A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep … all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimps makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

 

“A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.”

Other Titles by Iceberg Slim

 

The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim Mama Black Widow

Trick Baby Death Wish

Airtight Willie & Me Long White Con

 

Pimp

Copyright © 1969, 1987 by Iceberg Slim

 

 

ISBN: 978-1-451-61713-9 pbk

 

ISBN: 978-1-451-61714-6 ebook

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

Printed in the United States

CONTENTS

FOREWORD PREFACE

1.  TORN FROM THE NEST

 

1.  FIRST STEPS INTO THE JUNGLE

 

1.  SALTY TRIP WITH PEPPER

 

1.  A DEGREE IN PIMPING

 

1.  THE JUNGLE FAUNA

 

1.  DRILLING FOR OIL

 

1.  MELODY OFF KEY

 

1.  GRINNING SLIM

 

1.  THE BUTTERFLY

 

1. THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

 

1. TO LOSE A WHORE

 

1. TO GAIN A STABLE

 

1. THE ICEBERG

 

1. THE MISTAKE
   
2. IN A SEWER

 

1. AWAY FROM THE TRACK

 

1. TRYING A NEW GAME

 

1. JAILBREAK

 

1. THE ICE PICK

 

1. STABLE MOVES

 

1. THE STEEL CASKET

 

1. DAWN

 

EPILOGUE GLOSSARY

 

Pimp

FOREWORD

 

Dawn was breaking as the big Hog scooted through the streets. My five whores were chattering like drunk magpies. I smelled the stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night. The inside of my nose was raw. It happens when you’re a pig for snorting cocaine.

My nose was on fire and the stink of those whores and the gangster they were smoking seemed like invisible knives scraping to the root of my brain. I was in an evil, dangerous mood despite that pile of scratch crammed into the glove compartment.

“Goddamnit, has one of you bitches shit on herself or something?” I bellowed as I flipped the long window toward me. For a long moment there was silence.

Then Rachel, my bottom whore, cracked in a pleasing ass-kissing voice. “Daddy Baby, that ain’t no shit you smell. We been turning all night and ain’t no bathrooms in those tricks’ cars we been flipping out of. Daddy, we sure been humping for you, and what you smell is our nasty whore asses.”

I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions and I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at Rachel’s shaky witticism. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

I coasted the Hog into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off so I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

As Kim got out I said, “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday so I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after, but at twelve noon sharp I want you down, got it, Baby?”

She didn’t answer, but she did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long

moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.

Then in her crisp New England accent she said, “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, okay?”

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing, he gets his pay off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in this family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some shut eye, and get in the street at noon like I told you.”

The bitch just stood there, her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores. If I had been ten years dumber I would have leaned out of that Hog and broken her jaw, and put my foot in her ass, but the joint was too fresh in my mind.

I knew the bitch was trying to booby trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I am sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Goddamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”

She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass off when she finished. So, I just sat there staring at her.

Then she went on, “I have turned more tricks in the three months I have been with you than in the whole two years with Paul. My pussy stays sore and swollen. Do I get my ass kicked before I split? If so, kick it now because I am going back to Providence on the next thing smoking.”

She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef and now she was lying back for a sucker response.

I disappointed her with my cold overlay. I could see her wilt as I said in an icy voice. “Listen square-ass Bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some worthy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.”

The rollers cruised by in a squad car so I flashed a sucker smile on my face

and cooled it until they passed. Kim was rooted there wincing under the blizzard.

I went on ruthlessly, “Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.”

I rocketed away from the curb. In the rear-view mirror I saw Kim walk slowly into the hotel, her shoulders slumped. In the Hog, until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon. I had tested out for them, “solid ice.”

I went back for Kim. She was packed and silent. On the way to the station, I riffled the pages in that pimp’s book in my head for an angle to hold her without kissing her ass.

I couldn’t find a line in it for an out like that. As it turned out the bitch was testing and bluffing right down the line.

We had pulled into the station parking lot when the bitch fell to pieces. Her eyes were misty when she yelped, “Daddy, are you really going to let me split? Daddy, I love you!”

I started the prat action to cinch her when I said, “Bitch, I don’t want a whore with rabbit in her. I want a bitch who wants me for life. You have got to go after that bullshit earlier this morning, you are not that bitch.”

That prat butchered her and she collapsed into my lap crying and begging to stay. I had a theory about splitting whores. I think they seldom split without a bankroll.

So, I cracked on her, “Give me that scratch you held out and maybe I will give you another chance.”

Sure enough she reached into her bosom and drew out close to five bills and handed it to me. No pimp with a brain in his head cuts loose a young beautiful whore with lots of mileage left in her. I let her come back.

When at long last I was driving toward my hotel I remembered what Baby Jones, the master pimp who turned me out, had said about whores like Kim.

“Slim,” he had said, “A pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it and leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast to stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love, so prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believe a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.”

My mind went back to Pepper. Then back even further and I remembered what he had said about The Georgia.

“Slim, a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores. So Slim, be as sweet as the scratch, no sweeter, and always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.

On the elevator riding to my pad I thought about the first bitch who had Georgied me and how she had flim-flammed me out of my head. She would be old and gray now, but if I could find her I would sure get the bitch’s unpaid account off my conscience.

PREFACE

 

In this book I will take you, the reader, with me into the secret inner world of the pimp. I will lay bare my life and thoughts as a pimp. The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime; then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner.

I regret that it is impossible to recount to you all of my experiences as a pimp. Unfortunately, it would require the combined pages of a half-dozen books. Perhaps my remorse for my ghastly life will diminish to the degree that within this one book I have been allowed to purge myself. Perhaps one day I can win respect as a constructive human being. Most of all I wish to become a decent example for my children and for that wonderful woman in the grave, my mother.

1

TORN FROM THE NEST

Her name was Maude and she Georgied me around 1921. I was only three years old. Mama told me about it, and always when she did her rage and indignation would be as strong and as emotional perhaps as at the time when she had surprised her, panting and moaning at the point of orgasm with my tiny head wedged between her ebony thighs, her massive hands viselike around my head.

Mama worked long hours in a hand laundry and Maude had been hired as a babysitter at fifty cents a day. Maude was a young widow. Strangely, she had a reputation in Indianapolis, Indiana as a devout Holy Roller.

I have tried through the years to remember her face but all I can remember is the funky ritual. I vaguely remember, not her words but her excitement when we were alone.

I remember more vividly the moist, odorous darkness and the bristle-like hairs tickling my face and most vividly I can remember my panic, when in the wild moment of her climax, she would savagely jerk my head even tighter into the hairy maw.

I couldn’t get a breath of air until like a huge black balloon she would exhale with a whistling whoosh and relax, limply freeing my head.

I remember the ache of the strain on my fragile neck muscles, and especially at the root of my tongue.

Mama and I had come to Indianapolis from Chicago, where since the time when she was six months pregnant, my father had begun to show his true colors as an irresponsible, white-spats-wearing bum.

Back in that small town in Tennessee, their home town, he had stalked the beautiful virgin and conned her into marriage. Her parents, with vast relief, gave their blessing and wished them the best in the promised land up North in

Chicago.

Mama had ten brothers and sisters. Her marriage meant one less mouth to feed.

My father’s father was a skilled cook and he passed his know how to my father, who shortly after getting to Chicago scored a chef’s job at a huge middle-class hotel. Mama was put on as a waitress.

Mama told me that even with both of them working twelve hours a day, six days a week they couldn’t save a nickel or buy furniture or anything.

My idiot father had come to the big city and gone sucker wild. He couldn’t stay away from the high-yellow whores with their big asses and bitch-dog sexual antics. What they didn’t con him out of he lost in the cheat crap joints. At the hotel one night he vanished from the kitchen. Mama finally found him thrusting mightily into a half-white waitress lying on a sack of potatoes

in a storage room, with her legs locked around his back.

Mama said she threw everything she could lift at them. They were unemployed when they walked away from the shambles.

My father tearfully vowed to straighten himself out and be a man, but he didn’t have the will, the strength to resist the cheap thrills of the city.

After my birth he got worse and had the stupid gall to suggest to Mama that I be put on a Catholic Church doorstep. Mama naturally refused so he hurled me against the wall in disgust.

I survived it and he left us, his white spats flashing and his derby hat at a rakish angle.

It was the beginning of a bitter winter. Mama packed pressing irons and waving combs into a small bag and wrapped me warmly in blankets and set out into the bleak, friendless city to ring door bells, the bag in one arm and I in the other.

Her pitch was something like this, “Madam, I can make your hair curly and beautiful. Please give me a chance. For fifty cents, that’s all, I will make your hair shine like new money.”

At this point in the pitch Mama told me she would slip the blanket aside to bare my wee big-eyed face. The sight of me in her arm on a subzero day was like a charm. She managed to make a living for us.

That spring, with new friends of Mama’s we left Chicago for Indianapolis. We stayed there until nineteen twenty-four, when a fire gutted the hand laundry where Mama worked.

There were no jobs in Indianapolis for Mama and for six months we barely

made it on the meager savings. We were penniless and with hardly any food when a tall black angel visiting relatives in Indianapolis came into our lives.

He fell instantly in love with my lissome beautiful mother. His name was Henry Upshaw, and I guess I fell as hard for him as he fell for Mama.

He took us back to Rockford, Illinois with him where he owned a cleaning and pressing shop, the only Negro business in downtown Rockford.

In those tough depression times a Negro in his position was the envy of most Negro men.

Henry was religious, ambitious, good and kind. I often wonder what would have happened to my life if I had not been torn from him.

He treated Mama like she was a princess, anything she wanted he got for her. She was a fashion plate all right.

Every Sunday when we all three went to church in the gleaming black Dodge we were an outstanding sight as we walked down the aisle in our fresh neat clothing.

Only the few Negro lawyers and physicians lived as well, looked as well. Mama was president of several civic clubs. For the first time we were living the good life.

Mama had a dream. She told it to Henry. Like the genie of the lamp he made it a reality.

It was a four stall, opulent beauty shop. Its chrome gleamed in the black- and-gold motif. It was located in the heart of the Negro business section and it flourished from the moment its doors opened.

Her clientele was for the most part whores, pimps, and hustlers from the sprawling red light district in Rockford. They were the only ones who always had the money to spend on their appearance.

The first time I saw Steve he was sitting getting his nails manicured in the shop. Mama was smiling into his handsome olive-tinted face as she buffed his nails.

I didn’t know when I first saw him that he was the pin-striped snake who would poison the core of our lives.

I certainly had no inkling that last day at the shop as live billows of steam hissed from the old pressing machine each time Henry slammed its lid down on a garment.

Jesus! It was hot in that little shop, but I loved every minute of it. It was school-vacation time for me and every summer I worked in the shop all day, every day helping my stepfather.

That day as I saw my reflection on the banker’s expensive black shoes, I was perhaps the happiest black boy in Rockford. As I applied the sole dressing I hummed my favorite tune “Spring Time in the Rockies.”

The banker stepped down from the shine stand, stood for a moment as I flicked lint from his soft, rich suit, then with a warm smile he pressed an extravagant fifty-cent piece into my hand and stepped out into the broiling street.

Now I whistled my favorite tune, shines were only a dime, what a tip.

I didn’t know at the time that the banker would never press another coin into my hand, that for the next thirty-five years this last day would be remembered vividly as the final day of real happiness for me.

I would press five-dollar bills into the palms of shine boys. My shoes would be handmade, would cost three times as much as the banker’s shoes, but my shoes, though perfectly fitted would be worn in tension and fear.

There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw that prepared me for the swift, confusing events that over the weekend would slam my life away from all that was good to all that was bad.

Now, looking back remembering that last day in the shop as clearly as if it were yesterday, my stepfather, Henry, was unusually quiet. My young mind couldn’t grasp his worry, his heart break.

Even I, a ten year old, knew that this huge, ugly, black man who had rescued Mama and me from actual starvation back in Indianapolis loved us with all of his great, sensitive heart.

I loved Henry with all my heart. He was the only father I had ever really known.

He could have saved himself an early death from a broken heart if instead of falling so madly in love with Mama he had run as fast as he could away from her. For him, she was brown-skin murder in a size-twelve dress.

That last night at eight o’clock Dad and I flicked the shop’s lights out as always at closing.

In an emotion muffled voice he spoke my name “Bobby.”

I turned toward him and looked up into his face tense and strained in the pale light from the street lamp. I was confused and shaken when he put his massive hands on my shoulders and drew me to him very tightly just holding me in this strange desperate way.

My head was pressed against his belt buckle. I could barely hear his low,

rapid flow of pitiful words.

He said, “Bobby, you know I love you and Mama, don’t you?”

His stomach muscles were cording, jerking against my cheek. I knew he was going to burst into tears.

I said as I squeezed my arms around his waist, “Yes, Daddy, yes, Daddy.

We love you too, Daddy. We always will, Daddy.”

He was trembling as he said, “You and Mama wouldn’t ever leave me? You know Bobby, I ain’t got nobody in the world but you two. I just couldn’t go on if you left me alone.”

I clung tightly to him and said, “Don’t worry Daddy, we’ll never leave you, I promise, honest, Daddy.”

What a sight we must have been, the six-foot-six black giant and the frail little boy holding on to each other for dear life, crying there in the darkness.

I tell you when we finally made it to the big black Dodge and were riding home my thoughts were turning madly.

Yes, poor Henry’s fears had foundation. Mama had never loved my stepfather. This kind, wonderful man had only been a tool of convenience. She had fallen in love with the snake all right.

His plan was to cop Mama and make it to the Windy. The dirty bastard knew I would be excess baggage, but the way Mama was gulping his con, he figured he could get rid of me later.

Only after I had become a pimp years later would I know Steve’s complete plot, and how stupid he really was.

Here this fool had a smart, square broad with a progressive square-john husband, infatuated with him. Her business was getting better all the time.

Her sucker husband was blindly in love, and the money from his business was wide open to her. If Steve had been clever he could have stayed right there on top of things and bled a big bankroll from the businesses in a couple of years.

Then he could have pulled Mama out of there and with a big bankroll he could have done anything with her, even turned her out.

I tell you she was that hot for him. She had to be insane over the asshole to walk away from all that potential with only twenty-five hundred in cash.

Steve blew it in a Georgia-skin game within a week after we got to Chicago.

I have wished to Christ, in four penitentiaries, that the lunatic lovers had left me in Rockford with Henry when they split.

One scene in my life I can never forget and that was that morning when Mama had finished packing our clothes and Henry lost his inner fight for his pride and dignity.

He fell down on his knees and bawled like a scalded child, pleading with Mama not to leave him, begging her to stay. He had welded his arms around her legs, his voice hoarse in anguish, as he whimpered his love for us.

His agonized eyes walled up at her as he wailed, “Please don’t leave me. You are sure to kill me if you do. I ain’t done nothing. If I have, forgive me.”

I will never forget her face, as cold as an executioner’s, which she was, as she kicked and struggled loose from him.

Then with an awful grin on her face she lied and said, “Henry, Honey, I just want to get away for a while. Darling, we’ll be back.”

In his state she was lucky he hadn’t killed her and me, and buried us in the backyard.

As the cab drove us away to the secret rendezvous with Steve sitting in his old Model T, I looked back at Henry on the porch, his chest heaving as tears rolled down his tortured face.

There were too many wheels within wheels, too much hurt for me to cry. After a blank time and distance we got to Chicago. Steve had vanished and Mama was telling me in a drab hotel room that my real father was coming over to see us, and to remember that Steve was her cousin.

Steve was stupid all right, but cunning, if you get what I mean.

Mama, at Steve’s instruction, weeks before, had gotten in contact with my father through a hustler brother of Mama’s in Chicago.

When my father came through the hotel room door reeking of cologne and dressed to kill, all I could think was what Mama had told me about that morning when this tall brown-skin joker had tossed me against the wall.

He took a long look at me. It was like looking in a mirror. His deep down guilt cream puffed him and he grabbed me and squeezed me to him. I was stiff and tense in the stranger’s arms, but I had looked in the mirror too when he came in, so I strung my arms limply about his neck.

When he hugged Mama, her face was toward me and stony, like back there with Henry. My father strutted about that hotel room boasting of his personal chef’s job for Big Bill Thompson the mayor of Chicago.

He told Mama and me, “I am a changed man now. I have saved my money and now I really have something to offer my wife and son. Won’t you come back to me and try again? I am older now, and I bitterly regret my mistakes

of the past.”

Like a black-widow spider spinning a web around her prey, Mama put up enough resistance to make him pitch himself into a sweat then agreed to go back to him.

My father’s house was crammed with expensive furniture and art pieces.

He had thousands of dollars invested in rich clothing and linens.

After a week, my hustler uncle brought Steve to visit us, and to case the lay out. My father bought the cousin angle and broke out his best cigars and cognac for the thieves. It was another week before they took him off.

Remember, at the time I had no idea as to what really was going to happen.

I would learn the shocking truth only after we got to Milwaukee.

On that early evening when it happened Mama was jittery as we prepared to visit some close white friends of my father. I had a wonderful time getting acquainted with the host’s children who were around my age. Too soon it was time to go home.

In my lifetime I have seen many degrees of shock and surprise on the human face. I have never seen on any face the traumatic disbelief and shock that was on my father’s face when he unlocked the door and stepped into his completely empty house. His lips flapped mutely. He couldn’t speak. Everything was gone, all the furniture and drapery, everything, from the percolator to the pictures on the wall, even my Mama’s belongings.

Mama stood there in the empty house clinging to him, comforting him, sobbing with real tears flowing down her cheeks. I guess she was crying in joy because the cross had come off so beautifully.

Mama missed her calling. She should have been a film actress. With only a bit part, an Oscar a season would have been a lead-pipe cinch for her.

Mama told my father we would go to Indianapolis to friends until he could put another nest together.

When we got to Milwaukee by train, ninety miles away, Steve had rented a house. Every square inch of that house was filled with my father’s things.

Those lovely things did us little good and brought no happiness. Steve, with his mania for craps, within weeks had sold everything, piece by piece, and lost it across the craps table.

Mama worked long hours as a cook, and Steve and I were alone quite often.

At these times he would say, “You little mother-fucker, you. I’m going to beat your mother-fucking ass. I am telling you, if you don’t run away, I’m

going to kill you.”

He was just so cruel to me. My mother had bought me a little baby cat. I loved that kitten, and this man hated animals. One day the cat, being a baby cat, did his business on the kitchen floor.

Steve said, “Where is that little mother-fucker?”

The little kitten had hidden under the sofa. He grabbed that kitten and took it downstairs where there was a concrete wall. He grabbed it by the heels. I was standing (we lived on the second floor) looking down at him; he took the kitten and beat its brains out against that wall.

I remember, there was a park behind our house, concrete covered. There were some concrete steps. I sat there and I cried until I puked. All the while I kept saying like a litany, “I hate Mama! I hate Mama! I hate Mama!” And, “I hate Steve! I hate Steve! I hate him! I hate him!”

For many tortured years she would suffer her guilt. She had made that terrible decision on that long ago weekend.

I know my lousy old man deserved what happened to his goods. I know Mama got her revenge and it was sweet I am sure, but it was bitter for a kid like me to know that Mama was part of it.

Perhaps if Mama had kept that burglary cross a secret from me, in some tiny way I might have been stronger to fight off that pimping disease. I don’t know, but somehow after that cross Mama just didn’t seem like the same honest sweet Mama that I had prayed in church with back in Rockford.

I went to her grave the other day and told her for the hundredth time since her death, “Mama, it wasn’t really your fault. You were a dumb country girl, you didn’t understand. I was your first and only child. You couldn’t have known how important Henry was to me.”

I choked up, stopped talking to her beneath the silent sod, and thought about Henry lying rotten, forgotten in his grave.

Then, through my tight throat I said to Mama, “To you he was ugly, but Mama I swear to heaven he was so beautiful to me. I loved him Mama, I needed him. I wish you could have seen beyond his ugly black face and loved him a little and stayed with him. Mama, we could have been happy, our lives would have been different, but I don’t blame you. Mama, I love you.”

I paused looking up at the sky, hoped she was up there and could hear me, then I went on, “I just wish you were alive now, you would be so proud of me. I am not a lawyer as you always wanted me to be, but Mama, you have two beautiful grandchildren and another on the way, and a fine daughter-in-

law who looks a lot like you when you were young.”

The grave next to hers had visitors, an old man and a bright eyed girl about ten.

I stopped my bragging until the pair walked away, then I said, “Mama, I haven’t shot any H in ten years. I haven’t had a whore in five years. I have squared up, I work every day. How about it Mama, Iceberg Slim a square? You wouldn’t believe it Mama, I wear fiftydollar suits right off the rack, and my car is ten years old, you gotta believe it now Mama. Goodbye Mama, see you at Christmas, and remember, I’ll always love you.”

When I walked away from her grave I thought, “I don’t know, maybe that prison head-shrinker was right when he told me I had become a pimp because of my unconscious hatred for my mother.”

I know one damn thing, I can’t help crying at her grave almost as if I was crying because I did so much to put her there. Maybe the hidden hate that I can’t feel wants me to laugh that she’s down there in the earth. Maybe my crying is really laughing.

About ninety days after Steve smashed my kitten Mama cast off her spell, and one gray April dawn while Steve lay in a drunken, open-mouthed stupor, Mama and I packed what we could carry and moved into a hotel room. It was complete with hot plate and downthe-hall toilet.

Steve had stomped on three and a half years of our lives. I would soon be fourteen.

On August fourth, my birthday, our old friend Steve, with diabolical timing, made that event unforgettable. Since that chilly dawn in April he had searched the slum streets for his escaped dupes, thirsty for revenge.

I waited eagerly in the hotel room for Mama who had promised to bake a cake in her white woman’s kitchen. She said she would be home early at six o’clock to celebrate my birthday.

Well, she came home all right on the seventh of August, from a hospital, with her broken jaw wired, and her body covered with bruises.

Steve had stalked her and attacked her with his fists and feet and then escaped through the grimy catacombs of the Ghetto.

All that night and all the next day I crouched in the dark shadows beneath his stairwell gripping a gleaming ice pick. He never came back. He had moved.

Twenty years later, while idly looking from the window of a plush hotel suite I would see something familiar in the white-haired stooped figure of a

garbage collector on the street three stories down.

I blacked out, when reason returned I was down there on the street in the bright morning sunlight, clutching a pistol, wearing only a pair of red silk pajamas.

As the garbage truck turned the corner a block away out of range, a small crowd of passersby stood bug-eyed watching the strange scene as Rachel, my main whore, tugged at my arm, pleaded with me to get off the street.

That was the last time I saw Steve, but I just don’t know, even now, what I would do if our paths crossed.

Perhaps that beating Mama took was good, as painful as it was. I remember how it worried me in that cruddy hotel room when the hotel’s neon sign outside our window would flash on her face. Her eyes would be bright, riveted on the ceiling, she would be in a trance, remembering, still hot for him.

As worthless as that bastard was otherwise, he sure must have been a son- of-a-bitch in the bed.

After all he had done to us, she still had a terrible itch for the bastard. That beating was good for her, it cured the itch.

Mama had learned a bitter lesson the hard way. The country girl had rolled in the hay with the city slicker and now I saw all of her sorrow and guilt in her eyes.

We couldn’t go back to the peaceful, green hills of Rockford. She had destroyed a good man back there, a native son. Henry died a year after we left him. Until the grave claimed her, Henry would rise from his own to haunt her in the lonely gloom.

Mama was desperate to save at least fragments of her image, to hold fast the love and respect I had for her in Rockford. I had seen too much, had suffered too much. The jungle had started to embalm me with bitterness and hardness.

I was losing, page by page, the fine rules of thought and deed that I had learned in church, from Henry to the Boy Scout Troop in Rockford. I was sopping up the poison of the street like a sponge.

I had begun to play Steve’s favorite game, craps, in the alleys after school.

Dangerously, I was frantic to sock it into every young girl weak enough to go for it. I had to run for my life one evening when an enraged father caught me on his back porch punching animal-like astraddle his daughter’s head. I had become impatient with the unusual thickness of her maidenhead.

2

FIRST STEPS INTO THE JUNGLE

The slide was greased. I was starting my long plunge to the very bottom of the grim pit. I guess my trip downward really was cinched when I met a petty hustler who was very likeable and we became pals.

My hustler pal was called Party Time. By the time he was twentythree he had done four bits in the joint. On each fall he had been jacked up for either strong-arm robbery or till tapping.

He got his moniker hung on him because as soon as he scored for scratch he would make fast tracks to the nearest underworld bar.

When he got inside the door he would shout, “All right you poor ass bastards, it’s party time and Joe Evans is in port with enough scratch to burn up a wet elephant. All you studs stop playing stink finger with these long- cock whores and everybody belly up to the log and get twisted on me.”

His flat African features were pasted to a skull that could have belonged to a cave man. He was short, powerful, and shiny black.

He was ugly enough to “break daylight with his fist,” but for some curious reason he was irresistible to many of the thrill-seeking white women who sneaked into the black side of town panting as they chased after that hoary myth, “Nigger men do it so good it thrills you to your toe nails.”

There was a Fast sheet joint with the trick rooms in the rear, right on the alley. I was peeping one night into one through a frayed shade when I saw Party Time for the first time.

My eyes were bugging when I saw the tall viking type white man, his tiny, but voluptuous female white companion and Party Time taking their clothes off. Finally they stood there naked. I could see their lips moving so I pressed my ear and eye sideways against the window that was open a couple of inches at the top to get the sound.

The white joker was tenderly hefting Party Time’s weapon in his hand like maybe it was Ming Dynasty Pottery. He said excitedly to the broad, “Oh! Honey, can you believe the size, the beauty of it!”

In the glow of the room’s red light, that broad looked like an animated portrait by Da Vinci. Her eyes were blue fire in her passion. She purred like a Persian kitten and pounced onto the bed.

Party Time stood at the side of the bed looking down at her. He was an ebony executioner. His horizontal axe cast a cruel shadow across the snowy peaks, rose tipped.

My trouser front was tented as I pressed even tighter against the window. I had never seen anything like this back in Rockford. Then to my amazed ears, the white man said a strange thing as he pulled a chair to the end of the bed and sat on the very edge of it.

He was breathing hard when he said, “All right now Boy, stab it into her, hurt her, punish her, crucify her, good Boy! Good Boy!”

The broad looked so fragile and helpless to my naive eyes that I felt a pang of pity pulse inside me as she moaned and whimpered in painful pleasure beneath the black demon savagely pile driving between the jerking white legs jack-knifed, imprisoned behind the sweating, hunching black shoulders.

Like he was trying to make a home Party Time was asking in a hoarse voice over and over, “Beautiful Bitch, is it good? Beautiful Bitch, is it good?”

The white man was an odd, funny sight as he raced around the arena like a demented Caesar, cheering on his merciless black gladiator.

Finally when the show was over and they started to dress, I went to the front and sat on a stoop next door to the joint. I wanted to get a close up of the freaks.

When they got to the sidewalk, in their street clothes, they were disappointingly normal. Just a clean-cut white couple having a parting chat with a grinning, black Negro.

The mixed-up couple went down the sidewalk away from me. Party Time came toward me. He didn’t notice me sitting on the stoop. I was itching with curiosity, so I hit on him when he came abreast. It startled him. His face got stiff.

I said, “Hey Jack, how you doing? That sure is a fine silk girl, huh? You got a square to spare?”

He fished a cigarette from his red shirt pocket, handed it to me and said, “Yeh Kid, she’s fine as a Valentine. Two sights I ain’t never seen and that is

a pretty bulldog, and an ugly white woman.”

He was spouting cliches, but to a small town boy he came off witty as Hell. I was in that brain-picking mood so I put the snow machine into high gear to hold him. My eyes bucked in mock awe as I lit the square.

I said, “Thanks Man, for the square. Christ! That’s a sporty vine you got on. I wish I could dress like you. You sure are clean aplenty.”

He took the bait like a rapist in a nudist colony for the blind. He flopped down on the stoop beside me. He poked his chest out, his eyes flashing like a pin-ball machine gone haywire, as he got ready to open up. He hiked the pants legs of his green checked suit to his calves to show his blood red socks. The huge zircon on his right pinky glittered under the street lamp as he cracked his knuckles and said, “Kid, my name is Party Time. I am the best flat-footed hustler in town. Money loves me and can’t stay away from me. You see that fine silk broad, I got a double saw to lay her. Course that ain’t nothing, it happens all the time. I could be one of the greatest pimps in the

country if I was lazy and didn’t have so much good hustler in me.”

I sat there listening to his bullshit until two A.M. He was likable and I was hungry for a pal. He was an orphan and he had just done a two-year bit straight up, his fourth, two months before. He had a head full of wild risky hustles he wanted to try. He needed a partner. He tried all of them on me for size.

I got home at two-twenty. About one minute later I heard Mama’s key in the door. She had served a banquet for her white folks. I just made it into bed with all my clothes on, when she came to look in on me. I was snoring like a drunk with a sick sinus when she kissed me goodnight.

I lay thinking in the darkness until daybreak, putting myself into, and trying to size myself into one of those quick buck schemes that Party had plotted. When the sun came up fat and bright I knew I would give Party’s version of the Murphy a whirl. I didn’t know his version was crude and dangerous, and only a weak imitation of the real Murphy.

Years later I discovered that the Murphy, when played by experts, was a smooth short con game with a slight risk. In any section where Negro whores operate white men will flock to trick with them.

I met Party several times after school at a pool room. He ran my role down to me and the next Friday night we got down with our hustle. Mama was serving a party so I could stay in the streets until at least one A.M.

Around ten that night in an alley in the heart of the vice section, Seventh

and Vliet Sts., we unwrapped the package that Party had brought. I rolled up my pants legs beyond my bony knees. I slipped into the twenty-five cent red- cotton dress from the Salvation Army.

I put on the frayed red satin high-heel shoes. I pinned a scraggly piece of hair just inside the front inner band of the faded blue straw bonnet. When I tilted it on my head at a sexy angle, the ringlets of uneven hair hung down over my eyes like bangs.

I stood wide legged, flexed my thigh and hip muscles against the tight red dress, aping the whores stance.

Party looked me over head to toe. I was wondering how I came off as a broad. He shook his head, hunched his shoulders and walked toward the mouth of the alley to catch a sucker.

I got the answer when be reached the sidewalk. He twisted his bead toward me and said, “Listen Man, stay outta the light, okay?”

Within five minutes he gave me the office that some action was coming down the street. I watched Party giving the pitch to a short elderly white man. I wondered if I had enough voltage as a broad to come through with my end of the deal.

He officed my flash cue an instant before the white man peeked up the alley at me. I jerked my skinny ass in a series of bumps and grinds and hopefully waved him toward me.

That skinny black bitch he saw must have lit a fire in him all right. He fumbled his hide from his hip pocket and handed a bill to Party.

The chump started up the alley at a helluva pace for an old bastard. He had paid his money and he was red hot to take his chance to stick that hot Nigger bitch waiting for him in the shadows.

He had no chance, but in a way he was lucky. Lucky that his hide had not been fat with green backs. If he had been loaded, when I evaporated through that gang way, Party instead of fading away would have come into the dark alley behind the sucker and robbed him with brute force.

My heart was pounding in excitement as I galloped through the alleys toward our next prearranged duck blind. I took a new station several blocks away. Party Time came moments later, looked up the alley and hooked the tips of his thumb and index fingers into an “all is well” O.

We beat several other suckers. None had the fare for the strong arm. We worked until twelve-thirty, then unlike Cinderella, I stashed my mildewed costume, got my half of the seventy-dollar take and raced home. Mama came

in a half hour after I did.

As in all other things there are many Murphy’s. Real Murphy players use great finesse to separate a mark from his scratch. The most adept of them prefer that a trick hit on them. It puts the Murphy player in a position to force the sucker to “qualify” himself and to trim the mark not only for all of his scratch, but his jewelry as well.

When approached and quizzed by a mark as to, where a girl can be found, the Murphy Man will say, “Look Buddy, I know a fabulous house not more than two blocks away. Brother, you ain’t never seen more beautiful, freakier broads than are in that house. One of them, the prettiest one, can do more with a swipe than a monkey can with a banana. She’s like a rubber doll, she can take a hundred positions.”

At this point the sucker is wild to get to this house of pure joy. He entreats the con player to take him there, not just direct him to it.

The Murphy player will prat him to enhance his desire. He will say, “Man, don’t be offended, but Aunt Kate, that runs the house don’t have nothing but high-class white men coming to her place. No Niggers or poor white trash. You know, doctors, lawyers, bigshot politicians. You look like a clean-cut white man, but you ain’t in that league are you?”

At this pricking of his ego the mark is ready for the hook. He will protest his worth as a person and his right to go where any other son-of-a-bitch can go. Hell for a high class lay a double saw wouldn’t faze him. Few can resist the charm of exclusivity in its myriad forms.

The con player still hedging, shoring up firmly the convincer will then say, “Man, I believe you and everything you say is true as gospel. In fact, I like you Pal, but try to see my side of it. First to show you I trust you, I’ll tell you a secret. I been working for Aunt Kate’s house for many years now as her outside man, you know, making sure only nice dates went up there. Aunt Kate and I got an air tight system. Friend, I know you will help me keep Aunt Kate’s roles, so let’s go. I am taking you to the thrill of your life.”

While keeping up an inflaming description of the whores and sexual delights to be found only at Aunt Kate’s, the Murphy player had steered the sucker to a pre-chosen neat, attractive apartment building. In the foyer, in a subtle but compelling manner, the con player nudged the mark into a fast meeting of minds, the question agreed on. As hot as he was, he couldn’t go up before he checked in all valuables. It was Aunt Kate’s unshakeable rule.

Aunt Kate was rock right never to tempt or trust a whore. Only fools

trusted whores, right? The mark wasn’t a fool, right? Right!

The con player produced a sturdy brown envelope. The sucker counted all the scratch in his pocket into the hand of Aunt Kate’s “outside” business manager. The efficient affable manager shoved it into the envelope, licked it, sealed it, and stuck it in his pocket for safe keeping from the possible larceny in the hearts of the gorgeous dolls upstairs, third floor, first apartment to the left, number nine to be specific.

The sucker was in a bubbly mood as he took the stairs three at a time. He liked that Nigger down there who was protecting his money. What had he told him, when he gave him the shiny goldcolored metal check? “Harry, Pal, this one is on me, just go up and hand it to Aunt Kate. Everything is going to be all right. If you want you can buy me a drink when you come down.”

The two strikes that had whiffed across the white man’s mental plate and had set him up for the kill, the third strike was first his desperate need to relieve himself into a black body, the second was his complete inability to conceive that the “black boy” before him was intelligent enough to fool him, to fashion the Murphy dialogue.

Party and his rawboned lure, after three weekends of fair success with the Murphy, ran head on into a round brick balloon. It was only five feet tall, but it weighed close to three-hundred pounds.

It was a Saturday night around ten. The vice section was overrun with Johns. It seemed that every white man in town was out there, scratch in one hand and rod in the other, ripping and running after the black whores with the widest, blackest asses.

Party and I set up a blind on the fringe of the section, because with all that mad action in the center it would be a hectic cat-and-mouse game with the cruising, rousting vice squad. I would have gotten something less than pure kicks to get busted making like a broad.

Party hadn’t strong armed since his last bit. The only reason he hadn’t was simply that none of the Johns we had fleeced was carrying a wad.

We were fishing in a sand pile. All the hungry suckers were swimming in center stream.

From my Murphy station in the alley, I watched Party eagerly for the office for action. Around eleven-thirty, I was standing on one leg and then the other like a bored crane with a twenty-five cent dress on.

About five minutes later the office came through. Was it a man? A machine? No, it was a walking, living, round balloon with a fat poke and a

flaming itch for black Cush. It stood there fascinated by my furious bumps and grinds.

I felt prickly feet of excitement stomping along my spine when the balloon took his hide out. Party jerked rigid at the sight of its contents. Even as the balloon bounced toward me, I inched toward my point of evaporation. I knew the strong-arm lust had exploded inside Party and sure as Hell he was going to come up that alley and smash the air out of the balloon.

I quit the scene and poked my head into the alley farther up. I could hear guttural grunting. The kind of sound a heart case makes when he’s riding hard to convince a nympho that he’s a raging tiger. It was the balloon that was grunting as he held Party in a crushing strangle hold. My heart-beat back fired and melted the starch in my props. I collapsed onto a garbage can. The balloon was also a weight lifter. Poor Party was hanging high over the head of the monster and then flung to the alley floor with a shattering “whoomp” where he lay like a rag doll. The balloon hollered as he leaped into the air and then fell like a ton of concrete on moaning Party. I was almost puking in pity for Party. But I just couldn’t find the strength to get off that garbage can and join the fray. Anyway it wouldn’t have been lady like.

The derrick scooped Party from the alley and flung him across his back. I watched Party’s rubber neck bumping against the balloon’s rear end as he was carried to the sidewalk.

I jetted out of there and went to the roof of my building. I watched for the rollers I was sure were coming to bust me, but they never came. Old Party had had the funky luck to try the strong arm on a professional wrestler called the Blimp.

Party went back to the joint for a yard after he got out of City Hospital. One thing about Party he wasn’t copper hearted. He never tipped my name to the heat.

When he got older, and lost his nerve to hustle, he got a crazy desire to pimp. He wasn’t the type, but he kept trying until he ran the Gorilla game on a dope dealer’s broad and was set up for a hot shot. Party tried his fists and muscle until the pimp game croaked him. The pimp game is like the watchmaker’s art, it’s tough. Party went through his life struggling to make a watch while wearing boxing gloves. Party’s bad break sobered me, and I started hearing what was going on in day classes at school.

At fifteen, amazingly, I graduated from high school with a ninetyeight point four average. There was a sizeable alumni of Tuskegee, a Southern

Negro college, who insisted upon Mama letting them underwrite all expenses for my education at their Alma Mater. Mama leaped at the chance.

The alumni went into debt and sent me down to their hallowed school with a sparkling wardrobe. They didn’t know I had started to rot inside from street poisoning.

It was like the poor chumps had entered a poisoned horse in the Kentucky Derby and were certain they had a cinch winner. They couldn’t know they had bet their hearts and blood money on a born loser.

A rich bonanza was at stake. The success of my very life itself. The rescue of Mama from her awesome guilt. The trust and confidence of those big- hearted alumni.

My mental eyes had been stabbed blind by the street. I was like a freakish joker who had gotten clap in his eyes from a mangy street whore.

On campus, I was like a fox in a chicken coop. Within ninety days after I got down there I had slit the maidenhead on a halfdozen curvy coeds.

Somehow I managed to get through the Freshman year, but my notoriety was getting awful. The campus finks were envious, and it was too dangerous to continue to impale coeds on my stake.

In my Sophomore year, I started going into the hills near the campus to juke joints. With my slick Northern dress and manner, I was prince charming in spades to the pungent, hot-ass maidens in the hills.

A round butt, bare foot, beauty—fifteen years old—fell hard for me. One night I failed to meet her in our favorite clump of bushes. I had stuck her up to keep a date in another clump of bushes with a bigger, hotter, rounder ass than hers.

Through the hill grape vine she got the wire of my double cross. It was high noon on campus the next day when I saw her. I had just walked out of the cafeteria onto the main drag. The street was lousy with students and teachers.

She stood out like a Pope in a cat house. Her potato-sack dress was grimy and dirty as Hell from the long trip from the hills. Her bare feet and legs were rusty and dusty. She saw me a wild heart-beat after I saw her.

She battle-cried like an Apache Warrior, and before I could get the wax out of my props, she had raced close enough toward me so that I could see the insane fury in her eyes.

Beads of sweat clung to the kinky hair in the pit of her arm that was upraised, gripping like a dagger a broken Coca Cola bottle, the jagged edges

were glinting in the sun.

The screaming teachers and students fled like terrified sheep in the wake of a panther. I don’t remember what athlete was reputed to be the fastest human in the world that year, but for those few seconds after I got the wax out of my legs, I was.

When I finally looked back through the cloud of dust, I saw the crazy broad as a speck in the distance behind me.

Mine had been a carpet offense and I was on it in the office of the school President.

I stood before him, seated behind his gleaming mahogany desk. He cleared his pipes and gave me a look like I had jacked off before the student body. He held his head high. His nose reaching for the ceiling like I was crap on his top lip.

In a sneaky Southern drawl he said, “Boy, yu ah a disgrace to oauh fine institushun. Ah’m shocked thet sech has occurred. Yo mothah has bin infaumed of yo bad conduck. Oauh bord is considurin yo dismissul. En thu meantime, keep yo nos clean, Boy. Yo ah not to leave campus for eny resun.” I could have saved my worry over dismissal. That alumni had powerful pull all right. I got a break and got the chance to stay until mid-term of the Sophomore year when I went for the “okey doke.” I took a bootlegging rap for a pal. “What goes around comes around” old hustlers had said. Party had

taken our beef without spilling.

Anything with a buzz in it was in great demand on campus. A pint of rot gut whiskey brought from seven and a half to ten dollars depending on supply. My roommate had scratch and a Fagin disposition. He was a sharpy from a number-racket family in New York.

We made a deal. He would bank roll our venture if I copped the merchandise and sold it. He got my promise that I would keep his part in it a secret. He was a fox for sure.

He gave me the scratch and I slipped up into the hills to contact a moonshiner who would supply me. Perhaps I don’t have to say that I carefully avoided any contact with that broad who pushed me to that track record.

I scored for a connection and the markup on campus was fourhundred percent.

Everything was beautiful. The merchandise was moving like crazy. I was sure that when I got back home for the summer I would have enough scratch

to turn everybody green with envy.

I recruited a coed I had layed to distribute for me in her dorm. It was the beginning of the end.

There were two jasper coeds in her dorm who were fierce rivals for the love of a coffee-colored, curvaceous doll from a country town in Oklahoma. The doll was really dumb. She bad no idea of the lesbian kick, so naturally she couldn’t know she was a target.

Eventually, the craftier of the two jaspers wore the doll down and turned her out. They had to keep the secret of their romance from the other jasper because she was tough and built like a football player. She was doing money favors for the doll hoping to get into her pants. The doll and her jockey were in cahoots playing the sucker jasper hard for the scratch.

One night the doll and her jockey were tied into a pretzel doing the sixty- nine and drunk as Hell on my merchandise, when their passionate outcries reached the ears of the muscular jasper.

The bloody fight and spicy details were topics for state-wide gossip.

In the heat of the investigation my agent fell apart. She put the finger on me and within a week I was on the train going back to the streets for good. I didn’t turn over on my roommate. I obeyed the code.

Mama changed jobs a week after I got back, to nurse and cook for a wealthy, white recluse. Now I really stuck my nose in the devil’s ass.

Mama had to stay on the place. I saw her once a week, on Sunday, when she would come in for a day. That was the only time I stayed at the hotel.

I had found a fascinating second home, a gambling joint run by a broken down ex-pimp and murderer called Diamond Tooth Jimmy. The two-carat stone, wedged between the upper front rotting teeth, was the last vulgar memento of his infamy as the top ass-kicker of the nineteen-twenties.

He boasted endlessly that he was the only Nigger pimp on Earth who had ever pimped in Paris on French girls. I was to discover later, when I would meet and be trained by the Master, that Jimmy was a mere buffoon, an amateur not fit to hold the Master’s coat.

After the suckers were trimmed and all the shills had been paid, Jimmy would lock the door and then like a ritual, light up a thin brown reefer. As he talked, he would pass it to me, cursing me affably for not inhaling deeply and holding the smoke, as he put it, “deep in my belly.”

When dawn broke he would go out through the joint door home to the nineteen-year-old jasper on whom he lavished furs and jewels. He was a real

sucker.

I would go to bed in the tiny cubicle in the rear of the joint and dream fantastic dreams. Always beautiful whores would get down on their knees and tearfully beg me to take their money.

For several months I had been screwing the luscious daughter of a popular band leader. She was fifteen. Her name was June and she had a wild yen for me. She had a habit of waiting down the street from the gambling joint until Jimmy left, then she would come up and get on the army cot with me. She would stay until seven o’clock at night. She knew I had to clean the joint for action around nine.

One day, around noon, I asked her, “Do you love me enough to do anything for me?”

She said, “Yes.”

So, I said, “Even turn a trick?” She said, “Anything.”

I put my clothes on and went to the street and saw an old gambler whom I knew was a trick and told him what was upstairs. Sure enough he gave me a five-dollar bill, the asking price, and I took him upstairs and let him in on her. She turned him in less than five minutes.

My seventeen-year-old brain reeled. This was still the depression. I could get rich with this girl and drive a big white Packard.

My next prospect was all wrong. He was an acquaintance of the band leader, June’s father. He went up the stairs, saw her and called the father in Pittsburgh.

The father called the local police department and my pimping career died aborning. When the detective came, I was still out there looking for tricks for the down payment on that big white Packard.

Diamond Tooth’s bullshit had screwed me for certain. My mother, of course, was shocked. She was sure it was a frame up. That June, that evil girl, had led her sweet little Bobby astray.

At the County Jail two days before my trial, I left my cell on an Attorney Consultation pass. A short, gopher-faced Negro sat in the cage at an old oak desk grinning at me.

My blood ran cold, my palms got slippery wet as I took a seat across from him. The gleaming yellow gold teeth filling his mouth had been a flash of doom. Christ! I thought, a deep South Nigger lip. Didn’t Mama know that most of them turned to jelly when defending a criminal case?

The rodent wiped his blue-black brow with a soggy handkerchief and said, “Well Bobby, it seems that you are in a little trouble, huh? I am attorney Williams, an old friend of your family. I knew your mother as a girl.”

My eyes sent special delivery murder across the table to that ugly bastard. I said, “It isn’t a little trouble. Under the Max I could get a fin’.”

He fingered his dollar necktie and hoisted his starved shoulders inside the jacket of his cheap vine and said, “Oh! Now let’s not be fatalistic. You are a first offender and I am positive it will mitigate the charge. Rest assured I will press the court for leniency. Now tell me the whole truth about your trouble.” Anger, everything drained out of me. I was lost, stricken. The phony would lead me to the slaughter. I knew I was already tried and convicted and sentenced to the joint. The only loose end was for how long? Without hearing

it myself, I ran down the details to him and stumbled blindly back to my cell.

On my trial day in the courtroom, the shaky bastard was so nervous before the bench when he pleaded me guilty, that the same cheap vine that he had worn at our first meeting was soaked by his sweat.

He was so shook up by the stern face and voice of the white hawk-faced judge that he forgot to ask for leniency. That awful fear the white folks had put into him down South was still painfully alive in him. He just stood there paralyzed, waiting for the judge to sentence me.

So, I looked up into the frosty blue eyes and said, “Your Honor, I am sorry for what I did. I have never been in trouble before. If Your Honor will just give me a break this time, I swear before the Lord I won’t ever come back down here. Please, Your Honor, don’t send me to the pen.”

The frost deepened in his eyes as he looked down at me and intoned, “You are a vicious young man. Your crime against that innocent young girl, against the laws of this state, is inexcusable. The very nature of your crime precludes the possibility of probation. For your own good and for that of society’s I sentence you to the State Reformatory to a term for not less than one year, and for not more than eighteen months. I hope it teaches you a lesson.”

I shrugged off the wet hand of the lip from my shoulder, avoided the tear- reddened eyes of Mama sobbing quietly in the rear of the courtroom, and stuck my hands out to the bailiff for the icy-cold handcuffs.

June’s old man was a big wheel with lots of muscle in the courts. He had gone behind the scenes and pulled strings and put the cinch on the joint for me. My sentence was for carnal knowledge and abuse, reduced from pandering, because you can’t pander from anything except a whore, and

June’s old man wasn’t about to go for that.

Yes, I was sure working at that first patch of gray in my mother’s hair.

Steve would have been proud of me, don’t you think?

My sentence to the Wisconsin Green Bay reformatory almost cracked Mama up.

There were several repeaters from the reformatory on my tier at County Jail, who tried to bug the first offenders with terrible stories about the hard time up at the reformatory, while we were waiting for the van to take upstate to the reformatory. I was too dumb to feel anything, A fool I was to think the dummy was a fairy tale!

In the two weeks that I waited, Mama wrote me a letter every day and visited twice. Mama’s guilt and heartbreak were weighing heavily on her.

Back in Rockford she had been a dutiful church goer, leading a christian life until Steve came on the scene. But now when I read her long rambling letters crammed with threats of fire and brimstone for me if I didn’t get Jesus in my heart and respect the Holy Ghost and the fire, I realized that poor Mama was becoming a religious fanatic to save her sanity. The pressures of Henry’s death and now my plight must have been awful.

The van came to get us on a stormy, thunderous morning. As we stepped into the van handcuffed together I saw Mama standing in the icy, driving rain waving good-bye. I could feel a hot throbbing lump at the base of my throat to see her standing there looking so sad and lonesome, cowering beneath the battering rain. I could feel the tears aching to flow, but I couldn’t cry.

Mama never told me how she found out the time the van would come. I still wonder how she found out and what her thoughts were out there in the storm as she watched me start my journey.

The state called it a reformatory, but believe me it was a prison for real.

My belly fluttered when the van pulled into the prison road leading to the joint. The van had been vibrating with horse play and profane ribbing among the twenty-odd prisoners. Only one of them had sat tensely and silently during the entire trip. The fat fellow next to me.

But when those high slate grey walls loomed grimly before us it was as if a giant fist had slugged the breath from us all. Even the repeaters who had served time behind those walls were silent, tight faced. I started to believe those stories they had told back in County Jail.

The van went through three gates manned by rock-faced backs carrying scoped, high-powered rifles. Three casket-gray cell houses stood like mute

mourners beneath the bleak sunless sky. For the first time in my life I felt raw, grinding fear.

The fat Negro sitting next to me was a former schoolmate of mine in high school. He had been a dedicated member of the Holiness Church then.

I had never gotten friendly with him because his only interest at that time seemed to be his church and Bible. He didn’t smoke, swear, chase broads or gamble. He had been a rock-ribbed square.

His name was Oscar. Apparently he was still square because now his eyes were closed and I could hear bits of prayer as he whispered softly.

Oscar’s prayer was abruptly cut off by the screech of the van’s brakes as it stopped in front of the prison check-in station and bath house. We clambered out and stood in line to have our handcuffs removed. Two screws started at each end of the line unlocking the cuffs.

As they moved toward the middle of the line they stifled the thin whispers of the men. They said to each man, “Button it up! Silence! No talking!”

Oscar was shaking and trembling in front of me as we filed into a brightly- lit high-ceilinged room. A rough pine counter stretched for twenty yards down a green-and-gray flagstone floor that looked clean enough to eat from. This was part of the shiny, clean skin of the apple. The inside was rotting and foul.

Cons with starch-white faces stood behind the long counter guessing our sizes as we passed them and passing out faded pieces of our uniform from caps to brogans.

We passed with our bundles into a large room. A tall silent screw, dazzling with brass buttons and gold braid on his navy-blue uniform, slashed his lead- loaded cane through the air like a vocal sword directing us to put our bundles on a long bench and to undress for short arm inspection, and a brief exam by the prison croaker seated at a battered steel desk in the back of the room.

Finally we all had been checked by the croaker and showered. The gold- spangled screw raised his talkative cane. It told us to go out the door and turn left, then straight ahead. Two screws marched alongside as we made it toward a squat sandstone building two-hundred yards away. Was that talking cane the dummys?

I heard it before I saw it. A loud scraping, thunder laced with a hollow roar. Never before had I heard anything like it. Then mysteriously, in the dimness, countless young grim faces seemed to be bobbing in a sea of gray. A hundred feet ahead I saw the mystery. Hundreds of gray-clad cons were

lock stepping from the mess halls into the three cell houses. They were an eerie sight in the twilight, marching mutely in cadence like tragic robot soldiers. The roaring thunder was the scrape and thump of their heavy prison brogans.

We reached the squat building. We were to stay in its quarantine cells for the next ten days. All fish, new cons, were housed here to be given a thorough medical check out and classification before being assigned to work details out in population.

I got a putrid taste of the inside of that apple when cons in white uniforms and peaked caps gave us our supper through a slot in our cell doors. It was barley soup with a hunk of brown bread. It would have made great shrapnel in a grenade.

I was new and learning, so instead of just gulping it down, I took a long close look at the odd little things black-dotted at one end. I puked until my belly cramped. The barley in the soup was lousy with worms.

The lights went out at nine. Every hour or so a screw came by the row of cells. He would poke the bright eye of his flashlight into a cell and then squint his eyes as he looked into each cell. I wondered if it were a capital crime in this joint to get caught having an affair with “lady five fingers.”

I flapped my ears when I heard one of the white repeaters running down the joint in a whisper to a fish. Oscar was listening too because he had stopped praying in his cell next to mine.

The white fish was saying, “Look Rocky, what the Hell gives with that hack in the bath house? Why don’t the jack-off never rap? What’s with that cane bit?”

The repeater said, “The son-of-a-bitch is stir crazy. His voice-box screwed up on him a dime ago. He’s been the brass nuts here for a double dime, and guess how the bastard lost his rapper?”

That screw and his light was making the rounds again, so the repeater got on the dummy.

When the screw had passed he continued, “The creep was called Fog Horn by the cons before his trouble made him a dummy. They say the bastard’s bellows could be heard from one side of the joint to the other. He’s the meanest captain of screws this joint ever had. In the last double dime he has croaked two white cons and four spades with his cane. He hates Niggers.”

Oscar was praying like mad now. He had heard what the repeater said about those four Negroes. The fish wanted a loose end tied for him.

He said, “Yeh Rocky, just to glim him and you know he’s rough, but what in the Hell cut his box off?”

The repeater said, “Oh! The vine has it he treated his wife and Crumb crusher worse than he did the cons. She got her fill of his screwing and drilled herself and the kid through the head. The little broad was only two years old. The note his broad left said, ‘I can’t stand your hollering any longer. Good-bye.’ A head-shrinker here at the time said when the broad croaked herself it shut off Brass Nuts box.”

I lay there thinking about what the con had said. I thought about Oscar and wondered if he could pull his bit or if he would go back to his parents in a pine box, or worse, to the crazy farm.

Oscar had been sentenced to a year by the same-judge that had socked it into me. Oscar, poor chump had started going with a crippled Irish girl of seventeen.

In the dark balcony of a downtown theatre they were seen smooching by the son of a close friend of the girl’s family. He reported post haste to his parents who wired up the girl’s parents. They were Irish, with temper and prejudice.

They third-degreed the girl and she confessed that old black Oscar had indeed trespassed the forbidden valley. The charge of statutory rape naturally stood up and here was old Oscar next door to me.

I slapped the itching sting on my thigh. I pulled the sheet back. Lord, have mercy! How I hated them. It was a bed bug I had smashed, but he was only a scout. When that flashlight jarred me awake an hour later, a division of them was parading the walls.

I lay wide-eyed until morning. The inside of that shiny apple was really something else.

After all our tests we fish were taken out of the quarantine tank on the tenth day to the Warden’s office. My turn came to go in. I got up from the long bench in the hall outside his office and walked in. My knees were having a boxing match as I stood before him.

He was a silver-maned, profane, huge, white bull with two tiny chunks of black fire rammed deep into his eye sockets.

He said, “Well Sambo, you sure got your black-Nigger ass in a sling, didn’t you? Well understand me, we didn’t send for you, but you came. We are here to punish you smart-aleck bastards, so if you fuck around, two things can happen to you, both of them horrible. We got a hole here that we bury

tough punks in. It’s a stripped cell without light, twenty feet below ground. Down there, two slices of bread and a pint of water twice a day. You can go out that North gate in a box for your second choice. So take this rulebook and study it. Now get your rusty black ass out of my face.”

The only thing I said before I eased out of there was, “Yes Sir, Boss Man,” and I was grinning like a Mississippi rape suspect turned loose by the mob.

It was a wise thing I had uncled on him. One of those arrogant repeaters went to the hole for having a sassy look in his eyes. The charge was “visual insubordination.”

Oscar and I were assigned to work and live in cell block “B.” It was all black. Of the three, it was the only one without toilets. We had buckets in cells that we took out each morning and dumped into running water in a trough behind the cell block.

The only stench in my life I have ever smelled that was worse than that cell block on a warm night was a sick hype.

It was rough all right and a terrible battle of wits. The battle mainly centered around staying out of sight and trouble with the dummy. He walked on the balls of his feet and he could read a con’s mind. It was terrifying to have maybe a slice of contraband bread in your bosom, and then from nowhere have the dummy pop up.

He didn’t pass out an instruction leaflet running down the lingo of that cane. If you misunderstood what it said, the dummy would crack the leaded shaft of it against your skull.

After I had put in six months on my bit, a young Negro con came in on transfer from the big joint and brought me a wire from Party.

He sent word that we were still tight and I was his horse if I never won a race.

It felt good to know he had forgiven me for turning chicken back there in the alley with the balloon.

The dummy hated everybody. He felt something much more frightful for Oscar.

I don’t know whether it was that the dummy had a hate for God too, and he knew how religious Oscar was, and had focused all his hate on a living target. Oscar and I shared a double bunk cell. I had the bottom bunk. It was a chilling sight at night when the dummy should have been at home to look up from a book and see him out there on the tier motionless, staring up at Oscar

in his bunk reading the Bible.

When I was sure that the cold, luminous, green eyes had slipped away for the night, I would crack, “Oscar, my man, I like you. Will you take some good advice from a friend? I am telling you Pal, it’s driving the dummy off his rocker to see you reading that Bible. Pal, why in the Hell don’t you stop reading it for your own good?”

That square jerk would go on reading, he hadn’t even noticed the dummy’s visit.

He would say, “I know you are my friend and I appreciate your advice, but I can’t take it. Don’t worry about me. Jesus will protect me.”

Mama was writing at least once a week. Every month she visited me. On her last visit, without worrying her too much, I suggested it would be a good idea to put in a long-distance call to the Warden once a week just so he would know somebody out there loved me and wanted me to stay healthy.

She was looking fine and had saved her money. She had opened a beauty shop. She told me when I came up for parole she was sure a friend of hers would give me a job. At night after her visits I would lie sleepless all night mentally recapping our sad lives. I could still remember too, every mole and crease in Henry’s face.

One night after one of her visits, the radio loud speaker on the cell house wall blared out “Spring Time in the Rockies.” I tried to keep my crying a secret from Oscar, but he heard me. He marked off a chapter in the Bible for me to read, but with the dummy around, I wasn’t about to do something stupid like that.

The dummy put one over on Jesus and busted Oscar. We had almost finished mopping the flag when the cell house runner brought me two wieners from the kitchen. A pal had sent them.

I gave Oscar one. He stuck it inside his shirt I stood my mop against the wall and ducked into an empty cell and wolfed mine down.

We had finished mopping and were at the supply closet putting our mops and buckets away. Oscar was nibbling slowly on his wiener like he was safe and sound at the “Last Supper.”

I saw the giant shadow glue itself against the wall next to the closet door. I looked through the trap door in the corner of my eye. The universe reeled.

It was the dummy. He saw the piece of wiener in Oscar’s hand. The dummy’s green eyes were oscillating.

That deadly cane razored through the air and cut a slice of hair and bloody flesh from the side of Oscar’s head.

The scarlet glob was hanging by a slimy thread of flesh dangling like an awful earring near the tip of his ear lobe. Oscar’s eyes walled toward the back of his head as he moaned and slipped to the flag. From the grey, whitish core of the wound spouts of blood pulsed out.

The dummy just stood there looking down at the carnage. His green eyes were twinkling in excitement. I had seen him every day for eight months. I had never seen him smile. He was smiling now like he was watching two cute kittens frolicking. I stooped to help Oscar. I felt feathery puffs of air against my cheek. The cane was screaming. The dummy was furiously waggling it beside my head. It was screaming, “Get out!”

I got. I lay in my cell wondering if the dummy had second thoughts and would try for two. I heard the voices of the hospital orderlies on the flag taking Oscar away.

I remembered the murderous force of the blow the dummy had struck. I remembered that pleased look on his face. I knew from con grape-vine that he was from Alabama. I knew now it hadn’t been Oscar’s Bible that had put the dummy’s balls in the fire. The dummy knew about that crippled Irish girl. Oscar went from the hospital into the hole for fifteen days. The charges, “possession of contraband food” and “physical aggression against an officer.”

I was there and the only aggression on Oscar’s part was the natural resistance of his flesh and bone to that steel cane.

The parole board met in the joint every month to consider applications. Every con, when he had served to within several months of his minimum, started dreaming of the street and that upcoming parole consideration.

Oscar was in the hole and I missed his company. He was a square, but a nice one with lots of wry wit. Several cons slightly older than I came in on transfer from the big joint. They claimed to be “mack” men.

In bad weather, when there was no yard recreation, I would join them at a table on the flag. I didn’t talk much. I usually listened. I was fascinated by the yarns they spun about their pimping ability. They had a lot of bullshit, and I was stealing as much as I could from them to use when I got out.

I would go back to my cell excited. I would pretend I had a whore before me. I would stand there in the cell and pimp up a storm. I didn’t know that the crap I was rehearsing wouldn’t get a quarter in the street.

Oscar came out of the hole and was put into an isolation cell on the top tier of the cell house. I didn’t see him come in so I wasn’t prepared when I got a chance to go up there.

When I got to the cell with his number in the slot, a skinny joker was peeing in his bucket with his back to me. He was in a laughing fit. I checked the number in the slot again. It was Oscar’s number all right.

I pulled the key to the supply closet across the bars of the cell door. The skeleton jumped and spun around facing me. His eyes were wild and vacant. It was Oscar. Only that livid bald scar on the side of his head made me sure.

He didn’t seem to remember me so I said, “How are you, Pal? I knew they couldn’t stop a stepper.”

He just stood there, his dingus flopping from his open fly.

I said, “Jack, you are going to give your bright future the flu if you don’t get it out of the draft.”

He ignored my words, and then from the very bottom of his throat I could hear a kind of eerie high pitched humming or keening, like maybe the mating call of a werewolf. I was beginning to worry about him. I was standing there trying to figure something to say to get through to him. He hadn’t been out of the hole for more than two hours. Maybe some loose circuit would jar him back to contact.

I knew he had been destroyed when he gave me a sly look and went to the back of his cell. He picked up his bucket and thrust his hand into it.

He brought out a fist full of crap. He scraped the crap from his right palm into the rigid upturned left palm.

Using his left palm as a kind of palette, he dipped into the crap with his right index finger and started to finger paint on the cell wall.

I just stood there in shock. Finally, he stopped, snapped to attention, saluted me and stuck his chest out proudly and pointed a crappy finger at his art on the wall.

There was an idiot’s look of triumph on his face like he had finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I gave up on him. I went downstairs and told the cell house screw.

The next day they shipped Oscar to the funny farm where perhaps he is today, thirty years later.

My time went fast after the eighth month. I had gone before the parole board and I was waiting for my pink slip. A white one meant denial and a new date for consideration.

I saw the mail clerk when he shoved it through the bars of my cell. I leaped up and grabbed the small brown envelope. My hands shook so badly, it took seconds to rip it open. It was pink! I banged my fists against the steel wall of

my cell. I was so happy I couldn’t feel pain.

They dressed me out in a cheap glen-plaid suit. I would have been thrilled to have left that den of pressure in tar and feathers. On the way out I had to face the bull.

When I walked into his office he said, “Well Snowball, you must have had your rabbit’s foot. So long, see you in a couple of weeks.”

I wasn’t out yet so I gave him the same uncle smile going out that I gave him coming in.

When I walked out of the joint the fresh air was like a blast of oxygen. It made me woozy. I turned and looked back at the joint. The dummy was standing at the chapel window staring at me, but for once that steel cane wasn’t talking to me.

3

SALTY TRIP WITH PEPPER

First thing back in Milwaukee, I reported to my parole officer, a Mr. Rand, I think. After asking a thousand questions and filling out a mountain of papers he gave me an I.Q. test. When he computed my score his sea-blue eyes saucered in surprise.

He couldn’t understand how a boy with a score of one-hundred and seventy-five could do a stupid thing like peddling a girl’s ass on the sidewalk. If that I.Q. test had been on the basis of the half-baked criminal, pimping theories that I had picked up in the joint at that table from those Chili pimps that were churning in my mind, and that I was so eager to try, my score

would have been zero.

I was eighteen now, six feet two inches tall, slender, sweet, and stupid. My maroon eyes were deeply set, dreamy. My shoulders were broad and my waist as narrow as a girl’s.

I was going to be a heart breaker all right. All I needed was the threads and a whore.

Mama’s small, lucrative beauty shop was on the main drag. Poor Mama, she was doomed I guess to inadvertently set up my disasters.

I had started on my job delivering for the drugstore owned by the friend of my Mama’s who had hired me to satisfy the parole condition of a job upon release.

As fate would have it, Mama’s shop and the drugstore were in the same building. Mama and I lived in an apartment over the storefronts.

Mama called me in from the sidewalk one day about three months after I had gotten parole. She wanted me to meet one of her customers who was getting her eyebrows arched. I walked through the pungent odors rising from the hot pressing combs pulling through the kinky hair of several customers, to

the rear of the shop.

There she was, flashy as a Christmas tree, sitting before a mirror at a dressing table with her back to me. Mama stopped plucking at her brows as she introduced us, “Mrs. Ibbetts, this is my son Bobby.”

Like a yellow cat hypnotizing a bird, she sat there motionless, her green eyes smoky, as she stared at me through the mirror.

Then the velvet purring voice undulated toward me, she said, “Oh Bobby, I have heard so much about you. It’s so exciting to meet you, but please call me Pepper, everyone does.”

I don’t know what excited me more as I stood there, her raw sensuality or the blazing rocks on her tapered fingers that I was sure hadn’t come from Kresges. I mumbled something like I had to go back to the drug store to work, and I would see her around.

Later I saw her slide into her sleek Caddie convertible, her white silk dress riding up exposing the satin sheen of her banana yellow thighs. As she gunned away from the curb, she turned deliberately and gave me a full dose of those hot green eyes. She was signing our deal.

I quizzed around and got the background on her. She was twentyfive, an ex-whore who had worked the jazziest houses on the Eastern Seaboard. A wealthy white fence and gambler had tricked with her out there, and it had gotten so good to him that he crossed her pimp into a five-year bit and squared her up.

Three days later, a half hour before closing, an order came in for a case of Mums. The address was in the plush Height’s, miles from the store.

I made the trip on a bicycle. She answered the door wearing only a pair of white lace step-ins. My erection was hard and instant.

It was a fabulous pad, and the lights were soft and blue. The old man wouldn’t be back for a week.

I was just a hep punk, I wasn’t in her league, but one of my greatest assets has always been my open mind. That freak bitch cajoled and persuaded me to do everything in the sexual book, and a number of things not even listed.

What a thrill for a dog like her to turn out a tender fool like me. She was a hell of a teacher all right, and what a performer. If Pepper had lived in the old Biblical city of Sodom the citizen’s would have stoned her to death.

She nibbled and sucked hundreds of tingling bruises on every square inch of my body. Fair exchange, as the old saw goes, is never robbery.

It took me a week to get the stench of her piss out of my hair. She sure had

been pimped on hard back East. She hated men, and she was taking her revenge on me.

She had taught me to snort girl, and almost always when I came to her pad, there would be thin sparkling rows of crystal cocaine on the glass top of the cocktail table.

We would snort it through alabaster horns and then in the mirrored bedroom we made circus love until our nerve ends shrieked.

Pepper and that pure cocaine would have made a freak out of a Priest. She had sure put me on a fast track.

I couldn’t know at the time that at the end of the line stood the grim State Penitentiary.

I was green all right and twice as soft and Pepper knew it. Here was a hardened ex-whore who knew all the crosses, all the answers, who handled lots of scratch and wasn’t laying a red penny on me.

The dazzling edge on our orgies was dulling for me, but I was flipping Pepper with the techniques she had taught me. I knew all the buttons to push for her, and she burned hotter than ever for her little puppy.

No wonder, I was freaking for free, those Eastern pimps had charged her a fortune.

I tried one night to get a C note from her for a suit. I knew I had really come on fine in the bed. She had almost climbed the walls in her passion.

“Sugar,” I said, “I saw a wild vine for a bill downtown. If you laid the scratch on me, I could cop tomorrow.”

She slitted her green eyes and laughed in my face, and said, “Now listen Lil’ Puppy, I don’t give men money. I take it from them, and besides, as sweet as you are to this pussy, you don’t need a suit. I like you as you are, with no clothes on at all.”

I was a rank greenhorn, sure, but her cold turn down of my plea for the C note was bitchy cute, and I was a salty sucker, so I reacted like any stupid would-be pimp who had been Georgied.

I had fouled up basic business. I had led with my dick instead of my mitt.

I reached down and slapped her hard against the side of her face. It sounded like a pistol shot. On impact a thrill shot through me. I should have slugged her with a baseball bat.

The bitch uncoiled from that bed like a striking yellow cobra, hooked her arms around my waist and sank her razor sharp teeth into my navel.

The shock paralyzed me. I fell on my back across the bed moaning in pain.

I could feel blood rolling from the wound down toward my crotch, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move.

Pepper was sure a strange twisted broad. She was breathing hard now, but not in rage. The violence, the blood, had turned her on.

She was gently caressing me as she licked, with a feathery tongue, the oozing wound on my belly. She had never been so tenderly efficient as she took me on a beautiful “trip around the Universe.”

The funny thing was, that throbbing awful pain some how became a part of, melted into the joy of the feathery tongue, the thrill of the thing that Pepper was doing to me.

I guess Freud was right. If it thrills you to give pain, you can get your jollies taking it.

When I left Pepper, I was sapped. I felt like an old man. My mood was as bleak and cheerless as the gray dawn I cycled through.

When I got home and looked into the mirror, a death’s head stared back at me. That vampire bitch was sucking my life’s blood all right. I also knew that crystal cocaine wasn’t exactly a health tonic.

Pepper was too fast, too slick for me. I had to make her shit or get off the pot.

I made the skeleton in the mirror a solemn vow that before the week was out I would in some way get Weeping Shorty, a pimp about fifty-five who, while a gorilla pimp, was the best pimp in town to pull my coat to give me a plan for putting a ring in Pepper’s nose.

Before I got busted, I had seen him at Jimmy’s joint. He had looked horrible then, and now less than a year and a half later he looked like a breathing corpse.

Hoss was his Boss. He had chippied around and gotten hooked. It was Friday, almost midnight when I found him.

He looked at me and made that clacking sound against the roof of his mouth with his tongue. You know, that mischievous, weirdly joyful sound that a young kid makes the instant before he rams a hat pin into your ear drum.

Then he said, “Well kiss my dead mammy’s ass, if it ain’t Macking Youngblood. The whore’s pet and the pimp’s fret.”

The junkie bastard was jeffing on me, lashing me with contempt and scorn. Old pimps always know when a youngster with a yen for the pimp game is desperate for advice.

After all, they remember when they started and what a bitch it was just to learn the million questions. The answers would come slowly, from heart breaking trial and error, from the ass kissing of the few who had solved the riddle, who pimped by the book.

The cleverest pimp could give a thousand years and never come close to all the answers.

Weeping Shorty was an old man, and he had gotten past the questions and had worked out a few answers, but even so he knew a thousand times more than I did. So, I fought for control, I couldn’t show anger. If I did he would cut me loose.

We had been standing under the awning of a vacant storefront. He pulled me with a jerk of his head, I followed him to a big shabby Buick. It was parked at an intersection in a cheap-trick district.

When we got inside the Buick I understood why he had parked it there. He could watch and keep tabs on his stable of scrawny, junkie whores working the four corners of the intersection.

He sat under the wheel not saying anything. His eyes straight ahead. I had kissed his ass for a half hour and now he was freezing up. I thought of the tiny pile of cocaine wrapped in tinfoil under my instep that I had filched from Pepper. I fished it out and held it in my hand. Perhaps the cocaine would open him up.

I turned to him and said, “Weeping, do you want a light snort of girl?”

He stiffened like a butcher knife had been run into his back. He looked at the wad of tinfoil in my palm and snatched it and in the same motion hurled it through the window on his side.

His top was blown, he shouted, “Nigger, ain’t you got no sense? You trying to go back to the joint and blow my wheels?”

I said, “What did I do wrong? All I did was to offer the C just to be sociable. What’s wrong with that?”

He said, “Sucker, first booty butt, you don’t transport no hard in your stomp, keep it in your mitt so you can down it fast to the turf. Second, you’re on parole. You’re hot! You ain’t got no business sitting dirty in my short. There’s a law, Sucker, that can confiscate a short with stuff in it. You know if the heat had hit on you you would unload in my short. Keep stuff off you. When you stop somewhere down it in the street until you ready to split. It’s better to get beat for the stash than beat by the heat. Now what took your head outta Pepper’s ass long enough for you to look me up?”

Oh! How this junkie creep bugged me. I sat there beside him trying to think of questions that would bleed him so I could get out of his face fast. He looked exactly like a withered baboon. His breath stunk like he had just eaten a bowl of maggots.

I said, “Weeping, Pepper hasn’t got my nose open for her. She’s too jazzy and slick for me. I came to you because everybody knows that your game is mellow. I want you to pull my coat so I can pimp some scratch out of her.”

The baboon liked that banana I threw him. He was ready to talk the pimp game.

He said, “The suckers in Hell want ice water, but it’s late for them. They ain’t never going to get no ice water. The way you start with a bitch is the way you end with a bitch. You can start pimping hard on a bitch and then sucker out and blow her, but ain’t no way you can turn it around and pimp on Pepper after starting with her like a sucker. Forget her and get down on a fresh bitch.”

I said, “You mean there is no way to get any scratch out of her?”

He said, “Now you see I didn’t say that. I said you couldn’t pimp any scratch outta her. A foxy cold-blooded stud can always find an angle to cross a broad outta scratch.”

I said, “I’m not foxy, but I think I could be cold blooded enough to cross that slick bitch Pepper. Weeping, you are the fox. Lay some game on me and put me to the test. I’ll split any scratch I take off right down the middle with you.”

I hadn’t noticed it was raining. Now it was raining hard enough so that Weeping had turned to run up the window on his side. He had just raised it and was about to answer my proposition when there was a frantic rapping on his window. It was one of his whores.

Through the closed window of the locked door she said loudly, “Daddy, open the door! My feet are soaked. Nothing is happening out here tonight, and besides I am hot as Hell. The vice is watching me. It’s Costello. He told me to get off the street or he would bust me. Please open the door.”

Weeping was a cold gorilla all right. He sat there for a long moment. His monkey face was tight and hard. He casually opened the wind wing as the rain beat down on his whore. She stuck her nose through it.

Without moving toward the wing, sitting erect in the car seat he hollered, “You bullshit Bitch, make something happen. You a whore, you suppose to be hot. Let Costello bust you. He can’t make a beef stand up unless he

ketches you with a trick. You dumb chickenhearted bitch, whatta you think I got this ass pocket full of ‘fall’ scratch for? Now get out there and work. Don’t worry about the rain. Walk between the rain drops, Bitch.”

He slammed the wing shut.

Her face was wild and angry through the murky glass. Her doperotted teeth were ragged fangs in the dimness as she pressed her face close to the glass.

She screamed, “You just lost a girl. You had four, now you got three. I’m cutting you loose, Shorty.”

Weeping let his window down and stuck his head out into the rain as she walked away. He was all gorilla now.

He screamed, “Bitch, I give you odds you won’t split. As much of my dope you been shooting, I’m playing ketch up. You rank Bitch, you know if you split I’ll find you and stick my knife in your stinking ass and gut you to your breast bone.”

I wondered if he had lost her. He read my mind. He said, “She ain’t going nowhere, look at this.”

He turned his car engine on and started the windshield wiper so we could see the street. There she was back out there in the rain whistling and waving at the passing cars.

He switched the engine off.

He said, “That bitch knows I ain’t jiving. She’ll make me some scratch this morning. Now Youngblood, about Pepper. You don’t know anything about her. You ain’t long out of the joint. I like you, so my advice is the same I gave you at first. Forget her. Try in another spot.”

What he said about my not knowing her made me curious.

I said, “Look Weeping, I know you like me, and if you do, run Pepper down for me.”

“Did you know that peckerwood of Pepper’s is the bankroll behind the biggest policy wheel in town?”

I said, “No, but if the old man is flush isn’t that good. Why give Pepper up because she’s in shape. If you gave me an angle I could get some of that policy scratch.”

“Look Blood, brace yourself. Here is the rest of the rundown. Pepper is a rotten freak broad. You ain’t the only stud she freaks off with. I could name a half dozen who ride her. The dangerous one is Dalanski the detective. He is in a bad way over Pepper. If he ever found out you were freaking off with her, Blood, shame on your ass.”

I was shaken by the rundown. Like a sucker I believed that I was the whole show in her love life. I was thinking like the young punk I was.

I said, “Are you sure there are that many studs laying her?” He said, “Maybe more.”

I had a bellyache and a worse headache. I felt lousy.

I mumbled, “Thanks for the advice and the run down, ‘Weeping.’” I got out of the Buick and walked home in the rain. When I got there it was three thirty and Mama was angry, worried and raving. She was right of course. I was violating my parole to be out after eleven P.M.

I was coming out of the drug store to make a delivery when I bumped into him on the sidewalk. It was old “Party Time.”

While doing his year for our caper he had copped a lonely-hearts broad through the mails.

She went his train fare. He finished the bit and went to visit her and made a home.

She had died and the home went to relatives who threw him out. After five bits he was still full of crooked inspiration. I liked him, but not enough to join him again in a hustle. I had only been out four and a half months. I cooled it and avoided him in a smooth way.

I hadn’t touched Pepper in a week. She had called the drug store twice just before closing. She had made licking and sucking sounds to get me out to her place. I made excuses and put her off. I wondered at the time why I was so important when she was a douche bag for that mob that was laying it into her. The day before Weeping brought me a proposition, Dalanski, the roller,

came into the drug store for cigarettes and gave me a thoughtful look.

I was walking home. It was my day off. It was Saturday night around nine. I had been to see a prison movie. It was a grim drama. A young green punk tried a double cross. He was criss-crossed into the joint. He made deadly enemies while doing his long bit.

When he got out, a long black short pulled up and riddled him with a tommy gun.

A big black car was pulling to the curb toward me. There was something familiar about that small pinhead driver. It was Weeping.

He jerked his head and opened the car door. I went over and got in. He was

excited. At first I thought because his car was clean.

He told me, “Blood, put a smile on your face. Old Shorty’s got good news for you. How would you like a half a G in your slide?”

I said, “All right, give me the poison and take me to the baby.”

He said, “I ain’t shucking. It’s cream-puff work. In fact Tender Dick, it’s what you like to do best. Want the run down?”

“If you are going to tell me some broad is going to lay out fivehundred frog skins to get her rocks off, say it. I would lay a syphillis patient that died a week ago for that kind of scratch.”

Then he said, “Pepper is the broad. All you have to do is take her to bed and go through a full circus with her, that’s all. Are you game?”

“Yes, if I get a rake off from the bleacher seats, I said, “and you tell me who wants the show on.”

His eyebrows jitterbugged. He was a slick joker. I should have run from him.

He said, “No, I can’t tell you who. Don’t worry about the scratch, it’s guaranteed. Are you in?”

I said, “Yes, but I want to know more. Like why?”

