The Innocents, Nathan Senthil [best life changing books .TXT] 📗

Now that Ryatt had defeated one enemy, his nemesis within showed up: acid reflux. Ryatt’s hand shot towards his mouth and cupped it. From his jeans pocket, he pulled out a lollipop with a yellow wrapper. He quickly removed the cover and put it in his mouth; seconds later, the heartburn subsided.

Acidity troubled Ryatt only after he had a meal, or whenever he performed activities that rattled his body, disturbing his stomach, or when he did something that pumped adrenaline into his bloodstream and raised his heartbeat. Given that he was a thug, who loved food, who ran a lot, and who also committed petty crimes for a living, he always kept a few lollipops handy.

Ryatt took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off his forehead on his sleeves. Just another day on the grind. Sighing, he went to pick up his jersey before walking home.

Chapter 5

May 18, 1981. 07:06 P.M.

Leg muscles burning, Ryatt traipsed along the remaining three-and-a-half-mile detour to his home. As his mind stopped thinking about his little stunt, it settled back into default mode.

Envy.

Ryatt had only three pairs of jeans, all peppered with tiny holes. He did not even have money to spare for a barber. So his shoulder length straggly dreadlocks weren’t the outcome of trend but inability.

He crossed another main road and cut through the city center, which was lined with a gazillion stores. Out of habit, he window-shopped items he craved to own. Nothing for himself, though. Long-term poverty had that effect on you. It numbed your desires and expectations. Gone were the days when Ryatt stood outside a shop or a restaurant and fantasized about eating tasty food or donning trendy clothes. Now all he imagined was to buy a TV or a washing machine or a refrigerator; he wanted to make his mom’s life better.

Rich folks didn’t really think about the cost of things before buying them, but people on the less fortunate side of the spectrum always did. A dirt-poor kid like Ryatt had developed a nasty quirk of attaching price tags to anything he wanted, just to remind himself he couldn’t afford it. When you saw a cheap pair of jeans or shoes, which in all probability could be knock-offs, and accepted the fact that you couldn’t even afford that shit, it kind of showed you your place in the world.

Like all desperate people, Ryatt didn’t compare himself to others. Nope. He was a man, and no responsible man acted selfish. He thought about other kids’ moms and compared Iris with them. While middle-class moms wore silk shirts, jewels, and perfumes, Iris didn’t own such fashionable apparels. Simple and functional, she had always been lower than them. Seeing his mom like that, which only became worse when she acted like nothing was wrong, agonized Ryatt. It pierced what was left of his heart and killed him.

He exited the city center, and eventually the neighborhoods transformed from good to bad and finally to worse. He let the painful change of scenery daunt him as he entered the ghetto. The buildings became shorter and shorter, the shiny glass façades replaced with cardboards, Nissans and Toyotas turned into lowriders blasting bass. The volume of trash strewn about on the streets and potholes increased, dumpsters overflowed, and strays prowled for pickings. Denizens changed too, becoming louder and more obnoxious, scantily dressed in vivid colors.

And the smell was just awful. Most people might not know, but poverty has a unique stench and low-income hoods reeked of it. An amalgamated odor of sweat, cheap rum, cigarettes, rotten meat, spoiled cabbage, and urine, both human and animal.

One could get used to it, like rats habituated to sewers, but Ryatt had long ago promised himself he would never become acclimated to poverty. He just hated it when people said we should be happy with what we are given and live in gratitude.

Well, fuck youse.

Evolution didn’t function like that. Greed, the want more attitude, was what mutated us from some gooey multicellular organism at the bottom of the ocean to a species smart enough to photograph a ringed planet one and a half billion kilometers away from the Earth. If we had been complacent, satisfied with what we had, we wouldn’t have crawled out of the darkest pits of ancient waters. So greed was good, not a sin, and even if it were, then Ryatt would gleefully compete to be the greatest sinner.

Twenty-seven minutes of revalidating his beliefs and justifying his perspective of the world later, Ryatt ambled towards a fence at the end of a cul-de-sac. It separated the tarmac from a vacant lot on the other side, which the homeless, junkies, and other garden variety bottom feeders occupied. The concrete platform of the lot was broken, and the rugged edges jutted up, greenery sprouting from the maws.

Across the lot was the back of a one-story building – the Durants’ home/business. It nestled between a poultry and an auto parts shop, where a transmission tower stood supporting dangerously low hanging power cables.

Ryatt slipped through the narrow opening in the fence, went and sat beside one of the hobos. The streetwise guy, though inebriated, sensed Ryatt’s presence, and left. Ryatt pulled his thighs up to his chest and hugged his legs, mimicking an antsy druggie.

Chin on his knees, he meticulously observed every little thing around him for fifteen minutes. Only when he was sure that he wasn’t being followed did he get up and wipe the back of his jeans. Better that no one knew where he resided.

As Ryatt crept up to the building, he spotted an old guy with half a bottle of rum in one hand, pissing against their wall. Ryatt shook his head. This was what his mom had to live with. He stepped over the broken section of the picket fence