𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬: 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐄𝐊𝐇𝐈

22. | F I R E W O R K S

C H A P T E R | TWENTY-TWO
FIREWORKS

New York City,
July 4th, 2004

***

"I'm surprised to see you Carter," Joy, Midknight's wife said to Carter as she cleared out the plates set on the table for she, Carter, and Midknight, "I thought for sure you'd be out with the other boys shooting fireworks," she looked out the window, hearing the laughter of children out in the summer from the streets.

Midknight usually kept Joy confined to upstate New York where their main home was but for the holiday Joy decided that she wanted to spend some time with friends and Midknight in the city and because of all the hell Midknight had been putting her through with his other women and secluding her the way he did, he agreed to let her have her way.

If Carter didn't know anything else about Joy and Midknight's strained marriage he knew that Joy was a good woman and Midknight was a lucky man. Regardless of what went down, Joy was always there holding him down, sticking by him like Midknight told Carter a good, down ass, real woman should.

If shit hitting the fan made her hit the bricks faster than a d-boy dropping his product in the middle of a sale when he saw the blue lights, then she wasn't about shit and she wasn't a down ass bitch - - only wifey could be this, Midknight lectured. According to him, there was just certain shit that the wife of a man in his position had to put up with - - the nature of the beast.

"Well I was but," young boyish Carter shrugged his shoulders and wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin that his silverware was once wrapped in, "Midknight thought it would be best if we kicked it on fourth of July instead," Carter said, "So you know."

"Mhmm," Joy smiled and rubbed Carter's short black curly hair, "Well you know you're still a kid - - I think it'd be nice if you had a little more fun every now and then, huh?" Midknight quietly cut into his steak and lifted the piece to his mouth, "Instead of hanging out with this old man," she laughed and poured him more wine in his glass and poured Carter lemonade. Carter couldn't help but share the laugh while he reached for another one of Joy's homemade rolls that melted like the butter atop their browned crust, in his mouth.

"What's out there," Midknight's deep voice said as he took a sip of his wine, "For youngins like Carter but problems," he tried getting steak out of his teeth with his tongue as he talked, "A bunch of them getting together is a national emergency. These kids don't have structure, Joy."

"Well I should know about structure," Joy said as she walked into the kitchen of their city loft, "The kids my sister teaches at her school," she looked up from the sink every now and then as she cleaned dishes, "They're more worried about making their next drug sale than learning how to read," she took a sip of her wine and kept cleaning, "I just feel so bad for these children. I hate it that children have forgotten how to be children - - how to have fun and worry about things other than if they'll die because they went to school. All this violence, all these guns in school - - it's just, it's horrible. My heart feels for our children, especially the kids in this city."

"That's why I'm teaching Carter what I'm teaching him," he said, "That's just the point."

"What do you mean?" Joy said as she walked back in the dining room, "What's the point?"

Midknight surrendered his plate to Joy to wash and wiped his mouth, "That he can't be a kid in today's society. It's best for him to disassociate himself from the common niggas with their common nigga problems and he's above that common nigga shit," Midknight stood from his chair and on his way past Carter he grabbed Carter's shoulder, "This one here's special," he said to both Carter and Joy, "Youngblood is gonna be a great man in this city someday. I prophesize that."