Bullet-Proof Love

By Xlibris US

Hey, somebody stop him! yelled a civilian involved in the accident. Caine broke into a sprint and like the classic video game Frogger he darted across traffic on Academy Boulevard. As he maneuvered through parked cars in a shopping center, other civilians he passed appeared bewildered and alarmed but Caine was more scared and confused than them all. After zig-zagging across another street, he sprinted through an undeveloped space, half the size of a foot-ball field. In some places, the weeds and wild grains climbed to his waist. He heard approaching police sirens and crouched down, becoming swallowed within them. It was slightly cool in the near-summer weather and with his body clammy and wound up from the adrenalin flowing in his blood-stream, the slightest breeze nipped at his skin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499044218

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Lloyd Pate II.

Library of Congress Control Number:     2014911805

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-4990-4423-2

                            Softcover                          978-1-4990-4422-5

                            eBook                               978-1-4990-4421-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/16/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

…All Praise is Due to the Almighty.

Death is most certain… Life is not.

Is a life wasted if a person lies, cheats, schemes, damages, manipulates, and hurts others all his life, but then remembers something of his true nature as a result of it-Remembers, perhaps, something he has been spending lifetimes trying to remember-And thus evolves at last, to the next level? Is that life wasted?

It is not for you to judge the journey of another’s soul. It is for you to decide who You are, not who another has been or failed to be.

So, you ask what would stop people from simply wasting their lives, lollygagging around, collecting benefits and the answer is: Nothing.

Page 208

Conversations with God

Book 2

Neale Donald Walsch

I Hope

                                I’ve truly become a stronger man today

                                Than I was yesterday.

I Hope

                                That I am strong enough to

                                Walk away when it is most wise.

I Hope

                                That all of my manifested thoughts can help

                                A younger Brother or Sister through their

                                Obstacles and challenges.

Prologue

Hey, somebody stop him! yelled a civilian involved in the accident. Caine broke into a sprint and like the classic video game Frogger he darted across traffic on Academy Boulevard. As he maneuvered through parked cars in a shopping center, other civilians he passed appeared bewildered and alarmed but Caine was more scared and confused than them all. After zig-zagging across another street, he sprinted through an undeveloped space, half the size of a foot-ball field. In some places, the weeds and wild grains climbed to his waist. He heard approaching police sirens and crouched down, becoming swallowed within them. It was slightly cool in the near-summer weather and with his body clammy and wound up from the adrenalin flowing in his blood-stream, the slightest breeze nipped at his skin.

He sat motionless for a moment and collected his breathing as he stared up at a billboard fifteen feet away from him. It advertised selling the unused plot of land he was taking refuge in. A faint light reflected off of the board and his attention turned back to the shopping center. There were several figures with flashlights looking around and underneath parked cars for him. Two began to cross the street and search the field he was in. Although there was a lengthy gap between Caine and his pursuers, he resumed in eluding his captors.

Reaching the opposite end of the field and crossing the street, he could hear distant yells behind him. He was confident his dark apparel would aid him in his escape as he entered a residential neighborhood. The gray and black Nike pullover and black bandana tied on his head helped envelope him amongst the trees, cars, homes, and pockets of darkness. To remain a step ahead of the law-abiding citizens and police who hunted him like game, he sprinted through streets and every block or two, cut a corner and hopped fences of private homes. He had some trouble over them because in his left hand he carried a bottle of alcohol. When vehicles drove by, he hid on the sides of homes and briefly paused only when he was concealed sufficiently.

In the distance, he could hear additional sirens and assumed it was an ambulance for his Comrade he was forced to leave behind. He jumped one last fence in another backyard and entered an irrigation ditch. He trotted about a half –mile in it before he felt comfortable to stop and catch his breath. He stood there trying to convince himself he was dreaming but he knew he could only bring himself to believe that for a few more seconds before he started moving again. The reality of the situation began to settle in his mind and he started to sob quietly.

