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Showing posts from April, 2019

Excerpt 2: The Heart of a Champion

TROY “Nigga you cheatin like a mothafucka. Hell nah, we ain't doin that,” Nino my cousin shouted. I was back in my neck of the woods where I grew up, Godby Road, right in College Park, Ga. My aunt threw a cookout just because that’s what she did when her stamps came in every month. She invited her nearby relatives and though I wasn’t there frequently, I made sure to show my face a few times out the year. According to my family, it isn’t a real cookout without a game of spades going. Looking around there was four games of Spades moving along and the other people in the neighborhood were in the driveway shooting dice, betting money. Nino, leaned over the square table, searching a deck of cards, “Yeah, nigga, this right here. You reneged. Ain’t nobody stupid.” Everyone at the table started fussing and I shifted gear towards my homeboy Nathan who was counting money, hundred dollar bills to be exact.  “Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, t