Page 53 of Quasim III: King Inferno

“It hurts so bad, Des…. I see him when I try to sleep. He’s fucking cold out here… I know he’s freezing.” He sobbed as Des held him tighter and allowed him to get everything out.

I was the last person to ever get emotional and I often held that shit in because I’ve had to. Seeing him break down, so young and in pain, almost took me there. He had experienced something that would break niggas my age.

Des put him in Kiki’s truck and was going to take him to get checked out at the sanctuary while I brought Kaia’s ass back to her aunt and let her deal with what she was going through. It was not my pony nor my race, so I was going to let her deal with that shit.

Before we went our separate ways, Des rolled down the window. “Keith touched down.”

I looked at him and nodded my head. Keith was a few years younger than us, but the man had done and seen some shit with us. He didn’t get the name Bajan butcher by playing fucking uno.

When it came to alcohol, I never liked that shit. It wasn’t until I met Mina and saw that she socially drank that I indulged. Sherespected that I didn’t drink, but that shit never stopped her from having a drink every now and then.

She also showed me that I wasn’t my father because I had a drink every now and again, and anytime I felt like I was becoming addicted, I could stop. I had the power to start and stop whatever I wanted. That was the reason she was my baby, because she always had the best advice. Always some crazy shit, but the voice of reason whenever I needed her.

We were the blind leading the blind because we both knew we weren’t wrapped too tight. Then we decided to go and have two kids that were missing screws. Anytime I saw that look in Blaze’s eyes, it reminded me of his mother.

Pop was more like me with his. We were quiet and leaned back. Almost like we had it on reserve, but when that bitch came out nothing good came out of it. The one thing I had always been proud of was being a father.

It was easy to make children but harder to stick around and become fathers. When you became a father, you had to continue to be one through the ups and downs. There wasn’t personal time off when you became parents.

My father had been there through my childhood, always teaching me lessons about life. Proud of that Inferno name and making sure that I knew my sister. My mother was the type that felt like he had to deal with her to be a parent to me.

She would play petty games and tell him that he couldn’t come pick me up on the weekend. I would sit, waiting for him to come scoop me so we could hang out. Instead of telling me the reason he didn’t come, she almost always made it seem like he didn’t show up because he forgot about me.

My moms knew I looked forward to hanging out with my father. Every weekend, he would take me to hang at the bar with his friends. All of them niggas had bikes and they were so damn cool.

I’d sit out there for hours, looking over the bikes and trying to take in all that I could. I wanted to own one of these bikes, and I promised myself that I would. While I was outside planning my future, my pops was in the bar getting fucked up.

The first time I drove a car was when I was twelve. He had gotten too drunk and needed me to drive his Ford Granada. That was the first time that I drove, and I remembered he kept telling me he would fuck me up if I crashed his car.

It was his prized possession.

There were so many memories that I thought were good when I was growing up. While I thought it was dope that my pops taught me how to drive, I realized that it was for his benefit. He was able to get fucked up and know that I could get us home. These memories I held onto, because to me, they were good times with my old man. It wasn’t until I became a father that I realized half the shit my father had me doing, I would have never put my sons in that position at that age.

His drinking consumed him and became the love of his life. It had replaced his desire to parent, something that you would always be. Your child would always be your child, even when they grew up and had children of their own.

I walked into the small dive bar that was in Newark and scanned from wall to wall. His shrunken appearance was shriveled up in the corner with a drink in his hand and his red eyes scanning the TV for the winning numbers for the lotto.

Owen would always find a bar to crawl into, so he could continue to fuel his body with liquor. He wanted to have that burning sensation going down his throat, because it had become normal. It was like breathing for him, and you couldn’t stop breathing, right?

I cut my father off when Quasim was three. The unwillingness to change for not only yourself, but your kids and their kids was some shit I could never get down with. WhenQuasim was six, I ran into him in our neighborhood, which used to be his old stomping grounds.

I didn’t know if my sons knew who O was when he was hanging around the bar. They had good hearts, and they didn’t give a fuck what someone did with their life. Other than having loyalty to the bottle, I knew there was a little bit of loyalty left in him.

“Shae’s soft ass gave you some money to drink up, huh?” I sat down beside him, then moved over a seat once I smelled him. “Just because you a drunk don’t mean you gotta smell like ass.”

He blankly stared at me, all the life drained from him, then finished his drink. “How are the boys?”

“Men.” Only I was able to call my sons my boys, because they were my boys. He didn’t get the chance to do that.

He didn’t know them like that, and I’d be damned if he called them boys. They had been more man than he could ever be. Despite going through rough shit, Quasim never turned to the bottle or drugs.

I wasn’t thrilled with his side hustle, but if that was what got him to heal, I wasn’t going to say shit. He was a grown man and capable of handling himself. Even if he wasn’t, he had a whole bunch of muthafuckas riding behind him.

“Men,” he corrected himself as he held onto the empty glass in his hand, his thumb rubbing the rim of it.

I turned down the drink the bartender offered. “They’ll be back to shit soon… God willing.”

He nodded his head. “Got your brother’s hands all over it, Quinton.”

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