Why I Do What I Do: Bred From Treason

PROLOGUE

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An old timer once told me that if you believe in nothing than that’s exactly what you end up with.

He said that shit to me when I was at the lowest point in my life. Regardless why he said those words to me, or what he might have meant by them, I know how I took it. Shit forced me to re-evaluate why I was in jail in the first place. Yeah, those words helped me to never give up.

My man, Viejo said it the best, he said, A muthafucka like you could never be held back. The system gives you life in fucking jail, and what do you do? You turn jail into an enterprise that ends up setting you free. But that story starts much later in my life. This story is about the street.

It’s crazy, but street law tells it all. You make the bitch number one in your life, follow her rules, and she will provide for you; just never give up on her. I didn’t, no matter what I thought might have went wrong. The street will always be my number one.

You will get to know me. Some may see me as a foul mutha fucka and some may say I’m official. It all depends on how cold the blood is that runs through your veins.

Not that I give a fuck how any of y’all feel; I am 100% official hard body street Boss. The illest that ever did it, straight like that. So call me what you want as long as you recognize my loyalty to the street. But before you consider me the foulest, remember, I got a cold heart, but ain’t nothin’ as cold as the concrete in February.

CHAPTER 1

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I got the name Doogs in 1977, at Goshen Juvenile Correctional Facility. The name spread faster than I could punch muthafuckas in the mouth for calling me that shit. Then it ended up growing on me. I decided to give it meaning ...word. But let me rewind just a little bit more.

My pops always been M.I.A. and my mom’s was in Bedford doing a 2 ½ to 5 for running with some stick up cats that liked to target them hustlas’. Not them street corner lames either. I’m talking about the willies, the weight men, the kingpins, and my mother was the lure. Fully equipped with that fat ass, babyhair side burns, fine shoulder length hair. Y’all know what I mean; the bitch that look like she got Indian in her blood. Yeah, a red bone beauty, but with a butter fly knife in her pocket, a .25 in her purse, and a swag that would water a mouth for real.

Before my uncle died he used to tell me some of the shit my mom’s used to do with the thugs she ran with before she got locked up; the kidnappings, the torture, all for the payoff. Shit has to be in my blood because what should have scared me excited me. My uncle loved it too, I mean, what the fuck was he doing telling me shit like that anyway? I was a kid.

A few years before I got locked up my mom’s came home from her stretch. She didn’t want to see me until she got her shit together. When she finally got her own place my uncle took me there on the subway.

We laughed and talked about how my moms and me was gonna finally be a family, but when we got there she was dead.

The door was unlocked, and when my uncle and me walked in the place seemed empty. We looked around and called out, then I wandered into the bathroom.

I saw her and the man she was with, Tre-Pound, tied up in the tub, both shot in their foreheads. My mother’s lifeless eyes stared in my direction. I just stood there and stared back until my uncle walked in. He snatched me out, but it was too late for all that.

That’s right, I guess you could say that I was fucked from the beginning.

I don’t think it bothered me as much as it should of, I mean, growing up I was always mad because she was never around. And when she got locked up, for some reason she even refused our visit.

She wrote me one letter apologizing, but that shit was like a paragraph. Yeah, like that made up for a lifetime. She lived as a cold and very detached woman.

Then she was dead.

As I got older I buried the hatchet. I even admired her. She had lived the fuckin’ life, but there ain’t no love. How could there be? Only her genes. Then again, with my lifestyle, it was probably the greatest gift Charlene Feldman could have given me.

When I left D.F.Y., I was a problem. My weight was up in Juvey, being one of the few who was down for a body. I used to show dudes my paperwork and just stare them in the eyes; young fury with proof.

I caught my first body at fourteen. At that time, no matter what the fuck you did, you got cut loose at eighteen.

I ran with an older crowd who wanted to be stick-up kids like Tre-Pound. Matter fact, his son Nuc ran with them. He was the one who recruited me into the little team one night when he saw me on Milford and Liberty, tryin’ to get my paper right.

After Pound was murdered I heard rumors that he was my pops, but my uncle never co-signed that so I dismissed it. But you never know, fuck around Nuc was my half-brother.

Anyway, Nuc ran up on me with another young kid and put a gun to the back of my head. When he realized who it was, he snatched me up just like that. What did I care? I just wanted to make money. It didn’t matter how, not then.

Yo Shawn, what the fuck you doin’ on the corner, nigga? Nuc asked me after we got to some abandon building about two blocks over.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the packages. I’m try’na get paid and now you just fucked that up! Come on son, what the fuck is you doin anyway?

Nigga, I’ma be better than my pops was back in the day. Fuck that huggin the block shit, spending all day try na’ get a grip. It only takes thirty seconds to take it. They make it, I take it, feel me?

I did feel him. I felt him enough to run with him, but it didn’t last. Nuc didn’t get a fraction of the run his pops got before a killer made an example out of him. Some cat who ran dope out of the housing projects we ran up in and caught slippin’.

Nuc was standing in front of the store on Logan and Blake, and I was inside buying a pack of rolling papers. I was at the counter when I saw Nuc go down. I automatically reached for the little .32 Revolver I had in my waist. The man behind the counter thought it was a stick up and started emptying the register. Seeing the money on the counter made me pause for a second; the irony of a stick up kid. To this day I know that’s why Nuc is dead. And to think, he might have been my brother. By the time I shouted to the man behind the counter that I didn’t want the money I heard five more cracks of gunfire.

I crept out the store and snuck upon the gunman. I had my pistol within inches of the back of his head. Then I heard two more shots. I turned to see an old man in the driver’s seat of some raggedy car pointing and shooting at me. I squeezed off one shot then ran like hell through a hole in the fence that was right around the corner and disappeared.

