Free Unruly by Ja Rule Page A

toilet.
    The crack high was like no other, that’s what the fiends said. It was a burst of quick excitement that they called euphoria. It was a feeling that was apparently worth five or ten dollars out of every paycheck, twenty dollars out of their grocery money, then the fifty dollars out of their water bill, and then a hundred out of their rent money . . . until it was all gone to my homies and me.
    I had started to work the fifteen- and twenty-floor high-rises, all uniformly encased in weathered red bricks, all smothering the breath of Black people whose only need was a little more personal space. Whether they were co-ops or projects, the buildings were all the same to me.
    My homies and me were all hustling within the same area around 205th and Hollis Avenue—the 2/5th we called it. I was on 1-9-1 Woodhull, which for me was the smarter hustle. We were selling red “31 Illusion Capsules.” The vials made the rocks look bigger, which is why they were called illusion capsules. They were selling on 205 for five dollars, which was a big vial for a low price. Ten blocks away the money was more lucrative. On 1-9-1 the same thing was going for twenty dollars.
    I left the 2/5th because although the money was better, the Jamaicans worked 99th Avenue and our corner was becoming a free for all. The way it worked was we would all wait for the cars to pull up and then pure chaos would ensue. We would run to the cars and swarm around them like bees. We would hiss like snakes, “ My shit , my shit, my shit . . .” The first one of us to get our vials into the car window would get the sale. That was a crazy way to hustle.
    One night, I returned to 99th Avenue and started a war with the Jamaicans that almost got me killed. The war went on for weeks.
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    IT ALL STARTED because the cops were getting called to the block on the regular, and they seemed to be always looking for my crew. We knew that the Jamaicans were calling them to take attention off of their scandalous shit.
    That night, it was unusually quiet on the block. It was like a ghost town. I saw one straggler car roll up to the spot. I ran over to the customer’s car. A Jamaican saw him too and just as I was shoving my vial through the window, the Jamaican was trying to push his in at the same time. The customer took my vial, handed me the cash and I thought it was over. But it wasn’t.
    The Jamaican got me hemmed up as he raged, “This bombo claat bwoy gwan mek me blow off ’im hed, ya no maan.” He held his machete over my head. His big eyes widened. All I had was a boom box that I threw at him to get him the fuck off of me.
    Out of the darkness came Barrington and Lenox, two of the most notorious Jamaican guys in the crew. One put a Mac-10 to my stomach and the other a gun to my head. I remember not feeling anything but the unforgiving weight of the metal gun against my sweating temple. I wasn’t afraid. I was just there, in this life that I chose. Bruthas were getting killed around me, every day. Today was just my day.
    â€œYou know bwoy you don’t wuk over here anymore. Move from ’round here. We own dis here spot. Ya betta run pun the tren track and don stop.”
    Junior’s heavy Jamaican patois accent roared in my ear. I was beyond the point of being scared.
    I knew they were going to shoot me in the back of my head, which is a punk way to murder a homie, if I must say so myself.
    Shit was hectic and I started making my plans as I started to run through a tunnel in the neighborhood to the safe side. My brain was running faster than my feet. My heart was pumping and my eyes were twitching with sheer terror. I figured if I ran to the end of the tunnel and got up the stairs I would come out on the other side of 1-9-1. If I could get up on the tracks they wouldn’t be able to catch me.
    POP! POP! POP! I heard the bullets flying above and around me, hitting walls and parked trains. They were giving