The tale he told me went like this. A fast hustler from New York who specialized in pressure rackets saw a chance to trim Pepper’s old man out of a bundle.

The hustler knew that Pepper was a dog and a freak. He also knew that Pepper’s old man was hung up on her.

Even though he had met her in a whorehouse and squared her up, he was dangerously jealous of her and unpredictable if he caught her wrong.

The hustler felt that Pepper would be in a sweet state for pressure if solid evidence could be gotten showing Pepper as the dog she was.

The hustler was sure he could force her to help him in his scheme to trim the old man. He needed clear unfaked photographs.

His plan would be simple. Once he got the club over Pepper’s head, he would force her to sneak in phony “hit” slips against the policy wheel.

The hustler had discovered that for Pepper, from her inside position in the wheel, it would be very simple.

The hustler would pay me five bills after I had brought Pepper to a prearranged set up.

I was all for the scratch, and eager to give Pepper some grief for the way she had used me, and outslicked me.

Weeping told me the trap was set. I was to wait until Pepper itched enough to call me. I was not to call her.

Whenever she called I was to tell her to meet me in the bathroom of an old, but still elegant hotel on the fringe of the arcade and shooting gallery section of town.

I was then to call him. I was to make sure that at least two hours passed between her call and when I went to the desk and asked for the key to apartment two-fourteen. My name would be Barksdale. That name I’ll never forget if I live to get a hundred.

On the third day after I had gotten the rundown on the trap, Pepper called the store. It was eight fifty-five P.M., five minutes before closing. I answered the phone. She was burning blisters for one of our parties.

She invited me to her place as usual. I told her that I had to tidy up the store and also mail an important package at the downtown post office for my boss.

I asked her if she could get dressed and meet me by ten-thirty in the bar room of the hotel. It would be more convenient that way. She agreed.

I called Weeping. He told me to maneuver Pepper’s face toward the head of the bed as much as possible when we got into the act.

I went to the bar room and drank rum and coke until she got there.

I almost felt sorry for her when I saw her coming through the door. She looked so innocent and clean, not at all like the cruddy filly that humped up a funky lather beneath a mob of jockeys.

We took a booth so I could watch the clock. She was Jacqueline the Ripper with a fly, but she had a great gentle touch inside if you know what I mean.

She was a space buff all right. She was checking out my readiness for entry into inner space.

At eleven sharp Mr. and Mrs. Barksdale picked up the key to their pad. We walked onto the stage.

Wyatt Earp would have gone ape over the pad.

It was overstuffed horse-hair living room. Gleaming brass bed, giant cherubs on the wall, Gideon Bible on the marble top bedroom table. Midget, efficiency kitchen cubicle. So what, we hadn’t come to cook.

High on the wall over the bed were the two gold colored cherubs. Their eyes were holes, their mouths popped wide holding the light fixtures.

When we got into the brass bed we got the show on the road.

I was almost sure some steamed up joker in the adjoining room had his

gizmo focused on the carnival through a drilled hole peeking from a cherub’s empty eye socket.

Pepper let me out of her Hog at one-thirty in the A.M. just two blocks from Weeping’s whore stand. I felt good. I was going to collect five fat ones for my pleasant night’s work. It was like having a license to steal.

I spotted Weeping’s pin-head in his Buick. As I walked toward him, I couldn’t stop thinking about that Eastern blackmailer. I thought about that green rain that would fall when Pepper started rolling those phony hits in. I thought about how I could catch a few palms full.

Smooth as silk the pay-off came off. When Weeping handed me my scratch he gave me a funny look.

He said, “Take it easy Blood, take it easy.” The next day I went downtown and got clean.

It was the early years for the Nat “King” Cole Trio. They were playing for a two-buck dance that night at Liberty Hall. Party and I were in the balcony at a table overlooking the crowded dance floor. We were slaving like sand hogs trying to tunnel into the flashy high yellows on our laps. They were almost stoned. Ready for the killing floor.

Party saw him first coming in the front door of the auditorium. He knifed me in the side with his elbow.

Then con style, from the side of his mouth, he whispered, “Dalanski, the heat.”

The bastard’s head was on a swivel. He was looking everywhere at once. I felt mad butterflies with stingers ricocheting in my belly when his eyes spotted me and locked on me. I froze, his eyes were still riveted to me as he walked up the stairway straight for me.

I pretended to ignore him. He walked up behind me and stood there for a long moment. Then he dropped a hand like an anvil on my shoulder.

He said, “Get up! I want to talk to you.”

My legs were shuddery as I stood in a small alcove with him. He said, “Where were you around ten and after last night?” Relief and courage flooded me. That was easy; I hedged. “Why?”

He said, “Look punk, don’t get cute. Where were you? Don’t answer. I know where you were. You were out on Crystal Road in the nighttime burglarizing the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ibbetts. Night-time burglary is five to ten.”

My courage and relief swiftly drained out. Frank Ibbetts was Pepper’s old man. He was roughly frisking me now. He ran his hands into my side pockets. With one hand he brought out the three hundred dollars left from my pay-off, plus twenty clean dollars. The other came out with a strange brass door key.

He said, “Jeez, for a flunky in a drug store you got a helluva bankroll.

Where did you get it and where and what does this key fit?”

I said, “Officer, that’s crap-game money. I have never seen that key before.”

He grabbed me firmly like he had captured Sutton and walked me through the dancers out the door to his short.

He took me down and booked me on suspicion of Grand Theft burglary.

He also booked the scratch and key as evidence.

Mama came down bright and early the next morning. She was in a near fainting dither. She was clutching her chest over her heart.

She said, “Bobby, you are going to kill your mama. You haven’t been out six months and now you are back in trouble. What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? You need prayer. Get down on your knees and pray to the good Lord.”

I said, “I don’t need to pray. Mama, believe me there is nothing to worry about. I didn’t steal anything from Pepper’s house. I am not nuts. Pepper will tell them the truth. Mama, I was with her.”

I got my first nightmare inkling of the cork-screw criss-cross when Mama broke into tears. She rolled her eyes to heaven.

She blubbered, “Bobby, there’s no hope for you. You are going to spend your young life in prisons. Don’t you know Son, your mama loves you? You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I went out to see her early this morning,” she said. “She told me she hasn’t seen you in a week. Mr. Dalanski has brought Pepper’s spare key down here. That key in your pocket was one you stole when you made a delivery out there.”

Finally, she went down the corridor. Her shoulders were jerking in her sobbing.

It was an iron cross. My public defender went to that hotel to get corroboration for my alibi. The joint had been too crowded, too hectic. None of the employees remembered Pepper and me. At least they said they didn’t.

The desk man on that night had been a substitute and wasn’t now

available. My signature wasn’t on the register anyway.

I went into court again with the dirty end of the stick. I was a parolee arrested at one A.M. with a bottle of whiskey in front of me in a public place.

Pepper looked like a prospect for a convent. She had stripped herself of paint and gee-gaws. She testified that the key found in my slide was her’s, and that yes, it was possible that I had stolen it while making deliveries to her home. No, she had not seen me for a week before my arrest.

My defender had gotten a change of venue. I was afraid to go before the judge who had sent me to the reformatory.

I got two years in state prison for grand theft, the amount, fivehundred dollars. My parole was to run concurrently with the new sentence.

Pepper’s old man was with her in court. They bought the cross. I couldn’t figure who had sold it to them.

Was Dalanski the joker that Weeping worked for? Or had Dalanski heard that I had a wad, and without knowing anything about the hotel affair sold it to Pepper?

For what reason had the old man bought it? Had those hotel employees been bribed or threatened? If Dalanski was the brain, did he want me out of the way for a reason other than Pepper?

Maybe some day I’ll find out what really happened. I know if I had had lots of scratch Miss Justice would have smiled on me. She favors the bird with the scratch.

The Waupun State Prison was tough, but in a different way than the reformatory. Here the cons were older. Many of them were murderer’s serving life sentences.

These cons would never put up with the kind of petty tyranny that was practiced in the reformatory. Here the food was much better. There were industries here. A con could learn a trade if he wanted to.

He could go into the yard during recreation hours and learn other trades and skills. Here the desperate heist men congregated to plot new, more sensational robberies. The fruits and punks lay on the grass in the sun romancing each other.

This was a prison of cliques, of bloody vendettas. I found my level with the soft spoken smooth Midwestern pimps and stuff players.

Since I was one of the youngest cons in the joint I bunked in a dormitory. It was like a suite in the Waldorf compared to the bug infested tight cells in the reformatory with their odious crap buckets.

It was there in that dormitory that I got the insatiable desire to pimp. I was a member of a clique that talked about nothing except whores and pimping. I began to feel a new slickness and hardness.

I worked in the laundry. I kept my clothing fresh and neat. It was in the laundry that I met the first man from whom I got cunning to balance my hardness.

He was an old Drag man with his bit getting short. He was the first to attempt to teach me to control my emotions.

He would say, “Always remember whether you be sucker or hustler in the world out there, you’ve got that vital edge if you can iron-clad your feelings. I picture the human mind as a movie screen. If you’re a dopey sucker, you’ll just sit and watch all kinds of mindwrecking, damn fool movies on that screen.”

He said. “Son, there is no reason except a stupid one for anybody to project on that screen anything that will worry him or dull that vital edge. After all, we are the absolute bosses of that whole theatre and show in our minds. We even write the script. So always write positive, dynamic scripts and show only the best movies for you on that screen whether you are pimp or priest.”

His rundown of his screen theory saved my sanity many years later. He was a twisted wise man and one day when he wasn’t looking, a movie flashed on the screen. The title was “Death For an Old Con.”

He died in his sleep behind the high gray walls. His fate was that which lives like a specter with all cons. The fear of dying in a cell.

I sure missed that convict philosopher. The wisdom he taught me took me successfully through my bit. I was released after twenty-one months. I got three months “good time” for good conduct.

With “good time” I was free, hard, slick and bitter. No more small towns for me. I was going to the city to get my degree in pimping.

The Pepper cross had answered a perplexing question for me. Why did Justice really always wear a blindfold? I knew now. It was because the cunning bitch had dollar signs for eyeballs.

4

A DEGREE IN PIMPING

When I got back to Milwaukee, Mama, and the street, my mind was straitjacketed into the pimp game. Back in the joint I had dreamed almost nightly. They were cruel playets.

They were fantastic. I would see myself gigantic and powerful like God Almighty. My clothes would glow. My underwear would be rainbow-hued silk petting my skin.

My suits were spun-gold shot through with precious stones. My shoes would be dazzling silver. The toes were as sharp as daggers. Beautiful whores with piteous eyes groveled at my feet.

Through the dream mist I would see huge shaped stakes. The whore’s painted faces would be wild in fear. They would wail and beg me not to murder them on those sharp steel stakes.

I would laugh madly. Springs of scarlet would spurt from their behinds as I joyfully booted them crotch first onto the sharp pikes. They would flop around like dying chickens. They would finally fall away in a welter of blood into two red halves.

When I awoke my ticker would be earthquaking inside me. The hot volley of the savage thrill lay sticky set between my trembling thighs.

I had other terrible dreams. I would be very tiny. A gargantuan Christ in a sea of light would be towering above me. In his anger his eyes would be blazing blue suns. His silky platinum hair would stand on end in his rage.

A shaft of purest white light would shoot from the tip of his index finger. He would point toward a woman. Her back would be turned to me. He would hand me a barbed leather whip.

Like a crash of summer thunder he would command, “Punish this evil woman. Destroy the devil inside her. The Lord so directs thee.”

Eagerly I would grab the heavy whip in both hands. I would bring it down with all my force on the woman’s back. She would just stand there. The scarlet would drain down from her slashed back. She would be standing to her knees in a river of blood.

She would turn her brown agonized face toward me. It would be Mama. I would be shaking and screaming in my sweat. It was horrible. I could never cut the dream off until its end. It had to run its fearful course. The dreams about Mama came until her death.

For a day or two following them, these dreams would recreate in day- dreams. Sudden dark arrows of depression and regret would stab into that open sore in my mind. I would get high. The narcotics seemed to ward off like armor the stealthy arrows.

After a week of rest and Mama’s soulfood, my color and strength came back. On a Saturday night I decked myself out in one of the vines and topcoat I had bought the day before Dalanski busted me.

I remembered the pimp rundowns at the joint. I had learned my first step had to be a fast cop. I needed a whore to hit the city scene. I had to get on that fast track to pimping.

I was only several months away from age twenty. My baby face was gone. I was six feet two. I was as thin as a greyhound on a crash diet. I went into an underworld bar, The 711 Club, crowded with pimps, whores, and thieves.

I stood at the far end of the bar stalling with a coke. I faced the front door. I turned and asked the slightly familiar elephant beside me about Weeping and Party.

He turned his head. His dime-sized eyes got stuck in my fly’s zipper as he looked me over head to toe. He remembered me.

He said, “About a month ago your boon coon Party caught sixty in the county. One of them tight pussys opened his nose wide enough to drive a freight train through. He caught a stud whamming it into her. The stud quit the scene. The broad had to go to a croaker to get Party’s shoe outta her ass.”

Then after pausing to thumbnail a ball of snot from his trunk, he said, “Old Weeping fell dead outside a shooting gallery in Saint Paul. Musta’ shot some pure, cause a lookout on the sidewalk heard him mumble before he croaked. Well kiss my dead mammy’s ass if this ain’t the best smack I ever shot.”

The elephant again raised his hoof toward his filthy trunk. The sissy barkeep sat a fresh bottle of coke on the log before me. I yanked my eyebrows into a question mark.

He lisped, “The runty black bitch in the middle of the bar sent you a taste.”

Without taking my eyes off his thin yellow face, I said, “Sugar, run her down to me. Is the bitch qualified? Is she a whore? Does she have a man?”

The corners of his mouth see-sawed. He slugged his soggy, dirty bar rag against my reflection on the bat top.

He almost whispered, “The bitch ain’t nothing but a young skunk from Saint Louis. She ain’t nothing but a jazzy jive whore. I’m more whore than she is. She ain’t got no man. She’s a come freak She’s Georgied three bullshit pimps since she got here a month ago. If your game is strong you could play a hog outta her ass. She ain’t but eighteen.”

I eased a bone from my pocket, put it on the bar for the fresh coke. I frantically remembered those pimp rundowns in the joint.

I said, “Tell the bitch no dice. I’ll take care of the little things, and if she is qualified maybe I’ll let her take care of the big things. Give the bitch a drink on me.”

On the juke box Ella Fitzgerald was crying about her “little yellow basket.” The bar keep twinkle-toed toward her with the wire and drink. Through the blue mirror I zeroed my eyes in on the target. My ass bone starched on stiff point. Her big peepers were two sexy dancers in the velvet midnight of her

cute Pekingese face.

Hot scratch fever streaked through me. I thought, if I could cop her and get a pimp’s terms she would be out of pocket poison to all white tricks that pinned her.

Those pimps back in the joint sure knew basic whorology. I was glad my ears had flapped to all those rundowns.

They had said, “Chase a whore, you get a chump’s weak cop. Stalk a whore, you get a pimp’s strong cop.”

My turn down of her measly first offer had her jumpy. It was a slick sharp hook twisting in the bitch’s mind. Her juicy tongue darted out like a red lizard past her ivory teeth. It slithered over the full lips. She wiggled toward me in an uneven race with the bar keep. He was sliding her green drink between me and the elephant.

I heard a low excited trumpeting in the trunk of the elephant. He had dug her flawless props and gourmet rear end. It was rolling inside her glove-tight white dress.

I painted a lukewarm indifferent grin on my face as she perched on the stool. I noticed a roll of scratch wedged deep between the black peaks.

She said, “Who the hell are you, and what is that ‘off the wall’ shit you cracked on the bartender?” My eyes were sub-zero spotlights on her face. I said, “Bitch, my name is Blood, and my wire wasn’t ‘off the wall.’ It was real, like me. Bitch, you sure got a filthy, sassy job. It could get your ass ruptured.”

The big vein at the temple in the tiny dog face quivered. Her rapper was shrill.

She bleated, “I ain’t no bitch. I’m a mother-fucking lady. The stud ain’t been pulled outta his mammy’s womb that kicks my ass. Goddamnit, call me Phyllis. Be a gentleman and respect me. I’m a lady.”

The icy blasts busted the thermostat in my spotlights.

I could feel my cool spit on my lips as I roared, “You stinking black Bitch, you’re a fake. There’s no such thing as a lady in our world. You either got to be a bitch or a faggot in drag. Now Bitch, which is it? Bitch, I’m not a gentleman, I’m a pimp. I’ll kick your funky ass. You gave me first lick. Bitch, you’re creaming to eat me up. I’m not a come freak, you are. I’m a freak to scratch.”

My blast had moved her. Those joint rundowns sure worked. I could see those sexy dancers were hot as hell there in the midnight. She was trying to conceal from me the freakish pain-loving bitch inside her.

She was comical like that fire-and-brimstone preacher. He was trying to hide his hard-on from the cute sister in the front pew flashing her cat for him.

The broad was speechless. I had called all the shots. I turned toward the crapper.

As I walked away I bombed her. I said, “Bitch, I’m splitting when I come out of that crapper. I know your pussy is jumping for me. I know you want me for your man. Some lucky bitch is going to steal me from you. You better toss that bullshit out of your mind. Get straight Bitch, and tell me like it is on my way out. You had your chance. After tonight you don’t have any.”

Inside the crapper I ripped a wad of paper from its holder. I wrapped the saw buck and the four singles around it. Whatever happened out there, I had to show a bankroll.

I stood there in the crapper. I was letting the heat seep deep into that bitch out there. Was I going to cop my first whore? My crotch was fluttery at the thought of it.

I walked out of the crapper. She was outside the door. I almost trampled her. I ignored her. I walked to the bar to pay my light tab. She was peering

over my shoulder. I peeled the saw buck off.

I told the barkeep, “Steal the change and cop a hog.”

His bedroom gray eyes sparkled. His delicate pinkie scooted the saw buck back to me across the log.

He said, “Sweetie, it’s on me. Come back at two and cop a real girl.”

She tugged at my sleeve as I turned from the bar. She looked up at me.

Those dancers had stripped.

I looked down at the hot runt and said, “Well Bitch, it’s your move. Do I cut you loose?”

She grabbed my shoulder. She pulled me down toward her. I could feel her hot breath on the side of my head. She popped that lizard tongue into my ear almost to my eardrum. It sent hot shivers through me. I stayed cool. I turned my head and knifed my teeth into the side of her neck. I don’t know why she didn’t bleed. She just moaned.

Then she whispered, “You cold-blooded sweet mother-fucker, I go for you.

Let’s go to my pad and rap.”

We walked to the slammer. I glanced back. The elephant was staring at us.

His tongue was frenching his chops. His trunk was twitching for a party.

On the sidewalk she handed me the key to her yellow thirty-six Ford. I was lucky. I had been taught to drive the laundry truck back in the joint. The Ford’s motor sang a fine tune. It wasn’t a pimp’s “wheels,” but it sure would make the trip to the city track.

I drove to her pad. On the way she played on me. She was setting me up for the Georgia. That lizard thought my ear was a speedway. It did a hundred laps inside it. I was still green. I shouldn’t have let her touch me.

Her pad was a trap for suckers all right. She had pasted luminous white stars on the hotel room’s blue ceiling. There was one blue light. It glowed sexily from behind a three-foot plaster copy of Rodin’s “The Kiss.”

There was a mirror over the bed. There were mirrors on the walls flanking the bed. There was a polar-bear rug gleaming whitely in front of a blue chaise lounge.

I sat on the lounge. She flipped on the portable record player. Ellington rippled out “Mood Indigo.”

She slipped into a cell-sized bathroom. Its door was half shut. The peke was digging a washcloth into her armpits and cat. She was nude. She sure was panting to swindle me out of my youth. I wondered if and where she had stashed that roll of scratch.

She came out belly dancing to the “Indigo” sex booster. She was a runt Watusi princess. Her curvy black body had the sheen of seal skin. I had one bitch of a time remembering the dialogue that covered this kind of a situation. What had the pimps in the joint said: “You gotta back up from them fabulous pussys. You gotta make like you don’t have a swipe. You gotta keep

your mind on the scratch.”

“Stay cold and brutal. Cop your scratch first. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll cut you loose like a trick after they’ve flim- flammed you. Your scratch cop is the only way to put a hook in their stinking asses.”

She danced toward the head of the bed. She stooped over and raised the edge of the red carpet. Her rear end swayed to the “Indigo.” It was grinning at me. It was theatre in the round for sure.

She danced toward me. She had two thin reefers in her hand. That box at the side of the bed had rejected and “Indigo” was encoring.

She stood between my legs. Even through the trouser cloth I could feel the hot dampness of her outer thighs. The inner surface of my kneecaps tingled under the heat.

She quivered and rolled her jet satin belly under my nose. Her humming of the “Indigo” was low and throaty. She sure qualified as the package the pimps had warned about. My twenty-one month cherry was aching to chunk out.

She took a lighter off the cocktail table. She ran the sticks in and out of her mouth to get an even burn. She lit them and handed me one.

She said, “Daddy, this is light green pot from chili gut country. It will make us mellow. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”

I took a deep pull on the stick of reefer. I looked up into the sultry dreamy eyes.

I parroted, “Bitch, don’t put shit in the game. Business always comes before pleasure in my book. I’ll take my clothes off when I know I’m taking them off with my whore. I don’t sucker for the Georgia. Jar loose from respectable scratch, Bitch.”

I had heard it verbatim in the joint. It worked like a lie detector. The motor in her belly threw a rod. Her eyes had a far away look.

She was busy tailoring the con for me. She collapsed to a yogi squat on the polar bear rug. Her moon was winking at me. Her voice was bullshit sweet.

She warbled, “Sweetheart Daddy, you already shot me down. I’m your

sweet bitch. I got a C note coming from a trick with his nose open for me. He’ll spring for it tomorrow night. It’s yours, but you got to wait. Now come on and put your freak baby to bed.”

My system had been clean. The reefer was powerful. She didn’t know how desperately I needed to pimp. She couldn’t know she was the first. I couldn’t let her escape.

I had to have a whore. That reefer was sending currents of anger and hatred through me in time with “Indigo.” My mortal enemy squatted on that white rug.

I thought, “I’m going to murder this runt black bitch if she don’t give me that scratch she had in her bosom.”

Like a brute cop giving a heist man a last chance to confess, I said, “Bitch, give me that scratch you had between your tiddies.”

Her peepers ballooned in surprise and anger.

She gritted, “You’re pimping too hard skinny ass nigger. I have changed my mind. Get your lid and benny and split.”

The “Indigo” was on a torrid upbeat. Like brown-skin lightning I leaped erect from the chaise. I flung my right leg back.

I could feel the tendons at my hip socket straining. My eyes sighted for a heart shot. My needle-toed eleven triple-A shoe rocketed toward her.

The lucky runt turned a fraction of a second in time. The leather bomb exploded into her left shoulder blade. It knocked her flat on her belly. She lay there groaning.

Then like in the dreams in the joint, I kicked her rear end until my leg cramped. Through it all she just moaned and sobbed. I was soaked in sweat. Panting, I lay on the bear-skin beside her. I thrust my mouth against her ear.

In an icy whisper I said, “Bitch, do I have to kill you to make you my whore? Get up and give me that scratch.”

She turned her head and looked into my eyes. There was no anger in them now, only fear and strange passion. Her tremulous mouth opened to speak. For a long moment nothing came out.

Then she whispered, “You got a whore Blood. Please don’t kick me any more. I’m your little dog. I’ll do anything you say. I love you, Pretty Daddy.”

Her talons stabbed into the back of my neck as she tried to suck my tongue from its roots. I could taste her salty tears.

She wobbled to the record player. She lifted a corner of it. She slid that wad of scratch from beneath it. She rejected “Indigo.” She put another platter

on the turntable.

“Lady Day” was singing a sad lament. “My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean. He’s the meanest man that I ever seen.”

I was standing on the bear skin. She came toward me with the scratch in her hand. She laid it in my palm. I riffled it in a fast count. It was respectable. It had to be over two bills. I was ready to let that cherry pop.

I scooped the ninty-pound runt up into my arms. I bit her hard on the tip of her chin. I carried her to the side of the bed. I hurled her onto it. She bounced and lay there on her back. She was breathing hard. Her legs were a wide pyramid.

I got out of my clothes fast. I snatched the top sheet off. I ripped it into four narrow strips. I tied her hands to the bed posts. I spread eagled her legs. With the longer strips, I tied her legs to the top of the springs at the sides of the bed.

She lay there a prisoner. I put her through the nerve shredding routines Pepper had taught me. She blacked out four times. She couldn’t pull back from the thrilling, awful torture.

Finally, I took a straight ride home. On the way I tried to smash the track. I reached my destination. The blast of hate was big enough to spawn a million embryo black pimps.

I untied her. We lay there in the dim blueness. The fake white stars glowed down on us. “Lady Day” still moaned her troubles.

I said, “Bitch, I want you to hump like Hell in these streets for a week. We’re going to the big track in the city. Oh yes, this week we got to get that title to the Ford changed. I don’t drive no bitch’s wheels. It’s got to be in my name, understand?”

She said, “Yes, Daddy, anything you say. Daddy, don’t get angry, but I was bullshitting about that C note trick.”

I said, “Bitch, I knew that. Don’t ever try to con me again.”

I got up and put my clothes on. I peeled a fin off the scratch and put it on the dresser.

I said, “I want you in the street at six tonight. Stay out of the bars. Work the area around Seventh and Apple.”

“I’ll come through sometime tonight. You be there when I show. If you get busted your name is Mary Jones. If you forget it I can’t raise you fast. Have some scratch whenever I show.”

I went down to the street. I got into my Ford. It roared to life. I drove

toward Mama’s. I felt good. I wasn’t doing bad for a black boy just out of the joint.

I shuddered when I thought, what if I hadn’t kept my ears flapping back there in the joint? I would be a boot black or porter for the rest of my life in the high walled white world. My black whore was a cinch to get piles of white scratch from that forbidden white world.

Mama was pressing a young customer’s hair. She saw me get out of the Ford in front of the shop. She called me inside with a waggle of the pressing comb.

She said, “I have been worried. Where have you been all night? Where did you get the pretty little car? Did you find a job?”

I said, “A friend of mine let me borrow it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me. I stayed with him all night. He’s got a hundred-and-three fever. I’ll try to find a job tomorrow.”

She said, “There’s a roast in the oven. Shut the gas off and eat. I hope, Son, you haven’t been with Pepper.”

I looked down at the nut brown, shapely girl getting her hair pressed.

I said, “Pepper? She’s too old for me. I like young pretty brownskin girls.

Pepper’s too yellow for me.”

The young broad flashed her eyes up at me. She smiled. I winked and ran my tongue over my lips. She dug it. She blushed. I put her on file.

I turned and walked to the sidewalk. I went upstairs and attacked the roast.

I took a long nap. At five-thirty P.M. I went down and got into the Ford. I drove to Seventh and Apple. I parked.

At five minutes to six I saw Phyllis coming toward me. She was a block away. I fired the engine and pulled away.

It sure looked like I had copped a whore. I went back at midnight. She looked mussed up and tired. She got into the car.

I said, “Well, how goes it Baby?”

She dug in her bosom and handed me a damp wad of bills. I counted it. It was a fin over half a C.

She said, “I’m tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. Can I stop now, Daddy? I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. You know how you kicked me last night”

I said, “Bitch, the track closes at two. I’ll take you to the sandwich and coffee. The bath will have to wait until the two o’clock breakdown. You needed your ass kicked.”

She sighed and said, “All right Daddy, anything you say.”

I drove her to an open-air kosher joint. She kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she finished the sandwich and coffee.

Then she said, “Daddy, please don’t misunderstand me. I like a little slapping around before my man does it to me. Please don’t be as cruel as you were last night. You might kill me.”

I said, “Baby, never horse around with my scratch or try to play con on me. You blew my stack last night. You don’t have to worry so long as you never violate my rules. I will never hurt you more than to turn you on.”

I drove her back to the track. She got out of the car. As soon as she hit the sidewalk, two white tricks almost had a wreck pulling to the curb for her. She was a black money-tree all right.

The next day I took her to a notary. In ten minutes we walked out. She gave me the three bills back that I had paid her for the Ford.

It was legal now. She wasn’t beefing. Her bruises were healing and she was ripe for another “prisoner of love” scene. She finished the week in great humping style. I had a seven-bill bankroll.

Sunday evening I packed the runt’s bearskin and other things into the trunk of the Ford.

I parked around the corner from Mama’s. I went up to get my things together. Mama caught me packing. Tears flooded her eyes. She grabbed me and held me tightly against her. Her sobbing was strangling her.

She sobbed, “Son, don’t you love your Mama anymore? Where are you going? Why do you want to leave the nice home I fixed for you? I just know if you leave I’ll never see you again. We don’t have anybody but each other. Please don’t leave me. Don’t break my heart, Son.”

I heard her words. I was too far gone for her grief to register. I kept thinking about that freak, black money-tree in the Ford. I was eager to get to that fast pimp track in the city.

I said, “Mama, you know I love you. I got a fine clerk’s job in a men’s store in the city. Everybody in this town knows I’m an excon. I have to leave. I love you for making a home for me. You have been an angel to stick by me through those prison bits. You’ll see me again. I’ll be back to visit you. Honest, Mama, I will.”

I had to wrestle out of her arms. I picked up my bags and hit the stairs. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the front window. Mama was

gnawing her knuckles and crying her heart out. My shirt front was wet with her tears.

5

THE JUNGLE FAUNA

The yellow Ford ran like an escaped con. We got to Chicago in two hours. We checked into a hotel in a slum neighborhood, around 29th and State Streets. We took our stuff out of the Ford’s trunk.

It was ten P.M. I threw some water on my face. I told the runt to cool it. I went out and cruised around to case the city.

I turned the wipers on. A late March snowfall was starting. About a mile from the hotel I saw whores working the streets.

I parked and went into a bar in the heart of the action. It stank like a son- of-a-bitch. It was a junkie joint. I sat sipping on a bottle of suds; I couldn’t trust the glasses.

A cannon with a tired horse face took the vacant stool in my right. His stall took the one on the left. The stall had a yellow fox face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him pinning me. He snapped his fingers. I jerked my head toward him.

He said, “Brother, you are lucky as a shit-house rat. What size benny and vine you wear? I’m Dress ’em up Red. Stand up brother so I can dig your size. I got a pile of crazy vines dirt cheap.”

I stood up facing him. He ran his eyes up and down me. He unbuttoned my top coat. He pulled my vine’s lapels. He shoved me back toward Horseface. I stumbled, half turned to apologize to Horseface. There was a streaking blur behind me. It was so fast I couldn’t have sworn I had seen it. I found out later what it had been.

Horseface showed his choppers, got off the stool and trotted through the slammer. I faced the stall.

I said, “Jim, you got my size? Do you have any black mohairs?” The stall smiled crookedly at me. He straightened my tie.

He said, “Slim, I got blue and black mohair, I can fit you like Saville Row in London. You want the blue too? The bite is two for fifty slats.”

I said, “Man, let’s go. I am ready to cop.”

His brow telescoped like I was going to open a door and catch his mother crapping in my hat. He started oozing toward the slammer.

He said, “Brother, I don’t know you well enough to trust you. I got to protect my stash. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if you went with me and copped? What if you came back later and beat me?”

“No, Slim, cool it. I’ll be back in twenty minutes with the vines. Here’s a slat. Get a taste on Dress ’em up Red.”

I ordered another beer. I was trying to stall that twenty minutes out. I sure needed those vines.

After an hour I figured Dress ’em up Red got busted or something.

I asked the fat broad tending bar where the swank joints were. She named a few, and gave me directions. My bill was eighty cents. I left a twenty-cent tip and walked to the Ford.

The wind wing on the street side gaped open. It had been jimmied. The car door had been unlocked through it.

I got in. I remembered the runt’s costume jewelry had been locked in the glove compartment. I unlocked it. Some slick bastard had slit the cardboard bottom from underneath. There wasn’t even an earring left.

I started the motor and turned the lights on. The snow had stopped falling. My headlights beamed on a squatting junkie whore with a Dracula face peeing in the gutter. She grinned toothlessly into the glare like maybe she was a starlet taking bows at a movie premiere.

I thundered the motor. She stood up wide legged. Her cat was a mangy red slash. She was holding up the bottom front of her dress with her rusty elbows. Her long black fingers were pulling her snare wide open to stop me.

As I shot by her, she shouted, “Come back here Nigger! It ain’t but a buck.”

I drove through the snow-slushed streets. The streetlights were dim halos in the murk.

I thought, “I can’t put the runt down in a spot like back there. I have to find somebody to give me a rundown.”

I drove a hundred blocks. Suddenly a huge red neon sign glittered through the gloom. It read “Devil’s Roost.” It was one of the joints the fat broad at the hype bar had told me about.

Gaudy Hogs and Lincolns were bumper to bumper. They pigged the parking spaces on the Roost’s side of the street. I parked across the street. I got out of the Ford and crossed the street.

I started walking down the sidewalk toward the Roost. “The Bird,” Eckstein and Sarah sent a crazy medley of soul sounds from the rib and chicken joint’s loudspeakers. The street was as busy as a black anthill. Studs and broads in sharp clothes paraded the block.

The hickory-smoked chicken and rib odors watered my mouth. I was at the point of stepping into one for a fast feast. The sign said “Creole Fat’s Rib Heaven.” I didn’t make it.

A long, stooped shadow stood in my way. He was chanting at me like a voodoo doctor. He pointed toward a storefront. Its window was blacked out with blue paint.

He sang, “Shootin’ ’em up inside, heavy and good. Scratch piled up like cords of wood. Geez you look lucky, Jack. Seven, eleven point right back. That’s sure you, Jack. Go in fast. Come out quicker. Lady Luck is a bitch but you can stick her.”

His topcoat was a threadbare green-checked antique. The tops of his shabby black shoes had criss-cross holes snipped out. His bulging corns were humps pressing through the vents. He stank like a bootlegger’s garbage. There was something ghostly familiar in the banana yellow, Basset-Hound face.

I said, “Jim, I’m not in the mood to whale the craps. Say, don’t I know you?”

His transient eyes jerked their bags. They moved over my shoulder, searching down the sidewalk for a fresh prospect. His bald head glistened like a tiny yellow lake under the street lamp.

He said, “Jack, I can’t put a pistol on you. I can’t force you to go inside and collect your scratch. Kid, you too young to know me. You might a heard of me. I’m Pretty Preston. I gave the whores blues in the night when I was pimping at my peak. Who are you?”

His name triggered my clear memory of him. He had driven a gleaming black La Salle car. I had shined his shoes back in the pressing shop days.

Then he had been sleek and handsome like a yellow Valentino. I remembered his diamonds. They had winked and sparkled brightly on his fingers, in his shirt cuffs, even on his shirt front.

I thought, “Could this really be the same dandy? What had happened to

him?”

I said, “Preston, I know you. I’m the kid who used to shine your Stacy’s back on Main Street. Remember me? I’m pimping myself now. You sure pimped up a storm when I was a kid. What happened? Why are you steering for this craps joint?”

He had a dreamy, far-away look in his dull brown eyes. He was probably remembering his long ago flashy pimp days. He sighed and put his arms around my shoulders. I walked with him through the door of the craps trap.

The raw stink of gamblers’ sweat punched up into my nose. We sat on a battered sofa in the almost dark front of the joint. Through a partition I could hear the tinkle of silver coins. I heard the flat cackle of the bone dice laughing at the cursing shooters begging for a natural.

He said, “Sure, Kid, I remember you. Christ, you got tall. I gotta be getting old. What’s your name? Kid, I been getting funky breaks since I came to this raggedy city twelve years ago. I’m just steering for a pal who runs the joint.

“Hell he needs me more than I need him. I’m gonna catch a hot number, or a wild daily double. Old Preston’s name will ring again. How many girls you got?”

I said, “Slim Lancaster, but they call me Young Blood. Blood for short. I only got one now, but with all the whores here I’ll have bookoos in a month. I just got in town tonight. I want to put my girl to work. Give me a rundown on some streets after I dash next door for a slab of ribs. I haven’t dirtied a plate since noon. Anything I can get you?”

He said, “Blood, if you must do something, get me a half-pint of Old Taylor at the corner liquor store. I’ll rundown for you, but you ain’t going to like my tail-end rundown at all.”

It felt good to step out into the fresh, chilly air. I stopped in the rib joint and put my order in. I saw the front of the Roost on my way to the corner.

I tiptoed and peeked through the bottom of the window blind. The joint was jumping. Pimps, whores, and white men crowded the circular bar.

Some skinny joker with scald burns on his face was fronting a combo. He tried to ape the Birds phrasing and tone. His tan face had turned black. He was choking on his horn.

Mixed couples danced to “Stomping at the Savoy” on a carpetsized dance floor in the rear. Silk broads itching for forbidden fruit sat in booths lining the walls.

Their faces glowed starkly in the red dimness. Their long hair flopped

around their shoulders as they threw their heads back. They laughed drunkenly with their black lovers.

I took my peepers out of the slot. I walked toward the corner to cop the bottle for Preston. I made a skull note to pop into the Roost after Preston’s rundown.

I was fifty feet from the corner when I saw him. He was in the center of a small crowd. His high crown white hat was bobbing a foot above it. He was a nut brown giant.

As I drew closer I could see his snow white teeth. His heavy lips were drawn back in a snarl. His wide shoulders jiggled. He was stomping on something. It was like maybe he was a sharply togged fire dancer or maybe a dapper grape crusher from Sicily.

I squeezed through the crowd for a ringside view. He was grunting. His labor was yanking the sweat out of him. The crowd stood tittering and excited like a Salem mob watching the execution of a witch.

The witch was black. She had the slant eyes and doll features of a Geisha girl.

The chill breeze whipped back the bottom of his benny. The giant’s thigh muscles rippled inside the pants leg of his two-hundred-dollar vine.

Again and again he slammed his size-thirteen shoe down on the witch’s belly and chest. She was out cold. Her jaw hinge was awry and red frothy bubbles bunched at the corners of her crooked mouth.

At last he scooped her from the pavement. She looked like an infant in his arms. His eyes were strangely damp. He wedged through the crowd to a purple Hog at the curb. He looked down into her unconscious face.

He muttered, “Baby, why, why do you make me do you like this? Why don’t you hump and stop lushing and bullshitting with the tricks?”

Still holding her tenderly, he stooped and opened the front door of the Hog. He placed her on the front seat. He shut the door and walked around the Hog to the driver’s side. He got in and the Hog roared away into the night.

The crowd was scattering. I turned to a fellow about my age. His eyes were glazed. He was sucking a stick of gangster.

I said, “That stud would have gotten busted sure as Hell if the heat had made the scene.”

He stepped back and looked at me like I was fresh in town from a monastery in Tibet.

He said, “You must be that square, Rip Van Winkle, I heard about. He’s

heat. He’s vice heat. They call him Poison. He’s got nine whores. He’s a pimp. That broad is one of ’em. She got drunk with a trick.”

I went into the liquor store. It was five-after-twelve. I ordered the half pint. The clerk put it on the counter. I swung my topcoat away to get my hide in my hip pocket. I had two hundred in fives and tens in it. I had five C notes pinned to my shorts in a tobacco sack between my legs.

My fingers touched the bottom of the pocket. My right hip pocket was empty. I was sure my hide had been on that side. I dug my left hand into the left pocket. Empty!

Within seconds both my sweaty hands had darted in and explored all my pockets a half-dozen times. The clerk just stood there amused watching the show. His hairy paw slid the half pint back toward him away from foul territory.

He said, “Whatsa matter, Buddy, some broad ram it into you for your poke or did you leave it in your other Strides?”

My mind was ferreting. It back pedaled, tore apart the scenes and moves I had made. I was a confused, jazzy punk.

I said, “Jack, your score is zero. I’m not a vic. I just remembered I got my scratch on Mars. I’ll be back when I get back.”

He was shaking his head when I walked out. I crossed the street. I was headed toward the Ford. I wasn’t going there to look for my hide on the seat. I was going there to peel off one of those C notes next to my balls.

I had remembered the scene back in the hype joint. I saw that rattlesnake lightning again. For the first time I saw the thrill of the cop on the face of the horse. The Fox had sure held my balls in the fire for Horseface.

I thought, “As slick as those two bastards are they can’t miss making a million or getting croaked.”

From that day to this one almost thirty years later no scratch has ever been in my hide.

I copped the bottle. I was hurrying to pick up my rib order. Old Preston was back out there bird-dogging suckers. I saw him point a joker into the joint. He slapped the balking sucker on the rump. The vic went inside. He saw me and hobbled toward me. For the first time I saw his crippled walk. He grinned when I laid the bottle on him. He said, “Thanks Kid, want first suck?” I said, “Jack, it’s all yours. After I get my ribs I’ll duck back in the joint and rap with you.”

Preston had his bad dogs propped on a chair when I got back. I stumbled

over his make-shift sandals beside the sofa. I sat down. His feet stank like a terminal cancer victim. Even a budding pimp has to have a cast iron belly. I unwrapped and started to gobble the ribs.

He said, “I guess you saw pimping Poison hanging that whore on the corner. He’s number two mack man in town.”

Through the peppery grease I burbled, “Yeh, she looked dead to me. I guess he checked her into the morgue. How does he cut the double action? Who, as strong as he is, could top him?”

He tilted the bottle straight up and drained it. He said, “She ain’t croaked. She’ll be back out before daylight humping her ass off. He’s the top Nigger vice roller in town. His pimping don’t faze the white brass just so he don’t kick no white asses. Poison is a nice sweet stud compared to Sweet Jones. Sweet’s the top spade pimp in the country.”

I said, “Preston, I want to be great like Sweet. I want my name to ring like his. I want to be slick enough to handle a hundred whores. Can you pull my coat so I can cut into Sweet and get down right and really do the thing.”

In the half darkness I saw his yellow jaw pop loose. His hound face was twisting sideways in quizzical amazement. His face jig-sawed like maybe I had asked him to let me knock him up. He starched like a corpse on the sofa.

He said, “Kid, you bang a cap of smack or something? Sweet’s crazy as a flock of loons. Your bell ain’t never gonna clang that loud, unless you go crazy too. He’s killed four studs. He ain’t human. He’s got every Nigger in town scared shitless. His whores call him Mr. Jones.

“He hates young punks. I can’t cut you into him. Kid, I like you. You’re good looking. You conned me that you’re intelligent. I am going to give you some advice. Take it or leave it.

“I came to this town twelve years ago. I was so pretty just my ass would have made you a Sunday face. I brought five whores with me. I had been one hell of a pimp back in the sticks. I was only twentyeight when I got here.

“Just like you, I had to cut into Sweet. It was easy for me. I was yellow and pretty. I also had three beautiful white whores in my stable. I didn’t know Sweet hated yellow Niggers and white men.

“He grinned that gold-toothed smile for a year. He conned me that he loved me. He was a hype even then. He started to rib me, called me a square. I tried hard to be like him, so I got hooked on H.

“My habit screwed my mind up. All I wanted to do was bang H and coast. Like a real pal he kept my stable humping. At first his angle was Uncle Sweet

to my whores. In six weeks he was giving me and my whores orders. He tore my image down before my whores. He copped my stable.

“One morning, I was puking sick. Sweet was torturing me. He hadn’t brought me my stuff in twenty-four hours. I was cold as ice wrapped in a blanket, then red hot. I was naked, crawling on the floor, nailing my body bloody when he came in. He stood over me flashing that gold in his jib.

“Sweet said, ‘Easy now you pretty yellow bastard. There’s been a panic. Until this morning I couldn’t cop any stuff. I copped you a sixteenth in Spic town. You know I gotta love your stinking junkie ass to stick my neck out like that. Ain’t that a bitch. I just noticed when you sick you almost black as me.

“‘I wish that bastard white father of your’s could see you down there on your knees begging this black Nigger to stop your misery.’

“Sweet held the tiny cellophane pack out to me. I was too weak to take it. “I said, ‘Please Sweet, cook it for me and load my outfit. It’s inside the

candy-striped tie in the closet. Sweet if you don’t hurry, I’m sure to croak.’

“I was one big ache and cramp. He walked slowly to the closet. He fumbled past the striped tie on the rack. He was getting his kicks making the yellow Nigger suffer.

“I screamed, ‘Sweet you had your mitt on the right one. It’s there! Right there!’

“Sweet finally got the spike out of the tie lining. I was too weak to shoot the H when he got it cooked. I held my arm flat on the carpet. My eyes begged him to tie me up and bang me.

“He pulled my belt from my trousers on a chair. He tightened the belt around my arm above the elbow. My veins stood out like blue rope. He stabbed the needle into a vein in the hollow. The glass tube turned red. I lay there freezing to death waiting for the smack to slug the sickness and pain out of me.”

Preston stopped for breath. Bubbles of sweat had popped out on his bald head. While running down Sweet’s double cross, he had really relived it.

I licked the hot sauce off my hands. I crushed the greasy sack into a ball and sailed it into a paper box at my end of the sofa. I fished my handkerchief out and wiped my mouth and hands.

Those dice the house was using had a Ph.D. Every ten minutes a chump would shuffle from the rear with a tapped out look on his face.

I said, “Christ, Sweet’s slick and cold blooded. What happened after that?”

Preston said, “That shot took the fever and pain away. I wasn’t ready to go a fast fifteen with Joe Louis. I felt better. Sweet stood in the middle of the floor watching me. My legs were weak when I finally stood up. I stood there naked.

“I said, ‘Sweet, I know you have stolen my stable. I know I have been a prize sucker, I demand that you lay a grand or so on me. I got to kick this habit you conned me into. I won’t give you any headaches. You got to loan me that G.’

“Sweet just stood there like a black Buddha for a long moment. For a second I thought he was going to put his foot in my ass like I was a whore. He grinned. He pulled my robe from the foot of the bed. He draped it around my shoulders.

“Then he said, ‘Sweetheart, I ain’t stole no whores from you. Them whores would have blew to the wind if it don’t be for me. You got me. I’m just like your whore. Wouldn’t you rather I had them whores than some bastard you couldn’t cop a favor from? Course I’m going to give you the grand. I’m even going to give you back that buck-toothed yellow whore you had. I want you to straighten up. Sweetheart, I love you.’

“I said, Sweet when do I get the grand? I got to know it’s coming at a certain time.’

“Sweet said, ‘Look Sweetheart, you get it no later than tomorrow morning. I’ll bring the buck-toothed bitch with me. Today before noon I’ll send you a quarter piece. You got no reason to sweat. Sweet’s in your corner, Sweetheart.’

“He chucked me under the chin and walked out. The runner came with the quarter piece at eleven o’clock, I was beginning to think Sweet was only half rat.

“At noon two rollers broke the door down. I was coasting. I was draped in my P.J.’s. They found the H and booked me for possession. I got a fin. I kicked the habit cold turkey in city jail. I did three years, nine months in the state joint.

“I left my hair, teeth, and looks in the joint. A con ran a shiv into my plumbing. That’s why I limp and pee out of this tube in my side. I ain’t had a whore since.”

Preston had choked up.

He said, “Kid, you still want to try this track and cut into Sweet?”

I turned my face from him. He was mopping his tears away with his

sleeve. I was sure a lost, stupid punk. After a rundown like that, I was still itching to take my crack at the fast track.

The rundown had only boosted my desire to meet the slick, icy Sweet. If I had been smart I would have jumped in that Ford and rushed back to the sticks.

I thought, “Sweet hates yellow and white. I am black like him. The runt is black. Sweet won’t have a black whore. I have no reason to fear him. I have nothing that he wants. I have to find him and pick his brain. I got to take that short cut to become a great pimp.”

I said, “To hell with the Sweet cut-in. I’m not bats, but I got to try this track. Yeh, Preston, you sure got the hurt put to you. Man, I feel for you. When I start pimping a zillion, I’ll do something big for you. You are overdue for a break. Now tell me the best spot to down my package.”

He said, “You gotta get your head bumped, huh? What kind of package you got?”

I said, “Black, eighteen, cute, stacked, and three way.”

He said, “Blood, we are sitting on the best street in town for a package like that. Only drawback is this street is crawling with fast, whore-hungry pimps.

“You would also be playing your girl against a half-dozen strong, jasper whores on this stem. They pimping tough as studs.

“They got some fancy con to lay on a fine young whore. If your game ain’t tight, you’ll blow your girl fast. How long you had her? What kind of wheels you got?”

I said, “About a week, but I got her up tight. The Bitch loves me. Nobody can steal her. Temporarily I got a Ford.”

He threw his head back and started laughing. I thought he had flipped his cork. He died laughing for a full minute. The tears were rolling down his cheeks when he stopped.

He said, “Blood Lancaster, Slim Young, Dizzy Willie, or whatever your name is, don’t get down in this town if you ain’t hip that a pimp don’t never have a whore tight. Do you believe any whore can love a pimp?

“You ain’t no pimp. These slick Niggers will steal that young bitch as soon as you down her. The bartenders and bell hops on this fast track are better pimps than the best in the hinterlands.

“You ain’t got no front and flash. Some of these bootblacks got Hogs. You’ll get that young bitch dazzled out from under you. Get out of town and be a good pimp in a chump town. Go to the West Coast. Believe me, you

ain’t ready for this one.”

He stopped rapping. He sat there just looking at me like I should bolt out the door and head for suckerville. He sure thought he had spooked me. His ribbing had me hot as a Bull Run musket.

I thought, “What did this crippled flunky think I came here for? I knew I was slow. I sure didn’t intend to stay slow. I was determined to maybe get as fast and slick as Sweet Jones, the boss pimp. If I blew the runt it wouldn’t be the end of the world. This poor cry baby had let Sweets cross destroy him.”

I said, “Look Preston, I got lots of heart. I’m not a pussy. I been to the joint twice. I did tough bits, but I didn’t fall apart. I believe my whore loves me in her freak way. I believe I got her.

“If I’m wrong, and I blow her, so what. I won’t give up no matter what happens. If I go stone blind, I’m still going to pimp. If my props get cut off I’ll wheel myself on a wagon looking for a whore. I’m going to pimp or die.

“I’m not going to be a flunky in this white man’s world. You can’t convince me I can’t pimp here. I know I can get my share of pussys to peddle. I’m going to get hip to what I don’t know. I’m not afraid of Sweet. I’m going to cut into him and pick his brain like a buzzard.”

A heavy-set Greek with a carny face came in the door. I dummied up. He walked by us then went through the small door in the partition. Preston started to put his shoes on. He looked nervous.

I asked, “Who’s the big stud? Is he heat?”

He said, “Oh, he’s the owner of the joint come to check the bankroll and cut box.”

“Then you and your pal are flunkies for the Greek?”

Before he could answer the Greek came out. Preston was slipping into his topcoat. The Greek paused and glared at him.

He said, “I ain’t payin you a fin a night to sit on your keister. I can get a hundred boys to jump for that fin and the cot in the back. Your ass will grow icicles in the alleys if you don’t get on the ball. Get out on the midway and dump some suckers into the joint.”

Preston said, “Yes, Sir, Mr. Nick, but I wasn’t setting there but a minute before you showed. You know nobody can pull a mark better than me.”

I avoided Preston’s eyes when we got on the sidewalk. I knew what I’d see there. I felt sorry for him. I pulled a sawbuck from my pocket. I folded it and dropped it into his ragged coat pocket. He took it out and put it in his short pocket.

He said, “Thanks Blood, maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you got the guts for the fast track. You’ll need all you got. Good luck, Kid.”

I said, “Preston, thanks for the rundown. In six months you’ll have to anchor your eyeballs. I’m getting down right on this stem tomorrow night. You can’t stop a stepper. Don’t worry if the Greek boots you out, I’ll cop you a pad.”

I peeped into my skull file and saw that Roost note. My Mickey Mouse read one-thirty A.M. I headed toward the Roost. I had been in town only three- and-a-half hours. It had cost me only two-hundred and twelve slats to find out how little I knew. It’s easy for a half-wise punk to lock his mind. Just this was worth a fortune.

I thought, “I have to keep my mind like a sponge. I’ll use my eyes and ears like suction cups. I have to know everything about crosses and whores.

“Fast, I got to find out the secrets of pimping. I don’t want to be a half-ass gigolo lover like the white pimps. I really want to control the whole whore. I want to be the boss of her life, even her thoughts. I got to con them that Lincoln never freed the slaves.”

The Roost was still jumping. I copped the one open stool at the middle of the bar. A Mexican broad in a red satin cocktail dress brought me a pink Planters Punch.

The combo was speed riffing “Tea For Two.” Through the barlength mirror I could see a black ugly stud playing stink finger with an angel-faced white broad in a booth behind me. He was playing pocket pool with his other hand. The broad had her eyes closed. Her rhinestone tiara looked like a phony halo. She was biting her bottom lip like maybe she was taking a heavenly trip right there in the booth.

My ear cups started sucking. The dapper joker on my right was rapping to the stud on the other side of him.

He was saying, “I want my three bills back. That pretty bitch ain’t turned three tricks since you sold her to me. The bitch is dying. She’s falling apart. She can’t walk the street.”

The seller said, “Jack, I sold you the package as is. I ain’t responsible for divine acts.”

The buyer said, “Divine my ass. You knew that dog was rotten inside and needed a grand’s worth of carving. Give me a yard and a half and take the bitch back.”

The seller said, “You a stick up man? The bitch was whole when I sold

her. Maybe you trying to play con on me. Maybe you stomped on the package. Maybe you put the bitch in bad shape. I ain’t buying her back even if you only wanted a slat for her.”

The buyer said, “Ain’t this a bitch? I went for the okee doke. I’m out three bills for a black dog with a foot in the grave.”

The seller said, “I’m pimping for myself, Jack. I ain’t got no time to pimp for you. Just to get you off my ass, I’m going to rundown for you.

“There’s a whore house up state with all Spic trade. They don’t spend but a fin, but there’s a zillion of ’em. On weekends they line up on the sidewalk.

“All you gotta do is cop some pills. Patch the bitch up and take her up there. Up there, ain’t no walking. She can flat back and so long as she keeps breathing you can get some scratch. Jack, she may even last long enough so you can invest the scratch to overhaul her, and still show a profit.

“The bitch is black and pretty. She ain’t got much mileage on her. Them Spies are wild for black broads. Jim, I been running down the out for you. If you go for it call me at noon.

“In the meantime I’ll contact the joint. Me and the house broad are tight.

It’s a cinch you can place your grief tomorrow.”

The buyer said, “Jack, you know I deserve some cooperation. I’ll try anything to break even on that dog. I’ll call you at noon. I ain’t salty with you now. Let’s split and make the scene at the lair. I’ll pop for a coupla rounds.”

The buyer stood up. He knocked his knuckles against the log. The cute Mexican broad came toward him to check him out. She stood before him. She was smiling.

The seller drained his glass and stood. He leaned across the log staring into her bosom. I was digging the action from that trap door in the corner of my eye.

She said, “Both tabs come to twelve dollars. Yours is seven. Your friend’s is five.”

The buyer said, “I’ve got ’em both. Here’s a double saw. Keep the change Miss Bet I Get You. Say Girl, was that bum your father who brought you in when you started to work here last night? Ain’t you afraid I’ll salt and pepper you and eat you raw?”

She said, “No, not my father, my husband. He’s no bum. He had on his work clothes. People are not good to eat. It’s not nice to eat people. Thanks for the tip. Come back soon.”

The buyer hurled his beak toward the ceiling and laughed. Flakes of

grayish white dust clung to the hairs in his nostrils. He had snorted and loaded his skull with H.

Her mouth was still smiling. Her big black eyes had slitted in Latin fury. She turned away toward the register. She punched it. She came back. She stood staring at the buyer. She had a fin and three slats in her hand. She was crushing them into a missile. In the mirror I saw the seller shaking his head as he walked out the door.

The buyer was looking at her like the eight slats had made her his indentured slave. The four-carat stone on his left hand flashed like neon as he caressed his fly.

He said, “If that tramp was your man I’m stealing you. Shit, I should kidnap you right now. You ain’t got no business juggling suds. Bitch, you got a mint between your big hairy legs. I’m gonna show you how to make a grand a week. I ain’t never wanted nothing and didn’t get it. Bitch, I’m gonna get you. I’ll be back at four to pick you up.”

A massive black bulk with a face like a rabid bulldog had come on the scene. It had to be the joint bouncer. He was standing several feet behind the buyer, grinning like a starved croc. He was hunching his shoulders. The Mexican broad was shaking. She fired the missile. It struck the buyer on the tip of his beak. He threw his hands across his face.

She shouted, “You stupid ugly filth. You insane Nigger bastard. Do you think I’d let you touch me? I wouldn’t shit in your mouth to save your slimy life. If you ever look at me again I’ll cut your heart out!”

The bouncer streaked toward the buyer like a howitzer shell. His feet clickety-clacked like the wheels of an express train against the parquet floor. He vised the buyer’s rear end through the tail split in his topcoat.

He seized the scrawny neck with his other giant paw. The buyer was almost airborne. The tips of his shoes did a tap dance against the floor on his way to the door. The joint was silent. The buyer swiveled his head back toward the angry tamale.

Just before he skidded toward the sidewalk he screamed, “You square-ass greasy chili-gut bitch. I’m gonna triple-cross you.”

The joint got back on jump time. The combo started to riff “Mood Indigo.” I thought about the runt. The Mexican broad had her hands on her hips.

She was looking at me. She wanted me to say the buyer was a nogood bastard. She didn’t know I was up as a pledge in his club.

I put a deuce on the log and walked out. It was two-thirty in the A.M. I

walked to the corner. Preston had been right. Poison’s black whore was standing in front of the liquor store. She hit on me. That terrible beating she had taken sure hadn’t cured her bad habit.

She said, “Hi Slim, give me ten and sock it in. I won’t put the rush on you handsome. Cop a jug and let’s go freak off.”

I jerked my head away from the sight of her like she was Medusa. I put my dogs in high gear and crossed the street. I had a quick vision of Poison’s thirteens giving me a butt ache.

I got into the Ford and made a U-turn. I was going to the runt and some doss. I caught Preston in my headlights on the turn. He was still out there trying to make the Greek richer. He waved. I honked.

The mercury had fallen. The icy streets were like a ski run.

Less than a mile from the Roost, I saw a clean front of a hotel. The blue neon sparkled out “Blue Haven Hotel.” I went into the blue-and-red lobby. A broad was on the desk. She had a razor slash on her tan cheek. She had the build and rapper of a heavyweight wrestler.

She said, “You want something permanent or just for the night?”

I said, “How much are the permanent pads? I want the best you got.

Whatever it is, it’s got to be on the front with a view.”

She said, “The best single rooms are thirty-two-fifty a week. The best three-room apartments are a hundred a week.”

She got up and went to a red board behind her. She took several keys off and gave them to me.

The elevator operator was an old stud reading a wild Maggie and Jiggs comic book. He was whistling “When the Saints go Marching In.” His peepers were glued to it like maybe he had found the map to the “Lost Dutchman.” I got off on the third floor.

I looked at two single rooms. The carpets in them were stained and the furniture was battered. This was an underworld hotel all right. I could smell the odor of gangster grass in the hallways.

I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I looked into two apartments. I went for the second one. It was freshly decorated in gold and black paint. The furniture was blond and new.

It was spotless and flashy. The gold-draped front window gave a wide view of the stem. The pad was perfect for now. It would do until I hit the big time with a big stable.

I went to the elevator and pressed the down button. The floor indicator dial

was stuck between floor number two and three.

I took the stairs down. I figured the antics of Maggie and Jiggs had put a lot of pressure on the old joker. Some whore in the hotel was probably down there with the old coot. They were maybe using the comic book as a guide.

I went to the desk. I registered and paid a week’s rent in advance. I put the key in my pocket and went to the Ford. I drove toward the runt. I saw a black whore leading a white man into the front door of the Martin Hotel, a hundred yards from the Haven. The runt could take her good tricks there.

It was four A.M. when I got there. I parked and went up the hotel stairs. An elevated train shook the stairway as it passed. Its shadow leaped through the second floor window and plunged like a rattling, speeding ghost across the wall.

I turned left to number twenty. I twisted my key in the lock and stepped inside. The runt was wide-eyed. She leaped from the bed. She had on red baby-doll pajamas. She squeezed herself hard against me. She acted like I had been gone a year.

She said, “Oh Daddy, I am so glad you’re back. I was worried like hell. Where have you been? Do you love me as much as I love you? Did you miss me? I’d die if anything ever happens to you.”

A heart-aching montage tornadoed through my skull. I gritted my teeth. I felt my fingernails ice-picking into my palms. The runt’s love con had resurrected sad old scenes.

I saw poor black Henry. He was on his knees blubbering his love for Mama. I saw his pitiful eyes begging Mama not to break his heart. I saw Mama kicking herself free of his clutching arms. I saw that terrible look of scorn and triumph on Mama’s face. I thought about the worms that had devoured his flesh, in his lonely grave.

I shuddered and punched the runt with all my might against the left temple. On impact, needles of pain threaded to my elbow. She moaned and shot backward onto the bed. She bounced like she was on a trampoline. There was a crunching, pulpy thud on the second bounce. She’d crashed face first on the steel edge at the foot of the bed.

She just lay there breathing hard. I moved to the foot of the bed. I grabbed a fist full of hair. I turned her face toward me. Her eyes were closed and there was a bloody gash just above her right eyebrow.

I went to the face bowl and drew a pitcher of cold water. I doused her full in the face. Her eyes flickered open. She just lay looking up at me. A scarlet

trickle ran down her cheek across her chin.

She stroked the side of her face. She saw the blood. Her eyes fullmooned. Her mouth was open. I stood looking down at her. The guts in my scrotum were twisting. I could feel hot currents firing up that generator at the base of my weapon.

Then she said, “Why Daddy? What did I say to get my ass whipped? Are you high or what?”

I said, “Bitch, if I have you a hundred years don’t ever ask me where I been. Don’t ever try to play that bullshit love con on me. We’re not squares. I’m a pimp and you’re a whore. Now get up and keep a cold towel on that eyebrow.”

She got up and stood at the washbowl washing the blood off. Her big eyes were staring at me through the mirror. I didn’t know she had started to keep a revenge score in her skull. Seven years later she would tally up and happily cross me into prison.

She sat on the side of the bed pressing a towel against the wound. I got in the sack in the raw. In fifteen minutes the leak had stopped. It was now only a small puckered slash.

She crawled in beside me. She nibbled at my ear. That lizard did cross- country laps and then took the boss trek around the world. I lay there silently. I was trying to figure the real reason why I had slugged her. I couldn’t find the answer. My thoughts were ham strung by the razor-edge of conscience.

She whispered, “Daddy, do you feel like tying me down? Please. I want you to.”

I said, “Bitch, you got a one track mind. I’m gonna tie you down like a sow in a slaughter house. After you get your rocks off I’m gonna give you the rundown on that stem you’re working tonight. Get on your back. Stretch your legs out and put your arms above your head. That’s right you sweet freak bitch.”

6

DRILLING FOR OIL

That thunderbolt El train had trembled the room a half dozen times. Dawn had broken through a smeary sky. Fingers of pale gray light poked through the frayed window shades.

She was lying in my arms. I saw flakes of brown blood beneath her chin. Her heart against my side was sprinting like a wildcat’s facing the hounds. I could hear the clip-clop of an ice-huckster’s horse. The creaking wagon wheels were in rhythm to his pitch.

He sang, “Ice Man! Ice! A hundred for twenty, fifty for a dime. Keep your watermelon cold and your pork chops fine, ’vite Old Joe up to chitlins just any old time. Ice Man! Ice!”

I thought, “Even the ice man is starving down here. I gotta get down up- there on that stem. Off Preston’s run-down, that stem must be a sonuvabitch. I gotta down her there. It’s where the scratch is.”

“When I rundown to her I have to be cool and confident. I can’t falter and tip her I’m still going to school. I gotta really remember the get down rundown I hustled from those pimps in the joint.”

I said, “Phyllis, Daddy’s been out there casing those streets. It’s like walking in a river of tricky crap. If I had any other bitch but you I would say she couldn’t go out there and get me some scratch. Baby, I got a lot of confidence in you.

“I know no stud or con bitch can sell you a pig in a poke. In fact I would stand in the Halls of Congress and swear that you would be too busy getting scratch to even listen to bullshit. Am I right so far about you, or have I overrated you?”

She said, “Daddy, I’m a big girl now. No nickel-slick bastard can steal me from you. I ‘you-know-what’ you, and always will. Honey, I just want to be

your little dog and make you a million dollars.

“When we get rich maybe you won’t mind if Gay, my daughter, lives with us. She’s only two. She’s so cute and friendly. You’d be crazy about her. My aunt in Saint Louis takes care of her.”

I thought, “I was sure a sap making like a pimp. Here I’d had her a week and I was flat-footed. I hadn’t heard about a crumb crusher. Worse, I hadn’t given her a deep quiz. I really knew nothing about her. It had been the one rundown from the joint I’d goofed. I had been satisfied with the shallow rundown from that sissy barkeep.”

The pimp’s in the joint had said, “There ain’t nothing more important than what makes a new bitch tick and why. You gotta scrape her brain. Find out whether the first joker who layed her was her father or who. Make her tell you her life story.

“If she can remember back in her mammy’s ass, good! Fit all the pieces together. Maybe then you’ll know if she’s a two-day package or a two-year package. Don’t try to play ’em in the dark. Quiz ’em into a crack up if you have to. Wake ’em up from a dead sleep. Check the answers you got with what you get.”

I said, “Girl, your rap is right on the scratch. It’s you and me against the world. I’m gonna make a star out of you. We are going to get rich as cream. You gotta hump your ass off in those streets, Baby. As soon as we get a big bundle you go cop the kid. Now forget about her until we get in shape. I don’t want anything in your skull but those tricks out there.

“Now listen carefully. I want you to work nothing but the street. Stay out of the bars. Don’t drink, smoke gangster, or use anything while you’re working. Your skull has got to be sharp and clear out there. Otherwise you could lose your life, and almost as bad, my scratch.

“Believe me, I am not yeasting it. I want you to memorize everything that happens while you’re working. I want a rundown every night after you knock off. Maybe some stuff player will set you up like tonight and take you off tomorrow night.

“Keep those crack-wise Niggers out of your face. If I see you rapping to a jasper broad I’m gonna put my foot in your ass. Play for cruising white tricks. Spade tricks are trouble. They all want to make a home.

“You’re black and beautiful. They can’t resist you. They are the freaks and they got the scratch. Ask them for a hundred and take ten. You can go down on a price. You can’t go up. Don’t go to nobody’s pad. For a double saw or

over take ’em to the Martin down the street from where we are gonna move. Flip out of wheels as much as possible. Flip ’em fast and crack more scratch for over time.

“Your name is Mary Jones. I got enough B.R. to raise you fast. You’re not a thief. I don’t need a bondsman or a lip now. You don’t have a sheet. You see a young girl out there, square or whore, pull her. Be friendly to her. Build me up. You know, tell her how smart and sweet I am. Don’t let no bitch pull you. This family needs some whores. Don’t bring no junkie bitch to me. Now is there anything you don’t understand?”

She said, “No Daddy, I dig everything. You can wire me if something turns up I don’t dig. Daddy, I am so proud of you. You are so clever and strong. I feel so safe being your girl. I’m gonna be a star for you.”

I had told her all I knew. It was just pimp garbage. What the ninety percent know to tell a whore. What she really needed to protect herself in those terrible streets were daily rundowns for as long as she was my woman. How could I rundown the thousand crosses she’d face?

All I knew I’d gotten from the pimps in the joint. They were only fair pimps from small towns. None of them had the guts or savvy for this rapid track. The runt and me were a pure case of the blind leading the blind. I was bone tired. I had to be fresh for our debut.

I said, “Sugar, let’s cop some doss. We got a hectic night coming up. Oh! I forgot, some louse put the heist on your slum. Don’t worry, with what you got to offer, I’ll have enough scratch soon to score for the real thing. This is our last day in this flophouse. I copped us a jazzy little pad uptown. Sleep tight baby puppy.”

She said, “All right, Daddy. I’m going to sleep. I wonder how Gay is doing?”

When I woke up I thought the runt had scalded me with hot grease. I was in a flaming sweat. My ticker was smashing inside my chest like a wrecker’s demolition ball. That cunning joker playing God had conned me again. I had whipped my poor mama again. The runt’s frightened big eyes almost touched mine. That puckered gash looked like she had grown an extra cat.

She was saying, “Daddy, Daddy, you all right? It’s your baby, Phyllis. Damn, you had a bitch-kitty nightmare. Was the heat chasing you or something?”

I said, “No Baby, as a matter of fact, you were in trouble. You had done a stupid thing in the street. You let a Nigger pimp con you into his Hog. It

turned out he was a crazy gorilla. He was trying to cut your throat. I saved you before he croaked you. Dreams often carry warnings. So Bitch, stay out of those pimp’s Hogs.”

She said, “Daddy, I’m looking for white tricks in Hogs. That’s where the long scratch is. Ain’t no Nigger pimp going to put my ass in a sling. I’m too slick for that okee doke. You not going to get salty with me about a dream I hope. Daddy, I ain’t going to bullshit out there.”

It was five-twenty. By seven o’clock we had moved to the Blue Haven. The runt went for the pad. First thing, she lifted the phone off the hook to see if it worked.

I said, “Tell your tricks to call you here.”

She laid the bearskin and freaked the joint off with her lights and other crap. Except for the fake stars, it was a fair mock-up of her pad where I had copped her. She went to the street to get down at eight.

I had told her to work just the block where we padded for a week or so. I went to the front window. Ten minutes after she got down she broke luck. A white trick in a thirty-seven Buick picked her up. I timed her. She had racehorse speed. She was back on the track in nine and a half minutes.

A black pretty broad could sure scratch a white man’s itch fast. I watched her scratch three. I showered and got as pretty as I could. I made an urgent skull note to cop a hot vine connection. I also needed a gangster and cocaine contact. I got the elevator. I left the key at the desk. I had told the runt to check her scratch past forty slats into the toe of my tan Stetsons.

I got into the Ford. I waved to the runt on my way to the Roost. It sure was a thrill to have a young fine bitch humping for me.

I parked across the street from the Roost. I dabbed a sponge into the box of Sun Glow face powder in the glove compartment. I made my face up into an even, glowing tan. I got out and crossed the street toward the Roost.

It was ten-thirty. The sky was a fresh, bright bitch. This first April night had gone sucker and gifted her with a shimmering bracelet of diamond stars. The fat moon lurked like an evil yellow eye staring down at the pimps, hustlers, and whores hawk-eyeing for a mark, a cop.

I felt the raw tenderness of first April winds lashing at the hem of my white alligator. I felt the birth stirrings of that poisonous pimp’s rapture. I felt powerful and beautiful.

I thought, “I was still black in the white man’s world. My hope to be important and admired could be realized even behind this black stockade. It

was simple, just pimp my ass off and get a ton of scratch. Everybody in both worlds kissed your ass black and blue if you had flash and front.”

I was six storefronts away from the Roost. He stood in the center of the sidewalk. I looked down at him. He was a foot shorter than the runt. He looked like a black baby who had taken ugly pills. His head was the size of a giant pumpkin. His voice was a squeal like a clappy joker makes when the croaker rams a sound down his dingus.

He squealed, “Shine ’em up, Hot Shot. If I had your ‘hand’ I’d throw mine away. Get on bigtime. Shines ain’t but a dime. Shine ’em up.”

I looked down at my Stomps. They could stand a gloss all right. I followed the pointing, gnarled finger to the dwarf’s open-air stand. It sat at the mouth of a gangway between two buildings. The red fringes of its tattered canvas top rippled in the breeze.

I climbed into the chair. The dwarf was slapping polish on my Stetsons. A thin stud with at least a half a grand in threads on his back took the other chair. He was wearing silver nail polish. He was reeking with perfume.

A gleaming black custom Duesenberg eased into the curb in front of me.

The top was down. My peepers did a triple take.

A huge stud was sitting in the back seat. He had an ocelot in his lap dozing against his chest. The cat was wearing a stone-studded collar. A gold chain was strung to it.

He was sitting between two spectacular high-yellow whores. His diamonds were blazing under the streetlight. Three gorgeous white whores were in the front seat. He looked exactly like Boris Karloff in black-face.

He was rapping something. All five of those whores were turned toward him. They were listening and paying attention like he was God giving them a pass to Heaven. He could have been running down a safe place to hide because the world was coming to an end.

I said, “Who is that?”

The dwarf said, “You gotta be from outta town. That Sweet Jones. He’s the greatest Nigger pimp in the world.”

The thin joker said, “That spotted cat, Miss Peaches, is the only bitch he cares lives or croaks. Shit, them whores you pinning ain’t but half the stable. If they got Nigger pimps in outer space, he’s the best of them, too. He’s gonna take them whores into the Roost and pop some. He’s lugging twenty G’s in his raise. Ain’t no heist man crazy enough to stick him up though. He croaks Niggers for his recreation.”

I couldn’t believe what I saw. This was only nineteen-thirty-eight. Those Duesenbergs cost a fortune. He must have been the only black pimp in the country who owned one. My peepers jacked off just watching him and those high-powered whores. It was as exciting as maybe Christ making his encore.

The dwarf had shined my Stomps. I gave him a buck. I sat there and watched Sweet Jones and those whores get out of the Duesenberg and walk toward the Roost. The black-spotted cat slinked beside him.

I thought, “Tonight I got to cut into him. I got to be careful so I don’t blow him. The cut in has to be in the Roost. I’ll go in and cook up something in there.”

I got off the stand. I passed Poison’s problem whore. She was sitting beside a joker in a red Hog. She had a bottle of gin in her jib turned straight up. As I neared the Roost I saw old Preston trying to shoo two marks into the Greek’s joint. Just as I turned into the Roost he bucked his eyes and jerked his thumb at me. He was tipping me Sweet was in the Roost. I nodded my head and went in.

It was an off night for the combo. The jukebox was grinding out “Pennies From Heaven.” The joint hadn’t crowded yet. There were maybe a half dozen couples in the booths. Sweet Jones and his whores were the only people at the log. They were in the center. The cat was licking her paws beneath Sweet’s stool. I sat at the log near the front door facing him and the stable. The pretty Mexican broad was standing in front of him.

Sweet was buying the house a drink. She served his party. She glanced at me. She remembered my drink. She brought me a Planter’s Punch on Sweet. The floor waitress loaded a tray from the log and served the couples in the booths all on Sweet.

I sat there studying Sweet. He had to be six feet six. His face was like a black steel mask. Not a flicker of emotion played over it. He kept smashing the heels of his brute-sized hands together like he was crushing an invisible throat.

Even at a distance it made me edgy. I guess it kept his whores on the brink of peeing on themselves. If he had smiled maybe they would have dropped dead from shock. He sure proved pimping wasn’t a charm contest.

Those whores lit his cigarette. They took turns feeding him sips of his Coke. They fought to ram their noses up his ass.

I froze; one of the white broads was whispering in his ear. Those unearthly gray eyes of his in the ebony sockets were staring at me. I could hear the thud

of those meat sledges.

I thought, “Christ Almighty! Mama darling, I hope my double hasn’t put the muscle on this broad for some snatch or scratch. Please don’t let this broad bum-finger me!”

He slid his terrible pearl-gray peepers off me. I saw him pound the bottom of his glass against the log. The Mexican broad expressed to him. He was rapping to her. She was nodding her head and looking down the log at me.

My Stetsons on the stool rung were slamming together like the heels of a Flamenco Dancer. The jukebox was sobbing Lady Day’s beef about her mean but sweet man. I wondered if I’d see the runt again, and if not, how soon she’d get another ass kicker.

The couples in the booths were bug-eying the arena. It was maybe like the Circus Maximus. The doomed Christian, me, pitted against the king of beasts, him, plus the ocelot.

The Mexican broad came slowly toward me. Her face was tight and serious as she stood before me. She had pity in her peepers. She hated capital punishment.

She said, “Mr. Jones wants you to come to him pronto.”

She turned and walked away. I staggered to my feet. I started hoofing that thousand miles to Mr. Jones. On the way I dusted off the hundred-and- seventy-five I. Q. in my skull.

I got to him. The cat snarled under the stool. It pasted its yellow eyes on me. I jerked my eyes from the cat and kept them riveted to the floor. I was afraid to look into Sweet’s glowing peepers up close. I knew I’d crap in my pants.

He whirled around on his stool, his back to the log. I glued my peepers to the tapping tips of his needle-toed patent leather stomps. I flinched at each crash of his huge hooks.

He whispered, “Nigger, you know who I am? Look at me when I’m spieling to you.”

That teletype in my skull hammered out the escape hatch.

It read, “For this maniac you gotta be just like a Mississippi Nigger. You gotta pretend he’s a white lynch-mob leader. You gotta con him, but be careful, don’t get cute. Keep your nose square in his ass. Jeff it out all the way.”

I said, “Sure I know who you are Mr. Jones. You’re the black God of the sporting world. Ain’t a Nigger alive, unless he’s stupid and deaf, that ain’t

heard your fame and name ring. The reason I don’t look at you is because I remember what happened to that sucker in the Bible that snitched a peep.”

His whores broke out into gales of laughter. Miss Peaches wasn’t a lady. She broke wind and grinned. Those patent-leather toes stopped tapping. Could I be selling it?

He reached out and grabbed my chin. He held my head up and cupped it in his giant hook. I flexed my belly to take up the slack in my bowels. Those deadly gray slits almost slugged me into a dead faint. When he opened his Jib I saw spidery webs of spit for an instant bridge his fat lips.

He said, “Little Nigger, who are you and where you from? You kinda look like me. Maybe I layed your Mammy, huh?”

I neatly side-stepped his booby trap.

I said, “Mr. Jones, I’m nobody trying in your world to be somebody. I was born right here in your town. Could be my Mammy went for you. What bitch wouldn’t? If I was a bitch I’d give you some scratch to get some.”

He said, “Nigger, you like fine white pussy? This dog of mine wants you to lay her. I give my whores what they want. You going to lay her for a double saw?

My skull raced out the warning, “Fool! Watch your ass!”

I said, “Mr. Jones, I don’t want no kind of a pussy unless it hangs on my own whore. Mr. Jones, I’m a pimp, like you. I don’t want nothing but some pimp scratch. My principles won’t let me turn no reverse trick.

“Mr. Jones, I ain’t no party freak. I want to be great like you. I ain’t never going to amount to anything if I screw up the rules of the pimp game. You the greatest pimp on Earth. You got great pimping by the rules. Would you want a poor dumb pimp like me to chump out at the start?”

His freak white woman pouted at his side. She begged Nero to flip his thumbs down.

She said, “Mr. Jones, make this pretty punk freak off with your baby. You don’t let nobody say no to you. Since he’s dreaming he’s a pimp it will be wild kicks for me. Force him, Daddy, force him. Show him who’s boss. Sic Miss Peaches on him.”

He shoved her aside. The boa constrictor uncoiled from around my chest. I saw contempt paint over the skull and crossed bones in his peepers. I drew a deep breath.