He felt helpless; he didn’t know what to do and had no idea how he was going to explain what he had done to the Comrades who would demand answers. There was no way Caine would be able to explain the condition his Homie Bigg Mac was in when he was forced to flee. He wiped the tears from his face and stared up at the night sky for answers that would never come. Returning his gaze downward, he stared at the bottle in his left hand and examined it. It was a half-gallon bottle of Bumpy Face gin that was unopened and as he turned it in his hand, the moonlight gave the liquid a polished, pearly look. In a flash, the distress he felt turned to pure rage. He lifted the bottle over his head and with all of his strength, smashed it against the incline of the ditch.

The gin and shards of glass descended the embankment and a puddle formed around Caine’s tennis shoes. His eyes began to swell with tears once more as he stared down at it. Not far away, he could make out the buzzing sound of a helicopter and knew the police department had dispatched their ghetto-bird to locate him. He quickly gathered himself and with a thickness in his voice said, I fucked up, Bigg Mac. I hope that at least you forgive me ’cause I know the Homies won’t.

The sound of the helicopter grew and when he searched the sky for it, it was still out of sight. It’s in our nature to destroy ourselves, Caine whispered, even if it is by accident. He rubbed the tears from his eyes and resumed in his escape back to the Block.

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Part 1

Colorado is a very intriguing state to live in. It’s one of the few places that can be in the middle of a snow storm and in the next moment become bathed in sunlight. It can be in the week of Christmas that Loved Ones or Comrades are planning to barbeque in seventy degree weather with a complete view of snow capping the mountains of Pikes Peak. That’s just the way it is, unpredictable. The air is wonderful and possessed virtually no smog in the city of Colorado Springs. The weather and temperatures, above all, were fair. One can’t really complain when given a good season for barbequing, club hopping, and just sitting on the porch with a glass of iced tea or a cold tall-can of beer.

The winter season would promise quiet solitude and maybe some snow for the holidays. Sometimes a blanket of snow was all the small city needed to cool and calm down tension in the midst of the streets. Everyone’s blood would seem to boil every couple of years and wreak havoc in the city. Snow would eliminate most of those ill tempers because very few who engaged in the streets would want to drive around on icy roads putting in work or go hang out somewhere with friends in twenty-five degree weather. The winter season was the time to stay home, warm, and make babies with their main squeeze.

The scenery surrounding a person there was a personal treasure only that individual could be able to explain. An untouched blanket of snow that put the city to sleep was absolutely beautiful, especially within the mountain range. The mountains were proof of the artistic power in the Hands of God. They looked like a painting mounted on a wall directly in front of a neglecting city. Man had created and achieved too much in the work he had done to take any time to marvel at nature’s beauty. Time was money and money was the root to just about everything. It was building more homes and employment opportunity, drawing more people to the Springs.

Cassandra and Brandon Jones, however, didn’t come to the Springs for any opportunities, they came for survival. Cassandra, twenty years old, her brother seventeen had been living with their Aunt Pearl for five years. For the past two of those years, Brandon had been incarcerated in a juvenile institution. In eight days, he planned on being released back into the killing fields. As odd as it seemed, Cassandra had been somewhat relieved Brandon had been locked away for a little while because many of their peers were dying in the streets as if a deadly disease was sweeping over them.

The neighborhood in which they lived was average. It wasn’t a rich area, yet it wasn’t the ghetto. There weren’t any Housing Projects in the Springs. It was too small and most areas were still in the process of development. Natives of other states would travel to or pass through Colorado Springs and call it an entire suburb. At the rate of how fast gang membership was multiplying and how drugs easily flooded the community, without change, in ten or twenty years their neighborhoods would in fact be the ghetto. The entire Southside of the city would become one. Property values were already declining and many families moved away due to increasing violence.

