The bank robbers

Fiction based on real things like robberies that do still happen

We wanted to get money. But not the way that everyone else does. Not by working for white people in any shape or fashion. We were fed it was our jobs to serve them for years. Teachers, parents, and everyone in society told us you need to serve them. Our neighborhood is segregated even though we don’t think of it that way. It’s just our neighborhood. We only leave it when it comes time to work for some crackers in the suburbs or the wealthier parts of the city. Some of the brothas on the corner tell us that we need to start businesses or go to socialist meetings or read Garvey or vote for the Democrats or join a union. All of that shit is stupid. Malcolm and Martin are both dead. What use do either of them have for us? We need to get it on our own. It starts with small steps. We get guns. We practice with the guns on the days we aren’t working for the white people. We imagine murdering them as we deliver packages, serve food, run the trolleys, deliver more packages, sell drugs to our own people, sort packages at a warehouse, drive people to the airport, and countless other tasks that suggest to us over and over that our lives are meaningless and not our own. Despite all of our work, we don’t make much money. So we get masks and gloves. We plan together in our basements, parks, abandoned lots and within the privacy of our rooms. Some of us get scared and chicken out. We aren’t willing to face prison time. We have children, responsibilities and hope about the future. But that’s not us. We just want money. We don’t want to live the existence we have now. We dream of leaving our neighborhood and getting a nice house somewhere in California. We can sit by the beach like the Black people on television. We don’t feel stuck. Even if some white people stare at us, we’ll have money so it doesn’t matter. We have to find a car that can’t be traced. We end up talking to one of our cousins or friends about it. He hooks us up with a boosted one. We’re only gonna use it once. We’ll get the cash, we’ll get out. Get the nice house in California. We won’t talk to each other ever again. The day finally comes. We go to the bank. We’ve staked out the targets correctly. It doesn’t end up being a lot of money, but that’s okay. We get enough. Unfortunately we are shot in the leg by a brave security guard. We manage to get out of the neighborhood. We have to split up. We end up in prison. We also disappear. The police don’t know where to look for us. We are probably just stuck in another neighborhood just like our old one. But in the instant when we took the cash and fled out the door, we felt like everything was possible

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