I ain’t in a killing mood this morning. So I tiptoe carefully—as much as one can—in my brown leather, steel-toe boots, mindful not to smash any of the slimy, tender bodies beneath my soles. I’m looking out for the little homies gently slithering or resting peacefully still on the rain-sheeted asphalt. Some earthworms briefly raise their heads toward the shivering stars in an effort to either consider my presence or to breathe, because—I bet you didn’t know, my dude—when it rains and the soil floods, the oxygen available for earthworms becomes scarce, triggering the air-thirsty annelids to travel out of the darkness and mop up oxygen via the dregs of rain through nanoscopic pores, and, while they are at it, tan under the dampened moon. “Breathe, dawg,” I declare to one hand-length worm. Because I want everyone and everything I love to breathe. Because I have been on some mindfulness shit lately. Because the voice of Alonzo from Training Day pours into my ears as, in the scene, he regards Roger—a supposed drug dealer—who fights to breathe after being walloped with a shotgun blast to the chest. This, after his team of undercovers chainsaw through Roger’s kitchen floor and shovel their way through the earth to a trunk loaded with four million dollars. What is perhaps alarming about this scene is I was made to believe that Roger was, at one point, Alonzo’s friend. I think about what it means to bury what we value most. What it means to consider the soil as a place to hide things from the world. And I wonder what it feels like to be the worms at my feet, combating suffocation as the ground locks up with water. I wonder, my fleshy little friends, if my footsteps feel like gunshots vibrating into your skin because, from my tenure in the army, I know how the marching of boots can echo a violent artillery. I swear Friday is always on television these days and twice I’ve tuned in at the moment Big Worm hydraulically lowers his Chevy Impala to the ground, presenting to the viewer his license plate which spells out his name. How fitting, I think, since earthworms, much like Big Worm’s old school, traverse the underworld via hydraulics; liquids circulating under pressure, as each segment of the worm is flushed with coelomic fluid. And when Big Worm relocates the heat to his lap, I instinctively hold my breath. My eyes move from his perm—an assortment of hair rollers adorning his crown under the bright Compton sun—to his beretta. “I don’t want to have to fuck you up, Smokey,” he says, mugging a worried Chris Tucker, who, seconds before, demonstrated a bout of twitches excited from the effects of smoking Big Worm’s chronic. A sad sight to be honest, bruh. This is yet another reminder how both Black hope and Black trust are incredibly fragile, once again illuminating the frailty of my culture’s survival. I cringe as Smokey, who leans on Worm’s salmon Chevy, resorts to pleading and lying that he hasn’t been chiefing on the same weed he’s supposed to be selling—he, like myself years ago, can’t see his own way out. Burning his hope away. Big Worm, then, spits his famous maxim: “Playing with my money is like playing with my emotions.” And, reader, bruh, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repeated this line—as a joke, of course—anytime I lent a friend—on the extremely rare occasions when I was in the possession of money—some change. Meaning I once lacked trust—and sometimes still do—in my own people. If only I had spat a rendition of Worm’s proverb to the grimy used-car dealer, whose yellow-crusted teeth—no bullshit—rivaled the sun, before being nearly forced into financing $18,000 for a used 2006 Chevy Malibu SS—the latter initials my friend once deemed stood for “SpaceShip.” While cruising through Mississippi, on my way to rekindle a long-distance love, the engine of my Chevy threw a rod, the steering wheel seized up, and I broke down on the side of the road, along with—you guessed it—the love. Because it was a metaphor, yo. Because things break down on account of neglect. But there is a seemingly happy ending, if I can call it that, because shortly after, I’d sell the shell of my “SpaceShip” for $500 to a Black mechanic who gave it to his daughter as a high school graduation present. Shoutout to her. Shoutout to all the cars that have been driven into the ground for the sake of love. I watch worms slowly slip back into the earth and think about Lloyd, from Dumb and Dumber, trading in the Mutt Cutts Van for a crotch rocket on a cross-country road trip to return Mary’s suitcase, the woman with whom he is infatuated. I still can’t get over him securing the head of his parakeet Petie with a ribbon of duct tape then selling the once-headless bird to Blind Billy for gas money. Leaving behind their worm farm. Leaving behind the idea of opening a pet store called “I Got Worms.” Pour one out for Blind Billy, real quick. And for the pretty bird he’ll never see fly. Though, be mindful of the earthworms who have inhabited the worlds beneath our feet for 500 million years. Earthworms, it is said, are blind. However, according to an experiment executed by biologists at the University of Michigan, it has been determined that while they “lack the specialized light-sensing organs we call eyes,” worms are able to see light. Equipped with special cells which react to