let them land with a thud. “You tryna say you down and all that, tryna come off like you ’bout it? First off, I don’t need no editor. At Heart of the Earth Survival School, I’m the editor of the school paper. And I don’t need no thought police stepping on my First Amendment rights.”
The program director glanced at the clock. “It’s time to get working on your stories. Each of you will take a turn working with Jon. Who’s ready to go first?”
José stood, his bravado bolder than his lanky frame would suggest. “I’ll go. Ain’t no one gonna fuck with my shit.” He breathed up at my chin, then swaggered into the conference room with a cherry iBook under his arm.
José set the computer on the mahogany table and opened the lid. “You can’t say nothing ’bout this. You gotsta be down with the hip-hop game before you can say word one.”
A document titled “Ja Rule and 50 Cent Leave Blood on the Tracks” filled the screen. As I read the article, it became clear that this was José’s commentary on the latest feud between rival hip-hop artists. Such conflicts had led to the murders of some of rap music’s biggest stars in recent months.
José pulled a butterfly knife from his back pocket and whipped it around above his head like a rodeo ninja. “What can you even say? You ain’t down with the game, the youth, the Native Americans.”
“These gangstas gots to be bigger than that,” he wrote. “They gots to leave the beef char-broiling at Burger King and stick to making dope records. We all remember those who been felled by the bullet: Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, and Notorious BIG. But ain’t nothing ever gonna bring ’em back. We can’t afford to lose no more of our voices from the ghetto to senseless murder and mayhem. I got a message for all you rhyme-slingers out there thinking you badder than Ice-T in NWA: Leave the damn blood on the tracks.”
I was impressed with the piece. José was writing in the language of hip-hop. He had a clear sense of intended audience. And he was good with metaphor.
There were some glaring factual errors that I hoped to take up with him, but in the meantime, the verbal battery went on. “You gotsta have street cred ta fuck with my shit. Man, they’d tear your punk ass up on the mothafuckin’ block.”
“You little bitch,” I interjected. “I was listening to rap music while you were still shitting your diapers.” I was genuinely irritated, but I was also taking a calculated risk. When I lived on the Rosebud Reservation I had worked part-time as a substitute teacher, and I quickly learned that one way to win the respect of a streetwise teen was to get in his face.
Occasionally, though, the strategy backfired.
José wasn’t laughing. He jumped out of his chair and stood over me, butterfly knife resting at his hip. “You calling me a little bitch?’
“That’s right,” I said. “Professionals understand that editing is part of the business.”
“You little bitch,” José hissed back at me. He put his hands on a long aluminum cabinet that stood against the wall by the door, then lowered his head and went silent.
The sudden hush worried me, and I took a more conciliatory tack.
“Come over here and sit down,” I said. “Let me show you how a few small changes could improve your article.” I scrolled down a page on the iBook. “In the final paragraph, where you say Ice-T was in NWA? He was never in NWA. You must have been thinking of Ice Cube.”
José pushed off the cabinet and clapped like a boxer doing push-ups.
“And here, where you list the names of the rappers who have been murdered: Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, and Biggie Smalls? That’s not right. It’s true they were murdered, but Biggie Smalls and Notorious B.I.G. were the same guy.”
José’s cheeks went scarlet, and he squealed in falsetto, “Whaaat?”
“Fact checking–”
“Whaaat?” he sang out again, then bounced his backside off the aluminum cabinet. It rocked against the wall and tilted forward. The doors swung open and office supplies crashed to the floor.
“What the fuck,” José yelped, dancing out of the way. He tripped on a cardboard box, stumbled over a chair, and fell to the floor, surrounded by ink pads, manila envelopes, and computer cords.
He ignored my help, pushed himself to his knees, and rifled through the debris.
His knife was missing, replaced in his right hand by a long eagle-feather ink stamp he had uncovered among the office supplies. A group project from days gone by, the stamp was made from a rectangle of rough-edged steel. I saw beside it a shallow ink pad encased in tin.
“Let’s do those changes you came up with, dawg. But hit me with this first.” José rubbed the rectangular stamp in black ink and handed it to me.
“Hit me!” He slapped his sinewy left shoulder, flexing. “Do it!”
I took a breath and jabbed the stamp home. When I pulled back, an eagle-feather tattoo appeared near the top of José’s shoulder.
“Now you, dawg,” he giggled, smothering the stamp in ink.
I rolled up my sleeve and flexed.
José took three giant steps backward. “Hang on. I’m gonna do this.”
He ran at me, the stamp cocked above his head, and brought it down on my shoulder, the sharp corner piercing my flesh.
I doubled over in pain. “What the hell!”
I pulled tentatively at the gash on my shoulder. My eagle feather was smeared, the black ink mingling with bright blood. It hurt, but I also felt relief as a red stream wound down my arm.
José beamed at his handiwork, and after a second of hesitation, we laughed together like maniacs.
In the spring of 2006, several years after my initial encounter with José, I was in a very bad way. I had recently lost my wife of 13 years to a divorce, a young friend to brain cancer, and my beloved Maman to the inevitable march of time. The sick cinema in my head played a continuous loop of rage and self-pity. I had begun crying late the previous year, and I couldn’t stop.
I was ashamed that my four kids had to see me in such a wretched state, but even as I resolved to get a grip—seeing therapists, exhausting friendships, and self-medicating—I remained prisoner to a vicious depression. And when panic attacked late at night, I often called José, who had become a trusted friend.
“Bro,” I would groan, feigning a laugh, “I’m mentally ill.”
Our roles had reversed. In the early stages of our friendship, I had fielded the late-night calls. José called me from a juvenile detention center after he was arrested for stealing cars. He called to ask if he could borrow money when his grandmother’s supply of heating oil was cut off in the winter, and when he needed to be bailed out of jail after smashing a liquor bottle over the head of his mother’s abusive boyfriend. And he called when he was expelled from high school for engaging in gang activity.
“You’re
