Free Dutch by Teri Woods

family and wanted to control the city’s drug trade. Frank
     had two hits carried out on Kazami, but missed both times, which only added to Kazami’s street reputation, making him legendary.
    Dutch had already heard of Kazami from Angel, who had started nickel and dimin’ for one of Kazami’s workers on Dayton Street.
     Of the whole clique, Angel was the only one who wrote to Dutch on a consistent basis. Roc, who also worked for one of Kazami’s
     street teams, sent money from time to time, but it was Angel who kept him in the know.
    She told him about everything. Shock had died in a motorcycle accident. That was the first time Dutch had cried for someone
     in his life. She also wrote and told him Zoom was home and he was running around sticking everything up with the Zoo Crew.
     Years later, they too would become legends in Newark. She also wrote telling him about her first sexual experience with a
     woman. Dutch already knew she was dyke material, so he wasn’t at all surprised.
    Craze, his main man, almost never wrote unless Angel caught him, sat him down, and made him, which was seldom. It wasn’t that
     Craze wouldn’t write. It was that he couldn’t and he was ashamed. Dutch understood when he finally did get a letter from Craze
     and it was in the handwriting of a child. Dutch couldn’t read it to answer back, so he didn’t.
    Qwan wrote him a lot. He was over there in “gladiator camp” holding it down with the tack heads over there. Qwan always went
     to church, but never hesitated when he perceived someone as disrespecting him. He talked about God in every letter, but Dutch
     wasn’t concerned with that. He was just glad Qwan was all right.
    Of everyone in Dutch’s young life, the one he expected to write him the most, his mother, never wrote at all. When he was
     in the county, Dutch wrote her several times but she never wrote back. And right after he got locked up, her phone was disconnected,
     and he couldn’t call. He sent letters every week or so and greeting cards for every holiday and occasion, but his mail to
     his mother was returned to him marked CHANGE OF ADDRESS UNKNOWN . Delores had moved and didn’t even leave a forwarding address.
    At first, it pained him, but he knew his mother loved him, so his pain changed to confusion, but never to stress. He had Angel
     find out where she moved to, but he never wrote her again. He figured he’d just go visit her when he got out. He only had
     one month left in prison. Dutch was now sixteen, and had grown a full two inches, and with the constant workouts in the gym,
     he was in tip-top shape.
    He had learned many things in prison, things that would shape his immediate future and ultimate destiny. He stared around
     the cold cell in which he had spent the last eighteen months of his life. It was the last morning he would ever spend locked
     in a cage. He looked at the mirror and at himself.
I’m never coming back to no place like this again,
he promised himself. Then said it out loud, “I’m never coming back to prison. I’ll hold court in the streets first.”
    Dutch walked out the front gate of Mountainview Correctional and never looked back.

CHAPTER SIX

THE RETURN
    D utch’s first sight on leaving prison was Craze sitting outside the fence in a stolen Honda Prelude.
    “Fuck kinda shit you into? How you gonna pick me up in some stolen shit?” Dutch asked, finding his friend amusing.
    “Oh, so these muhfuckers done got rehabilitation programs that work on niggas, now? Let me find the fuck out, they done got
     you all fucked up in the head and rehabilitated and shit,” said Craze as he threw up his hands and playfully swung at Dutch,
     who blocked him and playfully threw one of his own.
    On the long trip back to Newark, Craze filled Dutch in on everything he’d been doing during Dutch’s absence.
    “Ay, yo, you remember that chick, Sharonda? She used to live in my building? Word life, money, I gutted that bitch out!” Craze
     bragged