Gage

by Blacc Topp

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

The Gage family fights tooth and nail to stay together — and when they’re reunited, their enemies don’t stand a chance as they navigate the criminal underworld side by side.

Redemption usually begins with the soul’s commitment to withstand evil, and it’s easier said than done. Who can you trust when you can’t trust yourself?

Forced to murder his own father but hailed as a savior by his brothers, Julius Gage has a tough row to hoe. He’s been thrust into an adult world that he’s ill-prepared for, and all that matters is keeping his family together. With no adults in the picture, the state of Arkansas is all too willing to separate the brothers. Julius has no choice but to steal his younger brothers away from the state and reunite his family. Their only hope is to find their older brother, Otis Gage, in the hopes that he, and he alone, can fix what’s been broken.

The Gage brothers travel to the mean streets of Detroit, Michigan, to not only escape the demons of rural Arkansas but also to start anew. None of the brothers is prepared for the dog-eat-dog world of crime, sex, drugs, and mayhem that they are about to encounter. Lost love, hatred, greed, and an utter hunger for the finer things fuel the Gage brothers and, in fact, threaten to tear the already fragile family apart.

A chance encounter with a new friend thrusts them into a business that they’re very proficient in, but that could unravel all their hopes and dreams. Can they weather a storm that’s been brewing for years, or will the love of money destroy a legacy that Julius Gage is fighting tooth and nail to establish? Their journey unmasks an abusive past, the misuse of power, and the disintegration of an American family.

The only question that has everyone puzzled is: Do the Gages kill for the pleasure, or is it all for the money?

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Marianna, Arkansas

Fall 1925

Nathaniel Gage lay on his back with his hands cradling the back of his head. He watched the shadows dance across the ceiling as the half-burned candle flickered next to him. His mother had come home drunk again, spewing her usual hatred-filled words. Venom had dripped from every word she spat.

“You ain’t shit and ain’t gon’ never be shit, just like yo’ no-good daddy.” And “I guess you gon’ leave me, like your daddy did!” And “You ain’t no man. You can’t even provide for your dear old mama.”

He’d never answered back, for fear that this might be construed as talking back and beatings for doing that were the most brutal. His mother hated him, he was sure of it, because she was always mean to him and never had encouraging words. She made him work outside when the sun was at its highest, to “darken him up,” as she put it. Once she covered him in mud and made him sit in the center of the field from sunup to sundown. His father was sympathetic, but he never came to his rescue, and Nathaniel never blamed him, because his mother was a mean-spirited woman who thought she was owed more than she contributed.

“Nathaniel?” his mother yelled from the next room. “Nate, I know you hear me calling you, boy!”

Nathaniel didn’t answer. He stood and walked to the open door of her bedroom. “Yes, Mama?”

“Come in here and lay with me for a while. I’m lonely,” she said.

A sliver of moonlight dashed into the room, only to be veiled in darkness by passing clouds. She reeked of alcohol, and when she lifted the dirty sheet from her body, her rancid odor filled the room. She was naked beneath the covers, and the smell assaulted his nostrils and embedded itself in the fibers of his tongue. The putrid funk danced there, swirling in his mouth, until he felt as if he might vomit.

His mother made him do things, things that had to be sins, nasty things. That had started after his father died. She’d come home drunk one night and lain on his pallet with him. He’d thought they were having a moment, bonding over the death of his father and her husband, but then she’d kissed him and let her hands roam underneath his blanket. He’d pushed her hands away, and so she’d beaten him and called him worthless. He’d refused the next time, and she’d beaten him again, this time more severely, more brutally.

“You gon’ mind, or you gon’ get beat!”

So Nathaniel had learned to “mind” his mother during all her drunken, incestuous, perverted acts. Tonight it would all end: he would not be used, and he would not take a beating. He could hear his father’s words in his head as he tried to muster the courage to tell his mother no. Sometimes what seems like the scariest thang in the world to do is the onliest thang a man can do. If it don’t feel right, it probably ain’t right.

She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him. “You coming to bed, boy?” she asked, patting a spot on the mattress next to her.

“No.”