The home across the street from Cassandra had housed three different families in the past two and a half years. In a lawn chair, on her Aunt’s porch, she stared at the vacant house. It had been unoccupied for three months and the lawn was in need of being mowed. The house looked gloomy as if it was animate but depressed because no one wanted to call it their home. It reminded Cassandra of her childhood days when she would draw houses that held the resemblance of a human’s face: the upstairs windows would be its eyes, the door would be a long mouth….Those days were long gone.

The days of being innocents and hopeful had now become those of caution and doubt. She had many excuses for the reasons why the quality of her life had fallen short from how she envisioned it when younger. She claimed to be a product of her environment and had gotten into plenty of arguments over the statement. Sometimes she would win the debate because not many around her had lost a Sister, a Father and a handful of Comrades all before they were even twenty one. She had strong points, but when one got through with it all, they were still excuses. Everyone had a choice on how they act or react towards something and therefore, could partially–at the least-create their own destiny. Cassandra’s aspirations didn’t reach the sky, only her loyalty.

Just about everyone she knew was involved in the Game from one extent or another. The ‘Game’ was basically the dark side of society, its shadow. Tax paying citizens left for work in the mornings and possessed checking and savings accounts at the nearest bank. Tax avoiding inhabitants earned their keep in the streets they roamed. They possessed safes, freezers and coffee cans buried in the backyard to hold their dead presidents. The Game, all in all, consisted of pimps, hustlers, ballers, bangers and killers.

The hustlers were, in all actuality, every person involved in the Game, (small and large scale), because hustling was a part of making it to the next day. Even smokers (crack-heads), heroin junkies and meth-heads are in a sense hustlers because their next hit isn’t going to come falling down from Heaven like Manna. Nickel and diming, pushing weight, shooting dice, and jacking another for their goods were hand in hand in the world of rising street scholars getting their hustle on. A baller or high-roller would not be seen on the block slinging dubs and bops because they were pushing off quarter-keys and birds to stable and loyal customers. They never sold anything less, never ever to anyone who was not one of their regulars, and avoided anything that did not make money. The bangers, last of all, needed no background information. The word and their role needed no defining.

Brandon was a well-known banger and Cassandra had come to be known for being his older Sister. In the streets, he was called ‘Caine’, attributed to raising all hell on the block. Cassandra was named ‘Small-Fry’, particularly for her short height and small frame. She was three years older than Caine, but stood three inches shorter than him at five-foot seven. They had twin-like features and their skin was a creamy milk-chocolate complexion. Small-Fry appeared to be flawless without blemishes or scars. She had dark brown eyes that looked like shiny milk duds when she was content and when provoked to anger, would open into black holes, threatening to suck in and entrap a prisoner for a small eternity. Although Caine had his share of fistfights and lane-scuffles, he was still fortunate to bear few wounds and lifelong scars. The wounds in his mind and heart, however, would probably never heal.

With his release approaching, Small-Fry began to receive an aggravating amount of phone calls asking when Caine would be home. The buzz grew and there seemed to be more activity than usual on their block. For the most part, the two years he had been gone, the neighborhood had been a ghost-town. There were no longer any targets for adversaries and associates who would stop by and only, a very small few did so periodically.

Small-Fry spent most of her time with the Turners. They lived one house over from her and were her and Caine’s confidants. They were Colorado Natives and befriended them when they came to live with their Aunt. There was Leon, Chance, and Shyanne Turner. Leon was the youngest, being sixteen-years old, by only a couple of days at that time. Chance was eighteen and Shyanne was nineteen. Only several months earlier, their Mother left them the house and moved to California to pursue a small business venture with her own Sister. They assumed responsibility of paying the utility bills and mortgage. After their Mother packed up and left, Chance and Shyanne quit their jobs and began selling dope again.

It was a little after eleven o’clock in the morning and Small-Fry suspected they were still asleep or just getting up, otherwise she would have been over there smoking a joint with Shyanne. Her life remained fairly simple–work a nine to five a few months out of the year, hustle in the streets the latter months, and all year long smoke weed with her best-friend. It was nearing the end of the month of May and she was not planning on holding a legitimate job through the summer. She would soon remember the familiar frequent spots to grind and flip her resources. She still had several thousand dollars in the house but putting things off until the last minute was not acceptable. The lifestyle they lived was full of surprises and unexpected turns and they never knew when the time would come when they had to go for broke.

