1979. Summer in Los Angeles. No place for us to be but in the house until Mama or Grandma got off work.

The house could not contain us.

We prepared for war on a Monday, making mud rocks in our backyard. We used Grandma's shovel. Her collard green garden shovel. She used that shovel often. So did we. Red rusty blade head, with a long thick dusty-gray wooden handle, liable to give us splinters. Gave Grandma callouses long ago in Mississippi. Gave my ‘lil brother and me something to do in LA. We worked that shovel, taking turns cause it was fun. Turn a chunk of dirt over in its own hole. Chop it up good.

Chhh, chhhh, chhhh was the sound of a future meal.

Chhh, chhhh, chhhh, was the sound of future war with Chris and his cousins next door. Put hose water in that hole. Not a whole lot, just enough to make the dirt soft, soften it up, mix that water with earth like butter in grits, salt, and pepper. Get on hands and knees and stick happy hands in liquid earth. Let her ooze between fingers at molten lava pace. Stare at the flow. Feel it drip off our elbows, warm from warm earth, warm from sunbathed stagnant water still in the hose from the last time Grandma watered her collard green garden.

"It's still too soupy.”

"Add more dirt.”

Smiles all around earth's cauldron. Me. My little brother Cory, and Devin from across the street. Not a care in the world 'till Mama gets home from working at the post office, not a care in the world until Grandma gets home from cleaning rich white folk Hollywood hill homes overlooking three pairs of black hands in the city, diggin’ it, three distinct voices, talking about no thing and every thing, without the bass of puberty, without the primordial yearn for female bodies. Our bodies lean, full of potential, full of energy, body tissue regenerates so fast, so fast, fascinated when we scab up, peel off a piece, eat a piece of our indestructible selves.

And that's how we need to be, indestructible, for the mud rock war against Chris and his cousins, our neighbors on the north side of the 1000 foot high dusty vine-covered, spider- infested chain-linked fence that separated our house from the transient compound Chris and his cousins called home; a small collection of one story, one bed'er apartments, more like motel rooms, more like upscale shanties on the other side of the vined, dusty border that separated our warring camps.

Me, my 'lil brother Cory and Devin get off task from war preparations. Laughing. Sling mud at each other. Can't help ourselves. Freedom. Get dirty all we like. Clothes filthy. An ass whupping is on the horizon for sure though, punching that post office time clock; or locking up that kazillion dollar Hollywood home, merging into L.A. Traffic. Headed back home. Stuck in a sea of metal. Another day, another . . .

…batch of mud rocks completed. Perfect. We laid out the mud rock spheres on top of two dented metal trashcan lids.

"We need more.”

Spot of orange sun vigilant in L.A. sky. Young black hands mold dark mother into miniature replicas of herself for war. It's city dirt so there's no telling what's in her; an RC cola bottle cap, shards of glass, chunks of gravel.

"Don't take those out! Leave 'em in.”

Something solid within, like bottle caps, glass, and gravel, makes the dirt rocks crack and explode on impact, spewing dust like blood mist in the air for maximum visual effect, shock and awe.

War was Devin's idea. Chris and his cousins made fun of Devin when Devin and his mother were in the long government cheese line outside of Holy Baptist Church of Christ. Mama says that government cheese makes you lazy, said it was a staple of the King Alfred Plan and COINTELPRO menus, said it was Eden's apple, Adam's excuse, split one into two, the whole now separated, but we don't care who likes who.

We just like war.

Any war.

War games take patience and planning and set up. Make mud rocks on Monday, let them dry on Tuesday and Wednesday, for war on Thursday. War. Patience and planning. We keep shaping and molding and patting and making mud rocks as round as we can and then we hide them and then we find other stuff to get into. Devin climbs the apple tree that's in the corner of our yard next to the 1000 foot high border and when he comes down he says he saw Chris and his cousins collecting rocks, real rocks, nuclear option rocks from the railroad tracks.