He roared, “You little pissy, green-ass Nigger. You a pimp? You can’t spell pimp. You couldn’t make a pimple on a pimp’s ass. Nigger, I’ll blow

your head off through that ceiling. Don’t let the word pimp come outta your jib in my presence. Now get outta my face, Pussy. I oughta stick my swipe in your jib.”

The cat slithered from under the stool. She crouched on her belly and stared up at me.

I wasn’t David. Good thing I wasn’t. I was sure mad at the kooky bastard. I grinned and fished a fin out. I tossed it on the log and dragged tail out the door to the street. I was glad I hadn’t stacked that sling-shot switch blade in my pocket against that thirty-eight magnum stuck beneath Goliath’s belt.

The door smacked Preston a hard shot in the forehead. He had been peeping through a slat in the door blind. He rubbed his head. He looked scared.

He said, “Kid, I told you he’s nuts. You keep it up, a ground hog will be your mailman. To play it safe you better give me your Mama’s address. I gotta know where to ship your corpse. Where you going now?”

I said, “Look Preston, I didn’t cut into him. He cut into me. Hell, I ain’t no head-shrinker. I couldn’t handle the maniac. I’m splitting to the Ford to think.”

He was clucking his jib when I walked away from him. I collapsed onto the Ford’s seat. I was stinking from the fear-sweat in the bar. My pants were soggy.

I saw the white broad that was burning to freak off with me. She was holding the Roost door open. Sweet filed out. His whores strutted out behind him. They walked behind him to the Duesenberg.

A tall brown-skin joker with a gleaming head of processed hair got out of a red Hog. He was the gutty stud I saw pouring that gin down Poison’s girl.

Sweet’s stable had gotten into the Duesenberg. The shiny-topped joker and Sweet were rapping on the sidewalk. They pounded each other on the back. They looked like boon buddies. Miss Peaches stood lashing her tail at Sweet’s side.

I almost leaped out of my hide. It was Preston banging on the car window. I unlocked the door. He slid in. His peepers were ballooning, looking past me to Sweet on the other side of the street.

He was sucking air like a mackerel on the beach. He was shoving a rusty owl-head twenty-two pistol across the seat. He was trembling like the zero second had come to assassinate maybe F.D.R.

He said, “Kid, you sitting here hating him, ain’t you? You despise his guts.

I saw the way you was looking at him. A bastard like him ain’t got a right to live on God’s green Earth.

“Do yourself and the world a favor, Kid. Take this rod and walk sneaky like down that sidewalk while he’s rapping to Glass Top. Stick the barrel in his ear and pull the trigger. Then quick, blow the cat’s brains out. It’s easy, Kid. You can do it.

“Every Nigger in the country will love you. Kid, it’s your chance to get great. Go on, Kid, do it now. You ain’t never gonna get a choicer chance.”

I said, “Preston, I’m not hip to the murder game. I don’t want to get hip to it. I don’t want to blow his brains out on that sidewalk and waste them. I want his brains to work inside my skull. You getting old, Preston. You can’t even dent the mustard. He screwed you around a thousand times worse than me.

“You can’t lose for winning. Why don’t you be the hero and croak him. Look Preston, take that tommy gun and split. I like you, but give me a break, huh? I’ve had a funky night and my skull needs a change.”

He said, “Kid, you think I ain’t got the guts? He ruined me, Kid. He destroyed me. He’s just another Nigger. He ain’t no bear, and that cat ain’t no tiger. I’m going over there right now and cash them out.”

Old Preston sprang out of the car. I watched him all the way. That game leg had him tilting from side to side. He looked like one of those doughty “Spirit of Seventy-Six” jokers on the posters around the Fourth of July.

I wondered if he was tanked up with enough rot-gut moxie to really fold Sweet’s dukes for good across his chest. Preston was on the other side of the street only twenty feet from Sweet and Glass Top. His mitt was rammed into his benny pocket keeping the rod warm and ready. Preston’s shoulders and back were stiff and straight. Sweet’s back was toward me. He was facing the sidewalk.

I thought, “The old Dingbat may do it. He sure had reasons. Sweet put the hurt to him all right. Will there be much gore? Will Sweet croak right away or flop around on the street like a chicken with its head wrung off? Will Miss Peaches leap up and cut Preston’s throat?

“If Preston croaks him I’ll have to cut into Poison. I’ll bleed his skull. He will be top pimp. Maybe a couple of those ten whores Sweet’s got will go for me. I’d be some kind of sonuvabitching young pimp in a Duesenberg.

Preston came abreast of Sweet. He had slowed to an amble. I could see his yellow mitt easing out of his pocket. He got maybe three feet past Sweet and stopped. He was going to do it! He was coming back for a fatal flank sneak.

At that instant Sweet turned his buffalo head and looked down at Preston. Miss Peaches stiffened. I saw a black cavern open in Preston’s toothless yellow face. The chicken-hearted bastard had been chilled by those awful gray orbs and the cat. He was grinning at Sweet. He scooted his empty hand out of his pocket.

Preston might have made it if Sweet hadn’t turned those lights on him. Old Preston bowed his bald head. He walked toward the Greek’s joint. His shoulders were sagging. His back was a stooped slouch. Old Preston had missed his choice chance at glory.

I just sat watching Sweet and trying to plot a way to cut into him. It looked hopeless. Finally, Sweet got in the rear seat of his Duesenberg. The cat leaped into his lap. One of the white broads roared it away. I saw Glass Top pat his greasy dome as he turned into the Roost.

I thought, “That glossy-top stud with a face like a pretty whore’s might be the tunnel to Sweet.”

I took my sponge out and freshened my makeup. I got out of the Ford and walked to the Roost. The joint was getting crowded. I was lucky. There was an empty stool in the middle of the log.

The beautiful joker was on a stool next to it. The memory of that four-slat tip out of the fin sent the tamale skidding to me. I sipped my Planter’s Punch. I drummed my Stetsons against the stool legs. Hamp’s “Flying Home” was rocking the joint.

A pack of white broads had a booth behind me. They looked like they had been to a P.T.A. meeting. Their perfume sent a medley of sexy odors through the joint. They were flirting their cans off. I guess they were writers. They were maybe doing urgent research on the “Sexual Habits of the Black Male.”

I wasted no time. I was afraid the pretty joker might split. I snatched my eyes from the excited pack in the mirror. I turned my head toward him and touched him lightly on the sleeve.

He was sure a wrong doer all right. He frogged at least three inches off his stool. It was like I’d stabbed him in the butt with a red-hot poker. He turned his shocked face toward mine. His silky long-lashed eyes were popped wide in alarm. He had panicked like maybe a cute nun caught naked in the Priest’s bedroom by the Mother Superior.

I said, “Jeez, excuse me, Jim. I didn’t know you were in deep thought, I’m sorry I hit on you like a square. My name is Young Blood. I’m a friend of Preston’s. You must be the fabulous Glass Top. It would be a boss honor to

buy you a taste.”

He patted his shiny mop and said, “Yeah, Man, I’m Glass Top. What’s your stupid story? You young studs sure ain’t got no finesse. It drags me to get hit on like that. When somebody touches me I like to be digging it and facing the stud, you know?

“I ain’t salty. I dig you ain’t nothing but a punk that needs his coat pulled to social polish and class. I ain’t no lush. You can spring for a Coke if you want. Tell her to sugar it heavy.”

The Mexican broad spooned sugar into a glass and brought his Coke. He stirred it with a straw. He raised the glass to drink. I noticed ugly black tracks tracing the veins on his light-brown mitt. He was a junkie for sure. He would know where to cop C, and probably gangster for the runt. He was also a pal of Sweet’s. Maybe I could make a two-bird killing here.

He said, “So, you know Preston? What’s your racket? You a till tapper or maybe a burglar, huh?”

I said, “I been knowing Preston since I was a kid. I used to buff his stomps when he was pimping. I’m no till tapper or burglar. I’m a pimp. You must be a pimp yourself. I saw you rapping to the best pimp there is.”

He said, “You a pimp? I ain’t never heard of you. Where you been pimping, in Siberia? Sweet ain’t the best pimp there is. I am. Pimps are just like cars. The best known ain’t no real yardstick to the best car. It’s like I’m a Duesenberg and Sweet’s a Ford. I got all the quality and beauty. He’s got all the advertising and all the luck.

“Sweet’s got ten whores, I got five. These whores in town ain’t hip to how great I am yet. When they wake up to me I’ll have to fight ’em off with a baseball bat. How many girls you got?”

I said, “I only got one girl now. I just got out of the joint, but I’m going to have ten in a year. This town will hear about me. I was thinking about cutting into some top pimp like Sweet. I’m not stupid enough to think I don’t need to learn a thousand times more about pimping than I know. I also need connections like for girl and gangster. I’m just a kid in darkness waiting for some brain to help light the way.”

He said, “Stay cool, Blood. I just remembered I left my kitty’s slammer open. I’ll be back after I lock it.”

I looked in the mirror and saw him go out. He turned left towards the Greek’s joint. I knew he was going to Preston to check me out. When he walked out that panting pack behind me turned as one. It was like Gary Grant

had walked out.

The jukebox was moaning gut-bucket blues. Some joker was singing “Going down slow; Don’t send no Doctor; Doctor sure can’t do no good; Please write my mother, tell her the shape I’m in; I’m going down slow.”

I remembered it had been my father’s favorite record. He had kept it spinning on the rich Victrola. I remembered his shocked face there in the doorway when he discovered it and everything else gone. I wondered if he were alive and still in town. If I ran into him I sure wouldn’t know what to say to him after all these years.

I saw the silk chicks crane their necks toward the door. I switched my eyes left in the mirror. I saw Glass Top coming in. Those chickens were clucking when he sat down.

I said, “Jack, aren’t you afraid those silk broads behind us will rape you?” He said, “Shit, if you stripped and searched all of ’em you wouldn’t find a

C note. They ain’t nothing but square housewives. They sick of that half-ass screwing at home. They laying to swindle chump Niggers outta their youth.

“They know enough on each other to keep all their jibs sealed. Ain’t a chance for their husbands to tumble to what’s going on. So what if some white joker who knows ’em made this scene and saw ’em? Everyone of ’em is just slumming out with the girls. Jack, what they got is a secret sex club.”

I said, “Top, I’m frayed. I sure wish I had a snort of girl. Can you score?”

He told me, “Blood, I believe you are a down young stud. I got news for you. You can score right with me. I got the best girl and boy in town. Even my reefer is dynamite. Blood, I love you. You got heart. How much stuff you want?”

I said, “What’s the bite for girl?”

“A fin a number-five cap. A sixteenth for a C. A piece for a grand. I got a cozy pad around the corner. There you can fly to the moon, Pimping Buddy.”

I said, “Top, let’s split to your pad. If your girl is mellow I’ll maybe go for a C note.”

I threw a fin on the log. The Mexican showed me her choppers like I was her dentist. Three square black studs were standing rapping to the purring pack in the booth.

We went out and got in Glass Top’s Hog. My foot struck a bottle. I looked down. It was the dead gin soldier Poison’s whore had sucked dry. The Hog shot from the curb like a red torpedo. Eckstein’s syrupy “Cottage For Sale” oozed from the Hog’s radio.

I thought, “I sure gotta hurry and get my ass into a Hog at least. I’ll cop a Duesenberg in maybe a year. Geez, it must be one-thirty. I shoulda checked on the runt. My luck is changing though. This glossy-top joker is my in to Sweet.”

He lived in a plush apartment building. It had all the jazz. Technicolored lights spotlighted the exterior. Fake rubber plants stood tall in the foyer.

We took a chrome-and-brass elevator to his second-floor pad. Thick red broadloom carpet wall to wall in the hall. Fresh black and gold paint sparkled the walls and ceilings.

A Polynesian-type dream took our bennys and my lid in a small silver- mirrored entrance hall. My feet sank into the soft lavender carpet. I could hear the deep-throated boom of a console phonograph. The Ink Spots’ lead tenor was parfaiting “Whispering Grass.”

I followed Top and the olive-tinted beauty into the womb-like living room. Double heavy lavender drapes covered the windows. Not a beam of street light or sunshine could violate this pimp’s lair.

Top and I sat on a long gray sofa. It had cost him a big buck to lower the ceiling with the silver lame fabric. The only light came from the glass-topped cocktail table. It gurgled and flashed a pale blue light.

A score of yellow, red, and orange tropical fish streaked inside the aquarium built six inches below the tabletop. Two gray rubber hoses at each end of the tank ran down into the lavender carpet. It was a slick drain off and fresh water gimmick.

The broad was almost naked. She stood wide legged in front of us like a bellhop waiting for orders. The table’s blue light behind her silhouetted her Coca Cola bottle curves inside the flame red shortie gown. I saw a four-inch cone of jet hair between her thighs. She had a rare cat with that extra dimension. I unglued my eyes and looked into her face. She had the dreamy eyes of a freakish “Mona Lisa.”

He said, “Bitch, bring a coupla outfits and some caps of girl and boy. Oh yeah, Blood, this is Radell.”

That awesome round butt of her’s jiggled as she wiggled past me. The big white phonograph in the corner was booming out a novelty tune. “When your pipes get dry then you know you’re high. Everything is dandy. You truck on down to the candy store but you don’t get no peppermint candy. Then you know your body’s sent, you don’t care if you don’t pay rent. Light a tea and let it be if you’re a viper.”

“This pretty gowster is sure pimping his ass off,” I thought. “He’s a crazy gowster if he thinks he’ll con me into banging any

1. I’m not even sure about shooting the girl. Of course, I can’t come off like a hayseed either.”

I said, “Jim, you sure ain’t jiving. Your layout is a sonuvabitch.”

He said, “I got five bedrooms here. These whores on this fast track dig front and flash. You can’t pimp here unless you got ’em. Jack, this C I got ain’t going to let you split for awhile. You may as well shed your threads and get in the groove.”

The broad brought the outfits, a spoon and a dozen white and brown caps. She put them on the cocktail table. She slid it closer to us. The water tidal- waved in the tank. The fish darted in a frenzy. She stooped and started unlacing Top’s shoes. I reached into my pocket for a C note. I had peeled it off from my crotch stash before leaving the Haven.

He said, “This flight is on me. It’s a sample. You can cop what you want later.”

We stripped our clothes off to our shorts. His were candy-striped silk. I felt like a bum in my white cotton jocks.

The broad draped our clothes on each arm of the gray overstuffed chair across the room. She didn’t have any of my scratch in her mit when she came away. She stood next to me. The phone on the end table beside him jangled. He uncradled it.

He said, “Castle of Joy, what’s your desire? Oh yeah, Angelo, she’s here.

Hell no she ain’t dossing. She’s on her way.”

He hung up and said, “Bitch, just slip your benny on and get downtown to that head bellboy at the Franklin Arms. Dimples and the other girls are getting more action than they can turn. Take the key to the kitty and get there fast.”

The broad zipped out of there in less than three minutes. She sure liked getting her man some money. Those tricks at the Franklin were going to give their swipes a treat all right.

I thought, “I gotta make the runt cultivate her cat like that broad’s.”

He said, “That’s a good young bitch I got there. I copped her in Hawaii a year ago. There are twenty-thousand white suckers in town for a convention. They got a double saw in one hand and their swipes in the other.

“Radell ain’t had no sleep in thirty-six hours. My other four whores been humping at the Franklin since early this morning. I can’t miss a five G score

for the three days even with Angelo’s thirty percent off the top. Ain’t but a C a day for a girl in oil for the heat.”

He got up and whistled our belts through the loops in our pants. He walked back and started to coil my belt around my arm just above the elbow hollow.

“Look Top, I’m not a square,” I said, “but I ain’t shooting no H. I’m game to bang some C. I’ve been curious to try it like that.”

He said, “Kid, I ain’t squeezing your balls to hip you that after Mink comes Sable. Ain’t nothing a greater blast than horse. It’s your privilege to wake up slow if you want. Horse is what puts the ice in a pimp’s game.”

He upended a cap of girl into the spoon and stuck an eyedropper into the fish tank. He pressed the bulb and drew the dropper full. He emptied it into the spoon. He held the yellow flame of a table lighter beneath the spoon and took a tiny wad of cotton from an ashtray. He tossed it into the bowl of the spoon and then wrapped a thin piece of cellophane around the tip of the dropper. He fitted the needle on it. He stuck the hollow end of the needle into the cotton and drew the dropper full.

I felt my blood smashing against the tight coils of the belt. I saw the veins balloon in the throbbing hollow. I smelled the sharp sicklysweet odor of the cocaine. My palms were dripping sweat. He had the spike in his right hand. He grabbed my forearm with his left hand. I turned my head and closed my eyes. I bit down on my bottom lip waiting for the stabbing plunge of the needle.

He said, “Damn! You got some beautiful lines.”

I shivered when it daggered in. I opened my eyes and looked. My blood had shot up into the dropper. He was pressing the bulb. I saw the blood- streaked liquid draining into me. It was like a ton of nitro exploded inside me. My ticker went berserk. I could feel it clawing up my throat. It was like I had a million swipes in every pore from head to toe. It was like they were all popping off together in a nerveshredding climax.

I was quivering like a joker in the hot seat at the first jolt. I tried to open my talc-dry mouth. I couldn’t. I was paralyzed. I could feel a hot ball of puke racing up from my careening guts. I saw the green, stinking puke rope arch into the black mouth of the wastebasket. I felt the cool metal against my chest. I saw Top’s manicured fingers pressing it close to me.

He was saying, “You’ll be all right in a minute, Kid. You thought I was bullshitting when I told you I had the best stuff in town.”

I still couldn’t say anything. I felt like the top of my skull had been crushed

1. It was like I had been blown apart and all that was left were my eyes. Then tiny prickly feet of ecstasy started dancing through me. I heard melodious bells tolling softly inside my skull.

I looked down at my hands and thighs. A thrill shot through me. Surely they were the most beautiful in the Universe. I felt a superman’s surge of power.

I thought, “It was a cinch that any stud as beautiful and clever as me would become the greatest pimp in history. What bitch could resist me? I turned and stared at the ugly stud beside me.”

He said, “Did you hear those chapel bells? Ain’t they a bitch, Kid?”

“Yeah man, I heard ’em loud and clear. Right now I’d like to see the bitch I couldn’t make. It’s sure wild to bang girl. The only time I’ll snort after this is when I’m in the street between bangs.”

He said, “Blood, you sure know what to say. Just don’t forget where to cop. The more you buy, the cheaper I’ll make it. I love you, Blood. We gonna be tight.”

He had a time trying to bang himself. He was only around thirtytwo, but most of his veins had folded. He finally hit pay clay in his inner right thigh. He kept the needle in, pumping the horse into the vein then drawing it out.

I said, “Jack, why the hell do you screw around like that?”

He said, “Man, you ain’t hip? That’s where the thrill is. When I jack this joint off the horse kicks my ass groovy.”

I lost tally of time while we sat on the sofa and banged stuff. After the second cap I started banging myself. After that first bang the thrill wasn’t as good and sharp. Top was coasting. There were three caps of H still on the tabletop. There was no girl. I had banged five caps of girl. I looked at my Mickey. It was five A.M. I went to my clothes and started to dress. My ticker was speeding inside my frosty chest.

I said, “Top, I gotta split I want a sixteenth of girl and a can of reefer.

Here’s a C note and twenty slats.”

He pulled up from the sofa. He took the scratch and went into a bedroom.

He came out and handed me a tobacco can sealed with rubber bands.

He said, “Kid, I put a coupla yellows in your bag so you can come down and get some doss. Where you padding? You don’t wanta walk through the street with that package of sizzle on you. I’ll call a cab.”

I said, “Thanks Top. I’m padding at the Blue Haven, but my wheels are just around the corner across from the Roost. I’ll hoof it there. The fresh air

will be a kick.”

I stood at the living room doorway to the entrance hall. He was uncapping a thing of horse.

I thought, “Now’s the time to crack on him to sew up the cut into Sweet. I gotta phrase it right. This joker envies Sweet.”

I said, “Top, I was thinking how much more common sense and cool you got than your pal Sweet.”

His hands froze. His eyes beat his mouth to the question. I knew Preston hadn’t told him about my clash with Sweet. I guess Preston’s chicken act had blocked Sweet out of his mind.

Top said, “You know Sweet personally?”

“I met him last night in the Roost. That tall blonde of his wanted me to freak-off with her. Sweet offered me a double saw to do the job. I stood on pimp principle and turned him down. He flipped his cork. He forced me to split. He told me he’d blow my head through the ceiling. I figured he might do it.

“I guess now I have blown my chance to get acquainted with him. I don’t suppose anybody in town is strong enough with him to square me and cut me into him. As foxy as you are Top, I wouldn’t be shocked if you couldn’t cut it. After all, the man is complicated. Come to think about it Top, I don’t have a real need to meet him since I met you.

“My main reason now is I don’t want a crazy enemy like that. So if you tell me it’s over your head, I’ll forget it, stay out of his way and take my chances. I love you Top, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you on my account.”

He gobbled it raw and whole. He flung his girlish head back and roiled off the sofa to the floor. He held his elbows against his belly and laughed like I’d told the funniest joke human ears had ever heard. He was gasping when he finally stopped. He patted his mop.

“Sweet ain’t dangerous, sucker,” he began. “He ain’t never croaked anything but yellow Niggers. He’s croaked four of them in the last twenty years. He ain’t croaked nobody in over two years. He’s ninety percent Bull scare. He don’t kill nobody unless they bad mouth him or muscle his whores. “But he sure hates white folks. He pimps awful tough on white whores.

When he puts his foot in their asses he’s really doing it to the white man. He says he’s paying ’em back for what they done and are doing to black people. His brain is rotted from hate.

“Shit, he probably wouldn’t know you if he saw you again. He wasn’t salty with you for turning down the freak-off. He was playing strong con on his white whore. He’s got his whores thinking he’s God. Even a square from Delaware should know God ain’t going to kiss your ass when you tell him no, you poor boob.

“I tell you what. I gotta take him some stuff this weekend. I’ll buzz your crib to let you know just when. I’ll stop on the way and pick you up. I’ll take you with me to his pad. He ain’t nothing but a big ugly Nigger with a filthy loud mouth.”

I said, “I pad in four-twenty under the name of Lancaster. Top, you gotta overlook my dumbness. I told you I was just a kid in darkness needing some brain to light the way. Top, I sure appreciate your coat-pulling. See you later, Pal.”

He said, “All right Kid, keep that sizzle in your mitt so you can down it in a hurry. Oh yeah, you can cop a spike at any drug store. You gotta crack for insulin with it.”

I walked into the entrance hall. I flicked my sponge across my greasy face in the silver mirror. I went out the door to the elevator. It opened on the ground floor. I flinched before the stark morning light.

Out on the sidewalk, I saw Glass Top’s red Hog pulling to the curb. It was his five whores back from the Franklin Arms salt mines.

I thought as I walked to the Ford, “How about it? Those five whores are probably checking in a coupla grand for a night’s work. Why couldn’t it be me up there in that crazy pad with my mitt out for all those frog skins?”

The night people had vanished from the street. Knots of squares on the way to work bunched at the street-car stops. I got in the Ford and U-turned toward the Haven.

I saw an all-night drug store and pulled into the parking lot. I copped a saw-buck pair of binoculars, and at the drug counter, I got the insulin and copped spikes and eyedroppers. Five minutes later I got to the Haven. I parked on the street.

I glanced up at our apartment window. I saw the drapes flutter. I got a flash of the runt’s dark face pulling back. I walked through the lobby to the elevator. The joint sure looked shabby after Top’s joint.

I thought as I got on the elevator, “If the runt is shitty and tries to third degree me this morning I’ll bury my foot in her ass.”

I got off on the fourth floor. I walked down the hall to four-twenty. I slid

the rubber bands off the top of the tobacco can. I opened the top and took my packet of girl out. It was wrapped in tin foil inside a penny balloon. I shoved it into my watch pocket. I took a yellow from the top of the loose reefer and dry-swallowed it.

I knocked on the door. I waited a full minute. I knocked again, harder. Finally the runt opened it. She was stretching and massaging her eyes with her fists, conning me she had been fast asleep. She jumped into bed. She turned her back and pulled the covers to her ears.

I put the can of reefer on the dresser. I saw a tiny pile of bills on it. I heeled them apart. It was only forty slats. I went to the closet and checked the toes of the tan Stetsons. Empty! I stashed the binoculars in a coat pocket with my C and bang outfit I saw smoke spiraling from a cigarette lying on the base of the plaster copy of “The Kiss” near the front window.

I said, “Bitch, what did you do, break your leg or knock off as soon as you saw me split? Is this tonight’s take? Turn over so I can see that black mug of yours.”

I was standing at the side of the bed. My right hand was resting on the closed plastic lid of the record player. The tips of my fingers were touching the back of it near the motor. It was warm. I raised the lid. Lady Day’s whimper about that “mean man” was on the turntable. The runt turned slowly. I looked down into her face. Her eyes were narrow. Her jib was puffed out. She and Lady Day had been dragging me through the mud all night. The whore was acting like an outraged housewife.

She said, “Ain’t I never going to be nothing but a bitch to you? Call me Phyllis the whore, or Runt the fool. You’d never believe it but I’m human. That scratch I made tonight ain’t bad. These streets are new to me. I gotta feel my way and get hip to the tricks.”

That cocaine was blowing a frosty blizzard through my skull.

I said, “Bitch, when your funky black ass is in the grave you’ll still be a bitch; Bitch, one of these nights you’re going to shoot your jib off, I’ll curtsy and call you Runt the corpse. You stinking bitch I’m hip you’re human. You’re a human black slop-bucket for those peckerwood swipes.

“You gutless idiot, I’m going to throw you out that window if you don’t get the kinks outta your ass an hustle some real scratch. Don’t get hip to the tricks, Bitch. Get hip to what I’m rapping. If you don’t stop your bullshit, I’m gonna kick your heart out and stomp on it. Now don’t crack your jib unless I rap to you, Bitch.”

I started to take my clothes off. She just lay there staring at me. Her eyes were gleaming like a crazy Voodoo Doctor’s. I got into bed. I turned my back to her. I could feel the freak inching toward me.

She stroked the back of my neck. I felt the hot tip of the lizard on the back of my neck. I felt the scab on her brow scrape the tip of my ear. I pulled away toward the edge of the bed.

She said, “Daddy, I’m sorry I bugged you. I love you. Please forgive me.”

The bed creaked when I rattlesnaked to strike. I hooked my right heel under the bed springs. I raised myself on my right elbow. I drew my “ved” left arm back so the back of my left fist touched my right cheek. I grunted for velocity and blackjacked my left elbow into her gut-button. She groaned and wrapped and unwrapped her legs. She chattered her teeth like she was freezing to death.

I could feel that yellow drawing a heavy black curtain inside my dome. Just before I went under I thought, “I wonder if the runt can lug a hundred and fifty pounds to that window.”

7

MELODY OFF KEY

The blast of the phone woke me. The pad was dark as hell. I flung my left hand out for the runt. She wasn’t there. I fumbled the receiver to my ear.

I said, “Hello, this is Mary’s brother.”

He said, “I wanta speak to Mary. Put her on, yeah?” I said, “She just went out. She’s taking a walk.”

He hung up. I cradled the phone on the bedside table. I switched the table lamp on. I checked Mickey. It was seven-thirty P.M. I wondered if I had blown the runt.

I got up and checked the closet. Her clothes were still there. I went to the dresser. I checked the forty slats. Two were missing. There was a note beside the scratch.

It read, “Daddy, I took a deuce for the street. I’m gonna hump my ass off.

Please try to be a little sweet to your little bitch dog, huh?”

I thought, “I’m stumbling upon some pimp answers. It looks like the tougher a stud is the more a whore goes for him. I’ll sure be glad when those four days pass and I go with Top to the Sweet cut in. I gotta watch that the runt don’t get hip I’m banging stuff. Gee, I’m starved. I gotta eat before I bang some girl.”

I went to the phone. The broad who should have been a wrestler picked up. I said, “Anybody down there to get me bacon and eggs?”

She said, “Wait a second, I’ll let you talk to Silas, the elevator man.” The old Maggie and Jiggs fan said, “Yeah, Big Timer, what is it?”

I said, “Silas, can I get bacon with eggs over light, and toast?”

He said, “Yeah, there’s a greasy spoon right across the street I’m going now.”

I hung up and went to the closet. I got the spy piece. I went to the window.

I saw the old jink hobble across the street toward the Busy Bee Cafe.

I made a sweep up and down the street to spot the runt. I didn’t see her. I zeroed the spy into the greasy joint. The runt was draining a cup of coffee at the counter. She came out. Her eyes flashed whitely up at our window.

She walked down the street twisting her rear end at the passing cars. I saw her round black ass hook a white trick in a black Hog. He skidded to the curb. She got in. I wondered if it was the same joker that called.

I ducked into the shower. I was toweling off when I heard a rap on the door. I saronged the towel. On the way to the door I scooped the can of gangster off the dresser and stuck it behind the mirror.

I heard Silas outside the door whistling “When the Saints Go Marching In.” I opened the door. He had a tray in his hands. I took it. A paper napkin fluttered to the floor. He stooped for it.

I looked into the big brown eyes of a pretty yellow broad coming out of the door across the hall. The scar-faced stud who tooted at the Roost had walked out in front of her. He had a saxophone case under his arm. She rolled her lustrous eyes at me. They rocketed to that lump on the sarong. Her sly hot smile made a flat statement, “Please, try it for size.”

I skull noted her. Silas finally tore his eyes from her rear end floating down the hall. He had squeezed the paper napkin into a damp ball.

He said, “That’s a buck.”

I put the tray on the dresser. I took three slats to the door and gave them to him.

I said, “Silas, that’s quite a package with Mr. Hyde. Give me a rundown, huh?”

He said, “Yeah, she’s stacked tough enough to make a preacher lay his Bible down. The horn blower ain’t had her but a coupla years. She’s done rammed her cat scent up his nose and got him hooked. She was a whore until he squared her up.

“He’s got it bad. He don’t allow her outta his sight. Any club he plays she hasta be right there stuck in his ass. If I was thirty years younger I’d steal her. “Thanks, Big Timer, for the deuce. Any time you want something, call old

Silas. Sit the tray outside your door when you finish.”

I sat on the side of the bed and wolfed down the bacon and eggs. I felt better. I wanted to feel wonderful. I put together everything for bang time. I held the end of a necktie in my teeth. I coiled it and tightened it around my arm. On first stab I hit a perfect bullseye. I did Top’s jackoff bit. I threw up. I

just made it to the john. The kick was greater than the one at Top’s.

I thought, “What if my black face like magic turned white. Shit, I could go out that hotel front door and sneak through the barbedwire stockade. I’d be like a wolf turned loose on a flock of sheep. That white world wouldn’t tumble that I’m a Nigger. I could pay ’em all back in spades, the Dummy, the White Bull, that bastard judge that crucified me on my first rap. Once I escape this black hell I’ll find a way all right. Well Nigger, you’re pretty, but a bleach cream will never be invented that will make you white. So, pimp your ass off and be somebody with what you got. It could be worse, you could be an ugly Nigger.”

I dressed and powdered my face. That sure was one pretty sonuvabitch in that mirror. I saw a roach scouting the tray’s rim. I shoved the tray out into the hall.

I thought, “I gotta start stalking that fine bitch across the hall. Maybe I’ll decoy the runt to get past that scarfaced watchdog. I guess I’ll take a walk. Maybe I can cop my second whore. I feel hard and lucky as a horseshoe.”

I put the can of reefer and the other sizzle into a paper bag. I locked the door and went down the hall toward the elevator. On the way, I stopped at the porter’s broom closet. It was unlocked. I tiptoed and shoved the bag of sizzle behind some junk on a shelf.

The cocaine had me froggy. I saw the floor indicator stop at floor number two. I took the stairway to the lobby. I dropped the key on the desk and glided to the street. The cocaine had fitted wings on my feet. I felt cool, breathless, and magnificent. It was a balmy eighty degrees. I was glad I’d left the benny.

I walked toward a rainbow bouquet of neon maybe ten blocks away. My senses screamed on the razor-edge of cocaine. It was like walking through a battlefield. The streaking headlights of the car arcing the night were giant tracer bullets. The rattling crashing street-cars were army tanks. The frightened, hopeless black faces of the passengers peered through the grimy windows. They were battleshocked soldiers doomed forever to the front trenches.

I passed beneath an El-train bridge. A terrified, glowing face loomed toward me in the tunnel’s gloom. It was an elderly white man trapped behind enemy lines. A train furled by overhead. It bombed and strafed the street. The shrapnel fell in gritty clouds.

I was too nervous for the combat zone. I whistled at a general in a yellow

staff car to halt. He whisked me to that oasis of neon. It turned out he was a mercenary. He shafted me a slat and a quarter for the evacuation.

I got out and mothed toward a Haggling flash. The “Fun House.” It was a bar. I opened the door and stepped inside. It almost busted the gaskets in my bowels. A phosphorescent green skeleton popped up out of the floor in front of me. It screeched a hollow howl and then dived back into the floor through a trap door.

I just stood there shaking. I couldn’t figure why those crazy jokers at the bar were yukking like pickaninnys. To stay with the program I mastered a King Fish grin. I went to the bar and sat between “Amos” and “Andy.”

I saw a tall stud with a Frankenstein mask on behind the log. He darted his hand in a sneaky way under the log. There was a wooshing noise like a tire going flat. My stool descended beneath me. I looked up at Amos. My nose was an inch from the log. Amos was grinning down at me.

Amos said, “You sho nuff ain’t been here befo, is you Slim? You frum de big-foot country?”

Andy said, “Wait til he ketch his win. He gonna buy us a pitchuh suds. We gonna lurn ole home boy bout dis big city rigamaro.”

Everybody at the crowded log yukked in a deep South accent. Frankenstein pushed his mercy button. I felt the stool stretching up. With the cocaine kangarooing me, and this booby-trapped nest of low-life suckers I stumbled into I had more than a frantic yearning for maybe four-twenty at the Haven.

He walked down the log to me.

He said, “It’s all in fun. Welcome to the ‘Fun House.’ What’ll it be?”

I ignored him. I got off the stool. I looked down at it. Its metal legs were tubular and anchored to the floor. It had to be a compressed air gizmo. I stepped back and looked at the two ex-cotton pickers. I twitched my nose. I looked down and around them, then the length of the log. I fingered the button on that sling shot in my raise.

I said, “King Fished, Holy mackul, boys. You smell dat? I’se wunder iffen some po stupid Nigger’s funky-ass, nappy-head Southern Mammy ain’t dose shit out anuther square-ass, ugly bastard turd?”

Amos and Andy dropped their jibs like plantation idiots. They shot an anguished look at the white joker behind the log. I walked out the door. They didn’t dig my humor. Maybe it was too “in.”

I slammed into a perfumed line-backer. In reflex, I threw my arms around her soft shoulders. She had the flawless face of Olivia de Haviland. She was

bigger and prettier. I felt the fabric of her tailored black suit petal stroke across my fingertips. She was the finest broad I’d seen since my last movie. I wondered if she was a whore. I decided to hit on her.

I said, “I’m sorry. Ain’t it a bitch, baby the first time we meet it had to be in a collision like two-square? Sugar, were you going into this tramp joint? Believe me there’s no action inside for a package like you. I just stopped in to make a call. My name is Blood. What’s yours?”

Her big curvy legs were wide tracked. I saw the fabulous shadow of her rear end on the sidewalk. Through the filmy orange blouse I saw a pink mole on her milk-white midriff. She brushed back a wayward lock of silky black hair from one of the big electric blue eyes. Her even choppers gleamed like rare china. Her crimson tongue doodled across the cupid bow lips. She was doing a bit that would have shook up a eunuch.

She said, “Blood! How quaint. Your idiom is fascinating. My name is Melody. I don’t drink in bars. Occasionally I go to a supper club. I am not looking for action. As a matter of fact my car is disabled. I was going inside to call for help when our heavenly bodies collided. Is it possible that you’re not oblivious to the esoteric aspects of car repair? Mine is there at the curb.”

My eyes followed her manicured finger to the sparkling new Lincoln sedan. Everything about her hollered class and affluence.

I thought, “This beautiful white bitch has class. She sounds like an egghead. With wheels like that she’s probably got a bundle in the darner! Maybe she’s got some rich sucker in her web. I’ll nut roll on her. I’ll stay outta the pimp role until I case her. I’ll go Sweet William on her. Maybe I can string her out and get all that scratch she’s got, then make a whore outta her. With her rear end, this bitch is sitting on a mint.”

I said, “Darling, I’m not a mechanic. I did learn a little about cars from a buddy in a prep school I just finished. You get in. I’ll raise the hood and have a look.”

She got in. I raised the hood. I spotted the trouble right away. A battery cable had jarred loose. I put it back on. I looked around the hood and signaled for the starter try. She did and smiled happily when the engine throbbed to life. She waved me to her. I stuck my head through the open window.

She said, “Are you driving? If not I should love to take you wherever you want to go.”

I said, “Honey, I’m not driving and it’s a long sad story. You don’t want to hear my troubles. If you drop me off at some nice bar, I promise not to bore

you with it.”

I got in. She pulled out into traffic. We cruised along. For two minutes we were silent. I was busy trying to think of the opener for that long sad story. I had read a cellhouse full of books. I knew I could rise to a smooth pitch. That old philosopher convict had told me I should forget the pimp game and be a con man.

I said, “Melody, doesn’t fate puppeteer humans in a weird way? There I was coming out of that joint, I had just called a garage a hundred miles away. The engine of my car burnt up on my way here from Saint Louis a week ago. I was depressed, lonely, and hopeless in a big, friendless city.

“The mechanic had just dropped the bad news. The charge to get the car is a hundred and fifty dollars. I have fifty. I was blind with worry when I came out that door.

“My elderly mother has to have a pancreas operation. I came here to work for a contractor in the suburbs. I’m a talented carpenter. I need my car to get to work. I’m committed to start work the first of next week. Mama’s going to die sure as the sun rises in the East unless I get that money for her operation.

“The strange wonderful thing is, Darling, with all these problems I feel so good. See those garbage cans glittering between the tenements? To me they are giant jewels. I want to climb up on those rooftops and cry out to the stars, I have met, I have found the beautiful Melody. Surely I’m the luckiest black man alive. Convince me you’re real. Don’t evaporate like a beautiful mirage. I’d die if you did.”

Out of the side scope in my eye I saw those awesome thighs quivering. She almost crashed the Lincoln into the rear end of the gray Studebaker ahead of us.

She cut in sharply and grated the Lincoln’s wheels against the curb. She shut the motor off and turned toward me. Her eyes were blue bonfires of passion. The pulse on the satin throat was maniacing. She slid close to me. She zippered her scarlet mouth to mine. That confection tongue flooded my mouth with sugar. Her nails dug into my thighs. She gazed at me.

She said, “Blood, you sweet black poetic panther. Does that prove I’m real. No, I know I don’t want to evaporate, ever. Please, let’s don’t go to a bar. You can’t solve your problems with alcohol. My parents are out of the city until tomorrow noon. Settle for coffee and conversation at my place. Will you Blood? Perhaps we can find solutions to your problems there. Besides, I’m expecting Mother to call me at home later this evening.”

I said, “Angel of mercy, I’m putting myself in your tender hands.”

She lived a long way from the black concentration camp. She drove for almost an hour. I could smell the pungent odors of early April plant life. This white world was like leaving Hell and riding through Heaven. The neat rows of plush houses shone in the moonlight. The streets were quiet as maybe the Cathedral in Rheims.

I thought, “Ain’t it a bitch? Ninety-eight percent of the black people back there in Hell will be born and die and never know the joys of this earthly Heaven. There ain’t but two passports the white folks honor. A white skin, or a bale of scratch. I sure got to pimp good and cop my scratch passport. Well, at least I get a Cinderella crack at Heaven. This is good. It’s hipping me to what I’m missing.”

We turned into her driveway. I saw the soft glow of a table lamp behind blue drapes in the front room. She parked the Lincoln in a pink stucco garage that matched the house. The garage was connected to the house. We went through the back door. We passed through the kitchen. Even in the dimness it sparkled. We moved like burglars through the half-darkened house. We walked on deep-pile carpet up a stairway. We got to the top. She stopped.

She whispered, “Blood, I was born in this house. Everybody in the block knows me. If some friend passed and knew someone was at home, we might get an unwelcome visitor. We’ll go to my bedroom in the rear.”

I followed to her bedroom. She flipped on a tiny blue light over a mirrored dressing table. The bedroom was done in pale blue and off-white. The queen- sized bed had a blue satin canopy over it. I sat down on a white silk chaise next to the dressing table. She switched on an ivory radio. Debussy’s “Clare de Lune” sweet-noted gently through the room.

She kicked off her tiny black calfskin shoes. She was even more beautiful here than she had been in the street. She stroked my ear lobes with her fingertips.

She said, “Mommy’s pretty black panther don’t run away now. I’m going downstairs and make coffee.”

She went down the stairs.

I thought, “I’m gonna crack on her for scratch. She should be good for a C note at least. A C note ain’t bad to break the ice with. If she springs for it, I’ll tie her to that bed and put my Pepper-specialty on her. It’s certain to flip a young broad like her who’s lived in Heaven all her life! Besides, I ain’t never sloughed around in a bed with a canopy. Especially one in Heaven.”

I heard the faint bounce of her tiny feet on the stairway. She came into the bedroom with a silver service. We were going to have coffee in style. She set the gleaming tray on the dressing-table top.

She said, “Blood, pour us a cup. I’m going to get out of these clothes. Then we can chat.”

I poured two and left them black. I sipped mine. She stepped into a walk-in closet. She stepped out a moment later. All she had on were black panties and the red top of a transparent shortie nightgown. Her small, but sculptured bosom straight-jutted against the red gauze. She sat on the foot of the bed facing me and crossed her legs. I handed her the cup of black.

She said, “So, you’re going to stay in town for a while?”

I said, “Baby, if I get strong enough encouragement I’ll stay all my life. Baby, it’s a pity I had to meet you when I’m in bad shape. I want to be good company, but that car problem and Mama won’t let my mind stay on a pleasant track.”

Her ringers snapped “eureka.”

She got off the bed and went to the dresser across the room. She opened the top drawer and took out a bankbook. She came back and sat on the bed. She tapped the red nail of her left index finger against her white teeth. She studied the book’s figures. I saw a frown hedgerow her brow. She got up and went to the dresser and threw the book into the open drawer and banged it shut.

I thought, “This broad has over-drawn. She’s gonna try the check con on me.”

She stooped and opened the bottom drawer. She brought out a foot-long, foot-tall metal pig. She walked to the dressing table and put the porker on the table beside me.

She said, “Blood, this is the best I can do to help you now. I don’t get my allowance for a week. I have less than a hundred dollars in my account. Cheer up, there must be at least a hundred dollars in quarters and halves in this bank. Believe me, I can vividly imagine what it’s like to be colored and faced with your problems. Let’s say it’s a loan.”

I hefted the poker for a moment to check its gross weight. It was heavy all right. It felt a C note heavy. I reached out and took her hand. I guided her to my side on the chaise. I put my arms around her. I kissed her and sucked at that sugary tongue like a suicidal diabetic. I leaned back from her. I looked into the heart of the blue fire.

I said, “Baby, it’s a wonderful secret that you’ve discovered. Not many people know it’s better to give than to receive. Maybe it sounds crazy, but I wish you weren’t so beautiful and generous, so perfect. I don’t see how you can miss capturing my foolish heart. You’re a cinch to make me yours forever. Baby, I’m just a poor black country boy. Please don’t hurt my heart.”

She sure had an appetite for the Jeff con. The blue fire softened. Her eyes were misty and serious. She held my head between her dove-soft palms.

She said, “Blood baby, I’m white, but I have been more unhappy than any black person all my life. My parents have never understood me. When my whole being cried out for love and understanding, they gave me shiny things to stop my tears.

“Non-whites are like dirt to them. They are narrow and cold. If they found out you had been here they would disown me before they dropped dead. There’s a sweet warmth that you have. I know that you can make me happy. I am so desperate for love and understanding. Please give it to me.”

I said, “Baby, you can dump all your money on the black horse to win. I’m gonna win ’em all for you, beautiful.”

She said, “Blood, you’re a black panther; I’m a white lamb. I know nothing can stop that panther from taking the lamb, soul and body. The lamb will bide her time to take the panther. The lamb needs and wants it that way. Now listen carefully and please catch the clue of my tragedy so nothing will shock you in my bed.

“Blood, perhaps you are aware of the structural flaws built into the columns of the world’s most famous building. It’s the Parthenon. The flaw is called entasis. This contrived flaw is necessary so that the fickle human eye sees only perfection. I am a lot like those columns. I am not old, but I am beautiful. My tragedy is that unlike the entasis that gives perfection to the columns, my entasis must be concealed to protect my perfection. Can you understand?”

I thought, “What the hell, so this broad’s got a prematurely-gray cat. Maybe it’s a little off-center. If it’s odd it will be a novelty kick for me. She’s so beautiful the tricks won’t notice a tiny irregularity after I’ve turned her out.”

I said, “Baby Melody, you haven’t opened the door to a square. As fine as you are I wish you had two heads. Now get on that bed on your back. I’m gonna make love to you black panther style. You got some long towels?”

She went to the hall linen closet. She gave me four long slender ones. She

slipped off the red top and panties. She lay on her back in bed. I saw her flaw. Was this her entasis? I saw no crotch hair. She looked completely bald downstairs. I tied both her legs to the posts at the foot of the bed. I tied her left arm to a post at the head. The phone jangled on a nightstand at her side. She picked up the receiver with her free right hand.

She said, “Hi Mother, I’m fine. Are you and Dad still having fun? Mother, I miss you both so terribly. Are you coming home tomorrow as planned? Oh good, I’ll be at the airport on time. I’ve gone to bed. I’ve gotten out that ‘Anthology of Africa.’ I’m going to have a wild time researching the Watusi Warrior. Good night, Mother. Oh, tell Dad to bring me some of that heavenly Miami beach wear. I’ll be a sensation here on the beach this summer.”

I had taken my clothes off when she hung up. I lashed her free arm to the fourth bedpost. I looked down at her. Her eyes were pleading.

She said, “Remember Blood darling, you are not an unsophisticated bumpkin. You are not prone to shock states. I know you are going to find my entasis as sweet and desirable as the rest of me.”

I wondered why she still worried about her entasis. She knew I saw she was hairless downstairs. I put my knee on the bed. I stroked her belly. I felt cloth. I took a close look. A custom flesh-colored jock belt bandied her crotch. I ripped the elastic top down over her round hips. I jumped back. My rear end bounced on the floor. I struggled to my feet.

I shouted, “You stinking sissy sonuvabitch!”

His real entasis had popped up pink and stiff. It was a foot long and as thick as the head of a cobra.

He was crying like I had put a lighted match to his entasis.

He sobbed, “You promised to understand. Please, Blood, keep your promise. You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s delicious you fool.”

I said, “Look man, I made my promises to a broad, not a stud. I’m a pimp, not a faggot. I’m getting the hell out of here. I’m charging you the porker for my time and your bullshit.”

He lay there blubbering. I speed dressed. I took the porker off the table and stuck it under my arm. I walked toward the stairway. I looked back. His beautiful face was ugly in anger and hate.

He screamed, “You dirty Nigger liar, thief! Untie me you Coon Bastard!

Oh, how I wish I had your black ass tied here on your belly!”

I said, “Man, as slick as you are you’ll untie yourself before long. Yeah, that entasis could murder me all right.”

I walked down the stairway. I went through the house to the back door. I walked down the driveway to the street. I walked for an hour before I got out of the residential sprawl. I was lucky to hail a Yellow Cab as soon as I got to a busy intersection.

When it got me to the Haven, the meter read fourteen-thirty. I gave the cabbie a fin and a saw buck. I looked up at my window. The runt was at it. It was two A.M. It had been like a nightmare Halloween all the way. All trick and no treat. I was icy sober.

Then it struck me riding up on the elevator. That white faggot could cross me. What if he couldn’t free himself by the time his folks got home? He was a cinch to cover himself. He’d say a Nigger burglar or holdup man had robbed him and trussed him up.

I was a two-time loser. Five to ten would stick to me like flypaper. Even if he untied himself right away he might be mad enough to frame me. I remembered the Dalanski-Pepper cross. I was sweating salt balls when I retrieved my stash in the broom closet.

I went to my watch pocket with the cocaine. I knocked on fourtwenty. The runt opened the door. She was grinning.

She said, “Hello, Daddy-angel. Your dog bitch bumped her black ass off tonight. Gotta piggy bank, huh?”

I said, “So whatta you want, bitch, a medal for doing your whore duty?”

I didn’t answer her question. I looked down to see if she’d sprouted an entasis. She was buck-naked. I stepped inside and bolted the door. There were seventy slats on the dresser. I turned and lowered my face. She kissed me. I put the porker on the base of the “Kiss” statue.

I gave her the can of grass. She sat on the bed. She shook some grass out of the can onto a newspaper in her lap. She started rolling a joint. I took my clothes off. I went into the bathroom to shower and scrub the sissy taste out of my jib. The piercing heavy odor of the gangster wafted to me.

Over the roar of the shower I shouted, “Girl, there’s a gap under that slammer. Chink it up with a rag or something. Torch a coupla sticks of incense.”

I came out of the bathroom and got into bed beside her. She handed me a joint. I lit it and sucked it into a roach. I squeezed tobacco from the tip of a cigarette. I stuck the butt of gangster into the empty tip. I twisted the end and lit it. It was a good reefer.

I could feel my skull go into a dreamy float. I got one brilliant thought

after another. The trouble was, each one I tried to hold long enough so I could put a saddle on it stampeded. It was maybe like the painful irritation a drunk wrangler suffers trying to corral a herd of greased mustangs.

Gangster was sure a whore’s high. That reefer confusion was no good for a pimp’s skull. That beautiful sissy had buried a hot seed in my guts. The wild flower blossomed. I dreamily drifted into the runt. I rolled sleepily out of the warm churning tunnel. I wouldn’t need a yellow tonight.

8

GRINNING SLIM

I opened my eyes. I saw glinting stars of dust whirling like a golden hurricane through a bright shaft of noon sun. I looked through the open bedroom door. I saw the runt sitting at the living room window. She was doing her nails. She lifted her eyes from her nails. She looked into the bedroom.

I said, “Good morning, li’l freak puppy. I’m gonna call Silas to run across the street for ham and eggs. Are you hungry?”

She said, “Yeah, I’m hungry, but the way he moves around it would take him a week to cop. I’ll slip on something and go myself.”

She went to the closet and slipped on her blue poplin rain-orshine coat. She took a fin off the dresser and held it up for my consent. I nodded my head. I heard the door shut when she went out.

I lit a cigarette. I thought, “I wonder if Melody has the heat looking for me. I’ve only got a day or so left before Glass Top takes me to Sweet Jones. I’m gonna cool it. I won’t go out at all. I’ll stay right here in the hotel until Top calls me.”

The phone rang just as the runt came through the bedroom door. She put the plates wrapped in wax paper on the dresser. She picked up the receiver. I got up, took my plate and started to eat with a plastic fork.

She said, “Hello. Oh, Chuck, how are you, sweetie? I was just thinking about you, lover. No, I can’t. I wish I could come out for a few drinks, but my brother won’t be home from work until six. Mama’s not well at all. I have to stay here during the day to take care of her. I could slip out around seven. Yeah, I could do that until eight for twenty. Bye, bye, sugar blue eyes.”

She hung up the phone and her coat. She sat naked on the side of the bed eating.

I said, “Bitch, I got an idea for that cat of yours. You gotta take a stiff brush and brush the hair straight down every time you think about it. Put some hair grower on it until you got maybe a four-inch cone. Your tricks will pant to bury their beaks in it. It will make your cat unique with that extra dimension.”

She mumbled, “Where on Earth did you get a jazzy idea like that?”

I said, “Bitch, ain’t you hip yet? I’m a pimp with great imagination, that’s all.”

She finished her flapjacks. She got up and gathered up an armful of our soiled clothing. She went into the bathroom. I heard the water sloshing in the bowl. She was doing our laundry. I turned my back to the sunlight. I felt old Morpheus slugging his velvet hammer against my eyelids.

I woke up in darkness. I looked at the front-room window. The streetlights were on. I turned the nightstand lamp on. Mickey said seven-ten. The runt was gone. She was breaking her luck with Chuck.

I thought, “Jesus, I sure needed rest all right. That fast track I’ve been blundering on sure took the juice out of me.”

I got up and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had made several brush strokes when the phone rang. I picked it up. He rapped before I could open my mouth.

He said, “Kid, this is Glass Top. The plans have changed. I’m in a hurry.

Be outside your joint in fifteen minutes. You got that?” I said, “Yeah, but …”

He had hung up. I dressed even faster than I had at the sissy’s pad. I rushed down the hall. I stopped at the broom-closet stash. I hurled the sizzle into the corner on the shelf. I took the stairs three at a time to the lobby. I sailed the key to the desk top. I bolted out the door.

Top was parked in front of the joint in the red Hog. He had his hand over the horn when he saw me. I got in. The Hog squealed from the curb. Top was sure in a hurry. I could hear the harsh whisper of the Hog’s tires against the pavement. We passed that neon bouquet. I looked back and saw the “Fun House” sign flashing. I wondered if Melody was out here somewhere booby trapping with his entasis.

I said, “Jack, I didn’t expect your call for a coupla days. What happened?”

He said, “There’s a big boxing match tonight. All the biggest pimps and whores in the country are gonna be at Sweet’s after the fight. Kinda like a party. All of ’em use stuff. Even with Sweet as the middleman I should take

off a coupla grand for my end.”

“Sweet never goes to fights. He can’t stand big crowds, and besides they won’t let Miss Peaches into fights. Sweet’s gnawing his nails waiting for this stuff. He ain’t got none for himself and he’s anxious to cop some stuff for those birds coming from the fight.”

I said, “Have you cracked anything about me to him?”

He said, “Kid, you ain’t hip I’m a genius? He called and I rapped to him this morning. I played you off as my punk nephew from Kansas City. You got wild ideas you wanta be a pimp. I’ve tried to chill you back to K.C. to maybe hustle pool or even be a broom mechanic. You’re a stupid, stubborn punk. I’ve told you a thousand times you ain’t got it to pimp. You gotta pimp. “You would eat ten yards of Sweet’s crap. You think he’s God. You won’t believe your uncle is tight with God. I’m Glass Top. I gotta save face even for a snot-nosed punk. Maybe if you hang around the inside of the fast track for a hot minute you’ll get scared. You’ll wise up, get outta my ass and run your ass back to K.C. Now Kid, don’t shoot your jib off at his pad. If he don’t

remember you from the Roost, don’t wake him up.”

I said, “Don’t worry Top. I won’t rank us. I’ll never forget you, Pal, for the cut in. That was sure some beautiful stuff you played for Sweet.”

He caressed his patent-leather hair. He erected his wide shoulders inside his blue mohair jacket. His pretty, bitch face wore that terrible conceit and awful pride maybe of a cute mass murderer who never gets her victims’ blood on her. The full moon through the windshield shone flush on his face.

He said, “Kid, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Shit, I done drove three whores screaming crazy with this brain. They in the boob box upstate right now babbling about Pretty Glass Top. Even Sweet ain’t shipped but two up there. He’s been pimping almost twice as long as me.”

I said, “Christ, Top, I don’t get it. Why drive a whore nuts if she’s still humping out the scratch. A stud would have to be slick as grease to plant bats in the skull of a bitch that was sane. I can’t dig how a stud could do it. I ain’t hip to it.”

He said, “Sucker, what you don’t dig, and ain’t hip to would make a book bigger than this Hog. Now you take Sweet, the two he crossed were young white broads with small mileage. He’s sick in the head. He’s got an insane hate for the whole white race.

“He was a crumb crusher of seven down in Georgia when the white folks first poisoned his skull. His mammy was jet black and beautiful. The

peckerwoods for miles around were aching to lay her. The son of the wealthy plantation owner that Sweet’s old man sharecropped for way-laid her on the way to a spring. He punched her out, tore her clothes off and socked it into her. She was naked and crying when she got back to her shack.

“The peckerwood pig hid out in the woods. Sweet’s old man came in from the fields and found his wife clawed and bawling. He was close to seven feet and weighed three hundred. Sweet still remembers how his old man hollered and butted his head against the door of the shack. The hinges ripped loose.

“He knew the woods like a fox. He found the white boy. He left him for dead. He covered him with brush. He slipped back to his shack. Sweet remembers the white boy’s blood on his old man, even on his old man’s bare feet. He had stomped the white boy to a red pulp out there in the lonely woods. The old man figured he was safe. The white folks would never find the corpse in those thick woods. He cleaned himself, repaired the shack door, and waited.

“He hadn’t croaked the white boy. He had only maimed and paralyzed him. That night a white man out possum hunting with his dogs heard the kid bleating under the brush. He was out of his skull. It was midnight before the kid’s raving made sense to the white folks.

“Sweet heard the mob’s horses galloping toward the shack. He hid in the loft just as the crazy gang came through the shack slammer. Sweet peeped through a crack and watched them beat his old man’s head bloody. They dragged him outside. Sweet saw the whole mob rape his mother.

“Finally all was quiet except for his mother whimpering on the bed. He sneaked out of the loft. Through the open door he saw his old man swinging in the moonlight from a peach tree in front of the shack.

“His mammy went to the funny farm. Sweet was taken in by a share- cropper on the same plantation. He worked the fields until he got seventeen. He ran away and caught a freight train North. He was eighteen when he got his first whore. She was a white girl. He drove her to suicide before he got nineteen. Sweet’s gotta be sixty now.”

He paused. He steered the Hog with one hand. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He punched in the dashboard lighter.

I thought, “No wonder Sweet’s off his rocker. I wonder why Top really gave me that tight rundown on Sweet?”

The lighter popped. Top lit his cigarette. He sucked hard. He blew out a white cloud against the windshield that for an instant blotted out the moon.

He said, “I ain’t insane like Sweet. My skull is clear and cool. I ain’t no mixed-up Southern Nigger. I was born in the North I grew up with white kids. I don’t hate white people or any other people. I ain’t no black brute. I’m a pretty brown-skin lover. I love people.

“When I was a square, I was even engaged to marry a white girl. Her parents and friends put pressure on her and she chickened out. I guess I loved her. Right after we quit I went to a hospital for my nerves. I ain’t had nothing but whores since. It’s like I told you when I met you. Sweet’s a Ford and I’m a Duesenberg. He’s just an ugly lucky nut.”

I said, “But Top you cracked your booby-box score was higher than Sweet’s. Those three gibbering bitches upstate sure don’t show no love for whore people.”

He said, “There you go, fool. A young chump is just like a dumb bitch. He can’t figure nothing out himself. He’s gotta have a rundown on everything. Of course I drove those whores crazy, but for a sane reason, sucker.

“A pimp cops a whore. He cons her maybe if she stays in his corner humping his pockets fat, at the end of the rainbow she’s got a husband and a soft easy chair. To hold her beak to the grindstone, he pumps air castles into her skull.

“She takes all the stable grief. She humps her ass into a cramp to outshine the other whores in the family. At first, it’s easy for the bitch to star. As she gets older and uglier her competition gets younger and prettier.

“She don’t have to be no brain to wake up there ain’t no easy chair at the end. She gets hip there ain’t never even been a rainbow. She gets larceny in her heart. She bullshits herself that if she can drive all those young pretty whores away from the pimp that rainbow might come true after all. If it don’t, she’ll get her revenge anyway.

“It’s a violation of the pimp book to quit a whore. A bitch like that is a ticking bomb. Every day, her value to the pimp drops to the zero line. She’s old, tired, and dangerous. She can rattle a pimp into goofing his whole game. If the pimp is a sucker he’ll try to drive her away with his foot in her ass. She’s almost a cinch to croak him or cross him into the joint.

“I’m a genius. I’m hip that after a bitch has had maybe ten-thousand tricks drill her she ain’t too steady, skullwise. I don’t tip her I’m salty and disgusted. I talk like a sweet head-shrinker to her. Indeed of air castles, I pump her full of H.

“Her skull starts to jelly. I’ll be worried as hell about her. I’ll start sneaking

slugs of morphine or chloral hydrate into her shots. While she’s out, I’ll maybe douse her with chicken blood. She comes to, I’ll tell her I brought her in from the street. I tell her I hope you didn’t croak anybody while you were sleepwalking.

“I got a thousand ways to drive ’em goofy. That last broad I flipped, I hung her out a fifth floor window. I had given her a jolt of pure cocaine so she’d wake up outside that window. I was holding her by both wrists. Her feet were dangling in the air. She opened her eyes. When she looked down she screamed like a scared baby. She was screaming when they came to get her. You see, kid, I’m all business. I ain’t got an ounce of hate in me.”

He had been driving for at least an hour. I had lost track of time and space. I saw no black faces in the streets around us. I saw tall gleaming apartment houses. Some so tall they seemed welded to the night sky.

I said, “Yeah Top, you’re a cold clever stud all right. I’m sure glad you’re yanking my coat. Jesus, Sweet must live in a white neighborhood.”

He said, “Yeah, Kid, he lives just around that next corner, in a penthouse. Like I told you he’s lucky as a shit-house rat. It’s a million-dollar building. The old white broad that owns it is Sweet’s freak white dog.”

I said, “But don’t the white tenants blow the roof because Sweet lives there?”

He said, “Sweet’s old white broad owns the building, but Sweet runs it. At least he runs it through a old ex-pimp pal. Sweet stuck him into a pad on the ground floor. Patch Eye, the old stud, collects the rents and keeps the porters and other flunkys on their toes. All the tenants are white gamblers and hustlers. Sweet is got the old ex-pimp running book wide open. The action a day just from the tenants runs two or three grand. I’ll say it a thousand times, Sweet is a lucky old stud.”

He turned the corner. He eased the Hog into the curb in front of a snow- white apartment building. A moss-green canvas canopy ran from the edge of the curb twenty-five yards to the kleig-lighted fancy front of the building. A gaunt white stud in a green monkey suit was standing in stooped attention at the curb. We got out. Top walked around the Hog to the doorman.

The doorman said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

Top said, “Hello Jack, do me a favor. When you take my wheels to the back see that it’s parked close to an exit. When I come out I don’t wanna hassle outta there. Here’s a fin, Buster.”

The doorman said, “Thank you, Sir. I’ll relay your wish to Smitty.”

We walked into the green-painted, black-marbled foyer. I was trembling like maybe a hick virgin on a casting couch. We walked up the half-dozen marble steps to an almost invisible glass door.

A Boston Coffee-colored broad slid it open. We stepped into the green- and-pearl lobby. A tan broad as flashy as a Cotton Club pony sat behind a blond desk. We walked across the quicksand pearl carpet to the front of it. She flashed two perfect dozen of the thirty-two. Her voice was contralto silk.

She said, “Good evening, may I help you?”

Top said, “Stewart and Lancaster to see Mr. Jones.”

She turned to an elderly black broad sitting before a switchboard beside her.

She told her, “Penthouse, Misters Stewart and Lancaster.”

The old broad shifted her earphones from round her wrinkled neck to her horns. She plugged in and started batting her chops together. After a moment she nodded to the pony. We got the ivory flash again.

The pony said, “Thank you so much for waiting. Mr. Jones is at home and will see you.”

I followed Top to the elevators. A pretty brown-skin broad in a tight green uniform zipped us to the fifteenth floor. The brass door opened. We stepped out onto a gold-carpeted entrance hall. It was larger than Top’s living room.

A skinny Filipino in a gold lame outfit came toward us. He was grinning and bowing his head, his lank hair flopped across his skull like the wings of a wounded raven. The crystal chandelier overhead glittered his gold suit. He took my lid. He put it on the limb of a mock mother-of-pearl tree.

He said, “Good evening. Follow, please.”

We followed him to the brink of a sunken living room. It was like a Pasha’s passion pit. A green light inside the gurgling bowl of a huge fountain beamed on the vulgar face of a stone woman squatting over it. She was nude and big as a baby elephant. The red light inside her skull blazed, her eyes staring straight ahead. Her giant hands pressed the tips of her long breasts into each corner of her wide open mouth. She was peeing serenely and endlessly into the fountain bowl.

We stepped down to the champagne, oriental carpet. Sweet was sitting across the dim room on a white velour couch. He was wearing a white satin smoking jacket. He looked like a huge black fly in a bucket of milk. Miss Peaches was curled at his side. She was resting her black spotted head on a silk turquoise pillow. Sweet was stroking her back. She purred and locked her

yellow eyes on us. I got a whiff of her raw animal odor.

Sweet said, “Sit your black asses down. Sweetheart, you been dangling me. What happened? Did that raggedy nickel Hog break down? So this is your square country nephew?”

Top sat on a couch beside Miss Peaches. I sat in a blue velour chair several yards to the side of Top. Sweet’s gray eyes were flicking up and down me. I was nervous. I grinned at him.

I jerked my eyes away to a large picture on the wall over the couch. A naked white broad was on her hands and knees. A Great Dane with his red tongue lolling out was astraddle her back. He had his paws hooked under her breasts. Her blonde head was turned looking back at him. Her blue eyes were popped wide open.

Top said, “Man, that Hog ain’t no plane. I got here quick as I could. You know I don’t play no games on you, Honey.”

I said, “Thank you, Mr. Jones, for letting me come up with ‘unc.’”

My voice triggered the Roost memory. He stiffened and glared at me. He smashed his hooks together. It sounded like pistol shots. Peaches growled and sneered.

He said, “Ain’t you the little shit ball I chased outta the Roost?”

I said, “Yeah, I’m one and the same. I want to beg your pardon for making you salty that night. Maybe I coulda gotten a pass if I had told you I’m your pal’s nephew. I ain’t got no sense, Mr. Jones. I took after my idiot father.”

Sweet said, “Top, this punk ain’t hopeless. He’s silly as a bitch grinning all the time, but dig how he butters out the con to keep his balls outta the fire. He sure ain’t got no tender dick to turn down my pretty big-ass Mimi. Kid, I love black boys with the urge to pimp. Ain’t no surer way to amount to something. Your uncle ain’t but a good pimp. I’m the greatest in the world. He wired me he’s hoping you’ll fold on this track and split back to the sticks.

“You got one whore he tells me. You could have the makings. This joint is going to be crawling with fast whores in a coupla hours. I’m gonna be pinning you. I’m gonna watch how you handle yourself. Maybe I’m gonna make you my protege. You gotta be icy; understand, Kid, icy, icy? You gotta stop that grinning. Freeze your map and keep it that way. Maybe I’m gonna prove to your half-ass pimp uncle that I can train even a mule to win the Kentucky Derby.”

Top said, “Shit Honey, you didn’t have to tip him. I’m pulling for his split. I love the kid. I just don’t think he can cut the pimp game. The kid raps good.

I ain’t denying it. He should be maybe a Murphy player or even a mitt man. His ticker ain’t icy enough to pimp on this track.”

I thought, “Top’s pad is a pigsty compared to this layout. It looks like I’m in.”

Sweet said, “Sweetheart, let’s go in a bedroom and cap up and bag that stuff for those jokers. I’m gonna have old Patch Eye come up here and deal it off. I ain’t no dope peddler. I’m a pimp. Kid, you can cool it. Have the Filipino bring you a taste. If you want get it yourself from the bar over there.” They went around a hand-painted gold silk screen through a doorway.

Peaches padded behind them. I saw a bronze bell on a table beside the couch. I decided to get my own taste. I walked across the room to a turquoise bar. I went behind it. I took a tall crystal glass off the mirrored shelf on the wall. I mixed creme de menthe and bubbly water.

I took my green, cool drink and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling glass door. I slid it open and stepped up into the patio. I looked up; the April zephyrs were balleting the burnt-orange and pale-green Japanese lanterns. They danced on glowing jade cords strung high above the lime floor.

The ice-cream-yellow moon seemed close enough to lick. I walked to the pearl parapet. I looked out at a brilliant sea of emerald and ruby neon bursting pastel skyrockets toward the cobalt blue sky bejeweled with sapphire stars.

I thought, “Sweet sure has caught lightning in a thimble. He came out of the white man’s cotton fields. He’s pimped himself up to this. He’s living high in the sky like a black God in heaven with the white people. He ain’t no Nigger doctor. He ain’t no hot-sheet Nigger preacher, but he’s here.

“He pimped up his scratch passport. That barbed-wire stockade is a million miles away. I got more education, I’m better looking, and younger than he is. I know I can do it too.”

I remembered Henry and how religious he was. Look what happened to him. I remembered how I used to kneel every night by the side of the bed to pray. I really believed in God then. I knew he existed. Now I wasn’t so sure. I guess the first prison rap started to hack away at my belief in him.

I often wondered in the cell how, if he existed, he could let the Dummy destroy Oscar who loved him. I told myself at the time, maybe he’s got complicated long-range plans. Maybe even he’s got divine reasons for letting the white folks butcher black people down South.

Maybe some morning about dawn all the black folks will sing Hallelujah! God’s white board of directors will untie the red tape. God will roll up his

sleeves. He’ll smash down the invisible stockades. He’ll kill all the rats in the black ghettos. Fill all the black bellies and con all the white folks that Niggers are his children, too.

Now I couldn’t wait. If he were up there or not, I had to go with the odds. I stared into the sky. It was the first time I’d prayed since Steve, the tramp. I know now it was more a fearful alibi than anything else.

I said, “Lord, if you’re up there, you know I’m black and you know my thoughts. Lord, if the Bible is really your divine book then I know it’s a sin to pimp. If you’re up there and listening you know I’m not trying to con you.

“Lord, I’m not asking you to bless my pimping. I ain’t that stupid. Lord, I know you ain’t black. Surely you know, if you’re up there, what it’s like to be black down here. These white folks are doing all the fine living and sucking up all the gravy. I gotta have some of that living and some of that gravy.

“I don’t wanta be a stickup man or a dope peddler. I sure as hell won’t be a porter or dishwasher. I just wanta pimp that’s all. It’s not too bad, because whores are rotten. Besides I ain’t going to croak them or drive them crazy. I’m just going to pimp some real whitetype living out of them.

“So Lord, if you’re up there listening, do one thing for me. Please don’t let me croak before I live some and get to be somebody down here in the white man’s world. I don’t care what happens after that.”

I looked down over the parapet. I wondered if the undertaker had been born yet who was slick enough to paste a sucker’s ass together after a Brodie fifteen-stories down. I heard “Tuxedo Junction” pulsing behind me. I had pitched my pipes dry. I upended my drink.

I turned and walked toward the glass door. I saw the Japanese lanterns splashing color on the polished alabaster-topped tables. The Filipino had sure been busy flopping his mop. I slid the door open to a chorus of profanity. The whore scent flared my nostrils. There must have been thirty yapping pimps and whores lounging around the spacious pit.

I stepped down and slid the door shut. An ebony satin-skinned pimp was sprawled in the blue velour chair. A tawny tan tigress was kneeling before him between his legs. She had her chin rammed into his crotch. She clutched him around the waist like a humping twodollar trick in an alley.

Her dreamy maroon eyes rolled toward the top of her long skull. She was staring at his fat blue lips. It was maybe she expected him to whistle the “Lost Chord.” The rock on his finger exploded blue-white, frozen fireworks.

He raised his glass to curse all square bitches. He was con-toasting all whores. The room got silent. Somebody had strangled the gold phonograph in the corner.

He toasted:

 

“Before I’d touch a square bitch’s slit,

I’d suck a thousand clappy pricks and swim through liquid shit.

They got green puke between their rotten toes and snot runs from their funky noses.

I hope all square bitches become syphilitic wrecks. I hope they fall through their own ass-holes and break their mother-fucking necks.”

 

It was the first time I’d heard it. It was the first time for the crowd, too. They roared and begged him to do it again. He looked toward the hand- painted Chinese screen.

All eyes turned to Top and Sweet coming into the room. An old black stud wearing a white silk patch over his right eye trailed behind them. Peaches followed him. He looked like a vulture decked out in a gray mohair vine. Peaches stood before the white velour couch and bared her fangs.

The three pimps sitting on it scattered off it like quail under a double- barreled shotgun. They thumped their rear ends to the carpet. Sweet, Top, and Peaches sat on the couch.

I sat on a satin pillow in the corner near the glass door. I watched the show. I saw Patch Eye go and sit behind the bar. Everybody was in a big half-circle around the couch. It was like the couch was a stage, and Sweet the star.

Sweet said, “Well how did you silly bastards like the fight? Did the Nigger murder that peckerwood or did his black ass turn shit yellow?”

A Southern white whore with a wide face and a sultry voice like Bankhead’s drawled, “Mistah Jones, Ahm happy to repoat thet the Niggah run the white stud back intu his mammy’s ass in thu fust round.”

Everybody laughed except Sweet. He was crashing together his mitts. I wondered what madness bubbled in his skull as he stared at her. A high-ass yellow broad flicked life back into the phonograph. “Gloomy Sunday,” the suicide’s favorite, dirged through the room. She stared at me as she came away.

Sweet said, “All right you freakish pigs. Patch Eye’s got outfits and bags

of poison. You got the go sign to croak yourselves.”

They started rising from the satin pillows and velour ottomans. They clustered around Patch Eye at the bar.

The high-ass yellow broad came to me. She stooped in front of me. I saw black tracks on her inner thighs. The inside of her gaping cat was beef-steak red. She had a shiv slash on the right side of her face. It was a livid gully from her cheekbone to the corner of her twisted mouth. Smallpox craters covered her face. I caught the glint of a pearl-handled switch-blade in her bosom. Her gray eyes were whirling in her skull. She was high.

I was careful. I grinned. Sweet was digging us. He was shaking his head in disgust. I wondered if he thought I oughta slug her in the jib and maybe take that shiv in the gut.

She said, “Let me see that pretty dick, handsome.”

I said, “I don’t show my swipe to strange bitches. I got a whore to pamper my swipe.”

She said, “Nigger, you ain’t heard of me? I’m Red Cora” from Detroit. That red is for blood. You ain’t hip I’m a thieving bitch that croaked two studs? Now I said show that dick. Call me Cora, little bullshit Nigger. Ain’t you a bitch with one whore? You gonna starve to death, Nigger, if she’s a chump flat-backer. Nigger, you better get hip and cop a thief.”

A big husky broad with a spike in one hand and pack of stuff in the other took me off the hook. She kneed Cora’s spine.

She said, “Bitch, I’m gonna shoot this dope. You want some? You can Georgia this skinny Nigger later.”

I watched Cora’s rear end twist away from me. She and the husky broad went to the bar and got a spoon and a glass of water. I looked at Sweet. He was giving me a cold stare.

I thought, “This track is too fast I can’t protect myself. With young soft bitches like the runt I’m a champ. These old, hard bitches, I gotta solve. I gotta be careful and not blow Sweet. If I sucker out anymore tonight he’ll freeze and boot me.”

I sat in the corner bug-eyed for two hours. My ears flapped to the super- slick dialogue. I was excited by the fast-paced, smooth byplay between these wizards of pimpdom.

Red Cora kept me edgy. She went to the patio several times. She was Hed out of her skull. Each time she passed she cracked on me. She was sure panting to view my swipe.

Several of Sweet’s whores came in. None of them had been at the Roost with him that first time I saw him. All of them were fine with low mileage. One of them was yellow and beautiful. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

There was a giant black pimp from the Apple. He had three of his whores with him. He had been boasting about how he had his swipe trained. He was one of the three at the party that didn’t bang stuff. I had watched him snort girl and down a few mixed drinks. He had a glass in his hand standing over Sweet and Top on the couch.

He said, “Sweet, ain’t a bitch living can pop me off unless I want her to. I don’t care if she’s got velvet suction cups in her cat. Her jib can have a college degree, she ain’t gonna make me pop against my will. I got the toughest swipe in the world. I got a C note to back my crack.”

Sweet said, “Sucker, I got a young bitch I turned out six months ago that could blow that tender sucker swipe of yours in five minutes. I ain’t going to teach you no lesson for a measly C note. If that C note ain’t all you got, put five bills in Top’s mitt and you got a bet.”

The big joker snatched a roll from his side pocket. He plunked five C notes into Top’s palm. Sweet eased a bale of C notes from the pocket of his smoking jacket. He covered the bet in Top’s hand.

Sweet snapped his fingers. The beautiful yellow broad kneeled before the standing giant. She started to perform before the cheering audience. Within less than three minutes she had won the bet for Sweet.

The big joker stood there for a long moment with his eyes closed. He had a goofy grin on his face. One of his whores snickered. He slapped her hard against the jaw. He went to the bar.

I thought, “She sure has a head for business. Pepper was great, but she couldn’t hold this broad’s douche bag.”

I got up and went behind the Chinese screen through the door. I went down a long hall. I passed three way-out bedrooms. I went into a mirrored john. It was as big as a bedroom. I pushed the door shut. I should have locked it.

I walked to the stool. I raised the lid. That tough bitch Red Cora darted in. She was licking out her red tongue. Her gray eyes were voodooing in her skull. She was hot as hell for my relative innocence and youth. She was a double murderess with a skull load of H and a hot jib.

I stood there before the deadly bitch. I searched the thin catalogue in my skull. I didn’t know the right crack for a situation like this. I mumbled a

plaintive pitch.

I said, “Now listen girl, you haven’t given me a nickel. I’m not your man.” It was like trying to stand off a starving leopard with a broom straw. She snaked that shiv out of her bosom and popped the gleaming blade open. She clawed my fly open with the other hand. I heard buttons bounce on the tile

floor. My ticker was doing a fox trot.

She said, “You jiving pretty sonuvabitch. You ain’t no pimp. I’m gonna eat your sweat ass up or chop off your dick.”

I backed up to the wall beside the stool. I could feel the wet throbbing tips of my fingers against the cool tile. She was grabbing inside when Sweet bulled in. He seized a fistful of her long hair. She squealed in pain. He jerked her away from me toward the door. He cussed her as he drove his needle-toed shoe into her wide caboose several times.

He said, “Bull-shit bitch, this chump is in my school. I ain’t gonna let you Georgia him. Now nix, bitch, nix.”

I heard her high heels staccato against the tile as she fled. He turned toward me. His black face was gray with fury. Maybe Sweet would forget I wasn’t yellow. I remembered what Top had told me about those four murders.

He thrust his flat black nose against mine. I could feel a spray of spit strike my lips as he cursed me. He twisted the collar of my vine like a garrote around my throat. He had snatched me six feet from the wall.

He shouted, “Listen you stupid little motherfucker. You know why that bitch screwed you around? You always grinning like a Cheshire Cat. What’s funny? Can’t I get the sucker outta you? I can’t make a pimp outta a pussy like you.

“I told you once, do I have to tell you a thousand times? Greenass Nigger, to be a good pimp, you gotta be icy, cold like the inside of a dead-whore’s pussy. Now if you a bitch, a sissy, or something let me know. I’ll put you in drag and you can whore for me. Stay outta my face Nigger, until you freeze up and stop that sucker grinning.”

I heard his ground grippers skid against the floor as he hurled me against the wall. The back of my skull torpedoed into it. Through a drowsy fog of pain I saw him float away.

My back snailed down the wall. I laughed at the funny way the shoe tips turned in as the long legs glided across the tile. I sat there on the cool floor gazing at the weird comical legs stretched out before me.

I saw a pair of blue mohair legs right angle the flat ones. I looked up. It

was Top. He bent over to help me up.

