Something To Live For, Something To Die For

By Brogar Maximus

Poetry and short stories are the makeup of this insightful book; the goal of the author is to inspire and cause the reader to think upon the stories that were read and decide how he/she would have taken action if standing in the shoes of each character in this book. The short stories focus on individuals creating a positive outcome from a negati

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Aug 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648951473

Brogar Maximus

Garrett S. L. King, Jr. is a self-published author out of Kansas City, Missouri. Something to Live For... is his only printed book. Mr. King has also published three e-books that are available through Amazon's Kindle, found under his pen name, Brogar Maximus.

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my family, those living and those that have passed on.

This book is also dedicated to the following deceased:

Tupac A. Shakur a.k.a. Makaveli (1971–1996)

I haven’t forgotten about you, Pac, I’m still down!

Stephone A. Strickland a.k.a. Fats 53rd Street Soldier (1987–2008)

Reggie Patterson (1979–199?)

LaTasha Harlins (1976–1991)

Erica Marie Green a.k.a. Precious Doe (1998–2001)

I also would like to thank Wright Career College for giving me a chance to do something with my life.

P Is for Pride and Perseverance

November 09, 2009

Who think in elementary that I see the penitentiary one day?

—Tupac

Every misfortune that befalls the Earth, or your own persons, is ordained before WE bring it into being, that is easy enough for GOD, so that you may not grieve for The good things you miss, or be overjoyed at what you gain.

—The Koran (57:25-28), N. J. Dawood translation, 1956

I remember standing on stage with my other classmates holding up my sign with the letter P on it and reciting my line, P is for pride and perseverance. I attended K. B. Richardson on Thirty-Fifth and Park. My fourth grade teacher at this time was Mrs. Strawn. She got on me about my part in this short play or whatever it was because I couldn’t pronounce the word perseverance. I had a hard time with this particular word, and up until this time, I’ve never even heard of such a word. But finally come play day, I got up on that stage and spoke my part with no problem, and even to this day, I still remember those same words that have defined my life what it has been about.

I was born Garrett Shundell Lee King Jr. on June 18 in 1979 at Truman Medical Hospital to a then sixteen-year-old mom. My mother, Nancy Cole, was only fifteen when she got pregnant with me. The man responsible was nine years her senior, twenty-four-year-old Garrett Kenney King Sr., who I believe at the time was a supervisor or assistant manager at a Taco Bell. Monk, as he was known to be called, had to marry my mother due to her young age; unfortunately, he didn’t make the choice without some demanded persuasion from my grandma, Mrs. Emma Holley.

I guess he resented that because not too long after, he quit his job and began to terrorize my mother for the next three or four years. My mother was abused physically and emotionally by Monk, and at one point in their relationship, he stabbed her, and if not for Grandma Emma dashing in to stop him, he probably would have killed her!

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, at various addresses. My family tended to move around quite a lot. The most memorable address was Thirty-Third and Virginia where most of my childhood memories actually start, and then there were Thirty-Sixth or Thirty-Seventh and Park, Twenty-Sixth Chestnut, Twenty-Sixth Benton, E. Fiftieth, Thirty-Ninth Troost, Twenty-Second Brooklyn, and finally Fifty-Second and Brookwood Avenue where I currently stay right now!

Actually, I have to back up a little and go back to Thirty-Third and Virginia where once again most of my uncles, aunts, and cousins had stayed at one time or another. I remember starting elementary at Chester A. Franklin on Thirty-Fourth and Highland. I also remember my dad, Monk, coming around playing Mr. Nice Guy. He bought me and my younger brother Antwoin some socks and these really cool little briefcases. Though I think he did this small gesture of kindness to get on my mother’s good side. By this time, my other little brother, Nick, was born from a previous marriage, and my baby sister, Ms. Tina, was on the way.

When I was about eight years old, I also remember my dad, Monk, coming around a few times. I guess to make peace or whatever, but what he did that was a lasting good memory was give me my first rap tape. I was allowed to use his black boom box for about a day before he came back for it, but he did let me keep my first three tapes: L.L. Cool J, Kool Moe Dee, and the Force MD’s. I had always heard hip-hop music like Digital Underground, NWA, and Too Short, but having my own rap tapes was excitedly new. I listened to them three tapes every day on a single cassette tape recorder.

Sometime later during my fourth grade year, my family decided to move to a town called Oak Grove. It was located in Missouri about three or four hours from Kansas City. Maybe about fifteen or twenty of my family members lived in this town on a farm for two and half years. The plan was for each family member to have their own trailer home, but we never got that done. Instead, we all lived in a one-story house with three rooms, a basement, and a garage with every available space used up! I’m not quite sure how all of us made it like that, but we got through it.

Oak Grove was probably 98 percent white at this time. Me and my cousins attended the elementary and middle schools that were right next to each other. The folks out there were very nice, and they welcomed our family. Ms. Lux, who was our school counselor or something like that, was also very nice to us during our two-year stay. I liked it out there a lot. I believe that place made me smarter as a kid, and overall, if our family had stayed there for another seven or eight years, a few of our lives including my own would have been different and better on a positive note!

