“What’s your name, son?” asked Clipboard.

“My name, sir?” I asked, as if not overstanding the question.

“Yeah,” Donut Cup snapped, “your name. You know, the legend you were given at birth?” His tone was pushy like “all you people are so stupid.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “my name. Kody Scott, sir.” I was careful to be nice and respectful to Clipboard, while agitating Donut Cup with my feigned stupidity.

“Where did this incident take place?” asked Donut Cup.

“Incident?” I asked right back, looking from Donut Cup to Mom for an interpretation of “incident.”

Donut Cup turned his head.

“Where were you when you were shot?” asked Clipboard with all the ease of a family doctor.

“I was standing alone on the bus stop at Adams and Western.”

“Southeast, northwest?” asked Donut Cup.

“No,” I began, as if he had it all wrong. “I was not at Southwest College, I was on Adams and Western.”

“On which side of the street were you standing?” asked Clipboard.

“On the Adams side in front of the gas station going toward downtown.”

“That would be the southeast corner, then,” said Donut Cup, trying to hammer his point home.

“I just always thought it was the corner of Adams and Western,” I said, trying to look perplexed. Donut Cup turned a shade darker.

“What happened while you were standing on the bus stop?” asked Donut Cup.

“Well,” I began, imitating an old man by rubbing my chin in deep thought, “I wasn’t really standing on the bus stop, I was standing behind the bus stop, in back of the bench on the sidewalk between the gas station and the street.”

Donut Cup went flaming red, grabbing his head with both hands as if he were trying to stop from going mad. Mom put a hand over her mouth to suppress a laugh. Clipboard, ever-patient, just waited to rephrase the question.

“Look,” said Donut Cup, his face a stricken mask of anger, “all you have to do is answer the questions as we ask them. If you can—”

“Whoa, whoa,’ said Clipboard, turning full around to face Donut Cup, “if you’d let me ask the questions you would be better off.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Ahh,” said Clipboard with an upheld hand, waving Donut Cup to silence.

“Now, uhh, Kody, as you were standing behind the bench on Adams and Western,” he began and paused for a second to turn and look at Donut Cup as if to say “this is all you got to do.” Then he turned back to me and simply said, “What happened?”

“A brown Monte Carlo came by traveling eastbound.” Now I looked over as Donut Cup as if to say “you people are so stupid.” “A guy with a .22 rifle hung out of the window—”

“Which window?” asked Donut Cup.

We both ignored him.

“—and hollered something and began shooting.”

“What was it that the shooter hollered out, do you remember?”

“No, sir. But I think it was some sort of gang language.”

“Do you gangbang, Kody?”

As if he had just committed blasphemy in front of the Almighty, I said, “No!” with a look of are-you-crazy? Mom rolled her eyes to the ceiling and turned her head.

“Why do you think they wanted to shoot you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“A brown Monte Carlo.”

“What year, do you know?”

“Seventy-four or seventy-five, I think.”

“Any distinguishing marks, dents, primer, paint defects?”

“Yeah, now that I think of it, there was a huge, gray primer spot on—”

“The quarter panel?” said Donut Cup excitedly.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it.” Fuck it, I thought, may as well send Donut Cup all the way out into left field.

“Oh my God,” said Donut Cup to Clipboard, “Jimbo’s out.”

Mom was shaking her head as if to say “unbelievable.”

When the soldier-cops had completed their report and were walking toward the door, I decided to use one of my old acting skits, which I had seen on an old TV show.

“Officer, officer,” I said faintly, my voice barely audible.

“Yes, son?” answered Clipboard.

“You… you will get them, won’t you, sir?”

And then just like in the movies Clipboard solemnly said, “Yes, son, we’ll get them,” and they left the room. Shit, that little episode threw me for a loop. Mom began right in on me.

“Boy, why you lie to them police like that? Don’t you know they gonna find out that you were lying?”

“Mom, I ain’t hardly worried about the police looking for me for lying. Besides, if I had told them the truth I would be going to jail for attempted robbery. assault, and possession of a gun. So I had to lie.”

“I don’t understand you kids today. Guns, robberies, and gangbanging. Where is it leading to? You don’t even know, do you? You are just a blind passenger being driven wherever the gang takes you. Kody, I don’t even know you anymore. You’re not the fine little guy that I used to know. I just don’t know what to do with you. You got Shaun into this shit, now he’s locked up for the rest of his young life. When are you going to realize that you are killing me? Kody?”

