the guns of my brother.

Oakland grew up knowing say in and day out he was a mistake. His mother was living in some subsidized apartment complex around the outer boundaries of Detroit. I guess she fell for the charms of a door to door cleaning service salesman. not a very smart broad, already has a kid. Now to tell you the brilliant heritage of OK, you gotta understand his mother's last name: Shetland. So names her first son, from an unknown African-American: Shep. Shep Shetland. Kid knows he's shit from day one.

So, woman living in government housing, no job, black kid from unknown father, and now pregnant from a man who sells cleaning products to poor people. She puts Oakland, whom she names Eddie, up for adoption immediately after birth. An old Germanic couple take him, as they were unable to have children of their own. Oddly enough, not named Kalinski. Apparently a pseudonym he made for himself. Last name: Schtuck.

Shep Shetland and Eddie Schtuck. Moron brothers, opposite sides of town, heading for the same place. Eddie is a delinquent, often filing false reports to the police about his adopted parents. Hangs out in a movie theater down the street, sneaking into any showing he can. Kid loves movies. Maybe with a better sense of direction and a little less stupid he could have been something. One of pals who works at the Bureau division up in the U.P. says that in some storage shed they find old packs of baseball cards and home movies made by the kid. Some real auteur stuff. Artsy shit. Indie gold. Unbelievable.

Anyway, kid starts shoplifting, paying hobos to get him beer, ya know, everything you see in any troubled poor kid story. Shep, meanwhile, is doing everything he can to keep his mother alive. She's into heavy drugs, doing god knows what, and who, to pay for 'em. Kid's working at age 12 to pay bills, etc. He's working real hard and the bitch dies on him. Finds out he has a half brother in town and heads to the adoption agency to find out anything he can about him. Turns out they won't give out private information to pre-pubes, so the kid lets this mystery live on for about 7, 8 more years as he gets tossed around foster home after foster home. Gets molested by one of his foster fathers, still a whiny bitch about it. Whatever, action's action, kid. But he ends up running off and finds some relief in his mother's downfall.

Cops pick up this new kid and hauls him off to juvi. Meets Eddie, somehow figures out they're brothers, but keeps it secret and starts following Eddie wherever he went protecting him from his own dumbass self. Eddie is beginning to get into some bigger small time hustling. Western Union scams, stealing scratch offs, stealing radios. Lock you up shit. Eddie follows him to some bar one night and confronts him. Eddie's amazed and has his brother help him try to smuggle a truck full of defective guns to Florida. Of course the police catch them, but since the guns are broken and dissassembled there is no real law broken and they go free. Eddie gets the idea to weld these broken up pieces back together and sell them as the real thing at a huge discount. This is the first of a large series of awful ideas that end up working out. Now, we assume this is where the fake name began as all acquired guns were branded "OK guns...they work".

So now most any low rent, newfound gangster looking to do some Import/Export has a brand new broken gun that looks worse than it works. But at that price as long as it fires then that's fine. you'd think someone would try to shoot one of these and then the secret would be out. But nope, get in a firefight with a gun that doesn't work and you're just going to die.

Shep isn't used to any of this sort of ridiculous hustling and grows tired of his brother always lying to him and withholding his drugs from him. The one act of caring OK does is viewed as being an asshole. The irony. But some careless addiction, slowly building, ends up splitting up the two boys and begins the only gangwar fought exclusively without a single shot fired.