She stood, walked to the dresser across the room, and lit the wick of an oil-burning lamp. Her features were dark and evil as her eyes burned into Nathaniel’s flesh. She picked up one of the stale cigarettes on the dresser and bent over to light it with the lamp’s flame. Nathaniel wished that her entire face would catch fire. But thinking of the fire that she would face on Judgment Day gave him solace. She turned to face him again.

“No? What I tell you about telling me no?” she asked, inhaling her cigarette, blowing ringlets into the darkness. “I bet you if I get that strap, you’a do it and beg me for mo’.” She paused for a moment. “What kinda man don’t want no pussy from a beautiful woman?” she asked no one in particular.

“You my mama, and this ain’t right.”

“You sassin’ me, boy? You’a do whatever I tell you to do. I oughta beat the freckles off your yella ass, but I’m tired,” she scoffed.

“Why do you hate me so much? I ain’t never did you no harm, always been respectful.”

“I don’t hate you, boy. I love you. This here is just grown folks’ business. This is called being grown and getting you a little experience. Wouldn’t you rather be with your mama than with one of them girls out there? They ain’t gon’ never love you like your mama,” she said.

“I’d rather not be doing this at all. The Bible says a man and a woman shouldn’t lay together until they’re married. And you specially ain’t s’posed to lay with kin.”

Delores Gage walked over to the door and hissed in Nathaniel’s face, “Stop being a little bitch, boy! When your daddy died, you promised me that you’d take care of me and be the man of the house! Well, a man’s job is to make sure that the woman of the house is happy! Don’t be preaching to me, boy. It’s your job to make sure that your mama is happy and satisfied! Don’t you wanna make Mama happy?”

Nathaniel listened to his mother whine as she resorted to the same manipulative tactics that she had used to control his father. During Nathaniel’s fifteen short years, his mother had not been a mother at all but rather a groomer of his young flesh, to be enjoyed at her command. She was always the victim, and she never acknowledged her own fault in anything that she did. Nathaniel was tired of it. He was over her lascivious, perverse fantasies, and the more she talked, the angrier he became, until he could no longer hold the hurt and humiliation that bubbled inside him.

“Make you happy? My whole life you been lying to me. Lying to me ’bout who I am, lying to me about who my real daddy is!”

“You know who yo’ daddy is, Nathaniel. You bein’ foolish!”

“Daddy lay right here in this bed ’fore he died and told me he wasn’t my pappy. He say some white man you was screwing in town is my real daddy,” Nathaniel spat. “He say he loved me the same as I was his own, and I shouldn’t be loved no less ’cause of what you did. He say it didn’t make him no never mind who my real daddy was, because he was happy to be my pappy. I ’spect he turning over in his grave, knowing the woman he took as his wife is tryna bed her son in the same bed they used to share!”

Delores slapped Nathaniel with such force that he fell to the floor, but he sprang right back to his feet. He stood in front of his incestuous mother with his fists balled up, mentally daring her to strike him again. His father had always told him never to strike a woman, and the Bible said to honor thy father and mother, but if she put her hands on him again, he would have to deal with breaking that commandment on Judgment Day.

“I want you outta my house, Nathanial Gage, and don’t you ever darken my door again!” Delores screamed.

“My daddy say this here my house! He gave me a piece of paper he called a deed. He say if’n you started in on me, I’d always have somewhere to go! Who been tilling the fields and baling the hay, Mama? Me, that’s who. You don’t do nothing round here but drink and keep up shit. Nah, Mama, you the one who need to leave! he barked.

“I don’t want you in my daddy house, in my house. I’m tired of you touching on me and making me do thangs. I’m tired of the whippings, and most of all, I’m tired of people whispering about me and you behind my back!”

“Who gonna take care of you if Mama leave, baby? I love you, Nate,” she pleaded.

“I take care of everything around here, anyway, while you lay up with them white mens, so I’m sure I be fine.”

Delores dressed slowly, trying to force puppy dog tears from her eyes as she did so. She looked at him through wet eyes, hoping to gain his sympathy. But there was no sympathy when he looked back at her, only hatred. Rage seethed in the young man for the woman who had brought him into the world but had defiled his innocence. She tossed the few belongings that she owned into a pillowcase and moved toward the front door. Her feigned sadness gave way to anger as she realized that her son was serious.

