Hood Legend

By CEDRICK WILSON

Everyone's a criminal, but not every crime is illegal. A legendary bank robber who knocked off ten banks with his crew before the FBI caught him, Robert Hood has done his time. Fifteen long years of it. Finally out of prison, he's finished with a life of crime. Now all he wants is to find a decent job, a good woman, and his happily ever after. With the help of his younger brother, who's offered him a place to stay, Robert has faith he'll make it. Instead his brother wants him gone as soon as possible, and he quickly realizes a recession and a criminal history don't mix. Every other storefront displays a Going Out of Business sign, the houses of his friends and neighbors are being foreclosed on, and jobs are nearly impossible to come by. How can a man whose greatest talent is theft make a better life for himself? Maybe he can't, but he can do something even better...

• Language: English
• Publisher: CEDRICK WILSON
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781733093026

Book preview

BACK INTO THE WORLD

Robert Hood leans in the opening of his prison room door. He eyes the inmates going through their regular routines. Some sit at a table and play cards, others stand in line and wait to make a phone call to a family member or a loved one. Then you have the group that huddle together and make plans for some kind of chaos. The rest usually stay in their cells glued to books, something most never did before they were brought to this God-awful place. Robert was a member of all groups at one time or another during his stay at this Hellish facility. He displays a wide grin as he turns back into his cell. He remembers his first day walking into this place. His first thought was, this ain’t juvie, this is the real deal. This place has killers, rapists, and the most violent men in the city, in which more than half of them probably suffered from mental health conditions. None of them would have a problem making his acquaintance, if he were to show any weakness. The first thing he did once he made it to his room was to make a shank out of his toothbrush. The memory tickles him now, but at the time, it was serious. 

Robert removes a singular photo from the white wall on the side of his bed. He gazes at the picture with fondness as he sits his six-foot frame down on the bottom bunk. His sentence is over. Fifteen hard years of living in a cell the size of a bathroom. One hundred eighty months of consuming food fit for canines. Around seven hundred and eighty-two weeks of looking over your shoulder because death or a murder beef for defending yourself is around every corner. Last but not least, five thousand four hundred and seventy-five days without a touch from a woman.

All that’s about to be behind him now. It’s time to get back into the world and see if he can fit in. This time as a productive citizen and not as the bank robber he was when he came into this hellhole. He’s in his late forties now, and thirty of those years he was nothing but a thief, someone who wanted to cheat his way into a better life. Get a nine to five? Forget that. He watched his mother work hard her entire life and didn’t move an economic inch. She was like a hamster running in place and going nowhere. If you want something in this world, you have to take it. Hell, he thought it was the American way. The United States was built on theft. Theft of land and the theft of millions of Black bodies. It took him a while to realize that only rich people can get away with stealing and he wasn’t in that sorority. Regular folks can’t cheat to get ahead; nope, they have to play by the rules.  

A correctional officer approaches his cell. Let’s go, inmate. Robert rises and follows the correctional officer through the cell block.

A few other inmates come to high five him and congratulate him on his release, but one muscle-bound inmate steps to him with a scowl. You better not show your face around here again.

What’re you gonna do? Robert responds. Don’t you remember what happened last time?

The correctional officer says, Back off, inmate, or I’ll put your ass in the hole.

Robert eyes the muscle-bound inmate before deciding to capitulate and back off. Maybe he didn’t want to go to the hole, or maybe he remembered that the last time they got into a skirmish, all it took was one hit in his Adam’s apple to put him down. Robert doesn’t even remember how the beef was started, he just knows that Muscles came into the joint and wanted to flex his strength. Muscles always started things off by staring him down and talking trash. He would then get the cajones to step to Robert, barking like a pit bull, but by the end, leaving with his tail between his legs.      

Robert says, I gotta go, with a hint of sarcasm, and the muscle-bound inmate moves his lips to say, Fuck you. Robert smiles as the prison door slides open to exit the cell block.

In the processing center, Robert changes from the blue jumpsuit into the clothes he wore when he initially was arrested. He has a pair of jeans, a short sleeved collared shirt, and black hiking boots. He goes to the desk to sign out his personal items. The officer reads, One black wallet and one gold watch.

Robert signs his name, slips on the gold watch, and looks into his wallet and notices lint. Hey, I had a thousand dollars in here.

