Lords of the Neighborhood

With ten dollars in his hand from selling a bottle of water he bought for a dollar, he felt ecstatic. The young Delawarean felt that he achieved something of heavy weight. There seemed to be an amount of time between him and his clientele. It was five minutes long. Usually, people rolled up and rolled by him and his friends. Sometimes that would get two dollars. Their selling price was three dollars. But today was different.

He clutched the note with Alexander Hamilton’s face emblazoned on the obverse and the U.S. Treasury on the reverse.

“What you got, Cosiah?” asked Martin.

“Ten dollars!”

“You splitting that with us,” Carmichael chimed.

“No, I’m not. I earned this for good customer service,” Cosiah replied proudly.

“No, you didn’t. That’s for us,” Carmichael challenged.

“If y’all had game like me, you’d pick up tips like this.”

“This isn’t about you. You’re being selfish!” Martin yelped.

“You’re goddamn right I’m being selfish. I put the work in to get this money. Y’all need to step it up.”

“What if we just take it from you?” Carmichael asked.

“You can try but in the meantime, why don’t we figure out how to get more customers?” Cosiah asked. Carmichael and Martin looked at each other and then turned to the cars coming through the neighborhood. The boys returned to the streets with ice cold plastic bottles of water.

“I’m getting twenty dollars,” Martin announced. That’s the spirit. Let’s try to top each other. Whoever gets a fifty gets all the money. Deal?”

Cosiah and Carmichael nodded their heads in agreement. Then, they put in the work.

Sweat poured from their pores as the hustled H2O. At the entrance to the neighborhood, they continued as the sun shone ever brighter like a huge firefly beaming on their bodies.

“Hi, Miss. Would you like a bottle of water?”

She looked at Carmichael and smiled. She tried to pet his head and handed him a tomato. She let the window go up in her luxury automobile. Carmichael looked at the fruit and threw it over a fence. A dog ran to it and ate it.

“Damn, Car’. You getting vegetables out here?” Martin asked.

“It’s a fruit and now I'm getting that fifty!”

Cosiah ran towards another vehicle. He approached with a businessman’s edge and keennesses. He rolled up on the car and held the ice water to the driver like an angler fishing on a dock.

Once he got up to the window, he saw that a barrel was pointed at him. The face was obscured by a black bandana and sunglasses.

“Give me all your money and your water,”

the voice echoed.

“Like hell,” Cosiah said. The ten still burned an image in his mind.

“Boy, you want to get shot?”

“You’re going to have to do so. I’ve got too much riding on this.” Cosiah ran away. The car sped off in the opposite direction as a police car approached the waterboys.

“Hey, young men.” Officer Holdings commented.

“What you’re doing is soliciting without a license. Now, you can keep your earnings but you’re going to have to stop all this business.”

“But this is our business. It is what we do. We have to continue down the route of doing the right thing. We’re not out here selling dope. We’re just trying to buy some school clothes,” Cosiah explained. “I almost got robbed. He had a green and gold SUV. That’s who you should be going after.”

“Alright. I let you finish out today, but I better not see you out here tomorrow,” Officer Holdings said. The cruiser darted back from the neighborhood.

The three of them banded.