That’s How I Roll: A Novel Read Free

stupid is committing suicide.
    So, despite my circumstances, I never coveted what others had. And when I learned how I could change those circumstances, there was no need for me to envy such things, anyway: houses, cars, jewelry, things like that. Things, that’s one key. But understanding yourself means you have to be able to open a two-key lock.
    You might be able to look back and see where you went wrong. But that’s a vision, not a tool. You can’t use what you see in your past to go back and change it. Sure, you can buy things you never had before, but you can’t change the “before.”
    When I found that second key, I realized envy is no sin—it can even be a motivation. Wanting what others have, that’s not wrong. It can make you strive. Work harder. Reach higher.
    You
can
change your own future.
    You might want a Cadillac. So might another man. You each envy the man who has one. And you each have choices. You can work and save your money until you have enough for that Caddy. You can steal money other people worked for; it spends just as good as money honestly earned. Or you can just sit there, stewing in your own bile. That’s poisonous stuff, bile.
    When two men each want a Cadillac, they can go their separate ways to get one. Usually, they keep going those separate ways for the rest of their lives.
    It’s only when you and another want the same thing—not an assembly line thing, something there’s only one of—that
real
sin knocks on your door. If you open the door, greed and possessiveness come right on in and make themselves to home. Once they’re in, they never leave.
    Two men want the same woman. This can bring blood, but that’s pretty rare. Most of the time, the man who’s not the woman’s choice gets over being rejected.
    Sometimes, the woman doesn’t even know she’s wanted by that man. He might believe he wouldn’t be her choice, and keep his own feelings to himself. So there’s no rejection to resent … or regret.
    But what about the man who
does
get what he wanted so bad?
    He could treat his woman like a princess. Be grateful every day of his life that he got so lucky. Work three jobs to buy her nice things.
    Or he could treat her like a slave. Not just making her work, but beating on her when she doesn’t work hard enough. Hard enough to support him when he quits his job or gets laid off.Hard enough to make him forget he’s got twice the stomach and half the hair he used to have.
    Some men, the only work they do is keep watch on their woman—go through the phone bills to see if there’s any strange numbers there; sit outside a tavern where she’s playing a few games of eight-ball with her friends to see who she leaves with; third-degree question her every time she comes back into the house.
    And some are too lazy to do even that much. They just keep their woman in the house. Cut her off from her friends, even from her own family.
    That sometimes works. But it’s got strong potential for backfire, too. If a man catches his woman in bed with another man, and he ends the affair with a pistol, the jury’s not going to treat him too harshly. They call it the “unwritten law.”
    But that only works for men. If a woman’s husband staggers in one night, drunk and nasty, a whore’s lipstick smeared all over him, she might be able to shoot him and get the law to treat her lightly, too. But only if she remembers to say he was acting like he was about to kill her. Self-defense. Around here, that means she only gets to fire once. A shotgun works a lot better than a pistol for that.
    Now that I’m taking stock, I have to face up to things like that. Admit that it might have been something as small and petty as my own possessiveness that brought all this down.
    “Might have,” that’s speculation. But this, this is absolute truth: I was never going to let anyone or anything take my little brother from me. That was never going to happen, no matter what the cost, or who had to pay