Exodus

My exodus occurred after years wandering the wilderness of my hometown. For bread to live, for bread to leave, I worked a part-time gig at the Oregonian’s downtown insert facility, stacking pallet after pallet of inky-ass newspapers. The day in question, I got a phone call from someone who, for love (and maybe his liberty), I’ll call Brother A. Brother A rang me to plead a ride to his apartment in the burbs; he had to sweep for dope after his dope-dealing roommate—a dude who’d already done a nickel in the pen on a drug charge (which, by the way, is no judgment, just context)—had got knocked by the feds. Brother A explained he needed the ride because his main squeeze had wrecked his Jeep, and he couldn’t think of anyone more fitting than me—of all people on God’s verdant earth, me—to be the one to shuttle him.

Heeeeeelllll no! That should have been my answer. But that was not my answer. My answer tugged me out of my job at the end of my shift and into the forest-green Lexus I’d bought in the bygone, unblessed days when I sold more than weed. It sent me to swoop Brother A from someplace close and hit Highway 26 with most dubious sense.

Guessing now is as good a time as ever to mention that this was the age during which I may have been selling weed—twenty sacks, eighths, half and whole zips, and, in the most blessed of times, half and whole pounds. Selling chronic, stacking newspapers, and throwing parties, because evermore this brother, a brother, every brother should diversify his hustle. No mights or maybes to that.

Memories from that age, hypothetical and otherwise, seldom feature date stamps, but I can assure you this incident occurred in May 2002 ad, which I know for truth because one of my homeboys and me had just thrown a well-attended Memorial Day shindig, and between my cut of the door and profits from the weed I may or may not have been selling, I had a knot of bills in my inky work jeans—which accounts for why I was feeling at least extra medium about myself. Brother A and I traded lightweight banter en route, and before I knew it, we’d reached his apartment complex, grounds of such expanse that there was plenty of time between the moment I pulled into the lot and when I found a place to park