“You’ll need me again, you yella bastard! Nobody will ever love you, boy, because you’re worthless!” she shouted. “You’re a cracker to the niggas, and you’re a nigga to the crackers, so who’s gonna love you ’sides me?”

Nathaniel opened the front door and glared at his mother, silently ordering her to leave. Delores walked out of the house, the pillowcase in her arms.

Nathaniel slammed the rickety wooden door behind her and watched from the window as she disappeared down the red-clay road. He watched until her body became a speck beneath a full moon heavy with new possibilities.

Spring 1926

Nathaniel walked through downtown Marianna, Arkansas, half expecting to see his mother, Delores, out on the corner hooking. He didn’t. Instead, he saw black people shuffling toward their respective jobs. Many of them were elderly black people who cleaned for the well-to-do white people in town. Others worked in the fields of former slave plantations in Marianna. Cotton was one of the main staples in the small country town, and growing and picking it kept the sparse population of forty-three hundred busy, especially since 80 percent of those folks were black and 20 percent white. Despite their small numbers in the town, white people controlled every aspect of life in Marianna.

The blacks were relegated to the bottoms. The bottoms was an area on the southern end of town, one lined with shotgun shanty houses made from salvaged wood and collected, often stolen, pieces of tin. Many of these houses still had dirt floors, and their residents still cooked in kettles over an open fire. Many of the homes, if they could even be called homes, were former slave quarters, but this fact did not bother the poor citizens of Marianna. They were just happy to have somewhere to lay their heads.

Nathaniel considered himself lucky, because Rufus Gage had worked hard for the land that Nathaniel now owned. Rufus’s entire family had been owned by the Gage family, and after slavery ended, Rufus’s father had stayed on to tend the fields of the plantation. When Joseph Gage died, he left the plantation to his son Philip Gage. After his father’s death, Philip seized the opportunity to live the life that he’d always wished for. He wanted the city life, and he would never have that in Marianna. He’d always dreamed of going to New York City. He’d heard stories of bright lights and adventure in the big city, where people rode in a new contraption called an automobile. Philip was far less committed to the upkeep of the old plantation than his father had been, and considering that he and Rufus, whose family had worked as slaves on this land, had grown up together, he signed over the deed to the property to Rufus.

The plantation wasn’t lavish, but it was profitable, nevertheless, and Rufus made it his own. Unlike many of the other plantations in Arkansas, the Gage plantation’s big house wasn’t big at all. It was a one-story wooden house with three very small bedrooms. It did, however, have indoor plumbing and a wood-burning stove. Rufus inherited not only the land that his enslaved family had toiled on but also the name of his family’s former master. He in turn passed the Gage name on to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel straightened his tie and wiped the dust on his leather shoes on the back of his tweed slacks, looking like a human cricket. When he entered Lee County Bank, the whites inside stopped what they were doing and looked at him as if he had six heads.

“Are you lost, boy?” a fat white woman asked, staring at Nathaniel over horn-rimmed glasses.

“No, ma’am. I wanted to ask ’bout maybe startin’ up me a saving account.”

“If you can count, nigger, I’m assuming that you can read too, boy!” she hissed.

“Yessum, I can read.”

“Then how come you didn’t bother to read the sign on that door that said this bank don’t cater to coloreds?” she grumbled.

“My money spend just like white folks’ money, don’t it!”

“Is there a problem here, Martha?” an elderly white man asked.

“Yes, Mr. Lund. I told this here nigger that we didn’t want his money, and now he’s sassin’ me!” she said.

“That true, boy? You sassing this here white woman?” Mr. Lund asked.

“No, suh, I’s just trying to find a way to bank my earnings. I didn’t come in here fuh no trouble, suh.” Nathaniel stared at the floor.

“Well, let me be the first to tell you, boy. You’re going to find plenty of trouble if you don’t get your black ass out of my bank. Take your coon ass down to the bottoms. Maybe one of those slimy niggers down there can help you, but we don’t mix good white citizens’ money with dirty nigger money!” Mr. Lund spat.

