Black Buck(120)
In 2009 yet another governor, David Paterson, removed the minimum sentences and left prison time for drug possession and sale up to judges’ discretion.
So how do I fit into all of this? Thanks to the video Clyde had of me dropping the backpack off and taking the money—and his framing me for the two pounds that Jason had delivered—I was charged with an A-I felony.
My lawyer threw everything she had at them, including entrapment and a whole host of other shit, but nothing stuck. And since I refused to snitch on Jason, a jury found me guilty. Despite being a first-time offender, I was sentenced to a healthy eight years without bail. I suppose it didn’t hurt that the judge and prosecutor played squash with Clyde’s pops on weekends. Or that I’m a young Black male who successfully bucked the system that was created to keep them in power and minorities like me subservient. But that’s just a hunch.
The rest of the Talented Fifth, plus Jason and Soraya, held marches. People from all over the world made posters saying FREE BUCK. Others lobbied Congress. But I eventually told them to stop. The Happy Campers were bigger than I was, and they would be able to thrive without my presence, proving I’d done something right.
I’ve been in here for two years now, and my lawyer continues to fight for me. But to tell you the truth, it’s not so bad. After the whirlwind I experienced, the past two years have given me time to think, analyze, and finally internalize everything that happened: Ma’s death, Mr. Rawlings’s, Sumwun, Rhett, Barry, the Happy Campers, and all of the other events that feel like a dream that happened far too quickly to someone that young.
Plus, I receive about a hundred letters every week from new Happy Campers and other admirers around the world, so I have my hands full responding to them, calling in to different talk shows, and taking about a dozen visits a week from friends and strangers. Just last month Frodo showed up with Marissa and told me they’re having a baby. Life is weird as fuck. I would have never guessed Frodo knew what a vagina looked like. Even Brian has a girlfriend—the French woman he picked up at the bar during his sales training.
As for the others, Jason cleared his mom’s debt and still lives with her in Bed-Stuy, although in a much nicer and larger apartment that he owns. Rhett’s still going strong at Sumwun, Barry continues to move up the Forbes list, Bonnie Sauren came out with a New York Times bestseller, White Offense: Why Being White Is Quite All Right, and the rest of the Talented Fifth have their hands full with thousands of Happy Campers worldwide. Trey, unfortunately, has never reached out to me and I don’t know what he’s up to now. I hope that it’s something good.
At the beginning of this book, I told you that my aim was to teach you how to sell in order to fix the game, to realize that life comes down to a handful of key negotiations, and that you’re either selling someone on “amen” or they’re selling you on “hell no.” If I taught you something, skills that you can take into your own life to get ahead, I hope you’ll make good on your end of the deal and share this book with someone who needs it. Don’t give them your copy; I want you to wear it out, reread your favorite passages, and understand the tactics that worked and the choices I made that didn’t. Buy your friend a new copy, open up the first page, and write the thing that you wish most for them. For me, what I want most for you is to be free.
As for my life, I am happy. I am locked up in a cage but have never been freer. I also apologize if I tricked you; it’s just that you probably wouldn’t have wanted to sit through hundreds of pages written by someone locked up who was trying to teach you how to be free.
But I’ll end this on a happy note, and I do hope that we’ll see each other again. The highlight of every week I’ve spent in here for these two years is Sundays. A correctional officer—who, I should add, has a niece who’s a Happy Camper—says I have a visitor. He unlocks my cell, we shake hands, and he leads me to the visitor center. When I sit down, the first thing I notice is the smell: cinnamon and cocoa butter.
We never say anything for the first minute or two. We just stare, taking in each other’s faces across a table. Then, my visitor turns her hand into a phone—thumb up, pinkie down, index, middle, and ring fingers curled toward her palm—and raises it to her ear. It’s my signal to do the same.
When I bring my own hand to my ear, she smiles, but there are some days when I don’t—when I just sit there for as long as I can, staring at her in her scrubs, thinking about how much better a man she makes me, how she is my rock, my foundation, my everything, even though I don’t deserve her after all the shit I’ve done. But on the days I do reciprocate, and we speak with our hands to our ears, do you know what she says? Do you know how she starts our conversations?
She says the two words that translate into opportunity, that mean the possibility of a better life is calling you, and that you better pick up before it’s too late. Two words that, like a rooster crowing, the sun rising, or coffee brewing, signal the beginning of a new day.
Two words that, if you pay close attention, can open doors that will make you never, ever feel less than again.
Ring ring.
Acknowledgments
Ayo! We’re here! As J. Cole said in “Note to Self,” which I’m paraphrasing, for legal reasons (you see that, Cole?!): acknowledgments are like movie credits. If you’re not down to sit through them, get your ass up and leave the theater! Truth. Picture this acknowledgments section as a freestyle—pure stream of consciousness. If you’re reading this, you’re a real one, and I want to start off by thanking you for purchasing my book, consuming it, and taking the time to let it digest. But whether it gives you energy or indigestion isn’t on me!