He said, “Kid, now you believe the ugly bastard is insane? Take this key to my Hog. Get it outta the lot in back. Park in the block and cool it. I’m getting outta here myself as soon as I cop my end of the smack scratch.”

I riveted my eyes to the champagne carpet. I zigzagged through the snickering whores and pimps. I made it across the pit to the elevator. The Filipino was standing beside it. He was pressing the down button.

He looked like a friendly brown snake sausaged in gold foil. He reached up and stroked my jacket collar down flat from around my ears. He took my lid off the pearl tree. He stuck it on my skull and snapped the brim. I felt the sweat band needle the aching boil. I adjusted my lid.

He said, “Good night, Sir. Sammee hopes you had fine time.”

I said, “Sammee pal, it’s been a wild night. I’ll never forget it.”

I got a whiff of crotch as the elevator plunged to the lobby. I wondered if the pretty brown-skin jockey whored a little bit as a sideline.

I stepped out of the gilded cage into the lobby. I saw a winking red- arrowed sign in the rear. I walked to the glass door below it. I went down the white stone steps to the parking lot.

I spotted Top’s red Hog in the ocean of cars. I went to it, unlocked it and got in. A big white Buick was parked in front of it. A grinning brown-skin joker in white overalls came toward the Buick.

I saw Smitty blue-stitched across his breast pocket. He pulled the Buick out. I keyed the Hog and scooted it out of the lot. I whipped around the corner and coasted to the curb fifty feet from the entrance of Sweet’s apartment building.

I shut the motor off. I lowered the driver’s side window. I put my lid on the seat. I threw my head back on the top of the seat. I closed my eyes. I dozed. Something was crushing my jaw. A blinding spotlight burned into my eyeballs. I heard a fog-horn voice.

It blasted, “Police officers! Nigger, what the hell you doing. What’s your name? Show us your identification.”

I couldn’t answer with my jaw crushed in a vise. I was dazed. I lowered my eyes below the inferno of light. I saw a white brutish wrist. Thick black hair bristled on it. I saw muscles cord and ripple across it as the vise tightened around my jawbone. I wondered if the copper was Satan and I had croaked in the Hog and was being checked into Hell. Hell or not, Satan wanted identification. I remembered the Fox and the Horse. I didn’t even

have a hide.

Satan swung the Hog door open. The door frame blackjacked the top of my skull as Satan yanked me from the Hog. He released my jaw and slammed me across the hood of the Hog. My wet palms skidded on the top of it.

Satan’s fellow demon was punch-frisking me from breast to shoe soles. He poked an index finger inside my shoe. I felt a tickle in the arch of my instep.

I said, “My name is Albert Thomas. Hell, I wasn’t doing anything officers.

I was just waiting for my uncle. I lost my wal—.”

I didn’t finish. A galaxy of shooting stars orbited my skull. It was like a flame-hot poker was imbedded in that sore bump at the back of my skull.

I heard the tinkle of glass against the hood. I puked and nosedived to the hood. I felt the warm stinking mess against my cheek as I lay across the hood gasping.

Glass splinters sparkled on the hood. Satan had slugged his flashlight against my skull. I saw the fellow demon’s shadow bobbing inside the hog. He was frisking it, too.

Satan said, “Nigger, you got a sheet downtown? Whatta you do for a living?”

I whispered, “I’ve never been in trouble. I’m an entertainer. I’m a dancer.”

He said, “You black, conning bastard. How in the fuck do you know what a sheet is? You been mugged, Nigger. Stand up straight. I’m gonna take you downtown. You can jig a few steps on the ‘show up’ stage.”

I struggled off the hood. I turned and faced him. I looked up into the red, puffy face. Top came around the back of the Hog and stood between us.

He said, “What’s the beef, officer? This is my nephew and my Cadillac. The kid was waiting for me. He’s clean. We been to a party at Sweet’s. You know who he is. We’re personal friends of his, you dig?”

Satan’s puffy face creased into a hyena grin. He rapped on the windshield. I saw the demon’s starch-white face peer over the rear seat. Satan waved him from the Hog. He clambered out and stood beside Satan.

Satan said, “Looks like we made a slight mistake, Johnnie. These gentlemen are pals of Mr. Jones. Mister, all your nephew had to do to beat the roust was mention a name.

“Christ, we have to do our job. There’s a cat burglar operating in this district. The lieutenant is riding our asses to nab him. Sorry about the whole thing gentlemen.”

The rollers walked across the street. They got into a black Chevrolet and

gunned it away. I took a handkerchief from my back pocket, and wiped my face.

I wiped the bits of loose glass and most of the puke off the hood. I threw the rag in the gutter. I got in the Hog. Top u-turned and headed back to Black Town. I touched the bump on my skull. I felt a spot of sticky ooze. My skull had only a tiny split. I wiped my fingers on the end of my lapel pocket handkerchief.

I thought, “If it gets any rougher on this track, I’ll be punchy before long.

Maybe I better take Preston’s advice and go back to the sticks.”

I said, “Jeez, Sweet Jones sure has got pull. It was like magic when you cracked his name.”

Top said, “Magic your black ass. The only magic is in that C note a week Sweet lays on ’em. Every copper in the district from Captain down greases his mitts in that lard bucket in Sweet’s pocket.

“Mary, mammy of Jesus, you stink. You musta shit in your pants. You sure getting funky breaks, Kid. Too bad you couldn’t handle Red Cora. She’s one of the fastest thieves in the country.”

I said, “Look Top, if that crazy, pocked-face bitch had a tunnel straight into Fort Knox, I wouldn’t fart in her jib. I hate old hard-leg whores.”

He said, “That’s a chump crack. After you get hip to the pimp game you’ll take scratch from a gold-toothed, three-legged bulldog with two heads. Say listen, Kid, don’t ever forget to keep that rundown on Sweet under your lid. I’m the only stud he told. He’d twist my skull off and play soccer with it.”

I said, “Now Top, that’s a helluva crack to make. Do I look like the kind of rat square that would cross a pal?”

I was glad when I saw the Haven’s blue sign. Top parked across the street from it. I got out. I had crossed to the middle of the street. Top blew the horn. I turned back to the side of the Hog. Top had my lid and a small square of paper in his hand. I took them.

He said, “Kid, here’s my phone number in case you wanta ring me for something. Take it easy now.”

I passed through the lobby. The indicator pointed out the elevator was at the fourth floor. I took the stairs and picked up the sizzle from the broom closet. The runt let me in after the first knock. I walked by her to the bedroom and stuck the sizzle in a coat pocket in the closet. I started taking my stinking clothes off. She was standing in the doorway. I tossed them in a pile in the corner.

She said, “Daddy, when you passed me you smelled like you’d been dunked in a garbage truck. What happened?”

I headed for the bathroom. I was standing over the stool. She followed me.

She stood in the bathroom doorway. I looked over my shoulder at her.

I said, “Bitch, some white rollers busted me tonight. They got the wire I’m in town to pimp. They took me down and beat the puke outta me. Baby, they wanted me to finger you. They wanted to know where you worked. Shit, I was too pure in heart to put a finger on you, baby. I’m not feeling worth a damn, so go on the dummy, okay?”

I flushed the toilet. I turned the shower on. I gave her a hard look and frowned. She turned and got into bed. I took Mickey off. It was four A.M. I showered and toweled off. I fell into bed without checking the scratch on the dresser. I went to sleep wondering what to do to solve the fast track.

9

THE BUTTERFLY

I woke up. The sun was noon bright. I heard a squad of rats or something in the direction of the closet. I turned and looked. It was the runt. She was on her knees in the closet scraping and pulling suitcases and shoes around. The back of my skull was sore and throbbing. I touched it, and felt a crusty cap over the bump.

I thought as I watched the runt’s rear end, “What the hell is she doing?”

I said, “Damn Bitch, can’t you put a damper on that racket? I gotta aching skull. I wake up, the first living thing I pin is the rusty black ass of a dizzy whore. She’s digging a ditch in the closet. Now there’s gotta be a prettier way to start a day.”

She snapped her head around and said, “I’m looking for the reefer. I feel low. Where did you stash it? I couldn’t find it last night when I came in.”

I got up and went to the closet. I ran my hand into the coat pocket stash. I separated my stuff from the reefer inside the pocket. I gave her the can. I saw two lonely saw bucks on the dresser. I went back and got into bed.

I said, “Bitch, I take an outside stash, where else?” I don’t wanta come home some night and greet a roller. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if he had that can of one to two in the penitentiary in his mitt?

“Christ, your scratch for last night is shitty. What happened? Some joker stick you up? That reefer ain’t making you lazy is it? A double-saw take for a young freak bitch is outrageous. Shit, you broke your luck for the double saw with the lover, Sugar Blue Eyes.

“You musta shot a blank the rest of the night. I’ll murder you, bitch, if I find out you freak off all night with your tricks for a double saw.”

She was licking at the sides of the joint she had rolled. She sat on the side of the bed next to me. She rolled her sassy eyes at me.

She said, “Daddy, I’m your girl. If I ever stop loving you, I’m gonna quit whoring for you. If you don’t croak me I’ll get another black man when we’re washed up. Right now I’m in your corner all the way.

“White tricks don’t move me. I want to vomit when they paw and slobber over me. I baby talk them, but I hate them. Daddy, I just want their scratch. I get a thrill with them all right. It knocks me out that here I am, a black Nigger bitch, taking their scratch.

“A lot of them are clean-cut high muckty mucks in the white world. Some of them show me pictures of beautiful wives and cute children. It makes me feel greater than those white bitches living in soft luxury. Those white broads got Nigger maids they laugh at. They think we ain’t good for nothing but clowning and cleaning. It would give them a stroke to see their trick husbands moaning and groaning and licking between a black whore’s thighs.

“I know I ain’t got no silky hair and white skin. I’m damn sure hip those white men ain’t leaving Heaven to come to Hell every night just for the drive. They coming because those cold-ass white broads in Heaven ain’t got what these black whores in Hell got between their legs. Black and low as I am, I got secrets with their white men those high-class white bitches ain’t hip to.

“Now Daddy, we rap so little I got earned away. I ain’t nobody’s fool but yours. I wanted to rundown to you this morning about last night. You put me on the dummy remember? After I turned Chuck at the Martin, I got a roust. Two white vice coppers picked me up. They rode me around and felt over me. One of them was a mean, nasty bastard. The other, blond nice one, was sorry for me.

“Nasty said, ‘I know this black bitch is a cinch ringer for those eight larceny from the person beefs. We oughta take her down and put her on a Show Up or two. What the hell Carl, we know she’s a whore.”

“Blondie said, ‘But Max, she ain’t no hard leg. She’s just a beautiful young sexy kid with a mother to support. You know how tough it is for Boots to get three squares and a roof in this town. Let’s give her a break and cut her loose. Jesus Max, this broad has got a pair of thighs on her. She’s soft as kitten fur.’

“Nasty said, ‘Carl, you sure got a weak spot for spades. This broad says she’s broke. That black ass of her’s ain’t enough to buy a pass from me. If she ain’t too shy to show what her Derby’s like, maybe, I say just maybe, I might give her a break.’

“I’m driving into this alley. Carl, you test her lid and snatch. If you ain’t raving how great it is upstairs and down when you finish, I’m gonna wheel

outta this alley and toss her black ass in jail … I’m gonna book her on those eight counts of larceny. If she’s lucky she’ll get a deuce.’

“Daddy, Blondie pushed my head down to his lap. Then I got on the back seat with him. That freak bastard, Max, turned around and kept his flashlight on us the whole time. I made Blondie holler.

“I finished with Blondie. Max got back there with me. For a half hour he called me filthy names. He punched and pinched me. I’m sure sore all over. Blondie begged him to stop. My ass feels like he split something back there. I had a rough time.

“Finally they let me out. Max told me to never let him see me again. I was scared so I came in. That’s why the scratch is short. Max will bust me if he sees me again. You gonna have to find me another street to work.”

I said, “You square-ass stupid bitch. You think you’re a brain because you’re hip that white men sneak through the stockade to lay black whores. Ain’t a Nigger sealed in here that don’t know that. It don’t make you great because those white sick fools leave that fine pussy in Heaven to find your stinking black ass in Hell.

“You chicken-hearted bitch. You got a roust. They conned you to believe they could slap a bum rap on you. You’re too dumb to know I’m gonna raise you. You rammed your funky finger in your sore ass. You took a powder from the track with a lousy double saw. You let those peckerwood coppers fuck you front rear, sideways, and across. You simple bitch, I’m gonna find you another street to work? Now you got like a license to hustle this one?

“You ain’t got to worry about Max and that other roller. Bitch, you can work it forever just so you don’t get cancer of the cat or lockjaw. Bitch, if you don’t get outta my face I’m going to the chair for slaughtering you. Get your clothes on. Get in the street and hump up some scratch. Bitch, don’t come to that door unless you call me first. I ain’t going nowhere.”

She had been taking sucks on the reefer while she was rapping. She was high when I gave her the rundown on how she had been conned by the rollers. She leaped off the bed and went to the closet. She dressed and jerked her head around the whole time.

She knew I was angry. She was maybe afraid after that slaughter crack that I might goose her in the butt with my knife. She got out fast. I had Silas bring me some food and take my shirts and things to the cleaners. I ate and snorted some Girl. Later I banged some. Except for the bump on my skull that still ached a little I felt all right.

I remembered Satan and the Demon wanting to see identification. I called Silas. He told me where to go. I could get a driver’s license without a test for a saw buck under the counter. I dressed and made the trip. Sure enough I copped. I was back home in an hour.

I pulled a chair to the front window. I had my spy glass. It was still daylight. I didn’t see the runt on the street. I spied into the greasy spoon across the street. The runt was sitting at the counter talking to a big black stud in overalls. He had trick engraved all over him. I saw them leave together and come across the street toward the Martin Hotel.

The scarfaced horn tooter who lived in four-twenty-two across the hall came out behind them alone. He got into a battered Ford and chugged away. It gave me an idea. After all, I could blow the runt. I picked up the phone and asked for connection to apartment four-twenty-two. The pretty yellow ex- whore “helloed.” I was glad old Silas had given me a rundown on her. I could tailor my pitch.

I said, “Now try to control yourself baby. I’m the tall stud with the dreamy bedroom eyes across the hall in four-twenty. I’m the guy with the pretty towel wrapped around his sexy hips. I got the same hips on now that you x- rayed. Remember that hump of sugar your peepers feasted on?”

She said, “Maybe, but you shouldn’t call me. I don’t want an incident.

What do you want? A lady doesn’t accept phone calls from strangers.”

I said, “A million dollars and a trip to the moon with a bored, trapped, beautiful bitch, you dig? I’m no stranger. I’ve been popping the elastic on your panties ever since you saw me in the hall.”

She giggled. I could hear the thrill in her voice. The horn blower had taken her off the track, but the whore was alive and thrashing inside her. She had class. She had done more than screw on the fire escape at high school.

She said, “I don’t drink and besides I don’t know you.”

I said, “You met me in your first hot dream, remember? You know that pretty joker in your little girl dreams that always faded when you woke up wet between the legs. You waited and wished.

“You lucky bitch, I’ve stepped out of your dreams. I’m alive and real across the hall from you. Get over here, I’m gonna turn you on. Don’t worry about the watch dog. I saw him split out of the greasy spoon ten minutes ago. Baby, I’m gonna have to make one of my whores bake you a cake with a saw in it.”

She said, “You’re not married to one of them? I don’t want my throat cut. I

don’t want to break an old habit, breathing.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m married. I’m married to the whore game. You’re still a member of the club yourself. You just ain’t paid any dues lately. Maybe if you ain’t full of shit I can put you back in good standing. Now get over here!”

She said, “I’m raw. I’ll have to slip on something. I’ll come over for a minute. You’re not a hype? I’m not hip to anything but grass.”

I said, “No, sugar, I’m a lover and a beggar. I got black gunion, baby. You hip?”

I hung up. I went to the dresser mirror and powdered my face. I brushed my hair with a damp brush. My mop was black, bright and curly. I went to the closet and slipped on a wild yellow lounging robe. I had bought it the day before Dalanski busted me at the dance.

I had peeped at her hole card that day in the hall. I knew she was a freak. I remembered her eyes chained to my crotch. Now I didn’t have on any towel. First chance I got I’d flash her into a boil, through the split in the front of the robe.

Maybe I could shoot some cocaine into that yellow virgin arm. That would open her up for sure. I might even steal her from scarface and put her back on the track tomorrow.

I thought, “This fine bitch is my speed. She’s not a hard-leg dog with a million miles on her. She’s no more than nineteen and sexy as the rear end of a peacock. I’ll play it cool and quiz her. Maybe some asskicker booted her off the track. Maybe that’s how scarface copped.

“I’ll stay in the pimp role, but I’ll sweeten it with a little highclass bullshit. Maybe I’ll rap some of that gigolo garbage I overheard the white pimps in the joint rapping.

“I better call Silas. I’m not ready for trouble with Scarface. I went to the door and unlocked it. I picked up the phone and got Silas.

I said, “Listen Jack, this is important. I’m gonna be rapping to the big-butt yellow broad who lives in four-twenty-two. I’m gonna give you and the broad on the desk a fin a piece. You gotta wire me here when Scarface shows. I’m not ready for him to wise up. Got me?”

Silas said, “You lucky young sonuvabitch. A faggot in a Y.M.C.A. shower room ain’t no luckier. You got salt and pepper, kid. We’ll wire you. I’ll stall the cage on the way up with him. Can I peep a little, kid, huh?”

I hung up. I felt a cool puff of draft on my ankles. I went into the living

room. She had slipped into almost nothing. She was crossed legged in the chair at the window. She turned her head from the street and looked up at me. She had on a thigh-long black negligee with pink butterflies sewn on. A pair of white silk panties gleamed through the black gauze. She curved inside it like a yellow Petty Girl. Her ebony hair was steepled on top of her skull like a black satin crown. I saw a frantic tic jerk at a corner of her melon-red mouth. If she turned out to have entasis, I swore I would give up whores and

get hip to the sissy game.

She said, “Hi. I ask myself why I’m here?”

I said, “Baby, don’t drag the party. Don’t ask yourself stupid questions. You can’t escape that freak, desperate spark. You know baby, that awful sweet electricity that makes a farm boy kiss a ewe. The same power that yowls a hot torn cat in the alley. You hip to it? Now just relax. I’m gonna roll you up a bomber. Baby, your luck has changed. You’ve hit the jackpot. You found me. Oh yea, my name is Blood.”

She said, “‘Blood’ it’s nice to meet you. I’m Christine. Chris I like better. I can’t stay long. I have to be careful. My old man is very jealous.”

I said, “Chris, you are gonna find out I’m a wild groove. You may stay a lifetime thinking it was only an hour. All we need is an understanding. All you need is a man.”

Over the top of Chris’s head I saw the runt flash her eyes up at the window. She was just getting into a white trick’s car. Twilight was sweeping away daylight with a deep purple broom. I went to the bedroom. I loaded an outfit and tilted it spike up in my pocket. I rolled two bombers. One with reefer, the other in cigarette tobacco. I snorted a thumb tip of cocaine. I got a towel and put it next to the gap under the front door. I lit some incense.

I gave Chris the bomber. I lit it and my dud. With a package like Chris, reefer might confuse me. I might wake up swindled. If she had been Garbo, I still wanted scratch before snatch.

I got another chair. We sat there facing each other in the twilight. I waited for the reefer to fill her skull. The bomber in her hand was now a roach. I cock-tailed it for her. Her eyes were dreamy.

She said, “Goddamnit sweetheart, I’m high. You know Blood you’re going to laugh when I tell you something. Guess what I was thinking when I saw you the first time in that towel?”

I said, “You thought, ‘Oh my itching cat! That pretty brown bastard looks like a pimp. I wish to hell I was still whoring. I sure would like to kiss “Mr.

Thriller, the killer” under that towel.’ Am I right, sweet freak?”

She giggled and scooted her chair flush against my knees. She slid her back down in the leather chair. She put the heels of her pink shoes on the seat of my chair.

I was sandwiched between her big yellow legs. The street lamp came on, spotlighting her. She was still giggling. I fingered the ready jolt of cocaine in my robe pocket. I took it out and hid it against the side of my chair. I saw blue veins pulsing on her inner thighs.

The cocaine had me strung on an icy rack. I raised her right leg and rubbed my cheek against it. I crushed her knee-cap between my teeth. She moaned. I gazed deep into her eyes. She had laughed tiny pearls of tears that clung to her long, silky lashes. Under the street lamp her face was innocent and soft as a yellow fawn’s. I felt old as Methuselah.

She said, “Don’t look at me like that. I know you can read minds. You give me the creeps with that look. It’s like you’re Svengali or that crazy Russian Monk I read about”

I said, “Chris, you’re gonna be my whore. We gotta share things. That reefer was just an appetizer. Reefer is for low-class skunk broads. Heroin is for chumps bound for the graveyard. Cocaine is for brilliant, beautiful people. “Chris, banging cocaine will spin a magic web of music and bells inside your skull. Every pore in your body will feel like Daddy’s jugging his swipe in all over you. It will torch off a racy secret fire of life inside you. It’s a miracle, Chris. You get all that thrill and no habit. I know you ain’t chicken

shit. Are you game to try?”

She said, “If it won’t scar me or hurt me. If it hurts, promise you’ll stop.

Don’t give me a lot, Baby. Where you going to put it in?”

I took her left leg and put it on the arm of my chair. I saw a fat line high up on her thigh. I eased the spike into it. She flinched. The dropper flashed red. I pressed the bulb slowly. Her eyes widened. Her white teeth bit into her bottom lip.

I emptied the dropper. I pulled out the gun. She sat there stiffly. She took her leg off the chair arm. She rubbed the inside knobs of her ankles against my sides. I saw her Adam’s apple spasm.

I remembered how I puked the first time. I slid my chair back and raced to the bedroom to get the wastebasket. I just made it back. She dumped a load into it. I flushed the mess down the toilet and rinsed the basket out. When I got back to her she was smiling and stroking her legs.

She said, “I’m sorry I did that naughty thing, Daddy. Oh! Oh! But now I feel heavenly. Baby, I’m so glad I came over and got this feeling. Aren’t those bells something? Baby, you got a lot of this? I want to do this every day. Stay like this every minute. Let’s lie down. I want a formal introduction to Mr. Thriller.”

I said, “Bitch, when you come to me as my whore I’ll keep your skull mellow. Now you gotta be joking about Mr. Thriller. He won’t have anything to do with a broke bitch that claims a square horn blower as her man. Let’s go over there while he’s away and get your clothes. You’re not married to him are you?”

She said, “How many girls do you have? Maybe your stable is too big for comfort. I get salty standing in a long line for my loving.”

I said, “Whore, answer my question. What are you, a roller or something? When you are my whore you don’t worry about anything but your own ass and scratch. Now answer my question.”

She said, “Blood, I didn’t want to answer because I am married to him. Leroy, that’s my husband, saved my life really. He’s been wonderful to me. He used to be good looking. He didn’t get so insanely jealous until after his accident.

“We’ve been waiting over two years for a settlement. Blood, honestly, you are my kind of stud. My life is so screwed up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to tell you. Would you believe that you’re the first fellow I’ve talked to in over two years? Blood, I don’t love Leroy.”

That cocaine had her speed rapping. I couldn’t cop her tonight unless I croaked Scarface. My plans had to change. I had to unhook her from Leroy soon. She’d make bales of scratch. Maybe I could work an angle to get her and a slice of that settlement. Of course, I couldn’t wait forever. If I had to, I’d cop without a slice of the settlement.

I knew Leroy was going to blow her. He didn’t have a chance to hold much longer with that ugly face and that jealous bit. I had to find out if she would level with me all the way. Silas had told me she was an ex-whore.

I said, “Chris, give me a fast rundown of your life story. I’ll have all the answers for you when you finish.”

She said, “If you let me sit in your lap.”

I nodded and she climbed onto my lap. She hooked an arm around my neck. Her cheek was against my ear. The cocaine thudded her ticker against my breast. Out of the side of my eye I saw the runt go into the greasy spoon. I

was hoping she wouldn’t use the phone just inside the door and interrupt the rundown.

I felt her balloon bottom blasting heat to the throbbing cup of my lap. Too bad I worked so hard at the pimp game. Mr. Thriller was playing stiff con on me. He was just a fool at heart. The poor chump wanted to sucker out in that bed with this luscious doll. Good thing he had me to stand guard over him.

She said, “I remember nothing but good until I was twelve. Then my mother died. My father had been a kind, good man, until then. He always worked. He was a good carpenter. He changed quickly after Mama died.

“He took my bed down. He said he wanted me to sleep with him. He told me how lonely his bed was after all those years with Mama. Nothing happened at first. One night a month later I had a nightmare. A wild ferocious animal was sucking my breast. It was terrible. I woke up. It was Papa.

“I screamed. He slapped me hard. His face was all twisted and hateful. He looked like a crazy stranger. I blacked out. When I came to Papa was crying and begging me to forgive him.

“After a while I would just lie there, numb and let him use me. I hated his guts. In school I had the crazy feeling the students could see and feel my shame and filth. By the time I got fifteen I was a skeleton. By now he had me doing everything to him. I’m glad he’s dead in Hell.

“Papa, the beast, was killing me. I was so nervous I couldn’t wash dishes. I broke dozens. I wasn’t eating enough to keep a bird alive. I collapsed one day coming from the grocery. I woke up in a hospital. My system was shot and I was pregnant. I stayed in the hospital a month. I stayed at Papa’s a week after I got out. I took some money while he slept and left Wichita with the clothes on my back.

“I came here and got a waitress job. A young pimp named Dandy Louee started picking me up when I got off. I thought he was a millionaire. He dressed me up and turned me out. He was a cruel black bastard. He liked to beat me, and then screw me. He worked me in a house run by one of his whores. He kept his foot in my ass.

“Funny thing, I made money even when my belly was stuck way out. A lot of tricks who came there wanted a pregnant girl. I lost the baby while turning a trick. Dandy got five years on a white slave rap two months later.

“I got a bar-maid job and met Leroy. He was playing a gig in the spot. I was a sick girl. I fell out twice while serving the bar. The doctor said I needed rest. He said I couldn’t expect to live long unless I rested. Leroy nursed me

back to health.

“He was good to me. I needed someone who cared. I married him when I was just four months shy of seventeen. I went with Leroy on a string of one- nighters in the Midwest. The group broke up in Youngstown, Ohio. We were stranded. Leroy got a job in an industrial cleaning plant. The second week a boiler exploded and you’ve seen his face.

“His lawyer says we can expect a ten-thousand dollar settlement any time now. Leroy is driving roe crazy with his jealousy. I don’t mind hustling. I’d be your girl, “Blood. I go for you, Blood. Are things clearer now? What should I do?”

I said, “You’ve had nothing but heartache. I feel so sorry for you, baby. Now I know you’ve got to be my woman. I gotta protect you. I gotta give you affection and understanding. Don’t worry angel, with me life will be smooth as the snow at Sun Valley.

“You’ll be so happy you’ll be out of your mind half the time. With our color combination we could make a sonuvabitching baby together after we get rich. Tell me, does Leroy plan to work the Roost for a while?”

She said, “Oh! I forgot to tell you. Last night was his last night. They want him for another six weeks, but he’s going to drop the Combo. It’s too much headache to get them to show for work sober and on time.

“He’s out now with a booking agent. I think he might go with a big band on an East-Coast tour. I hope he gets it. Band leaders want band members’ wives to stay at home. Daddy, please figure things out fast. I want to be your girl as soon as possible.”

I was sucking her scented cheek. I flogged my skull for a quick plot to tear the yellow gold mine from Scarface. The phone rang. She got out of her nest. I rushed to the phone. It was the excited broad on the desk.

She said, “Forgive me for goofing. Four-twenty-two went up two minutes ago. I was having a hassle with a check out. I saw him come in. It didn’t register until the second that I called you. You better clean house fast.”

I ran into the living room. I snatched her from the chair. I pulled her to the door. I cracked it. We peeped down the hall. Scarface was twenty yards away coming down the hall. He had a big stack of papers, maybe sheet music under his arm. He shifted the bundle to his other arm.

A paper fluttered to the carpet. He stooped to get it. I saw her door ajar. I stepped aside. I slapped her on the rump. She blurred across through her doorway. Scarface was standing with his mouth open staring toward his now

locked door.

He was sure he’d seen her. His face was puzzled. I shut my door easy like. I stood with my ear against the door. A bomb of sound shocked my eardrum. Someone was punching his fist against my door. I ran into the bedroom and got my switch-blade. I came back to the door. I held the open blade behind me. I opened the door.

It was Scarface. He looked like Mr. Hyde all right. His orangebrown eyes were spinning counter clockwise. I saw the bundle of papers in a careless heap in front of his door. His right mitt was deep in his coat pocket. I saw the faint outline of maybe a skinny lead pipe, or a gun barrel. I gauged the moves for a heart stab to beat his mitt out of his pocket.

I said, “Yeah Jack, what is it? I’m on the phone with my bondsman. The court just raised my bond on a double-murder beef. I’m in a bad mood. I don’t want to buy anything.”

He just stood there like a scarfaced zombie staring at me. He looked down at the carpet in front of my door. I looked down. A pink butterfly lay there like a silent indictment.

He heaved his chest and took a deep breath. It was like his last one. He stooped and picked it up. The eerie bastard took his other hand out of his pocket. Tears rolled down from his unblinking orange eyes as he stared at me. His scarred cheeks were quivering as he shredded the butterfly into pink lint on the carpet.

He turned and walked away. I shut my door and got a beak load of cocaine. I took the lounging robe off. It was dripping sweat. I showered. I sat in Chris’s chair at the window. Her sweet odor was still rising from it. For an hour I heard a loud sobbing whine across the hall. It was Scarface chewing out Chris. Mickey said midnight. I hadn’t eaten since morning and I wasn’t hungry. Cocaine was a strong con for the belly.

I thought, “I hope that jealous chump doesn’t croak her. It would be like making a big bonfire out of hundred dollar bills. If she wasn’t his wife and I had a rod, I’d go over there and claim her.”

The phone rang. It was Silas.

He said, “What happened, kid? Was she a whiz in the sack? Did the joker catch her? I been busy. I ain’t had a chance to check with you until now. I was worried about you, kid. The broad told me she was late with the wire. I stalled him in the cage.”

I said, “It was very close, Silas. I’m a pimp, I didn’t stick her. I’ll take care

of you and the broad this weekend when I pay my rent. Silas, if you get any news on the broad or Scarface wire me fast.”

He said, “Yeah, Kid, you know me. I stay hip to what goes on around here.

I’ll keep you plugged in, Kid. Good night. I’m going home.”

I hung up and lay across the bed. I wondered if Max and Blondie had the runt hemmed up in an alley again. I smoked a reefer. I fell asleep. The phone woke me up. It was the runt.

She said, “Daddy, it’s your baby. It’s after two, can I come home?” I said, “Bitch, what kinda lines you got?”

She said, “I got thirty slats. I’m beat, Daddy. My tricks have been spades.

You know how cheap and hard they are to turn. Can I come in?”

I said, “Come on in. Take a bath. Watch your jib, bitch. Don’t irritate me.

I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

She’d been working more than twelve hours. She was beat all right. Within a half hour after her bath she was snoring beside me. I was dozing when the phone rang. I switched on the light. I picked up.

I said, “Hello.”

Chris whispered, “Daddy, I can’t talk long. Leroy’s asleep. He found a butterfly that fell off my negligee. He’s been raving like a crazy man. He knows I was over there. I got bad news for us. The band spot is out. He called and turned it down. He’s going to keep the combo and go through Ohio.

“His agent has a slew of one-nighters booked for him. He’s taking me with him. Daddy, I won’t forget us. I’ll keep in touch. Maybe he’ll go out before we leave tomorrow afternoon. I may get a chance to kiss you goodbye. I love you, Blood. I’m going to dream about Mr. Thriller until I—”

I heard the drowsy whine of Leroy’s voice calling her name the instant before she hung up. I turned and looked at the runt. Her big mouth was wide open. Frothy slobber ran down her chin. Her sour hair had started to kink at the edges. She needed to go to the beauty shop downstairs.

I thought, “What kinda breaks am I getting? I’m sinfully good looking. I’m lying here with a lather-mouth dog. The ugliest joker in the world is across the hall. He’s in the sack with a pretty bitch whose nose is wide open for me. Something’s gotta be done. Maybe after I cop Chris, I’ll have the brass ring in my mitt.”

I didn’t sleep at all after Chris called. The runt woke up at noon. She went across the street and got our lunch. At two in the afternoon she was in the street.

Silas called. He told me Chris was checking out. I saw Chris and Scarface put their stuff in the car and drive away.

The runt came in at two A.M. with only twenty slats. She was shying away from white tricks. She was leery of Max and Blondie. I couldn’t shake her out of it. She would rather turn spades for three or five dollars. She was afraid Max would catch her with a white trick.

10

THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

A week after Chris left I copped another bag of cocaine from Top. It was almost gone. The runt was only making expenses. I had one lonely C note and a double saw plus the porker silver. The weather was getting balmy. I needed fresh clothes. I was going to the bottom fast.

In the three weeks after Chris left I kicked the runt’s ass a halfdozen times. I only left the hotel twice in almost a month. I was expecting Chris to call me and say she was on her way to me. Things were getting worse.

It had been two weeks since I saw Top. I decided to call him. Maybe he could hip me to a new spot to work for runt. My bankroll was thin. At ten

A.M. I called Top. One of his broads said he was out of town. He wouldn’t be back for a week.

I got a sudden thought. I asked her if she knew Sweet’s phone number. She said she did, but she’d have to call and find out if Sweet wanted me to have it. She called back in ten minutes and gave it to me. I called him. He answered. He was in a good mood.

He said, “Well, whatta you know, if it ain’t grinning Slim. You still got that one whore or have you grinned yourself whoreless?”

I looked over at the runt. She was still asleep. She hadn’t been in the street for three days. Her period had run five days. She claimed she was too weak and sick to go out. I had given her a terrible whipping the night before. I needed advice badly.

I said, “Sweet, my bitch is falling apart. She’s playing dead. If you don’t pull my coat I’m gonna starve to death. You gotta help me Sweet.”

He said, “Nigger, you ain’t cracking to nick me for scratch are you? I don’t loan my scratch to suckers who got whores and can’t pimp on ’em. I ain’t gonna support you and that lazy bitch.”

I said, “No Sweet I don’t want scratch. I want you to run the game through my skull. I got a tiny bit of scratch. I gotta get my coat pulled before I tap out.”

He said, “You got wheels? You know how to get out here? Now remember you get a roust out here, crack my name. Don’t repeat your boner.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m driving. I think I can find you pad. When should I come out there?”

He said, “Quick as you can get here. You get here and grin in my face, I’m gonna throw you over the patio wall.

“Say kid, Peaches and me got a taste for some of that barbecued chicken down there in Hell. Bring one with you when you come.”

He hung up. My ticker was pounding like Chris had walked in the door naked with a million dollars. I shook the runt. She opened her eyes. I stood over her.

I said, “Bitch, you better be in the street when I get back.”

She said, “You can’t do anything but kill me. I’m ready to die. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sick.”

I said, “All right bitch, just hip me where you want your black stinking ass shipped.”

I got in the Ford. I realized I hadn’t put on a tie. I didn’t have a lid. I looked into the rear-view mirror. I sure looked scroungy. Maybe he’d be alone. Then I remembered the lobby. What the hell did it matter.

I drove for about fifteen minutes before I saw a clean open barbeque joint. A black stud in a tall white cap was stabbing chickens onto a turning spit in the window. I went in. I came out with two birds. Peaches might be really hungry for barbequed chicken. It made solid sense to brown-nose Miss Peaches.

After making several wrong turns I found Sweet’s building. I parked the Ford in almost the same spot at the curb where Satan had sapped me a month ago. A young white stud in a monkey suit was out in front. Crusader Sweet was doing his bit to reverse the social order.

I went to the desk in the lobby. I felt like a tramp as I waited for the pass. I got on the elevator. A different broad was at the controls. The spicy scent of the chicken wiggled her nose. She wasn’t as pretty as the ripe-smelling broad. She sure kept her crotch from advertising. Maybe it was just that she didn’t get heavy action.

I stepped from the cage. The friendly brown snake wasn’t at his station to

flop his mop for me. I figured it was his off day. The odds were a hundred to one he was in the sack somewhere with a six-foot blonde.

She was probably a little like the blonde coming up from the pit on her way to the cage. It was Mimi. She flicked her green eyes across my face. They were cold as a frozen French lake. She passed me. She looked like a fancy French pastry in her sable stole. I wondered how I got the stupid courage to turn down her freak off.

I walked to the doorway of the pit. The stone broad was still in her squirting squat. Sweet was sitting on the couch. Miss Peaches beside him saw me first. She bounded across the carpet. I felt her choppers graze my hand. She snatched the bag of chicken. She flung it on the alabaster topped cocktail table in front of Sweet.

Sweet looked at me. I tightened my face into a solemn grim mask. I stepped down and walked toward him. He was wearing only a pair of polka- dot shorts. In daylight I noticed a mole on the broad in the picture over the couch.

I said, “Hello Mr. Jones. I hope those birds are still warm.”

He said, “Kid, your map sure looks like that bullshit bitch you got is been shooting you through hot grease. I like that look you got today. Maybe you’re getting hip the pimp game ain’t for grinning jackasses.

“Get over here and sit on this couch. While baby and me eat our barbeque, rundown you and your whore. I wanta know where and how you copped her. Tell me everything you can remember about her and what’s happened since you copped her. Rundown your whole life as far back as you remember. It don’t matter which is first.”

I ran down my life for him. Then I ran down from the night I met the runt until the moment I left the Haven. It took maybe forty-five minutes. I even described the runt in detail.

Sweet and his greedy girl-friend had devoured both birds down to the bare bones. Sweet was wiping Miss Peaches’ whiskers with a paper napkin. She put her head in his lap. She was jammed against my thigh. Sweet leaned back on the couch. He put his bare feet on the top of the cocktail table.

He said, “Sweetheart, you’re black like me. I love you. You got the hate to pimp. You a lucky Nigger to get your coat pulled by me. You flap your horns and remember what I’m gonna spiel to you.

“There are thousands of Niggers in this country who think they’re pimps. The pussy-weak white pimps ain’t worth mentioning. Don’t none of them

pimp by the book. They ain’t even heard about it. If they was black, they’d starve stiff.

“There ain’t more than six of ’em who are hip to and pimp by the book. You won’t find it in the square-Nigger or white history books. The truth is that book was written in the skulls of proud slick Niggers freed from slavery. They wasn’t lazy. They was puking sick of picking white man’s cotton and kissing his nasty ass. The slave days stuck in their skulls. They went to the cities. They got hip fast.

“The conning bastard white man hadn’t freed the Niggers. The cities was like the plantations down South. Jeffing Uncle Toms still did all the white man’s hard and filthy work.

“Those slick Nigger heroes bawled like crumb crushers. They saw the white man just like on the plantations still ramming it into the finest black broads.

“The broads were stupid squares. They still freaked for free with the white man. They wasn’t hip to the scratch in their hot black asses.

“Those first Nigger pimps started hipping the dumb bitches to the gold mines between their legs. They hipped them to stick their mitts out for the white man’s scratch. The first Nigger pimps and sure-shot gamblers was the only Nigger big shots in the country.

“They wore fine threads and had blooded horses. Those pimps was black geniuses. They wrote that skull book on pimping. Even now if it wasn’t for that frantic army of white tricks, Nigger pimps would starve to death.

“Greenie, the white man has been pig-greedy for Nigger broads ever since his first whiff of black pussy. Black whores con themselves the only reason he sniffs his way to ’em is white broads ain’t got what it takes to please him.

“I’m hip he’s got two other secret sick reasons. White women ain’t hip to his secret reasons. The dumb white broads ain’t even hip to why he locks all Niggers inside tight stockades. He’d love it if the Nigger broads wasn’t locked in there. The white man is scared shitless. He don’t want them humping bucks coming out there in the white world rubbing their bellies against those soft white bellies.

“That’s the real reason for keeping all the Niggers locked up. To show you how sick in the head he is, he thinks black broads are dirt beneath his feet. His balls will bust if he don’t sneak through that stockade, to those half- savage, less than human, black broads.

“You know, Greenie, why he’s gotta come to ’em? The silly sick bastard is

like a whore that needs and loves punishment. He’s a joke with scratch in his mitt. As great as he thinks he is, he can’t keep his beak and swipe outta the stink of a black ass.

“He wallows and stains himself. The poor freak’s joy is in his suffering. The chump believes he’s done something dirty to himself. He slips back into his white world. He goes on conning himself he’s God and Niggers are wild filthy animals he has to keep in the stockades.

“The sad thing is, he don’t even know he’s sick in the skull. Greenie, I’m pulling your coat from the bottom to the top. That rundown on the first Nigger pimps will make you proud to be a pimp.

“Square-ass Niggers will try to put shame inside you. Ain’t one of ’em wouldn’t suck a mule’s ass to pimp. They can’t because a square ain’t nothing but a pussy. He lets a square bitch pimp on him. You gotta pimp by the rules of that pimp book those noble studs wrote a hundred years ago. When you look in a mirror you gotta know that cold-hearted bastard looking at you is real.

“Now that young bitch you got is gone lazy. She’s stuffing on you. That bitch ain’t sick. I ain’t never seen a bitch under twenty that could get sick. Your whore is bullshitting. A whore’s scratch ain’t never longer than a pimp’s cold game. You gotta have strict rules for a whore. She’s gotta respect you to hump her heart out in the street.

“One whore ain’t got but one pussy and one jib. You got to get what there is in her fast as you can. You gotta get sixteen hours a day outta her. There ain’t no guarantee you going to keep any bitch for long. The name of the pimp game is ‘Cop and Blow.’

“Now this young bitch you git is shitty all right. She knows you ain’t got no other whore. I want you to go back to that hotel. Make that bitch get outta that bed and get in the street. Put your foot in her ass hard. If that don’t work, take a wire coat hanger and twist it into a whip. Ain’t no bitch, freak or not, can stand up to that hanger.

“Maybe your foot and fist can’t move that young whore anymore. She’s a freak to them. Believe me, Greenie, that coat hanger will blow her or straighten her out. It’s better to have no whore than a piece of whore. Get some cotton and make her pack herself. The show can’t stop when a whore bleeds.

“I’m gonna lay some pills on you. Give her a couple when you get her outta that bed. Don’t give her anymore reefer. It makes some whores lazy.

Don’t worry, kid, if you do like I say and blow her, I’ll give you a whore. Kid, don’t hold that whore to one block. Tell that whore all the streets go. Turn her loose. It’s the only way to pimp. If she blows, whatta you lost. She stands up, you got a whore and some real scratch.

“You go back and put the coat-hanger pressure on her. If it don’t blow her and she stands up for a week, you ought to have half a grand in a week. Take that scratch and drive to one of the whore towns close around. Go to Western Union. Send that scratch back to yourself at your hotel. Use some broad’s name as the sender.

“That lazy bitch you got will think she’s got competition. Watch the sparks fly from her ass. She’ll try to top that bitch that doesn’t exist. Greenie, you listen to Sweet Jones. You’ll be a helluva pimp.

“Never get friendly and confide in your whores. You got twenty whores, don’t forget your thoughts are secret. A good pimp is always really alone. You gotta always be a puzzle, a mystery to them. That’s how you hold a whore. Don’t get sour. Tell them something new and confusing every day. You can hold ’em as long as you can do it.

“Sweet is hipping you to pimp by the book. I’m the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. Now Greenie, is your skull going to hold everything I told you?”

I said, “Thirty years from now I’ll still remember every word. Sweet you won’t be sorry you helped me. I’m gonna pimp my black ass off. I’ll make you proud of me. I’ll call you later and hip you to what the runt did under hanger pressure. Oh yeah, don’t forget to give me those pills.”

He got up. Miss Peaches stretched her legs. She jumped down and followed him. A sharp hooked nail in one of her rear claws snagged out an inch of cloth from my pants knee. I wouldn’t have cared if she had clawed me naked. I was in a thrilled daze. With Sweet Jones on ready tap to pull my coat I was going to set a record on the fast track.

Sweet came back. He gave me a tiny bottle of small white pills. He put his hands on my shoulders. He looked down at me. His subzero eyes warmed to maybe zero.

He said, “I love you, Sweetheart! You know kid, I don’t ever think I’m gonna grin in your face. I love you like a son. Any time I grin in a sucker’s face I’m gonna cross him or croak him. Call me any time you need a rundown. Good luck, Greenie.”

I walked across the pit. I stepped up to the doorway. I glanced back. Sweet

had Peaches in his arms. She was purring like a new bride. Sweet was squeezing her in a lover’s embrace. He was covering her laughing face with kisses.

I checked Mickey when I got in the Ford. It was four P.M. I drove toward the runt. I tromped hard on the gas pedal.

I thought, “No wonder Sweet is the greatest Nigger pimp in the world. He even knows the history of the black pimp.

“I ain’t going to spare the runt’s ass. I’m gonna go right in with the pressure. I hope she’s not in the street. Sweet promised me a whore if I blow the runt. Any whore of Sweet’s is already trained to a fine edge. Maybe he’ll give me Mimi.”

11

TO LOSE A WHORE

I pulled the Ford into the curb across the street from the Haven. I didn’t see the runt anywhere in the street. I peeped into the greasy spoon. She wasn’t at the counter. I looked up at our window. I crossed the street and went through the lobby. I took the stairs to the fourth floor. I made three stabs at the lock with the key before I made it. I stepped inside. I was excited. I chain-bolted the door. I walked to the bedroom.

The runt was propped up in bed smoking a stick of gangster. Lady Day was tar brushing that mean, sweet man again. I stood by the side of the bed, next to the record player. I saw the edge of a paper plate sticking out of the wastebasket. I took it out and put it on the bed.

Two navy beans were in a puddle of grease on the side of the plate. A pile of sucked, cleaned neck bones were heaped in the center of it. The runt had gone out to the greasy spoon and copped a hearty meal. She sure had a healthy appetite for a sick bitch. Her eyes were wild and big, looking up at me.

She fingered gently at the hole in my pants knee. I shut the box off. I ripped the record off the turntable. I broke it in half and hurled the pieces into the wastebasket. She kept her eyes on the hole at my knee. She ignored the broken record. She played it cool.

She said, “You’ll have to get it rewoven, huh? Daddy, I’m feeling better. I felt good enough to go across the street for food. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel good enough to go in the street. Baby, I would’ve went out after I ate, but my legs were too weak.”

I said, “Bitch, I already passed the death sentence on you. It’s good you had your last meal. I’m gonna send your dead ass to your daughter, Gay. Take off that gown and lie on your belly, bitch.”

I went to the closet. I took down a wire hanger. I straightened it into one long piece. I doubled and braided it. I wrapped a necktie around the handle end. I turned back to the bed. She was still propped in the bed. Her mouth was gaped open. She had both her hands clapped over her chest.

She was like a broad in a movie. She opens a door and there’s Dr. Jekyll just going into his frightful change. I saw her tongue tremble inside her jib. Her lips made a liquid plopping sound as they mutely pounded together. She rolled across the bed away from me. I raised my right arm up and back. I heard my shoulder socket creak.

Her gown was hiked up to her waist. Her naked rear end had scrambled to the far edge of the bed. I raced around the foot of the bed. She rolled to the middle. She was on her back. Her arms held her jack-knifed legs against her chest.

The whites of her eyes glowed like phosphorus. I brought the wire whip down. I heard it swish through the air. It struck her across the shin bones. She cried out like she was celebrating New Year’s Eve.

She screamed, “Ooh-whee! Ooh-whee!”

She jerked flat, rigid on the bed then smalled her fists against her temples. She sucked her bottom lip up into her jib. I slashed the air again. It sounded like maybe a dum-dum bullet striking across her gut button.

She moaned, “Whee-Lordy! Whee-Lordy!”

She turned over on her belly. I tore the gown from her back. She was naked. She flailed her arms like a holy-roller. The whip whistled a deadly lyric as I brought it down again and again across her back and butt. I saw the awful welts puffing the black velvet skin.

I stopped and turned her over. The pillow stuck to her face. I snatched it away. There was a ripping sound. I saw feathers sticking to her tear wet face. She had chewed a hole in the pillow. She was thrashing her legs and mumbling.

Her chest heaved in great sobs. She was staring at me and shaking her skull. Her eyes had that pitiful look of Christ’s on those paintings of the Crucifixion. Her lips were moving. I got on the bed. I stuck my ear near.

She whispered, “I don’t need any more whipping. I give, Daddy. You’re the boss. I was a dumb bitch. It looks like you got a whore now. Kiss me and help me up.”

I felt tears roll down my cheeks. Maybe I was crying in joy that I broke her spirit. I felt sorry for her. I wondered if I was falling in love like a sucker. I

kissed her hard. I carried her into the bathroom. I placed her tenderly in the tub.

I turned the water on. A stream burst from the shower nozzle overhead. She squealed. I pushed in the shower bypass on the tub faucet. The warm water started filling the tub. I dumped a bottle of rubbing alcohol into the tub. She looked up at me. I took the tiny bottle of pills out of my pocket. I shook out two into my palm. I took a glass off the face bowl. I handed her the pills. She put them in her mouth. She washed them down with the glass of

water I gave her.

I said, “Phyllis, why do you make your sweet daddy mean? Daddy’s gonna kill his little bitch if she don’t straighten up and whore like the star she is.

“Bitch, lie down in that water for a while. Then get in the street and get some real scratch for your man. You don’t have to stay in this block. Just walk and work until you get respectable scratch to bring in. I can raise you if you take a fall. They gotta let you make a phone call. If I go out I’ll check the desk here by phone every hour or so. Bitch, get down and star. You want your man, get him some real scratch.”

I went and sat on the bed. The sheet looked like a red zebra had lain down and his stripes had faded on it. I heard her sloshing the water in the tub. She was humming the record I’d smashed. Sweet’s pills sure weren’t hurting her.

Whores are strange people all right. She was silent while she combed her hair and fixed her face. She put on a red knit suit. She stood in front of me. She held her hand out. I saw dark stains on her stockings at the shins. Her eyes were bright.

She said, “Daddy, I don’t have a dime. Give me a coupla dollars, please.

Don’t worry, when I come in I’ll have nice scratch.”

I stood up. I gave her a fin. I walked to the door with her. She turned her face up. I leaned down. I sucked her bottom lip, then bit it hard. She squeezed my arm and gouged her teeth into my cheek. She went down the hall.

I shut the door and went to the front window. I rubbed my cheek to see if the skin was broken. I saw her cross the street at the corner. She was walking fast. That whipping and those pills had made her well. She looked like a child. She was so tiny and sexy in her red suit. I wondered as she disappeared whether she’d come back. It was seven P.M.

I thought, “I better stick here in the pad. Whipping a broad with a hanger is not a bit like a foot in the ass. Christ! I’d kill the bastard on the spot if he hit my bare ass with one. Sweet was right. She got outta that bed all right. I

wonder if those slavery pimps invented the hanger whip.

“No, even hangers hadn’t been invented then. I guess Sweet did. I’m gonna wait the runt out. If she tries to slip in here to steal her clothes, I’ll croak her. I wonder why Chris hasn’t gotten in touch? Maybe some fast pimp has already stolen that pretty bitch from Leroy. Maybe Leroy had one of his fits and croaked her.

“I wonder what the bitch will be like that I get from Sweet if the runt blows? This is a hell of a feeling I got. I don’t know if I got a whore or not. It would be a bitch if Sweet goes back on his word and leaves me whoreless on this fast track. I’m gonna get high. I’d better take the flight with gangster. Cocaine will only sharpen my grief.”

I took a shower. I stepped out of the tub. I got a towel from the wall rack. I saw splotches of red on the one beside it. I toweled off. I rolled a giant bomber. I put a fresh case on the pillow the runt had gnawed.

I propped myself against the head of the bed. I sucked the bomber down to a “roach.” The reefer and the sibilant murmuring of tires against the street lulled me into deep sleep.

I woke up. I was still half-propped against the pillows. It was broad daylight. The runt hadn’t come in. I had blown whoreless with that wire hanger. I lit a cigarette. It was seven A.M. I lay there staring at the entwined lovers on the “Kiss” Statue.

I thought, “The runt’s got a pair of tits like that broad. Jeez, she was sure a freak. Some pimp is going to have a sweet bitch when he straightens her out. I wonder if that little bitch will miss me? She damn sure can’t forget me.

“Hell, I can’t worry about the mule going blind. I’ll wait until noon or so. I’ll rip open that whore grab-bag Sweet promised me. Maybe I was hasty to shut the door on Melody and his entasis. At this point I can get hip to anything except work. No one could know I was freaking with a stud.

“Christ, I wish beautiful Chris would call. What a thrill if she’d tell me she was rushing to me. To get her tight I’d maybe eat everything but the tacks in her shoes. I’m hungry. I’m not going to let my troubles abuse my skull and my belly.”

I got Silas on the phone. I ordered home fries and sausage. I got up and brushed my teeth. I skull-noted to call Top when he got back in town. Maybe he could find out who booked Leroy. Maybe I’d trace Chris that way. I’d get Preston’s owl-head and take her from Leroy at gunpoint.

I was listening to “Mood Indigo” and thinking about the runt. I was

remembering that day when I left Mama crying at the window.

I couldn’t wait to get around the corner to the runt. Then I was sure I had a black gold mine sitting in the Ford waiting for me. In this tough pimp game you couldn’t count your scratch until you had it in your mitt. Holding whores was like trying to cinch-grip quicksilver.

I thought, “Poor Mama. I haven’t called her or anything. I’m gonna call her when things get straight.”

12

TO GAIN A STABLE

I heard Silas knock on the door. I went and opened it. Silas was a strange, beautiful sight. The slick sorcerer-bastard had my breakfast on a tray. He had turned himself into a cute black bitch in a red knit suit. It was the runt. I murdered the grin of relief in its jib womb. I twisted my face into a copy of Sweet’s when he bounced my skull off his John wall.

I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna croak you. Since three o’clock I been calling all the hospitals and jails in town. I even called the morgue. Speak up bitch, what’s your story?”

She looked up at me. She was smiling. She walked past me into the bedroom. I followed her. She sat the tray on the dresser. She ran her fingers deep into her bosom. She brought out a damp wad of bills. She gave it to me.

She said, “Daddy, my last trick was a fifty slat, all night trick. I caught him at two this morning. Baby, I gave you a hundred and twenty eight slats.

“Silas had your breakfast on the elevator on my way up. With the two slats I gave him, I made a hundred and thirty.

“Oh, Daddy, I’ve found some good streets to work a coupla miles from here. It’s in the neighborhood of a joint called the Roost. You were a sweet daddy to be worried about your baby. Oh! I almost forgot. Keep your fingers crossed. I may bring you a girl one of these mornings. She’s wild about me. Her old man ain’t nothing. He’s a burglar.”

I said, “Phyllis, there’s more than one note in a song. You gotta string together a thousand nights like last night. Now take a bath. I’m gonna treat those scratches. Remember I don’t want any junkie bitch. Make sure she’s clean before you cop.”

I forgot about my breakfast. I went out and got into the Ford. I drove to the drugstore and got ointments and salves.

I called Sweet and told him the runt stood up. He reminded me to send that scratch to myself as soon as possible. I went back to the Haven. I sent Silas for hot food. I dressed her wounds. They sure looked bad.

Those “go” pills she had taken died. She fell asleep while I was doctoring her back. I ate and took a nap. By the end of the week, I felt like a pimp. I had an eight-bill bankroll not counting the porker silver.

One night about nine I got into the Ford. I drove less than a hundred miles to Terre Haute a small whore-town. I sent five bills to myself at the Haven. I used Christine as the broad’s name.

Top was back in town so I stopped on the way home and copped cocaine, yellows, and bennies. The runt came in that morning around four. She had a hundred-and-five slats. She was on her way to stardom. We were in bed when I cracked on her.

I said, “Baby, I think our luck is changing all around. I’m pretty sure Daddy’s copped another whore. I met her in a bar about a week ago.

“It’s a small world all right. She said she just moved out of this joint not long ago. She went wild over me. She’s a fine young bitch. She begged me to go to Terre Haute with her. She’s working a fast house up there. I told her I’d run up there after she sent her first week’s scratch. She gave me her phone number up there. I gave her my address.

“Tonight I called up there. I asked her about my scratch. She told me five bills were on the way. Baby, if she’s jiving we ain’t hurt. If she sends it and it’s respectable scratch your daddy’s got a small stable.”

She said, “Is she a white bitch? What does the bitch look like?”

I said, “Bitch, don’t get shitty now. What’s wrong with a white broad helping two spades? She’s a boot. She looks like what she is. A scratch- getting fine bitch in love with your man at first sight.”

It was a little after noon when the messenger brought the scratch notice.

The runt went to the door and brought him into the bedroom.

I opened it. The office was a half-mile away. I asked the runt if she’d like some air. She was eager to go.

It was a good thing I had gotten that driver’s license. I had to go through a long routine. They even made me crack the amount I was expecting. I got the cash.

The runt was silent on the way home. Sweet sure knew the angles to put pressure on a whore’s skull. In the next month I made two more trips to Terre Haute. Twice I went across town and stayed in a hotel over night until around

noon. I was conning the runt I was visiting her stable mate.

The runt was really humping. She was averaging no less than a bill a night. Two months after the hanger whipping I took a furnished three-bedroom vacancy in Top’s building. It was a gold-andred dream after the Haven. The runt really freaked this pad off. I guess she felt at home at last. It was on the sixth floor.

I copped six two-hundred-dollar vines at sixty slats a piece. The booster lived on the second floor beneath me. The same week Top cut me into a stud who had a black LaSalle car in mint condition.

He was out on an appeal bond and his lip wired him he was joint bound. I gave the stud four bills in his mitt. I paid off the last two notes on the wheels.

I had two cars. I gave the runt her Ford back. She could cover and get down in a wider area.

I started hanging around out at Sweet’s pad, sucking up the pimp game. I got home from Sweet’s one morning around five. I heard the runt rapping to someone in one of the bedrooms. I pushed the door open. The runt was in bed with a tall, pretty brown-skin broad. She looked fifteen. They were naked. They stopped kissing and looked at me.

The runt said, “Daddy this is Ophelia. I told you about her in the Haven. Her old man got one-to-three in the joint for burglary. She wants to join our family. Can she?”

I said, “Ophelia, if you’re not full of shit and you obey my rules you’re welcome. Have you bitches been in the streets working tonight? I hope you just got in that bed to freak off. Phyllis, get outta that bed and get my double- action scratch.”

The runt went into the closet and brought me a roll of bills. She said, “A bill of this I made.”

I fast counted a yard and seventy-five slats. I took off my clothes and got between them. I spent an hour quizzing Ophelia and running down my rules. She was eighteen. The circus started. I was circus master. I had become too much pimp to freak off with a new package. They were the performers. She had put only six bits in my pocket. How cheaply did she get me if she blew tomorrow.

It was the night before my twentieth birthday in August. I had gone to the West Side to cop some dresses for Phyllis and Ophelia. I had left the booster’s pad. I was loading the dozen or so pieces in the trunk of the LaSalle. I slammed the trunk lid shut and locked it.

I heard screaming and smashing sounds coming from a cabaret just down the street. I saw a hatless, gray-haired man come staggering to the sidewalk. He was holding his head. The side of his head looked shiny. I walked down the sidewalk toward him.

He was bleeding from a deep cut in his head. He was moaning and trying to stop the flow of blood with his hands. A dark thin joker ran out behind the old man. I saw something gleam in his hand as he raised his arm again and again.

I moved closer. The thin joker was savagely pistol whipping the old stud. He was beaten to his knees. He looked like someone had painted his face red. The thin joker turned his face. The light coming from the open door of the cabaret shone on it. It was Chris’ Leroy beating the old man. Twenty customers had come out. They formed a circle around the massacre. I moved

to the outside of the circle.

Then I saw Chris standing on the other side of the circle. She was screaming and tugging at Leroy’s pistol arm. Leroy had gone insane.

I moved around the circle closer to Chris. I stood behind her. I saw greasy stains on the back of her dress collar. Her hair looked frowsy and dull. Scarface was sure taking her to the dogs. I heard the screech of brakes. I saw two huge white rollers muscle through the crowd. Leroy was astraddle the unconscious figure, still pounding his pistol against it.

They shoved Chris backward. One of them put an armlock on Leroy’s gun arm and took the pistol. The other vised his neck in a strangle hold. They dragged him to the prowl car and threw him into the back seat.

A short middle-aged white broad stepped to the side of the fallen figure. She was wringing her hands. She was wearing a bar apron. She stooped and stroked the figure’s brow.

One of them got on the front seat. He turned sideways guarding Leroy. He put a microphone to his lips. He was calling an ambulance, no doubt. The other roller came back and stopped beside the white woman.

He said, “Anybody you know?”

She sobbed. “Yes, he’s my father-in-law.” He said, “What happened?”

She said, “Everybody knows Papa Tony loves to kid around the girls. He’s got a heart as big as New York. Everybody loves and understands him. Papa Tony came in the bar. He started kissing the cheek of all the girls at the bar.

“He kissed that one behind you. That maniac man of hers stopped singing.

He leaped off the stage. He started to beat poor Papa Tony with his pistol. It’s the first night the maniac has worked for my husband. If my husband, Vince, had been here that jerk’s brains would splatter the sidewalk.”

The roller looked back at Chris. He started making notes in a small book. I knew he’d quiz her after he got the full picture. I touched Chris lightly on the shoulder. She turned and looked up at me. She got weak in the knees. She slumped against me. I took her arm and steered her down the sidewalk. I heard the distant whine of an ambulance siren.

I said, “Chris, you had better split. That’s a white man Leroy beat up. The white folks are going to cross you into it. After all you’re the reason he nipped.”

We got into the La Salle. I moved it down the street toward the prowl car. I put on the brakes. A couple came from in front of the prowl car. They crossed the street in front of me. I had stopped beside the prowl car. Chris could have reached out and touched it.

I turned my head and looked into the rear seat of the prowl car. Leroy was staring at Chris. His eyes shifted to me. He leaped toward the front seat. The roller backhanded him. I saw Leroy’s head dip out of sight as I pulled away.

I made from that frantic leap of his that he remembered me. The LaSalle moved quickly away from the West Side. Chris was crying. I stayed silent until I hit the fringe of the South Side.

Then I said, “All right, Chris, I got you away from the heat. Tell me where you live and I’ll take you home. Don’t cry. You can bail him out when they book him.”

She sobbed, “All right, you want to take me home? Turn around and take me to Leroy’s jalopy. It’s parked behind the bar where he blew his silly top.

“We got in town broke this afternoon. He didn’t get the settlement. Maybe he’ll never get it. I’m so disgusted. He was to get paid nightly for the gig. He does a blues singing bit now.”

I said, “Bitch, you look like a bum. You conned me you’d keep in touch. You were gonna be my whore, remember? I shoulda left you back there to go to jail with your sucker-man.”

I realized I had a solid chance to cop her now. All I had to do was stay strong and bluff her.

Leroy was a cinch to get a bit. He couldn’t make bail. Chris had no out but me. She sure looked like my third whore.

I coasted into the curb. I left the engine running. We were parked in front

of a fleabag hotel. I had maybe a twenty-five-hundred-slat roll in my pocket I flashed for her. I peeled off a saw buck. I held it toward her. She ignored it.

She said, “Blood, it wasn’t that I didn’t think about you. I wanted to call you. I wanted to keep my word. Leroy never let me out of his sight. He would even follow me to the toilet. You don’t know how much I hate him. I hope he gets life. Don’t cut me loose, Blood. I’ll keep my promises. I’m free now. I’m yours, baby. Tell me to jump in the river. I’ll do it.”

I said, “No Chris, I’m afraid of you. I think Leroy has made a tramp jive- bitch outta you. I’m pimping too good to bring a headache into the stable. I’ll always be your friend, Chris. My ticker is bleeding for you, baby. I gotta think of number one.

“My whores are humping sixteen hours a day in the street. They love it. I don’t figure you got the guts and heart for the street track.

“Chris, for the rest of my life I’ll be sad when I think of you. I’ll have a lump in my throat when I think of what might have been. Take this saw buck, baby, and the best of luck always. Goodbye, Chris. Please split before I get weak and let you be my whore.”

I reached across her and opened the car door. My skull was hitting on all hundred-and-seventy-five cylinders. I was cinching her.

I remembered her name, Christine, on those Terre Haute money orders I’d been sending myself. She was the runt’s ghost gadfly come to life.

She pulled the door shut. She hurled herself against me. She held on to me and wailed like maybe I was her dead mama on the way back to the grave after a brief visit.

She blubbered, “Blood, please don’t cut me loose. I’m not a lazy bitch. Give me a chance. I want to amount to something. Please take me with you. I won’t let you down. I can hold my own against any bitch.”

I pulled out. I was headed home. I was a fox with a rare, pretty hen in my jib. I knew the runt and Ophelia were in the street. In the trunk I had six dresses I’d copped for Ophelia. I was sure they’d fit Chris.

I said, “Bitch, I’m gonna gamble on you. I’m taking you to your new pad. You gotta understand one thing. You can’t bring in scratch under a bill a night. You do, I may light my cigarettes with it or use it to wipe my ass.

“You’re gonna meet and work in the street tonight with your sisters. I’m gonna give you a rundown. Flap your horns and remember it. It will bring you into the family with some stardust on your tail.

“Chris, you’re lucky. A whore of mine croaked in Terre Haute just a week

ago. Her heart stopped while she was turning a trick. She was a martyr. Her name was Christine. I went up there and blew a coupla grand on her funeral.

“I guess I felt guilty about blowing all that scratch on a broad I’d had for only a coupla months or so. I didn’t tell the stable about her death. Maybe I went all out on her funeral because she had your name.

“I just don’t know. Anyway, the stable never met her. They sure have a lot of respect for that long scratch she sent me every week from the whorehouse. “Chris, you’re that great humping bitch reborn. A week before she croaked she begged me to turn her loose here in the street. I turned her down because

I knew she had a screwy ticker.

“So, Chris, I know you’ll prove to the stable you are just as great in the street as you were in the house in Terre Haute. I’m taking you home to get pretty for the trick people, baby-bitch.”

13

THE ICEBERG

When she saw the pad she flipped. A pink silk dress from the trunk fitted her perfectly. After a bath and a shampoo she was again the gorgeous Chris I’d met at the Haven.

I gave her two “go” pills and took her to the street for the cut into Phyllis and Ophelia. It was midnight when I curbed in the block where they were working. They were walking together across the street. They looked over at the LaSalle.

I blinked my headlights. They crossed the street and came toward me. The runt stuck her head through the window on Chris’s side. Ophelia was stooping down, pinning Chris.

I said, “Both of you get in.”

They got into the back seat. In the rear-view mirror I saw them look at each other, then at the back of Chris’ head.

I said, “Phyllis, Ophelia, meet Christine. She’s gonna work the street with you. She’s tired of giving up fifty percent of her scratch.

“She wants Daddy to have all she makes. I pulled her outta the whorehouse. What the hell, the whole family should be together anyway.

“Phyllis, I’ve told Christine a hundred times how great you are in the street. She’s hip you know all the rollers and all the angles. I want you to take her under your wing out here for a week or so. I know there ain’t a bitch out here that could pull her coat like you can. Now get outta the car and starve these other joker’s whores to death.”

I watched them walk away chattering and laughing. It was like they were real sisters. I looked at my diamond-studded Longines. It was ten-after- twelve. How about it? I was twenty years old. I was living in a six-bill a month pad. I had three young fine mud kickers. I was a pimp at last.

I tilted down the rear-view mirror. I powdered my face. I sat there gazing at myself. Finally I pulled off. I was going to Sweet’s to report my progress. I didn’t get much of a chance to rap to him.

Two rollers from Sweet’s precinct were drinking and horsing around with two of Sweet’s yellow whores. Sweet told them I was his son.

It tickled them witless when Sweet told them what Satan and his Demon had done to me. They told me not to worry. They would remember me and would wire the other precinct rollers not to roust me.

The rollers finally got crocked. The whores took them around the Chinese screen into bedrooms.

Then I said, “Sweet, I copped a beautiful yellow bitch tonight. I got her humping on the track with my girls. Sweet, the bitch is crazy about me. I know I’ll hold her for years.”

He said, “Slim, a pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it. They’ll leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast. Stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love. Prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.

“Slim, I hope you ain’t sexed that pretty bitch yet. Believe me, Slim, a pimp is really a whore who’s reversed the game on whores. Slim, be as sweet as the scratch. Don’t be no sweeter. Always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.

“Whores in a stable are like working chumps in the white man’s factory. They know in their sucker tickers they’re chumping. They both gotta have horns to blow their beefs into. They gotta have someone to listen while they bad mouth that Goddamn boss.

“A good pimp is like a slick white boss. He don’t ever pair two of a kind for long. He don’t ever pair two new bitches. He ain’t stuck ’em for no long scratch. A pair of new bitches got too much in common. They’ll beef to each other and pool their skull, plots, and split to the wind together.

“The real glue that holds any bitch to a pimp is the long scratch she’s hip she’s stuck for. A good pimp could cut his swipe off and still pimp his ass off. Pimping ain’t no sex game. It’s a skull game.

“A pimp with a shaky-bottom woman is like a sucker with a lit firecracker stuck in his ass. When his boss bitch turns sour and blows, all the other

bitches in the stable flee to the wind behind her.

“There ain’t more than three or four good bottom women promised a pimp in his lifetime. I don’t care if he cops three hundred whores before he croaks.

“A good pimp has gotta have like a farm system for bottom women. He’s gotta know what bitch in the family could be the bottom bitch when mama bitch goes sour.

“He’s gotta keep his game tighter on his bottom bitch than on any bitch in the stable. He’s gotta peep around her ass while she’s taking a crap. He’s gotta know if it’s got the same stink and color it had yesterday.

“Slim, you’re in trouble until you cop the fourth whore. A stable is sets of teams playing against each other to stuff the pimp’s pockets with scratch. You got a odd bitch. You ain’t got but a team and a hall.

“A young pimp like you is gotta learn not to cop blind. Your fourth bitch is gotta be right to pair with the third whore.

“She can’t be no ugly bitch unless she likes pussy. She can’t be smarter than the pretty bitch. She can be younger, even prettier, but she’s gotta be dumber.

“Slim, all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills ’em when the pimp makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

“A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He’s gotta know his whores. He can’t let them know him. He’s gotta be God all the way.

“The poor sonuvabitch has joined a hate club he can’t quit. He can’t do a turn around and be a whore himself in the white boss’s stable unless he was never a pimp in the first place.

“So, Kid, rest and dress and pimp till you croak. I ain’t had no rest in a coupla days. I think I’ll try to get some doss. Kid, these skull aches are getting bad. Good luck, Kid. Call me tomorrow, late.

“Oh yeah, happy birthday, Kid. That rundown was a birthday present.”

My skull was reeling from his rundown on the way home. It was five A.M. when I got there. The runt and Ophelia were asleep. They were locked together like Siamese twins.

I picked up my scratch off the dresser. It was two and a quarter bills.

I went and looked in on Chris. She was in bed reading a book. She looked up and put the book across her belly. She reached under the pillow. She gave me a roll of bills.

I checked it. There was six bits. It wasn’t bad for a new bitch who got to

the track late. She held out her arms. She was naked. I had to cop her some sleep wear. To avoid her arms I lit a cigarette.

She said, “Daddy, did I do all right?”

I said, “Chris, you made a start. It’s like the first buck of that million you’re gonna make. I oughta frame it like a sucker who’s opened a new hot- dog stand. I want you to put that book down. Get some doss. I want you to take a fin to Leroy tomorrow. Hip him I’m your man now.

“The family is gonna Cabaret tonight. It’s my birthday today. I’ll get a rundown of your first night when I wake up. I’m gonna cop you a partner for the street real soon, baby. Good night, Chris.”

When I woke up, it was one P.M. I turned on my side. Two big brown eyes were looking at me. It was Ophelia. She started kissing my eyelids.

She said, “Daddy, you’re so pretty. You got eyelashes just like a bitch’s. Phyllis took Chris to visit that sucker in the shit-house. Daddy, can I kiss my candy?”

I said, “Christ in Heaven, ain’t I got a whore in this family without a hot jib. Go on bitch. Then get your kit and trim my toenails and paint ’em. We’re all going to get pretty for my birthday party tonight.”

She said, “How old are you, Daddy? I bet you’re nineteen.”

I said, “Bitch, I’m a hundred-and-nineteen. I just got a pretty baby face.”

Chris and the runt got back from Leroy around three P.M. Chris had a serious look on her face.

I said, “Well how did he take the news? Did he hang himself from the bars before your eyes?”

She said, “Daddy, he fell apart. He would have killed me if he could have reached me. He cried like his heart was broken. He said he was going to kill you wherever he saw you. I feel bad, Daddy. He really upset me. I’m going to lie down.

I thought, “That square chump is sure a whingding. I’m gonna put the hurt to him fast if I run into him.”

We partied at a swank white joint near the Gold Coast. We got home at four A.M. I was sober. The whores were stoned. I went and got into my bed. I dozed.

An hour later I woke up. The three whores were crowded into bed with me.

They were stroking and kissing me all over.

Mr. Thriller sure ached to be a circus performer. I was having trouble convincing Mr. Thriller he had to take only one at a time. He was a pimp not

a freak.

The ring-master put the show on and stayed cool. It was eight o’clock before I got to sleep.

It was a month before I copped the fourth whore. She was a cute tiny seventeen-year-old broad, about Chris’ color. The stable had brought her home from a coffee joint at closing time. They took their breaks there.

The little broad was a waitress in the joint. She was curious about the whore game. She was wild to wear flashy clothes. She thought I was rich when she dug the pad. The excitement in her eyes hipped me I could make a fast cop.

I took her into the living room. I cracked her into saying she’d be my woman and stop slaving for thirty a week.

Then I gave her the pitch to tie the knot. She was sitting in a chair. I stood looking down at her. Her eyes never left my face. It was maybe like a rattlesnake charming a robin.

I said, “Jo Ann, I gotta congratulate you. You’re not only lucky, you’re smart. You knew when you saw me that I was going to be your man, I’m hip that you were just waiting to meet me.

“You have wanted since you were a little girl to live an exciting, glamorous life. Well, Sugar, you’re on Blood’s magic carpet. I’m gonna make your life with me out-shine your flashiest day dreams.

“I’m a pimp. You gotta be a whore. I don’t have squares. I’m gonna be your mother, your father, your brother, your friend, and your lover. The most important thing I’m gonna be to you is your man. The manager of the scratch you make in the street. Now, sweet bitch, have you followed me so far?”

She whispered, “Yes, Blood, I understand.”

I reached down and took her hand. I took her to the window overlooking the city. I held her against me.

I said, “Look out there, baby angel. Out there is where you work. Those streets are yours because you’re my woman. I’ve got five G’s in fall money. If you get busted for anything, even murder, I can free you. Baby Bitch, this family is like a small army. We got rules and regulations we never break.

“I am really two studs. One of them is sweet and kind to his whores when they don’t break the rules. The other one comes out insane and dangerous when the rules are broken. Little baby, I’m sure you’ll never meet him.

“Never forget this family is as one against the cold, cruel world. We are strong because we love each other. There’s no problem I can’t solve. There’s

no question I can’t answer about this game.

“Tomorrow I’m going to start filling your skull with everything about this game and street. I’m going to make a star outta you angel. Don’t ask any outsider anything. Come to Chris or me.

“My little baby, I’ll protect you with my last drop of blood. If any mother- fucker in those streets out there, stud or bitch, hurts you, or threatens you, come to me. He will have to cut my throat first, shoot me first. I take an oath to protect you for as long as you are my woman. Baby, I know that’s for always. Now repeat after Daddy, baby.”

She squeezed tightly against me. She was in a trance looking up at me.

She chanted along with me. “From this moment I belong to Blood. I am his whore. I will do everything he tells me. I won’t ever fuck with his scratch. I will hump my heart out every night. I’ve gotta make a bill a night.”

She slept with Chris that night. After the first week I knew she was the perfect partner for Chris.

Sweet was right. Chris and Jo Ann ran Phyllis and Ophelia into a panting lather in the street. I started wanting that fifth whore.

Leroy got a year for the beating he gave Papa Tony.

About six months later Top and I were at the Roost bar. A loudmouth joker beside me was arguing with a stud on his other side. I had my back to him, facing Top.

Top and I had been shooting stuff for several hours in his pad. I was so frosted with cocaine I felt embalmed. It was maybe like I was at the Roost and I really wasn’t. I had raised my glass of Coke to my jib. I was being fascinated by the tiny bubbles popping inside the glass.

I was trying to count them before they all popped away.

I heard an explosion behind me. My skull was numb. It was maybe like the noise behind me happened a year ago on an ice floe in the Arctic somewhere.

I saw a light gray lid that stirred a faint memory. It wobbled across the log and stopped in front of where Top had been.

I thought, “That’s a Knox forty. I had one once that color.”

That crazy joker Top was on the floor between the log and his stool. His eyes were wide in fear. He was looking up at me like he thought I had gone bats and was going to croak him. I laughed at him.

I heard running feet behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The joker who had been arguing with Loud Mouth was running through the door with a rod in his hand.

I looked behind me. Loud Mouth was on his back, out cold. He had a long, red gouge across his temple. Some of the frost melted away in my skull.

The bullet that grazed Loud Mouth had torn my lid off. The joint was still. Top was standing and dusting himself off. The joint had emptied. I reached over and picked my lid off the bar.

I took a casual look at the entrance, exit holes in the top of the crown. I stuck it on my head. Top was staring at me. I tilted my glass and drained it. I turned to Top. Loud Mouth was groaning and coming to on the floor.

I said, “Jack, let’s get outta here before the rollers come. I ain’t got time for a quiz. You know Top, if my skull had been pointed, I’da had a bad break.”

Top followed me out the door. We got into his Hog in front of the Roost.

Top was still staring at me. His jib was gaping.

He said, “Kid, I saw it but I don’t believe it. I’ve seen some cool studs in my time, but I ain’t never seen nothing to equal that.

“Kid, you were cold in there, icy; icy, like an iceberg. Kid, I got it. You’re getting to be a good young pimp. All good pimps got monikers. I’m gonna hang one on you.

“Kid you’ve outgrown ‘Young Blood’ as a moniker. How about ‘Iceberg Slim’? Kid, it’s a beautiful fit. ‘Iceberg Slim,’ how about it, and I thought it up. Cocaine sure chills you. I guess you picked the right high for you.”

14

THE MISTAKE

By the end of the year I had copped a new thirty-nine Hog. I had blown Jo Ann ninety days after I got her. She was too possessive and she didn’t really have the guts for a long stretch in the street.

I didn’t cry when she left. While I had her, Chris kept her humping. I was thousands ahead of her when she slipped away from Chris in the street.

A week later I copped a young whore that was a whiz in the street and was hip to boosting. She went ape over Chris. She’d go downtown and come home with shopping bags loaded with fine dresses and underclothes for herself and her sisters.