Nathaniel turned on his heels and left the bank. Although he hadn’t witnessed it firsthand, he’d heard of boys not much older than himself being found hanging from trees in the back woods of Marianna, Arkansas. He walked through town with his head held low, feeling even lower. If the white people wouldn’t allow a black man in their bank, and if they wouldn’t allow him, a young man, to save money, then how was he supposed to someday have a family? Maybe he would start his own bank. Yeah, that would teach them. He pulled the deed to his property from his pocket and read it slowly. Who was he fooling? He had a fifth-grade education, and he was fifteen years old. The chances of him starting a bank—hell, any business—were slim to none.

He trudged to the bottoms and wandered into Lenny’s Juke Joint. It wasn’t more than a gutted barn that had been converted into a party palace. It was a little before dark when Nathaniel wandered into Lenny’s to the sound of guitar licks and piano riffs. He walked to the makeshift bar and ordered three shots of whiskey.

“You a little young to be drinking, ain’t you, boy?” the bartender asked.

“Don’t worry ’bout how old I is. I gots money, and I aim to spend it. Or is you too good to take my money too?”

The bartender didn’t exchange another word with Nathaniel. He sloppily poured the drinks, spilling a little bit onto the wooden bar. The sound of the lead guitar wafted through the air as riotous patrons danced in the middle of the dusty dirt floor. Nathaniel downed the three shots back-to-back and beckoned to the bartender.

“Hey, man, how much for the bottle?” he asked.

“It’s a whole dollar.” He looked at Nathaniel skeptically.

“Leave it,” Nathaniel said, leaving a crumpled dollar on the bar. He poured a shot from the bottle and downed it quickly. He was just about to pour another one when a young woman joined him at the bar. She touched his hand, stopping him from pouring more liquor.

“You’re drinking kind of fast. Don’t you think you should slow down?” she said.

“I think you should mind your own damn business!”

“Just because you drunk don’t give you no cause to be rude. I’m Juanita.” She extended her hand.

Nathaniel shook it, introduced himself, and apologized. “I’m sorry, Miss Juanita. I guess I’m still steaming ’bout how them white folk down at the bank treated me today. These peckerwoods love for us to spend our money with them, but God forbid you wanna save a little bit for yo’self. As long as you spendin’ it soon as you get it, they happy. Let me buy you a drank, to apologize proper.”

“Nathaniel, that’s just one obstacle, honey. If you’re really persistent, you can do anything that you put your mind to. When I was nine years old, my pappy left us, and it broke my mama down, but she was always there for me. She used to tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be. I went all the way to the tenth grade before my mama took sick and I had to get a job to help take care of home.” Her eyes grew brighter. “One day I’m going to be rich, Nathaniel. You watch and see!” she said excitedly.

“I believe you, Juanita. I don’t think I’s smart enough to get rich. I just wanna have me a family and work my land.”

“One gon’ be rich, and one ain’t. Shit, I don’t think neither one of you niggas gon’ be shit!” a large black man spat. He stood behind the pair, huffing and puffing, glaring at Nathaniel.

“Walter Polk, don’t come over here starting no trouble now! Me and Nathaniel is having us a private conversation,” Juanita said.

“Yeah, well, did you tell this little, frail half-yella nigga that you’s my woman?” Walter Polk’s chest heaved as he spoke. Nathaniel had never seen a man so big. The buttons of his shirt held on for dear life, pressing against the fabric, trying to contain the massive hairy chest that hid beneath it.

Nathaniel’s legs buckled, his insides quivered, and he suddenly felt the urge to urinate. His teeth clattered, while the voices in his head told him to run. Nathaniel craned his neck to see past Juanita and her mountain and ascertain how far he was from the door in case he needed to run.

“I ain’t your woman, Walter. We had a go, and that was that, but I don’t belong to you!” Juanita spat.

“You ’longs to me till I say different. Now, grab yo’ thangs. We’s leaving!” Walter Polk shouted. He grabbed Juanita by her arm and attempted to drag her out of the juke joint. Nathaniel gripped the neck of the whiskey bottle and leapt from his seat.