The officer is unamused and replies, Yeah, right. But here is your release card from the state. He said with a huge smile as he slid it across the counter. Robert’s smile turns into a frown as he grabs the debit card and places it into his empty wallet. It’s the slave wages he’s earned from working inside the prison plus the fifty dollars he had on his person when he arrived. He hasn’t even walked out the door yet, and the system is already screwing him over. He’s heard about these release cards. It’s a pre-paid debit card they hit newly released convicts with which have weekly service and transaction fees that will eat up pretty much everything you’ve earned. He shakes his head and his theory is proven yet again. Only the powerful can be thieves.

Robert sits on the bus on his way back to the city. He’s thinking of all the time that has passed and wonders how much everything, if anything, has changed. With his head on the headrest, he stares up at the roof of the bus. He begins to think about his mother. The last time he saw her was in the courtroom before she became stricken with cancer. He told her not to come, but she came anyway. How are you going to tell the woman who birthed you to stay away? A woman who tried to keep her two kids clothed and fed and away from the street life? She was not going to stay away. She and his brother sat a few rows back. Robert didn’t know why they came. He knows that he was guilty, and he didn’t need them to trouble themselves with his mess. It took him a while to understand when you do dumb shit, it just doesn’t affect you, it affects the whole family. Once they found him guilty and handcuffed him, all he could muster up was, Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be okay. Take care of her, little brother. They took him away as his family stood there in tears. They kept in touch as much as they could, but after his mother became ill, his little brother’s visits and letters came sporadically.

Robert looks around the bus at the few passengers and notices a mom holding her precocious baby. He thinks about not having a child, which leads to him thinking about the only woman he wanted to have a child with. He turns away and stares out the window to take in the scenery that he hasn’t been able to see in fifteen years. It’s nothing but trees, and every now and then, a plain field with a few cows grazing, but it’s never been so beautiful.

This stint was his longest. The longest amount of time he’d done before that was about three years, and that was for theft too. He did time in juvie, three years in the big house, and then there’s the fifteen he just completed. About half of his life he was locked in a cage. Most cats from his neighborhood were into selling drugs, but he wasn’t into that for whatever reason. It just didn’t appeal to him. He wanted big money, and he didn’t want to be selling shit to kids or to their mothers to get it. It wasn’t like he had a moral code or anything, he just wanted fast money and the pure rush of it all. Robbing a jewelry store or pulling off a bank job didn’t involve people who wanted to mess up their lives by getting high. It was just you and your crew versus the chumps in the store, and most of them weren’t ready to be in pain over someone else’s money; well, at least most of the time. There was always that one guy who wanted to be a hero because he thought the greedy place he worked for would value him more or give him a raise for fighting tooth and nail to protect their cash. That guy always ended up getting pistol whipped or knocked the fuck out. Robert committed several jobs, and luckily, he never had to kill anyone. Theft is one thing, but murder is something in an entirely different stratosphere.

He did lose a good friends though. Jaylon Woods. A member of his four-man crew. A few days after a robbery, they were living it up at the plaza when the police confronted them. Everyone was willing to put their hands up except for Jaylon. He reached for his firearm and the blue boys didn’t hesitate to fill him up with a few hot ones. While on the ground being cuffed, Robert stared at his dear friend who was bleeding to death and also being unnecessarily handcuffed. He’s thought about that every day, for at least the first five years in prison. He just couldn’t shake it. Eventually though, the thought of his friend laying there dead became less frequent. It was more like every once in a while.  

Being close to death will change you, and so does being far from loved ones. He’s done with that lifestyle. He’s through with crime. He’s too old for that. He wants to find a decent job and woman and live happily ever after. He knows that it’s going to be hard, but with the help of his younger brother, he believes he will make it.

BROTHER

Robert and the passengers filter off the bus. He takes a few steps before he hears a car horn. He turns around, and from across the street, he sees a guy standing next to a truck that is a few years old but still in good condition. He heads toward him, and from afar, he can tell that it’s his younger brother Derrick. He looks like a choirboy who just found out that God doesn’t exist. Truth be told, he was the more responsible one, the younger bigger brother in a sense. Derrick looked up to his older sibling. He was the male figure in the house since his dad died of a heart attack at a young age. Robert taught him everything. He taught him how to tie his shoe, how to cook, and how to defend himself. The admiration dissipated once Robert was sent to juvenile detention for breaking into a department store and snatching a ton of expensive items to sell on the street.