Later she hipped Chris to boosting. I let them go down together with a stud who drove for them. They filled my closet with beautiful vines.

Top got five years on a narcotics rap. The federal heat tricked him into a four-piece sale to an undercover agent. I sure missed him. I hung out at Sweet’s more than ever.

My name was ringing. The moniker Top hung on me stuck. Everybody was calling me Iceberg, even Sweet. Only I and the several peddlers I copped from knew that my icy front was really backed by the freezing cocaine I snorted and banged every day.

I pimped strictly by the book for the next three years. I traded in a Hog each year. I never had less than five girls in the family.

I moved out of Top’s building and let the family stay there. I took a suite in a swank midtown hotel. I had the privacy, the jewelry, and all the flash and glamour of a successful pimp.

I had managed to solve the fast track. I was fast becoming one of its legends.

Top had gotten out. He was in Seattle with relatives serving out his short

parole paper. Only one of his women stuck with him. The rest got in the wind when he fell.

The runt was still bottom woman. Ophelia was still hung up on her. Chris was proving every day she had the qualities for a bottom woman.

I noticed the runt was acting like she might be wearing thin fast. The other two whores I had had been stable mates. I copped them when their pimp shot an overdose of H.

I was at Sweet’s when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I had stayed all night. I was still in bed.

The friendly brown snake had brought my breakfast. I was just finishing when Sweet walked into the bedroom. He sat down on the side of the bed.

He said, “’Berg, Uncle Sam just got his throat cut. The Slant Eyes just put the torch to Pearl Harbor. Whores gonna make more scratch now than ever before. ’Berg I got a feeling this Second World War is gonna hurt the pimp game in the long run.”

I said, “Sweet, how do you figure that?”

He said, “You know a whore ain’t nothing but a ex-square. A good pimp wears out a lot of whores in his lifetime. If there ain’t no big pool of squares for the pimps to turn out, then stables gotta get smaller.

“The defense plants are gonna claim thousands of young potential whores. Those square bitches are gonna get those pay checks. They’ll get shitty independent. A pimp can’t turn them out.

“The older square broads are going into the plants too. Thousands of them got teenage daughters. They’ll have the scratch to fill the bellies of those young bitches. They’ll put nice clothes on their backs. Why the hell should they whore for a pimp. They can pimp on Mama.

“The worse thing is, those plants are inviting whores with strict pimps to split and square up. If the war lasts a long time, pimps will have to turn pussy to hold a whore.

“’Berg, ain’t but one real Heaven for a pimp. He’s in it when there’s a big pool of raggedy, hungry young bitches.”

The war was raging. The defense plants were grinding out war goods around the clock. Thousands of young and old broads were slaving in them.

As far as I was concerned, the pool was still full of fine fish. I had three original girls and three new cops.

It was December, nineteen-forty-four. Sweet was still pimping good for an old man. He was down to seven women, but this was great pimping for a stud

his age. Top had settled out West.

I had held Chris, Ophelia, and the runt a long time. Since thirty-eight I had copped and blown sixty to seventy whores and turnouts.

The turn-over in turnouts was big. Some of them would hump for a month and split. Some a week. Others a couple hours before they cut out. Sweet had been so right years ago. The pimp game was sure “cop and blow.”

I spent Christmas day with Mama. She was really happy to see me. She hadn’t seen me since thirty-eight. She cried as always when I left her.

The runt was getting tired and evil. Several of those turnouts she had run away from me. All new turn-outs I was giving to Chris to polish in the street.

I started sending the runt to small towns near army camps. Some of them were out of state. Sometimes Ophelia went with her. A week before I met Carmen, the runt and Ophelia had come back from a weekend in Wisconsin.

The runt and the other five girls were with me when I copped the seventh girl.

She was almost a perfect copy of the runt at eighteen. She had a prettier face than the runt had at eighteen. Her features were more regular. Time and street had bulldogged the once cute Peke face of the runt.

We were at a cabaret. Carmen was behind a twenty-six game table in the barroom. I left my table and went to the John. I passed Carmen on the way. She gave me a strong lick.

On the way back I stopped and tossed a quarter on her table and rolled the dice trying for a score of twenty-six. I hit twenty-six, so I bought us a drink with the score. I stood beside the table and quizzed her. She was from Peoria. She’d been in town a week.

We had old Party Time in common. She had met him up in Peoria where he was still living. He had a whore in a house up there. She had worked in the same house. She had run off from her pimp and she was wide open for a fast cop.

We rapped for fifteen or twenty minutes. I could tell she went for me. She looked at the clock. It was almost closing time. I invited her to have breakfast at the family’s pad.

We’d had breakfast. I was leaving with Carmen. I was going to my place to put her under contract. The runt followed me outside to the hallway. She called me.

I gave Carmen the key to the Hog. She went toward the elevator. I didn’t move toward the runt. I said, “Bitch, you wanna rap to me, come to me.” She

had a tight evil look on her face. She walked slowly up to me. Top was right. These bottom broads, when they started to rot, really funked up a stud’s skull.

She said, “You ain’t thinking about bringing that bullshit bitch into this family are you? That phony bitch ain’t shit.”

I said, “What the hell. You mean you’re gonna turn down a chance to Larceny a new bitch away. You stinking bitch, nobody tells me what bitch to have. You got the nerve to crack some bitch is phony. I had to almost croak you to make you real.”

I noticed two of the latest cops were in the open door. They were eyeballing down the hall at our show.

She shouted, “Nigger, you were a raggity nowhere scarecrow until you got me. You didn’t have no wheels. You muscled me for mine. Nigger, I’m the bitch that made you great. Without me, right now you’d go to the bottom fast as shit through a greasy funnel.”

I made a bad mistake. I shoulda maybe used Top’s jellied skull technique to get rid of her. Instead I left-hooked her hard as I could against the jaw. There was a pop like a firecracker going off. She fell to the carpet in a quiet heap. I kicked her big rear end a dozen times. I walked to the elevator. I looked down the hall. I saw Ophelia and Chris dragging her toward the apartment.

The runt got her broken jaw wired up. She split with Ophelia. Chris said she tried to take two of the newer girls with her too. I had made a pimp’s classic blunder. I had blown a tired bottom bitch in the rough.

Carmen was an easy cop. A pimp wants everybody who can hump his pockets fat. He’s in real clover when he cops a fine young whore who wants him. Carmen really wanted me. She was starting with Chris.

Six months later Sweet called me early in the morning. His voice was laced with excitement. I jerked erect in bed.

He said, “’Berg, I got a wire the F.B.I is nosing around some of the broad lock-ups. They’re quizzing whores. Your name has been cracked more than once. It looks like they already got a solid beef to go on. It’s my guess they’re trying to build a five or six count rap against you.”

I said, “Sweet, I bet it’s that stinking runt. Christ! Sweet, I’ve sent her and Ophelia across state lines a dozen times since the war started. They’re trying to ram a white-slave rap into me, Sweet. What would you do?”

He said, “I would give one of those nice sweet jokers on the West Side expense scratch and a ball-peen hammer. I’d tell him as soon as I read they

was found in an alley with their skulls caved in he could get a cinch two grand.

“It would be easy to trap ’em. They’re whores. He’d be just another freakish trick wanting to party with two whores.

“Tell you what, ’Berg get them whores outta that crib over there fast. Move outta your pad today. Go groundhog. Switch your whores to new stomping grounds. Stay outta the street after you move. Call me when you get outta there.”

He hung up. I thought, “I’m a sucker. I shoulda destroyed the runt Top’s way.”

I had moved the stable and myself to new pads by seven that night. Chris, my new bottom woman, was the only one in the family who knew the reason for the move.

I took the Hog and put it in a garage I rented from an old widower. The garage was behind his house in a respectable neighborhood.

I got a cab to one of my stuff connections. I was going underground. I had to have at least a piece of stuff. I had copped and was walking down the street looking for a cab.

I passed a barber shop. I got a glimpse of the white-spatted dogs of a joker in the barber’s chair, next to the window.

I thought, “Geez, that square joker is pitiful. He ain’t hip spats went out with high-button shoes.”

I was walking fast. I had the sizzle on me. I needed a cab in the worse way. I was almost a half block from the barber shop. I thought I heard some joker yelling, “Run! Run!”

I looked back over my shoulder. A tall skinny stud in a barber’s apron was on the sidewalk. His white spats flashed on his feet. He was screaming and flailing his arms like a minstrel clown singing “Mammy.”

He was loping down the sidewalk. The out-of-fashion bastard was yelping,” Son! Son!” He galloped by the neon lights toward me. His wrinkled brown-skin face changed colors like a chameleon.

He ran into me and clutched me like I was a winning sweepstakes ticket. He was panting and sweating like a whore on soldier’s payday. I could smell witch hazel and the stink of emotion sweat. I saw white specks of barber’s talc on the bald crown of his head. I couldn’t see his face. He had it buried in my chest.

He was blubbering, “Oh son, precious son. Sweet Jesus answered an old

man’s prayer. He’s let me see and hold my one and only son before I got to my heavenly rest.”

I had the damnedest thought while he made love to me. I wondered if my skull had chipped any paint off that wall he threw me against when I was six- months old.

I stiff-armed him away. I stared coldly into his face. I saw a weak blaze of anger light his dull brown eyes.

He said, “God don’t like ugly, son. You saw your father back there. You ignored me, didn’t you?”

I said, “Shit no I didn’t see you. I thought you had croaked. Look Jack, I’m happy to see you, but I’m in an awful hurry. See you around.”

He said, “I did my part to bring you into this world. You ain’t gonna treat me like a dog. Where do you live? You look prosperous. What’s your line? Are you with some big company? Are you married to some nice girl? Do I have any grandchildren, son?”

I said, “You haven’t heard about Iceberg Slim? He’s famous.” He said, “You don’t associate with black filth like that I hope.”

I said, “Look Jack, I am Iceberg. Ain’t you proud of me? I’m the greatest Nigger that ever came outta our family. I got five whores humping sparks outta their asses.”

I thought he was going to have a heart attack. The apron was quivering over his ticker. He was supporting himself against a lamp post. His face was gray in shock under the streetlight. I jerked my shirt and coat sleeves up past spike hollow. I stuck the needle-scarred arm under his nose. He drew back from it.

I said, “Goddamnit Jack, what’s the matter? Shit, I shoot more scratch into that arm a day than you make in a week. I’ve come a long way since you bounced my skull off that wall. Stick your chest out in pride, Jack. I been in two prisons already. Shit, Jack, I’m on my way to the third any day now. You ain’t hip I’m important? Maybe one of these days I’ll really make you a proud father. I’ll croak a whore and make the Chair.”

I walked away from him. I caught a cab at the corner. The cabbie u-turned. I looked at my old man. He was sitting on the curb beside the lamp post. His white spats gleamed starkly in the gutter. He had his head on his knees. I saw his back jerking up and down. The poor joker was bawling his ass off.

I got home. I called Sweet. I banged a load of cocaine. It was the best I’d copped since Glass Top went to the joint.

15

IN A SEWER

After I had called Sweet and banged the cocaine, I had chilling thoughts. “I’ve got five whores just like poor Preston had when Sweet crossed and

destroyed him. I wonder if Sweet will dream up a cross to steal my whores from me? He knows where I’m padding. It would be as easy as lifting a telephone receiver. Sweet swears he loves me like I’m his son.

“These seven years on this fast track have hipped me to one solid truth. To a pimp there’s nothing more important than copping whores. While I’m holed up, I’ll keep my stable headaches a secret, I won’t give him a cue to volunteer his help. It would be a bitch to have him handling my stable. I’m sure glad Chris is a boss bottom bitch.

“Oh! This pressure is really screwing my skull around. Sweet wouldn’t cross me. I gotta stop mistrusting the only friend I got. I mean more to Sweet as his friend than any whore.

“Maybe I should make a run for it and set up shop in some other city. Christ! Why do I have to be red hot with federal heat? Why couldn’t it be city or state heat? On this fast track I’ve only been busted and mugged once. A dozen other times I paid off on the street.

“That F.B.I. is a sonuvabitching genius. No, I’d better keep my hot ass in town right here in this cruddy pig sty.

“The runt’s a whore. Maybe her new pimp or a trick will croak her. Then I could walk into the F.B.I. office and stick my black ass out to be kissed. They’d have no case without the runt as a witness.”

“The runt took Ophelia on all those out-of-state trips. I gave the runt instructions and expense money. I ain’t never told Ophelia to cross a state line. The runt was screwing Ophelia. That was really the runt’s bitch.”

“It’s a good thing I holed up in this rat’s nest. The F.B.I. would never look

for a good pimp in a sewer.”

It was December, nineteen-forty-five. The war was over. The world was licking its bloody wounds. Drugs and the pimp game had hardened away my baby face. My hair was thinning. I was turning twenty-eight but I looked forty.

For seven years I had devoted myself to getting hip to that pimp’s book. I had labored with the zeal of a Catholic Brother agonizing for the Priesthood. I had thought and acted like a black God.

I was now trapped in my dingy one-room kitchenette. It was in a very old two-story building. I was on the first floor in the rear in number ten. Down the hall at night, rats would come scampering and squealing from the alley. They came under the back door which hung crookedly on its hinges.

I had a vague disturbing doubt in my skull. Was it possible I wasn’t even a poor imitation of a God? Maybe I was just a sucker black pimp on his way to a third bit in the joint.

Chris was the only one of the stable that visited me. We’d bang cocaine together. I wouldn’t let her know how worried I was. God couldn’t have skull aches.

I couldn’t let the others see me in a crummy setting. After all, how could a God live like a square chump? Chris knew all the reasons why. To her God’s farts still had the fragrant odor of roses. I worked out with Chris a smooth system. Even the best pimp has to keep some personal contact with his whores.

The system was simple and for a while effective. Chris and I would go out into the hall to the phone on the wall. She could call the stable at their pad. It would always be three or four o’clock in the morning.

One of the girls would pick up. Chris would pretend to be a long-distance operator. It was rare luck that Chris had a talent for mimicry. They didn’t get hip to it. It would always be a person-toperson call from me to one of them. Chris and I conned them the calls came from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.

I would get on the line and talk to all four of them. There were extensions in all four bedrooms. I could con and tighten my game on all of them at the same time.

The first call we made was supposed to be from New York. It took maybe a minute for me to have all their horns to receivers.

I said, “Well girls, I know you’ve missed Daddy. You’ve all probably

wondered, when in the hell is Daddy coming back to town? Jesus Christ! Has he forgotten a whore needs to see her man some time? Sure we’re in his corner. We prove that when we hump our asses off in the street. We check our scratch into Chris to send to him.

“Goddamnit, what could be so important that he neglects his whores? Well girls, I’m gonna show the kinda confidence Daddy’s got in you. I’m gonna hip you to a million-dollar secret. I know all of you will keep your jibs buttoned.”

Chris cut in crisply and said, “Three minutes are up, Sir. Please signal when through.”

I continued, “You are the luckiest whores alive. Your man’s got a genius white engraver for his pal. He used to be an engraver for the government. We’ve got some plates he’s just finished. We’ve turned out three-hundred of the prettiest hundred-slat bills the human eye has ever seen. They’re perfect. Even the government couldn’t get hip to a difference from real scratch. There ain’t any.

“We got one problem we’re gonna solve if it takes a year. We’ve run outta the special paper the government prints its scratch on. My white genius pal even knows how to make the paper. We are playing it cool and traveling and copping inks and other stuff we need. It’s tough to cop some of it, but for millions who’s going to give up? As soon as we get the paper made up we’re gonna run off a couplamillion or so slats.

“I’m gonna breeze back into town the only millionaire pimp in the world. I’m gonna buy a beach and a mansion in Hawaii for my stable. If we run outta scratch, we’ll just run off another bale.

“So stay cool and keep humping. Oh yeah, Chris got a cab to the airport an hour ago. She should be getting home in a coupla hours or so. She’s bringing each of you a piece of that beautiful lettuce. Spend it on anything you want. Take it anywhere, even a bank. Believe me, it’s perfect.”

I hung up. I had electrified them with the story. I could hear the excited thrill in their voices when they chorused goodbye. I told Chris to crack the genius had a way to make all the serial numbers on the bills different. I already knew what my story would be whenever I got the heat off me.

I could stall them a lifetime. I could say the genius got busted on another beef. I had to wait until he got out. He wouldn’t tell me where the plates were hidden. He could even croak while doing his bit.

Chris called the next day. The whores were walking on air. They rapped all

night about that perfect “queer.” I was sure I had found the way to hold my stable. I felt like a genius myself.

Each time I talked to the stable after that, the genius and I had just copped another vital item we needed. It wouldn’t be long now I assured them. Sweet had dropped the word in the street that I was on the West Coast taking off long scratch from a rich square broad.

It was getting almost impossible to sleep. I would almost jump from my skin when a tenant would knock. I would think it was the heat. The tenant would be calling me to the phone in the hall. When I did fall off into fitful sleep I’d have nightmares. Those dreams about Mama would hog-tie me on a sweaty rack of misery. I had an awful fear of another jolt in the joint. The guilty daydreams on the heels of the nightmares were torturing my skull.

I stopped banging cocaine. It only magnified my terror and worry. I remembered how serene Top used to look after a bang of H. He’d sit and coast like he was in a beautiful peaceful dream. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe sable H came after mink cocaine.

Chris came on Christmas Eve. She stayed until Christmas Day afternoon. She brought me pajamas, cologne and robes from herself and the girls. She had given them scratch from me.

My one-room kitchenette hideout was crammed wall to wall with trunks and suitcases. I had all those fine threads and no place to go. I was a lonely pimp bastard!

Sweet came to see me at midnight in January, the tenth I think. He took off his velvet-collared Melton benny. He hung it in the tiny closet. It had been ten-below-zero or colder for a week.

It was a brand new year, nineteen-forty-six. The new Hogs were out for the first time in several years. The garage rent was paid for a year for my old Hog. Chris had gone out several times to run its engine for awhile.

I thought “Christ it would be a kick to trade off and flash through the fresh air in a new Hog.”

It was the first time Sweet had visited me. He was getting white around his temples. There was less fiery voltage in his gray eyes. That H and the fast track had him looking terrible. He was getting old all right. He sat down on a suitcase at the head of the bed. I was lying down. Miss Peaches was an old lady, but still gorgeous in her mink coat and fur bootees. He slipped off her coat and shoes. He put them on the dresser. She sat on the floor looking up at me.

He said, “’Berg got bad news for you. The street wire says city rollers are carrying a mug shot of you around. You’re really hot now. I gotta wire that pimping Poison is nosing around your girls in the street. If you ain’t got Chris tight, he’ll steal her. She’s gonna hip him where you’re hiding.

“Maybe you oughta get outta this joint tonight. Take another hide out. Don’t let Chris or any whore you got know where you are. I’m your bosom buddy, sweetheart, and I love you. I’ll keep the stable in line for you.

“In the meantime I could figure an angle to get your balls outta the hot sand. All you gotta do is call your girls. Tell ’em you want Uncle Sweet to look out for ’em for a coupla weeks. It’s easy, Pal.”

I just lay there for a long moment feeling myself tremble. If he had been lovable Henry, my stepfather, saying he hated me, I couldn’t have felt worse. True, I had conquered the fast track, but that sucker inside me I couldn’t kill was hurting the hell out of me. I looked at him. Somehow I kept my voice steady and the pain outta my eyes.

I said, “Jeez Sweet, I’d have a bitch of a time trying to cop another friend like you. I feel like bawling just to think about it. I ran down my life story to you. You know I love you like I loved Henry. Maybe I love you, Sweet, more than I love Mama.

“Don’t think I’m a chump square when I say it. Sweet, you taught me to be cold-hearted. You’re the only person on Earth who could hurt me. The jokers in the street call me Iceberg.

“They’d laugh their asses off if they knew I was weak for a stud I love like a father. Sweet please don’t hip them I got a sucker weakness. Don’t ever do anything to croak my love for you. Sweet, if you ever do, they’ll all get hip.

“I’ll maybe fall apart and run through the streets wailing like a crazy bitch. Sweet, I’ll wait and think for a day or so. Poison can’t steal Chris. I’ll kick things around in my skull. Maybe you should be looking out for the stable.

The whole time I was talking, he had run his index fingers along the sword edges of his pant’s creases. His gray eyes had found the suitcases and cluttered room fascinating works of art. He swallowed air and tented his bejeweled fingers under his first chin.

He said, “’Berg, this joint is wrecking your skull. Sweet would chop his right arm off before he’d cross you. You’re the only friend I got, sweetheart. Shit, Honey, you could have a hundred whores and I could be whoreless. I’d ask you to give me a bitch. I wouldn’t try to steal no whore from you, Darling. You need anything? I gotta split. I got two whores I gotta pick up

downtown.”

I said, “No Sweet, I don’t need anything. I’ll rap to you tomorrow. If you hear anything, wire me fast. I’m sure glad you dropped by.”

I heard his heavy feet pounding down the linoleum in the hall. They stopped. I heard them getting louder. He was coming back. I looked around the suitcase where he had been sitting. I didn’t see anything he had left. He thumped the door. I opened it. He had Miss Peaches in his arms. He was flashing the first gold-toothed grin I’d ever seen on his face.

He said, “’Berg I forgot to tell you. They found old Pretty Preston frozen stiff in the alley back of the Roost. The poor bastard had wrapped himself in newspapers. The Greek fired him a week ago for staying near the fire and not pulling marks on the sidewalk. The drunk half-white bastard thought the newspapers could stand off ten-below-zero.”

He turned and walked down the hall. I shut the door and fell across the bed. At three Chris called. I told her to stay away until my next phony long- distance call to the girls. I told her Poison might try to tail her, and maybe the F.B.I.

She told me they didn’t have a chance. She went in front doors of a half- dozen buildings then out the back doors before she came to me. When she got to my place she’d come in the back door and walk through the front door. She’d go through the alley then through the back door again before she came to my door.

Maybe they couldn’t keep a tail on her. I told her to stay away to play safe. I told her not to call from the pad. It would be a bitch if one of the girls picked up an extension.

Sweet called the next morning at one A.M. The broad next door answered the phone. She knocked on my door. I slipped on an overcoat and walked into the hall. It felt like zero out there.

He said, “’Berg, I just got the wire. Poison stole your young bitch, Fay. I hope she ain’t hip to anything that can cross you. ‘Berg,’ you gotta make some moves. I’ll keep my horns to the wire.”

He hung up. I was in trouble. I went and got back in bed.

I thought, “Poison’s gonna quiz that stinking bitch. She’s gonna spill that ‘queer scratch’ con I’ve been playing. To tighten his game on her he’s gonna wake her to the con. He’s gonna tell her I’m hiding out in the city.

“It’s a good thing Chris is in on the con. I could blow whoreless in an hour if she wasn’t. I need her to take the rest of the stable underground. Maybe I

shoulda split outta town when I first got hot. I gotta move the rest of the stable fast.

“Poison is a cinch to pull their coats to the con I played. It’s the ace to play for a fast cop of maybe the other three. They’ll be salty as hell with me if he gets a chance to wake ’em up. Hurry Chris and call!”

At three Chris called. I ran to the phone in my pajamas. I almost froze to death talking to her.

She said, “Daddy, I had to call you from home. Poison just left with Fay and her clothes. The black bastard has wised up the whole family to that game we played. Dot, Rose, and Penny are larcenied to the gills. They’re crying and packing their clothes. I can’t hold them. They hate me. Poison came into my bedroom before he split. He acted and rapped like I was already his whore. If I’d had a pistol I’d have croaked the strong bastard.

“He said, ‘Well Miss Bitch, your Nigger is finished. You’re the only whore he’s got left. I know a fast pretty bitch like you don’t want no pimp you gotta solo for. With my Fay cop, I got eight whores. I’m on the inside of this game. None of my whores take falls. I’m top pimp in town.

“‘You’re the best whore in town. There ain’t nobody but me you can take for your man. Bitch, come to me and you can be queen boss bitch of the eight-whore stable. Get your domes and get outta here with me and Fay. Iceberg is going to the federal joint.’”

She said, “Daddy, what happens now? Maybe Poison will come back and gorilla me. I’m so upset, I know any minute I’ll scream myself into a padded cell.”

The zero drafts blasting through the gap under the back door kept me from passing out. I felt cold sweat dripping down my shaking legs. My throat was having dry convulsions. My voice sounded like it came from an echo chamber.

I stammered, “Chris, don’t lose your cool. This is Iceberg remember? Like always I’ll put an angle together. Now listen carefully. Pack your things. Go down and get the building flunky. Pay him to take you to a hotel near the garage where the Hog is stashed.

“Check in and leave your things. Go to the Hog. Drive back and pick up your stuff. Go downtown and check into a hotel. Drive the Hog back and stash it back in the garage. Take an El train back to your hotel. Call me then.” I went back and washed my face in cold water. I looked in the mirror. I looked like I had on a Halloween fright mask. I sure didn’t look a bit like a

fresh-faced kid any more. The whites of my oncebright eyes were blood-shot and faded. The deep black circles looked like some tricky practical joker had conned me to ram inked spyglasses against the sockets.

I started looking for a yellow. I had to put a damper on my nerves. I had a little cocaine. I didn’t need racing. I needed some skull pacifying. I was out of yellows.

Somewhere in one of the suitcases I had a notebook. The phone number of a connection no farther than fifteen blocks away was in it. Maybe he had yellows. If not, what the hell, I’d cop a cap of H. One cap couldn’t hook me. Horse was a cinch to kick the jitters outta my skull.

It would be two hours at least before Chris would call back. I found his number. I called him. I told him, in code, I’d pick up six caps within the hour. I had a fat roll of scratch in a sock pinned inside the sleeve of a trench coat.

I started to take it with me. I stuck it in my benny pocket. It bulged like a grapefruit. I’d be back before long. I pinned it back inside the sleeve.

I had close to sixty-eight hundred slats stashed there. I fished out three saw bucks. I slipped pants and a shirt over my pajamas. I put on shoes and a heavy benny.

I was in a helluva hurry. I pulled the door shut. I heard the spring-latch lock. Less than five minutes after I had talked to the peddler, I was on the way. It was four A.M. when I left. The wintry winds almost snatched my lid off my skull. It felt good though. It was the first time I’d walked in the fresh air for months.

A bleak overcast blotting out the sky. Slipping and sliding on the icy sidewalks, I finally got to the connection. He lived on the second floor over an all-night chili joint. The joint was crowded. There was no one on the sidewalk. I went up the rickety stairs and copped five caps of H. He put the caps into the cellophane shell from a cigarette pack. He twisted the end and balled the package.

I took it and went down the stairs to the street. I had the sizzle in my hand. I started to walk by the chili spot on my way home. Two neatly dressed brown skin studs were standing on the sidewalk in front of the joint. Its bright lights floodlighted the sidewalk. It was like walking a show-up stage at a police station.

From the side vent in my eye I saw them pinning me. They stiffened. One of them reached toward his chest. I looked back. He was showing his buddy a small square of paper. I started walking fast away from them.

I remembered the sizzle. I downed it and walked faster. I knew they couldn’t see in the darkness that I had dropped it. I glanced over my shoulder. I saw a rod in the hand of the taller one as they ran toward me. I ran.

They were bellowing, “Halt! Police! Halt! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

I had reached the corner and was halfway around it. I saw a fourman squad of white detectives. They were cruising toward me in a police car. They threw a blinding spotlight on me. I froze. They all looked at me. I saw a shotgun muzzle ease out of a fast-lowering rear side window.

The two rollers chasing me skidded around the corner. In a way I was glad to see them. Those rollers in the cruiser probably hadn’t croaked anybody in a week. I really didn’t want them to break their luck on me.

The two held onto me like I was Sutton. The white rollers shut off the spotlight and moved slowly down the street past us. The shorter one had handcuffed my hands behind me. He showed his buddy the picture. They looked up at me.

The taller one said, “Yeah, it’s the bastard all right. Look at the eyes.”

They searched me head to toe. They saw the lone saw buck I had. They hustled me back around the corner. We passed a skinny black joker standing on the corner. He nodded at me. I recognized him. He was in my building. I had sent him for groceries and change for the phone a dozen times.

I got a fast glimpse of the picture as the roller slipped it back inside his coat pocket. It was me. I remembered the pearl-gray sharkskin suit and black shirt. Top and I had been together four years ago. The two white rollers who had hit on us hated Top because he had white whores. They wouldn’t take a pay off. They booked us on suspicion of homicide and mugged us. Top and I were out in less than two hours. It was the one and only time I had been taken in on the fast track.

They put me into the rear seat of an unmarked Chevy. They were in the front seat as the tall one drove away.

I said, “Gentlemen, it’s not gonna put any scratch in your mitts to take me in. Let me give you the price of a couple fine vines to cut me loose.”

Slim said, “Shit, you couldn’t cop one bullshit vine in a hock shop with the scratch you’re carrying.”

I said, “I got more scratch at my pad. Knowing I’m Iceberg you can believe that, can’t you? Just run me by there, I’ll get it, lay a coupla C’s apiece on you and fade away. How about it?”

Slim and Shorty looked at each other.

Shorty said, “You think we’re suckers? You got a federal warrant for white slavery outstanding. We didn’t hear a word you said about that chicken shit four C’s.”

I said, “All right, so we’re all like black brothers. The bad difference is the

F.B.I. wants to lynch your brother in court. You gonna throw me to the white folks for hanging? I’ll give you two grand apiece to beat the F.B.I. outta their pound of black meat.”

Slim said, “Where’s your pad?”

I thought fast. It had been a mistake to crack about my pad. If I told them they could take my whole stash and still bust me or croak me. I was a fugitive. They might even come back to the stash after they took me in. I had the key to the kitchenette in my pocket. I tested them.

I said, “You know Sweet Jones. He’s a friend of mine. I can get four G’s from him five minutes after we get to his place. I can’t take you to my pad. I got a close friend there. Suppose after we got there you’d change your minds about the deal. You’d have to book him for harboring me.”

Slim said, “We can’t cut you loose. We couldn’t do it if you gave us forty G’s. I just remembered you were in that spotlight back there. One of those downtown men could have made you. Sorry brother, but what the hell? Federal joints ain’t bad to pull a bit in. Thanks for popping up like you did. You make a great pinch for us.”

16

AWAY FROM THE TRACK

They locked me up in central jail. At dawn a jail trusty brought a basket of bologna sandwiches down the line of cells. A moment later another trusty brought a gigantic kettle of black stinking chicory. I passed up the delicacies.

The tiny cell was too small for two men. Eight of us were in it. I was lying on the concrete floor. I was using my rolled up benny as a pillow. My lid shielded my eyes from the bright bare bulb in the corridor.

My cellmates were bums and junkies. Two of them were getting sick. They were puking all over. The bums were stinking almost as bad as the junkies. A drunk lying beside me dug his fingernails into his scalp and crotch over and over. He scratched his back against the floor. He had to be lousy. It was rough going for a pimp all right.

I thought, “If someone had told me a year ago I’d be back in a shit-house I’d have thought he was nuts. Christ! I hope nothing happens to Chris. She’s the only link to the outside I can trust to get my clothes and scratch.

“I know after she calls and can’t get me at the pad she’ll check out all the shit-houses. It’s a good thing I’m not in the federal lockup at county jail. Here she can grease a mitt and see me. I hope she makes it before the U. S. Marshal shows to move me.”

At nine the turnkey came and called out my name. I went to the cell door. He looked hard at me through the bar. He twisted the cell-lock open. I stepped out into the corridor and followed him.

He took me to a break-proof glass window with a speaking hole in it. I saw Chris on the other side of it. She was crying. I couldn’t blame her. I felt like crying with her. I bent down and put my mouth to the hole. She stuck an ear against it on her side.

I said, “Baby, there’s nothing to cry about. You’re Daddy’s brave bitch,

remember? Now listen. I want you to give the copper at the property desk a double saw or so for the key to my pad.

“I want you to get my scratch outta the sleeve of my green trench coat. Rent a safe-deposit box. Then move my stuff to your hotel. The Fed’s are gonna take me back to Wisconsin. They call it the point of origin for the runt’s beef.

“They’ll set a bond for me there. I’ll get a slick lip in Wisconsin, Baby you keep checking. Get to Wisconsin a day before I do with the scratch. I’ll need it for the lip and bail, understand Sugar? Once I get bail, I’ll get our stable back and beat this rap.”

I took my jib from the hole and put my horn there.

She said, “Daddy, I’ll do everything the way you say. I understand. Daddy, I’ll go and get the key to your latest hideout. Where did you move? I thought you were going to wait for my call?”

It didn’t register. Maybe I was cracking up under all the strain and grief. Maybe I had moved before I got busted. I raised my head and looked at her. Her eyes were questioning. I pointed my index finger at the hole. I decided to risk my theory that I hadn’t moved.

I said, “Chris, goddamnit! I haven’t moved! All my stuff is still on West Ave. Now come on, girl, this is not the time for jokes from Daddy’s witty bitch. You knocked on the door, I wasn’t there. Naturally, I couldn’t be, I was down here.”

She said, “Daddy, I didn’t have to knock. The door was wide open. Both trunks and all the suitcases were gone. In fact the only thing left was your hair brush. I put it in my purse. Daddy, all this is too much for me. I must be losing my mind.”

I stood there glaring hate at her. Her eyes were wide, staring at me.

I thought, “Poison or Sweet has stolen this Judas-bitch from me. I’m in a cross. One of them has rehearsed this bitch. She’s a sonuvabitching actress. A sucker looking at that innocent look she’s got would have to buy the con. I hate this bitch worse than I do the runt. If I could just get my hands around her throat. I’d love to see her tongue turned black, flopping across her chin.

“Well, I can’t croak her through that glass wall. No matter what, I’ve gotta stay Iceberg, I can’t let her take back a chump emotional scene to report. She and her new man are not gonna get their kicks at my expense.”

I turned and walked away from her. I saw the turnkey at the far end of the corridor with his back to me. Good thing for me he hadn’t been close enough

to lock me back in the cell right away. I was twenty feet from her when it exploded in my skull.

I thought, “It’s the skinny flunky! It’s the skinny flunky! It’s the bastard that saw me get busted! He rushed back and sprang that spring latch. I gotta go back to Chris and really play some game. If she gets hip I don’t trust her she’ll blow for sure. She’s the only stick I got to fight with.”

I turned back toward her. She was still standing there. She was crying harder than before. I walked to the glass and spoke into the hole.

I said, “Chris, a joker in the building saw me get busted. He cleaned me out. Baby, we’ve been so close. I had a crazy thought that if you’d been there I wouldn’t have been robbed. What the hell, Sugar, I’m the bastard that kept you away. It wasn’t your fault at all.

“Christ! I’ll be glad when this is over. Give a lip here in town a half a yard or so. Have him come to county jail and bring me whatever papers are needed to sell the Hog. Get the slip on the Hog from the property desk. It’s in my wallet. We should get twenty-five hundred or so for it. Bring that scratch and all you can hump up onto Wisconsin.”

They moved me to Wisconsin. Chris came to county jail there and put three-thousand dollars in my jail account.

Mama came to see me. She was in pieces. She thought the government was going to give me fifty years.

At my hearing, bail was set at twenty-thousand. A bondsman put up the face amount. His fee was two G’s. I got the state’s best criminal lip. I gave him a G retainer.

Chris and I went back to the track. I stayed out on bail for four months. I had two turnouts and three seasoned whores during that time. None stayed longer than a month.

Everybody in the street knew about that rap over my head. I guess the whores didn’t want to fatten a frog for snakes. Sweet and I didn’t see much of each other. I didn’t feel close to him any more. I was a pimp on the skids. Poison was top pimp.

Every slat I got my hands on I wired to the lip. I had to. I was getting one continuance after another. Finally I went to trial. The runt and Ophelia were there. They were afraid to look at me. They gave the government a penitentiary case all right.

They grinned at each other when I got eighteen months. Mama fainted. Chris boo-hooed. I had a good lip though. With the counts against me I could

have gotten ten years. Chris went back to the track. She swore she’d stick until I got out.

Leavenworth was what the government called a class-A joint. It was big and escape proof. It was run by master psychologists. There was no screw brutality. It wasn’t necessary. The invisible mental shackles were subtle but harder than the steel bars. Alcatraz was the grim trump the officials held over our heads.

It was a joint of con cliques. The most dangerous clique was the Southern cons. They hated Negroes!

I had references as a cellhouse orderly from other joints. I got a spot in a cellhouse with mostly pimps, dope dealers and stick-up men.

I was out at night until ten exchanging newspapers and magazines for the cons. I’d been in the joint about six months. I stopped in front of a cell to rap to a pimp pal. He was excited and standing gripping the bars of his cell door. He was a yellow version of Top. They called him Doll Baby.

He said, “’Berg, you told me I couldn’t steal the beautiful bitch. Well, the bitch sent me a kite this morning. She’s transferring to the shoe shop. I already got the spot picked out where I can sock it into her.

“I told you that square-ass peckerwood she’s got couldn’t out-play me. The bitch is got four bills on the books. She’s getting me a big order on commissary this week. Shit, on the street or in the joint it’s all the same to pimping Doll Baby.”

I had seen the beautiful bitch. He was a lanky white boy with watery blue eyes and bleached corn-silk hair. A fat red-faced Southern con was madly in love with him. The beautiful bitch would lie in the fat con’s arms in the yard and pick at the pimples on his face. The con was feared by everyone. He was the leader of a treacherous band of Southern cons.

I said, “Doll, you better cut that bitch loose. Her old man is from Mississippi. He’s a cinch to cut your heart out in that yard. He can’t let a Nigger steal his broad. Take my advice, pal. I like you. You’ve only a year to go.”

The next time on the yard I saw Doll and his bitch billing and cooing on the grass. They didn’t see any of the ball game. The game was over. The fat con and his band of Southern shiv men had been evil eyeing Doll’s show. I was fifty yards back of Doll when it happened.

Hundreds of cons were pressed together filing from the bleachers and playing field. I saw Doll throw up his hands and scream. He disappeared. The

gray tide moved on. Three screws were standing over him. He was on his back. Blood was gushing from his open mouth. Blood seeped from holes in his jacket.

He lived, but he had a bitch of a time making it. He stayed hitchless for the rest of his bit.

Chris stopped sending me scratch or anything. I got a wire she’d squared up and married a pullman porter. She even had a baby. I wondered if the sucker knew what a boss bitch he had.

I was filing out to sick call one morning. A group of cons on the other side of the road was filing to work. I saw a con marching behind a dark- complexioned con raise something that glinted in the sun. It was a shiv. He was chopping away at the con. Finally the con folded dead. Screws rushed up and took the hatchet man away.

I was two months from release. I had stopped to rap to an old con forger who knew Sweet. We were shooting the breeze about stick-up men and how they stacked up in the skull department with pimps and con men. We were rapping loud. I knew the night screw was at his desk four tiers down on the ground floor.

I said, “Pops, a stick-up man is gotta be nuts. The stupid bastard maybe passes a grocery store. He sees the owner checking his till. Right away a stupid idea flashes inside his crazy skull. ‘That’s my scratch.’

“The screwy heist man walks in. Maybe the grocer is a magician or an ex- acrobat with a degree in karate, worse an ex-marine. The silly sonuvabitch doesn’t realize the awful odds. He ain’t got enough in his dim skull to think about the trillion human elements. Any one of them can put him in his grave. The suicidal sonuvabitch maybe has his back to the street with his rod in his mitt. Pops, the stick-up man is champ lunatic in the underworld.”

Pops agreed and I walked away down the tier. I heard a hiss from the cell next to Pops’. A new transfer was standing at his cell door. He was skinny with a rat face. I stopped. He was sneering at me. His hands were trying to crush the rolled-steel bars.

He stuttered, “You you lousy pim-pim-pimp motherfucker. You you pu- pu-pussy-eating sonuvabitch. You-you ain’t going to live your bit out.”

I went fast to get a rundown on the nut from a stud on the tier below.

He said, “Ah, ’Berg, I hope you haven’t crossed that dizzy bastard. He croaked a stud in Lewisburg. They hung fifty on him. He’s a heist man. You better watch him close. He’s a cinch to make the Rock or loony bin.”

It was a week later just after the cellhouse filed out to the shops. The cellhouse screw had signaled “sick call.” I was standing in the back of the cellhouse on the flag. I was lighting a cigarette to smoke before I started mopping and waxing the flag.

Somewhere above me an excited voice shouted, “Look out, ’Berg.”

I looked up and chilled. A plummeting shadow flashed like black lightning in my eyes. I heard a whooshing whistle as it scraped gently against the cloth of my shirt at the tip of my shoulder. A dozen cymbals clashed as it grenaded against the flagstone at my side. I looked down. A steel mop wringer lay in three pieces. There was a Rorschach crater in the flagstone. Its outline was like a headshrinker’s blot.

I stared at it and idly wondered what the prison head-shrinker could make of it. He was a slick joker. Months ago he had told me, “Pimps have deep mother hatred and severe guilt feelings.”

I looked up. It wouldn’t take a head-shrinker to figure this one. The rat- faced heist man was grinning down at me. He was on his gallery on the fourth tier near the ceiling. He had stayed for “sick call” to bomb my skull off. The crater symbol was easy. Rat-face hated pimps without guilt feelings tied in. That night I took a pack of butts to the con who had screamed out the warning to me.

The nutty bomber went to solitary. Two weeks later he tried to gut a con with a shiv made from a file. They shipped him to the Rock. I was ecstatic to see him go.

During my bit I had read the second cellhouse full of books. I had read mountains of books on psychiatry, psychology, and the psychoneuroses. I couldn’t have done a smarter thing. I’d have to be my own head-shrinker when the white folks entombed me for a year in that steel casket in the future. I got all my good time. I was released in the early spring of nineteen-forty- seven. I stopped off at Mama’s for a week. Then I went back to the fast track. I had sixty slats and the joint vine on my back. The clothes I’d bought while on bail were with Chris. Maybe her pullman porter was my size.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to do a “Dick Tracy” for a few used vines.

Sweet was still in the penthouse. He had blown down to only three whores. Poison had made a bad pimping blunder. He had turned out a white square and put his foot in her ass. It was the last straw for the downtown brass. They bounced him off the force. He had one whore. He bird-dogged her. He took his scratch off after every trick like a Chili Pimp.

I rented a pad by the week. It was in the same slum district where the flunky had beat me for my roll and clothes. I had no flash and glamour, no pimp front. I was just another pimp down on his luck. I was starving for a whore.

In a pimp’s life, yesterday means nothing. It’s how you are doing today. A pimp’s fame is as fleeting as an icicle under a blow-torch. The young fine whores are wild to hump for a pimp in the chips. A pimp in bad shape can’t get the time of day from them. A pimp’s wardrobe has to be spectacular. His wheels must be expensive and sparkling new. I had to get the gaudy tools to start pimping again.

17

TRYING A NEW GAME

I had three choices. I could cop a piece of stuff on consignment from a contact I had made in the joint. I could peddle it retail and get nine or ten grand in weeks. I could take a dog, a broken-down whore with trillions of mileage on her. Maybe I could keep my foot in her ass and grind up a bankroll.

I decided to take the third out. Do a slick fast hustle. I met a pimp named Red Eye in a junkie joint. He had just finished a state bit the week before. He was whoreless like me and itching to pimp again. We were crying on each other’s shoulder at the bar.

He said, “Ice, ain’t it a bitch? No matter how much pimp a stud is, these dizzy bitches demand he’s got a front. Now we ain’t hustlers, but I got an idea. Ice, you’re a helluva actor and you can rap good as a con man. I know a stud who’s hip to every smack peddler and fence on the West Side. I got a rod and a real copper’s shield.

“All we need is a Short and a third stud to drive. Neither one of us is well known over there. Besides, there’s a flock of youngsters dealing now who were squares when we left the track. I’m a rollertype stud. With the weight you put on in the joint you’d make a perfect copper.

“Ice, if we only knock over three of ’em, we split maybe ten to fifteen G’s between us. Our finger man is a junkie punk. We give him and the driver peanuts. Ice, those forty-seven Hogs are a pimp’s dream. I gotta have one. Whatta you say? Are you in?”

I said, “Red Eye, I’ll go for it. I sure as hell ain’t going to put a mop in my hand out here. I don’t have wheels, but I’ve got a little scratch. I’ll spring to rent a short. You know someone with one? How about a driver?”

He said, “Ice, lay a double saw on me to cop a short. I know a stud for the

driver. Meet me right here in this joint tomorrow night at nine. We can take off our first mark.”

I said, “Don’t crack my name to that driver. Call me Tom, Frank, anything.”

I didn’t get two-hours sleep that night. It worried me to be part of a hustle that required a rod.

I thought, “Maybe I’d better back out. I could maybe find a young hash- slinger in a greasy spoon. I could turn her out in a hurry. She’d be a long shot for stardom. At least she’d make enough scratch for chump expenses.

“You can’t start pimping with a turnout. It never works out. A pimp with no whore and no bankroll is a sucker to try the turnout on a mulish square broad. No, I guess the Red Eye deal is all I got.”

Red Eye got to the joint at ten-thirty. The driver was a huge stud with a rapper like a girl’s. I noticed his big meat-hooks shaking on the steering wheel on our way to the West Side. Red Eye ran down our first mark. His light-maroon eyes were whirling. He had a skull full of H.

He said, “Paul, our first mark is a bird’s nest on the ground. It’s a broad. The finger showed her to me last night. She and her old man got the best smack on the West Side. It’s so good studs from all over town are rushing to cop every night.

“He and the broad deal out of a bar three blocks from their pad. They deal mostly in eights and sixteenths. On a weekend night like this one they take off maybe five G’s. The stud is got a rep as a fast-rod joker. He ain’t got no direct syndicate connections as far as I know.

“We ain’t got to worry about him tonight. He’s in New York copping a supply. The broad will leave the bar around midnight loaded with scratch. She’ll have a few packs of smack on her too for the evidence to shake her. Her real name is Mavis Sims.

“She’s gonna go to her short parked behind the bar. She ain’t afraid of being heisted. Everybody is scared shitless of her old man. She’s got a small rod strapped to her thigh. She ain’t going to pull it on the police though. That’s us, strange rollers from downtown. We gotta move fast on her when she bits that lot behind the bar. She’s a slick bitch. We gotta be real rollers. We can’t wake her up we’re fakes. She’s a strong bitch, I’d have to blow a hole in her if she reached for her rod.

“There will be a pack of hard studs in the bar. They would love to croak us on that lot to please her old man. We gotta move her fast outta the

neighborhood to play her outta the scratch. We gotta be careful the rollers don’t join our party. Her old man is doing a lot of greasing in the district.

“Perry is gonna park our short in the street beside the lot. We arrest the broad and you play on her while Perry drives. I ain’t going to rap. Ice, after we cop her it’s up to you for the shake. You got to convince her.”

Perry was really nervous. He pulled into the curb next to the bar lot. His skull was jiggling on his bull neck like he had Parkinson shakes. I was silent.

Red Eye’s rundown had me wondering how it shaped up as a bird’s nest to him. It looked like maybe a bird’s nest for Dillinger. If the mark hadn’t been a broad I’d have split and got on an El train.

I wondered if she’d seen me before I went to the joint. What if she made me right away as Iceberg and plugged me in the skull. Her old man might have outfit friends. If he did we’d be found in an alley with our balls rammed down our throats. We were standing in the shadows ten feet from the broad’s short.

I said, “Red, I better take the rod. When we step out on her, shine the flashlight right in her eyes.”

She was walking fast when she came into the lot. Her light blue chiffon dress was billowing in the April breeze. She was walking wide-legged like a whore after a long night in a two-dollar house.

My legs were trembling like a stud dog’s hung up in a bitch. I looked down at the badge pinned to the wallet in my palm. It glittered like molten silver in the moonlight. The thirty-two pistol in my right hand weighed a sweaty ton.

She was twirling a key ring. In the utter silence the clinking sounded like the U.S. Marshal’s handcuffs. She had her hands on the door handle. I stepped out of the shadows. Red Eye was behind me. I wondered if she could hear my ticker hammering. Red Eye put the light in her face. Her yellow forehead wrinkled in surprise. Her sexy jib flapped open. I grabbed her wrist and tried to crush it.

I roared, “Police! What’s your name and why are you sneaking around back here?”

She stammered, “Gloria Jones, and I was coming to my car. I always park it here. Now get out of the way. I’m going home. The captain of this district is a personal friend of my husband’s.”

Red Eye had turned off the flashlight and moved behind her. She was looking down at the badge. She was trying to yank her wrist free.

I said in a low heavy voice, “You lying dope-peddling bitch. Your real

moniker is Mavis Sims. We’re from downtown. Your old man’s no pal of ours. We’re gonna bust you, bitch. I’ll lay odds we’ve caught you dirty. Come on bitch, before we get rough. Anything I hate it’s a stinking smack dealer.”

We hurled her into the back seat of our short. Red got in beside her. I was up front with Perry. I turned facing the rear seat. There was silence as Perry drove out of the district toward central headquarters. Miss Sims was squirming in the seat. Her right hand was out of sight behind her. She was getting very jerky. I remembered that rod she was carrying. I started the shake.

I said, “Al, this suspect is acting peculiarly. Perhaps you’d better pull over.

She might have concealed some evidence behind the seat.”

He pulled over. Red moved toward her. She slid to the window on the other side.

She said, “Officers, I’m clean. It’s worth fifty apiece to cut me loose. If you bust me, I’ll be out in an hour. Take me back to the bar. I can get the hundred and fifty from the bar owner.”

I said, “No dice, sister. We got specific orders to bring you in. Now don’t make him slap a broad around. He’s gonna frisk you. He don’t have to wait for a matron to do it downtown. It’s proper if he thinks you’re armed and we’re in danger.”

He patted the inside of her thighs. It was there, a twenty-two automatic jammed under the top of her stocking. He took it out and shoved it in his pocket, searched her bosom, purse, shoes, and hair. She was sure clean except for the rod.

I felt like a real chump. All this trouble for nothing. He was scratching his chin. The junkie punk had put a bum finger on the broad.

I was at the point of shoving her out. Then it struck me. Where did my street whores hide their scratch? In the cat! In the cat, where else? The clincher was this broad’s wide-legged walk. I had noticed it on the lot. She was leaning forward staring at Perry’s face.

I said, “Joe, it’s gotta be up her cat. Bitch, stretch out and put your legs across his lap.”

She said, “The hell I will. You phony Niggers ain’t rollers. That big one at the wheel used to bounce at Mario’s.”

She was wise. The double saw I gave Red Eye had tapped me out. We had to know if she had treasure up her cat.

I wondered how he’d handle it. I didn’t wonder long. He turned brute. He punched her hard in the nose. It was like he had cut her throat. Blood splattered over the front of her dress. I felt a light spray on my face.

She opened her mouth to scream. He smothered it with a terrible slam to the gut. She went limp. He pulled her across him. He darted his paw between her legs.

When he brought his mitt out it made a kissing sound. He had a long shiny plastic tube between his index and middle fingers. It stank like rotten fish.

The broad was moaning and holding both hands to her nose. He unwrapped the package. The pouch was bursting with scratch. In the center of the roll I saw the cellophane edges of packaged dope.

He got out and opened the door on the broad’s side. He dragged her out to the sidewalk. He got in the front seat. Perry gunned away. I kept a sharp eye on Red Eye as he counted the scratch in his lap.

Red Eye and I netted two grand apiece. Red Eye took the packages of H. The broad dealer had forty-four hundred in the pouch. Perry and the junkie finger man got two bills apiece.

It was a week before we tried for the second mark. We shouldn’t have. He was a reefer peddler and fence. We thought he had big scratch on him. We didn’t have a driver. We had the mark in the short. Red Eye was driving.

We were playing the peel off. The mark was in the back seat. I was in the front seat. I asked for his identification. He handed me his hide. I saw it had only a few slats in it.

We were pulling to the curb to search him. A two-man squad car passed. The mark saw them and started screaming. They stopped and dragged Red Eye and me out to the street. They kicked and beat hell out of us. They took us down.

The mark was slick. Right there on the street he cracked. We took a C note from him. If he’d known about our roll, he could have beefed for four G’s.

The rollers saw our rolls and tried to pin every stick-up on the books against us. We went on every show-up for a week. We didn’t get a finger. They booked us for armed robbery of the mark.

18

JAILBREAK

An agent for a fixer came to the lockup. He assured us we could avoid five to ten for armed robbery. We could get the charge reduced to a workhouse bit for a price.

We tapped out and got a year apiece in the workhouse. It was like a prison, only tougher. A joint is always rough when there’s graft and corruption. Only cons with scratch are treated and fed like human beings. The walls were just as high. Most of the inmates were serving short thirty and ninety-day bits.

The joint was filthy. The food was unbelievable. The officials had an unfunny habit of putting pimps on the coal pile. I did a week on it. I was ready to make a blind rush at the wall. Maybe I could claw up the thirty feet before I got shot. I was really desperate.

After the first week I came out of shock. I started thinking about a sensible way to escape. I just couldn’t get my skull in shape for another bit. It was too soon after the last one. By the middle of the second week I’d had a dozen ideas. None of them stood up under second thoughts.

I shared a tiny cell with a young con. He was only eighteen. He idolized me. He’d heard about me in the streets. I slept on the top of a double bunk. There were three counts. One in the morning, one after night lockup, the third at midnight.

One night I missed standing up for count at the cell door. I was so beat from heaving coal I’d collapsed on my bunk. I woke up an hour after the count. It gave me an idea. I kicked it around in my skull. Like all good ideas it kept growing, crying out for my attention.

I thought, “I wonder how much and what of me that screw saw when he counted me?” I tested him three nights in a row. I’d lie on the bunk when he came through to count. Each time I’d lie so he saw less of me. The last time

he counted me there was only my back, rear end, and legs visible to him.

I got excited. I knew it would be easy to get extra pants and a shirt. I could stuff them into a passable dummy. I knew my first problem was to find a way to get out of line when filing from the coal pile.

My second problem was I couldn’t leave a dummy in position in the cell during the day. Cellhouse cons and screws would pass on the gallery and discover it. I decided to solve my outside problem first.

At the end of the day a screw would line us up at the coal pile to be counted. We would then file two-hundred yards into the mess hall for supper. After supper we would file through hallways to the cell house for count.

There were several cellhouses. All of the cellhouses phoned in their tallies to the office. If all the tallies equaled that number of cons in the entire joint then the count was right. A loud whistle blew and the day screws could go home.

There was no cover between the coal pile and the mess hall. A screw with a scoped, high-powered rifle manned a wall that ran parallel to our line of march. It looked impossible. I lost hope. On my twenty-eighth day in the joint I noticed something.

I had been on an official pass-out of some kind. It was very near supper time. I passed the dress-in station and shower room. The front door was open. I glanced in. In the rear of it a screw was hooklocking a wooden door.

I stopped and pretended to tie my shoe. He then walked up two or three stairs and swung a steel door shut inside the shower room. He started lining up his cons for the march to the dining room.

I had noticed the shed before on the marches to the dining room. It was maybe thirty feet from the line of march. The door had always been shut. I had thought it stayed locked all the time. I couldn’t have checked it with that rifleman on the wall and a screw marching with me.

In the cell that night I was as excited as a crumb crusher at Christmas time. I thought, “Maybe that shower screw sometimes forgets to lock that shed door. Maybe he’s even later locking it than today. I couldn’t see what the hell was in the shed. I know there’s gotta be old clothing or something. I can hide under when he comes to hook that slammer. I gotta get outta this joint. I can’t

pull my bit here.

“If the kid will handle the dummy end, I’ll take a chance. I’m gonna talk to my cellmate about that dummy. If he’ll help me, I can escape like a shadow.” I looked down over the rim of my bunk at him. I had written several

bullshit letters for him to his girlfriend. So far they had kept her writing and sending him candy and cigarette money. He was a good kid. I didn’t think he’d rat.

I said, “Shorty, what if I told you I could beat this joint?”

He said, “Iceberg, you’re jiving. You can’t make it out of here. There are five steel gates between this cell and the streets. How’re you planning to do it?”

I said, “Kid, as beautiful as it is I can’t do it without your help. Now here it is.”

I ran it down to him. At first he was leery. I told him to take the dummy from the floor under his bunk. Put it on mine. As soon as the whistle blew, unstuff the shirt and pants. Put the blanket stuffing back on my bunk. Sometime during the night before the midnight count, throw the pants and shirt over the gallery to the flagstone.

When the midnight hell broke loose he’d be clean. No one could prove or even suspect he had dismantled the dummy. I asked him to give me the name of a relative for record. I told him I would send him a C note from the first whore scratch I got.

I got his promise to handle the cell end of the plan. An hour later I gave a cellhouse orderly two packs of butts for an extra blanket. I had the stuffing. I took off my shirt and pants and stuffed them for rehearsal. He sat at the cell door with a mirror watching the gallery both ways. In twenty minutes he had the position and the rest of it down pat.

I didn’t close my eyes all night. At midnight I saw the screw counting heads. He was due for a shock soon. I knew that if something went wrong they’d probably beat me to death out there on the yard. I had to go through with it. No con misses his freedom more than a pimp. His senses are addicted to silky living.

I took packs of butts to the coal pile the next day. A yard runner got me a shirt and pants. I put them on over the ones I wore. That night in the cell I made up the dummy. I put it under the kid’s bunk and gave him a pep talk until midnight. I even promised him I’d keep in touch and when he got out I’d teach him to pimp.

I thought the last day on the coal pile would never end. I would be sunk if there was a routine cellhouse shakedown. Finally we lined up. My throat was dry and my knees were wobbly. We were approaching that shed. The screw on the wall walked twenty paces away. Then about faced and walked back

facing the coal pile gang.

I’d have to break for the shed when he walked away. I’d have to be in there when he turned if it wasn’t locked. If he didn’t shoot me, the yard screws would beat me to a pulp. The coal-pile screw was ahead of me. He could turn and look back at any moment. No other moment in my life has been so tense, so wildly adventuresome. I didn’t even know if there wasn’t a fink in the line. I tell you it was something. If my ticker had been faulty I’d have passed out.

The screw on the wall was walking away. The shed seemed miles away. I slipped out of line and raced for it. I could hear an excited whispering from the cons behind me. I touched the shed doorhandle. For an instant I hesitated. I was afraid I’d find it locked. My sweat-hot hands pulled it toward me. It was open!

Just before I stepped inside I looked up at the wall. The screw was standing looking in the direction of the shed. I shut the door. Had he seen me? I looked around the shed. There was nothing to hide under or behind. I could hear the cons in the shower room. They were getting ready for supper.

The steel door was half open. That screw would be out at any second to hook the shed door. There was no place to hide. It had been all for nothing. I heard a voice and the scrape of feet at the steel door. The screw was coming out into the shed! I looked up at the shed ceiling. I looked over the steel door. There was a line of rusty bars a foot long over the door flush against a grimy window. I leaped up and grabbed two of them. I swung my feet and legs up just as the screw walked in to lock the door. I was jack-knifing my legs just six inches from the top of his blue uniform cap. I hung there like a bat. I held my breath. He passed beneath me. I saw flakes of rust fall from the bars onto the top of his cap. It seemed forever to my agonized aching arms

and legs.

I heard the steel door crash shut. I started breathing again. I hung up there for another long moment. He might come back for some reason. I swung my paralyzed legs down and released my grip on the bars. I sat on the stone steps fighting for breath. The shed was quiet as a tomb. I could hear my ticker staccato.

The worse wasn’t over. That “all is well” whistle had to blow. If it didn’t blow they’d come looking for me with fists, clubs, and guns. I peeped through a crack in the door. I put my ear to it. The yard was bare. I could hear the clatter of steel plates in the mess hall. Finally all was quiet. The count was going on.

I thought, “Even if the kid goes through with his end, this one night the count screw will poke that dummy to stand up to the cell door. That whistle ain’t gonna blow. It’s been too long already. Those cold-hearted bastards are on the way already. They’ll beat and stomp me crippled.”

The whistle blew! The beautiful sound of it was like a faucet. It flooded my eyes with tears. I did a dusty jig on the shed floor. It was dusk. It wasn’t over. The only way to get over the wall was to scale and climb to the top of a cellhouse in the far corner of the yard.

Lucky for me the cellhouse sat in a deep recess, otherwise its roof would have towered above the wall. It was the only building close to a section of wall. Other buildings stairs stepped almost to the roof of the cellhouse. Maybe I’d been too eager to escape. I’d not put together a rope or hook. I’d have to use hands and feet. It sat six feet away and twenty feet above the wall.

There was only one screw on the wall after the count cleared. He’d be in his cubicle reading the newspaper or a magazine. If he looked up he couldn’t miss seeing me in the glare of the yard lights.

My uniform was dark green, stained black with coal dust. Maybe on the street I’d look like any sooty steel mill or coal worker. I hadn’t done too badly so far with short-term planning.

I had until midnight to get over the wall and out of the city. I had no scratch. I’d passed out a small fortune in tips to hotel maids, bellhops, and bartenders. Now all of them were rich compared to me. I knew several I could go to and get a few dollars. They could be found at their places of work.

There had been all the show-ups the month before and after my conviction. My face would be remembered by the rollers in those neighborhoods. I thought about Sweet. I remembered his crack at the hideout to set me up for the cop of my stable. I threw him out of my skull.

I couldn’t trust any of the pimps I knew. I’d always been a threat to them. Iceberg was really on his own. I’d have to make it to one of Mama’s sisters, thirty miles away in Indiana.

It was now pitch black inside the shed. I raised the hook and pushed the door open. I looked out into the yard. I stepped through the door into the yard. All was quiet. I pushed the door shut. I heard a dull metallic noise. I pulled it toward me. The hook had fallen into its loop. The shed door had hooked from the inside.

I thought, “That freak accident would confound the investigators for sure.” I raced to the side of the mess hall. I’d have to get on its flat roof. I took hold of some window bars and pulled up to a standing position on the sill, I reached over and grabbed the drain pipe. I swung over and shinnied up to the

roof.

I looked to my left. I could see the silhouetted figure of the wall screw in his cubicle. I looked across and up at the cellhouse roof abutting the wall. It was a long way. I walked across the roof toward the next building. I was near the far edge of the roof. I looked back at the wall cubicle. The screw was out walking the wall. He had that deadly rifle cradled in his arms.

I flung myself flat on my back on the black roof. I hoped I was invisible to him. I lay there panting. I wondered what a screw’s manual said about an escaping con target. If he saw me would he scope for a skull, heart, or gut shot?

Finally he went back into the cubicle. Lucky for me the mess-hall roof was connected to the chapel building. The connection was a concrete ledge. It was less than a foot wide and about twelve feet long. My heavy prison brogans seemed as wide as the ledge. They slipped on the glazed ledge. The wild late April winds made the walk as secure as a stroll across a teeter-totter two stories above the ground.

I stood at the end of the ledge and looked up. I stretched my right arm up and stood on tip-toes. The chapel roof was two feet above my fingertips. I’d have to go back a few feet on that glassy ledge. I’d have to get up enough speed coming back to make a twofeet leap. I’d have to grab the outside rim of the roof’s drain gutter. I wondered if it could stand my weight.

I carefully backed up six feet. I stood there trembling looking up at the rim. I looked back. The screw wasn’t on the wall. I had to forget how narrow the ledge was. I threw a leg out. I whipped the other toward it. I pumped them over the gritty glaze. I heard the whispering hiss of the leather soles tromping the ledge. My arms were outstretched to the black sky. My eyes were riveted upward to the gutter rim.

I leaped upward. I felt my feet soar off the ledge. I taloned the rim. I hung from it dangling in space. My fingernails sent red-hot needles of pain through the tortured flesh at their roots. I chinned up and hurled a leg across the roof top. I rolled onto it. I lay there gasping as I watched the rifleman walk his beat. He went in.

I struggled up the steep sloping roof to the top. The edge of the cellhouse

roof was three feet away. I leaped straight ahead. I flopped on my belly. The tips of my brogans were in the drain gutter. The cellhouse roof was even steeper. It was coated with squares of slippery shale. I looked up toward the top. It seemed a city block away. I started bellying up it. I dug my brogan tips into the small cracks between the shale squares.

I finally inched to the top. My chest was flaming. I lay astraddle the six- inch top of a double precipice. The two sides of the roof formed a steep pyramid. I was on top of it. The six-inch top seemed as thin as a wire. Through a dizzy haze I saw the lights of the city winking in an ocean of blackness.

I got to my feet. I started walking the tight wire like a circus performer. The winds were savage up here. They kicked and punched me. I teetered and swayed on the wire. I looked down over the right precipice to the street far below. Through a fuzzy blur I saw auto headlights darting through the night like tiny fireflies. My skull almost blacked out. I jerked my skull away and glued my eyes to the wire.

It was like an age before I reached the end of the cellhouse. If the screw came out now I’d be in full view. Even from the inside he could spot me. I stood shivering. I looked down twenty feet to the top of the three-foot wide wall. I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t just stand there. It was a cinch I couldn’t expect to keep balance if I hit the wall feet first.

I dropped, legs opened wide. I heard my trousers rip. The inside concrete edge of the wall top gouged into my inner thigh. My rear end crashed against the concrete. My skull reeled in pain as I sat in the cold saddle. I swung my gouged left leg from the inner side of the wall. I scooted back on my belly to my fingertips.

I hung there for a moment. I felt blood running down my left leg into my shoe. I let go. I struck feet first. My butt and back took the rest of the shock. I lay there on my back in a drunken fog of exhaustion, pain and breathless joy.

It was at least ten minutes before I could stand. I limped away for a hundred yards. I turned and looked back at the joint.

I thought, “Those dirty white folks are gonna pace the floor. Their assholes are gonna twitch. They’re gonna call me a million black-Nigger bastards and sonuvabitches. One thing they can’t deny in their cruel secret hearts. I outsmarted them. It’s gonna hurt ’em to the rotten quick that a Nigger did a black Houdini outta here. No screws’ skulls busted and no bars sawed.

“They’re gonna foul their chances to catch me after the midnight count.

They’ll search the yard and joint for a week. Their asses will turn blue. Their skulls won’t let ’em believe a Nigger was clever enough to ghost outta here.”

I turned and hobbled toward the State of Indiana.

19

THE ICE PICK

I was lucky. I caught five rides to get to my Aunt. It was five minutes to midnight when she opened the door. At first she didn’t recognize me. She made me welcome.

In a week my leg had healed and I felt strong. Her husband was my size. He gave me an outfit and fifty dollars. I went to the whore section of town. A bunch of New Orleans pimps were in town. They had their thieving whores with them. Three days later I stole one.

Her name was No Thumbs Helen. She was at that time one of the slickest “from the person” thieves in the country. We got about in a forty-seven Hog. She was a magician. For almost a year she left a trail of empty wallets across five states.

We were in Iowa when Helen stung a rich sod-buster for seventy-two hundred. I was in bed when she threw it on the bed. Excited? Sure I was. My heart boomed like bombs going off. She didn’t know it. I was icy cool. I casually scooped it up and counted it. I had a poker face.

I said, “Now listen, bitch. Run this sting down. I gotta know how hot this scratch is. Did you get all the sucker had? I’ll be a salty sonuvabitch to read in the papers that you missed a bundle.”

Her rundown told me it was best to split. We got in the Hog and went to Minneapolis. The second day I copped a young whore. She wanted to be a thief. I took her to Helen at our hotel. Helen chilled when she saw the pretty bitch.

She blew her top. She drew her knife. The young whore fled. I disarmed Helen and punched her around. Helen went to work. I fell asleep. I woke up fast. Helen was jabbing her knife into me. I rolled away. She had stabbed me in the forearm and the side of an elbow. I took a golf club and knocked her

out.

I never tried to stable her after that. I didn’t feel like a real pimp with one whore. I decided to steal the technique of stealing from Helen. I could use it to train other whores when I cut her loose. Finally I picked her skull. The technique went as follows.

She would lurk in some shadowy doorway or alley entrance. When a trick came by she’d go into a con act. She’d stand wide-legged and bend her knees to an almost squatting stance. She’d whip up the front bottom of her dress. She’d expose the gaping, hairy magnet to the bugging eyes of the sucker. The pull was magnified by her stroking her cat.

She’d say to the sucker, “Please pretty sweetie, I am so hot this pussy is burning up. I ain’t had no dick in six months. Come here and do something to it.”

He’d step into the doorway already blind hot to sock it in for free. His instinctive weariness blackjacked to sleep by the raw event. She’d bombard the sucker with a flow of sweetly passionate sexy bullshit as she tightly embraced him.

She had located his wallet, usually in a rear trouser pocket, with the sensitive tips of her fingers. She’d dry grind her belly against his scrotum. She’d complain that his belt buckle was hurting her. She would be panting in phony passion as she unbuckled it. It would release the tension on his pants pockets. She’d caress the head of his swipe with her fingers.

She’d stroke the tip of his ear with her tongue. The very tips of the airy light index finger and thumb of the free hand flicked the buttoned pocket open. The index and middle fingers scissored on the wallet and slid it from the pocket. The trick would be excited and hot. He wouldn’t have felt the glowing end of a cigarette on his ass.

With both hands behind his neck, she’d remove the scratch from the hide. She’d up the sexy chatter and the strong grind against his scrotum. She’d roll the bills into a tight suppository shape. She’d slip the wallet back into the pocket. She wouldn’t forget to rebutton the pocket. She was ready to blow the sucker off, get rid of him. She’d crack that she had to pee. Stooping quickly, she’d ram the rolled bills up her cat. She’d sight a passing car. She’d fake alarm.

She would say, “Oh my God. There’s Riley, the vice cop. Listen honey, go to the Park Hotel up the street and register as Mr. and Mrs. Jones. I will be there in ten minutes, Pretty Daddy. I sure want some of your good dick.”

The sucker would pat the reassuring bump of his wallet. It was still there in the buttoned pocket. He’d amble off to the hotel. The thief would make it home. She’d completely change her appearance. She’d go back into the street to sting another sucker.

There was an accident. She got pregnant. I found a croaker who made her one again. The game went down as usual. The bubble burst in a small town in Ohio.

The sky-rocket came crashing down when I ran into an old pal. He was now called New York Joe. I hadn’t seen him since I was fourteen. My mother had taken him in for a few weeks when his widowed-mother died. He got sick and had to go to a hospital. I’d take a bus to see him and bring him tid- bits. I’d sit with him and console him. I liked him. Our friendship was brief. He got out of the hospital and left town.

He was wholesaling cocaine and the sample he gave me was almost pure. I made an appointment to cop a piece. I didn’t know he had learned in New York to cross everybody, even old friends. I found out the stuff he gave me was phony. I rushed back to him figuring he had made a mistake and would square things with me. I said, “Joe, you’ve made a mistake, man.” He took me inside. He said, “What’s the trouble, Jim?”

I said, “Man, this is bullshit. This ain’t the same stuff that I sampled.”

He said, “Well listen, Ronald went out to the stash. That mother-fucker is crossing me.”

He drew his gun from a shoulder holster. At the time I didn’t know it was all con.

He said, “Should I go out there and kill that sonuvabitch? What do you want me to do?”

He started working his eyes. His eyes were bugging and going through all that crazy act.

I said, “No man, just give me my scratch back.” He said, “I’m so mad I should croak you both.”

I was relatively young. I had never run into this New York stuff before. I was spooked.

I said, “Forget about it.”

He was going through contortions. I was in his town. I had a thief with at least seven beefs on her. I was out the three grand. I might have gotten croaked. Later I knew it was stuff: New York stuff. In later years, I figured it out. He maybe had always hated me because I had more education than he

had.

A week later Helen got busted on seven counts. I signed the Hog over to a lip. She got five to ten. I should have wired a bomb to the starter before I turned it over to the lip.

A stud told me Joe had fingered Helen. He almost ruined me. He tapped me out, got my thief busted. He literally ran me out of town broke, and with no whore.

I heard whore-catching was good in Detroit. I took my last tendollar bill and caught a Greyhound. Detroit was the promised land for pimps all right. The town was teeming with young fast whores. The local pimps were soft competition.

I was walking, but I was sharp as a Harlem sissy. Anyway, these whores were a different breed than the ones back in the city. They were gullible, and a fellow didn’t have to play his heart out to cop them.

The first package I copped was a beautiful seventeen-year-old green-eyed version of Pepper. Her name was Rachel. I was to keep her thirteen years.

My next package was a huge, black, dangerous jasper named Serena. In addition to being a whore, she ran a fast sheet setup for a dozen whores. They tricked out of her joint. Within eight weeks after I hit Detroit I was cruising the streets in a sparkling new forty-eight Fleetwood. I had a fat bankroll.

Within ninety days after the Serena cop, I had copped two more young broads. A week later a small-time pimp came to town from Rhode Island. He had a beautiful young whore with him. He was jealous. He followed her in the street. I stalked her. He forgot to follow her. I stole her. I’d had her several months when the town got shaky. The rollers forced Serena out of her joint. I put her in the street.

Then I heard about a small town in Ohio—Lima—that was jumping with good tricks and wide open. I could possibly open up a couple of houses there. My luck was soaring. With my pad rent and a pad a piece for the girls, I needed a tighter setup to cut down my nut. My skull was whirling as I drove the Hog to pick up my stable in the street. They got in. I tossed their scratch

in the glove compartment.

Dawn was breaking as the big Hog scooted through the streets. My five whores were chattering like drunk magpies. I smelled that stink that only a street whore has after a long, busy night. The inside of my nose was raw. It happens when you’re a pig for snorting cocaine.

My nose was on fire. The stink of those whores and the gangster they were

smoking seemed like invisible knives scraping to the root of my brain. I was in an evil, dangerous mood despite that pile of scratch crammed into the glove compartment.

“Goddamnit, has one of you bitches shit on herself or something?” I bellowed. I flipped the wing window toward me.

For a long moment there was silence. Then Rachel, my bottom whore, cracked in a pleasing-ass kissing voice, “Daddy Baby, that ain’t no shit you smell. We been turning all night. Ain’t no bathrooms in those tricks’ cars we been flipping out of. Daddy, we sure been humping for you. What you smell is our nasty whore asses.”

I grinned widely, inside of course. The best pimps keep a steel lid on their emotions. I was one of the iciest. The whores went into fits of giggles at Rachel’s shaky witticism. A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep.

I coasted the Hog into the curb outside the hotel where Kim, my newest, prettiest girl, was cribbing. Jesus! I would be glad to drop the last whore off. I could get to my own hotel to nurse my nose with cocaine and be alone. Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner-life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores.

As Kim got out I said, “Goodnight Baby, today is Saturday. I want everybody in the street at noon instead of seven tonight. I said noon, not five minutes after or two minutes after. At twelve sharp I want you down, got it Baby?”

She didn’t answer. She did a strange thing. She walked into the street around the Hog to the window on my side. She stood looking at me for a long moment, her beautiful face tense in the dim dawn.

Then in her crisp New England accent she said, “Are you coming back to my pad this morning? You haven’t spent a night with me in a month. So come back, okay?”

A good pimp doesn’t get paid for screwing. He gets his pay-off for always having the right thing to say to a whore right on lightning tap. I knew my four whores were flapping their ears to get my reaction to this beautiful bitch. A pimp with an overly-fine bitch in his stable has to keep his game tight. Whores constantly probe for weakness in a pimp.

I fitted a scary mask on my face and said, in a low, deadly voice, “Bitch, are you insane? No bitch in this family calls any shots or muscles me to do anything. Now take your stinking yellow ass upstairs to a bath and some

shut-eye. Get in the street at noon like I told you.”

The bitch just stood there. Her eyes slitted in anger. I could sense she was game to play the string out right there in the street before my whores. If I had been ten-years dumber I would have leaped out of the Hog, broken her jaw, and put my foot in her ass. The joint was too fresh in my mind.

I knew the bitch was trying to booby-trap me when she spat out her invitation. “Come on, kick my ass. What the hell do I need with a man I only see when he comes to get his money? I am sick of it all. I don’t dig stables and never will. I know I’m the new bitch who has to prove herself. Well Goddamnit, I am sick of this shit. I’m cutting out.”

She stopped for air and lit a cigarette. I was going to blast her ass off when she finished. I just sat there staring at her.

Then she went on, “I have turned more tricks in the three months I have been with you than in the whole two years with Paul. My pussy stays sore and swollen. Do I get my ass kicked before I split? If so, kick it now because I’m going back to Providence on the next thing smoking.”

She was young, fast with trick appeal galore. She was a pimp’s dream and she knew it. She had tested me with her beef. She was laying back for a sucker response.

I disappointed her with my cold overlay. I could see her wilt as I said in an icy voice, “Listen square-ass bitch, I have never had a whore I couldn’t do without. I celebrate, Bitch, when a whore leaves me. It gives some wormy bitch a chance to take her place and be a star. You scurvy Bitch, if I shit in your face, you gotta love it and open your mouth wide.”

The rollers cruised by in a squad car. I flashed a sucker smile on my face. I cooled it until they passed. Kim was rooted there wincing under the blizzard.

I went on ruthlessly, “Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero. Before me you had one chili chump with no rep. Nobody except his mother ever heard of the bastard. Yes, Bitch, I’ll be back this morning to put your phony ass on the train.”

I rocketed away from the curb. In the rear-view mirror I saw Kim walk slowly into the hotel. Her shoulders were slumped. Until I dropped the last whore off you could have heard a mosquito crapping on the moon. I had tested out for them, solid ice.

I went back for Kim. She was packed and silent. On the way to the station, I riffled the pages in that pimp’s book in my head. I searched for an angle to hold her without kissing her ass.

I couldn’t find a line in it for an out like that. As it turned out the bitch was testing and bluffing right down the line.

We had pulled into the station parking lot when the bitch fell to pieces. Her eyes were misty when she yelped, “Daddy, are you really going to let me split? Daddy, I love you.”

I started the prat action to cinch her when I said, “Bitch, I don’t want a whore with rabbit in her. I want a bitch who wants me for life. You have got to go. After that bullshit earlier this morning, you are not that bitch.”

That prat butchered her. She collapsed into my lap crying and begging to stay. I had a theory about splitting whores. They seldom split without a bankroll.

So I cracked on her, “Give me that scratch you held out and maybe I’ll give you another chance.”

Sure enough she reached into her bosom. She drew out close to five bills and handed it to me. No pimp with a brain in his head cuts loose a young beautiful whore with lots of mileage left in her. I let her come back.

At long last I was driving toward my hotel. I remembered what Sweet Jones, the master pimp who turned me out, had said about whores like Kim.

“Slim,” he had said, “A pretty Nigger bitch and a white whore are just alike. They both will get in a stable to wreck it and leave the pimp on his ass with no whore. You gotta make ’em hump hard and fast to stick ’em for long scratch quick. Slim, pimping ain’t no game of love, so prat ’em and keep your swipe outta ’em. Any sucker who believes a whore loves him shouldn’t a fell outta his mammy’s ass.”

My mind went back to Pepper. Then back even further and I remembered what he had said about the Georgia.

“Slim, a pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores. So Slim, be as sweet as the scratch, no sweeter, and always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.”

I was on the elevator riding to my pad. I thought about the first bitch who had Georgiaed me when I was three. She had flim-flammed me out of my head. She would be old and gray now. If I could find her, I would sure get the bitch’s unpaid account off my conscience.

I snorted a couple of caps of cocaine. Two hours later I took a yellow. I fell asleep.