I was faking like I was asleep so she would not see how effective her talk was. I was the same old person she used to know, wasn’t I? Yeah, sure I was, I tried to convince myself. But if I were still that fine little guy, why didn’t she smile at me anymore? Or laugh and joke like days of old? It wasn’t me who changed, I wanted to say. It was the times, the circumstances dictating my rite of passage to manhood. All this was crucial to my development. I became, without ever knowing when, a product of the street and a stranger at home. Life sure was a trip.

“Mrs. Scott?” an American nurse said.

“Yes.”

“You may as well go home and get some sleep, because the doctor wants to keep Kody here for observation tonight.”

“Oh, thank you, but if it’s all the same I’d like to stay with my son.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Would you like a blanket or anything?”

“No, actually I’m fine, thank you.”

“All right, the doctor should be in any minute.”

Mom looked at me and saw my eyes flutter.

“Boy, I sure hope you got on clean underwear.”

Good ol’ Mom, she never changed. Of course she had changed, I was just too preoccupied with my own little perverted existence to take in anything outside the gang world. The world could have been crumbling around me, but if it didn’t affect the set, it didn’t affect me.

When the doctor returned he explained that, miraculously, the bullet—apparently a hollow point—had exploded on impact. But instead of doing its job of ripping up my internal organs, it had simply stopped, and now there were thirteen small, detectable fragments throughout my upper back. He added that during his observation of the X-ray chart he noticed another bullet lodged in my abdominal cavity. I told him of my previous brush with death and he asked if I was a gang member. I said no. I was instructed to stay the night for further observation.

During the night I regained feeling and movement in my arm. The pain subsided under a stiff dosage of something shot into my hip. The next day, under the warm rays of the Southern California sun, Mom and I tooled out of the hospital parking lot. The radio blared with Stevie Wonder’s new hit, “Hotter than July.” It was July 2, 1981.

Once I got home and was safe behind the locked door of Mission Control—my bedroom—I called up Diamond to inform him of my clean bill of health. His grandmother said he wasn’t there, so I phoned Tray Stone, who answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“What that gangsta like, nigga?” I said into the receiver, recognizing Stone’s voice.

“West Side, the best side,” Stone shot back.

“Naw, if it ain’t North you short, fool.”

“What’s up, homie? You all right? What they say? Did the police come up there? What Mom say?”

“Wait, wait. Goddamn, man, ask one fuckin’ question at a time, all right?”

“Awright, Mr. Important. You okay?”

“Okay all day and even on Sundays.”

“Naw, I know that, I mean the bullet. What the Doc say?”

“I know what you talkin’ ’bout. I’m cool. Fool say the bullet hit my back, broke up and stopped.”

“You bullshittin’?”

“Naw, I ain’t. Doc say I’m too strong for a deuce-deuce to stop.”

“You puttin’ too much on it, now.”

“Naw, naw, Doc say, ’You must be some kind of Monster or something,’ you know, so I said, ’Yeah, from the notorious North.’ ”

“Now I know you lyin’. Nigga, ain’t nobody heard of no fuckin’ North Side, ’specially no damn white-boy doctor.”

“Yo’ mama heard of the North.”

Silence.

“Cuz, don’t talk ’bout Moms. You ain’t right.”

“Yeah, you right, fuck her—”

“I’m gone, Monster.”

“Naw! Awright, homie, I ain’t trippin’.”

“Oh, we handled that other thang, too,” Stone said in a low voice, as if his father had come into the room.

“What other thang?” I knew what he meant, but I wanted to hear him say it.

“’Member that van that fool say he work so hard to get?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he gonna be workin’ harder now, ’cause we fucked that muthafucka up!”

“What ’bout, fool?”

“He never came out and we didn’t know what apartment he stayed in. And there was like a whole bunch of apartments, like fifty.”

“Nigga, ain’t no fifty fuckin’ apartments on that damn corner!”

“Awright, ’bout sixteen then. Anyway, we kept fuckin’ up the van and nobody came out. So Joker said Tuck it,’ and shot up every apartment!”

“What?!”

“Yeah, cuz, the shit was crazy! People screamin’ and shit. He shot one window and a fire started. Aw, cuz, it was just like the movies, I ain’t lyin’.”

“Right, right,” I said, joining in on the excitement.

“But, cuz, you awright, tho’?”

“Yeah, yeah homie, I’m cool. I’ll be at the blue apartments later.”

“Awright, cuzzin, I’ll see you then.”

“Tray minutes.”

