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My hands hurt and I was breathing hard. Buster walked over and handed me a cigarette. It looked as though it had lived in his pocket for weeks. I shook my head.
“No thanks.”
“Yuh hafta. Evabody inna gang gotta smoke a Camel. It’s part o’ the ‘nitiation.”
He pulled out a Zippo lighter, clicked it open, and flicked the wheel. A guttering flame flared the wrinkled paper and dry, loose grains with a crackling sound that died as the ash dropped and the tip of the cigarette glowed. I took a quick puff, blew out the smoke, and handed the butt back to him. He laughed.
“Yuh look jus like a queer. Yuh gotta suck it in, like dis.” He put the scraggly butt between his lips. It glowed and sizzled then he inhaled deeply, held it, and blew the smoke from his nose.
It was more than half gone when he handed it back, and I wanted to just drop it and rub it out with my shoe, but I did what he did and when the smoke hit my lungs I began to cough. I was so dizzy I thought I was going to fall. After two more puffs my head felt like The Grand Canyon filling slowly with pillow down. I flipped the short butt into the scummy water of the ditch and waited. I thought the initiation was over, but I was wrong. Dead wrong.
When Buster explained what I had to do next, I looked up. I could see the cross bars of the walkway outlined against a clear blue sky and I swallowed hard. My throat was dry and I could feel the slow onset of panic. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go and no one was going to help me. Still reeling from the nicotine, I climbed up to where the support column joined a crossbeam of the bridge. I looked down, but the height made me queasy so I focused on the cross bars of the walkway that were spaced about two and a half feet apart but seemed to grow shorter as they narrowed toward the other side of the bridge. It looked like miles but it was only eighty feet or so, and I knew I was strong enough to make it across. But that knowledge melted in a sudden thrill of fear. If I fell, I could break a leg, or my back. I could even die. My heart was racing and I could barely breathe. My hands felt cold and I wanted to climb back down, but something stubborn, something I recognized as pride mixed with anger, kept me up there, teetering on the brink of reckless abandon. If those little creeps could do it, so could I.
Libros Libertad 