2._Finding Peace

----------------------------------------

The theft was in the news, not like a front page headline or anything, but $15,000 worth of gear isn’t nothing, and local news was all over the story. It popped up in one of the climbing magazines too, and on damn near every forum, even some of the UK ones.

I slept like shit for that whole first month, every night I expected to wake up to a knock on my window with red and blue flashing through my curtains. I stuck to BLM land as much as possible and kept a low profile. Didn’t really talk to people very much, just tried to stay out of sight as much as I could without seeming all weird and conspicuous. And I didn’t even think about trying to offload any of the gear, I waited a good 3 months before I started posting the occasional ad on bulletin boards at gyms near me.

In a month I made about a thousand bucks, and at that point I felt like it was probably safe to try selling stuff online. I used Craigslist and a couple of fake Facebook profiles. A few times I was just talking to other car-campers near me and found out they were climbers and I’d make up some story about how I didn’t need such-and-such gear anymore and just sell it for cash right then and there.

Took me the better part of a year to sell it all. Or at least most of it. There’re still a couple pieces chillin’ in the van, but it’s basically all sold, finally. I netted about 9K, which I’d say is pretty damn good considering I couldn’t exactly sell the shit at retail prices.

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking 9 grand in a year isn’t very much at all. Well, you’re right, but in my defense: A, I didn’t expect it to take quite that long to sell, and B, getting the ball rolling was always gonna be the slowest part. Yeah, it might’ve taken a bit longer than I’d’ve wanted, but after that first year, things started moving a lot quicker.

Also, I picked up other work to supplement my income in the meantime. Not a full time gig or anything like that. Just odd jobs for cash. Dish washer at a random restaurant. Doing lawnwork for people. Found one grocery store that would pay me under the table for stocking shelves. Shit like that. Nothing majorly time consuming or that I couldn’t dip out on at last minute.

I was busy planning other stuff, after all—you understand.

So anyways, a year after I robbed the gear shop i finally had the funds to—oh wait, I almost forgot to tell you! One of the odd jobs I had was helping this guy in Memphis move a bunch of furniture in his place. Might’ve been stolen stuff, I don’t know. Seemed like a pretty sketchy guy, and we were in south Memphis, so it was straight up hood. But I saw the Craigslist job offer and figured what the hell. So anyways, the whole day I’m helping this guy, I see him flashing hella cash and taking on all these phones—which I assume were burners—and occasionally random people would show up and they’d go into this one room for a bit and then leave, so I assume he was selling drugs, which, whatever, that’s fine by me. I actually thought about asking what he had.

But a few times I saw his babymama or something arguing with him and one time he smacked her around in front of this little 5 year old boy and when the boy stepped up to him, this motherfucker slapped the little kid, which wasn’t fucking fine by me at all.

Homie gave me a look like “what are you gonna do about it?” and they went into another room and then a few seconds later the lady and kid left crying and it was just me and him again and I had finished moving the last thing and was waiting for him to pay me, and he walks over with that same wallet stuffed with cash that he’d been showing off all day and he pulls out two twenties and hands them toward me and I told him he said he’d pay me a hundred.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

He just tossed the bills on the ground and said “whateva, nigga” and started walking away. So I bent down to pick them up but right as I did I got this little flash of excitement. I realized there was no one else in the house except me and him, and it didn’t sound like there were people outside—I mean, there was all the commotion like cars blasting music and squealing tires and shit, but it’d been like that all day, that was normal—it didn’t sound like anyone was directly outside walking up to the house. I knew there was a risk someone could and I wouldn’t hear them, but I figured I’d be fast enough it wouldn’t matter.

When I stood back up I called to him asking if he knew where I could score some snow—and I did a little sniff sniff noise with my nose and flicked my nostril. He turned around with this kind of surprised look and asked me to repeat myself, so I said it again and he kinda laughed and asked how much I was looking for, and I walked up to him and said I wanted as much as this $40 would get me.

He laughed again and by then I was right in front of him and he grabbed the twenties from me and said to wait there and he turned to open the door to the room that he’d been going in and out of all day.

As soon as his back was turned I lunged at him. I threw my arm under his chin and my other arm behind his neck and squeezed as hard as I could as I wrenched him down to the side. He fell over pretty easily because he was a lot smaller than me—which is the big reason I decided to risk choking him out. I’m not some fucking jiu jitsu black belt, but the size difference plus the element of surprise I figured would be enough. He went limp pretty quickly and as soon as he did I eased up a bit and then like kinda dragged him backwards into the room by his neck and shut the door.

You know all the videos of people doing the survival training shit or whatever it is? Where they fireman carry their buddies up a hill, stuff like that? Well if you ever have then you’d probably notice that there’s always at least one comment on each video ragging on it for not being realistic. “Try it on an unconscious body” shit like that. And I’ll tell you what, it’s true.

That motherfucker was probably no more than 110 pounds, maybe 120, but totally limp like a sack of potatoes he was harder to move than I had anticipated. I mean, it’s not like it was super super hard to drag him, it was only a few feet into the room, but if I’d had to pick him up over my shoulders and go up the stairs or anything like that it would have been a lot more awkward to move him. Actually, I kinda accidentally dropped him as I was shutting the door. He just noodled out of my grip and flumped onto the wood floor. His head made a pretty loud noise hitting the ground, but I’m sure he’s fine. No way that was the first time he’d gotten hit in the head.

The door had one of those flimsy little sliding locks, not a deadbolt, one of the ones you’d see on a shed or on like the inside of an old outhouse. I slid that real quick and then I rolled him on his back and grabbed that fat wallet out his pocket. I was gonna check his other pockets but I saw the gun in his belt so I put my hand in my shirt as a glove and pulled it out. I dropped the mag, racked the slide, and dropped it in the crack between the wall and the dresser. I actually considered keeping it for a second, since I doubt it was registered—at least definitly not to me—but I didn’t have a backpack or anything to put it in and I figured it would end up being more trouble than it was worth to try and run through the hood with a Glock bulging out of my fucking pocket.

Anyways, right after I’d tossed it behind the dresser, I saw him moving a little bit, so I rushed over and sat down behind him and propped him up against me and then waited til he started mumbling and raising his hands and I squeezed again until he passed out. I checked his other pockets real quick but there was nothing in them. I also checked his pulse real quick too—not that I could’ve done anything about it if he hadn’t had one.

There was definitely more cash somewhere in that room, but it was so cluttered that it would’ve taken an hour to sift through everything, so I said fuck it and sprinted out the house to my van. I had parked way on the other side of M.L.K. Jr. expressway, like, 3 miles away—maybe 2 and a half—where it’s supposedly not the ghetto, so I knew no one had seen my van or the plates. The most anyone’d be able to say is that they seen some scrawny white boy running across traffic.

I’m sure the adrenaline dump helped some again, but I’m also just getting pretty fucking good at running I think. Or maybe I’ve always been pretty good at it, I don’t know. But I sprint for what felt like a half mile at least, ‘cause I didn’t slow down until well past the expressway. To be honest, the hardest part was trying not to laugh when I was running up past the ritzy houses. I don’t know what it was but as soon as I saw all the fancy homes I immediately got this really giddy buzzing feeling in my body and couldn’t stop smiling.

Anyways, once I got in my van I got the fuck out of there. Went straight to Chatt. I mean, fuck Memphis anyways, but now I’m definitely not going back there. Don’t really feel like running into that dude on the street and getting shot.

I assume homeboy’s still alive, never saw a homicide report in Memphis news or anything, but it’s not like I make a point of following the happenings in that shithole.

----------------------------------------

2.

目录