I Woke Up In New York City!

So I have been writing about Kevin in pretty much a straight line, his misadventures in Butler Alabama and New Orleans. I got bored with the straight line so I am going to take Kevin everywhere. Hold on for the ride.
Please don't fear that comment section I NEED you to help me maximize my craft. I want to entertain you, and only YOU can tell me,how to best do that.
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Without further ado. 
  
Kevin had been in New York for nearly 5 months.

In that time, he had been through a lot. 
Kevin had no idea what he was thinking when he left New Orleans. It had been a rough and tumble few months. Kevin, had basically been abandoned by the person who had brought him here. His bank account was inaccessible and the meager $150 he had come to the city with, was long gone.
Kevin, was seething and hungry by the time he had been forced to call his dad for help.
“Family!”
Kevin thought, as he waited for his uncle.

Uncle Billy?

He had never heard of his grandfather's brother.
He barely knew his dad's father.
“I was comfortable as FUCK! What the fuck was I thinking!”
Kevin’s internal battle was evident in the way that he stomped up and down 145th St. and Hamilton Terrace.

The small side street was nestled between Amsterdam and Saint Nick. 

He had been staying in an apartment there.
The power had finally gone off. The gas had been sporadic since he had arrived, and Kevin had been sleeping in the BDU’S from his High school ROTC.
He was unbelievably fortunate, that when his uncle had abandoned the apartment to check into Rehab, he had at least left a mink blanket.
That blanket was the warmest thing Kevin had ever encountered.
He had Quilts that his mother had made for him, which were awesome, however they paled beside that blanket.

Kevin wished he had that blanket around him right now.
It was EXTRA cold and the snow hadn't even started falling yet.
Kevin had on his full battle dress uniform, and an army great coat atop his long John underwear.
He was still shivering.
His stubbornness had cost him this time, to the tune of 28 lbs. and malnutrition wasn't far away.
He could have asked for a ticket back to  New Orleans, but Kevin, being Kevin, would not lose.

 So he paced, looking for a relative he'd never met, a relative he'd never even heard of, before today.
He had went to the phone booth to page his cousin Boris again.
A waste of a now very precious quarter.
Kevin’s handsome face was lined. His pride severely injured.

He had always been able to work hard enough to get ahead.
He had left New Orleans after a week long bender.

After his long lost cousin had come to the house he had worked hard to restore in New Orleans, Kevin had consumed enough alcohol to fill a small swimming pool.
He had smoked a LOT of marijuana.

Thinking about it now he wondered at his own behavior. When had he become so foolish? Had he totally lost his mind? 

“What kind of what drugs, did I  really do?”

Kevin had every right to beat himself up. 

Actually maybe keeping his hands to himself was a better ideal.
“Ahhh,!” Kevin screamed aloud oblivious to the people walking by him on the street.
Kevin didn't care how he looked, yelling and pulling the two long braids that shone like hot black oil shot through with premature grey.
He had fought with his mid-shoulder length mane for hours the night before to achieve the simple style.
The building manager had informed him, that despite his assertions that his uncle had given him, his permission to stay there,  Kevin had to leave.
Plus, Kevin was penniless for the first time in his recent memory.
“What did I do to deserve this God?”

Kevin fought the tears that threatened to leak from his brownish golden eyes, fought like a mother bear.
A car horn abruptly honked behind him.

 “Hey is you Kevin?"

Then as he turned to face the man. "You sho is, Boy you look just like Kevin Sr. Get on in year!”
It was a warm country voice, rich and melodic the voice sounded like blackberries, and honeysuckle, like Kudzu, and red mud, it sounded like home.
Kevin realized that he was in NYC, he had gotten his dream, and he was thinking of Butler Alabama as home.
He spoke to the man on the passenger side of the newer Bronco.
“How you doing are you Uncle Billy? “
The man speaking had the largest chin, Kevin had ever seen, and the biggest laugh he'd ever heard.
“Oh hell no I ain't that Damn ugly I'm Walt, Willie is driving we are a long way from where we should be. C'mon get your lanky ass on in here.”
The older man hopped out of the front seat and into the back, Kevin protested momentarily, but he knew that he was much too tall to fit in the backseat. “Maybe you needed a um update sir. I am your Big great-nephew.”
Kevin attempted to get the dynamic together with the joke.
Kevin wanted to (1)Break the ice and (2) get a feel for this unknown relative.
His uncle wasted no time in letting Kevin know who he was.
“Listen, I ain't sign up to babysit some stupid kid. Your dad said that you was the most mature young man I could hope to meet. Are you?”
Kevin wasn’t sure that he liked this uncle.

People, just didn’t get to talk to him like that.
He had earned the respect of his peers, and his elders, from the time he was a very young teen.
Kevin gritted his teeth so hard they hurt.

He looked over at his uncle and said, 

“Yeah, I ain't no kid. I’m grown as fuck. I just needed to get away from a bad situation. I don't like needing help. And if you going to rub the shit in, you can stop this motherfucker right the fuck NOW!” Kevin had kept his tone even, in deference to this man who resembled his grandfather, the face which resembled his own split into a beatific smile.
“Good. Now we know you can get mad. Are you mad enough to make something happen?”
Kevin, whispered the affirmative through still gritted teeth while nodding the same. “Ight, well i’m betting that you are pretty hungry. Let’s feed you. Then I’m gonna show you where you’ll be staying.”
Kevin looked out the window as they sped in and out of the crowded city streets.
He had been driving in the city of New Orleans for a little over a year, but he still marveled at the level of maneuvering that was required to navigate traffic in NYC.

