When I think of all the brothers that I owe some measure of my breath to, I can never forget my brother UNICRON. There is no question in my mind that I am here today because of his street savvy and his courage.
The truth is that I was just a kid from Queens who got a chance to play street thug as if it were some amusement park ride and when I returned to the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, the adventure and the drama ended. That wasn’t the case for my brothers that lived in the war zones. Their lives were caught up in a delicate and tenuous web in which a trip to the corner bodega for a carton of milk could be a final destination. There was no area in New York City for which this was more accurate than Ocean Hill – Brownsville. More specifically, the Brevoort housing complex. This is where UNICRON lived and where I almost met a fateful demise.
In the winter of 1988 I was no longer in high school and I wasn’t doing anything that my parents would consider productive or valuable. I spent my days traveling into Brooklyn or the city to meet up with my brothers. From there we would plot our day around what was usually a spontaneous and unpredictable chord. This is how so many of our days would begin, with a group meeting at ‘Sign of the Times’ park in Hell’s Kitchen, and then an afternoon of hell on Earth. Or something certainly akin to one of the rings in Dante’s Inferno. The promise of adventure, rewards, notoriety were all used as bait to induce as many brothers as possible to come along for the ride. I had spent so many days running missions with my brothers that I had begun to develop my own small satellite band of brothers that would accompany me anywhere with the utmost loyalty and zeal.
On a cool January afternoon the youth collective that I was a part of decided to visit a high school in midtown Manhattan. The potential for meeting some pretty young women and ‘finding’ some expensive jewelry were the temptations used to recruit members for the mission. The ulterior reason for this visit was to exact revenge upon some young men that had disrespected one of the senior members of the collective.
A connection that the collective had inside of the school located the boys who were guilty of the transgression and provided access into the school so that we could meet these youths inside of their classroom. As soon as the bell to switch classes was sounded, the signal was given to demand retribution. In the congested hallways mayhem ensued as young people roared and screamed and transferred their energy that was raw and unbridled. The fighting that ensued wasn’t as fierce as it was brutal. The sheer overwhelming numbers that my brothers contained made them look like a tsunami washing through the corridors. The destruction that was left in their wake was total and indiscriminate.
As my brothers exited the school they disappeared and blended into the multitudes of other teenagers that were shocked and awed out from their classes that afternoon. That transformation was imperative to the success of the mission. Otherwise, as a group of young Black teenagers near the school after the attack would become a target for the hundreds of police officers from the several local precincts surrounding the school. In these situations the collective relied upon the earlier briefings that established assigned rendezvous points throughout the subway stations along the 8th Avenue line. The key was to get to these points individually because any group of young Black teenagers near the mission area would become a target and therefore compromise the missions’ ultimate goal – a safe return home. This goal was something that I had always taken for granted, until this day.
After we had all gathered at the meta-rendezvous area we decided to return to Brooklyn. Several members were confirmed as apprehended by the authorities. All others were present and accounted for especially my brothers from my Queens neighborhood. I took extra special care to insure that they would be part of an experienced recon team as opposed to part of one of the more robust and raucous scout teams. If these boys didn’t come home I would have to deal with two sets of angry parents.
As the 8th Avenue local marched through Brooklyn members would depart from the train at their respective stations. The brothers that lived in Red Hook, Walt Whitman and Farragut Houses would all exit at Jay Street. The collective members from Flatbush and Crown Heights would split from the core at Franklin Avenue to transfer for the shuttle train. The remainder would exit at Utica and then finally Ralph Avenue. Cybertron was located on the ‘Hill’ on Ralph Avenue. Cybertron was the home base for the collective’s leader, MEGATRON. My brothers RUMBLE, CYCLONUS and HEADSTRONG also lived there. On this cold wintry night, for whatever the reason, I decided to journey to Cybertron with some of my Queens brothers. I should have been satisfied with the afternoon’s mission and returned to Queens for the warmth and comfort of my parents’ home. This was a decision that I am truly lucky that I have lived to regret.
When we exited the subway station we were quickly summoned to attention. Along Fulton Street an anxious crowd was gathering. As we approached the crowd we could see that our brother RANSACK was in the center of this brewing storm. We sprung into action and began to extricate our brother in the only way that we knew how. Even though we were in the dead of winter our energy was so potent you could have told me that was July outdoors. As we chased the rival group into the lobby of Brevoort Houses we felt the rush of invincibility that comes from asserting your will on any mortal foolish enough to cross your path. This feeling was short lived. In a moment the temperature outside would feel as hot as Africa in the month of August.
From out of the doorway of the housing development came a young man who pulled a gun from inside his jacket lining. This wasn’t any gun I had ever seen before in real life. It wasn’t like the .22 caliber pistol that I had held before. It wasn’t at all like the chunky .38 caliber that was standard issue for NYC policeman in the days before the Glock semiauto. The only thing that I can relate this firearm to was the long barrel magnum used by Clint Eastwood in the ‘Dirty Harry’ film. The gun was a polished chrome that reflected the light on this cold, crisp night as if it were the sun itself. At that moment everyone that was advancing became frozen in their footsteps. The young man yelled something that I can not remember and then he pointed his gun at all of us that were standing in the courtyard of Brevoort Houses. As he began to pull the trigger everyone started running in every which direction, hopping over the wooden benches and hurdling the waist high cast-iron gates of the housing development. Everyone, that is, except for me.
I was hypnotized by the gun in a surreal sense. It was nothing like any picture show or television program that I had seen. The gun made a thunderous boom whose sound echoed several times off the housing project facades. I could actually hear the bullets. They were invisibly cutting through the winter night, leaving only the sound and effect of displaced air. I was transfixed. The shells passed by my ears or skitched along the concrete in the courtyard ricocheting off dumpsters and other miscellaneous metal. One of those bullets may have eventually come to a halt inside of my body had I not been tackled by UNICRON.
He woke me up from my trance and then shielded me while the gunman continued to expend the shots loaded in the gun’s barrel. After a moment the shooting stopped and then UNI helped me up to my feet. My legs initially were unable to move and I looked around to see if THUNDERCRACKER, was alright. I scanned the crowd and found him crouched behind the concrete support of a park bench. He was untouched by a bullet, but we were both touched by the experience. We dashed for the subway at a speed that would have put CARL LEWIS to shame. On the ride back home THUNDERCRACKER, SOUNDWAVE, DUE and I did not say one word to each other. It was probably two days after that my heartbeat finally returned to a normal rate.
What was painfully honest to admit was that we had been acting out a fantasy as outlaw youth. When our collective was initially formed it was to repel the knuckleheads that would come up to our high school to terrorize us. But as the stakes got higher and higher so did the methods for fighting. There were no more ‘fair ones’ between the youth. Brass knuckles gave way to knives; switchblades were replaced with Smif-n-Wessuns; and our collective had transformed from defenders into the very oppressors that we had vowed to combat
I am eternally grateful for my brother UNICRON for saving me on that evening. Unfortunately, he would eventually meet with a fate like so many other young men that are unwittingly trapped in the downward spiral of violence. UNICRON had a sense of courage and compassion that so many other young men possess, but was without the direction and the proper tools to construct a sustainable sufficient way of life. And now he is lost to us forever.
UNICRON’s sacrifice on this night transformed me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time that I would need to learn a life lesson, but that my friends is another story…