When I woke up at noon, I knew I had to make a move. Rachel’s parents

were trying to cross me. Kim might split back to the sucker. My whole stable, except Kim, were local girls. A pimp is asking for trouble when he doesn’t move his action away.

Control is easier and tighter away from the familiar setting. A girl in strange surroundings depends more on her man. She needs his advice and guidance more. Girls copped in smaller towns have to be moved fast.

That night I went to Ohio. I put down the foundation for the move. I rented two houses and furnished them beautifully. I made contact with a fellow who collected the oil for the heat. I got the okay to go at a C a week for each house. I moved my whole family there. I was just in time. A month later Detroit folded and the lid slammed down.

There was a good dope connection in the new town. I started capping H with my C. I’d mix them and shoot speedballs. When I went to bed I got sound sleep. I seldom had those bad dreams. I got hooked on H. It didn’t worry me. I was getting long scratch.

I was thirty years old. For the second time in my pimping career I could see solid success and lots of long green in my future. How could I know that elephant bitch, Serena, would get jealous? She brought the whole green-back house of cards crashing down around me. I missed a murder rap by a fraction of an inch. The fraction was in Serena’s chest.

Within the year that I had set up my houses, tricks from all over the county were beating a path to them. They were wild to sample those luscious young freaks. Pimping had never been better.

I was in a wonderful mood as I walked in the sunshine. I noticed Serena was coming up the street with a sack of groceries in her arm. She had croaked two people in New Orleans. She walked toward me smiling. When she got close to me she got the ice pick out of the sack. She jabbed it toward my chest. At the time I was quite quick, so I leaped back. The point of it slashed the edge of my pocket right over my ticker. She was trying to drive the point right through my ticker.

I was without a pistol at the time. I could buy a pistol from any hardware store. I bought a .32 and a box of fifty bullets. I took it up to her pad and loaded it at the kitchen table.

She said, “Daddy, what’s that for?”

I said, “That’s to croak any bitch that tries to hurt me.”

She said, “Oh Daddy, you know I was just upset. Forget about it.”

I said, “No, I’m not going to forget about it. I’d kill my own mother if I

thought she was going to hurt me.”

Later that evening about midnight the other girls and I were returning from a cabaret. I put the key in the door. I opened it and smelled the heavy odor of Tabu. The heavy scent that only Serena used. I hesitated. My eyes became accustomed to the gloom. I saw Serena standing over in the corner of the living room with an ice pick in her hand. She had slipped into Rachel’s house through an open basement window. I drew my gun.

I said, “Serena!”

She said, “Yes, mother-fucker, I’m killing you and them whores this morning.”

She started crying.

I said, “Serena, don’t come by that end table. If you do I’m going to kill you. You know I always keep my word.”

She said, “I wouldn’t give a mother-fuck.”

She lunged past the end table. I shot her. When I shot her the only thing that saved her life was the fact that she had a forty-six inch bust. The fatty tissue absorbed the bullet at almost point-blank range.

When I shot her, blood splattered. I struck her in an artery. It blew all over my face, all over her. Her dress had a ringlet of sparks. I set her on fire. She had elephant toughness. It didn’t even knock her down. The bitch grabbed at me. She had dropped the ice pick.

She grabbed her chest and said, “Daddy, don’t kill me!”

I was tempted. I really intended to kill her. I started to shoot her through the head. I didn’t. I don’t really know why except there were witnessess, those four whores. She staggered past us through the door and down the street. We all got into the Fleetwood and raced out of town leaving everything.

I sped toward Mama. I hadn’t seen her since that Christmas visit. Her hair was snow white. Jesus! Was she excited and happy to see me. I told her what had happened. She got a friend to drive her back there. She loaded all the clothing on a trailer. She visited Serena in the hospital.

Serena begged my mother to tell me to come back. She wouldn’t file charges. It was all her fault and she loved me. I knew that if I had gone back Serena would have driven a butcher knife through my heart in my sleep.

20

STABLE MOVES

It had been a sucker move to come to Mama. Fortunately she had moved from over the beauty shop. She now lived in an almost all-white neighborhood. Here I was with four idle whores in a closed town where I had fallen three times. It was the point of origin for the white slave rap that the copper-hearted runt had crossed me with. There were a couple of sneak ten- dollar houses in town.

I stayed inside the house at Mama’s. Every joker in town knew me. They all had diarrhea of the mouth. I couldn’t put my action in the street in this hot town. They’d had an easy go in Ohio. They were soft. I could put them down only in a town where I had a fix. I knew that none of them, if busted, could stand up under the clever grilling of the F.B.I.

I had a ten G bankroll. I was housing and feeding four whores in an expensive hotel. I was a pig for banging speedballs. No fresh scratch was coming in. With only a ten G stick I knew I would soon be in trouble. I had to make a move fast. It was bad for morale of the stable to keep them on their asses.

After a week of confinement at Mama’s house, I slipped out of town to cop H and C for myself, and gangster for the girls. While in the city I looked up Sweet. I was careful because all the heat in the neighborhood knew me.

Sweet insisted I give him all the details of my escape. He shook his skull in awe when he heard them. Miss Peaches had died of old age. His eyes were sad when he told me about it. Glass Top was still out West in Seattle. Patch Eye did a little bookie business for him. Sweet had lost his glory. He looked a hundred years old. His backbone was the old white broad who owned the building.

Sweet had just beat a murder rap. He had killed some pretty jerk from St.

Louis who had insulted him in the Roost. The poor chump had called Sweet an ugly, gray-ass bastard. Sweet had drawn his pistol on him. He prodded him into an alley. He made him kneel and then he pissed on him. This was too much to take, so the kid lost his temper. Sweet shot him through the top of the head.

Sweet was laughing, in a good mood as he told me about it. It had cost him five grand to beat it. He told me he got a wire that Red Eye got life for croaking a whore in Pittsburgh.

Sweet had a complete answer to my problem. He said that since Serena hadn’t beefed I should go back into Ohio. No state was better at the time for house or street. Before I left I went to his John. The door had a padlock on the outside.

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Pal, my crapper is out of order.”

I went downstairs to the John in the bookie joint. On the way out I asked Patch Eye why Sweet didn’t get his toilet fixed.

The old ex-pimp, without looking up answered, “Shit, ain’t nothing wrong with the crapper. That cold bastard has his two whores locked in there for fucking with his scratch. They been in there three days.”

I walked toward my car. I wondered how long Sweet would keep them there and how long the whores could live with just water.

I got back from the city. I stopped downtown at Rachel’s suite. I stayed for the night. I outlined the move. The next morning I was looking out the window down on the street. There was a stooped white-haired joker dumping barrels of hotel garbage into a huge truck. It was Steve. I’d know him in hell! A hot-flash shot through me. I don’t know what happened after that.

Rachel told me I snatched my thirty-two from my coat pocket in the closet. I ran to the service elevator in my pajamas. She followed me all the way to the street. I didn’t say a word. The truck had pulled away when we reached the sidewalk.

She got me back upstairs. It had been a sucker play for a fugitive. Lucky for me no rollers showed on the scene. I dressed and told Rachel I’d be back later and I wanted the rest of the stable in her joint.

I stopped at a leather-goods shop and bought a small valise. It was about the size that a doctor carries. I stopped at several banks and cracked some of my big bills into enough singles to fill the bag. I went to Mama’s to prepare the flash. I filled it almost to the brim with singles. I put the remaining big bills on top. I was getting ready to ship my stable. With my plan I could ship

them without a strong fix. Even new whores think twice before leaving a rich pimp.

That afternoon they were all in Rachel’s plush suite. She was the boss bitch. They had twenty-five dollar a day, neat rooms on the same floor. I walked in. They were smoking gangster and eager for my speech.

They were anxious to get back on the track. I had loosened the catch on the bag. I casually hurled it onto the table before them. A bale of hundred-dollar bills jumped from the bag. Reefer enhances what you see. I saw on those whores’ faces that they were seeing every dollar of the mountain of greenbacks they had given me for the years I had been their man.

Confidence flooded their eyes. I finished my briefing and my instructions. I had built my shining castles in the air. Brother, I could have sent those whores to Siberia, in bikinis, in the wintertime. Keeping her wife-in-laws and my scratch straight up there in Toledo was the first acid test for Rachel as a bottom woman.

I stayed around Mama’s for a week. She was bugging me to embrace the Holy Ghost and the Fire. She begged me to square up and repent my sins. No, it was a little late for that. I moved onto Ohio again.

Cleveland was only a short hop to Toledo. I set up a mad apartment in the larger city. Cleveland was jumping. I was ready for the best pimping of my career. Kim ran off with a wealthy white trick but I didn’t miss her. Both towns were crawling with young fine whores. The name of the game was still “cop and blow.”

Within four mouths I had the three girls in Toledo and five in Cleveland. I was pimping good. I had a connection for staff. All was perfect except for one thing. Rachel’s name was ringing. Every pimp, con man and rich dope- peddler was shooting for her. They offered soft, irresistible propositions.

Her head was getting as big as a pumpkin. I didn’t want to lose her. I had another more serious reason for wanting to hold her. If I blew her, she might pull a runt on me and go to the F.B.I. I got it through the wire that a slick con-man out of New York was using his beautiful Jasper white girl as bait to cop Rachel. The same wire said that Rachel was getting weak for the broad.

I went to Toledo one early morning to Rachel’s. Sure enough there they were, the three of them in Rachel’s bed. Believe me they hadn’t gotten in there to recite bedtime stories. I was cool, icy as always. I let her con me that it was a party, all business of course. That wire had described that bastard con player and his freak woman.

I was in trouble. If it had been any other bitch in the stable except Rachel it wouldn’t have been worth a fleeting thought. I couldn’t lose Rachel, my bottom woman, in this shitty fashion to some ass-hole con player.

It could kill my career as a pimp. The news would flash in a dozen states. No, I couldn’t afford to lose her. I still had that expensive friend riding with me, that monkey on my back. Sweet would have had the solution to this tough problem right off the top of his head. Sweet, the week before, had shot himself in the temple. He left a bitter note, “Good-bye squares! Kiss my pimping ass!”

I felt nothing when I got the wire. I left her apartment and drove out into the country. I spun the wheels in my skull. I got the key to the riddle. It was cruel but perfect. If it worked I’d never have to worry that she’d blow or cross me with the F.B.I.

Rachel called me the next day. She told me she had just sent me three bills. She got them for the party I had crashed. When she cracked I knew I had to go through with the cross. The three bills she was sending had to be scratch she had been holding out. That con bastard was too pretty and slick to spend three fat-ones with a whore. I had to make an honest whore of her from now on.

I faked excitement when I told her about a sucker who was visiting Akron. It’s a small town, thirty miles from Cleveland. I told her I got a wire that the sucker had hit the numbers for twenty G’s. He had it all with him in his hotel room.

I sold her that she could take it off smooth and easy. She said she would be down the next day to get briefed in detail.

I had already driven to Akron and set the stage for her. I had rented a hotel room in a fair hotel. I contacted a dignified looking old ex-slum hustler down on his luck. He spruced up a wino friend of his for the play.

The whole arrangement: clothes, room, and a bill apiece for the actors, came to a half-grand. The slum hustler was to wait in a pool room nearby for my call.

Rachel got to my apartment at three P.M. We got to Akron around six. I told her one of the bellhops had told the sucker she would be there before seven. He was waiting for her.

I slipped a small vial of mineral oil into her palm. I told her it was Chloral Hydrate. Only two drops would knock the sucker out. I told her I would be waiting in the hotel bar for her.

She stopped at the desk. Sure enough he was expecting her. She went up. She came down within an hour nervous and jumpy. The sucker was out cold. She had searched the room. She couldn’t find the scratch. I went back to the room with her. I went through another search. The wino was lying there motionless. We gave up searching. We moved toward the door. I looked back at the wino.

I said, “Say Baby, he looks bad to me.”

I knelt beside him blocking her view with my back. I wiped my brow and turned my face toward her. My eyes were wide in alarm.

I said, “Baby, he’s dead I think.”

Most women, even whores, are terrified of dead bodies. She stood there paralyzed.

I said, “Don’t get panicky. Shut that door. I’ve got it! I know an underworld croaker here in town. Maybe he can bring him to. I know he will keep his mouth shut for a price, even if …”

She knew we couldn’t leave a murdered man here. She had stopped at the desk first before coming up. She was painfully aware of the big gap between theft and murder. I picked up the phone and got the pool room. I gave the fake doctor the hotel and room number. He came within five minutes carrying his empty bag.

She couldn’t see into it. I had told her to hide in the closet. Too many people had seen her already. He stooped down beside the wino. He fumbled with his pulse, his eyelids.

Finally he stood up and said, “He’s dead. I can’t help him. I’ll have to call the police.”

I could almost hear Rachel’s heart booming in the closet. We haggled for her benefit for ten minutes. Finally we had a deal. For five bills, he would keep his mouth shut. He would also contact a hoodlum who would get the body out of there and dispose of it. He left. Rachel and I got out of there fast.

Driving back to Cleveland, Rachel was in a trance. She squeezed tightly against me. I kept telling her she had nothing to worry about. After all we were together for life and her secret would always be safe with me. She found out about the hoax years later.

Rachel straightened up with that murder pressure on her. Toledo was on fire and in one month my three girls got nine cases between them. I pulled them out into Cleveland. Cleveland was lousy with pimps and whores and boosters from all over the country.

The mob of hustlers set the torch to Cleveland. By nineteen-fifty-three the streets were so hot a whore was lucky to stand up a week between falls. I was a fugitive. For almost a year I never left my apartment. I couldn’t risk arrest and a fingerprint check. I was down to four girls. That year in the apartment was cramping my style.

Mama had hit a romantic and financial jack-pot. She had moved to Los Angeles. She called me every week pleading with me to visit her. She wanted me to meet my new stepfather and stay for a while. I kept stalling her. I had heard that the smack in California was only six percent. The pimps out there were only half serious. This makes for bad pimping conditions.

Several Eastern pimps had gone to the coast in good shape. They had returned torn down. They said the Western whores were lazy and were satisfied with making chump change. The Western pimps had spoiled them.

I gave myself logical arguments against the move to California. Why should I expose my well-trained whores to that dangerous half-ass scene out West? What if I blew my family out there in the hinterlands?

I was thirty-four now. In any square profession I would have been in my prime. As a pimp I was getting elderly. I was stern and strict on my women.

Rachel wired me that a stud with a stable of boosters was in town with a load of wild Lilli Anne suits and Petrocelli vines at twenty percent of retail. She got me his number the next day.

I called him and got an appointment to look his stock over. I only left the apartment for important reasons. I decided I would cop a piece of stuff and a fresh outfit before seeing him.

He was staying at a crummy hotel on the East Side. He let me into a cracker-box three-room apartment. He sounded me down to make sure of my pedigree.

“So, you’re Iceberg, huh? I was in your town not long ago. Philly sure is hot.”

He knew me by reputation and that I was from Chicago. I said, “Yes, I’m Iceberg from the Windy.”

He said, “Say Jim, how ‘bout old Red Eye? I saw him in New York last month. He’s pimping a zillion. Surely you know him.”

I gave him that look, like I had caught him frenching a sissy.

I said, “Listen carefully, Jack. I don’t have time for bull-shit. I knew Red Eye. You saw him last month, Jack? You better see a head-shrinker. You’re flipping your top. Red Eye caught the big one in Pittsburgh five years ago.

He’s doing it all.”

He gave me a grin like he had swallowed a bottle of snot. He got the sizes from me. He said to cool it in his pad. He had to go to his stash across the street to get the merchandise.

I glanced into the tiny bedroom. There was a naked broad lying on the bed. I said to myself, “I wonder what kind of dog that is.”

I went to the bed and looked down at her. She was drunk, stoned. It looked like the runt. This broad was buxom, almost fat. I knew one way to be sure. I had lashed the blood out of her with that hanger whipping years ago. She would still have the scars. I flipped her over on her belly. They were there.

I stood there looking down at her. I remembered that tough bit in Leavenworth. Here at my mercy was that stinking bitch, Phyllis. Just the sight of her made me crazy.

I grabbed a cologne bottle off the dresser. I jerked the big top off. I got my bag out. I dumped enough of the twenty percent stuff into the top to croak a sick junkie. She was clean.

I spotted a bottle of mixer water on the floor. I filled the top and struck a match. I held it beneath the top. I rammed my gun into it. I drew up her reckoning.

I stabbed the outfit into a vein just back of her knees. Her red blood streaked up into the joint. I was just about to press the pacifier bulb. I looked out the window. I caught a glimpse of the joker darting across the street. He had a steamer trunk headed toward the front door of the hotel.

I froze, jerked the spike out of her. I thrust the loaded outfit inside my shoe underneath my instep. I pinned the bag to my shorts between my legs. I collapsed into the living-room chair just as he came through the door. I was sweating like hell. He was suspicious. He kept looking from the corner of his eye at his broad.

He thought I had been riding her in his absence. I wondered how long he’d had her. He was a wrong-doer. He’d cut her loose when he got hip to what he had. Sooner or later someone would pull his coat. He’d find out the runt had sent me to the joint. I was getting what I wanted from the merchandise. He slipped into the bedroom and checked her cat out.

I left with the dozen items I had bought. I knew I had bought going-to- California clothes. I had quizzed him about his plans. He was going to stay in Cleveland for weeks. I had to leave town. Now.

Phyllis was sure to get the wire from him that I was in town. I knew she

wouldn’t hesitate to drop a dime in the phone to the heat. She had to know about the escape. I drove away. I tried to picture the expression on her face when her man cracked to her that Iceberg had been up there alone with her while she was stoned.

I got a flight that night for L.A. It’s fabulous when a pimp’s bottom girl can be trusted to handle his scratch and his whores. She was welded to me by that murder cross. The stable would drive out later in the Hog.

Mama was radiantly happy out there and my stepfather was a wonderful square. They lived in a big house. L.A. was worse than the reports I had gotten. I got around in Mama’s Coupe de Ville. After the second night I went into the whore and pimp stomping grounds.

I stayed around Mama for another week then went up to Seattle. Glass Top’s name wasn’t ringing. In fact he was almost unknown. One stud told me Glass Top had croaked.

I copped a gorgeous hash-slinger up there. I turned her out that week. Lucky I did. I lost a girl back in Cleveland. Her appendix burst. I pulled the three left into Seattle.

After I had been in town six months, fate dealt me one off the top for a change. My bag was empty and the stuff in town was around six percent. I had to shoot three spoons to stay well. The girls were humping up a storm, I was getting no inside grief.

I was sitting in the Hog one day. An old withered stud walked past me. He came back and stooped down looking at me.

He shouted, “Ice, my old pimping buddy.”

I took a close look. It was Glass Top. He got in. He patted the scraggly processed hair on his nearly-bald head. He’d done a long bit in the state joint. He wasn’t pimping. An old square broad was feeding him. He was a drunk. Until I left town I bought him bottles and rapped with him. He croaked two days after I left town.

I ran into the croaker who aborted Helen. He had lost his license and done a short bit back East for an abortion. We started rapping a lot to each other. He knew most of the hustlers I knew so we had much in common. He kept telling me how bad I looked. He told me how handsome I’d been when I brought Helen to him.

He needled me. He expressed doubt that I had the guts to kick. He was game to help me kick if I was game to kick. I decided to let him help me. He warned me I would have to follow his every instruction. He had a house in

town. He still took a fast buck from his old hustle.

Rachel was the only girl in the family who knew I was hooked. None of the rest knew. I was going to stay at the Doc’s to kick. They thought I was out of town.

He used the system of reduction. We reached the tearing, puking, none-at- all stage. Let me tell you that beautiful croaker bastard was immune and rock- hard. I tried the raving, crying con on him. He would jab a needle into me to tranquilize me so he couldn’t hear my bleating. I tell you, if you have ever had the flu real bad, just multiply the misery, the aching torture by a thousand. That’s what it’s like to kick a habit.

It took two weeks. I was weak, but with an appetite like a horse. In another two weeks I was stronger than I’d been in years. The Doc will always be my man. If he hadn’t come to my rescue, and I had kept that habit until nineteen- sixty, I would have been a corpse within a week in that steel casket waiting for me.

21

THE STEEL CASKET

Seattle had played out. It was nineteen-fifty-eight. My stepfather died, leaving Mama all alone back in California. Her letters were full of her grief and loneliness. I had blown down to Rachel and the young hash-slinger I’d turned out.

I had put on fifty pounds since I kicked the habit. I weighed more than two-hundred pounds. Time had scissored away my hair in front. I didn’t look much like the mug shot of that sleek escapee.

I smoked a little gangster and snorted cocaine now and then. I actually copped a cap of H once with my C. I wanted to mix it in a speedball. It was hard to flush the H down the drain.

At almost forty I was ancient as a pimp. I looked like a black, fat seal in my expensive threads. For the first time in many years I had rediscovered my appetite for good food. I was slowing down. I spent most of my time reading in bed. The end of my pimping career wasn’t far in the future.

I made the decision to go back to the fast track. I stayed away from old haunts. I had put my two girls to work in the street near downtown. Most of their tricks were white. I stayed in a nice hotel nearby. They lived together in the same hotel. Three months after I got back, a fire changed my pimping setup. The change set up the chain of events that busted me for the escape.

I was taking a walk. I stopped to watch flames gut an apartment building. An old brown-skin stud was watching beside me. He was a sure-shot craps hustler. He also sold working togs to whores in houses in ten states. After the fire we went and had a drink together. We liked each other right away. For the next month we saw each other every day. I started going with him to the whorehouses to peddle his merchandise.

I’d always had contempt for whores who worked houses. They gave up

fifty percent of the scratch to a madam. I’d always believed a good whore went to the street to meet the trick. Even when I had the houses in Ohio my whores got their tricks in the street.

Lazy, half-ass whores worked houses and let the trick come to them. My friend, Bet ’Em Big, convinced me whorehouses were the thing for me. His points were that the wear and tear on a pimp was less. The houses were protected and the madams were responsible for falls. Also a girl didn’t need the complicated turn out for houses.

A pimp’s blows would be at least fifty percent less in the houses. He told me at my age I could grind up a bankroll in the houses. Then I could open a couple of my own and live to get a hundred years old. I wouldn’t live that long under the stress and strain of the street.

Two months later I had both my girls in houses. I got my scratch every Monday in money orders by registered mail. Just like he said, it was an easy way to pimp. The fifty percent off the top, I couldn’t miss. I never had it.

The girls would work maybe a month or two before coming in to visit me. I spent the time between with Bet ’Em Big. He was a real pal. He blew his top when I ignored his advice and tapped almost out for a new fifty-nine Hog. I loved him like a father. He knew all the percentages on craps and people.

His friendship and wisdom maybe helped me to stay away from H. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to jail I would have gone back to it. I was tempted a dozen times.

I moved Stacy, the younger whore, to a house in Montana. It was March. She was up there for the season. This meant every six weeks or so I’d have to go up there to service her and tighten my game. She was lonesome. She’d call and write to tell me how much she missed me.

She fell out with the madam and started working in a house run by a stud in the same town. I told Bet I was going up to visit her.

He said, “Ice, you can’t take good advice. You were a sucker to go broke on that new Hog. Now here is more good advice. Ice, not only should you not go up there, you better pull that fine bitch out of there. I know that stud. He’s a snake. Pull her out! I know a spot in Pennsylvania just as good. Inside of two days you can pull her and place her.”

I didn’t take his advice. I took a train up to visit her. I rented a room in a motel. I registered as Johnny Cato. It was on the outskirts of town. The only Negroes ever in town were whores in houses and pimps come to visit them.

She’d come to the motel in early morning after work. She confessed to me

that she woke up one day and found her boss in bed with her. In her alarm she struck him on the head with a heavy brass clock. It didn’t chill him. He wiped the blood away and gave her fifty slats to get his rocks. He begged her to quit me and be his woman. It was a bitch of a time to tell me.

It was the third and last day of my visit. It was Sunday night around nine. She didn’t work Sundays. We were playing around. I had my pajamas on. I had a cap of C in a pocket. I was just lighting a cigarette when a roller-type knock shook the door and me. I went to the door.

I said, “Yes, who is it?”

He said, “Police, open the door.”

I opened it. It was two red-faced Swede rollers. One was porcine, the other lanky. I put my shaking hands into the pajama pockets. My fingertips touched the scorching hot cap of cocaine. I hoped I was keeping the fear out of my face. I gave them a wide toothy smile. They came in and stood in the middle of the room. Their eyes were racing about the room. Stacy was open-mouthed in the bed.

I said, “Yes gentlemen, what can I do for you?” Lanky said, “We wanta see your ID.”

I went to the closet and got the phony John Cato Fredrickson ID. I put it in his palm. I felt cold sweat running down my back. They looked at it, then looked at each other.

Lanky said, “You are in violation of the law. You signed the motel register improperly. Why didn’t you sign your full name? What are you trying to hide? What are you doing here in town? It says here you’re a dancer. We don’t have a club in town that books entertainers.”

I said, “Officers, my professional name is Johnny Cato. I’ve got nothing to hide. My full name had always been too long for the marquees. I’ve fallen into the habit of using the shorter version.

“My legs went out last year. I don’t dance anymore. My wife and I decided to go into business. We are making a tour of this part of the country. We think that in your town we’ve found the ideal site for a Southern fried chicken shack. My wife has a secret recipe that should make us rich up here.” Porky said, “You’re a Goddamn black lying sonuvabitch. Every one of you Niggers come up here to open another cat house or suck your whore’s pussy. You and that bitch aren’t married. You’re a low life pimp and she’s your whore. I’ve seen her around. I’m telling you boy, get your Nigger ass out of

town. We don’t want you here.”

I said, “Yes Sir, I’ll forget about the restaurant like you say.”

They turned and walked out. I knew Stacy’s boss had put his finger on me. It was too late to catch the train back to the city. There was one a day at eight

P.M. I knew they’d be back. I was trapped. I’d heard radio bulletins warning that the highways were snowed under. I couldn’t even walk out of town. I snorted the sizzle and sat trying to figure a way out.

The chief of police came back at three the next afternoon. I let him in.

He said, “Boy, I’m not satisfied. I’m going to forget about the phony registration. Now there’s a more serious matter. If you and this young woman aren’t legally married you’ve broken a law I can’t overlook. When and where were you married?”

I thought fast. I tried to remember a courthouse fire from the newspapers. I couldn’t.

I said, “Sir, we were married three years ago in Waco, Texas. I just can’t understand why you doubt we’re married.”

He said, “I’m going to take you in. I’m going to check your story. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll let you go. If not, you’ll get a jail sentence.”

He took us down. We were mugged and fingerprinted. Afterwards we were taken to his office.

He said, “Boy, you lied to me. I called Waco. There’s no record of your marriage.”

They locked us up. An hour later we walked out on two-hundred dollar bonds each. We got a cab to the motel. I understood the bond delay. The joint had been searched. We got her stuff from the whorehouse and sat in the train station until eight P.M.

We got back to the city early that morning. I knew when my fingerprints got to Washington the F.B.I. would rush back the news I was a fugitive. I had to get out of town.

The police chief knew my destination when I left his town. “Bet ’Em Big” called Pennsylvania. Stacy was parked, ready to leave for the new spot the next day. The chief must have flown my fingerprints to Washington.

The city rollers, with a captain of guards from the joint busted Stacy and me. I was held for the escape. Stacy for harboring me. There was one angle I couldn’t figure. All the way to the lock-up it bothered me. How did the city police and that screw know just where in that big city to put their hands on me?

I had been transferred to county jail when I figured it out. I have made

many stupid mistakes in my life. None was more stupid than the one that put me back in the shit house. I had a letter in my bag from Stacy. The rollers that searched our room while we were in jail made a notation of my city address. I had played the hick coppers cheap and here I was with my balls in the fire.

Rachel rushed to me from the whorehouse. I fought the charge of escape. After all, they couldn’t prove it to the extent that they could tell in court how I had escaped. At my first hearing I told the judge I hadn’t escaped. I told him one night before midnight a screw unlocked the cell and took me to the front gate and released me. I had a friend who had supplied the scratch for the underground release.

It was a very thin story, but it was strong enough to forestall my return to the joint. I was sure bad things would happen to me back there. Bet visited me. He offered to do anything for me. I was lost. No one could help me.

Mama came from California to visit me. She was sick and old. In fact she was dying. She had heart trouble and diabetes. I don’t see how she made the trip. It was an old scene. I was in a barred cage. She was crying on the outside of it.

She sobbed, “Son, this is the last time we are going to see each other. Your Mama’s so tired. God gave me the strength to make the long trip to see my poor baby fore I go to sleep in Jesus’ arms. Son, it’s too bad you don’t love me as much as I love you.”

I was crying. I was squeezing her thin, pale hands in mine between the bars.

I said, “Now look Mama, you know we all got Indian blood in us. Mama you ain’t gonna die. Mama, I’ll live to get a hundred like Papa Joe, your father. Come on now Mama, stop it. Ain’t I got enough worry? Mama I love you. Honest Mama. Forgive me not writing regular and stuff like that. I love you Mama, I love you. Please don’t die. I couldn’t take it while I’m locked up. I’ll take care of you when I get out. I swear it Mama. Just don’t die. Please!”

The screw came up. The visit was over. His hard face softened in pity as he looked at her. He knew she was critically sick. I watched her move slowly away from me down the jail corridor. She got to the elevator. She turned and looked at me. She had a sad, pitiful look on her face. It reminded me of that stormy morning long ago she had stood in the rain and watched the van taking me to my first prison bit. I get a terrible lump in my throat even now when I relive that moment.

A week passed after Mama visited me and went back to California.

I went into court for the third and last time. The judge ordered me into the custody of the joint’s captain of screws. Stacy was released.

The captain and his aide were grimly silent. Their prison sedan sliced through the sparkling April day. I was on the rear seat. I gazed at the scurrying, lucky citizens on the street. I wondered what they’d use on me at the joint, rubber hoses or blackjacks? I felt so low. I wouldn’t have cared if I’d dropped dead right on the car seat.

We went through the big gate into the joint. The warm April sun shone down on the ancient grimy buildings.

The yard cons leaned on their brooms. They stared through the car window at me. The sedan came to a stop. We got out. They took off my handcuffs. I was taken into the same cell house from which I’d made the escape thirteen years before. I was locked in a cell on the flag.

In the early afternoon a screw marched me to the office of the chief of the joint’s security. He looked like a pure Aryan storm trooper sitting behind his desk. He didn’t have a blackjack or a rubber hose in his hand. He was grinning like maybe Herr Schickelgruber at that railroad coach in France. His voice was a lethal whisper.

He said, “Well, well, so you’re that slick blackbird who flew the coop. Cheer up, you only owe us eleven months. You’re lucky you escaped before the new law. There’s one on the books now. It penalizes escapees with up to an extra year.

“Ah, what a shame it isn’t retroactive. I am going to put you into a punishment cell for a few days. Nothing personal mind you. Hell, you didn’t hurt me with your escape. Tell me confidentially, how did you do it?”

I said, “Sir, I wish I knew. I am subject to states of fugue. I came to that night and I was walking down the highway a free man. Sir, I certainly wish I could tell you how I did it.” His pale cold eyes hardened into blue agates. His grin widened.

He said, “Oh, it’s all right my boy. Tell you what, you’re a cinch to get a clear memory of just how you did it before long. Put in a request to the cell- house officer to see me when you regain the memory. Well good luck my boy, ’til we meet again.”

A screw took me to the bathhouse. I took a shower and changed into a tattered con uniform. A croaker examined me, then back to the cell house. The screw took me to a row of tiny filthy cells on the flag. My first detention

cell was on the other side of the cell house. The screw stopped in front of a cell. He unlocked it. He prodded me into it. It was near the front of the cell house. I looked around my new home.

It was a tight box designed to crush and torture the human spirit. I raised my arms above me. My fingertips touched the cold steel ceiling. I stretched them out to the side. I touched the steel walls. I walked seven feet or so from the barred door to the rear of the cell. I passed a steel cot.

The mattress cover was stained and stinking from old puke and crap. The toilet and washbowls were encrusted with greenish-brown crud. It could be a steel casket for a weak skull after a week or two. I wondered how long they’d punish me in the box.

I turned and walked to the cell door. I stood grasping the bars, looking out at the blank cell-house wall in front of me.

I thought, “The Nazi figures after a week or so in this dungeon I’ll be crying and begging to tell him how I escaped. I’m not going to pussy-out. Hell, I got a strong skull. I could do a month in here.”

I heard a slapping noise against the steel space between the cells. I saw a thin white hand holding a square of paper. I stuck my arm through the bars of my cell door. I took the paper. It was a kite with two cigarettes and three matches folded inside.

It read, “Welcome to Happiness Lane. My name is Coppola. The vine said you’re Lancaster, the guy who took a powder thirteen years ago. I was clerking in an office up front. I took my powder a year and a half ago.

“They brought me back six months ago. I’ve started to cash in my chips a dozen times. You’ll find out what I mean. I’ve been right in this cell ever since. I got another year to go with the new time stacked on top for the escape. I got a detainer warrant from Maine for forgery up front.

“We’re in big trouble, buddy. The prick up front has cracked up four or five cons in these cells since I came back … There’s six of us on the row now. Only three are escapees. The rest are doing short punishment time like two days to a week. I’ll give you background on other things later, I know what screws will get anything you want for a price.”

I lit a cigarette and sat on the cot. I thought, Coppola is a helluva stud to keep his skull straight for six months on Happiness Lane. He doesn’t know I’m just here for a few days.”

That night we had a supper of sour Spanish rice. I heard the shuffling feet of cons filing into the cell house. They were going into their cells on the tiers

overhead. The blaring radio loudspeakers and the lights went off at nine. Over the flushing of toilets and epidemic farting, I heard my name mentioned. The speaker was on the tier just above my cell.

He said, “Jim, how about old Iceberg, the mack man? Jim, a deuce will get you a sawbuck the white folks will croak him down there. A pimp ain’t got the heart to do a slat down there.”

Jim said, “Jack, I hope the pimp bastard croaks tonight. One of them pimps put my baby sister on stuff.”

I dozed off. After midnight I woke up. Somebody was screaming. He was pleading with someone not to kill him. I heard thudding sounds. I got up and went to the cell door. I heard Coppola flush his john.

I stage whispered, “Coppola, what’s happening, man?”

He whispered, “Don’t let it bug you, Lancaster. It’s just the night screws having their nightly fun and exercise. They pull their punching bags from the cells on the other side. It’s where drunks and old men are held for court in the morning.

“Buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Don’t give them any lip if they ever come by and needle you. They’ll beat hell out of you. Then take all your clothes off and put you in a stripped cell. That’s one with nothing in it, just the cold concrete floor. Buddy, there are at least a dozen ways to die in here.” All the rest of the night I lay staring at the blank dirty wall in front of me. I wondered what Rachel and Stacy were doing. I had to make contact with a screw to mail some letters on the outside for me. The joint censors would never let whore instructions pass through. Every few minutes a screw would

pass and flash his light on me.

That morning I watched the cell-house cons file past my cell on the way to breakfast and then to their work. All new arrivals the day before were also in this line.

That afternoon I got letters from Stacy and Rachel. They had also sent money orders. They missed their strong right arm. They were working bars downtown. “Bet” was handling any falls they might take.

Coppola within the first week hipped me to the angles of survival. I had a screw who would take letters directly to the girls. He would get his pay-off from them. He would bring me cash from them.

I got a letter from Mama. I could hardly read the shaky writing. She sent me religious tracts inside it. I was really worried about her. The tight cell and the fear of a year in it was getting to me. The little sleep I got was crowded

with nightmares. I was eating good at high prices. I still lost weight.

The first month I lost thirty pounds. Then I got bad news twice within the fifth week. I got a letter from Stacy. Bet had been found dead on his toilet stool at home. It really shook me. He had been a real friend. I got a very short note from Rachel. She was in Cleveland.

It said, “I ran into an old doctor friend of yours the other night. He was looped. He bought me a drink. Lucky for me the bartender asked how you were doing. The doctor spilled his guts. He told me about a dead patient of his who came back to life. My worst wishes. P.S. Please drop dead. I’ll keep the Hog.”

The joint waived the balance of Coppola’s time to face the rap in Maine. The skull pressure was getting larger. The cell was getting tighter. With Coppola gone I was in real trouble the third month. It was like a deadly hex was at work to crack me up.

None of the screws would cop heavy drugs for me. I settled for whiskey. I stopped using the safety razor. I didn’t want to see the gaunt ugly stranger in my sliver of mirror. It wasn’t just the cell. It was the sights and sounds of the misery and torment on the row and in the nightmares.

Mama was bedridden. She was too sick to write. I got telegrams and letters from her friends. They were all praying that I’d get out before Mama passed. I got a pass to the visitors cage. A screw took me and stood behind me the whole time. It was Stacy. She was pregnant and living with an old hustler. Her eyes told me how bad I looked. Her letters dropped off to one a month with no scratch.

At the end of the fourth month my skull was shaking on my shoulders like I had palsy. A con on the row blew his top one night around midnight. He woke up the whole cell house. At first he was cursing God and his mother. The screws brought him past my cell.

In my state the sight of him almost took me into madness. He was buck naked and jabbering a weird madman’s language through a foamy jib. It was like the talking in tongues Holy Rollers do. He was jacking-off his stiff swipe with both hands. I gnawed into my pillow like the runt to keep from screaming.

The next day I put in a request to see the Nazi. Nothing happened. A week later I was sitting on the John with my head between my knees. I heard the morning line moving to breakfast. The line had stalled for a moment right outside my cell door.

I looked up into a pair of strange almost orange eyes sunk into an old horribly scarred face. It was Leroy. I had stolen Chris from him many years ago. He still remembered me. He stared at me and smiled crookedly as the line moved out.

I got my screw to check his rap sheet. The screw gave me the whole rundown. Since nineteen-forty Leroy had been arrested more than a hundred times for common drunk. He had also been committed to mental hospitals twice. I was forty-two. I was twenty when I stole Chris from him. I asked the screw to pull strings to send him to another cell house. I gave him a rundown on the Chris steal and how weak Leroy had been for her. The screw told me he couldn’t cut it.

Leroy was doing only five days for drunk. Leroy had to stay in the cell house. I wondered how Leroy would try for revenge. I had to be careful in the morning for the next five days. I had to keep my feet and legs away from the cell door. Leroy might score for a shiv and try to hack something off when he passed my cell. I worried all day about what he would do. Could he somehow get gasoline and torch me?

That night I heard the voice for the first time. The lights were out. The cell house was quiet. The voice seemed to be coming through a tiny grille at the head of the cot.

A light always burned in the breezeway behind the grille. The pipes for all the plumbing for the cells were there. I got down on my hands and knees and looked through the grille’s tiny holes. I couldn’t see anybody.

I got back on the cot. The voice was louder and clearer. It sounded friendly and sweet like a woman consoling a friend. I wondered if cons on one of the tiers above me were clowning with each other.

I heard my name in the flow of chatter. I got back down and listened at the grille. A light flooded the corner. It was the screw. I spun around on my knees facing him. The light was in my eyes. He said, “What the hell are you doing?”

I said, “Officer, I heard a voice. I thought someone was working back there.”

He said, “Oh, you poor bastard. You won’t pull this bit. You’re going nuts ‘Slim.’ Now stop that nonsense and get in that cot and stay there.”

The cellhouse lights woke me up. My first thought was Leroy. I got up and sat on the cot. Then I thought about the voice. I wasn’t sure now. Maybe it had been a dream.

I wondered whether I should ask the screw about it. One thing for sure, dream or not, I didn’t want to go nuts. My mind hooked on to what I’d heard the old con philosopher say about that screen in the skull. I remembered what the books at federal prison said about voices and even people that only existed inside a joker’s skull.

I thought, “After this when I get the first sign of a sneaky worry, thought or idea, I’ll fight it out of my skull.”

Maybe I wasn’t dreaming when I heard that voice. If I hear it again I’ll have some protection. I’ll keep a strong sane voice inside to fight off anything screwy from going on.

Every moment I’ll stand guard over my thoughts until I get out of here. I can do it. I just have to train that guard. He’s got to be slick enough not to let trouble by him. I’ll make him shout down the phony voices. He’ll know they’re not real right away.

I got up and went to the face bowl. I heard the rumbling feet of the cons coming off the tiers. I was washing my face. I heard a series of sliding bumps on the floor behind me. It was like several newsboys all throwing your paper on the porch in rotation. Then I smelled it. I turned toward the door. I squinted through the soap on my eyelids. I had been bombed with crap.

It was oozing off the wall. The solid stuff had rolled to my feet. Pieces of loosely rolled newspaper were the casings. Cons were passing my door snickering. I felt dizzy. A big lead balloon started inflating inside my chest. I remembered the inside guard. He was new and late on the job. I puked.

I shouted over and over, “Watch out now, it’s only crap, it’s only crap. It’s just crap. Watch out, it can’t hurt you. It’s only stinking crap.”

A screw stood at the cell door twitching his nose. He was screaming, “Shut Up!”

He opened the cell. I got a bucket of hot water and a scrub brush. I cleaned the cell. The screw asked me who fouled my nest. I told him I didn’t know.

My screw came to see me at noon. He told me how Leroy had enlisted the crap-bombers. Leroy told them I had put the finger on him years ago when he got the bit for the Papa Tony beating. My screw dropped the truth around the cell house. All the bombers were down on Leroy. They dared him to bother me again. I was safe from Leroy. I didn’t mourn when Leroy finished his five-day bit. It was the end of my sixth month. I beat down worry, voices, and countless thoughts of suicide with the skull-guard plan.

A friend of Mama’s sent me a telegram. Mama had been stricken. The

hospital doctors had given her up. Then she bounced back. She was very sick now, but still alive. The telegram gave my skull gimmick a tough test.

I had a very sad day around the middle of the seventh month. A booster from New York busted on his second day in town was on the tier above me. A con on my row several cells down called me one night to borrow a book. A moment later I heard my name called from up above. He came down next morning and rapped to me. His job was in the cell house.

The booster asked me if I were the Iceberg who was a friend of Party Time. I told him yes. He didn’t say anything for awhile. Finally he told me Party had often spoken of me as the kid he once hustled with who grew up to be Iceberg the pimp.

He told me Party had copped the beautiful girlfriend of a dope dealer when he got a bit. Party turned her out. The dope dealer did his bit. The broad tried to cut Party loose to go back to a life of ease.

Party went gorilla on her. He broke her arm. Two months later Party copped some H. He didn’t know his connection was a pal of the dealer who got the bit. It was H all right mixed with flakes of battery acid. I didn’t sleep that night.

I had come to a decision in that awful cell. I was through with pimping and drugs. I got insight that perhaps I could never have hoped to get outside. I couldn’t have awakened if I had been serving a normal bit. After I got the mental game down pat I could see the terrible pattern of my life.

Mama’s condition and my guilty conscience had a lot to do with my decision. Perhaps my age and loss of youth played their parts. I had found out that pimping is for young men, the stupid kind.

I had spent more than half a lifetime in a worthless, dangerous profession. If I had stayed in school, in eight years of study I could have been an M.D. or lawyer. Now here I was, slick but not smart, in a cell. I was past forty with counterfeit glory in my past, and no marketable training, no future. I had been a bigger sucker than a square mark. All he loses is scratch. I had joined a club that suckered me behind bars five times.

A good pimp has to use great pressure. It’s always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim. I was weary of clutching quicksilver whores and the joints.

I was at the end of the ninth month of the bit. I got a front office interview. I was contesting my discharge date. I was still down for an eleven month bit.

An agent of the joint had been in the arresting group. I spent thirty days in

county jail before the transfer to the joint to finish out the year. I knew little or nothing about law. I was told at the interview I had to do eleven months. I wasn’t afraid I’d crack up serving the extra month. By this time I had perfect control of my skull.

Mama might die in California at any time. I had to get to her before she died. I had to convince her I loved her, that I appreciated her as a mother. That she and not whore-catching was more important to me. I had to get there as much for myself as for her.

I lay in that cell for two weeks. I wrote a paper based on what I believed were the legal grounds for my release at the expiration of ten months. It had subtle muscle in it too. I memorized the paper. I rehearsed it in the cell. Finally I felt I had the necessary dramatic inflection and fluid delivery. It was two days before the end of the tenth month. I was called in two weeks after I had requested the second interview.

I must have looked like a scarecrow as I stood before him. I was bearded, filthy, and ragged. He was immaculate seated behind his gleaming desk. He had a contemptuous look on his face.

I said, “Sir, I realize that the urgent press of your duties has perhaps contributed to your neglect of my urgent request for an interview. I have come here today to discuss the vital issue of my legal discharge date.

“Wild rumors are circulating to the effect that you are not a fair man, that you are a bigot, who hates Negroes. I discounted them immediately when I heard them. I am almost dogmatic in my belief that a man of your civic stature and intellect could ill afford or embrace base prejudice.

“In the spirit of fair play, I’m going to be brutally frank. If I am not released the day after tomorrow, a certain agent of mine here in the city is going to set in motion a process that will not only free me, but will possibly in addition throw a revealing spotlight on certain not too legal, not too pleasant activities carried on daily behind these walls.

“I have been caged here like an animal for almost ten months. Like an animal, my sensitivity of seeing and hearing has been enhanced. I only want what is legally mine. My contention is that if your Captain of guards, who is legally your agent, had arrested me and confined me on such an unlikely place as the moon for thirty days, technically and legally I would be in the custody of this institution. Sir, the point is unassailable. Frankly I don’t doubt that my release will occur on legal schedule. Thank you, Sir, for the interview.”

The contempt had drained out of his face. I convinced him I wasn’t running a bluff. His eyes told me he couldn’t risk it. After all, surely he knew how easy it was to get contraband in and out of the rotten joint. Getting a kite to an agent would be child’s play. I didn’t sleep that night. The next day I got a discharge notice. I would be released on legal schedule.

22

DAWN

I had amazed cons and guards alike, I had survived it. I was getting out in twenty-four hours. I was almost forty-three sitting in a cell.

I thought, “I have been in a deadly trap. Have I really escaped it? Does fate have grimmer traps set? Can I learn to be proud of my black skin? Can I adjust to the stark reality that black people in my lifetime had little chance to escape the barbed-wire stockade in the white man’s world?”

Only time and the imponderables inside me would answer the questions.

I had no one except Mama. They dressed me out. My clothes flopped around on my skeletal frame. I still hadn’t told them how I had escaped. Cons cheered me as I shuffled toward freedom. They knew how I had suffered and what the awful odds had been that I wouldn’t have made it.

A friend of Mama’s had sent me my fare. As the plane flew over the sea of neon, I looked down at the city where I had come so many years ago in search of an empty lonesome dream.

I thought of Henry and the sound of that pressing machine. Of Mama when she was young and pretty. How wonderful it had been back there in Rockford. She would come into my room at bedtime, a tender ghost, and tuck me in warmly and kiss me goodnight. It seemed a long time before I finally got to her.

When I walked into her room, death was there in her tiny gray face. Her eyes brightened and flashed a mother’s deathless love. Her embrace was firm and sure. My coming to her had been like a miracle. It was the magic that gave her strength.

She clutched life for an added six months. I never left the house for those six months. We would lie side by side on twin beds and talk far into the night. She made me promise that I would use the rest of my life in a good

way. She told me I should get married and have children.

I tried hard to make up for all those years I had neglected her. It’s hard to square an emotional debt. That last sad day she looked up into my eyes from the hospital bed.

In a voice I could scarcely hear through her parched lips, she whispered, “Forgive me Son, forgive me. Mama didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

I stood there watching her last tears rolling down her dead cheeks from the blank eyes. I crushed her to me.

I tried to get my final plea past death’s grim shield, “Oh Mama, nothing has been your fault, believe me, nothing. If you are foolish enough to think so, then I forgive you.”

I staggered blindly from the hospital. I went to the parking lot. I fell across the car hood and cried my heart out. I stopped crying. I thought Mama had really gotten in the last word this time.

These stinking whores would have gotten a huge charge if they could have seen old Iceberg out there wailing like a sucker because his old lady was dead.

EPILOGUE

 

I am lying in the quiet dawn. I am writing this last chapter for the publisher.

I am thinking, “How did a character like me, who for most of his life had devoted himself to the vilest career, ever square up? By all the odds, I should have ended a broken, diseased shell, or died in a lonely prison cell.”

I guess three of the very important reasons are lying asleep in the bedroom across the hall. I can see their peaceful, happy faces. They don’t know how hard and often discouraging it is for me to earn a living for them in the square world.

This square world is a strange place for me. For the last five years I have tried hard, so hard, to solve its riddles, to fit in.

Catherine, my beautiful wife, is wonderful and courageous. She’s a perfect mother to our adorable two-year-old girl, and our sturdy, handsome three- year-old boy.

In this new world that isn’t really square at all, I have had many bitter experiences. I remember soon after my marriage how optimistic I was as I set out to apply for the sales jobs listed in the want ads.

I knew that I was a stellar salesman. After all, hadn’t I proved my gift for thirty years? The principles of selling are the same in both worlds. The white interviewers were impressed by my bearing and apparent facility with words. They sensed my knowledge of human nature.

But they couldn’t risk the possible effect that a Negro’s presence would have on the firm’s all white personnel. In disgust and anger, I would return home and sulk. Bitterly I would try to convince myself to go back into the rackets. Catherine always said the right things and gave me her love and understanding.

There was another indispensable source of help and courage during these hard times. She’s a charming, brilliant woman. She had been a friend to my mother. She functioned as a kind of psychotherapist. She explained and pointed out to me the mental phases I was passing through. She gave me insight to fight the battle. To her I shall always be grateful.

The story of my life indicates that my close friends were few. Shortly before I started this book I met a man I respected. I thought he was a true friend. I was bitterly disillusioned to discover he wasn’t. I’m glad in a way it turned out the way it did. I’ve always come back stronger after a good kick in the ass.

I have had many interesting and even humorous experiences in this new life. They will have to wait for now. I see my little family is awake. I’ll have to light the heater. I can’t let them get up in the early morning chill.

How about it, an Iceberg with a warm heart?

GLOSSARY

 

APPLE, New York City BANG, injection of narcotics BEEF, criminal complaint

BELL, notoriety connected to one’s name BILL, a hundred dollars

BIT, prison term BITE, price

BLACK GUNION, powerful, thick, dark, gummy marijuana BOO KOOS, plenty

BOOSTER, shoplifter BOOT, Negro

BOSS, very good, excellent

BOTTOM WOMAN, pimp’s main woman, his foundation BOY, heroin

BREAKING LUCK, a whore’s first trick of working day BRIGHT, morning

BULL SCARE, blustering bluff BUSTED, arrested and/or convicted C, cocaine

CANNON, pickpocket CAN, derriere

CAP, a small glycerin container for drugs CAT, female sexual organ

CHILI PIMP, small-time one-whore pimp CHIPPIED, light periodic use of heavy drugs

CHUMP CHANGE, just enough money for basic needs CIRCUS LOVE, to run the gamut of the sexual perversions COAST, somnolent nodding state of heroin addict

COCKTAILED, to put a marijuana butt into the end of a conventional cigarette for smoking

COME DOWN, return to normal state after drug use

COP AND BLOW, pimp theory, to get as many whores as leave him COPPED, get or capture

CRACK WISE, usually applied to an underworld neophyte who spouts hip terminology to gain status

CROAK, kill

CROSSES, to trick or trap

CUT LOOSE, to refuse to help, to disdain

DAMPER, a place holding savings, a bank, safe deposit box, etc.; to stop or quell

DERBY, head, refers to oral copulation DIRTY, in possession of incriminating evidence

DOG, older, hardened whore, or young sexual libertine DOSSING, sleeping

DOWN, a pimp’s pressure on a whore, or his adherence to the rules of the pimp game; when a whore starts to work

FIX, to bribe so an illegal operation can go with impunity; also an injection of narcotics

FLAT-BACKER, a whore who gets paid for straight sexual intercourse FREAK, sexual libertine

FRENCH, oral copulation G, one thousand dollars GANGSTER, marijuana

GEORGIAED, to be taken advantage of sexually without receiving money

GIRL, cocaine

GORILLA, to use physical force GORILLA PIMP, no brains, all muscle GRAND, one thousand dollars

H, heroin

HARD LEG, an older, street-hardened used-up whore HEAT, police, or adverse street conditions for hustlers HIDE, wallet

HOG, Cadillac HOOKS, hands HORNS, ears HYPE, addict

JASPER, lesbian JEFFING, low level con JIB, mouth

KEISTER, derriere KITE, note KITTY, Cadillac

LARCENY, to turn against by vocal condemnation LINES, money

LIP, lawyer MACKING, pimping MARK, victim; sucker

MITT MAN, a hustler who uses religion and prophecy to con his victims, usually the victims are women

MOP, hair

MUCKTY-MUCKS, a temptuous term applied to the rich and privileged by the poor and underprivileged

MURPHY, con game played on suckers looking for whores NUT ROLL, a pretense at stupidity or unawareness

OKEE DOKE, a con game

OIL, pay-off money to the police OUTFIT, hypodermic kit used by addicts

PACIFIER BULB, the rubber top of a baby’s pacifier used by addicts to draw up drugs through the eye dropper

PIECE, measurement of narcotics; usually an ounce PIECE OF STUFF, one ounce of narcotics PINNING, looking

POKE, wallet or bankroll REEFER, marijuana

ROLLER, policeman, usually plain clothes ROUST, stopped, harassed by police SHAKE, extort

SHEET, police record SHIELD, badge

SHIV, knife, usually made by convicts from various objects SHORT, car

SIZZLE, narcotics carried on the person

SLAT, one usually refers to money or length of prison term

SLUM HUSTLER, a phony jewelry salesman SMACK, heroin

SNATCH, female sexual organ SNORT, sniff or inhale SPADE, Negro

SPEED BALLS, a combination of heroin and cocaine injected SPIC, Mexican

SPIELING, talking, a term used by older hustlers and pimps SQUARE UP, get out of the life

STABLE, a group of whores belonging to one pimp STALL, an accomplice of a cannon

STAND UP, to endure or survive STASH, hiding place

STING, rob STRIDES, trousers

STUFF ON, to play on or con THREADS, clothes

THREE WAY, orally, rectally, vaginally TO PULL COAT, to inform and teach

TURNED OUT, introduced to the fast life or drugs UPTIGHT, in trouble, financial or otherwise

VIC, mark, victim VINE, suit

WHALE, throw, usually applied to throwing dice WIRE, information, message, etc.

YEASTING, to build up or exaggerate

YELLOW, a yellow capsule containing barbiturate powder PRAT, to pretend rejection to increase desire

PEEL OFF, removal of only a portion of money from a wallet or roll

 

 

 

All rights reserved, no one is authorized to reproduce any portion of this book without the written consent of Dick Gregory Copyright 2011 by Dick Gregory First Edition

Nigger/Dick Gregory p. cm. ISBN: 978-1-936445-196

“Hot damn,

 

we’re going to bust this thing.

“This is a revolution. It started long before I came into it, and I may die before it’s over, but we’ll bust this thing and cut out this cancer. America will be as strong and beautiful as it should be, for black folks and white folks. We’ll all be free then, free from a system that makes a man less than a man, that teaches hate and fear and ignorance.

“You didn’t die a slave for nothing, Momma. You brought us up. You and all those Negro mothers who gave their kids the strength to go on, to take that thimble to the well while the whites were taking buckets. Those of us who weren’t destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we’re ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. Nigger.

“When we’re through, Momma, there won’t be any niggers anymore.”

Dear Momma—Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word “nigger” again, remember they are advertising my book.

This page is for Marjorie Rubin,

 

who helped to make all the other pages possible.

Contents

Not Poor, Just Broke I

II III IV V VI VII VIII

"... and they didn’t even have what I wanted." I

II III IV V VI VII VIII

One Less Door I

II III IV V VI VII VIII

Richard Claxton Gregory was born on Columbus Day 1932. A welfare case. You’ve seen him on every street corner in America. You knew he had rhythm by the way he snapped his cloth while he shined your shoes. Happy little black boy, the way he grinned and picked your quarter out of the air. Then he ran off and bought himself a Twinkie cupcake, a bottle of Pepsi-Cola, and a pocketful of caramels.

 

You didn’t know that was his dinner. And you never followed him home.

Not Poor, Just Broke

I

 

It’s a sad and beautiful feeling to walk home slow on Christmas Eve after you’ve been out hustling all day, shining shoes in the white taverns and going to the store for the neighbors and buying and stealing presents from the ten-cent store, and now it’s dark and still along the street and your feet feel warm and sweaty inside your tennis sneakers even if the wind finds the holes in your mittens. The electric Santa Clauses wink at you from windows. You stop off at your best friend’s house and look at his tree and give him a ballpoint pen with his name on it. You reach into your shopping bag and give something to everybody there, even the ones you don’t know. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have anything for you because it feels so good to be in a warm happy place where grown-ups are laughing. There are daddies around. Your best friend’s so happy and excited, standing there trying on all his new clothes. As you walk down the stairs you hear his mother say: “Boo, you forgot to say good-bye to Richard, say good-bye to Richard, Boo, and wish him a . . .”

Then you’re out on the street again and some of the lights have gone out. You take the long way home, and Mister Ben, the grocer, says, “Merry Christmas, Richard,” and you give him a present out of the shopping bag, and you smile at a wino and give him a nickel, and you even wave at Grimes, the mean cop. It’s a good feeling. You don’t want to get home too fast.

And then you hit North Taylor, your street, and something catches your eye and you lift your head up and it’s there in your window. Can’t believe it. You start running and the only thing in the whole world you’re mad about is that you can’t run fast enough. For the first time in a long while the cracked orange door says: “Come on in, little man, you’re home now,” and there’s a wreath and lights in the window and a tree in the kitchen near the coal closet and you hug your momma, her face hot from the stove. Oh, Momma, I’m so glad you did it like this because ours is new, just for us, everybody else’s tree been up all week long for other people to see, and, Momma, ours is up just for us. Momma, oh, Momma, you did it again.

My beautiful momma smiles at me like Miss America, and my brothers and sisters dance around that little kitchen with the round wooden table and the orange-crate chairs.

“Go get the vanilla, Richard,” said Momma, “Presley, peel some sweet potatoes.

Go get the bread out the oven, Dolores. You get away from that duckling, Garland. Ronald, oh, Ronald, you be good now, stand over there with Pauline. Oh, Richard, my little man, did you see the ham Miz White from the Eat Shop sent by, and the bag of nuts from Mister Myers and the turkey from Miz King, and wouldn’t you know, Mister Ben, he . . .”

“Hey, Momma, I know some rich people don’t got this much, a ham, and a turkey, Momma . . .”

“The Lord, He’s always looking out for my boys, Richard, and this ain’t all, the white folks’ll be by here tomorrow to bring us more things.”

Momma was so happy that Christmas, all the food folks brought us and Mister Ben giving us more credit, and Momma even talked the electric man into turning the lights on again.

“Hey, Momma, look here, got a present for Daddy. A cigarette lighter, Momma, there’s even a place to scratch a name on it.”

“What you scratch on it, Richard, Big Pres or Daddy?”

 

“Nothing, Momma. Might have to give Daddy’s present to old Mister White from the Eat Shop again.”

She turned away and when she turned back her eyes were wet. Then she smiled her Miss America smile and grabbed my shoulder. “Richard, my little man, if I show you something, you won’t tell nobody, will you?”

“What is it, Momma?”

 

“I got something for you.”

 

“Oh, Momma, you forgot, everything’s under the tree.” “This is something special, just for you, Richard.”

“Thanks, Momma, oh, thanks, how’d you know I wanted a wallet, Momma, a real wallet like men have?”

Momma always gave each of us something special like that, something personal

that wasn’t under the tree, something we weren’t supposed to tell the other kids about. It always came out, though. Garland and I’d be fighting and one of us would say, “Momma likes me better than you, look what she gave me,” and we both found out the other got a secret present, too.

But I loved that wallet. First thing I did was fill out the address card. If I got hit by a car someone would know who I am. Then I put my dollars in it, just like men do. Ran outside that night and got on a streetcar and pulled out my wallet and handed the conductor a dollar.

“Got anything smaller, boy?”

 

“Sure, mister,” I said and I pulled out my wallet again and took a dime out of the coin purse and snapped it shut and put the dollar back in the long pocket and closed the wallet and slipped it into my back pocket. Did the same thing on the way back home.

Did we eat that night! It seemed like all the days we went without food, no bread for the baloney and no baloney for the bread, all the times in the summer when there was no sugar for the Kool-Aid and no lemon for the lemonade and no ice at all were wiped away. Man, we’re all right.

After dinner I went out the back door and looked at the sky and told God how nobody ever ate like we ate that night, macaroni and cheese and ham and turkey and the old duckling’s cooking in the oven for tomorrow. There’s even whiskey, Momma said, for people who come by. Thanks, God, Momma’s so happy and even the rats and roaches didn’t come out tonight and the wind isn’t blowing through the cracks.

How’d you know I wanted a wallet, God? I wonder if all the rich people who get mink coats and electric trains got that one little thing nobody knew they wanted. You know, God, I’m kinda glad you were born in a manger. I wonder, God, if they had let Mary in the first place she stopped at, would you have remembered tonight? Oh, God, I’m scared. I wish I could die right now with the feeling I have because I know Momma’s going to make me mad and I’m going to make her mad, and me and Presley’s gonna fight . . .

“Richard, you get in here and put your coat on. Get in here or I’ll whip you.”

 

See what I mean, God, there she goes already and I’m not even cold, I’m all wrapped up in You.

“What’s wrong, Richard? Why you look so strange?” “You wouldn’t understand, Momma.”

“I would, Richard, you tell me.”

 

“Well, I came out to pray, Momma, way out here so they wouldn’t hear me and laugh at me and call me a sissy. God’s a good God, ain’t He, Momma?”

“Yes, Richard.”

 

“Momma, if I tell you something, would you laugh at me, would you say I’m crazy, would you say I was lying? Momma?”

“What is it, Richard?”

 

“I heard Him talk to me, Momma.”

 

She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me against her. “He talks to people, Richard, some people that are real special and good like you. Do me a favor, Richard?”

“Sure, Momma.”

 

“Next time you talk to Him, ask Him to send Daddy home.”

 

#

“Let me stay up and look out the window with you, Momma.” “Everybody’s in bed, Richard.”

“All my life, Momma, I wanted to stay up with you on Christmas Eve and look out that window with you, Momma. I won’t laugh at you.”

“What you mean, Richard?”

 

“You’re waiting on him, ain’t you? I know, Momma, every Christmas Eve you take a bath and put on that perfume and those clothes from the rich white folks

and get down there on your knees in front of that window looking for Daddy.” “Richard, you better get on to bed.”

“I know, Momma, that whiskey ain’t for people coming by, that’s for Daddy.” “Richard, you go on to bed and when he gets here I’ll wake you up.”

“No, Momma, I want to sit up with you . . . Momma?” “Yes, Richard?”

“I shoulda got a present for Mister White, ’cause I know Daddy’s coming to get his this year.”

 

#

There were a lot of things I wanted to tell Momma that night while we sat and waited for Daddy, while we prayed on our knees, and dozed and hugged each other against the cold and jumped up like jacks every time we heard a noise on the street. But I never did. Sometimes I think she knew anyway.

I wanted to say to her, Momma, you remember that day I came home and told you I was at Doctor Jackson’s house? And how he liked me, Momma, and told me I’d be a good doctor? How he’s going to help me learn to read, and how he told me when it gets too cold to study in my house I could come by his house? Remember that, Momma? It was a lie. I played all that day in a vacant lot.

I guess she knew. She never pressed me for names when I told her about all the people who liked me, all the people I created in my mind, people to help poor folks. I couldn’t believe God had made a world and hadn’t put none of those people in it.

I made up a schoolteacher that loved me, that taught me to read. A teacher that didn’t put me in the idiot’s seat or talk about you and your kind. She didn’t yell at me when I came to school with my homework all wrinkled and damp. She understood when I told her it was too cold to study in the kitchen so I did my homework under the covers with a flashlight. Then I fell asleep. And one of the other five kids in the bed must have peed on it.

I’d go out and sweat and make five dollars. And I’d come home and say, Momma, Mister Green told me to bring this to you. Told me he liked you. Told me he wished he could raise his kids the way you’re raising us. That wasn’t true, Momma.

Remember all those birthday parties I went to, Momma? I used to steal things from the ten-cent store and give the best presents. I’d come home and tell you how we played pillow kiss and post office and pin the tail on the donkey and how everybody liked me? That was a lie, Momma. One girl cried and ran away when she threw the pillow and it hit me. She opened her eyes and saw she was supposed to kiss me and she cried and ran away.

And on my birthday, Momma, when I came home with that shopping bag full of presents and told you the kids in my class loved me so much they all got me things? That wasn’t true. I stole all those things from the ten-cent store and wrapped them up and put a different kid’s name on each one.

 

#

“Oh, Richard, if he don’t show up this time . . .”

 

“He’s comin’, Momma, it’s like you said. He got held up in traffic, the trains were full.”

“You know, Richard, your daddy’s a cook, he has to work on Christmas.” “He’ll be here, Momma, you go put those clothes back on.”

#

Remember when those people came by and told you how dirty we were, how they didn’t want us playing with their kids or coming into their houses? They said we smelled so bad. I was six then, and Presley was almost eight. You cried all night, Momma, and then you told us to stay home until you could get us some new clothes. And you went and hid all the clothes we had. Momma, it was summertime and we couldn’t just lay there, crying and watching out the window at the kids play running tag, and rip and run, and get called in for their naps, and get called in for their dinners. And we looked all over for our clothes, down in the basement, in the coal closet, under the stove, and we couldn’t find them. And

then we went through your things, Momma, and put on the dresses you never wore, the dresses the rich white folks gave you. And then we went outside to play. The people laughed at us when we went outside in your dresses, pointed and slapped their legs. We never played so good as we played that summer, with all those people watching us. When we came off the porch those Negro doctors and lawyers and teachers waiting to get into White’s Eat Shop across the street would nudge each other and turn their heads. And when the streetcar stopped on the corner, right in front of our house, the people would lean out the windows and stare. Presley and I would wave at them. We did it all that summer, and after a while nobody bothered us. Everybody got to know that the Gregory boys didn’t have clothes so they wore their mother’s dresses. We just made sure we were home before you got there, Momma.

 

#

“How do I look, Richard?” “You look okay, Momma.”

“These are the best pair of shoes I got, Miz Wallace gave me them, but they’re summer shoes.”

“What you mean, summer shoes? Those are the black-and-white ones I like so much, the ones you never wear. I didn’t know they were summer shoes.”

“You never see folks wear white shoes in the wintertime.”

 

“People dye them, Momma. I’ll dye them for you so you can put them on and Daddy can see you.”

“Oh, Richard, there won’t be time, they got to dry.”

 

“Don’t worry, Momma, you burn the dye and it dries right while you wear it.”

 

I’ve dyed a lot of shoes, Momma, down on my hands and knees in the taverns, dyeing shoes and shining shoes. I never told you too much about the things I did and the things I saw. Momma, remember the time I come home with my teeth knocked in and my lip all cut? Told you I tripped downstairs. Momma, I got kicked. Right in the face.

It was Saturday afternoon, my big hustling day. I was ten, but I looked like I was seven. There were a lot of people in the tavern, drinking beer, and I was shining this white woman’s shoes. The men sitting at the bar were laughing.

“Hey, Flo, gonna take the little monkey home with you, change your luck?”

 

She started laughing. “Maybe I will. Heard these little coons are hung like horses, I’m getting tired of you worms.”

“Little monkey’s got a tail, Flo, swing from limb to limb.”

 

White-and-brown shoes. I didn’t want to get the brown polish on the white part so I put my other hand on the back of the white woman’s leg to steady myself.

“He’s got a tail all right. One of you boys can warm me up, but I’m going to get me a black buck to do me right.”

One of the white men, a man who wasn’t laughing, jumped off his bar stool. “Get your dirty black hands off that white lady, you nigger bastard.”

He kicked me right in the mouth.

 

One of the men who had been laughing came off his stool and grabbed the man who kicked me.

“For Christ’s sake, he’s just a little kid.” “Mind your goddamn business.”

Whop. The fight was on.

 

The bartender jumped over the bar and grabbed me with one hand and my shoeshine box with the other. “Sorry, boy, it’s not your fault, but I can’t have you around.”

Out on the sidewalk he gave me a five-dollar bill.

 

When I saw all the blood and pieces of tooth on my shirt, I got scared. Momma would be real angry. So I went over to Boo’s house and spent the night. I told Boo if I could get kicked in the mouth a couple more times today, and get five dollars each time, man, I’d be all right.

“What time is it, Momma?” “Four o’clock, Richard.”

“I guess I didn’t have to burn them, did I?”

 

#

The tavern isn’t so bad, Momma. No kid ever runs up and laughs at me because I’m shining shoes. But they sure remind me I’m on relief. And there’s another reason I won’t quit working the taverns, Momma. In the wintertime it’s warmer in there, and in the summertime it’s cooler than our house. And even though men spit in my face and kick me in the mouth, Momma, every so often somebody rubs my head and calls me son.

“Why do you believe he’s coming, Richard?”

 

“Oh, Momma, I talked to that Man in the backyard, I know he’s coming.” “Go on to bed, Richard.”

“No, Momma, I’ll wait here with you. If I lay over there in the chair, when he comes will you wake me up?” “Sure I will, Richard. Now get some sleep.”

“Okay, Momma.”

 

#

So many things I wanted to tell you that night, Momma. There was a little girl used to wave to me when I cut through the alley to get onto Taylor, a clean little girl who used to sneak a piece of cake off her table and give it to me. A piece of cake and a glass of Kool-Aid. After a while, I’d finish up my paper route early just to come back and wave at her. After dinner, her momma and daddy would go up to the front room to sit around and leave her in the back to do the dishes all alone. I started to help her wash the dishes. I’d creep in up the back porch and she’d let me in and say: “Sh, nobody knows you’re here.” It was like playing house. I’d just come and stand there at the sink with her every night and help her with the dishes. Then one time her father came back to the kitchen. He grabbed

me and he shook me and told me how I broke into his house because his daughter wouldn’t let no dirty street kid in.

She was crying, scared to death, and she said: “I let him in, Daddy, I let him in, he’s my friend.”

“No, sir, she’s lying,” I said. “I make her bring me food out, I make her let me in.”

He slapped me. He slapped me until I fell down, and when she grabbed onto his arm, crying and screaming to make him stop, he kicked me out the door to the back porch. He started to choke me.

Then he stopped. “Why you grinning at me like that, you little bastard?” “Last week when you woke up drunk on this here porch, that was me brought

you home. Found you on Sarah Street and brought you home and was so proud

leading your black ass down the street ’cause you acted just like my daddy would. Come out of your drunk every now and then, swinging and fighting. I had to run and duck. People see you and want to jump on you. But I tell them that’s my daddy, he’s all right. Leave him alone, that’s my daddy.”

He let me go, and he backed away and there was a funny look on his face. He started sweating, and chewing on his lip, and looking around to see if anybody heard what I had said. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He gave me a dollar. I threw it back at him. I reached into my own hip pocket and pulled out a dollar. My dollar was bigger than his because nobody knew I had mine. And then I walked away.

 

#

“God, my little Richard’s asleep now and I have to talk to You. I always made a big mistake, God. I sit here every Christmas, times in the summer, too, and pray for his daddy and never pray for other kids’ daddies. Send them theirs first, and then if You’re not too weary, oh, Lawd, send Big Pres home. But when You send him, God, don’t send him for me. Send him ’cause the boys need him.”

 

#

“God, my Momma cried herself to sleep so I’m asking You to send Daddy home right away. God, wherever he is let him knock on that door. I’ll wait up for him, God, just let him please knock on that door.”

 

#

Momma, I loved those firemen in St. Louis, so big and tall and strong, rushing out to save people, Negro firemen and white firemen, no difference, they’d rush out and never ask whose house it was, how much money he had, if he was on relief. I’d stand on the corner where they had to pass and I’d wave to them, and sometimes they’d wave back. Sometimes I thought they went out of their way to pass that corner, just so they could wave to me. Then I’d follow them to the fire, and stand there and pray they would put it out fast so none of them would get hurt. I used to count every fireman that went up the ladder and count them as they came back down. Once I saw them use the net to save somebody and they didn’t act like they were doing anybody a favor. I’d see them standing around in their uniforms, like they all belonged to the same family, and talk about fires. At the big fires, when the Red Cross came, they’d drink coffee and bite into sandwiches. It’s a beautiful thing to watch a man who really deserves the food he eats.

One time I bought an old raincoat with hooks instead of buttons, and a pair of old hip boots. I hid them in the cellar. Nobody knew I had them. Whenever I wanted to feel good I’d put them on and walk around the cellar, pretending I was putting out fires, running up ladders to save people, catching them in my net.

Then I’d take them off and walk over to the firehouse and watch them drill and clean the engine and roll up the hose. I’d walk right up to a fireman and say: “Excuse me, mister, but I shore like you all.” He’d turn around and say something nice to me. Sometimes, before I knew better, I used to think my daddy was a fireman somewhere, saving people and saying nice things to kids.

 

#

“Momma, Momma, wake up, wake up, Momma. Didya hear it, didya hear it? Somebody’s knockin’ on the door.”

 

#

There was a neighbor woman standing at the door when I opened it. “Let me speak to your mother, Richard.”

I left the room like I was supposed to when a grown person came in. But I listened.

“He’s here, Lucille, Big Pres been down my house all night scared to come home ’cause he ain’t got nothing for the kids but some money. He just got in this evening. Been over my place crying, Lucille, ’cause he went and gambled and won and when he finished winning all the stores was closed.”

I ran right in and Momma grabbed me and hugged me. “I told you, Momma, didn’t I tell you he was coming? Go get him, Momma, go and tell him we got everything we want.”

I ran back and woke up the kids—“Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home”—and they tumbled out of bed, all five of them rolling and fighting their way out of the blankets, caught up in the sheet and scrambling around for the socks they lost under the covers and bumping into each other and in such a hurry they got legs and arms all mixed up. But nobody was mad at all. We all ran into the kitchen and jumped up and down while Momma got dressed again, put on the fanciest of the clothes the white folks gave her, clothes she never wore, and fixed her hair and put on lipstick and perfume.

“You don’t need that stuff, Momma, just go get Daddy and bring him home.”

 

After Momma left, we quieted down. We sat in the front room by the window and we waited. We hadn’t seen him much in five years. We waited a long time because Momma hadn’t seen him much in five years either.

“Aw, he’s not really here,” said Dolores. She was twelve. “Anyway, I don’t want to see him.”

“I want to see him,” said Ronald. He was seven, and he was sitting on the floor, shivering, and holding on to Pauline’s hand. Pauline was the baby, she was almost five.

“Oh, man,” said Presley, who was fourteen, “I can’t wait, he’s gonna be so clean, a two-hundred-dollar suit on him.”

“Dare anybody, he gonna be wearin’ thousand-dollar suits,” said Garland, who was nine. “And he’ll have a pocketful of money.”

“Yeah, a pocketful of money, but no gifts,” I said. “He been busy makin’ money,” said Garland. “He’s a soldier,” said Ronald.

“Momma said he’s a cook,” said Dolores. “Big deal.”

“What’s matter with you, Richard, don’t you want to see Daddy?” said Presley. “Last week I wanted to see him, when the rent man was cussin’ Momma.”

“He been busy makin’ money,” said Garland.

 

Pauline started to cry, and Ronald leaned over and rocked her in his arms. “Ooooh, you be quiet, little rat, your daddy comin’ home, he’s a soldier.”

“He’s a cook,” said Dolores, pushing Presley a little to look out the window.

 

“Shut up, girl,” said Presley. “You remember when Daddy carry that old lady across the street?”

“No.”

 

“See, you don’t know nothing. Man, was he ever big and clean. He got arms so strong he just picked this old lady right up after she fell off the streetcar and carry her across the street and up to her house. Everybody saw it.”

Presley did a lot of talking that night. I was just thinking. I thought about that time that trampy woman came by and shouted at my momma. “Goddamn husband of yours home?”

“No, he’s not,” Momma said politely.

 

“I just want you to know anytime he ain’t at your house or my house, he’s at some woman’s house.”

“I appreciate you wouldn’t come by here talking like this because the kids can hear you.” “I don’t give a damn ’bout your kids. I got some kids for him, too.”

Yeah, I thought, Big Pres is coming home. All those nights Momma kept the hallway light on after we went to bed. All those nights she listened to the police news on the radio, listening to hear his name. The times the police came by the house to ask if we’d see him lately.

Suddenly a taxicab pulled up outside the window and we heard the door slam and a big, deep voice like nobody’s but my daddy’s was saying, “Keep the change, friend.” And then all the kids were on their feet and knocking each other down to get to the door, and Ronald dropped Pauline, and everybody was hollering and screaming, and the last thing I heard was my momma’s voice saying, “Don’t touch his clothes with your dirty hands, now don’t touch his clothes.”

I slammed the bedroom door and climbed into bed with my sneakers on and cried. I pulled the blanket over my head, but I could hear all right.

“Man, look at that thousand-dollar suit, see, what’d I tell you, Presley? . . .” “Lookit, Daddy, lookit, Daddy . . .”

“Hey, Daddy, pick me up after Pauline . . .”

 

“Now you get off Big Pres, don’t go messing up his clothes with your dirty hands . . .”

“’Cille? Where’s Richard?”

 

“Richard, Big Pres is here, come on out.” But she was scared to leave him to see if I was okay. When she turned her back he might walk out again.

“Lookit all that money Daddy got. Bet it’s a million dollars . . .” “Where’d you get all that money, Daddy? . . .”

I could hear him crackling the money in his hand and his big, deep voice saying, “You been a good girl, ’Lores, doin’ like your momma says . . . You been good, Presley, don’t want you growin’ up to be like your daddy now . . . payin’ your momma mind and doin’ your schoolwork . . . How about you, Garland? . . .”

And I lay there and bit the cover and kicked the sheet and cried. Don’t want you growing up to be like your daddy now. Is that what he’s worried about? I bit the cover until my gums started bleeding and I didn’t stop until my nose was all stuffed up from crying. Don’t you worry, Daddy, don’t you worry.

After a while, Momma brought him into the bedroom. “Big Pres, Richard waited up all night for you, he knew you were coming. He bought you something for Christmas, Big Pres. You know, he buys you something every Christmas.”

She pulled on me. She rolled me over. “What’s wrong with you, Richard, didn’t you hear me call for you, didn’t you hear me say Daddy’s home? What are you crying about, Richard, what’s wrong with you?”

She didn’t tell him what was wrong. No, you got to treat strangers with respect. “Big Pres, he’s just jealous, he’s just jealous ’cause you didn’t pick him up like you picked up the others.”

I lay in bed and I looked up at the man and he was ten feet tall. Tallest man I ever saw. He was clean, and he was strong, and he was healthy. He sat down on the bed next to me.

“Don’t you sit on that dirty bed, Big Pres,” said Momma, and she brushed off his suit and got one of the silk tablecloths the white folks had given her that we never used. She put the tablecloth on top of the sheet, yeah, the one sheet that stayed on the bed for six months. She didn’t want Big Pres to get his suit dirty.

“I brought you some money, Richard.” “Don’t want it, Daddy.”

