oversoul by Mitchell S. Jackson
and nods, never seen a handshake that could end a world war. As I said, nobody from my fam is here, and since, ceremony or not, I ain’t at all in the mood for bantering with these dudes’ significant others, I don’t budge. Instead, I peep Cap dickering among the crowd, watch him hobble over and sit beside me and sift through pocket scraps and turn so we’re face-to-face. “It’s tough out there,” he says, and lets the silence linger too long. “But tough is what you want. Easy is for half-asses and dimwits, of which you, my friend, are neither.” The room verges on a hush. The guards round us up well ahead of when they should. 4.
y
ou can lose yourself in increments: this many and that many month-stretches at a time. One morning you slug out of a tiny bunk in some building bordered by razor wire, and your 20s, where the fuck are they? A few sets later, half your 30s—vamoosed, left your sorry self in a nasty communal bathroom plucking stubborn gray hairs out your chin while mourning the immutable fact your once superior hairline has begun a full-fledged recession. What’s worse is you lost all of this, and what’s left of what’s left to covet is reaching a few days till last wake-up. Here’s how it goes when you touch down. There’s the festivities and visits from the people you ain’t seen since the last time you were home or maybe a time or two for a distracted weekend visit during the first few months—try and get somebody to see you after that—of your set. How it goes if you come home to a short stash is, if you’re lucky, you get kicks from a female or fam or homeboys, the ones that not only say they want to see you back on your feet but confirm they’re beyond fat-mouthing by tossing your impecunious ass a few bucks. Those first days, weeks, back in the free world, you see all of mankind’s progress in the blink of an eye. When you left we’d just invented the wheel, but now, now we’re flying spaceships. Unless you’re a sucker 2, home sweet home equals an abundance of has-beens ready to pay homage to your new (but, let’s keep it real, most times temporary) swoll biceps with a shot of refurbished pussy. But sooner or later, after you inhale those early, emancipated breaths, inevitably sooner rather than later, you end up gaping into the maw of the real, live, wide, apathetic, show-mewhat-you-gonna-do-this-time cosmos—a position that clarifies options for even the most imbecilic of niggers. Be who you were. Be who you thought you could be. Be somebody brand-new altogether. 5.
w
elcome back is what the sign says, and you’d think this brand-new me was popping the fam’s just-came-home cherry with today’s turnout:
74 VICE.COM
My mama, my sis and baby bro, my twins (walking now), my fine-fine woman, all convened on the porch cheering and carrying on while I lug my luggage, a state-issued trash bag, up our rickety front steps. A trillion pats on shoulders built from a consistent season on the pile, plus yet another faithful push- and pull-up regime, so many encouraging words all I can hear is a hella-loud drone. Uncle Sip is in the backyard stooped over a billowing grill, wielding a long spatula, a semi-empty brew sitting on a side table with the meat. Somebody—no doubt one of my young geek nephews—has rigged our giant home speakers so they reach the patchy, hillocked lawn. There’s an old soulful voice wailing across them, so you know one of the grown folks has gangstered DJing duties. My oldest Unc two-steps and nods his unkempt salt-andpepper natural and keeps right on warbling along to the chorus till he sees me eyeing him from the porch. “What it is, Nephew?” he says. “What it is, what it ain’t, and what it shall be?” “Unc,” I say. “You know.” My response I mean literally. Unc’s the only one in the whole fam who’s logged more time in the system than me. One of those old heads who—when you’re facing new charges—can quote your prospective sentence under the new and old guidelines, who’s probably spent most of his adult years (probation, parole, house arrest, judge-ordered community service, mandatory outpatient drug programming, city-funded intervention: Clean Slate, Fresh Start, Second Chance…) on some form of paper. But Unc’s illustrious law-breaking/rehab history’s another story. Shit, I got more than enough trouble keeping up with my own. The rest of the stage: See fold-up tables scattered around the yard, see the bushes trimmed to neat shapes, see here and there adults (and a few sneaky youngsters) circumventing potholes with Styrofoam cups in hand. See a dominoes game at a shaded corner table where one of my oil-tongued cousins harangues some dudes who don’t at all look familiar except they resemble in dress and bearing the old heads who parley in the neighborhood, preaching advice they didn’t have the brains to follow themselves. While I preside over the scene, my woman taps my arm and motions me to follow. My word, from the front and back my baby girl is a cham-P-ion! But the cool part is, her physicality ain’t even the half. Yeah, ask any old old head and he’ll warn against bestowing an abundance of faith in a woman, any woman, while you’re gone, which is sage advice for sure, but maybe once in a millennium you have a shot at finding an extraspecial one, the kind who’ll stay down an entire set, by which I mean will keep a few bucks on your books, pay you consistent visits, and send enough naked flicks to keep your balls from swelling to the size of melons. And if it’s true there’s something rare about a female who can do that once, imagine how sublime one is who manages any more than that.