With Caine returning home, she knew he was going to need money for clothes and other necessities. All of his old clothes would be too small for him and she deliberated over when obtaining her next dope sack or if she should round up a couple of smokers to boost a new wardrobe for him. Caine would have very little–to nothing-to do with selling rocks or soft powder. It wasn’t necessarily due to the demoralization, it brought countless Brothers, Sisters, and entire communities to, but for an entirely different reason. Caine watched his little Sister die from a drug dealer’s arrogance and Small-Fry believed he thought it was somehow his fault she was gone.

Before they had come to Colorado to stay with their Aunt, they lived in Texas with their Mother, Lyle. They both lost their Father and Sister only one year apart. Delmar Jones, their Father, worked in carpentry. He died from a work-related accident, a sizeable piece of scrap wood gave way from a sheet panel which was being cut at the ridge of the roof. It made its descent from the opposite side and while passing by, struck directly across the side of Delmar’s face. The hit merely blacked him out, but the force of the hit and his contact with the pavement broke his neck, fracturing his skull. He died on the way to the hospital.

In their apartment complex in East Fort Worth Texas, nearly a year later, the Young Caine sat in the entryway steps and kept an eye on his little Sister, Renee, playing nearby. He became distracted by a drug dealer and his client getting into an altercation across the street. What was supposed to be a simple transaction turned into a bad drug deal and it all transpired in front of him. The drug dealer was murdered and a stray bullet found Renee. His Sister’s safety and well-being didn’t cross his mind until he heard their Mother calling for them as she had come scrambling outside of the apartment.

Small-Fry followed their Mother outside and saw the look of confusion and fear on her Brother’s face. Lyle disappeared from Caine and Small-Fry’s view and they followed the sounds of her anguish wails. Beside an old truck, they came to find their Mom cradling her youngest child’s body. She used her own hands and sweater to wipe away the blood that brimmed out of Renee’s mouth like an overflowing cup that ran down her cheeks. Renee suffered a bullet-wound to her neck, but it appeared that she passed away choking on her own blood. That was the breaking point for Lyle.

A few weeks later, Lyle Sister Pearl, convinced her to let her take care of Small-Fry and Caine temporarily until things could become slightly better. Pearl took them home with her to Colorado Springs and only four days later, received a phone call, Lyle suffered a nervous breakdown and had been hospitalized. Pearl made a return trip to Texas with the children to support and comfort her Sister. It was sad for Small-Fry to see her Mother feeble and withdrawn. She was no longer the strong, loving, and providing Mother she once was. Small-Fry lost her Father, Sister, and Mother in just over a year.

At that time, Small Fry was fourteen-years old. She watched Renee get buried twelve days before her fifteenth birthday. After several long days of hospital visits in Texas, Pearl and the children again returned to Colorado Springs and again, four days after doing so, she was notified Lyle was transferred to a health center. Five years eventually passed by… Lyle had since been released and unless she came to Colorado, it was unlikely Small-Fry would ever see her Mother again. She understood that each person could only carry so much weight in their life, but she no longer saw her Mother as the person she was when she was younger.

Pearl had a tremendous impact on Small-Fry during that difficult time. Before their family structure had fallen apart in Texas, she remembered the occasional conversations over the telephone and cards enclosed with currency she and Caine would receive from her on their birthdays. She used to wonder why her Aunt had no children of her own. Upon asking, she learned that when young, her Aunt had a cyst that had grown on her ovaries and had it removed. After surgery, she learned she was unable to bear children. That loss became replaced with the company of her Niece and Nephew.