“Got more for you than I got for the others.” “Still don’t want it.”

“I’m your daddy, boy, don’t you want to see me?”

 

“I see you every time I see my momma on her knees in front of the window cryin’ and prayin’ you’ll come. You oughta thank me ’cause I brought you here, yeah, thank me you never get sick ’cause every night I say my prayers I say

bless him wherever he is.”

 

“Richard, I’m going to stay home with you this time, if you want me I’ll stay home. You want me to stay, Richard?”

I didn’t say anything.

 

“I’ll get a job. Your momma won’t have to work. You want me, Richard?”

 

I looked at him but I didn’t say anything. I guess he meant what he said. The moment he said it, anyway. And I lay there and I was thinking: If you stay, old man, I’ll leave. I don’t need you, Daddy, not now. I needed you when the boys chased me home, when the man cheated me out of my paper money, needed you every time Boo’s daddy came home at seven o’clock.

“’Cille, what’s wrong with this boy?”

 

“Don’t you worry about him, Big Pres, he’s crazy.”

 

That got me mad, Momma forgetting all her love for me to pacify him.

 

“Yeah, he’s crazy. Hey, ’Cille, you got a drink around the house?” She brought out the whiskey. He drank it right out of the bottle.

I got dressed that day and I left the house to play, but I ducked back every half hour to see if he was still there. Once I slipped Boo in to let him peep.

“That’s my daddy, Boo. My daddy’s rich, too, man, pocket full of money.” “Your daddy ain’t got no money. You all on relief.”

“Come here, Boo, let me show you something.” I walked up to my daddy and looked at him. It was the first time I walked in and said anything to him. I didn’t ask him, I told him.

“Give Boo five dollars, Daddy.”

 

When he reached in and pulled out that pocketful of money, Boo’s eyes popped out. He hadn’t ever seen that much money in his life. Looked like he had all the money in the world. He looked so fine fumbling through those twenties and tens and fives, and I wondered if it was enough to go over to Mister Ben’s and wipe

out the back bill and put a little on the front bill. “You got a good daddy,” said Boo.

I kept slipping back all that day, peeping in to make sure he was still there. Once I thought I almost caught him leaving, all dressed with his brown bag in his hand, but when he saw me he put it down. I’d slip in and I’d hear him telling Momma all the things he was going to do for her. Stay home. Get a job. Get off relief. Give up other women. Take Momma to all the nightclubs. She wouldn’t have to work for the white folks no more.

“Told you about working so hard for them white folks,” he’d say. “Don’t want my kids left in this house all by themselves.”

She cried. “You mean it, Pres, you really mean it?”

 

She got up off her orange-crate chair and put her hands on his face and kissed him.

I walked right in then. “Get your goddamn hands off my momma.”

 

He beat me, pulled off his belt and beat me across my backside. Momma held me on her lap while he beat me.

“Ha. That’s a hell of a man there, that Richard. I beat his ass good, ’Cille, and he don’t even cry.”

He had little men and he didn’t even know it. Every time he hit me I couldn’t cry almost wanting to laugh. I know, old man, couple of days from now you’ll be too far away for that belt to reach me.

Momma made me go to bed and she whispered: “Please treat your Daddy nice. For me. Please do it for me.”

“I’m the cause of his being here, Momma. I’m the one that asked the Man out back, I prayed for him.”

“That’s right, Richard.” That night he beat her.

He beat her all through the house, every room, swinging his belt and whopping her with his hand and cussing her and kicking her and knocking her down and telling her all about his women.

“Think you’re so goddamn good, bitch,” said my daddy, cracking my momma across the back with his belt. She whimpered and fell against a little table, knocking over a lamp from the white folks. She bent over to pick up the lamp and Big Pres kicked her in her backside and she fell forward on the linoleum floor. She lay there, her face pressed against the linoleum, sobbing.

“I don’t even feel right walking down the street with you,” he said, kicking her in the side with his foot. “Walk down the street everybody wants to run up, say hello to you, they look at me like I was dirt.”

He grabbed her hair and pulled her up to her knees. Momma looked up at him, tears running down her cheeks. Slap. Right across her face.

“I got bitches, women like you never seen, proud to walk down the street with Big Pres.”

Slap. Momma fell down on her face again. “Get on your feet, bitch.”

Momma got up, slowly.

 

Whop. Momma spun across the front room, back toward the kitchen, like a drunk. Whop. Big Pres had the belt out again, and now he drove her in front of him, around the kitchen table, Momma stumbling over the chairs and the orange crates, Big Pres kicking them out of his way. Whop. Back into the front room, Momma bounced against a soft chair, then against the wall.

“And what the hell you taught Richard, bitch? Hell, whatever you taught him, you ain’t gonna turn them all against their daddy.”

She never said a word, just crying, sobbing, trying to stay on her feet, trying not to get hit too hard but never really ducking his hand or his belt. She’d see it coming and close her eyes and put her hands up, but she never tried to get out of the way. The kids were crying and hollering and Ronald and Pauline were hugging each other and Dolores was hiding her face in her hands. Garland and Presley were scared to death. I watched him knock her down, and cuss her, and

he was saying the things I wanted to say when she forgot her love for me and told him I was crazy. He left her on the floor, dirty and crying, came over and whopped me across my face so hard that when I knocked into the wall the pictures fell right off their hooks. One was a picture of Jesus, and the other was a piece of wood with the Ten Commandments.

And then they were in the kitchen and Big Pres was crying and kissing my momma and saying he was sorry and how he was going to take care of us and give up his women and get a job.

And Momma kept saying, “No, Big Pres, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, I shouldn’t talk like that, they’ll be time to get off relief when you’re home awhile and get a chance to rest up.”

I got up off the floor and walked into that kitchen. Big Pres was sitting at the table with his face in his hands, and Momma was standing over him, stroking his head. They both were crying. I took down the butcher knife off the wall, the big one with the black handle, and swung at his head. Seen plenty of people swing knives in the taverns and I knew how to cut. Swung right at his head, everything I had, I swung for every kid in the whole world who hated his no-good daddy.

Momma grabbed my wrist with both her hands and twisted the knife out of my hand.

Big Pres looked up real slow. I guess it’s a hell of a thing for a man to look up into his own son’s eyes and see murder.

“I’ll leave now, ’Cille,” he said very softly. “You should have let him hit me, should have let him kill me. I never was any good, never treated you or him right. I need to be dead.”

He got up. “Don’t beat Richard, ’Cille, don’t beat him. I know what I done.”

 

Momma grabbed Big Pres’ leg and he kicked her away. He turned and walked out the door. My momma tried to hold the door open while he closed it behind him.

“No, Big Pres, he didn’t mean nothing, Richard’s crazy, you know that . . .”

 

He turned and kicked her foot out of the door, and slammed it shut. My momma

fell down and slid across the floor, holding the doorknob in her hand. “Don’t leave, Daddy, don’t leave, Daddy . . .” the kids were screaming.

I followed him out the door and down the street. He didn’t see me, his head was down, and he walked like the greatest crime in the world had just been committed against him. His head didn’t come up again until he walked into a tavern. I walked in behind him and stood near the door where he couldn’t see me. He walked right up to a woman sitting at the bar. She was smoking a cigarette and tapping her high heels against the rail.

“Where you been, Big Pres? I been waiting on you for hours.”

 

“I had to beat the bitch’s ass for bad-mouthing you, Mollie,” he said. “But I got a tough little man there, Richard, you should see the little man, beat his ass and he didn’t cry.”

“I been waiting all day, Big Pres. Don’t you start telling me about some little bastard you got. Don’t even know if it’s yours or the . . .”

“Watch your mouth, Mollie. My ’Cille’s a good woman, no loose piece of trim like you.”

“Sure, who you think buys the bread when you’re . . .”

 

He knocked that bitch right off the stool. He swung that big hand of his and her cigarette went one way and her shoes came off and she went face-first on the floor. He stomped that woman like no other man in the world. I got to see my daddy at his best that night. Two men stood up from tables and started toward Big Pres. He threw back his head and he laughed and he stood over that bitch and his hand came out of his pocket with a razor in it.

“Dare any dirty motherfucker in this place to come and stop me from stomping this bitch. Hear?”

Nobody moved.

 

He walked out of there ten feet tall. My daddy. I walked over to the woman on the floor and helped her up. She shook me away.

“I’m real sorry, ma’am.”

She spat in my face. She didn’t know I was Big Pres’ boy.

 

I watched him walk down the street, head up high, hands swinging loose. Big Pres. A real Capone with the whores and the bitches. Heard “I love you” from some broad off the street. But never from his own kids. And that’s worth all the sevens falling on all the craps all over the world. He missed it. Missed seeing his kids grow up, missed having his kids crawl into bed with him and lie down and go to sleep because Daddy’s sleeping. He missed what I have now. Feeling a little girl put a finger in my mouth, knowing that Daddy will never bite hard.

Hearing a little kid say: “Throw me up in the air, Daddy,” sure that Daddy will catch her.

Big Pres had to be a lonely man. There must have been times he woke up in a lonely bed, and wanted to give every whore he ever had, every seven, every eleven he ever threw, every wild time he ever had, just to go all the way back and have one of his kids walk up to him and say: “Daddy, I love you.”

There must have been times like that. Because I would turn in all the Dick Gregorys in the world and all the nightclubs and all the money just to go back to those days and find a daddy there.

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not good enough, but it helps. But I got tired of hearing Momma say, God, fix it so I can pay the rent; God, fix it so the light will be turned on; God, fix it so the pot is full. I kind of felt it really wasn’t His job. And it’s a hell of a thing when you’re growing up and you’re out on the street and you kind of hedge up to a man so he can rub your head and call you son. It’s a hell of a thing to hear a man say: I wish my boys were more like the Gregory boys. If Big Pres could only know how people admired the Gregory boys.

Well, Big Pres walked away and left us. Left us to face the cold winters, the hot summers, the Easters with nothing new, the picnics with nothing in the basket. I wonder if it ever dawned on him that he fixed it so we couldn’t even go to church one Sunday every year—Father’s Day.

I should never have swung at him with that knife. I should have fallen on my knees and cried for him. No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That’s already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.

When I got back home that night, the knob was back on the door. And the light was on in the hallway. She was sitting up that night, looking out the window.

Momma sat like that for the next three or four months, looking out the window, dozing in her chair, listening to the police news. Then she’d go to work without having been to bed.

Sometimes I’d stay up with her, listen to the radio with her, look out the window with her. I tried to make her believe I didn’t know she was waiting on him.

II

 

Like a lot of Negro kids, we never would have made it without our momma. When there was no fatback to go with the beans, no socks to go with the shoes, no hope to go with tomorrow, she’d smile and say: “We ain’t poor, we’re just broke.” Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition. She always had a big smile, even when her legs and feet swelled from high blood pressure and she collapsed across the table with sugar diabetes. You have to smile twenty-four hours a day, Momma would say. If you walk through life showing the aggravation you’ve gone through, people will feel sorry for you, and they’ll never respect you. She taught us that man has two ways out in life—laughing or crying. There’s more hope in laughing. A man can fall down the stairs and lie there in such pain and horror that his own wife will collapse and faint at the sight. But if he can hold back his pain for a minute she might be able to collect herself and call the doctor. It might mean the difference between his living to laugh again or dying there on the spot.

So you laugh, so you smile. Once a month the big gray relief truck would pull up in front of our house and Momma would flash that big smile and stretch out her hands. “Who else you know in this neighborhood get this kind of service?” And we could all feel proud when the neighbors, folks who weren’t on relief, folks who had daddies in their houses, would come by the back porch for some of those hundred pounds of potatoes, for some sugar and flour and salty fish. We’d stand out there on the back porch and hand out the food like we were in charge of helping poor people, and then we’d take the food they brought us in return.

And Momma came home one hot summer day and found we’d been evicted, thrown out into the streetcar zone with all our orange-crate chairs and secondhand lamps. She flashed that big smile and dried our tears and bought some penny Kool-Aid. We stood out there and sold drinks to thirsty people coming off the streetcar, and we thought nobody knew we were kicked out— figured they thought we wanted to be there. And Momma went off to talk to the landlord into letting us back in on credit.

But I wonder about my momma sometimes, and all the other Negro mothers who got up at 6 am to go to the white man’s house with sacks over their shoes because it was so wet and cold. I wonder how they made it. They worked very hard for the man, they made his breakfast and they scrubbed his floors and they

diapered his babies. They didn’t have too much time for us.

 

I wonder about my momma, who walked out of a white woman’s clean house at midnight and came back to her own where the lights had been out for three months, and the pipes were frozen and the wind came in through the cracks.

She’d have to make deals with the rats: leave out some food for them so they wouldn’t gnaw on the doors or bite the babies. The roaches, they were just like part of the family.

I wonder how she felt telling those white kids she took care of to brush their teeth after they ate, to wash their hands after they peed. She could never tell her own kids because there wasn’t soap or water back home.

I wonder how my momma felt when we came home from school with a list of vitamins and pills and cod liver oils the school nurse said we had to have.

Momma would cry all night, and then go out and spend most of the rent money for pills. A week later, the white man would come for his eighteen dollars rent and Momma would plead with him to wait until tomorrow. She had lost her pocketbook. The relief check was coming. The white folks had some money for her. Tomorrow. I’d be hiding in the coal closet because there were only supposed to be two kids in the flat, and I could hear the rent man curse my momma and call her a liar. And when he finally went away, Momma put the sacks on her shoes and went off to the rich white folks’ house to dress the rich white kids so their mother could take them to a special baby doctor.

Momma had to take us to Homer G. Phillips, the free hospital, the city hospital for Negroes. We’d stand on line and wait for hours, smiling and Uncle Tomming every time a doctor or a nurse passed by. We’d feel good when one of them smiled back and didn’t look at us as though we were dirty and had no right coming down there. All the doctors and nurses at Homer G. Phillips were Negro, too.

I remember one time when a doctor in white walked up and said: “What’s wrong with him?” as if he didn’t believe anything was.

Momma looked at me and looked at him and shook her head. “I sure don’t know, Doctor, but he cried all night long. Held his stomach.”

“Bring him in and get his damn clothes off.”

 

I was so mad the way he was talking to my momma that I bit down too hard on

the thermometer. It broke in my mouth. The doctor slapped me across my face. “Both of you go stand in the back of the line and wait your turn.”

My momma had to say: “I’m sorry, Doctor,” and go to the back of the line. She had five other kids at home and she never knew when she’d have to bring another down to the city hospital.

And those rich white folks Momma was so proud of. She’d sit around with the other women and they’d talk about how good their white folks were. They’d lie about how rich they were, what nice parties they gave, what good clothes they wore. And how they were going to be remembered in their white folks’ wills.

The next morning the white lady would say, “We’re going on vacation for two months, Lucille, we won’t be needing you until we get back.” Damn. Two- month vacation without pay.

I wonder how my momma stayed so good and beautiful in her soul when she worked seven days a week on swollen legs and feet, how she kept teaching us to smile and laugh when the house was dark and cold and she never knew when one of her hungry kids was going to ask about Daddy.

I wonder how she kept from teaching us hate when the social worker came around. She was a nasty bitch with a pinched face who said: “We have reason to suspect you are working, Miss Gregory, and you can be sure I’m going to check on you. We don’t stand for welfare cheaters.”

Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn’t stand to see her kids go hungry, or grow up in slums and end up mugging people in dark corners. I guess the system didn’t want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to make sure Momma wasn’t trying to make things better.

I remember how that social worker would poke around the house, wrinkling her nose at the coal dust on the chilly linoleum floor, shaking her head at the bugs crawling over the dirty dishes in the sink. My momma would have to stand there and make like she was too lazy to keep her own house clean. She could never let on that she spent all day cleaning another woman’s house for two dollars and carfare. She would have to follow that nasty bitch around those drafty three rooms, keeping her fingers crossed that the telephone hidden in the closet wouldn’t ring. Welfare cases weren’t supposed to have telephones.

But Momma figured that someday the Gregory kids were going to get off North Taylor Street and into a world where they would have to compete with kids who grew up with telephones in their houses. She didn’t want us to be at a disadvantage. She couldn’t explain that to the social worker. And she couldn’t explain that while she was out spoon-feeding somebody else’s kids, she was worrying about her own kids, that she could rest her mind by picking up the telephone and calling us—to find out if we had bread for our baloney or baloney for our bread, to see if any of us had gotten run over by the streetcar while we played in the gutter, to make sure the house hadn’t burned down from the papers and magazines we stuffed in the stove when the coal ran out.

But sometimes when she called there would be no answer. Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.

#

 

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that. I was about seven years old when I got my first big lesson. I was in love with a little girl named Helene Tucker, a light-complected little girl with pigtails and nice manners. She was always clean and she was smart in school. I think I went to school then mostly to look at her. I brushed my hair and even got me a little old handkerchief. It was a lady’s handkerchief, but I didn’t want Helene to see me wipe my nose on my hand. The pipes were frozen again, there was no water in the house, but I washed my socks and shirt every night. I’d get a pot, and go over to Mister Ben’s grocery store, and stick my pot down into his soda machine.

Scoop out some chopped ice. By evening the ice melted to water for washing. I got sick a lot that winter because the fire would go out at night before the clothes were dry. In the morning I’d put them on, wet or dry, because they were the only clothes I had.

Everybody’s got a Helene Tucker, a symbol of everything you want. I loved her for her goodness, her cleanness, her popularity. She’d walk down my street and my brothers and sisters would yell, “Here come Helene,” and I’d rub my tennis sneakers on the back of my pants and wish my hair wasn’t so nappy and the white folks’ shirt fit me better. I’d run out on the street. If I knew my place and didn’t come too close, she’d wink at me and say hello. That was a good feeling. Sometimes I’d follow her all the way home, and shovel the snow off her walk and try to make friends with her momma and her aunts. I’d drop money on her stoop late at night on my way back from shining shoes in the taverns. And she had a daddy, and he had a good job. He was a paper hanger.

I guess I would have gotten over Helene by summertime, but something happened in that classroom that made her face hang in front of me for the next twenty-two years. When I played the drums in high school it was for Helene and when I broke track records in college it was for Helene and when I started standing behind microphones and heard applause I wished Helene could hear it, too. It wasn’t until I was twenty-nine years old and married and making money that I finally got her out of my system. Helene was sitting in that classroom when I learned to be ashamed of myself.

It was on a Thursday. I was sitting in the back of the room, in a seat with a chalk circle drawn around it. The idiot’s seat, the troublemaker’s seat.

The teacher thought I was stupid. Couldn’t spell, couldn’t read, couldn’t do arithmetic. Just stupid. Teachers were never interested in finding out that you couldn’t concentrate because you were so hungry, because you hadn’t had any breakfast. All you could think about was noontime, would it ever come? Maybe you could sneak into the cloakroom and steal a bite of some kid’s lunch out of a coat pocket. A bite of something. Paste. You can’t really make a meal of paste, or put it on bread for a sandwich, but sometimes I’d scoop a few spoonfuls out of the paste jar in the back of the room. Pregnant people get strange tastes. I was pregnant with poverty. Pregnant with dirt and pregnant with smells that made people turn away, pregnant with cold and pregnant with shoes that were never bought for me, pregnant with five other people in my bed and no Daddy in the next room, and pregnant with hunger. Paste doesn’t taste too bad when you’re hungry.

The teacher thought I was a troublemaker. All she saw from the front of the room was a little black boy who squirmed in his idiot’s seat and made noises and poked the kids around him. I guess she couldn’t see a kid who made noises because he wanted someone to know he was there.

It was on a Thursday, the day before the Negro payday. The eagle always flew on Friday. The teacher was asking each student how much his father would give to the Community Chest. On Friday night, each kid would get the money from his father and on Monday he would bring it to the school. I decided I was going to buy me a daddy right then. I had money in my pocket from shining shoes and selling papers, and whatever Helene Tucker pledged for her daddy I was going to top it. And I’d hand the money right in. I wasn’t going to wait until Monday

to buy me a daddy.

 

I was shaking, scared to death. The teacher opened her book and started calling out names alphabetically.

“Helene Tucker?”

 

“My daddy said he’d give two dollars and fifty cents.” “That’s very nice, Helene. Very, very nice indeed.”

That made me feel pretty good. It wouldn’t take too much to top that. I had almost three dollars in dimes and quarters in my pocket. I stuck my hand in my pocket and held on to the money, waiting for her to call my name. But the teacher closed her book after she called everybody else in the class.

I stood up and raised my hand. “What is it now?”

“You forgot me.”

 

She turned toward the blackboard. “I don’t have time to be playing with you, Richard.”

“My daddy said he’d . . .”

 

“Sit down, Richard, you’re disturbing the class.” “My daddy said he’d give . . . fifteen dollars.”

She turned around and looked mad. “We are collecting this money for you and your kind, Richard Gregory. If your daddy can give fifteen dollars you have no business being on relief.”

“I got it right now, I got it right now, my daddy gave it to me to turn in today, my daddy said . . .”

“And furthermore,” she said, looking right at me, her nostrils getting big and her lips getting thin and her eyes opening wide, “we know you don’t have a daddy.”

Helene Tucker turned around, her eyes full of tears. She felt sorry for me. Then I

couldn’t see her too well because I was crying, too. “Sit down, Richard.”

And I always thought the teacher kind of liked me. She always picked me to wash the blackboard on Friday, after school. That was a big thrill, it made me feel important. If I didn’t wash it, come Monday the school might not function right.

“Where are you going, Richard?”

 

I walked out of school that day, and for a long time I didn’t go back very often. There was shame there.

Now there was shame everywhere. It seemed like the whole world had been inside that classroom, everyone had heard what the teacher had said, everyone had turned around and felt sorry for me. There was shame in going to the Worthy Boys Annual Christmas Dinner for you and your kind, because everybody knew what a worthy boy was. Why couldn’t they just call it the Boys Annual Dinner, why’d they have to give it a name? There was shame in wearing the brown and orange and white plaid mackinaw the welfare gave to three thousand boys. Why’d it have to be the same for everybody so when you walked down the street the people could see you were on relief? It was a nice warm mackinaw and it had a hood, and my momma beat me and called me a little rat when she found out I stuffed it in the bottom of a pail full of garbage way over on Cottage Street. There was shame in running over to Mister Ben’s at the end of the day and asking for rotten peaches, there was shame in asking Mrs. Simmons for a spoonful of sugar, there was shame in running out to meet the relief truck. I hated that truck, full of food for you and your kind. I ran into the house and hid when it came. And then I started to sneak through alleys, to take the long way home so the people going into White’s Eat Shop wouldn’t see me. Yeah, the whole world heard the teacher that day, we all know you don’t have a daddy.

It lasted for a while, this kind of numbness. I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. And then one day I met this wino in a restaurant. I’d been out hustling all day, shining shoes, selling newspapers, and I had googobs of money in my pocket. Bought me a bowl of chili for fifteen cents, and a cheeseburger for fifteen cents, and a Pepsi for five cents, and a piece of chocolate cake for ten cents. That was a good meal. I was eating when this old wino came in. I love winos because they never hurt anyone but themselves.

The old wino sat down at the counter and ordered twenty-six cents’ worth of food. He ate it like he really enjoyed it. When the owner, Mister Williams, asked him to pay the check, the old wino didn’t lie or go through his pocket like he suddenly found a hole.

He just said: “Don’t have no money.”

 

The owner yelled: “Why in hell you come in here and eat my food if you don’t have no money? That food cost me money.”

Mister Williams jumped over the counter and knocked the wino off his stool and beat him over the bead with a pop bottle. Then he stepped back and watched the wino bleed. Then he kicked him. And he kicked him again.

I looked at the wino with blood all over his face and I went over. “Leave him alone, Mister Williams. I’ll pay the twenty-six cents.”

The wino got up, slowly, pulling himself up to the stool, then up to the counter, holding on for a minute until his legs stopped shaking so bad. He looked at me with pure hate. “Keep your twenty-six cents. You don’t have to pay, not now. I just finished paying for it.”

He started to walk out, and as he passed me, he reached down and touched my shoulder. “Thanks, sonny, but it’s too late now. Why didn’t you pay it before?”

I was pretty sick about that. I waited too long to help another man.

 

I remember a white lady who came to our door once around Thanksgiving time. She wore a woolly, green bonnet around her head, and she smiled a lot.

“Is your mother home, little boy?” “No, she ain’t.”

“May I come in?”

 

“What do you want, ma’am?”

 

She didn’t stop smiling once, but she sighed a little when she bent down and lifted up a big yellow basket. The kind I saw around church that were called

Baskets for the Needy. “This is for you.” “What’s in there?”

“All sorts of good things,” she said, smiling. “There’s candy and potatoes and cake and cranberry sauce and” —she made a funny little face at me by wrinkling up her nose—“and a great big fat turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.”

“Is it cooked?”

 

“A big fat juicy turkey, all plucked clean for you . . .” “It is cooked?”

“No, it’s not . . .”

 

“We ain’t got nothing in the house to cook it with, lady.”

 

I slammed the door in her face. Wouldn’t that be a bitch, to have a turkey like that in the house with no way to cook it? No gas, no electricity, no coal. Just a big fat juicy raw turkey.

I remember Mister Ben, the grocery-store man, a round little white man with funny little tufts of white hair on his head and sad-looking eyes. His face was kind of gray-colored, and the skin was loose and shook when be talked.

“Momma want a loaf of bread, Mister Ben, fresh bread.”

 

“Right away, Richard,” he’d say and get the bread he bought three days old from the bakeries downtown. It was the only kind he had for his credit-book customers. He dropped it on the counter. Clunk.

I’d hand him the credit book, that green tablet with the picture of the snuff can on it, to write down how much we owed him. He’d lick the tip of that stubby pencil he kept behind his ear. Six cents.

“How you like school, Richard?” “I like school fine, Mister Ben.”

“Good boy, you study, get smart.”

 

I’d run home to Momma and tell her that the bread wasn’t fresh bread, it was stale bread. She’d flash the big smile.

“Oh, that Mister Ben, he knew I was fixin’ to make toast.”

 

The peaches were rotten and the bread wasn’t fresh and sometimes the butter was green, but when it came down to the nitty-gritty you could always go to Mister Ben. Before a Jewish holiday he’d take all the food that was going to spoil while the store was shut and bring it over to our house. Before Christmas he’d send over some meat even though he knew it was going on the tablet and he might never see his money. When the push came to the shove and every hungry belly in the house was beginning to eat on itself, Momma could go to Mister Ben and always get enough for some kind of dinner.

But I can remember three days in a row I went into Mister Ben’s and asked him to give me a penny Mr. Goodbar from the window.

Three days in a row he said: “Out, out, or I’ll tell your momma you been begging.”

One night I threw a brick through his window and took it.

 

The next day I went into Mister Ben’s to get some bread for Momma and his skin was shaking and I heard him tell a lady, “I can’t understand why should anybody break my window for a penny piece of candy, a lousy piece of candy, all they got to do is ask, that’s all, and I give.”

III

 

My best friend in those days was Boo. His real name is Charles Simmons and he’s a teacher in St. Louis now. Boo. He was fifty years old when he was nine. He was born old. He used to sit on the curb and pull all the insides out of a loaf of bread, and roll it up into little white balls and line the balls up in a neat row on the sidewalk. Then he’d go down the line and eat the little white bread balls one by one. We’d sit and talk while Boo ate his bread balls, figuring out all the tough things we were going to do.

“Hey, Richard.”

 

“Wha?” “Let’s go down the zoo and let all the tigers loose.”

 

“Nah, that’s no fun, Boo. Let’s get that streetcar conductor, we’ll set him on fire and we’ll drop him into Mister Ben’s icebox.”

“Nah, let’s go beat up Calvin.” Calvin was Boo’s little brother.

Boo was really tough. All the gangs were always trying to get him to join, he was such a good fighter. And if he couldn’t whip a guy himself, he had a lot of older brothers who could. Mess with Boo, that was like declaring a war. Boo never started fights himself, he was too lazy, but he kept me from being beat up a lot of times. I was the neighborhood sissy. Ran errands for everybody—even Calvin.

We had a lot of fun, Boo and I, rolling down the street inside of big truck tires, playing stickball with a broom handle and soda bottle cap. Goes even farther if you pack the inside of the cap with dirt, but you better not let the other team catch you doing that. Best game we had was snatch and run—you kind of walk slow down a street whistling and looking around with your hands in your pockets pretending you’re just taking the air. Then you pass a fence that has a sign beware of bad dog. You slither past it, snatch the gate open, and run. I think that’s the reason I got to be so fast later on. You can break world records if you got a bad dog chasing you.

Once I was bitten by a Great Dane when we snatched a gate on Cote Brilliant

Street. The owner saw us, so when I went down to the clinic, I couldn’t tell them I knew which dog bit me. They would have taken me back there to pick up the dog for a rabies test and the owner would have told Momma what I had done. So I had to take the fourteen rabies shots.

Boo and I never pulled anything big for kicks. We cheered at fights and we egged guys on to things, but we were the first to run away when the cops came. There were Negro cops in the neighborhood, and they were tough. They were even tougher on us kids than the white cops because they knew us better and how we acted reflected on them. There was Big Black and Middlebrooks and Clarence Lee and Grimes, the toughest of them all. That Grimes could put seven cats from the corner in the hospital with two blows. Once he caught a kid drinking wine in the schoolyard and he smashed the bottle while the kid was drinking out of it. With a baseball bat.

Toughest thing Boo and I ever did was bomb the streetcar. We’d fill up paper shopping bags with the powdery dark dust that lays over St. Louis when it gets hot and dry in the summer. Then we’d stand at the corner with our shopping bags and when the streetcar came we’d swing the bags around and around like softball pitchers winding up and then, just when the streetcar stopped, we’d let our paper bags go. Blam. By the time the dust cleared, Boo and I would be under the porch, watching the people rub their eyes and try to clean off their clothes, listening to them cough and curse. And Boo and I would be laughing our heads off.

Most of the time, though, Boo and I just hustled. Saturday was our big day. We’d get up in the early morning before daylight and run out to the white neighborhoods, not the rich neighborhoods where my momma worked, but the working people’s neighborhoods. Depending on the time of year, we’d scrub steps, shovel snow, wash automobiles, and wash windows. A lot of times I went out with Presley, my older brother, or alone, because Boo’s father was a chauffeur, and he didn’t have to hustle so much. It was the windows I didn’t like, standing out there on a second-story ledge, afraid to stay out there, afraid to come in and go out again on the next window. Sometimes I prayed out there. A couple of times I pissed in my pants.

After working the white neighborhood, we’d come back to the Negro neighborhood and haul groceries from about two o’clock to about four o’clock. After that we’d get out our shoeshine boxes and while we were walking around looking for customers we’d sell wood and coal. We’d steal it from anywhere,

we’d pull down a fence for wood. That night we’d work the white taverns shining shoes, and then sell the Sunday papers until about three o’clock in the morning. Come home, get up at six o’clock to deliver more papers until about nine thirty.

My biggest problem was figuring out what to charge people. I never wanted anyone to hate me over a dollar. I’d say: “Pay me what you think it’s worth.” Hardly ever did they pay me what I thought it was worth, and I’d walk away disgusted. But then I figured at least I could always go back there, those people didn’t dislike me for overcharging them. But I got taken a lot that way.

After we finished selling papers, we’d clean up and go to church. I liked church, sitting there and listening to the sweet music, and the preacher shouting, and everyone dressed so fine and clean. The Negro church has always meant a lot to the Negro—it was his club, his social life, a place where he could forget about The Man downtown. For me, then, it was a place to get all wrapped up in a God who was stronger than any teacher, or social worker, or man who owned a second-story window.

We went to the movies a lot, too. Loved movies. Alan Ladd and Humphrey Bogart. So cool. We used to walk like they did and talk out of the sides of our mouths like they did, and smoke like they did, sucking that last puff right down to our toes. Went to the serials, Spy Smasher, fifteen weeks to find out the good guy won. Never missed a Tarzan movie. Used to sit there and laugh at those dumb Hollywood Africans grunting and jumping around and trying to fight the white men, spears against high-powered rifles. Once we had a riot in the movies when Tarzan jumped down from a tree and grabbed about a hundred Africans.

We didn’t mind when Tarzan beat up five or ten, but this was just too many, a whole tribe, and we took that movie house apart, ran up on the stage and kicked the screen and fought the guys who still dug Tarzan.

We used to root for Frankenstein, sat there and yelled, “Get him, Frankie baby.” We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, when the Indians won it was a massacre. We always cheered for the American soldiers and booed the Japanese and the Germans. We never noticed that there weren’t any Negro soldiers on the screen, even though we saw them on the street. My favorite movie then was Kings Row. I was about ten. Figured out all by myself that the old doctor cut the railroad man’s legs off because the young

guy didn’t love his daughter and she went crazy. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring that all out. I guess I should have. Sat through it enough times.

We had joys back there in St. Louis, joys that made us want to live just as surely as the pains taught us how to live. There was Camp Rivercliff, in the Missouri hills, where we sat around a campfire at night and sang songs and visited caves where Jesse James had stashed some bank money, and learned about brushing teeth and using soap and water. I went there two summers, two weeks each time. The Reverend James Cook ran it. He’d pick us off the streets and pack us in trucks and take us into the clear air. The counselors were Negroes who had finished high school and gone to college. I really liked them. If you messed up, they beat you but good.

But I guess the best thing we ever did was go to see the Muni Opera. Boo and I would walk and run half the day to get there, to sit up in the free seats for kids. Carousel and Showboat and Roberta, those were the kind of shows we’d see, the kind of music that really made you feel good. We’d sit up there and watch the conductors, so sophisticated in their tuxedos. We were so far away from the singers and dancers that we couldn’t tell if they were white or colored. During the intermission we could walk down and watch the rich people smoke and talk and laugh. That was part of the show, too. Sometimes in the summer we’d go almost every night. It was almost like church. And then we could go home, and turn on the radio and hum along with the same kind of music we had heard at the Muni, and close our eyes and the kitchen would disappear and we could see the whole show, all over again.

I got picked on a lot around the neighborhood; skinniest kid on the block, the poorest, the one without a daddy. I guess that’s when I first began to learn about humor, the power of a joke.

“Hey, Gregory.” “Yeah.”

“Get your ass over here, I want to look at that shirt you’re wearing.” “Well, uh, Herman, I got to . . .”

“What you think of that shirt he’s wearin’, York?” “That’s no shirt, Herman, that’s a tent for a picnic.”

“That your daddy’s shirt, Gregory?” “Well, uh . . ”

“He ain’t got no daddy, Herman, that’s a three-man shirt.” “Three-man shirt?”

“Him ’n’ Garland ’n’ Presley supposed to wear that shirt together.”

 

At first, if Boo wasn’t around to help me, I’d just get mad and run home and cry when the kids started. And then, I don’t know just when, I started to figure it out. They were going to laugh anyway, but if I made the jokes they’d laugh with me instead of at me. I’d get the kids off my back, on my side. So I’d come off that porch talking about myself.

“Hey, Gregory, get your ass over here. Want you to tell me and Herman how many kids sleep in your bed.”

“Goo-gobs of kids in my bed, man, when I get up to pee in the middle of the night gotta leave a bookmark so I don’t lose my place.”

Before they could get going, I’d knock it out first, fast, knock out those jokes so they wouldn’t have time to set and climb all over me.

“Other night I crawled through one of them rat holes in the kitchen, would you believe it them rats were sleeping six to a bed just like us.”

And they started to come over and listen to me, they’d see me coming and crowd around me on the corner.

“We don’t worry about knocking the snow off our shoes before we go into my house. So cold in there, no snow’s going to melt on the floor anyway.”

Everything began to change then. Once you get a man to laugh with you, it’s hard for him to laugh at you. The kids began to expect to hear funny things from me, and after a while I could say anything I wanted. I got a reputation as a funny man. And then I started to turn the jokes on them.

“Hey, Gregory, where’s your daddy these days?”

“Sure glad that motherfucker’s out the house, got a little peace and quiet. Not like your house, York.”

“What you say?”

 

“Yeah, man, what a free show I had last night, better than the Muni, laying in bed with the window open, listening to your daddy whop your mommy. That was your daddy, York, wasn’t it?”

And then I’d turn, real quick, to another kid.

 

“Hey, Herman, did the police wagon ever get by your house last night? They stopped by my house and asked where you lived . . .”

I got to be good, the champ of the block, the champ of the neighborhood as I got older. I’d stand on the corner, hands in my pockets, feet on the sewer lid, back to the street, Boo right next to me. After a while, they’d come from all around to try to score on the champ.

“You Richard Gregory?” “Yeah.”

“I’m George . . .”

 

“You’re midnight, blackest cat I ever saw, bet your mammy fed you buttermilk just so you wouldn’t pee ink.”

Sometimes I could even use the humor on myself. Like when I was delivering papers and I broke my arm and I couldn’t cry from laughing over the run-down heels on my shoes that made me slip when I turned the corner. A worn heel could break an arm, but I never heard of an arm could break a heel.

But mostly I’d use family jokes, about how my mother was such a bad cook, maybe the worst cook in the whole world. “Who ever heard of burning Kool- Aid?”

But that wasn’t really very funny. There never was any mealtime in our house. If you were there, you ate. Grab a hot dog, a piece of baloney, bread, and run out

again. Sometimes when the weather was hot, we were afraid to open the wooden icebox. The sour smell of yesterday’s beans could knock you out. And it bugged me when the other kids in the neighborhood were called in to eat dinner. We’d be playing, and all of a sudden they’d all have to leave to eat. I’d just wait on their back porches until they were through eating and ready to come out to play again.

It’s a funny feeling to be by yourself on a back porch and hear people eating, people talking. There’s no talk in the world like the warm, happy talk of a family at the dinner table. I’d peep through the window and see my friend Robert in there, close by his daddy. Then his daddy’d get up and stick a toothpick in his mouth, pick up the paper, light a cigar, and walk around like he owned the world.

Once he came to the back porch, smiling to himself, looking at his cigar. Then he glanced down. And there I was.

“Who you, boy?”

 

“I’m Miz Gregory’s boy, Richard.” “What you sitting out here for?”

“I’m waitin’ on Robert to get through eatin’.”

 

“Why didn’t you come in and get something to eat?” “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

“You come on in here, boy, and get something to eat.” He brought me in and sat me down at the table.

He brought me in the second day, too, and the third and that’s when I thanked God for all the manners Momma taught me. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, ma’am.

Thank you, ma’am. They looked pleased to have me there, too. The old man really dug me. Bet he wouldn’t have minded it too much if I was his son, too. Damn, they all really dug me. Robert’s little sister jumped up so quick to wash the dishes and bring me water that everybody teased her. “How come, Marjorie, you only show off and wash dishes when Richard’s here?”

Then, on the fifth day, I met Robert’s daddy coming off the streetcar from work

and I asked him what time you all going to eat. I didn’t really ask him this because I was hungry. I asked him because I had sat at his table every day ashamed of how dirty I was, dirty from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. This one day I wanted to go clean. Then I ran home and took a bath. I had polished my tennis sneakers and put them up on the roof so they wouldn’t stink so bad. I washed my socks and ironed my shirt, and put on a pair of sissy short pants Momma brought home from the white folks. They were the best pair I had because I never wore them. Didn’t like them, but I was really glad I had them. I wanted to sit at that table as clean as they were.

When I walked by the house nobody was outside so I knocked on the front door. “Is Robert in, Miz Brown?”

“Yes, but he’s eating now.” “He’s eating now?”

“He’ll be out after a while, you can wait on the back porch.” Then I heard the old man say, “Who was that out there?” “That Gregory boy again.”

“Little Richard, eh? Have him come in and get something to eat.”

 

The table didn’t seem as warm and happy that night. Robert’s momma was arguing with the daddy about little things. After dinner, I helped them clear the dishes. I dropped one. Yeah, just my luck. I broke it. And when I saw the way Mrs. Brown looked at me, like I had no right to be there, I got a little mad. She didn’t know I was going to bring her a whole set of dishes tomorrow, yeah, a whole set. Lunchtime I’m going by the ten-cent store and steal me a whole set of dishes and bring it to her in time for dinner tomorrow.

I was out on the back porch helping the old man sharpen his lawn mower when I heard it.

“Robert, I’m sick of that Gregory boy in here eating every night. Doesn’t even say thanks anymore. Ain’t he got no mother and father?”

Goddamn. Now I’m crying. And now I start running.

And I run and I run and I run and then the alley ends and I turn out of that one and look for another. Didn’t even say thanks. Yeah, I used to say thanks but you all made me feel so at home, like I belonged there with you. I never say thanks at home. You made me come off that back porch, you looked like you had so much fun and enjoyment with me there, you let me think I was part of the family, almost like one of Mister Brown’s sons. Why’d she have to go say that? Ain’t he got no mother and father?

IV

 

There were other fathers along the way, men who reached out and gave me their hands. There was Mister Coleman, principal of the Cote Brilliant Grammar School where I was transferred when I was thirteen. He called me into his office once when I was in the seventh grade. I walked right up to his big oak desk, and he leaned back in his swivel chair and looked me up and down.

“I’ve got a problem you might be able to help me with, Richard. It’s about your job as a patrol boy.”

“Sure, Mister Coleman.”

 

“I’ve had complaints about how rough you are at the school crossing, Richard. You push the students, you use bad language. Now, I’ve watched you, Richard, and I know you’re one of our best patrol captains. You don’t let anybody cross until all the cars have stopped, you get right out there and make those trucks stay behind the white line. I don’t want to have to take your badge away.”

“Well, Mister Coleman . . .” “How old are you, Richard?”

“Fourteen.” I was embarrassed at being behind.

 

“You’re a leader, Richard, a smart boy, a little older than some of the other students. They’ll do just what you tell them if you’re kind and strong. You’ve got to help them out on that corner, you can’t be hateful. You’re just like a father with a lot of children to watch after. Now go out there and keep those little kids safe.”

At three o’clock I ran out on my post and stood out there like a happy traffic cop, as straight as a man could stand, proud because everybody was looking at me, because kids couldn’t cross the street without me. Milkmen, laundrymen, they’d pull up their trucks and I’d make sure all the kids were on the sidewalk before I’d wave them through. The drivers would lean out and wave at me and call hello as they passed by. I was somebody.

I changed a lot those years at Cote Brilliant. St. Louis had a segregated school

system and that school had been built for white kids. But after the war, when the neighborhood changed, it became a Negro school. It had trees and lawns and a beautiful brick building. I had to walk through a nice neighborhood to get there from North Taylor. I stopped shining shoes that year because I wanted to go to school clean, without polish all over my hands. I started taking books home with me. I still didn’t read them because it was too cold at home, but it was a good feeling to have them around. In the three years I went to Cote Brilliant, I only missed school when I didn’t have enough warm clothes.

The teachers were different, too. I guess Mr. Coleman set the tone. They talked to me, they listened to me, I got a chance to see Negroes in authority who didn’t seem bitter or out to get me. I got up in class and I talked, even if I really didn’t have anything to say.

“Miss Carter?” “Yes, Richard?”

“If two and two is four, then what you’re really saying is that you have to subtract two from four two times to get zero. Or you could multiply two times two and then subtract it from four or from two plus two and still get zero. Isn’t that right?”

“Uh, I think so, Richard, but perhaps you better say that again, slowly . . .”

 

I never read books so I didn’t really know things the way the other kids did, but all of a sudden I wanted to know. From all those years on the street I had a feeling that maybe there was more to things than just what was brought out in class. And so I tried to punch holes in the stories the other kids believed in (“I don’t think anybody could throw a silver dollar all the way across no river”) and show those kids they really weren’t as smart as they thought (“Did you ever see that gold in Fort Knox, how you know it’s really there?”).

I didn’t know the answers either, but I got to be a big man at Cote Brilliant. I got the reputation of a talker who could go on and on about anything at all. There was a school play about the United Nations, and I was invited to be an actor in it. I started to learn how to read the newspapers, and I could talk about the editorial page. And I was the big negotiator, the guy who broke up all the fights. Teachers would send for me to break up fights. Sometimes the big guys would come after me. A guy twice my size would grab me and push me against a wall and be all

ready to knock my face in. I’d roll my eyes and look down at his feet.

 

“Baby, you better kill me quick. If you don’t, I’m gonna steal those cool shoes you wearin’.”

Now who could beat up a guy who said that?

 

Then I went to Sumner High and I was nobody again. There were a lot of wealthy Negro kids at Sumner, doctors’ sons who had their own cars. Every girl looked as clean and smart as Helene Tucker. The athletes and the rich boys and the brains were the big wheels at Sumner High School. The only attention I got was in Pop Beckett’s gym class. Pop was one of the first Negro graduates of Springfield College, in Massachusetts, probably the greatest physical education school in the country. He was tough. Rich or poor, everybody got hit one time or another in his class. He slapped me a couple of times for messing up, and it felt good to have somebody care enough to beat me for a reason. It got to the point where I started looking for it. Pop would stand up on the platform in front of the gym class, his face stony, his chest bulging out of his T-shirt, and I’d suck on my cheeks until my lips squeaked.

“Who was that?” Pop would roar. “Me. It was me, Pop.”

Whop.

 

Or I’d yell out: “Pop, you stink.” “That you, Gregory?”

“Yeah, Pop, it was me.” “Get up here.”

Whop.

 

I became a big man in gym class because I was the only one who would yell at Pop and take my beating. I guess he knew why I was doing it because he never threw me out.

 

#

When school ended in June, Boo and Presley and I got jobs with the government flood control project on the levee. We told them we were eighteen years old. At

$1.25 an hour, I figured I’d be able to get some nice new clothes for school next fall.

That summer was like a long bad movie. We had to load and pile sandbags up and down the banks of the Mississippi and it was so hot the soles of our boots got sticky and our shirts were like another layer of skin. Always wet, always muddy, and if you took your clothes off you died from sunstroke. We saw a lot of men die. Work all day, all night, puffing on cigarettes to keep the mosquitoes off, sleep where you drop, eat when the Red Cross truck came along with sandwiches and coffee. One of us always kept watch behind in case another man went crazy in the sun and started splitting heads with his shovel. We were loading hundred-pound sandbags one day and I’d been urinating blood for a week when the levee started shaking and the bags began to turn dark brown from the water seeping through. A Negro army sergeant grabbed my arm.

“See my truck over there, boy? When the levee bust we ain’t gonna pick up no whites, hear, but you hang near the truck and jump in.”

And suddenly somebody was screaming, “It’s breaking, it’s breaking,” and water and bags and men were spilling and tumbling around us and Boo and Presley and I were running through muddy water, running until we fell down and got up again. Once we were so tired we just fell down and stayed there. The water came seeping up through the ground and we were running again, no place to lie down, nothing to eat. We passed three white men standing on top of a rock eating cheese sandwiches. They wouldn’t let us come up with them. One of them threw half a cheese sandwich down. Boo tore it in three parts and we were just about to bite on it when one of the white men grabbed his stomach and pitched over. We started running again. We got separated that night, and we didn’t see each other again for a couple of weeks, when the water went down and we all were sent home.

We were heroes when we got home. Momma was so glad to see us because she had read about a truckload of Negroes who had been drowned. Boo and Presley and I strutted around the neighborhood, and people bought us watermelon slices just to sit on their front porches and tell them how bad it was, how many people we saved. We lied our heads off. It was beautiful.

We had a lot of trouble getting our checks for that summer. An old white man

with a turkey neck down at the Federal Building kept telling Presley and me to come back tomorrow. Finally, Momma came down with us and straightened things out and a few weeks later we got almost five hundred dollars. For the first time, Presley and I went downtown to shop in the big department stores.

We were treated like dogs. We’d go into a place and a salesman would hurry away from his white customer. “What do you boys want?”

“Hat.”

 

“What color?” “Brown.”

“What’s your head size?” “Don’t know.”

“You have to know.” “I’ll try it on.”

“Like hell you will.”

 

Wherever we went in the store, the detective would follow us. Couldn’t touch, couldn’t try things on. Funny though, they put our money right next to white folks’ money in the cash register. We got home and we spread out our clothes on the floor for everybody to see. There were more shirts and socks and underwear on that floor than in the whole wide world.

I felt a lot better going back to high school that year, wearing new clothes, feeling clean on the outside. When I heard that the track team got to take showers every evening after practice, I asked the coach if I could join. Sumner had the best Negro track team in the state and a brilliant coach, Lamar Smith.

“You run before?”

 

“Sure, Coach, I do a lot of running.” “Where?” “Around the neighborhood.”

He shook his head. “We've given out all the lockers and uniforms for this year.” “All I want to do is take a shower in the afternoon.”

He looked me over and kind of smiled. “All right. But you'll have to bring your own sweat suit. And stay off the track and out of my boys' way.”

That's how I started in sports. Sumner had a fine athletic field. While the team ran inside the field, around the track, I ran outside, around a city block.

Every day when school let out at three o'clock, I'd get into an old pair of sneakers and a T-shirt and gym shorts and run around that block. In the beginning, I'd just run for an hour, then go and take a hot shower. And then one day two girls walked by and one of them said. “What's he think he's doing?” And the other one said: “Oh, he must be training for the big races.” I just kept running that day, around and around the block, until every time I hit the pavement pain shot up my leg and a needle went into my side, and I kept going around and around until I was numb and I didn't feel anything anymore.

Suddenly, it was dark and the track team had all left. I could hardly walk home my feet hurt so much, but I couldn't wait until the next day to get out there again. Maybe I couldn't run as fast as the other guys, but I could run longer, longer than anybody in all of the city of St. Louis. And then everybody would know who I was.

I kept running all that fall and all that winter, sometimes through the snow, until everybody in school knew who I was, the guy who never took a rest from three o'clock until six o'clock. I don't think I ever would have finished high school without running. It was something that kept me going from day to day, a reason to get up in the morning, to sit through classes with the Helene Tuckers and the doctors' sons who knew all the answers and read books at home, to look forward to going a little faster and a little longer at three o'clock. And I felt so good when I ran, all by myself like a room of my own, I could think anything I wanted while I ran and talk to myself and sometimes I'd write stories on “My Favorite Daddy” and “What I'd Buy with a Million Dollars,” and I could figure out why people did certain things and why certain things happened. Nobody would point to me and say I was poor or crazy; they'd just look at me with admiration and say: “He's training.” I never got hungry while I was running even though we never ate breakfast at home and I didn't always have money for lunch. I never was cold or hot or ashamed of my clothes. I was proud of my body that kept going around and around and never had to take a rest.

After six o'clock I'd go to White's Eat Shop and wash dishes in return for dinner. Sometimes I'd go downtown and sneak into a white hotel and put on a busboy's uniform and get a good meal in the kitchen. The Man never knew the difference. “All niggers look alike.” And then I'd go home and go to sleep because I was tired and I needed a rest. I'd be running again tomorrow.

When spring came, the coach called me over one day and asked me if I'd like to run on the track. I ran against the guys on the team and they were still faster than me, but I could keep going long after they were pooped out. Every so often the coach would walk by and tell me I was holding my arms wrong, or that my body was at the wrong angle, or my knees weren't coming up high enough. But I was on the inside now and I was getting a little faster every day. By the time school closed in June I was beating the boys on the track team. The coach told me to report for track first thing in September. There would be a locker for me and a uniform.

That summer was the roughest I ever spent. The Korean War was on, and good jobs were opening up at ammunition plants. I lied four years, told them I was twenty-one, and went to work for a company manufacturing 105-millimeter howitzer shells. The unfinished shells weighed forty-five pounds each, and I had to pick up 243 every twenty minutes. I always had stomach trouble, never could wear a belt, and every time I bent over and picked up a shell my insides tore a little. But with overtime I could pull down as much as two hundred dollars some weeks. When the other workers found out how old I was, there was a lot of resentment. They'd slip up behind me with crowbars and shove the casings down the belt faster than I could pick them up. I'd be so tired when I came home it was a real effort to get out and practice my running.

Then they put me on the night shift, eleven o'clock to seven in the morning. “Keep the streets a little safer at night, one less nigger running around,” the foreman said. Now I did my running in the mornings after work, when the other folks were just going to their jobs. I kind of liked that, but it hurt, not being able to be with Boo and my friends in the evening.

And then the foreman told another boss to put me down in the furnace pit. “Nigger can take heat better,” he said. Well, the system wasn't going to beat me. I stood up next to that furnace, and I ate their goddamn salt tablets and just refused to pass out. They weren't going to make me quit, and I wasn't going to give them cause to fire me. I'd lean into that blazing pit until my face would

sting, and when the lunch whistle blew I'd fall on the floor and vomit blood for half an hour and I'd clean it up myself.

It was all worth it. I could walk home at the end of the week and put money in Momma's hand. We could go shopping with cash instead of the green tablet; we could walk into a supermarket instead of Mister Ben's. I could stand at the checkout counter and listen to the cash register and my heart didn't jump with every ring. Momma could pay some back bills and buy some new secondhand furniture and some clothes, and not have to go to the white folks’ every day. We had a little money around the house now, but we didn’t sign off relief. It was too hard to get back on.

I kept my job when school started. The band had a special music class at eight o’clock in the morning, one hour before regular classes started, and I worked out a deal with the bandmaster, Mr. Wilson, to let me take it. That way I could come to school right from the plant, and finish up classes and track practice early enough to grab a few hours’ sleep before leaving for the eleven o’clock shift. In return, I cleaned up the band room every morning, set the music out on the stands for the musicians, and kept out of their way. I liked sitting on the side and watching the band play, everybody working together to make a good sound, the bandmaster, a real sophisticated conductor with his baton, telling everybody when to come in, when to stop. I started watching the drummer. He seemed to be having the most fun, sitting there so cool, beating on that big kettledrum. When he brought those sticks down everybody heard him. He played all by himself, but he kept the whole thing going. I started tapping my hands on my knees along with him, and sometimes I’d get there a little earlier and take some licks on the drum myself. And after a while, when I was home, I’d keep time to the radio, beating a fork on one of Momma’s pots.

After school I’d be out on the track, inside the fence with my own uniform. There was a new coach, Warren St. James. And he started spending a lot of time with me, teaching me how to start, how to pace myself, when to make that closing kick. I learned fast because I was hungry to learn, and when the season opened I was running in dual meets, in the mile and the half-mile. I was doing well, finishing third and second, and once in a while I’d win a little race. But I was always tired, sometimes too tired to sleep before I went to work at the plant.

Momma came into the bedroom one evening, about eight o’clock. I was sitting up in bed, thinking about last week’s race and the mistakes I made, how I just

didn’t have it at the end, how I couldn’t get those knees up high enough for the stretch sprint.

“Can’t you sleep, Richard?” “No, Momma.”

“I don’t know why you don’t quit that old sport, Richard.” She sat down on the bed. She always sighed when she sat down. “I worry about you, Richard, you got so much trouble with your stomach and your mind drifts so.”

“Momma?”

 

“Yes, honey.”

 

“Remember when you took me to that old woman, I was a real little kid, and she said I’d be a great man someday.”

Momma took my head in her lap and rocked back and forth. “She saw a star right in the center of your head, and I knew it, oh, how I knew it. You’re gonna be a great man, Richard.”

“Momma, I’m gonna be a great runner, the coach said I could be a great runner. Momma?”

“Yes, honey?”

 

“I want to quit my job.”

 

And my momma rocked me in her arms and I guess she thought about the green tablet with the picture of the snuff can on it, and getting up at six o’clock to put sacks on her shoes and she said: “Okay, honey. And don’t you worry, my special little man, we’re gonna be all right.”

That was my last night at work. The next morning I got to the band room and the bandmaster was staring out the window looking mad. There was a concert the next week, and the drummer was in the hospital.

“You read music, Gregory?” “No, sir.”

“Well, I know you been fooling around with the drums. Now I want to try something. Whenever I tip my head toward you like this, see, I want you to hit the drum like this, hear, and when I . . .”

The drummer never got his job back. We got through that concert, and the one after that, and then it was football season and I was banging the big bass drum in the marching band.

Life really began to open up for me. Everybody in school knew me now, the athletic crowd and the musical crowd, and the girls that hung around both. I didn’t go out very much. I didn’t have money, and I was pretty shy. I could make quick talk outside the corner drugstore, or at a party, but when it came to that big step of asking a girl to have a date with me, I just couldn’t get those words out.

But I was all right, man. The band was taking big trips, to West Virginia and Illinois and Kansas, and we were playing Beethoven and Bach and Mozart, cats I never heard of. Once, just once, I invited Momma to a concert. I sat on the stage of the school auditorium, and I got sick and ashamed when I saw her come in wearing that shabby old coat, her swollen ankles running over the edges of those dyed shoes, that dress the rich white folks gave her, a little too much lipstick, the cheap perfume. They asked her to go sit up in the balcony. I should have got up and thrown that kettledrum right into the faces of all those doctors and society people and light-complected snobs sitting in the orchestra. But I didn’t. I just was glad she was up in the balcony where she couldn’t be seen by too many people.

I never wanted her at track meets. That was mine, all mine. Flagpole Gregory, they called me, Ironman Gregory. I could run all day. I had style. I wore argyle socks in the races and a handkerchief wrapped around my head. I had a little trick. When I came down the stretch I’d look up at the flagpole and make a little salute. Then I’d go into my closing kick and win going away. They thought I was very patriotic, that the flag gave me extra strength. Once in a meet against Vashon High, the other big Negro high school in St. Louis, some kids took the flag down, figuring that would beat me. I never even knew it.

Most of the meets were on Saturday, and I’d stay out until ten or eleven o’clock Friday night, talking with Mister Ben, or walking with Boo, or hanging around with the guys at the candy store and the poolroom. They’d tell me about a fight they were going to have with another gang, or some little bitch they were all

going to screw, and maybe some of the boys would come by with some wine. I’d tell them I couldn’t make it, I was in training. I didn’t tell them I didn’t need it, I had something bigger going for me. Then, about eleven o’clock, when I was sure I was so tired I’d fall right to sleep, I’d go home.

I’d wake up early on Saturday mornings with a smirk on my face. I’d walk around the house, look at the peeling linoleum floor, the dirty dishes in the sink, all the raggedy shoes under the bed. I’d punch Garland on the arm and tickle Ronald and maybe pinch the girls. I’d hug Momma. “We’re all right, Momma, we’re all right.” And then I’d take that one big step out of the house, jump the stoop, and I was in another world.

I’d walk to the stadium through the early morning, my uniform bag swinging in my hand, and with each step my stomach would turn over again and the little hairs would start standing up on the back of my neck. When I got to the stadium I’d just wave at the guard and he’d open the gate for me. I didn’t even have to show him my competitor’s pass. “Good luck, Greg, as if you need it.” He’d wink at me and I’d wink back.

And the sun would be coming up high and it would still be cold under my sweater. I could feel the sweat under my armpits and between my shoulder blades and behind my knees. “Hey, Greg, hey, Greg,” and I’d never look around, just climb quietly up to the grandstand and sit on a wooden bench like any other spectator. They’d be running off the shotput and high jump early and I’d just sit up there and watch. Just another spectator at the track and field meet.

The loudspeaker would crackle and snap: “Will all entrants in the one-mile run please report to the official’s table, will all . . .”

I’d stand up real slow, and feel this thing start to take me over, this monster that started at my toes like hot water flowing upward through a cold body. By the time I got down the steps I’d be on fire. I dressed fast in the locker room under the stands, put on my bright argyles, wrapped a handkerchief around my head. Then I’d walk out on the field and I knew I could crush the world.

“There you are, Gregory, I’ve been looking all over for you. Where you been?” “I’m ready, Coach.”

St. James looked me over. “You better be. I want to talk to you. That big boy

from Vashon, he’s good, you have to watch his . . .”

 

“Don’t tell me about him, Coach. You go on over and tell him about me.”

 

I got to the line with the other runners, and now, for just a moment, I was scared. God, I’m bringing 118 pounds of bones to this line, been training right, going to bed every night, trying to keep the rules, now . . .

Bang.

 

Let the pack get ahead of you for the first quarter, no need to get banged around and elbowed up there with the pacesetters burning themselves out. Take it easy, Greg baby, that’s the way, that’s the way. At the half they start falling back, the guys who don’t know how to run, the guys who smoke, the guys who don’t really have it. Take them now at the three-quarter, take one at the curve, get the other one coming off, and come around the straightaway and clean them all up. One by one. Don’t play with them, Greg baby, don’t play with them, just pass them by like snatching off weeds on the run like you used to do with Boo. Now you feel that thing, the monster, and you’re going, man, you’re going, ripping and running and here comes that bad dog. There’s only two up front now and they’re way over their heads, and here comes the flagpole, don’t forget to look up and salute, Greg, that’s your trademark. Somewhere Coach St. James is saying, “Goddamn. Look at that Gregory, look at that machine.” And my knees are coming up higher and higher and I’m running faster and faster and I pass those two like the Greyhound Bus passes telephone poles and the tape snaps against my chest and then, slowly, I’m off the stride, slowly, my head goes down, and, slowly, the thing inside of me lets go. The monster slips out, and I’m left all alone there, Richard Gregory, not Dick, not Flagpole or Ironman, just Richard. I fall on my knees and then on my face, and the grass smells sweet and my stomach explodes. “That . . . that . . . my last race, Coach . . . no . . . more.”

“Come on, Gregory, on your feet. They’re getting ready for the relays.”

 

And I’m up again and waiting, and it starts all over, the hot water seeping up, the monster slipping back in. I can see our number three man hit the curve and slow down like I told him to and now I’m running and the stick hits my hand like an electric charge. I put my head down and I go and the charge stays with me because everyone else is ahead and they have to settle down and run a race, but I have to go out and catch them all. Now my knees are coming up again, higher and higher and higher than the flagpole, and I salute my knees and then I snap

the tape again. This time, when I fall on the grass, I go right to sleep, into a dream world. I’m standing on the back of an open car riding up Fifth Avenue in New York City, ticker tape falling out of the buildings like a Christmas snow and everybody in the world is cheering me as I go by, except Big Pres who’s hanging his head. I’m asleep in the middle of a stadium and I don’t even hear them screaming my name.

 

#

 

I’d wake up screaming sometimes myself, my leg cramped and twisted under me. Momma would come in and sit down and take my legs and rub them gently.

“Anything makes a man like this here, he got to be crazy to go out and do it,” she would say. “What is it, Richard, inside of you makes you go out there? I’m really afraid for you, Richard.”

V

 

It was a thrill just to go to school, to walk down the street with guys and girls following me, jostling each other to walk next to me, to say: “Hey, Greg, how you feeling, baby? Gonna win the big one Saturday?” I’d just lay back and smile and wave my hand. Maybe say something funny about myself. That’s all I had to do. Act nice, never put anyone down. They loved it, I was a celebrity. I’d walk into Mister Ben’s and he’d stop whatever he was doing and ask me some question and make sure everyone in the place knew we were friends. If I said I was going out on Sunday to look over the track, there would be a crowd of little kids out there waiting for me. The same cop who used to come over and ask me what I was doing on the corner now came over and asked me how I was doing.

The only one who never seemed too impressed was Momma. She had five other kids in the house and she wasn’t going to let me get too big. I’d come running home, telling her the coach said I needed a special kind of food for my training. She’d tell me I’d better stop by the coach’s house to get it.

“You don’t understand, Momma. I’m putting the Gregory name on the map.” “Honey, I put you in the world, and the world was made before maps.”

Only once did I ever invite Momma to one of my track meets. She refused. She knew I really didn’t want her there with her shabby coat and swollen legs, sitting with the doctors’ sons and the Helene Tuckers who cheered and screamed for Flagpole Gregory, the gladiator. I could almost hear them think—After you kill that lion and stomp that elephant I’ll bring you home, you running fool, and you can tell us what the victory was all about while we sip tea. But don’t come too close.

I took one of those girls to my first prom.

 

That was a big event in my neighborhood, getting me ready for that junior prom. I couldn’t rent a tux because you had to leave a suit as deposit, and I didn’t have a suit. But, somehow, Momma came up with the tuxedo pants and the white jacket. The white folks she worked for sent over a flower for the girl I didn’t know you were supposed to bring a flower. Momma took half the day off just to dress me, hollering, “Hold still,” while she put the collar stays in. I was like a king with his court, my brothers and sisters standing around, watching me get dressed, crawling after studs that fell on the floor, opening the door for

neighbors who wanted to see me. Man, I looked good in that tux. Didn’t have to worry about the pants too long, the shoes not right, the tie doesn’t match.

Formal. It’s there. You know you’re perfect.

 

For an hour, Momma sent me around to Missis Rector’s and Missis Simmons’ and Aunt Elaine’s, all over the neighborhood so folks could get a look at me. Mister Ben closed his door and pulled the shade and told me all about his first prom. Never knew he went to a prom. He gave me two dollars. Then Momma gave me five dollars and told me to stop by the Chinese place on my way home and bring back dinner for the family. We were going to splurge and have a party after I got back.

I didn’t have fun at that dance. I was so afraid the taxi wouldn’t stop for me that he almost didn’t. The girl’s mother and father looked at each other and started whispering when I went to pick her up. When we got to the prom she kept going to the bathroom with other girls, talking in a low voice with the doctor’s son.

She didn’t want to dance to the blues, the gut bucket, the funky songs. Her crowd just came out on the floor for the sweet ballads. They talked about vacations and cars and clothes. After a while I went down to the far end of the gym and talked to the guys on the track team. Told them all about the women I screwed, the whiskey I could drink, the cats I had cut. Told them about this affair I had last week where the bitch screamed she would kill herself if I ever stopped giving it to her. Her husband almost caught us, but I climbed out a back window with her drawers in my hip pocket. I told the guys all the stories I had overheard in the taverns.

When the dance was finally over, a chilly fright came over the whole place. Suddenly, everyone who wouldn’t talk to me or dance with me wanted to leave with me. When we walked out the door I found out why.

There were hundreds of them out there, all the cats who couldn’t make it, the guys who couldn’t get dates, whose processed hair was too long, whose pants rode down too far on their hips. The line ran for blocks, mean looking guys just waiting. We went down the steps, and one of them knocked the doctor’s son’s hat off. When he reached down to pick it up, he got kicked right in his face.

Then the fight started. I took my little group back inside.

 

From the window, I could see a mess of pink and blue formal gowns, rust- colored pegged suits, black and white tuxes, and greasy jackets boiling around

together like a pot of beans and fatback. Society was paying its dues. Girls were rolling around on the ground with their gowns up over their heads, and a guy was running down the street with his tails split up to his neck. That was pretty funny. The hoodlums were having their ball now, downtown hoodlums pounding guys as they came out the door, and neighborhood hoodlums getting second licks, and the cats who just didn’t have it standing around and cheering and ripping the dress off a girl now and then. One girl stood there just in her underwear, her yellow gown down around her feet, while her date, who had lost a shoe, was hopping away down the street. The cops were there, but they were pretty busy keeping from losing their hats. The only guys really fighting the hoods were the cabdrivers, who were angry at losing all their customers.

While I watched, the boys on the football team, who had played against those hoods, been down in the nitty-gritty dirt with them, stepped out with their dates. They marched right through the line and nobody bothered them. So I took my little crowd out. The biggest downtown hoodlum looked up from beating some guy’s head.

“Richard Gregory, hey, there’s Flagpole Gregory. Come on, baby, you’re all right.” That big cat looked me in the eye, then looked at the crowd behind me. “You and your lady can go through, baby, but that’s all.”

The other cats stopped for a minute and looked up at me while the chief was talking, while he was really saying: Man, you’re the same as we are and we’re proud of you, but don’t try to get anybody through because you should be out here fighting them with us.

The rest of my crowd broke and ran, and my date and I walked like a king and queen past the gang boys and the petty cats, through the bricks and the noises and past the hood who stuck his head out of the backseat of a police car and waved his handcuffs and yelled: “I’ll get you next year, you . . .” to all the tuxedos he hadn’t ruined this year.

We took a cab with some other people from the dance to the DeLuxe, one of the best Negro restaurants in St. Louis. I had heard about the place. A plate of shrimps cost two dollars and something there. I had Momma’s five dollars left in my pocket after the cab rides. The crowd my girl knew were all sitting at one table, and they pulled out chairs for us kind of slow.

The doctor’s son, who had been kicked in the face, looked me over. “You look

pretty clean, man.”

 

“Got punched a couple times, but I was lucky,” I said. But he knew. Then it started, from the far end of the table.

“There’s a bug at this table, don’t you see the bug?” I looked for the bug.

 

“Is it a big bug?” said somebody at the other end. “You know it,” said the far end.

“How you know it’s a bug?” “Smells like a bug.”

After a while, when I realized they were talking about me, I picked up the menu and held it in front of me. It was like opening a box and seeing the most horrible face in the world staring back at you. The cheapest thing on the menu was chicken. $1.25.

“I’ll have the shrimps,” she said.

 

I didn’t even know what they looked like. I got scared, and I thought about the five dollars in my pocket. Some of it was supposed to buy dinner for the kids. No choice. I had to spend. I ordered the chicken.

I ate the chicken and the pie a la mode and I drank the Pepsi-Cola, but I never tasted them.

“They wouldn’t let a bug in this place.” “If it had a tie on, they would.”

“Bug crawled right through the fight.” “Didn’t get squashed?”

“No, bugs never step on bugs.”

 

I needed the final say that night. When the waitress came over with the bill for the table, I looked up at her and said: “I’ll take it.” The table got very quiet.

“I want to tell you, you did a real nice job here on service. I’ve worked in white hotels and this is the best restaurant I’ve ever been in.”

The waitress puckered up her lips and put her hands on her hips. “Son of a bitch, will you just give me twelve dollars and fifty cents so I can get the hell out of here?”

I played my game. “Dammit, bitch, you cursed me. You cursed me in front of my friends here, in front of these ladies.” And then I started to curse, my whole childhood spilling out of my mouth, everything vile I ever heard on the street or in a tavern or from Big Pres. The waitress’ mouth dropped open and the kids started to get up from the table. My date started to cry. She wanted to go home. I gave her a dollar to go home in a cab.

The waitress was shaking. “Just give me my money, you dirty little motherfucker.”

I whispered to her: “I ain’t got no money.” She shouted: “You ain’t got no money?”

Everybody heard her as they walked out of the restaurant.

 

“I’m sorry. I said all those things to stall for time. Here’s four dollars, your money for the service. I’ll come back tomorrow. If I don’t have money then, I’ll wash dishes for it. Tomorrow.”

She looked at me, and somewhere down the line I guess she could see what it was all about. “Okay. I believe you.

When I walked out on the street, my date was still there. Crying. I took her home. When we got to her front door she turned around and leaned up against me. “Thanks,” she said, “I had a lovely time.” She wanted to kiss me good night. I couldn’t believe it. She was the first girl I ever kissed.

I got back home that night about 4 am. The folks were sitting on my front porch waiting on me. And I lay back and smiled at them and waved my hand and sat down and told them all about the dance. The way it should have been.

I made them cry. The tears rolled down their faces when I told them how the girls in pink and yellow floated like clouds to music sweet as a chorus of angels.

The guys were so strong in their black and white tuxes. I told them about the snowy white tablecloths at the DeLuxe, and how the shrimps were as big as my fist. None of us knew that the batter wasn’t part of the shrimp. The waitress smiled and bowed, the cabdrivers lined up to pick us up, we laughed and sang and strutted down the avenue like kings and queens, like high society. Me and the doctor’s son got along so well he invited me over to his house next week. I showed them the lipstick on my handkerchief and told them how my date loved me, how elegant and fine she thought I was. They sat on the front porch and cried for what they had missed and I cried because I knew they hadn’t missed anything at all.

Then I went inside to face Momma.

 

“Garland cried all night,” she said. “He didn’t have anything to eat.”

 

I sat down next to her at the kitchen table and told her I spent all the money. She cried.

“Did you have fun, Richard?”

 

“I had fun here before I left, Momma, all the folks coming by to see me. Had fun out on the porch telling Boo and everybody about the dance I’m going to one day.”

She put her arm around me. “It’s my fault, Richard. I know kids don’t go to that kind of dance without having twenty dollars in their pockets. I should have borrowed more.”

“No, Momma, twenty dollars wouldn’t have been enough for me tonight. I still would’ve messed up. I would’ve had to pick up all the checks in that whole restaurant, Momma, I would’ve had to pay for everybody.”

There were other proms after that, and I learned what to do to have fun, to take girls who wanted to be with me, who wanted to dance to funky songs. I learned to slip out of the dance two hours early and buy some wine for the meanest cat standing outside. He’d get drunk then and dog somebody else a little more, but he’d let my crowd through. And I learned to introduce my girl to the hoodlum chief. That’s all he wanted. When we left the dance he’d make all those cats stop fighting for a few minutes. Now that he and my girl were acquainted, he didn’t

want her to see him acting so badly. And by my third prom I figured out how to stop the beatings altogether. I opened the windows so the cats outside could peep right in. I brought special guys and girls by the windows and introduced them to the hoods. After a while those cats would whisper to one of my friends, “Hey, dance with that girl over there for me,” and before you knew it, they were passing their bottles through the window and saying, “Have a drink on me, man.” The guys on the outside were in on the party, too. And they acted nice because they didn’t want those windows pulled to shut them out.

VI

 

That was a long summer, the summer of 1951. I was waiting for the scholastic record book to come out. In the spring I had won the mile in four minutes twenty-eight seconds at the Missouri state meet for Negroes, one of the best high school times of the year, and I could hardly wait to see my name in the book when it came out in the fall. It was a long summer, and a hot one. The papers always had pictures of people frying eggs on the sidewalk in front of their houses. The mud on the riverbanks baked into a powdery dust that blew all over the city. All through June and July, Boo and Presley and I went downtown looking for jobs. Every day. Never got anything. “Sorry, boys, we’re not hiring colored today.” By August, Boo and Presley gave up. But I couldn’t go back to shining shoes and running to the store for the neighbors: My name would be in a book soon. I kept going downtown alone.

It hit 109 degrees one day that August, so hot that skin peeled off my hand when I held a brass door handle too long. I had a nickel in my pocket that day, no job, and I started to walk home. Forty-five blocks, and every time I took a breath, the heat got caught in my throat. I thought I was going to pass out. And then I saw a beautiful sign on a restaurant window—air-conditioned—soda water 5c. It was cool inside, and the soda jerk looked like an angel in his clean, white uniform.

“We don’t serve niggers here.”

 

I just stood there, trying to get my mouth wet enough to tell him what I’d gone through that day . . .

“What’sa matter, you deaf, boy?” . . . to tell him how good it felt in here, to tell him I was sorry I was a Negro.

Someone in the corner smashed a pop bottle against the marble counter and came toward me.

He came around in front of me, waving the broken bottle in his hand like Humphrey Bogart would do in the movies. There were others in back of him, grinning. He shoved the broken bottle at me, and I put my hand in front of my face. I didn’t feel anything, but they started yelling. The soda jerk came flying over the counter like Alan Ladd, and he and Humphrey Bogart threw me out.

I started walking again, choking on the heat and the dust, watching my blood run down the sidewalk and the insides come out of my hand. It was white. Then I fainted. A wonderful feeling, like falling away from the world.

When I woke up, a white lady was kneeling in the gutter next to me, her arm under my head. Her other hand was stroking the lump on my forehead where it hit the pavement. “Everything will be all right, you’re going to be all right, young man.”

There was a white policeman standing next to her, and I tried to tell them that I wasn’t bothering the lady, that I hadn’t touched her. But my mouth was still too dry.

“Leave him alone, lady, I’ll take care of this. The ambulance’ll be right here.” “Where are you taking him, Officer?”

“The nigger hospital.” “I beg your pardon?” “Homer O. Phillips.”

“That’s too far. We’ll take him to Barnes.”

 

“Barnes ain’t for niggers, lady. You’d better mind your business.” “Officer, do you know who I am?”

“Some nigger-lover who . . .”

 

The lady said her name then and the cop’s mouth dropped open and he took a step backward. “I have your badge number and you can consider yourself fired.” The cop began to apologize and help me into the ambulance. The lady got into the back with me. “Barnes Hospital, and quickly, please, this young man is seriously injured.”

They turned on the siren. For me. Cars got out of the way. When she took me into the lobby of Barnes Hospital, I was a little ashamed of all the blood and dirt on my clothes. I had heard of Barnes, but never expected to be inside. They treated me well. Right upstairs, no waiting, one doctor to clean my hand, another

to sew eight stitches and put on a clean white bandage. They all seemed to know the lady, and she stayed with me all the time.

Afterward, she took me downstairs and called a cab. The driver looked at us strangely, but the lady got right in. She asked me where I lived, and she told the driver. She kept talking to me the whole ride, but I didn’t hear a word. I just kept staring at the beautiful white bandage on my hand. Nobody in my neighborhood had ever had such a beautiful white bandage.

“I think I better get off here, ma’am.” “But this isn’t North Taylor.”

“I know, ma’am, but my momma would think I did something wrong if she saw me come home with a white lady.” That was true, but I couldn’t tell her I wanted to slip in the back door and surprise everyone with my bandage. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“Are you really sure?”

 

“Yes, ma’am, and thank you very much. Thank you, too, sir,” I told the cabdriver. When I got out, the lady waved to me through the back window.

I started to run. I felt so good I ran five blocks, then ten blocks past my house. Finally, hot, my hand throbbing, I went home. I slipped in the back door. “Hey, everybody, come in here, you want to see something, you really want to see something?”

Momma put me to bed and I stayed there for three days. I only got up to put white shoe polish on my bandage when it started to get dirty. Everyone came to see me, and I told them about the white lady and the ambulance and going into Barnes Hospital. I didn’t know the lady’s name, and I think some people didn’t believe my story.

After a week or so, Momma told me to go to the city hospital to have the stitches removed. I didn’t want to go there, but nobody at Barnes had said anything about my coming back. So I took the stitches out myself. One by one, with a needle and scissors. It wasn’t that hard.

That September the scholastic record book came out and my name wasn’t in it. I went down to the Board of Education and a man told me that records set in all- Negro track meets were never listed. Coach St. James told me the same thing.

You have to run with the white boys to get your name in the book.

 

The next time I went down to the Board of Education I took a couple of thousand friends with me and I got my name on television and in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

What really happened was that the Sumner High PTA organized a march on the Board that September to protest overcrowded conditions. There were a lot of tensions and fears. Pop Beckett stood in front of the school with a baseball bat in his hand and when he saw me he told me not to get involved.

“Got to go, Pop. My momma doesn’t know I was one of the best milers in the country this year.”

He just looked at me, amazed.

 

My job on the march was to run up and down the line, keeping the kids in order and warning them not to steal from fruit stands along the way. The line got longer and longer, as kids from other Negro high schools joined. I never did get a chance to talk to the mayor about my time for the mile. The newspaper and television reporters along the way thought I was kidding when I said I was protesting because my name wasn’t in the scholastic record book. So I told them how there were eighty kids in the English class, and we learned math in the machine shop because there weren’t enough rooms in school, and the last ten kids to get to history had to stand up for an hour because there weren’t enough seats. They wrote in the papers that I was the leader of the demonstration. It’s not as if I really told them that.

The police broke up the demonstration at Locust Street, in front of the Board building. They said it was a breach of the peace. And a man came out and told us that if we wanted better schools we should return to them. And another white man said that six adults from the PTA could come into the building and discuss the matter if the rest of us went back to classes. We did. The city was pretty well turned upside down by all this Negro marching and chanting and sign-waving. It wasn’t even a matter of wanting to sit down. Back at school everyone told me I was going to get expelled, and back home Momma was all upset. The white folks had told her that the march was Communist-inspired. I told her I didn’t

even know how to spell Communist.

