that he had had an opportunity to travel a better path was never lost of him.
    Eli often looked at his only prized possession, a pocket-sized portrait of his family. The one he abandoned when he couldn’t conform to his wife’s world. Looking back, there was nothing wrong with that world. Especially when he compared it with the one he currently resided in.
    The day the prison barber finally got around to cutting off Eli’s lice-ridden dreads and his even nastier beard, a