Unfortunately, my family moved back to Kansas City in ’91 or ’92. I was enrolled immediately in King Middle, a uniform school on Forty-Second Indiana; I was now in the sixth grade. It was different being in an all-black school again. I was infatuated with every other girl I saw, especially this light-skinned sista named Tracy(i) Cole. She was in the seventh grade. Every time I saw her, I couldn’t help but to stare at her, and she had these pretty big pink lips that I adored!

The one incident that sticks out the most about King Middle was when I almost got beat up by a girl! I forgot what class I was in at the time, but I do remember the girl, Clarissa Gordon. I wasn’t trying to hurt her or nothing like that. I just wanted to touch her big butt, and so for the rest of that day, I totally avoided her, while she was totally determined to find me and crush me like a bug! Clarissa was kind of like a tomboy or something, and she looked like she could fight. I hid from her as much as I could, but eventually, she found me heading for the school buses that were lined up. Encouraging me to fight her by constantly pushing in front of other students, I just couldn’t because technically, she wasn’t wrong for her actions, but at the same time, I just wanted to be liked!

In the seventh and eighth grade year, I attended good ole Westport Middle School. I went there with a couple of family members. It was on Thirty-Ninth Street near McGee directly across from the high school that was also attended by several of my family members, including my mom and a few of her siblings. The high school experience is one of a kind and quite a soft spot in an individual’s life, so if things don’t turn out right during that four-year period, it tends to affect a person’s outlook on life from that point on! My freshman year was probably the most exciting of the two years I went there because I had never seen so many cute girls in my life. Of course, I never bothered to speak to any of them. I just didn’t have the confidence to approach a girl. My last year at Westport, my sophomore year, was about the same. I wasn’t, but I knew a few people because most them also attended the middle school.

In 1997, which should have been my junior year at Westport High School, I got my GED and got my first job as a sacker at a grocery store called Marsh’s Apple Market, and unbeknown to me, getting this job would have quite an impact on my life that I didn’t anticipate! The store was located on Thirty-Sixth Broadway, next to the Uptown Theater. I started on April 30 of 1997 as a sacker for about two and half months before I was moved to the meat department of the store. It was there that I stayed for the next eight-plus years, only quitting twice just to come back. Also at least eight of my family members worked there during that time with me being the last one left before my unfortunate departure.

While in the meat department, I mostly priced, stocked, and wrapped the various meat products, constantly unloaded the weekly delivery trucks, and I worked the night shift, cleaning and sanitizing the work area. Matter of fact, I worked all over that store whenever extra was needed during my eight years, including the produce department, the dairy area, the deli station, and I even stocked the various aisles with the regular stockers, all the while still working in the meat department!

I liked my fellow employees, and I got along well with everybody I worked with, but after a few years, it was like the store just went downhill. The time I worked there I tried investing in other areas to help myself; I tried buying educational courses through the mail. I tried owning an Internet business, and I even invested in all that junk mail about working at home, but nothing seemed to work out for me! I quit twice as mentioned earlier, but I always went back for some reason. I guess I didn’t have the proper job-searching skills, or maybe because I had been there for so long, and with the store being my first job, it was all I knew how to do!

I only made a little over two hundred dollars a week the entire eight years that I worked at the store. I helped my mother out a little bit, and everything I owned I bought through mail catalogs on credit, so I constantly had monthly payments to make. I tried going to the army, but I didn’t pass the physical, so I guess my fate was already written from the day I got that job at Marsh’s Apple Market! I don’t blame anybody for what I did on April 9 of 2006. I just wanted the little I was supposed to have in life.

On Halloween of 2005, as I began my workday in the meat department about six o’clock in the morning, I happen to notice an individual creep in from somewhere in the store. He ran up to Gary, the assistant store manager at the time, and put a gun up to him demanding money. Now most people would stay out of the way when something like that goes down, but strange little o’ me just had to walk up front where the robbery was happening for some reason! The gunman then turned around and pointed the gun at me, not really afraid for my life. I happen to notice the overflowing bag of money he was getting away with all the while wishing us a happy Halloween!

It was then at that very moment that the seed was planted in my mind to do the same thing as that robber. The next year, a couple months after the incident, with a few hundred dollars saved up, I purchased a brand-new Mossberg shotgun from a local pawnshop on Brushcreek for over three hundred dollars, and the really messed-up thing about it was that the pawnshop is located right next to a probation and parole office building!

I decided to make my move during my one-week vacation that started April 9 on a Sunday. With the shotgun strapped to my shoulder with a belt that was covered by the black leather trench coat-like jacket I had on, I left my house at five o’clock in the morning and commenced to walk as I always had done from Fifty-Second Brookwood to Thirty-Sixth Broadway, and I even walked past a police officer sitting in his cruiser on my way there!

My first plan was to go through mall section