“Wes—”

Before he could get “West Side” out, I clicked him. I felt good to know that the homies had responded. It was sad, however, that Joker had gone to such extremes, but I overstood his rage and appreciated his concern. I washed up as best I could with the bandage and the stiffness from the wound, put on my dark-blue overalls, a blue sweatshirt, black Romeos, and a black Bebop hat, grabbed my 9 millimeter, and hit the street.

When I got to the blue apartments Bam, Spooney, China, and Peaches were out in front drinking Old English and talking. When China saw me she eased away from the group, insinuating that she wanted to speak to me privately. Amid jeers and greetings from the other homegirls, China and I went to the side of the apartments. She seemed to have something on her mind.

“Kody,” she began. Never had she called me Monster. “I can’t take you gettin’ shot no mo’. Baby, I be worried to death fo’ you. Everybody dyin’ and shit. I just don’t know anymore.”

“So, what you sayin’?”

“What I’m sayin’ is we don’t do nothin’ together no mo’. You be wit’ Diamond and them and I be all alone. I be worried ’bout you.”

“Yeah, well it ain’t like you don’t know where I live, China—”

“You know yo’ mama don’t like me. You know that, Kody. So don’t even try—”

“What?” I said accusingly. “Don’t even try what? Huh?”

“You know what I—”

“No, I don’t know shit. You know I’m out here, bangin’, bustin’ on muthafuckas daily to make it safe fo’ you ’round here, and now you complainin’. You done changed like the rest of them sorry muthafuckas that’s gone and left the set hangin’.”

“No, baby, you have changed. This fuckin’ war has really turned you into somethin’. You think you Super Gangsta or somebody, runnin’ ’round tryin’ to save the world. But look what it’s doing to us! Look at us!”

She began to cry, dropping huge tears onto her smooth cheeks.

“Do you remember the last place you took me, Kody? Huh? Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” I said, grudgingly. “I remember.”

“Where?” she asked, hands on her hips. Then louder, “Where?!”

“To the drive-in,” I said, but before I could stop the flow of words I knew I was wrong.

“No,” she snapped, “you know where you took me? To jail! That’s where!”

And, of course, she was right. Li’l G.C. and I had jacked a civilian for his car one night. A nice car, too, so I decided to take China out on a date in the stolen car. But then again, why waste a good G-ride? I’ll just pick up Stone and Spooney, I thought, and we’ll do a double date ride-by. Shit, why not? So China and I picked up Stone and Spooney, along with their gun—a huge double-barrel 12 gauge. We stopped at the ’hood store for drinks—Old English and Night Train, gangsta juice. As we made our way west toward the Sixties, a black-and-white patrol car got on our tail. Never one to comply with the law, I accelerated, and the chase was on. After ten blocks of high speed and a faulty turn, we crashed. Immediately I was out of the car and into the wind. I was the only one to get away. Stone, Spooney, and China went to juvenile hall.

“But—” I tried to say, but was cut off.

“But nothin’, ’cause before that you stood me up when we was s’posed to go to the Pomona Fair. ’Member that? You got some new type of gun or somethin’ and just left me behind. That was cold.”

She was right again. The homegirl Dee Dee, whose boyfriend was in the navy, had given me a flare gun that looked like an ordinary ink pen, but shot a single ball of fire that she said would burn right through somebody. Well, that sounded like my type of weapon. She had given it to me on her way to the fair, and what better place to test such a weapon than at a fair? So I went with her instead of China.

“Yeah, but—”

“Naw, baby, ’cause there’s no mo’—”

Then out of the night came a terror-stricken cry of “Sixties!!” followed by the rat-a-tat-tat of a rifle.

In an instant we both were belly down, looking at each other. She saw the anger in my eyes and said in a whisper, “Don’t go, let somebody else play hero, baby, don’t go.”

“I gotta go, I gotta go.”

“Fuck you!!” she screamed, but I was on my way. I heard her faint sobs as I mounted my bike and peddled off.

No one was hit, but the response would have been the same in any case. We mounted up and rode back with swiftness. After that, to beat the heat, I went to Compton to kick it with some homies from Santana Block.

A week later, word was out that the police were looking for me and Crazy De for robbery. Which robbery, I wondered? Shit, we had done so many robberies that I was at a loss to figure out which one we were wanted for. With the police out for us, I’d wake up early, get dressed, and be out of the house before 6:00 A.M., because that’s their usual raiding time. I’d gravitate around homies’ houses until their parents went to work, and then we’d kick it until the rest of the ’hood started stirring. Then I’d try to lose myself in the sameness of the community. I ran, ducked, and hid every time someone yelled “Rollers.” I became so engrossed in escaping capture that my military performance slumped a bit.