Devin said he knew where they hid their rocks. Said he'd sneak over there at night, at NIGHT! to steal some of Chris's rocks but me and my little brother know that Devin won’t do that 'cause Devin's father didn't have to tell Devin twice to be inside the house before the street lights came on. But me and my 'lil brother grin, show teeth, and tell Devin "that's a good plan” 'cause anything related to war is supposed to be good and fun.

Fun!

Fun! like Saturday mornings eating bowls of cornflakes mixed with Captain Crunch and ten scoops of white sugar and white milk and watching black and white war movie marathons on Channel 13. Fun! My 'lil brother and I tackle each other during commercial breaks for no reason. We weren't allowed to play Cowboy and Indians 'cause Grandma told us there ain't no need to play a game where you already know the ultimate ending. She threw our paper cowboy hats in the trash and told us if she ever heard us imitating Indian war cries again she'd make one of us go to the 1000 foot high vined border wall, said she'd make one of us pull off four vines, said she'd braid those four vines together to make one long braided vine and said she'd give us something to hoop and holler about and then she showed us pictures of our great-great grandmother, high cheek bones, coal black skin, jet black, Choctaw Native American hair and my 'lil brother and I nodded our heads like we knew what we were looking at . . . but we didn't know what we were looking at . . . but we did know that Grandma knew how to use braided vines on soft behinds.

On Tuesday we did something stupid because of Christmas. Hours after Grandma's 1965 Dodge Dart made that left on Imperial Highway headed toward the 110 freeway northbound to Hollywood. Hours after Mama's 1978 Volkswagen Super Beetle made that left on Imperial Highway headed toward the 405 North, my 'lil brother Cory and I woke from war dreams. It felt like Christmas morning, coming outside seeing our mud rocks, ready. Underneath the hot Los Angeles summer sun, our mud rocks had dried faster than anticipated.

Ready! Gods we were! Holding pieces of nature we'd shaped into war weapons, ready to go, and just like Christmas we had to play with our new toys right then and there. We hid behind bushes, testing our mud rocks on passing buses, people and cars, BOOM! until our stockpile of ammunition was depleted. Sometimes wars don't go as planned.

Tuesday night, Mama and Grandma sat at the kitchen table and watched Jimmy Carter, the peanut president, on television. Grandma folded her arms and said there's no way in hell that America would put a bad actor like Ronald Reagan in the White House, America is crazy, but not that crazy. It would never happen. Nope. Never. Mama sucked her teeth, shook her head, and laughed. Mama read lots of stuff that came through the post office and Mama said that the peanut president "ain't got a chance in hell of getting re-elected ‘cause the peanut president don't like war” and I stood near the table and instantly hated the peanut president because the peanut president hated war and then my 'lil brother kicked me on the thigh while Mama and Grandma weren't looking and he ran in the bedroom and closed the door and I held my breath, fought the pain, rubbed my thigh, blood beneath the skin, spreading, purple. But I couldn't stop staring into the peanut president’s sad eyes in front of all those microphones talking about how the energy crisis was real, how it  was worldwide, how it was a clear and present danger to our nation and I watched his lips move and I thought about the 1000 foot border and mud rocks and because I liked war I asked Mama what military industrial complex meant and Mama turned from the television, leaned back in her chair, looked into my eyes, calculating the consequences of Truth and then Mama said, "It's in charge of war, imperialism, world capitalism, and domination, now go to bed.” She kissed me on the cheek and I ran into the bedroom and tackled Cory while he was drawing stick figures on the bedroom wall. I locked both of my hands around Cory's eight-year-old throat, so easy to turn his giggling into anger, so easy to watch him thrash about, bypass his kicking, put my full weight on top of my ‘lil brother, pinning him down, so easy to watch anger turn to fear, fear, the result of breathlessness, tighter, tighter.

I let go of my brother's throat when he started to cry 'cause, Mama don't make us get vines, Mama grabs whatever's nearby, extension cords, belts, whatever's around to whup our behinds when behinds act like they don't know no better, so I stopped choking Cory, I shushed him, I whispered I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and then we found some flashlights, turned off the lights, lay in bed and shined the flashlights upward, making our circles of light fight each other on our celestial ceiling.

I let Cory win.