illumination, the worm understands when it nears the surface and, more threateningly, sunlight, as overexposure can prove to be fatal. Dennis Rodman, whose nickname is “Worm,” given to him by his mother after his wiggling actions while playing pinball, once tried to commit suicide in a Detroit strip club. For reasons unknown. But, what I imagine, could have stemmed from the pressures that come with being Black, eccentric, and forever in the swallowing light of a camera. The late Craig Sager, a respected sports commentator, happened to be in attendance and supposedly talked Rodman out of taking his own life. The origin of Friday’s Big Worm—which hit theaters in 1995, the same year that Rodman was traded to the Chicago Bulls—still remains a mystery. I wonder if Faizon Love, the actor who portrayed Big Worm, who, according to an interview, swaggered into the audition under the guise of Big Worm and was only paid $2,500 to play the iconic role, had possibly studied J.R.R Tolkien. Perhaps Love’s inspiration came from Glaurung, a dragon which Tolkien deemed The Great Worm, and whose name in Sindarin, the language of the Grey Elves, means “Gold Worm.” The homie Glaurung was the first terrestrial, fire-breathing dragon and is considered the father of those mythical beasts. In Tolkien’s illustration, a dragon-headed creature creeps out of a hole in the earth, its tail seems to go on forever into the soil, flames spewing from its mouth, and I think about the fire spitting from the Desert Eagle and Mac 10, Uzi in the hands of Big Worm’s goons. Bullets flying over Craig and Smokey’s heads. And I too have felt the exhales of live rounds over my head, while low-crawling during a night range in basic training, dragging myself through the dirt to a finish line I couldn’t see. My prayers go out to the worms in that field. If in fact there are any left to listen to the storms of ordinance breaking into their dwellings, their homes. What I am interested in here is how we all find ways to crawl out of the dark places and steer ourselves toward light. Where we can nourish our lungs. What it means, reader, to desperately claw at the illusion of hope. Once, my friend Mickey, whose father was the most vicious football coach I’d ever known, and, who eerily resembled Faizon Love, claimed he could turn eight balls of cocaine. He then proceeded to ask me if I had ever done something like that and, when I said I had not, he chuckled. As if pushing narcotics was considered some celebratory achievement. As if being Black and never indulging in such shadowy work was seen as an anomaly, even comical. Mickey, who saw himself as a young kingpin, asked me to make a beat for his mixtape. He wanted me to sample Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman.” And as I added 808s behind Mayfield’s silky and seemingly delicate voice, along with the bass notes trailing behind the composition’s percussion, it is safe to say that I was not thinking about the meaning of aligning oneself with a position or title which elicits respect and fear, and who grants one access to briefly taste a short-lived sublime. I was ignorant of the spectacle of Black appearance when Mickey, for his mixtape cover, stopped a random girl in the hallway of our high school to snap pictures. I held her close like she was my mother, staring into the camera. Her hair smelled like the earth after it rains. The Pusha Man, for those who are not familiar, is an occupation most synonymous to the earthworm; the two carry out their business underground, away from public scrutiny. Ascending to the surface under the cover of darkness. It’s an underground world I once knew so well. And I would be lying, bruh, if I said I did not miss the thrill of living in a constant state of danger. Because there is an aliveness one feels when you’re skating on the edge of your own death. Oh, how I miss the threatened comfort and refuge of my homie’s traphouse, the night drives on dirt roads leading to the stash at his parent’s trailer in the country. This is a world directly beneath your feet, reader. The foundation of my existence. And, recently, I read how soil is the foundation of life. Consider the white kids in the field of my daycare stealing life from that foundation, forging and eating earthworms. How I would cringe while the little helpless things dangled above open mouths. “Eat one,” they ordered. I refused and instead held one gently in my palm, feeling it pull its body across my skin, exploring the world of my hand. I grapple with the motivation to consume the mysterious. Why must we ravage the powerless? I pondered this thought the next morning on campus when I saw a robin posted up in the grass. Its orange breast beaming, the silver specks dazzling around its eye. Hanging deceased from its beak was one of my dawgs from the underground. The price we all pay to breathe. Eye to eye with the robin, I think: Damn, bruh, I guess we all out here trying to eat.
Evan J. Massey is an African American, US Army veteran who served his country in Afghanistan. Evan’s creative stuff can be found or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Normal School, Hunger Mountain, Bat City Review, Pinch, and various others. He teaches creative writing at Eastern Kentucky University. More of his work can be found at evanjmassey.com.
Photo credit: Milan