“She said she ain’t your woman, so I reckon you oughta leave her be,” Nathaniel said. He was surprised at the authority in his own voice. He wasn’t sure if it was the liquor giving him the courage or plain stupidity. What he was sure of, though, was that he was tired of people thinking that they could step on him because he was small and fair skinned. Even if Walter beat him half to death or worse, no one could ever say Nathaniel Gage took shit from anyone, big or small.

“And what you gon’ do if I don’t, little high-yella nigga? Sit you little ass down ’fore you make me mad, boy.”

Nathaniel made a move toward the man who was four times his size, but before he reached him, a woman leapt onto Walter’s back and slit his throat from ear to ear. Walter Polk released Juanita’s arm and fell to his knees, holding his throat. Nathaniel watched as the massive man slipped into darkness. The music stopped, and gasps of horror filled the room. Delores Gage stood over Walter Polk’s dead body, holding a bloody straight razor.

“We’re even now, boy! My debt is washed away. I don’t owe you shit no mo’!” she hissed. Delores disappeared through the rear of the barn, never to be seen again by her son or by anyone else, for that matter.

The bartender came from around the bar with his shotgun in his hand. “See what you done, done, boy? These white folks already don’t want me open, and now I gots to explain a dead nigga in the middle of my establishment. Get your ass outta here and don’t never come back! And take this tramp with you. She might can sang, but she ain’t worth the damn trouble!”

“Lenny, we leaving, but I wanna be paid what I’m owed for singing in your place!” Juanita snarled.

“You can consider that your pay for cleaning up this boy’s mess. Now, get on outta here! Start your own goddamn juke joint and kill whosoever you want. Now, get on outta here!”

“What did that woman mean, she don’t owe you nothing else? Who is she?” Juanita asked.

“She’s my mother, and it is a very long story that I don’t want to go into tonight. Can I walk you home?”

“Yeah, that would be nice,” Juanita told him.

They walked in silence for a long while, the gravel beneath their feet crunching softly with each step. The sharp scent of woodsmoke drifted in from somewhere nearby and mingled with the earthy musk of damp soil and decaying leaves. A chorus of crickets chirped from the brush, the sound layered with the distant croaking of bullfrogs. Overhead, branches, heavy with new leaves, swayed gently, heavy, casting slow-moving shadows under the moonlight. Fireflies winked in and out near the tree line like slow, lazy sparks as they drifted just above the tall grass. Nathaniel kept his eyes fixed on the path ahead, while Juanita walked beside him, her pace slow, deliberate. Every few steps, her arm would brush against his, but neither said a word. Then Juanita reached over and took his hand in hers. She stopped, then tugged gently to turn him toward her.

“Maybe we should consider what Lenny said, Nate.”

“Consider what?” Nathaniel asked.

“Maybe we should start our own juke joint. I mean, Lenny’s is a nice place, but people complain that the band plays the same music and that Lenny waters down the drinks. All we have to do is find a place and make it our own.”

Nathaniel didn’t know how to take the things that she’d said. On one hand, he liked the fact that she used words like we and our, but on the other hand, they had just met. “All that sounds good, but where we gon’ find liquor? What we know ’bout running a bar?” he asked.

“I’ve been watching Lenny in that joint for about a year and a half. I know where he gets his liquor. I know most of the band, and my sister is the waitress. I got an auntie who cooks for the white folks, and I’m sure she’d be up for some extra money cooking for us. I can sang most nights, and when we get some real money, we can even bring in some talent, like Ethel Waters or Ma Rainey!” she said excitedly.

“Hold on now, Nita! You mighty excited for something that ain’t even happened yet. I don’t even know your last name. I don’t know how old you is or nothing.”

“My last name Mention, and I’m eighteen years old,” she told him. “Haven’t you ever been excited about things to come, Nate?”

“Okay, so we business partners now? You think when you find you a man, he gonna take kindly to you having a man as a business partner?”

“Don’t be silly, Nathaniel Gage. You gon’ be my man. So unless you gon’ be mad at yourself, then that’s a worry we won’t have,” Juanita said

“You know, I’m only fifteen years old. What a grown eighteen-year-old woman gon. . .