Alan, the Champion — Chapter 10 — The Green Hair
In a meeting with his subcommanders, a second kid enters the conversation.
Before he was King, he was cannon fodder, a convict, a killer. At thirteen, he ran grown men.
A week later I was in a meeting with all my lieutenants from the neighborhood.
We were dealing with a pain in the ass. Some cops — the kind we paid to look the other way — had decided the price of turning their heads had gone up.
That's more dangerous than it looks. You let one guy raise his price just because he felt like it, the next month all the others raise theirs too, and then there's no cash box that can hold. We were going to need a show of force. Something to make those guys understand the payment was fair and was going to stay fair.
In the middle of that, a guy walks into the room and calls me.
— There's a kid downstairs looking for you. By name.
I went out in a bad mood. It was an important meeting.
Downstairs there was a kid the same age as last week's. Only this one was Black — Black like me — with real white teeth, and hair dyed green so badly it was a crime.
And he was looking for me. By my name.
I didn't get where these kids were coming from. Or how this one had managed to climb the whole Hill without anybody stopping him.
— What's up — I said. — That's me.
He broke into a grin as big as his face.
— Oh, cool. So you're Alan.
And he jumped right in trying to punch me in the face. A goofy kind of jump, telegraphed, the move of somebody who saw it in a fight once and never did it.
He took a kick to the stomach and went backwards. Laughed from the ground, sitting there, one hand on his belly.
— Whoa. — He looked up at me, still laughing. — So you really are the champ, huh? The one they talk about. — He got up pointing his finger at me like he'd snapped a picture. — I'm gonna call you Champ.
The name stuck. Years later those two still use it — main story, ch. 3.
Until that day nobody had called me that. It was a seven-year-old kid, sitting on the ground, with my footprint on his stomach, who gave me the name the rest of Marélia was going to use forever.
I didn't understand a thing about my own life anymore.