I don’t know how but the cops ran up in my uncles’ crib the next morning. I fucked around and killed that old man in the car; one shot right between the eyes. Now fast forward back to ’81.

So there I was four years later, walking out of that fuckin place, eighteen years old, nobody left in this world but Carmen, my uncle’s wife.

Carmen agreed to to let me live there but it was with some strict rules. Bitch didn’t really give a fuck about me. She just let me move in because she had a baby with my uncle so I was like family. The strict rules were so I could break them and she would have a reason to kick me out. Shit like seven o’clock curfew, no weed, no alcohol, I mean come on. I was living in the fuckin streets within a week. That bitch.

CHAPTER 2

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I was eighteen and living on the streets. I had to strong arm rob anybody I could for cash to eat. I didn’t know nobody, feel me? Cat’s from the old school was dead; shit, cats from the new school was dead. I was on my own. At first Junito, Carmen’s son, told me he would sneak me shit, but to count on another mutha fucka to eat will starve a thug, word.

I just left and didn’t look back. I would rob drunks and dope fiends, young ladies, old ladies, old men, any easy target. Don’t judge me! As a matter of fact, judge me, I don’t give a fuck! No family, starving, homeless. Fuck what you think.

I slept days and roamed nights. It didn’t start that way though. Shit like that take some getting used to, especially coming out of juvey. I remember that first night when I broke down and looked for a place to sleep. I had no idea where to go. I went to the chicken house on New Lots and copped a dinner box. I only robbed for food, not luxury, so if I caught ten bucks I ate, bought a couple of loose cigarettes and a forty ounce or some shit.

I had been on my feet all day. First I hopped on a train and rode it from first stop to last stop, but with all the cops, the thugs, all the general sick fucks, I couldn’t sleep on no train. Call it paranoia but eventually I was back in the hood wandering around practically asleep on my feet.

When I saw an abandoned building with the door cracked open, I crept in. Shit was pitch black behind that door so I called out to make sure no one was inside. I lit a match and bent over to see the condition of the floor. The matchstick’s dim glow revealed only crumbled sheet rock, pieces of wood, trash and dirt. I sat down on the floor and leaned up against the wall. I picked a spot right behind the doorway so I could keep it open and get some light and still be out of sight. I sat there in the dark and thought about the fucked up situation I was in. I was dirty, stinking and alone. I was invisible.

The average kid my age would have cried just about then, but I was never really the average anything. I pulled out the last cigarette I had in my pocket. The shit broke right at the Newport line. After putting it back together the best I could I lit it and took a long drag. I didn’t know exactly what time it was, but I did know that it was late. I remember finishing the cigarette but I didn’t remember falling asleep.

I opened my eyes to the sound of scurrying. Before I knew what was happening a rat climbed over me full run. I started swinging at the air and other rats detoured around me and scattered in different directions. I sat up straight looking around wondering what the fuck. Then I was answered with a slow deep menacing growl. My eyes were adjusted to the darkness and I saw the glow of a pair of eyes. Then more sets. Stray dogs? Ain’t that a bitch! They started off on some threatening shit but when I shot up to my full height they scurried back the way they came. But me, I was done. I might have claimed this building as my new home, but never again at night.

Dawn soon showed its face. Just as I began to worry about the loose change I had left in my pocket, I saw a man stagger out a cab fumbling through his. Playa was dressed sharp and drunk as hell. He was probably coming back from the club or some shit. It was a few blocks from where I was laid up at. And that was all the reason I needed. When the cab took off he stood there swaying from side to side and back and forth looking for his keys. He didn’t even notice me. I knocked him right out. He had a couple of hundred on him. I was good for a minute.

I checked in the Lincoln Motel right off the Conduit. I took a long shower and fell out for most of the day. I ended up running through that money. Only after I was broke again did I realize my mistake.

The next two weeks I roamed by night robbing everything that moved. This time I didn’t rob just to eat, no, this time I tried to get up some money for product; some heroin.

I remembered all the runnins, the scales, the quinine, the 1x4 inch baggies with the wax paper filling. I asked about the measurements the night I started out on that corner Nuc snatched me off of.

It didn’t take long before fiends recognized me by my clothes. They would run whenever they saw me. My description made me a target for jail so I bought some cheap black hooded sweat suit and some no name sneakers. But before I could get the money up I ran short in victims; everybody was on point. Even the cops were on the look out for the man that had terrorized the neighborhood.

I was starving and desperate one night. I treked block after block, ending up on the corner my boy got murdered on; in front of the same store I had killed somebody myself. I kept it moving for another block or so and then got an idea. I turned back, and with each step I gassed myself until I finally stopped at the entrance to the store.

I dug my hands inside the hoodie pocket and stretched my finger into the shape of a gun. Fuck it. I looked around and tightened my hood. I walked in.

At the counter I said in the calmest voice I could, Run the cash, Ponch, or I’ll murder you right here.

Ponch stood still and just looked at me, Papi, that don’t even look like a gun. I saw him reach and I lost it. I snatched out my bare hand and he flinched momentarily, doubting his decision, and it was enough time for me to jump over the counter and grab his wrist. There were a couple of people inside the store who only watched. People rarely run for their lives in the hood, definitely not for a punk ass robbery. And ain’t no heroes either. On some real shit, most would rather see it go down and talk about it in the next cipher.

The man pulled a small semi-automatic and we struggled for a few seconds. Then a shot rang. The shot made the man relax, made me react. The first punch sent him on his back. I drew back. The second punch put him out. I pried the gun out of his hand and