There were several inconveniences at first. In the time of Lyle’s nervous breakdown, Pearl was the person of contact by Lyle’s attorneys who pursued a civil lawsuit against Delmar’s former employers. They briefed her on the progression of the proceedings and asked about their client’s health and recovery. The lawsuit was aimed towards the company for negligence resulting in a wrongful death, mental anguish, and punitive and compensatory damages totaling over a million dollars. After the company learned of Lyle’s additional loss and mental instability they became eager to settle. When she became deemed competent and of sound mind, an agreement was reached and they settled out of court.

In recent years, not much of the money she was given from the settlement was spent. Lyle sent Pearl money to pay off the mortgage on the house and bought and settled into a house of her own. It wasn’t anything extravagant. She lived very modestly and lonely most times. Through the years, Small-Fry had never been straight-forward with her Mother about how she felt about her. In time, however, Lyle figured it had been her fault. In the brief, empty conversations they had on the telephone, the issue of her and Caine returning home to Texas never came up. On the phone, and even before he got incarcerated, Caine often spoke of returning to Texas to take care of his Mother. He had been a mama’s boy since day one but Small-Fry believed he only made the statement when he was stressed out or upset in particular times or moments in his life that were adverse.

The screen door squeaking brought Small-Fry’s mind back to the porch. It was her Aunt coming outside for a moment to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Instead of them calling her formally by ‘Aunt Pearl’, Small-Fry, Caine, and all of their friends who stopped by the house, called her Ma Pearl. She was more of a mother-figure and confidant than a regular old aunt. She was slightly round, warmhearted, and very down-to-earth. She was the same height as her Niece and if it wasn’t for her older style of dress affirming she was from an older generation, she could pass for one of the home girls from the block.

Ma Pearl handed Small-Fry a glass of orange juice she brought with her and took a seat in a nearby lawn chair. Thanks for the juice, she said. What are you doin’ in there?

I just finished cleaning the kitchen baby. Small-Fry’s stomach was still full from the cheese-eggs, grits, and raisin toast she and Ma Pearl consumed only an hour and a half ago. Ma Pearl was an amazing cook and it was a surprise that Small-Fry wasn’t a pound overweight.

It is beautiful out here, Cassie. She smiled at her Aunt and nodded. Ma Pearl was the only person who had ever called her Cassie besides her Mother. To Small-Fry, she seemed passé and long-lived. She had the eyes of an old soul and though she spoke very little about her past experiences, she was probably one who could convey stories from several lifetimes.

What are your plans for today? She asked as she wiped her hands with a damp dish rag.

Probably nothing, I should start buying Brandon some clothes and a pair or two of shoes. She paused to drink from her glass. I need to come across some more ends.

You’re going to get another job? Ma Pearl questioned.

Small-Fry arched her eyebrows and glanced at her Aunt. You sure you want the truth?

Of course I do.

Well, I’m revivin’ my street license to practice my pharmaceutical occupation. A smile began to form at the corners of her mouth. I still have money; I just want to stay up and on safe ground.

Safe? Ma Pearl questioned with a tone of disbelief.

Small-Fry let out an exasperated sigh. Come on Auntie, you know how it’s going down out here. Ma Pearl shrugged her shoulders at her. It’s the truth.

Well, the truth will never come close to hurting me as much as a lie would… especially if it came from you or Brandon.

She stared at Small-Fry with concern in her eyes momentarily before turning her gaze elsewhere. I’ve probably told you this a hundred times, Cassie’, she paused and gently touched Small-Fry’s chin to receive her full attention and eye contact. I learned from personal experience with being forced to do things or live up to expectations that weren’t my desire. I want you to live by your own. You’re a young lady.

As she continued, Small-Fry watched the rapid blinking of her Aunt’s eyes. She did so to suppress her tears and in the glistening of her glossy, round browns, Small-Fry could see her reflection. "I love you and Brandon like you are my own seeds. You two should want more out of your lives because y’all deserve so much more than you give yourselves. Both of you are very smart and capable and