Shorty Gotta Be Grown. T.C. Littles

      CHAPTER 6

      CALVIN

      I’d been in the basement hooking up a few bags for Porsha to sell tonight while the wife and I were at the cabaret when I heard her little friend scurrying up the driveway. Imani was so consumed by her phone that she had not noticed me coming from the side door. I waited until she went inside with Porsha before moving from behind the dumpster and taking a seat on the porch. I didn’t like dealing with my daughter’s friends. Because little girls could cause a lot of trouble for a man like me, I never gave them the chance.

      “Five dollars, Cal. All I need is a five-dollar credit until the first of the month.” One of my regular custos begged for me to give him a credit on the cheapest packages of rocks I sold.

      “You know I don’t do credit, nigga. Either come with my money—and it can be in all pennies if you got it—or stay the fuck from around here and outta my face, rollie.” I called most of the heavy-hitting fiends around here rollie because they stayed high. In the hood, once you were stone-cold gone off the drugs, you were always rolling anyhow.

      “I’ll have it when my check comes. You can be on the porch waiting for the mailman with me,” he pleaded one more time.

      “Ay, on the real, rollie, quit mafuckin’ talking to me about credit before I silence ya ass for good. I already told you what it was around here, so be gone with that shit. I’m done talking.” Whipping my heater from the waistband of my pants, I loaded one up in the chamber, then looked him square in the face. “Five, four, three . . .” He ran away before I finished my countdown.

      Terrified of feeling the heat of a bullet ripping through his flesh, he pissed his pants before being able to leap up and run away. I didn’t care about scaring a regular away. He wasn’t doing me any good today, and if I gave him credit, he’d never want to pay again. I didn’t get into the dope game to make friends. I got in it to make money.

      Sitting back down on the porch, I set my pistol by my side and lit up a blunt. I’d been with Benzie all day and hadn’t smoked once. Though I’d put my piece in a nigga’s face with my li’l man strapped in the car seat and sold dope underneath where he slept, I didn’t want him mimicking me getting high. I wanted to raise a li’l monster, not a young ’head.

      When I first got in the game, I was a young OG who had the stamina to bang with niggas twenty-four hours a day. I built a kingdom from a few grains of sand. I was seeing my family eat and live better than I did as a child and could have even imagined. At the same time, I kept the law off my back and bullets out of my body.

      But every man has their day if they stay in the game. Old men were supposed to retire and live off the fat of the land at some point in life. I wanted to live out my life to spend my riches. My goal was to oversee my operation from another angle—out of the hood. I wanted to give my wife some peace out in the ’burbs with some wealthy wives, walkin’ a foo-foo dog or some shit. I wanted to give Benzie a big-ass backyard, playscape, and maybe a pond with some ducks in it. And I wanted to give Porsha her own li’l spot in a gated community away from all the bullshit the hood could bring to her life.

      There was only one large hole in the plan, and that was that my team lacked the strength they needed to stand without my hands-on leadership. Though Street was trying to take a step on his own, coming at me like he wanted to grow my team and our revenue, he did not make me feel like he was going to be a strong fallback if I wanted to fall back out of the game. He was already hungry for power. Our conversation earlier made me realize that I had to remind the whole squad of niggas working underneath me that I was still the king of this dope shit.