His uncle appeared adept at it. 
As they neared the Borough of Queens Kevin’s great-uncle started explaining life in New York to his ignorant relative. 

“I don’t care how charming you were before you got to New York son, that shit ain’t gonna fly up here, You can’t be running around up here showing everybody your teeth. Them jokes, save that shit. You were down the street from the Apollo when I picked you up if you were going to tell jokes that’s where you should have done it.”
Kevin was soaking it up.

His uncle Billy’s delivery might be lacking but here was someone who had moved to New York from Alabama and made it.
While Kevin might have agreed to come here in a drunken and drug induced fog, and on the world's stupidest dare, he was determined that he was going to be a success.
He hadn’t failed yet, and he was determined that he wouldn’t now.
The diner that his Uncle, who insisted on being called just Will, no uncle, no William, no Mr. Billy, not even Billy just Will, was a touch of down south in the city that never sleeps.
After the first good meal he had eaten in over 4 months, Kevin was excited about seeing this place that his uncle was talking about.
It rested on the corner of 191st and Linden Blvd.

There was a lot with two trailers in it, the lot was fenced in with one side facing the corner and the other was parallel to an alley.
The alley was beside a building that bore the sign “On the Money Deli” and it was into that building that the three men walked.
Will, produced an enormous ring of keys and quickly located the one that would unlock the building’s store front’s back door.
The door was nearly invisible, painted the same black as the bricks on the two story building.
Right beside the black door was another brighter door, complete with a screen and emblazoned apartment number.
Once they were inside, Will laid out his plans for his nephew.

He would contact one of Kevin's many cousin’s, his nephew, and see if he could pull some strings for a job.
They would begin by building a wall across the back of the deli where the bathroom was to make an "apartment"
Before they began measuring and drawing up plans in earnest, Will sent his friend Walter to the store, with instructions to get “The boy” some stuff to get through the day.
Once the large man had lumbered off, Will turned to face his nephew.
“Look I don't know you, I don't really know your Dad that well. My brother is my brother, but I don’t like him. I heard your mom's people let You down. You seem like a good kid and I am going to make sure you're okay. But I need you to get some attitude about yourself or these sharks will eat you out here.”
Will turned over a decade old five gallon bucket for himself and stacked up some abandoned Pepsi racks, to form a small bench, which he indicated that Kevin should occupy.
He sat down and pulled a large bag of marijuana from his sock.
He held the bag and a package of rolling paper in Kevin's direction with a questioning look.
Kevin took the stoner tools, sat and began constructing a lopsided monstrosity.
Walter returned from the store with a six pack of beer, a package of cigarettes and a folding chair that had obviously been in the Bronco.
The three men, two in their early retirement years and one barely legal, popped their beer cans and smoked the misshapen joint.
They sat against the back wall of the store Will had ran for years.
The metal overhead door had been peppered with bullets at some point and the glass behind it shattered. The paint from multiple coats of graffiti had spilled to the inside of the bullet holes, leaving trails in rainbow colors.
The trio talked, Kevin cautiously so, gauging his uncle's, and his uncle's friend's reactions as they devised plans and Kevin listened to stories of the two retirees from their working days.
As he reached into the bag for another beer, Kevin saw a twenty dollar bill and Mr. Walter nodded slightly in answer to his glance around.
After another horribly rolled joint that Kevin lit with a smooth flick of his Zippo lighter, Kevin's uncle, decided that he liked “the boy”, and promised to be back in an hour or two with a bed, some towels, a portable shower hose, and a radio.
He assured Kevin that in the morning he and Walt would be back to turn the store into an apartment.
Will came back to the empty former deli with all of the stuff he had said that he would and more.
Will was conflicted on the one hand he didn't want the kid to struggle.
He wanted to take him out to his Long Island home and make sure he was okay.

William Delaney was old school, and self-made.
He knew that diamonds are only formed by pressure, to that end, Will carried the stuff in through the sliding metal door.
He came back to the empty former deli to find his nephew doing push-ups and supplied Kevin with a twin sized bed.
Will handed Kevin a hammer and two hooks as well as a bunch of rope. He settled onto the Pepsi bench, and rolled up an expert joint.
“So look I still want to make money from the store front. So decide how much room you need, and that's where we'll build a wall. Sound fair? Or do you want to remodel one of those trailers?”
Kevin accepted the marijuana cigarette from his great-uncle inhaled deeply and said. “I don't want to be farther in your debt. I reckon I can remodel one of the trailers once I start making money.”
He hung up the hooks and the rope where he wanted the wall to be.
Before he left Will helped Kevin string up a tarpaulin separating the would be apartment from the bullet hole infested metal door.
Kevin could clearly hear all the street sounds through his tarp.
Sirens and laughter, cars driving past, he even heard what probably was a fight right in front of the locked screen.
He was glad his trusty.38 was beneath him within reach.
The heater his great-uncle had left was doing it's job, and he curled into the fetal position beneath the borrowed mink blanket and the much too small bed.

Despite the change of venue it reminded him of the first night he had spent in his house in Alabama.
Kevin knew that just like then he would make it, he would survive and prevail.