Kenney: Still Waters Part 2

Chapter 20

The first time I shot a man, it was by accident. Uncle Rico and Remmey told him that I did it on purpose, and that if he moved one more time I would shoot him again. So I had to stand there, nervous as shit, and act like I knew how to shoot him again in the exact same spot. Because I was about business, like them.

I figured it couldn't be that hard since I knew how to hit people in the same spot every time. So I just did everything Sammy taught us to do. Focusing and breathing, and I kept my eye steady on the target.

            Of course this fool moved again...and of course Rico told me to shoot him again.

            So I did.

            And I hit him pretty close to the same spot.

            I was eleven at the time, and from that point on Rico and Remmey started calling me Little Rico. They should have called me Little Sammy, since she was the one who taught me how to stay focused and hit my target.

            It wasn't long after that that Uncle Rico pulled me off of car detail – which is what he called it when we jacked cars and tricked them out – and posted me up full time on the main corner with my uncles. He wanted me to learn everything from them, and would quiz me every night to make sure that I was learning, and to make sure that they were teaching me.

            He also wanted me to hold the money for them. He said he was working on a new team that I would be over, so that when the time came my uncles would be freed up to help him with distribution and runs...which is what he called it when he went on out of town trips. I never asked where he went. It was always just "out of town." And he would always come back with either alot of money, or alot of drugs. Sometimes he would come back with a crapload of guns. I started noticing more and more kids my age and older coming around and standing on the corners with my uncles, but they didn't keep money like I did. They gave it all to me. I just had to hold it until Uncle Rico came around to pick it up. Mostly all the other kids did was sell, run and get my uncles food, or keep their eyes open for new people trying to come on our block. Of course there was also still the stickup crew that I used to be a part of, and there were some new older boys that Rico had working the crackhouses with my uncles.

Me and Jazz were still the only ones who cooked, though.

            All of the kids that Rico hired were from our neighborhood. He never had any new people around us, ever. And he always put Remmey with me. Probably because nobody messed with Remmey. Which meant that nobody ever messed with me. Remmey was funny. He would say the craziest shit to people and they would just take it. He told me that I had to start talking to people like that, too. And look them in the eye until they looked away first. No matter who it was, I had to keep staring at them until they looked away first.

            A lot of people started acting like they were afraid of me after I shot that man. Before it would have pissed me off, because I had never liked people assuming that they knew what I was about, but now I was glad they feared me. Rico had me walking around with all that money, and I didn't want anyone thinking they could take it from me. If they tried, they would get shot, too. Just like ol' boy.

Especially now that I knew I could put a hot one in somebody and get away with it.

I didn't want to hurt anybody else, but I most definitely would if I had to.   

Rico gave me my own .22 when I started stealing cars, but I didn't ever really need to use it until I started monitoring the corners with Remmey. Rico told me that I could get a Glock like them once I got my weight up. When no one was around, Remmey would laugh his ass off at my .22 and tell me to show him how I would pull it on somebody if I needed to. He told me never to practice on him, though, because I was his nephew but he would "fuck me up" if I ever pulled a gun on him. I believed him, too.