 

Nothing much happened right away, but the next week the high school cross- country program was integrated. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the march. It was the first time Negro and white ever competed against each other in the high schools of St. Louis, and things really began to open up for me.

It was wild. There were rumors and excitement and electricity in the air. We didn’t know the white boys and they didn’t know us. We’d never had a chance to love or hate each other on a man-to-man basis, to watch each other run, to see each other naked. There were Negro rumors that the white boys had special conditioning and food that gave them the strength to beat us in the long distances. There were white rumors that we needed only three runners at a track meet: one would win the 100 and the 220, the second would win both hurdles, and the third would win the half and the mile. Then the three regulars would borrow a Negro water boy and win the relays.

My first integrated meet was a cross-country run over at Wood River. I was so nervous I was shaking when we came to the line. Coach St. James had given us a big buildup for weeks. He had made us learn strategy all over again, made us promise to lay off the grandstanding. No argyle socks, no saluting, no crossing the tape holding your buddy’s hand, no waving at your girlfriends. This was big time. If we won we’d get our names in the white newspapers the next day—we wouldn’t have to wait until the Argus, the weekly Negro newspaper, came out on Thursday. And the coach had told me that there was a little white boy in the race who had one of the best scholastic three-mile times in the country, and if I could beat him I could win the race. But we had never run the course before.

And we didn’t even know which was the white boy to beat. Bang.

I didn’t break out too fast. Let the pack go on ahead, this is a long race. You could see right away how different it was, running against boys who had eaten better and taken better care of their bodies all their lives. They looked smooth, they ran smooth. I moved up into the pack, and then went on ahead. I didn’t know any of these white boys, which were the early pacesetters, which were the ones saving themselves for a final sprint. So I decided to stay with the leaders. There was a little white boy way ahead of everyone else, running as easy as flowing water. He took the corners sharply, and never seemed to get scratched by the bushes along the course. I got scratched all the time. I decided he had to

be the white boy to beat.

 

I moved up, past the leaders, and started to dog that white boy. He was running too fast for me, and when I tried to match his pace my breath got short and it felt like somebody was sewing up the left side of my stomach and there was broken glass inside my shoes. He kept running easy. I knew I could never outrun him.

Have to trick this race, Greg.

 

About the two-mile mark, I came up alongside him and slapped him on the butt. “Nice going, baby,” I said, and I fell back fast so he wouldn’t hear me panting.

A little bit later I came up again and kicked him on the heel of his shoe. Not enough to break his stride or bother him or get myself disqualified. Just enough so I could say, “Excuse me, baby.” Again I dropped back fast so he wouldn’t hear my breath come out. That upset him, but he didn’t break.

Not much time left now. Last chance. I came right up behind him and I held my breath. He felt me running right behind him and he heard my feet, but he never heard me breathe. There was a fire in my chest, and my mind got fuzzy, and when I tried to take a shallow breath my brain kept clicking to shut it off, but he was looking around him now and his eyes were wide and he was so scared he speeded up. I held my breath as long as I could, then I dropped back to where he couldn’t hear me and I let it all out and got myself together again. He had speeded up too early, and when he tried to slow down and settle back into his pace his smooth stride was broken, and he was off. He was destroyed. He wasn’t running his race anymore; he was scared and his mind was all messed up.

I came up again and I knew I could pass him anytime I wanted to, now. But I didn’t know the course, and I didn’t want to take the chance of making a wrong turn and getting disqualified. So I stayed a few yards behind him until the last two hundred yards, a straight shot to the tape. I could see the officials and the band and the crowd and the photographers and I passed him going away, and watched my knees all the way down the stretch, higher and higher, right through the tape. And then I got to see how Whitey treats his heroes.

First-class all the way. Had my picture on the front page of the Wood River paper, and on the sports pages of all the white St. Louis papers. Dick Gregory. No. 1. That was the start of a hell of a year, that last year in high school. I won the state cross-country meet at Forest Park, white and Negro. State champion. And then I finished second in a fifteen-mile race, the only high school runner in

a field of college boys. People started listening to me that year, taking me to dinners, giving me awards. Outstanding citizen. They always introduced me as Dick Gregory, a boy who was born and raised on relief. Look at him now, they said. As if relief was all in the past, as if Momma wasn’t still dragging home from the white folks, as if I wasn’t taking five dollars at a time out of her pocketbook. I was too busy being a good example to go out and work, to be much of a son or a brother.

I took the high school cooking course that year because I wanted to learn etiquette. I was getting to be a big man around and I wanted to learn how to hold a knife and fork. I always used to eat one course at a time, clean off the meat, then turn the plate and clean off the potatoes; turn it again and clean off the greens. I had to convince them at Sumner that I was going to be a cook after graduation so they would let me take the home economics course. That meant I had to take sewing, too. But I learned how to eat right. I never told them the real reason I took the course, so they put cook after my name in the yearbook.

Didn’t matter. I was captain of the track team that year, and the cross-country team, and I played the kettledrum in the orchestra and the bass drum in the band, and the bongos for a dance club called the Rockettes. Even started taking girls to the movies. I was so cool I always took them up to the balcony, the sophisticated place in those Negro movie houses in St. Louis. If the picture wasn’t so good you could always smoke and hug your girl and make jokes.

The trick there was to go to the movie house before you picked up your girl and slip the usher some money to save you a couple of balcony seats. Then you’d come back with your girl and wink at the usher and say: “Hi, baby,” and he’d take you right upstairs. Sometimes, the usher would be out to lunch and all the balcony seats would be filled. That was the worst feeling in the world. But usually you’d get up there, and when the movie was over you’d strut down from the balcony, real slow, so everyone could see how cool you were, how important. You knew somebody, you had connections. You never let anyone know you tipped the usher. In those days, all I really wanted out of life was always to be able to sit in the balcony.

That year, I was in the balcony all right, winning races, playing drums, going out. Everything went my way. Once there was a night track meet, and the lights went out in the middle of the race. I sneaked all across the field, taking a shortcut, and fell over a hurdle. I was lying there when the lights went on again.

The officials tried to disqualify me. Not a chance. I told them that any fool knows that when the power fails during a night athletic event, the race in progress is automatically canceled and then rerun. They looked at each other and coughed, and I guess they didn’t know their own rules too well. I had just made that up on the spur of the moment. The race was rerun.

And then one day I decided I wanted to be president of my senior class. Only certain people had ever been class president: kids from high-class families who had perfect attendance records, were in the National Honor Society, belonged to the French Club and the Math Club and the service organizations. So I got my own organization. The hoodlums. I went around and talked to all those cats who used to stand outside the proms, all those guys who didn’t have anything going for them and I told them I wanted this thing, that I was their representative. They went and they got it for me, they spread the word that if anybody else won the election he might as well quit. I was class president.

That was another turning point for me. A new feeling of responsibility for others. In track, I was running just for myself. But as president of the graduating class at Sumner High School I knew my shirt had to be clean, my shoes had to be polished, I couldn’t cut class or come late or sit in the toilet and watch crap games or yell out crazy things in class. There were obligations, meetings to go to, a Senior Day speech to write. I had to talk to the white man who came through selling senior class rings for twenty dollars each. I had to work out how he would take his orders and collect his money and then give out the rings. I wasn’t able to afford one myself.

I had never really thought about college until that last semester in high school when scholarship offers began coming in from colleges around the country.

Momma had only finished the third grade, and so just finishing high school was a big dream in our family. College was for people with money. After high school you get yourself some kind of a job. There were more than one hundred offers, colleges from California to Massachusetts, but my grades were too low for most of the schools. I was probably the only class president in the country that year who was in the lowest fifth of more than seven hundred students. I tried to study that year, to read books, but I just didn’t know how. At eight o’clock, after track practice, I’d sit down in the kitchen and try to read. God, I’m going to sit here until midnight if I have to, I’m going to read this book, even if it takes an hour to read every page, I’m going to sit here and read, one word at a time. And then the words started getting fuzzy and my mind started drifting, floating off to a million places.

Didn’t matter, it was still my year. Coach St. James had gone to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and he said he could help me get in. He thought it would be the best school for me, a chance to be a big fish in a little pond.

Southern Illinois wanted to give me an entrance exam, but I didn’t even show up for it, I was so sure I would flunk. I talked to the coach down there and told him that if he wanted me to run track for him I wouldn’t take any tests. He sent me to the dean, who made a deal: I could go to college, on an athletic-work scholarship, without taking the entrance exam. But the first quarter I made bad grades I’d have to take the exam and pass it, or leave school. Ironman Gregory won again.

Didn’t have to study, didn’t even have to train for my track meets anymore. Wrapped my legs in tape and told the coach I hurt too much to practice. I stayed out late, went to dances, took girls up to the balcony, drank beer. Even bought a pack of cigarettes. I started letting the vice president of the class go to the student government meetings. When the teachers kept asking me if my Senior Class Day speech was ready yet, I told them I was working on it. Tomorrow. It’ll be ready tomorrow. I guess I thought I’d just go up there and tell jokes. I really thought I was great stuff, bigger than the Gregory family, bigger than the school, right up there with God. I remember the day we walked out to Forest Park for the final meet of my high school career, and all along the way there were papers on the newsstands with headlines that read: “Dick Gregory Closes Out One of Most Brilliant Careers in History of St. Louis H.S. Track.” One headline even read: “Dick Gregory Wins State Meet Second Year in Row.” Somebody must have lost his job on that one, because it rained when we got out to Forest Park and the meet was postponed.

All that week there were stories in the newspapers about how Dick Gregory was going to close out his high school career in style, in a blaze of glory. I believed every word. Didn’t bother to train, stayed up late, made all the senior parties.

Then we went out to Forest Park again and the sun was out and the press was there and the bands and the photographers and crowds were waiting for me to close out this brilliant high school career. It was a hell of a close-out all right. I finished seventeenth.

I couldn’t believe it. Neither could anyone else. After the race I just hung around the finish line, waiting for them to disqualify the sixteen runners who finished ahead of me. The coach was mad and the press was disgusted and I was

ashamed. The headlines didn’t even mention who won the race, just: “Dick Gregory Finishes Disappointing 17th.” I went back to school, and they started asking me about my speech again, and I just shrugged and walked away. I had gotten so big in my own mind that when I disappointed myself there was nothing left to fall back on. Too big for Momma, too big for the teachers, too big for God. But I was wrong again. The day before the senior ceremony, one of the English teachers handed me a speech.

I walked up on the stage that day and it seemed as though the whole world was holding its breath. When the principal pinned the school colors on me, his hand was shaking so much he stuck the pin right into my chest. I stepped behind the microphone. Suddenly I had that feeling again, the hot water flowing upward, the monster growing to crush the world, and that teacher’s speech felt like it was mine.

“You know, since the beginning of time, man has used symbols . . .”

 

Suddenly, the whole goddamn auditorium stopped shifting and whispering, everyone froze, spellbound.

“. . . the crude stone tablets, unearthed by archaeologists, symbolized the feeble attempt of man to record his thoughts and his history . . .”

The teachers lost their terrified expressions, the students’ mouths dropped open.

 

“. . . the cross, so familiar in Christian civilization . . . the bald eagle . . . to many a symbol of democratic ideals .

They were leaning toward me now, everybody, as if they wanted to run up and hug me.

“ . . . a symbol of man’s efforts to live harmoniously with his fellow man. Today, we have gathered for a great symbolic experience. Colors Day. The maroon and white of Sumner High School, a symbol that for years has caused a little fire to burn in the hearts of many. Now we have joined this multitude.

Needless to say, we will wear the maroon and white, this symbol of the years we have spent in learning and thought and growth, with justifiable pride in the years to come.”

I was done and you could hear the breath rush out of hundreds of lungs, and then

they started cheering and shouting and the hoodlums nearly tore the auditorium down and the teachers were smiling and shaking each other’s hands and I looked down at Momma, and all I could see was tears in her eyes and she was moving her lips and I knew just what she looked like when she was alone and saying, Thank God, oh, thank God.

VII

 

I was walking down the main street of Carbondale, Illinois, in 1953 and a white man touched my arm.

“Dick Gregory?” “Yeah, that’s right.”

“You don’t know me, but my son and I always come to watch you run. He’s sitting in the car over there, he can’t walk without crutches. I’d be much obliged if you’d say hello to him and give him an autograph. It would mean a lot to him.”

“Be glad to.”

 

We walked over to the car and opened the front door. He was a skinny little boy, maybe nine years old.

“John, this is Dick Gregory. He wants to say hello to you.”

 

I leaned in and shook his little hand. His legs were in heavy metal braces. “Real glad to meet you, John. Your daddy tells me you’re a big fan. You always come out to cheer for Southern. You know, we always run a lot faster when there’s folks behind us.”

The little boy smiled, very shyly, and pulled out a tencent-store album. “Would you sign my autograph book?”

“Sure, John. Got a pencil?”

 

John didn’t have a pencil. Neither did his father. It was a Sunday, and the only place we could get a pencil was the restaurant we were standing in front of. I turned to the father.

“They’ll give you a pencil in there.”

 

He looked at me a little strangely, but he went in and got a pencil. He handed it to me as if he thought I should have walked into the restaurant and gotten the pencil myself. I signed the autograph book, told John I’d be looking for him in

the stands next week, and walked away. Quickly. I could feel the father’s eyes on my back, could hear him thinking about some uppity nigger making him go fetch a pencil. Somehow I didn’t feel I could explain to him that Negroes weren’t allowed in that restaurant, that before I could have asked for a pencil I would have heard that woman behind the cash register say, “I’m sorry, but you know we’re not allowed to serve colored in here.”

I don’t know if that father and his little crippled son would have believed me. What the hell, Dick Gregory owned Carbondale. Captain of the cross-country team, captain of the track team, financial grant, busboy in the president’s house, fastest half-miler in the school’s history, drummer in the orchestra and the marching band, big actor in the variety show, Outstanding Athlete of 1953. The only things Dick Gregory couldn’t do in Carbondale were eat out with his teammates and sit in the orchestra section of the movie house. I should have gotten that little crippled kid’s autograph. He was an American.

Sometimes it seemed as though all the manhood I won for myself out on the track was taken away when I got into town. You run and you tear your body apart and you win and the crowd goes wild shouting your name and your teammates carry you off the field on their shoulders and Doc Lingle, the coach, throws his arms around you, and when the team goes off downtown for a steak and a beer you have to tell them you can’t make it, you have something better to do. I didn’t finish a single book while I was in college, but I learned a lot and I got myself an attitude.

In the beginning, I could fool myself. When I left for Southern Illinois in March of 1952 for the spring quarter with a metal suitcase and a shopping bag full of Momma’s baloney sandwiches and a fried chicken, it was a thrill just to be going out of town. I had slipped out on the neighborhood; just Momma and me and some of the kids went down to the Greyhound Bus Terminal in St. Louis. And it was a bigger thrill when I got to Carbondale, left the shopping bag under my seat on the bus, and walked on the campus. I was in college, I was really in college. It was going to be beautiful.

I made the team right away, as a freshman, and I made a lot of friends. There were mostly white kids at school and white instructors, and not too many of them had heard of me. I had never seen so many white folks in one place before, except in parades and during election campaigns when they’d have Colored Day picnics and let the black babies pee all over them for the vote. But I wasn’t too

nervous because I had talked to white boys during track meets in high school. And I had my equalizer: I could always go out on the track and crush the world.

I developed as a runner. Leland P. Lingle was a fine coach and a fine man. He was the first white man to stretch out his hand to me. It was Doc Lingle who told me to take courses in speech and drama and music. It was Doc Lingle who laughed at my jokes and said I’d be a first-rate entertainer someday. He was a kind man. He used to buy me a $1.25 steak dinner at the university cafeteria every time I broke a school record, and he never complained when I purposely lowered the record a tenth of a second at a time just to get more steaks. I eventually brought the half-mile record down to 1 minute 54.1 seconds.

But I was still very confused. Track became something different for me in college. In high school I was fighting being broke and on relief, and each Saturday I’d go out and recharge my batteries, be a hero for another week. But in college I was fighting being Negro. That’s not a temporary condition. It was a hell of a thing for me to be running good track in college and walk past a downtown restaurant and see a teammate in there eating a sandwich and drinking a malt with his girl. He’d look up and smile and wave at me through the plate- glass window. I’d wave back and I’d say to myself: “Eat up good, ’cause tomorrow I’m going to crush you on the track.” But by the time tomorrow rolled around, I’d have swallowed the hurt down and I’d go out and show that guy how to shift his weight when he took the turn.

There were the weekends the team went traveling, and we’d all be sitting in some roadside diner, and the only reason I was in there was because I was one of Doc Lingle’s boys. Local white folks would walk in and look at me and nudge each other. I never talked about it with my white friends because it’s not something you can tell them about. All you can do is sit in the team bus with your metal suitcase across your knees and bang on it like it was a drum and sing calypso songs and tell jokes. Happy-go-lucky Greg. Personality Kid. Funny man. Always laughing. Sure. Momma always said there was more hope in laughing.

There were quite a few Negroes at Southern, and we stuck together. Roomed together and dated and partied and hung around together. We’d walk downtown in twos and threes, and as we passed those restaurants the white kids would come out and say: “Where you going, Greg?” and I’d wink and say: “Got a little party to go on, Big Daddy.” We hardly ever took our white friends down to the Negro neighborhood. They must have thought segregation worked both ways.

That wasn’t true. There were two honky-tonk bars down in the Negro section

and we were a little too ashamed of them to bring our white friends down.

 

There were a lot of things I didn’t tell the white boys, because I couldn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t understand. About Momma, and how she was in and out of the hospital these days, the diabetes and the heart trouble getting worse, a bad-smelling discharge coming out of her that Dolores thought was cancer. How could I explain how I felt about my momma, and that as much as I loved her I didn’t want to go back home? How could I explain that I was dying a slow death, too, in college, trying to figure out why I was running and going to business administration classes and working as a busboy in the president’s dining room and planning my steps so I’d always be near the university cafeteria or University Drug when I got hungry? How could I explain how I felt the day a white history instructor wrote the word Negro on the blackboard and spelled it with a small n? At the end of the hour I went to the board and erased the letter and wrote in a capital N. Everybody stared and nobody said anything about it. I don’t know how long it all would have gone on, or what I would have done if it hadn’t been for what happened in the movies.

I always liked the movie house in Carbondale. I thought it was the coolest place in the world. In St. Louis, it was always a big deal to get up into the balcony, but in Carbondale we had it made. As soon as I got there, I found out that all the Negro athletes sat up in the balcony. A bunch of us would go to the movies together, and we’d march right up to the balcony, and laugh and make jokes about the picture. I always figured that one of the juniors or seniors had taken care of the usher. I remembered the first time I went to the movies alone, I bought a ticket with my last penny, and I just sort of stood around downstairs, looking for someone to borrow a quarter from so I could tip the usher. I was a little embarrassed when the usher, a white student I had seen around campus, came up to me. I had nothing for him.

“You’re Dick Gregory, aren’t you?” “That’s right.”

He smiled at me. “We always hear a lot about you. Nice to have you here. You can go right on upstairs, there are plenty of seats.”

Did I feel big. Didn’t even have to tip the usher to get up to the balcony anymore. I knew someone, I had connections. “Thanks, baby, I’ll take care of you next time,” I told the usher.

The next time, I took a girl. I had promised to take another girl to the movies that night, but at the last minute I got another date. I was so afraid of running into that first girl up in the balcony that I took my date and sat downstairs. She jerked away from me and started toward the stairs, but I grabbed her hand. “Come on, baby, you’re with me tonight.”

She must have thought I meant that Dick Gregory was such a big man he could go anywhere he wanted. She seemed to be trembling when we sat downstairs but I was so busy worrying about meeting that other girl that I didn’t notice right away. Then I thought she was chilly. And I thought all the people downstairs turning and staring and pointing at us were whispering about that great track star, Dick Gregory. Then the usher came over.

“There are plenty of seats in the balcony, Greg.” “That’s okay, baby, I’ll sit here tonight.”

“Greg, I’m sorry, but you have to go upstairs.”

 

I figured that he wanted a tip from last time after all, so I started to lean over and explain why I couldn’t take a chance on being seen up in the balcony tonight.

His voice got hard. “I said you have to go upstairs.” I still thought he was playing until he came back with the manager. “May I see you for a moment, Mister Gregory?” When white folks call you mister you know something is wrong.

I told the girl I’d be right back, never knowing I was leaving her down there with all that hell, the white folks downstairs turning and hissing and grumbling, and the Negroes upstairs cheering, yelling, “Go, baby, go, you give it to ’em, Greg.” Until I got into the manager’s office, I thought the balcony was cheering me for last week’s race.

“I’m sorry, Mister Gregory, but you know you can’t sit in the orchestra.” “Why not?”

“Because colored seating is in the balcony.”

My St. Louis dream died that night, my dream about always being able to afford the balcony. In Carbondale, the balcony was my place. I stood there, so confused, wondering if the usher back home in St. Louis had been cheating me all those years, or if this man was trying to destroy something I had.

“If you want me in the balcony, you’ll have to put me there.” “Do you want me to call the police?”

“Go ahead.”

 

He called the police. I almost laughed. How many times had I given an usher a tip to save me a balcony seat and when I got there the usher was gone and the balcony was full and I wanted to call the police. Now here’s a man calling a cop to get me up to the balcony.

I went back and got my date and left. She was crying.

 

On the way out, the manager said: “Be sure and get your money back.” “Keep it. I’ll be back.”

I went back alone the next night and sat downstairs. They gave me the okay. Let him sit downstairs, he’s crazy, anybody who bucks this system is crazy and we don’t punish insane people here in America. And the nights after that I started bringing Negro friends, guys who weren’t Dick Gregory, big athlete, guys who couldn’t be crazy. If I had thought about it, I should have brought Doc Lingle or the dean or the president of the university.

And then Hollywood produced that great movie about Jesus Christ called The Robe. The movie house in Carbondale had paid a lot of money for that movie, and one night, while I was sitting downstairs, the manager invited me to his office. He was scared to death. He told me how much money he had spent for the picture, how afraid he was of going bankrupt, how he couldn’t afford to lose white customers at a time like this. If I promised not to sit downstairs while The Robe was showing, everything would be all right afterward. Negroes could sit anywhere they wanted to. I was sick and tired of negotiating for my rights. I agreed.

I was sitting in that movie house—in the balcony—on the night that Momma died. It was a good thing I was in the balcony that night because Doc Lingle

would never have thought to look for me downstairs. He called me out into the aisle, and told me to telephone home.

“Is it Momma, Doc?” “Just call home, Dick.” “Is she dead?”

“Just call home.” “Doc?”

“I’m very sorry, Dick.”

 

When I finally got through on the phone, Dolores said: “Hurry home, Richard. Momma is dead.”

“No need to rush now, ’Lores.”

 

I went back to my room and started to pack and my roommate said: “Think nice thoughts about her, Greg, how much good she did and how much pain she was in. Make you feel better.”

I cried and I prayed that night, thinking of Momma and blaming myself. If I hadn’t gone to college, if I had stayed home and gotten a job, Momma wouldn’t have had to keep on working in white folks’ houses, riding the streetcar with basket lunches to sell to the colored porters in the downtown hotels, hiding the telephone when the relief worker came around. My momma was forty-eight years old when she died.

I took the bus home the next morning. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in the house on North Taylor again and Momma wasn’t coming home. I jumped up every time the streetcar stopped, and suddenly I realized why I always stayed out and played until night. When Momma wasn’t there it wasn’t a home; it was nothing but a house. I didn’t have too much to say to my brothers and sisters.

After we talked about Momma, we just sat around, not looking at each other. I wandered around the neighborhood, just to hear Missis Simmons and Missis Rector and Mister Ben talk about what a great woman she was. I thought maybe Big Pres would show up. She would have come back from the dead for that.

Momma lay at the undertaker’s with a smile on her face, wearing all those fine, rich white folks’ clothes. She finally had a place to wear them. I bent over and kissed her and said: Thanks, Momma, someday I’m going to do something to make you proud of me. And I walked out and a voice in my head said: You’ll be all right, Richard, just be careful, wrap up good, and don’t wear tight belts against that poor stomach of yours. Everybody wondered why I didn’t cry. It hurt too much to cry.

At the funeral the next day I stood away from everybody else while those dirty little men in muddy overalls leaned on their rusty shovels and smoked while the preacher read. I wanted to run up to them and pull their shovels away and tell them not to throw dirt in my momma’s face, but all her white folks had come to the cemetery and I knew Momma didn’t want me to mess up in front of all her good white folks. So they threw the dirt in her face and I turned and walked back to the house and packed. I knew it would be the last time I’d ever be in that house because it wasn’t my home anymore. I went out to the backyard and looked up at the sky and said: I’m sorry, Momma, sorry I was embarrassed because we were on relief, sorry I was ashamed of you because you weren’t dressed the way other kids’ mothers were dressed, sorry you had to die before I realized what a great lady you were.

VIII

 

I went back to school numb and I stayed that way for most of the next four years, through the rest of that year at school, through two years in the army, through the last year at college. It wasn’t a sleepy numbness; it was a cold, hard, bitter numbness. It got me the Outstanding Athlete Award of 1953.

I remember the day I walked past the Athletic Department office, a few weeks after Momma died, and for the first time I really noticed the pictures along the walls. There were rows and rows of Negro athletes’ pictures, but along the top of the wall, where the pictures of each year’s Outstanding Athlete hung, there were only white faces. A school eighty-four years old and not one Negro had ever won the award. It was time.

So I walked up to the coach and told him that if I wasn’t elected Outstanding Athlete for 1953, I was going to quit. I threatened them so cool that they couldn’t even give it to another Negro—I went to them as an individual, made them think it had to do with me, not race. I made it. Outstanding Athlete of the Year, and all I could do was run track; never picked up a basketball, couldn’t play baseball, didn’t know how to swim. The next year another Negro, Leo Wilson, made it, and we’ve been making it ever since. But someone had to break the ice—with a threat. I remember that night in June they gave out the award at a big dinner, and when they handed it to me I thanked them and then I said to myself: Thanks, Greg, you got it for yourself, the same way you got to be class president in high school. A sports commentator flew down from St. Louis to do a thirty minute show on Dick Gregory, greatest athlete ever to hit Southern Illinois University. A St. Louis boy. And would you believe it, he was born on relief?

I never got to be as good a runner as Doc Lingle and the newspapers said I would. Too busy playing around, getting my attitude. I started doing some satire then. I didn’t know it was satire. It was just standing on a stage during the all- fraternity variety show and talking to a crowd of white people about school and athletics and the world situation and how tough it was to run away from home these days unless you came from a family with a second car. For a while, standing on that stage and watching those people laugh with me, I thought it was even better than winning a track meet. But running track was safer: You can be saying the funniest things in the world but if Whitey is mad at you and has hate, he might not laugh. If you’re in good condition and you can run faster than

Whitey, he can hate all he wants and you’ll still come out the better man.

 

My last big thrill in track was qualifying for the National Collegiate Meet for small colleges, in Texas. I was rated third in the nation in the half-mile for a little while, and I was proud and scared to be able to run with the best boys, white and black, from all over the country. I stood on that field on the opening day of the meet and it was like the best of all the Thanksgivings and Christmases, listening to the marching band play “The Star Spangled Banner,” and seeing the flag snap in the wind, and knowing that it was all for me, too. It was like all the war movies I had seen back in St. Louis and in Carbondale, pulling for the American soldiers, cheering for the good guys, feeling a part of something so big and strong and fine. I was beaten in the preliminaries of that meet, but I was proud just to have been there. And then I went back to school and it was like coming out of that movie, suddenly realizing there weren’t any Negro soldiers in that picture, “I’m sorry but you know we’re not allowed to serve colored in here.” All the joy and inspiration of being an American was gone.

When you’re a little kid you can press your nose against a plate-glass window and tell yourself you are going to grow up someday and be able to go inside. You can tell yourself you are going to grow up someday and be a man, and do all the things a man can do. These are nice dreams for kids. But when you walk down the street and see your track team friends on the other side of that plate- glass window, where you can’t go, you can’t even tell yourself to wait until you grow up. You are already a man, and knowing that there is no dream just strips your manhood away and brings you all the way back down to the gutter.

It’s a hard thing to be a big athlete on campus and to go downtown and feel like the chump who dropped the ball on Homecoming Day, to walk down a street and have farmers and little kids wave and call to you like you’re a big man and know in your heart that every one of them is really bigger than you. There was a man in Carbondale, a white man who owned a clothing store, and I used to borrow money at school so I could go in there and buy socks and ties I didn’t even need, just so I could walk around that section of town and have someplace to go. He was a kind man, and we talked about history and about sports and he even gave me credit. But he wasn’t enough to keep me from wondering about people who didn’t break down those segregation laws, who didn’t check on teachers who spelled Negro with a small n, who didn’t build dorms for the Negro coeds so they didn’t have to live in Negro rooming houses two miles from campus in a town without buses. Sure, the Negro men lived in the dorms, but that was because so many of us were gladiators. We had to be watched. And I

wondered how we Negroes were able to sit in the stands and cheer for Southern Illinois to win a football game against a team that had more Negroes than ours did. Of course, every time a Negro got the ball, on either team, we hoped he went for a touchdown. We sat together in the stands, because when you’re mixed in with the whites you hear a guy behind you say: “Look at that nigger go,” and then a white tackler dives at the Negro runner and the Negro shakes him loose and goes all the way for the touchdown and you want to turn around and say: “Go ahead, call him another nigger.” But you don’t.

You hang around and drift around and don’t even bother with your student deferment. I was drafted in 1954 and I didn’t care much what happened to me in the army. I’d sleep in my bunk all day, I’d fall out of formation wearing blue suede shoes, I’d salute with my left hand. When I was on KP I’d crawl into a big pot and go to sleep, and when the mess sergeant started banging on the pot I’d refuse to come out unless he paid me the minimum hourly wage. A colonel came by one day on inspection and asked me what I was doing in the pot.

“We ran out of chipped beef, Sergeant,” I said to the colonel, “and I volunteered to be cooked for lunch.”

The next day, I was brought to the colonel’s office. I walked in without saluting and sat down without permission. He just shook his head.

“Gregory,” he said, leaning across his desk, “you are either a great comedian or a goddamn malingerer. There is an open talent show at the service club tonight. You will go down there, and you will win it. Otherwise, I will court-martial you. Now get the hell out of here.”

I won it. I just stood up there and talked about the system and the army and the post and the officers. I told them how the army charged me eighty-five dollars when I lost my rifle. That’s why in the navy the captain always goes down with his ship. And I won the next talent show, and the one after that, and the next thing I knew I was in Special Services on an army tour.

I kept running, too. On the athletic field I met Jim Ellis, who became one of my best friends. Jim was a big, handsome lieutenant who had been All-America at Michigan State. He was an All-Army halfback. He used to lend me an extra officer’s uniform and let me sleep in the bachelor officers’ quarters. We used to tear around Fort Lee together in his car. We balled it up pretty good, and whenever we ran out of money I’d call Doc Lingle, collect, sometimes in the

middle of the night. Somehow, Doc always came through.

 

I started developing little routines now, in between clowning around and playing the bongos and singing a few calypso songs. I worked at a little Negro club in Petersburg, Virginia. I’d come onstage wearing long white underwear, a big black cowboy hat, and a painted mustache and sideburns. Once I got the audience’s attention, I could start talking, tell them about my home in St. Louis, so cold the snow wouldn’t melt on the floor, the bed so crowded we had to leave bookmarks to save our place when we got up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. I never really prepared for those shows, or for the army shows. In 1955 I qualified for the All-Army Show at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The winners from that show would go on Ed Sullivan’s television show. I didn’t make it, probably the best thing that could have happened. I would have been destroyed if I had made the Sullivan show in 1955, knowing nothing about show business, being on there by accident. I would have had the wrong attitude. I probably would never have worked as hard as I did later. But I was disappointed then, and kind of hung up when I got out of the army in the spring of 1956. No place to go.

Nothing much to do. The day I cleared post I had to fill out a form with my home address on it. I wrote Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois. It seemed like the only home I had, so I decided then to go back.

It was different back at school now. There was a new athletic system, putting more emphasis on football, shoving Doc Lingle off in a corner. I got back on the track team, but I wasn’t really interested, couldn’t figure out what I was running for. I stayed through summer school, on into the fall quarter, and my grades were poor. I tell people I was flunking out because it’s simpler than explaining that there just wasn’t any more reason to stay. Most of my friends were gone, and in the fall we got a collection called “Dimes for Doc,” to send the coach to the Olympic Games in Helsinki. Doc left, and I decided I might as well go, too.

Once I would have been afraid to go out into that white man’s world without my diploma, but now I knew that it really didn’t matter. I’d been around. I’d seen Negroes who had been graduated from white man’s colleges with that piece of white paper driving cabs and carrying mail. I’d seen Negroes who got all A’s in accounting go downtown to the big department stores only to hear, “Sorry, we’re not hiring porters today.” That piece of white paper isn’t enough unless they graduate you with a white face, too.

Then the old monster jumped me again. It wasn’t going to let me tuck down my

head and crawl out of Carbondale. So I sent myself a telegram.

 

I was laying around my dorm room when the telegram came. Was I cool. Never got a telegram before, but I just lay there as if I got one every day. My roommate got all excited.

“Aren’t you going to open it, Greg?” “Read it to me, baby.”

I knew the message by heart: come to baltimore maryland immediately guarantee $25,000 a year start—signed frank d’alesandro.

“Is this a gag, Greg?”

 

“Nope. I was in the army with Frank. His daddy’s mayor of Baltimore. Said he could get me a job in show business anytime I wanted. Think I should take it?”

He ran out of that room, waving that telegram, screaming up and down the halls of the dorm. Nobody ever bothered to see that the telegram had been filed at the Carbondale office. They all came in to congratulate me. The whole campus flipped. For two days I walked around showing that telegram to everybody who could read, from the president of the university to the guys who cleaned up the stadium. The dean of students read it, and we talked, and he said that maybe I should go. He put his arm around my shoulders, and we looked out his window at where they were breaking ground for the new Student Union. I had led the campaign for the new Union, and now I’d never see it built.

“Dick, you’ve been more than a student here. You’ve been a living part of this school. Southern Illinois University has taken personality from you, and you’ve taken personality from Southern Illinois.”

The kids threw me a farewell party, and everybody wished me good luck. I tried to feel ashamed, but I couldn’t. I was only lying to them for a little while. I’d make it big somehow, somewhere. Someday that twenty-five- thousand-dollar telegram would come true.

That night I went down to the Greyhound Bus Terminal and bought a ticket to Chicago. My brother Presley was working in Chicago at that time, and I figured he could help me get a job. I told the kids who came to see me off that I had me a little girl in Chicago, and I was going to have me a little ball before I took a

direct flight to Baltimore and settled down to show business. I waved to them through the bus window, and suddenly the monster drained right out of me and I felt like I was leaving the whole world behind, leaving everybody who would ever say: “There goes Dick Gregory.” I made the bus driver stop, and I got my bags off, and I ran back to campus, crying all the way.

Back at the dorms I saw all those happy faces who believed in me, all those people who wanted to shake my hand again and wish me good luck again. I had to live up to them. They had said their good-byes, they had sent me off like a champ, and now I had to go. I made up some story about not wanting to ride a bus now that I was almost a star, and I borrowed some money. The kids took me down to the train station.

A night train can be the loneliest place in the world when you look out the window and all you see is darkness moving fast. I showed my telegram to the porter.

“You do a good job, son,” he said. “They’ll all be watching you. Show them what we can do.”

I tipped him all the money I had left, just for believing me.

"... and they didn’t even have what I wanted."

I

 

I’m driving through a snowstorm on an empty gas tank and my girlfriend’s mother wants Scotch. My girlfriend’s brothers and sisters are hollering for food. And I’m figuring like mad. Got five dollars. It’s supposed to be dollar night at the drive-in movie, which leaves me four dollars to grandstand with. Plenty for hot dogs. But a bottle of Scotch can wipe me out. It’s their car, and if they want a tankful of gas out of me, that’ll wipe me out, too. But if I take a chance, and we run dry and I have to call a cab . . .

“We better stop and get some gas, Dick,” says Maryann’s mother.

 

"You're so right, I’m looking for a station now,” I say, passing one on each side of the road.

Every traffic light winks at me as if to say, “If you’re lucky, you’ll get arrested.” I jump every light, but nothing happens. Never find a cop when you want one.

“Gas station, there’s a gas station,” yells one of the four little kids in the back. I pull in alongside the pump and lean out. “Fill her up, baby.”

Then I jump out of the car and run to the back. “Just one dollar’s worth, please.”

Through the window I can see Maryann’s mother talking away at her daughter in the front of the car. The four little kids are rubbing their hungry bellies in the backseat. They are all very impressed to be going out with such a big entertainer. Dick Gregory, master of ceremonies and star comic of the Esquire Show Lounge of Chicago, buys his suits at Lytton’s and has his own apartment.

I get back into the car looking very put out. “What’s wrong, Dick?”

 

“Hell, I didn’t like that man’s attitude. I never spend my money with a man whose attitude I don’t like.”

"You're so right,” says the mother. “Why I was telling Maryann only yesterday that. . .”

Now if I can get Maryann off alone and explain the situation to her I’m all right. I don’t have to be phony with her. Of course, it would never dawn on me to embarrass the girl in front of her folks. Besides, people just don’t like to know that such a big entertainer makes thirty dollars a week, buys his clothes on the credit of a landlady who works nights at a drugstore, and rents a basement room.

“Sure is cold,” says the mother.

 

“We’re almost there, get us some good hot coffee.” “Some Scotch would warm us much faster, Dick.”

“Liquor store, there’s a liquor store,” yells a kid. Like God strung it down from heaven, right across the highway, is this big sign: last liquor store before drive- in. Even I can’t miss it, and I’m trying.

I pull over and get out. I’ve never bought whiskey before. I walk right up to the guy behind the counter.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see the sign: special on scotch—$1.25 a pint. I’m saved. Maryann and I won’t drink. Her mother can have the whole pint. I run back to the car.

“Didn’t they have any cups, Dick?” asks Maryann’s mother.

 

Things are very tight now. Got $2.50, and something tells me I read the newspaper wrong, just my luck it’s not dollar night after all. By the time we pull up to the box office I’m in a cold sweat despite the freezing weather. I’m sure it’s not dollar night.

“That will be one dollar, mister.”

 

“What the hell you mean, the paper said one dollar.” “That’s just what I said, mister, one dollar.”

Now I’m scared again. The only other time I’d been to a drive-in movie was two years ago, in college. How did the driver do it? Where do you park? Where do you get the speaker and the heater?

“We’re holding up traffic, Dick.”

It’s no trouble at all, and I’m so thankful I give the kids the rest of the money to buy hot dogs and soda. My stomach is turning over, and my hands are still shaking, and thank God everybody’s quiet now, watching the movie, and I can close my eyes and figure out how I got here in the first place.

#

 

It had been a short trip, that train ride from Carbondale to Chicago, but some of the days that followed were very long. Presley had left his rooming house, with no forwarding address, but his landlady let me stay there for a few days, until I got a Christmas job at the post office and a hotel room. I kept flipping the letters to Mississippi in the foreign slot, but I held the job until January. I hadn’t made any friends in Chicago and I couldn’t get another job. I was on my way back to the train station, with no destination in mind, when I ran into a guy I had run track with back in high school. I remember standing on a windy corner, getting colder and colder, just talking to keep from going to that station. I told the guy about college, about the army, about Lieutenant Jim Elks . . .

“You mean Tank Ellis, the football player?” said the guy. “Man, I was over his house last night on a party.”

“Where’s he live?”

 

“Fifty-one Oh Three Wabash.” I started running.

When Jim Ellis’ door opened, things began to open up for me in Chicago. He treated me like a long-lost brother and he got me a job with him out at Ford Aircraft. After work, we’d go to the park together and run to get him in condition for the pro football tryouts in the spring. I ran and I ran and it felt good as that old machine started to get into shape. I was beating Jim every day. He wasn’t a track man, but it’s a nice feeling to beat an All-American. Jim had a fast, hip crowd that threw a lot of parties, and I was swinging with people that liked me and my jokes. When Jim left for summer camp, I started running with the University of Chicago track team and made more friends, like Herbert Jubert and Ira Murchison. Murch was the fastest hundred-yard-dash man in the world and had records to prove it. I started seeing Presley, who was a door-to-door salesman, and Ron, my youngest brother, who was a track star at the University

of Notre Dame. And in September I moved in with Ozelle and William Underwood, a young couple who had a basement room to rent. They treated me like a member of the family. I lost the Ford job in October, but it wasn’t so bad. Whenever I was depressed, I could put on that track suit and run. After a while, I fell into the habit I had in high school—running early in the morning and at night when people were going and coming from work. I wanted to be seen.

I had a good Christmas with the Underwoods that year, and I was able to call St. Louis and tell Dolores and Garland and Pauline I was doing all right, and take the train to visit Ron in South Bend. But then January came and I was still out of work, and there was something about unemployment compensation that began to remind me of relief: the way they made you stand in line, the way they narrowed their eyes when they asked questions. I was getting more and more depressed, and there seemed to be less and less time to run it out of my system. I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t getting anywhere. And then, on a Saturday night in late January, I hooked up with the monster again. In a nightclub.

Ozelle and William were having some people over that night and I slipped out early. I didn’t feel social. I caught a double feature, and just started walking, up streets I didn’t remember, into a South Side neighborhood I had never seen before. There was a little neighborhood nightclub on a corner, jukebox and entertainment on the weekends. The place was packed with Saturday-night faces, happy faces. I walked in. The master of ceremonies was the comic, and his material was blue and old, but after a while I was laughing too, and I had forgotten the reason I was out that night. After the show, I went backstage and told the man how much I had enjoyed his routine. We started talking, and I told him I was a comedian too. I gave him my last five dollars, and he let me follow his act on the next show.

“Got a man here that’s supposed to be funny,” he said to the crowd. “Let’s bring him on and find out.”

I went out there scared, and I wasn’t funny at first. I started talking and creating and I don’t remember what I said, but after a while I was getting respectful laughs. The MC came out and took the microphone back. "You're a real funny man,” he said. “You’ll go far in show business.”

I wasn’t sure then if he was being sarcastic or not, but I figured I had done pretty well getting even weak laughs on clean material after following his blue jokes.

The next Saturday night I went to another Negro nightclub, the Esquire Show Lounge; I slipped Flash Evans, the MC, five dollars, and this time I got a nice introduction and I followed the band’s first set. I gave a masterpiece of a show that night. I just felt right and cool, and the crowd had come to laugh.

I never let them stop laughing, hit them hard and fast with jokes on processed hair and outer space and marijuana and integration and the numbers racket and long white Cadillacs and The Man downtown, and my dumb cousin and my mother-in-law, and the world situation. By the time I stopped my handkerchief was soaked and I had run out of cigarettes and I felt like I had passed them all, snatched them off like weeds, and broken the tape. When I came offstage the owner of the Esquire took me in a corner. The cheap son of a bitch let me buy myself a drink, and asked me if I’d like to start as MC in two weeks. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Ten dollars a night. I sat there and I looked at that man and I couldn’t believe him. He said it again. I didn’t know how I was going to wait until my opening night.

It came, finally, and I wasn’t funny at all. It’s one thing to be funny when you’re a guest on another man’s stage, something else again when it’s your stage and you have to be funny night after night. My training began, now, but it was beautiful because the people in the Esquire were like a new family, the customers in the Esquire were like the student body when I was president of the class, and the women looked up to me as the big entertainer. For a girl like Maryann, I was the biggest entertainer she knew.

“Dick, wake up now, the movie’s over.”

 

“Wasn’t sleeping, baby.” I’m not about to tell her I was starring in a little movie of my own.

I start the car and slip it into gear and the tires just whine. We don’t move. First, second, reverse, first again. We’re stuck in the snow. I get out of the car and walk around it. The back tires have spun themselves deep into the ice and slush. A lot of other cars at the drive-in are stuck, too. Seven white boys, mean-looking cats in jeans and boots and black leather jackets with a million zippers, are pushing the cars out, I watch them. They swagger up to a car whose tires are spinning and one of them says, “Okay, mister, you’re next. Five bucks.” They get their five, and they all get around the car and push it out toward the gate.

Then they turn to another car. If the first car gets stuck again before it gets out on the highway, the seven cats will push it again—for another five. I don’t even

have a dime. I get back into the car.

 

“We’re hungry,” say the little kids in the back. I have to get them home quick. The tires whine some more.

“Okay, mister, you’re next. Five bucks.”

 

“Thanks anyway,” I say, “I think I can get it out myself.”

 

The windshield is steamed up, and the tires spin and whine some more.

 

“It’s getting awfully cold, Dick,” says Maryann’s mother. “Why don’t you let those boys push us out?”

“I regard this as a personal challenge, man over the forces of nature,” I tell her. “We hungry,” say the kids.

“Man must triumph over nature. I must get this car out myself or perish in the attempt,” I say.

“But it’s only snow,” says Maryann’s mother.

 

"Yeah, but it’s white snow,” I say. A very good line, but no one laughs. The tires keep spinning.

“Well, you’re ruining the tires,” says Maryann’s mother, angry now.

 

Then I get out of the car, and I walk over to the seven white cats with all their zippers. I might as well be a fool out here than in that car. I just look at them, and I say: “How in the world can you start out right and end up wrong? I’m not trying to steal anything and I’m not trying to do anything shady, but this is what happened ...”

And they stand there quietly in the snow, around me in a circle, and people are shouting and honking their horns and waving money. I explain the whole thing to them, I tell them the whole story about my girl’s car and her mother and the gasoline and the Scotch and the hot dogs and dollar day, and they look at each other and nod their heads and the biggest of those cats says: “Get back in your car, mister, and roll down your windows so we can get a grip.”

And I am almost crying as they are pushing, pushing for a friend, a hundred yards, then another hundred yards, out of the spin holes and past the box office and out the gate and they wave as I drive onto the highway and I lean out and yell: “Thanks, baby,” like I just laid fifty dollars apiece on them. And now I’m driving down the highway and I look down on my lap and there’s a five-dollar bill there that one of those beautiful cats slipped through the open window while he was pushing the car.

“We better get some gas,” I say to Maryann’s mother. “How much you want?”

“Just enough to get home on.”

 

I’m smiling and laughing and crying and telling jokes as I pull alongside that beautiful pump, and when the attendant runs out I just turn my head and say: “Fill ’er up, baby, all the way up, and don’t forget to check the oil.”

II

 

The Esquire Show Lounge is a big, rectangular room attached to a neighborhood bar on the South Side of Chicago. The room has chrome luncheonette-type tables, and chairs with red plastic seats. The customers buy bottles at the bar and get glasses and paper buckets filled with ice and cherries at their tables. There are red lights around the room, faded murals on the walls, and entertainment on the weekend: an MC, a four-piece band, a shake dancer, some amateur talent now and then, and Guitar Red, an albino Negro who gets more out of an electric guitar than any man has a right to. He even plays with his feet. People come from all over Chicago to hear Guitar Red, and on Saturday nights there were lines around the block. But I was master of ceremonies and I introduced the acts and you had to get past me before you could see Guitar Red. I felt it was my show. And I felt like the Esquire Show Lounge was my home and my stadium.

All week long I would train for that Friday-night show that started my weekend. For the first time since high school, I got that thirsty taste again, waiting each week to go out and crush the world. Only now I didn’t have to beat anybody, I had to make people happy. Every day during the week I’d be working out for that three-day meet: buying comedy records, buying joke books, watching television, listening to people, going to the library and digging into musty old books of humor, and finding out where those comedy records got their material from. I walked downtown and spent money for books and magazines I couldn’t even afford, and along the way I’d hang out in the Walgreen’s at Sixty-third and Cottage Grove and on corners and anywhere people were listening to them talk, trying out thoughts and ideas and jokes on strangers. Ozelle and William would stay up half the night listening to new routines, and Ira Murchison and Herb Jubert and Jim Ellis would tell me what they liked and what they thought should go. I’d go to parties and just talk and create and clown and if something got a good response I’d mark it down in the back of my mind.

Morning, noon, and night, twenty-four hours a day, trying to develop a mind like I once developed a body, watching, listening, talking. Hours and hours of television, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Jack Paar Show, every comedy show, even funny old movies, and then the news shows, the soap operas, the westerns, the series. What makes people laugh, what are people thinking about?

And then you watch the stars, how do they act, how do they dress? I went down

to Lytton’s, a big department store in the Loop, and convinced them I was making a hundred dollars a week and had been working for four years. Ozelle and William helped me get clothes on credit. New shoes, new suits, new shirts. Change everything between shows. For the regular customers, you’re the biggest entertainer they know. You have to look it. Keeping my clothes clean and buying records and books cost me as much as I was making. But I was selling a talent that wasn’t really mine yet, and I had to develop it from every angle. I was hung up in something, and I had to find out how it worked.

Now people were beginning to say “There goes Dick Gregory” again, and it was greater than track ever was because it was all for me; it didn’t include the mothers’ sons who had to lose so I could win. Between my shows I’d talk to people and sit at tables and walk around and shake hands. I met a lot of girls and I started going around with some of them. And I made rules for myself. Never go to a man’s table if you think the woman with him is giving you the eye. That man is paying your salary—not much but he doesn’t know that—and he deserves respect. He has the right to feel comfortable with his lady in the club.

Never pick up the money that’s thrown onstage. There were nights when there was more money on that stage than I was making in a week, but I’d never let anyone know I needed that money. I was the big entertainer. Never let a man pay me to introduce him and his party from the floor. If he knew I’d take that kind of money he couldn’t respect me.

It’s a wild thing about a small nightclub with ordinary, working-class people. You can get the same kind of respect there that you can get in the big, downtown nightclub. You're those people’s entertainer, the biggest one they know, probably the biggest they will ever know. The stars on the top have created such an atmosphere of glamour that even the entertainers on the bottom can step in and get respect. That’s why you have to knock yourself out to dress well and act right and keep yourself up. You can never say: Look here, I’m just a small-time entertainer and my suits don’t have to be pressed or my act too sharp or my manners right. Where you are, you’re just as big as Milton Berle and Bob Hope and Sammy Davis and Nipsey Russell. You're the big big fish in the little little pond.

One Sunday, after my afternoon show, a girl came out of the audience and asked me to come back to her table and give some autographs. She said she’d like me to meet her sisters. I told her I’d be delighted. That’s why it’s so important to be nice and polite to people. You can never tell when you’re going to meet your future wife.

I walked over and there was a young girl at the table, very bashful, very excited. She was twisting her napkin to death, and giggling out of embarrassment. When I sat down it was like God came over to the table. She had never been in a nightclub before. She was from Willard, Ohio, a small town, and her name was Lillian Smith. She was a secretary over at the University of Chicago.

"You're fooling me, baby, you’re really working at the university?”

 

“No, I mean yes, I’m not fooling you.” “Well, look, Lillian, I’m over there nearly every day to run track. Let’s have lunch one day.”

She tucked her head down and started giggling and she said: “Oh, no, you don’t really mean that.”

“Tell you what, Lillian, give me your phone number. I’ll call you and tell you exactly what day we’ll have lunch.”

She was so nervous while she was writing it down, she kept tearing the paper with her pencil point. I rolled up the paper and put it in my pocket. Lillian Smith stayed through the second show and the Sunday-evening show and she kept staring at me like she was afraid nobody in Willard, Ohio, would ever believe she had actually talked to this great man. When I left that night with the girl I was dating at the time, I went over and said good night to Lillian. I thought it might give her a thrill to call her, just because she was so sure I wouldn’t.

That night, back at Ozelle and William’s I lay in bed and thought about that face staring up at me, that soft, little-girl face so out of place in a nightclub. It suddenly dawned on me that my mother would have looked that way if she had ever been to a nightclub. I had a dream that night about Momma, and I was Richard again, and she came off the streetcar and ran into the house and said: “Richard, oh, Richard, I spoke to the star of the show, Harry Belafonte, I talked to Harry Belafonte,” and I said: “No, Momma,” and she said: “Yes, I did, I really did, and he’s going to call me on the phone.” When I woke up that Monday morning I called Lillian and I could almost see her expression over the phone. I just talked to her, and told her I’d call her back soon and we’d have lunch.

That was around the middle of April in 1958, and I only saw Lillian a few times. She was so bashful and shy, sometimes I just ran out of words. But I was getting better and better at the Esquire. I worked harder, got to be a night owl so I could

go to the bars and restaurants where other show people hung out when they were finished working. I couldn’t afford to watch them work, but I could always buy coffee or a drink and talk to them and listen. I used to walk into those places where nobody knew me, and I used to tell myself that someday I’d walk in there and everybody would turn around and say “Hi, Greg.”

They knew me at the Esquire, though, my crowd. People were beginning to come to see me, not just for Guitar Red or Paul Bascomb’s band or the shake dancer. I’d MC the show, and then I’d play bongos with Paul’s band, then give my act, and MC the show some more, watching the time, keeping things moving like the patrol boy, like the president of the senior class. I’d go out to the show folks’ after-work spots, get some sleep, spend the days working on my material, reading, listening, trying my routines on anybody who would sit still. I guess it got to be too much, because in the summer I came down with yellow jaundice.

The day I went to the hospital, I called Lillian at her job. She was very concerned and very sweet, even though I hadn’t talked to her in more than a month. It was like calling Momma.

I was in the hospital for six weeks, impatient and angry at missing all those weekends at the Esquire, but it was the first time I ever really slowed down enough to look back down the road, and up ahead. I thought about track and I thought about Doc Lingle, how he used to tell me to take speech and music to prepare for a career in show business. He knew. And that old lady who had seen a star in the middle of my head. She knew, too. I was going to go all the way.

There were a lot of visitors at the hospital—friends, performers, and customers from the Esquire. Girls. A lot of noise, a lot of talking. When the room finally would clear out, there was Lillian, standing shyly in the corner. The first time she came she brought me candy bars and grapes. You're not supposed to bring things into a Veterans Administration hospital, but I knew Lillian hadn’t sneaked that paper bag past the desk. Some people can just walk into a place and never be stopped and never be questioned. She would stand there, her eyes full of concern, and we hardly talked because she was so shy and I couldn’t always find things to say to her. When visiting hours were over the first time, she asked if she could come back. I said no, it was too far to come at night. Her eyes seemed to fill up. I explained it wasn’t that I didn’t want her, it was just such a long trip. She asked me what she could bring the next time. I asked for something to read.

When she came back she brought Life and Time and Newsweek and Look and The Saturday Evening Post and the Reader’s Digest, all the magazines I had

always wanted to read every week, the magazines I felt I should keep up with but could never afford. She brought me two cartons of cigarettes. I had never had two cartons at a time. She slipped everything into the drawer, and we tried to hold a conversation for a little while, and then I told her to go before it got too late. After she left, I reached into the drawer for a cigarette. There were two rolls of dimes in there for the telephone, and some cigarette money. One hundred dollars. I counted it five times. I couldn’t believe it because it was just like Momma would have acted if she were a rich girl like Lillian Smith. When I got out on a three-day pass from the hospital, I took Lillian to a movie. She was so happy, it was like offering her the world.

I went right back to work after I got out of the hospital, and it was like romping and stomping through the neighborhood after the levee and the prom and the Wood River meet and the senior class speech all wrapped into one Friday night where the customers stood and clapped and cheered when I walked back up on my stage. Only they weren’t clapping for any gladiator, they were saying, Man, we’re really glad you’re back, we missed you, like how was it? Did a hell of a show that night, just talking about the hospital, the nurses, the doctors, the other patients, and when it was over everybody crowded around and told me they were planning to come out and visit me next week, or they would have sent me a card but they didn’t have the address, and they said it like they meant it. Somebody brought me some flowers. Oh, man, I kept romping and stomping all that fall, and my shows got better and better, and the lines got longer and longer, and more and more people were coming out just to hear me. Lil and I were going out pretty often now, and I’d carry her out to the club to see my act, and we’d talk about my work and she’d type up material for me at her job. I was such a big man now I went right up to the Esquire owners and I told them I was due for a raise. Been here almost a year, I’m packing the place every night, and ten dollars a night just isn’t enough money for a comic like me. I want twelve dollars a night. They told me ten dollars a night was plenty. I told them if they didn’t give me a two-dollar raise I’d quit on them. They didn’t give me a raise.

When I quit the Esquire I had the same funny feeling in my stomach I had when I left college with nowhere to go. Everything, everyone was behind me. I spent most of December lying around the house, reading and watching television.

Toward Christmas I played a couple benefits, just to make me feel I was still an entertainer. It was at one of those benefit shows that somebody mentioned there was an old, vacant nightclub for rent out in Robbins, Illinois. It was owned by a woman named Sally Wells. I called her, and she said the rent was fifty-six

dollars a night. I told her not to make a move until we could get together.

 

Ira Murchison drove me out in his car the next day, a nineteen-mile trip, and I talked nonstop the whole way. My own nightclub. I could do anything I wanted. I’d be my own boss. I’d do more topical material and less blue material. I’d gain respect as an owner and a performer. I’d develop new talent. I’d pay good salaries. I’d create an atmosphere for good comedy. Everybody would be happy. Ira didn’t say a word. He didn’t even ask me what I was going to use for money.

Sally Wells was a woman in her seventies, and the Apex Club was the most raggedy-looking nightclub in the world, a small, dusty, creaky, empty room. It looked a little haunted. We were peeking around the room, the three of us, when Sally Wells suddenly turned to Ira and stared at him with her bright, glittering eyes.

"You've been overseas,” she said, mysteriously, “and you’re going back again.”

 

"Yeah, that’s right, how you know?” said Ira. The year before, he had represented the United States in the Moscow track meet, and was planning to go again.

Then she turned on me, and I had the same strange feeling I had twenty years before when one of Momma’s spiritualist readers said she saw a star in the middle of my head.

“I see you flying all over this country, from one end to another, with a little brown case in your hand,” said Sally Wells.

Now I was really impressed. I had always had the idea, for some reason, that all the top comics carried their material in brown leather briefcases.

“I also see you getting married soon.”

 

“Nope, you’re wrong there. There’s a little matter of having to be in love first.” Sally Wells shook her head. “I see you getting married.”

I humored her because I was trying to make a business deal, and then we changed the subject. We sat and we talked and figured things out. I’d pay her

$168 a week, for using the club Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. There was insurance and licenses and cleaning and heat and electricity and water and taxes.

By the time Ira and I left Robbins and headed back north to Chicago, Dick Gregory was in business.

One of the first things I did was borrow eight hundred dollars from Lillian, my rich ace in the hole. We had gotten pretty close. Then I went to every newspaper in Chicago, white and Negro, and took out ads. In the big papers, good-sized ads with printed directions for getting out to Robbins cost sixty-five dollars a day. I was going first-class. I bought glasses and tables and chairs. Went around to entertainers I knew, and hired a band and some acts. I knew I’d need a car, and Maryann had one. I asked her if she would like to be my head cashier. She was fascinated by the idea. I hired a few other girls I knew as waitresses. Then I went to buy whiskey. I had never been much of a drinker, but I learned more about liquor in two weeks than most people learn in a lifetime. Scotch, bourbon, gin, vodka, rye, wine, brandies, and every kind has a dozen different brands. I finally talked a liquor-store owner on Sixty-third and St. Lawrence into letting me have a thousand dollars’ worth of liquor for the first weekend. I would pay for only what was used and opened, bring everything else back. I convinced him that when I hit it big with the club he’d get all my business. Then all I needed was beer, and different kinds of soda.

That first Friday in January I loaded everything into the car and headed out to Robbins. Opening night was only hours away. Halfway out, I realized I had no change. I drove back to town and persuaded Ozelle, my landlady, to borrow change from her boss at the drugstore. She had to promise to stand good for a hundred dollars’ worth of silver. Halfway out again, I remembered I’d need ice for the beer and cubes for the drinks. Back again, out again. Then lemons. Then pick up two of the waitresses, one singer, and the girl who owned the car.

At seven o’clock I opened the doors of the Apex Club and leaned back with a smirky smile to watch the people trample each other in the mad dash to get in. By nine o’clock there were four customers. They got very good service. At ten we had a dozen, mostly friends, but by eleven o’clock the Apex Club was more than half filled and, baby, I’m a nightclub owner. I never worked so hard in my life.

Did I ever move that night! One of the acts hasn’t shown up, run out and call them . . . introduce the band . . . a guy comes in without a tie, hustle him out. . . run out of change, scuffle up some more . . . introduce the singer . . . need more lemons . . . guy without a tie is back, hustle him out again . . . introduce the

dancer . . . customer isn’t satisfied, go pacify him . . . money drawer is stuck, unstick it . . . somebody wants a fancy drink, go buy a bottle of creme de menthe

. . . introduce the guitar player . . . glasses are coming out of the kitchen dirty, send them back and bawl out the waitresses . . . guy without a tie is back, go get him one . . . two men get up to fight, jump in between them . . . more change . . . customer says he was shortchanged, a lie, but give him money anyway ... go up and do my act, a masterpiece of a show . . . another fight, calm them down and buy them drinks . . . drawer stuck . . . more change . . . more lemons . . . more change . . . more change . . . time to close, clear everybody out . . . count the liquor . . . count the money . . . put the beer back in the cases . . . Cokes back in the cartons . . . load everything in the car because one robbery here will wipe me out. . . drive back to Chicago . . . too tired to carry everything inside . . . sleep in the car.

Saturday night we had a big, live crowd, a full house. It was twice as wild as Friday night, and I worked ten times as hard, and it was beautiful. I got up onstage and I gave two great shows, mostly topical material right out of the newspapers. And by the time we closed up we had twelve hundred dollars in the till. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know whether I was opening a club or closing it, I was so tired, but I knew I had twelve hundred dollars in a sack. We ran afternoon and evening shows that Sunday to fairly respectable houses.

By Monday morning I was in the pawnshop and at friends’ houses, scraping up enough to pay the next week’s ads and rent. The twelve hundred dollars wasn’t mine very long, with all the back bills. The only performers I paid for the first weekend were the bandsmen—they belonged to a union that would have closed the place. But I wasn’t more than a thousand dollars in debt now, and things were rolling, and I knew after the second weekend I’d be almost clear, and after that I’d have to hire someone to help me count the money. I saved that expense at least. The next Friday we got thirteen inches of snow. Thirteen inches of snow and three customers.

I stood in the back of my club that night and I swore that when I really hit it big and went to appear in another man’s nightclub I would refuse to take a penny if the weather was so bad that nobody showed up. I would never take a cent if there was a tornado or a hurricane or a blizzard. I thought about that for a while. I had time that night. Yeah. I thought, that’s okay when you’re thinking as an owner, Greg, but don’t forget all those ten-dollar nights at the Esquire when you showed up on bad nights even when the customers didn’t. You were going there to make your rent money, not spend it.

Saturday came with five more inches of snow and sleet, too. The highways were bad and we were nineteen miles out of downtown Chicago. Twenty people showed up. There were twenty on Sunday, and two more inches of snow. It was only the beginning of one of the worst winters we ever had in Chicago. The third and fourth weekends had snow and sleet and hail and freezing rain. Most nights there were more employees than customers in the Apex Club. I paid the girls with promises, promises that the weather would break, that we’d hit it big, that they’d all get their back pay and more. They believed me. I borrowed more money to keep the place going. I pawned and sold everything I could get my hands on. I began to resent the bandsmen who didn’t drink heavily on the job.

They weren’t leaving their salaries in the club. The liquor-store owner began to complain because I was bringing too much whiskey back, so I began to start each night with a pint each of gin, vodka, bourbon, and Scotch, six cans of beer, and a couple of cartons of soda. As I sold out, I’d run out to a small package store across the street and buy more. There were nights I didn’t have to buy more. And the rent went on, and the advertising went on. I was sinking so far into debt I couldn’t see straight.

On Thursday, January 29, 1959, I decided it was time to play my ace in the hole again. My rich girl. I went to see Lillian Smith. She was very sweet, but apologetic. All she could give me was three hundred dollars. She had quit her job at the university and she was leaving town. I had to ask her twice before she told me why.

“I’m pregnant, Greg. I’m going to have a baby.” The words felt as though someone had taken a bucket of ice water and splashed it against my naked guts. That’s all I need now, a baby, everything I’m trying for, everything I’m killing myself for, and no money, and no real home, and I don’t want to bring up any baby that’s going to be brought up as poor as I was brought up.

We sat and we talked and I asked Lil questions. No, she wasn’t rich—she had saved some money for college and when she left after a year she had kept the money in the bank. She had already given most of it to me. Yes she had known about this for some time, she was about four months’ pregnant. But you’ve been so busy and working so hard, Greg, I just didn’t want to . . . and now I’m not listening to her and I’m thinking that as poor as the Gregory kids were, and as ornery and as rotten and as no-good as Big Pres was, at least we all had a name. Big Pres had given us that.

I asked Lil to marry me.

 

She refused. She said she didn’t want to do anything to stand in my way.

 

This time I didn’t ask her, I told her. Friday we got the blood tests and bought the license, and on Monday, February 2, 1959, I was a married man. Old Lady Wells was right.

At midnight on Monday, Lil and I got on a Greyhound Bus for St. Louis. Three hundred miles down, sleeting all the way through the night. I told her that everything would be all right, the weather would break soon, the nightclub would hit, and I’d bring her back to Chicago and be a husband and a father. She was very brave. Lil was going to a city where she knew no one, to live with people she barely knew existed. I had no idea how hard it was going to be for her, then.

That Tuesday was one of the worst days St. Louis ever had. Rain and snow and driving sleet. The buses weren’t running, there were no cabs, and the insurance companies had announced that no cars would be covered that day. We finally found a guy bootlegging rides and he took us to the project where my sister Dolores lived with her three kids. Dolores was separated from her husband and was working as a waitress. Times were tough for her, too. But she was good and kind and she welcomed Lil. I saw some of my kinfolks in St. Louis and I asked everybody to help, and I talked to Lil some more. Then I went back to Chicago and the Apex Club.

III

 

It’s impossible to be in the nightclub business for six months and never make a penny. Absolutely impossible. I’ll never believe it happened to me. Somehow it seemed as though the harder we worked, the worse the weather got. There were weeks in February and March when the weather would break clear and warmer on Wednesday and I’d tell the waitresses who had never been paid, and the friends who had gone to a finance company for me, and the head cashier who had taken a second job to give me liquor money—I was right, baby, here we go now, this is the weekend this beautiful thing happens. Then Friday would smash down on us with snow and sleet and ten degrees. There were nights I was so tired and confused and half crazy that I thought the winter was a giant trick created just for me, a way for God to test my soul.

I’d go up on stage and be funny and develop and try not to think of what I was going to say to the bill collector at the side table when I came down again. By March I couldn’t afford to advertise anymore, or pay my room rent to Ozelle and William, or the club rent to Sally Wells. The Underwoods themselves were sinking deeper into debt over me and Sally Wells was laying out money for my heat, electricity, water, license, and taxes. The nightclub acts haven’t been paid in so long that they’re hassling with me and with each other. The husband-and- wife team is splitting up, and the girl singer is fighting every night with her boyfriend, and the only thing I can give these people is hope and free liquor. But the hope is wearing thin, and my friends are pawning their clothes to pay my whiskey bill. And behind everything else is the realization that I have to hit by May because I don’t want my baby born in a city hospital. There were nights when I ran across the street for another half-pint that all I wanted to do was pass the liquor store and turn the corner and put my head down and lift my knees and salute the lamppost and take off, just keep running, Greg, just keep running.

I never sent Lil a penny, and by April I couldn’t afford to call St. Louis anymore. Then the Underwoods’ telephone was turned off for nonpayment.

Some of my friends began to turn against me. I couldn’t blame them. You can’t keep saying “Tomorrow” to a man who borrowed five hundred dollars for you and now his paycheck is being garnisheed and he might lose his job. Abu can’t say “Tomorrow” to Thelma Isbell, a woman with three children who might be put out of her apartment, to people who are going to lose things they pawned for

you. But you say tomorrow and you say next week, and then tomorrow and next week roll around and you have to explain it to them all over again. The snow is going to melt and the sun is going to come out and the Apex Club is going to have a real, live crowd again, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. You say it when Ozelle is sick, and William is laid off, and the waitresses’ children are hungry. You say it when you’re lying on the floor, too weary to put up your hands just enough to keep your friend from punching you in the face again. Just lie there and wish you were dead and know you couldn’t be that lucky. And know that as bad as things are, they are ten times worse for Lillian, living with strangers in a strange city, waiting for a baby whose father never calls.

The second week in May, a man walked into the Apex Club with a gun. There were six customers in the club that night, and they jumped up and ran out. The waitresses and the bandsmen and the acts flattened out against the walls and froze when he walked around the tables, kicking chairs out of his way and waving the gun at the girl behind the money drawer. I came down off the stage and walked right up to him and looked him right in the eyes.

“Look, mister, you don’t know what I’ve been through, or you wouldn’t come in here with that gun, you’d come in here with money.”

He looked at me as if I were crazy, and he motioned me out of his way with the gun. I didn’t move. I was crazy. “Listen, mister, one of us has to die tonight.

What I’ve gone through all winter with this place, you need to pull a gun and shoot me to run me out of here. God Himself couldn’t run me out of here, and He’s tried.”

The man looked at me and shook his head. He had been down to the nitty-gritty himself, I guess, because he put his gun back in his pocket and said he was sorry. He turned and walked out.

I scuttled up enough money that week to have the Underwoods’ phone turned back on, and the first call that came through was Dolores, and she said the baby was due in another week. She had taken Lil to the city hospital for an examination. I put down the phone and I sat next to it for a long time, as if there were someone I could call to say: “Give me another month or so on this, just a little more time and the weather’ll break and the crowds’ll come out to Robbins, and I’ll be able to take care of this thing right.”

I went to a friend of mine that day, Pat Toomey, a man I had been avoiding. “I

know I owe you some money,” I said, “but a man has two ways of borrowing. He can ask and he can tell. I’m telling you. I need bus fare to St. Louis. One way. My baby’ll be born next week.”

“I didn’t know you were married, Greg.” “No one knows.”

Pat gave me the money and I went right down to St. Louis. The first thing I did when I got off the bus was walk three miles to the Red Cross office. I gave them my name at the desk, and took a seat. While I was waiting to be called, I looked over the Red Cross workers at then desks and picked out a nice-looking, gray- haired lady. She had a warm, friendly face. She would understand. I’d make a deal: if the Red Cross lent me money so my baby could be born in a private hospital, I would give them half of everything I’d ever make in my life. The weather is going to clear and then I’m going to hit it big, starting next week, and you can’t afford to turn this deal down.

“Mister Gregory?” It was a man, in the far corner.

 

I sat down and I explained the situation. I told him I had a nightclub in Chicago, that I was an entertainer temporarily broke, and that the baby was due the next week.

"You know, Mister Gregory, we have a very fine city hospital right here in St. Louis, and your wife will be well taken care of. Let me give you the address.”

I didn’t tell him that I knew the address, that I could remember the day a doctor slapped me and cursed my momma in that very fine city hospital. How could I explain to him, a man I was begging from, that I didn’t want my kid born in a city hospital?

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Thank you very much for your time. I guess you’re right.”

I walked out of the Red Cross office, and around the block and down the street, walking and praying and thinking and suddenly I had an idea. I started running. When Ron was at Notre Dame he got a hernia, and a doctor from St. Louis operated on him for free. I ran to a phone booth and started looking through the book until the name came to me. He had an office across town. I ran right over. And paced in front of it for two hours until I had the courage to walk into the

office of a white doctor who didn’t even know me. He was sitting there with a pleasant smile.

“I’m Dick Gregory, Ron Gregory’s brother, and . . .”

 

“Why, of course, I remember Ron, you know that day he took the mile at the ...”

 

We sat there and we talked, and I talked about Notre Dame as if I had built that school with my own two hands, and I talked about Ron as if I had lived in his soul. Whenever we were ready to stop talking I’d talk some more, just to put off begging from a white man I didn’t even know. He must have sensed it on my face, or forty-five minutes was just as long as a doctor could take.

“By the way, is there anything I can do to help you?”

 

"Yes. sir. I have a wife here in St. Louis that’s going to have a baby next week. I have no money.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “How much do you need?”

 

The world stood still and turned beautiful, and I remembered when I was a kid and had a wallet, and an angel came down and whispered something, and I was so happy and bursting inside I could never have believed man had ever fought a war or hated or been cruel.

“I said how much will you need, Mister Gregory?”

 

“I don’t know, Doctor. How much does it cost to have a baby?”

 

He called his nurse in. “Would you call the hospital and make an appointment for . . . what’s your wife’s name?” "Lillian Gregory.”

“. . . for Lillian Gregory. Tell them she’ll be in next week, and that they should hold the bill for me.”

“Doctor, I don’t know how to thank you, I . . .”

 

The blood was running through my veins again, and I wanted to kiss him and hug him and give him all the joys and pleasures I ever had in my whole life. When I got out on the street again I talked to the trees and the birds and I nodded

at the police car and I ran all the way to my sister’s house and I couldn’t wait for the elevator so I ran up eleven flights of stairs and burst into the apartment and grabbed a wife I hardly knew and hadn’t seen in almost four months. “Hey, baby, let me tell you what happened today.”

She sat there, her face shining. “Oh, Greg, oh, Greg,” and I was talking fast again. I told her what to do and where to go and how she was going to be all right. Now, baby, I’ve got to find some money to get back to Chicago and open up the Apex Club tomorrow night. Somehow she understood, even though she shouldn’t have had to.

I went by my aunt’s house, and they started screaming at me, what a disgrace you are, doing a woman like you’re doing. I tried to explain to them this thing I had, that it was bigger than you and me and my wife and the baby. They started screaming again, and I had to leave my aunt’s house running. I got some bus fare for myself and some carfare for Lil, and I went back to Dolores’. My sister was home and she took me aside. Lil wasn’t eating, she wasn’t talking or doing much of anything. She sat around the house taking care of Dolores’ kids and sleeping and crying, sleeping and crying. Lil was crying when I left the apartment, and as I slammed the door behind me I heard her scream, “Please don’t leave me again.” I went back into the apartment and into the room where she was sobbing on the bed, and she looked up and said: “I’m sorry, Greg, please forgive me.” All the way back to Chicago I tried to figure out how a woman could understand what a man was trying to do the way Lil understood. And she didn’t even know me yet.

It was another miserable weekend in Chicago, raining from Friday to Sunday. This time, it didn’t matter too much. I had met a man who reached for his wallet, and my kid wasn’t going to be born in a city hospital. On Wednesday night Dolores called and told me everything was fine. Lil had been thoroughly examined and had been admitted to the hospital that afternoon. The baby was due at any time. Everything was working according to plan. I felt great. My stomach quieted down.

The phone rang again on Thursday evening. “Richard?” “’Yeah, is . .

“Richard, to the last day you live you’ll never be forgiven what happened to this woman, you’ll. .

“What are you talking about?” “’Your baby’s born, Richard.”

“Is that right? Wonderful! How’s Lil?”

 

“She’s here in the house, Richard, and the baby’s here in the house, and both of them laying there on the floor . .

“But Lil’s at the hospital, she’s . .

 

“They sent her home, again, Richard. They said . . .” “’You call the ambulance?”

“’Yeah, they on their way, Richard, you ...” “Let me talk to her, Dolores . . . Dolores?”

“Richard, she just lying in there, lying on her back on the floor, lookin’ up at her baby. The hospital told me to put the baby on top of her stomach . . .”

“Dolores, oh God, Dolores, is she really there on the floor?” “’Yeah, Richard.”

“But I thought she was in the hospital.”

 

“She was there all night, Richard, all night long. They acted kind of funny to her, and she’s such a strange woman, that Lil. She wasn’t having labor pains so they told her she could go home, and she came home and then she had the pains and she was all alone in the house and she didn’t have no cab fare, honest to God, Richard, she didn’t have no cab fare, and she just. . .”

“Dolores?”

 

“I can’t hear you, Richard.” “Dolores, did she holler much?”

“She hasn’t said nothing. I’ve had three babies, Richard, and I always hollered,

but she didn’t say a word. I came home, Richard, and if I didn’t go into the room I wouldn’t know she was in there having her baby on the floor.

“I can’t believe it, Dolores, oh, my God . . .” “The ambulance’s here, Richard ...”

I hung up the phone, and the next thing I knew I was running through the rain, just running like a crazy man, and I ran around a corner and right into a guy I knew from the university track team, Brooks Johnson. We both fell down on the sidewalk. Before we got up, I said: “Would you loan me ten dollars?” He never asked why, just reached in his pocket, and then I was up running again, from the South Side down to the Loop, and I caught the St. Louis bus just as it was pulling out. I fell asleep the moment I sat down, and slept for seven hours, all the way to St. Louis. Then I ran to Dolores’ house.

“Richard, oh, Richard, the elevator was so small they had to stand her up on the stretcher going down eleven floors with the baby against her stomach . . .”

“Where is she, Dolores?” “Homer G. Phillips.

The city hospital. The old place haunted me down after all. I went right over there, marched up to the desk, and told them I wanted to see my wife. Where is she?

“What is her name sir?” “Mrs. Richard Gregory.”

“Certainly, sir. She’s on the fourth floor. Let me give you a slip of paper so you can visit your daughter.”

Lil was in a ward with twenty other women. Some of them were tossing and groaning, and I was scared to go in. I finally did, and Lil looked up at me, and all she said was: “Hi, Greg, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Lil, don’t be sorry for nothing. It was ... oh, God, Lil, are you all right?” She smiled. “I’m just fine, Greg.” She waved her hand to make me come closer,

and she whispered: “Greg, would you mind saying something nice to the lady in the bed over there? I’ve been telling her all about you.”

I did, and then I went up to see my baby girl, and then I spent some more time with Lil, and then I looked at my baby again, and then I went back down to the fourth floor.

“It’s Friday, Lil, I got to go back and open up the club.” “I understand, Greg. We’ll be all right, don’t you worry.”

When the bandsmen walked into the Apex Club that night, I was standing by the door and I told every one of them that I was a daddy and if they wanted to hold on to their jobs they better bring gifts for my baby. I walked around that weekend in a daze, sometimes proud because I was a father, sometimes ashamed because of what Lil had gone through all alone. On Tuesday I went back down to St. Louis with a hundred dollars’ worth of baby gifts and fifty dollars I scuffled up for Lil. It was the first time I ever brought anything to my wife. It felt like fifty million dollars to a guy who had let his wife pay for the ring and the blood test and the license and the bus fare out of town more than four months ago. For the first time I began to feel like a husband and a father.

Lil was home from the hospital, and I spent three days with her, the first time we ever spent any time together as husband and wife. It was the first time I lay in bed with my wife, and touched my wife, and put my back next to my wife’s back, and closed my eyes and slept next to my wife. And she was so beautiful, she just lay there and told me how happy she was, and I couldn’t believe it.

I never will forget how I lay there and tried to tell her that I knew what she had been through, that I knew she had to hate me, that I didn’t blame her. She cried and shook her head and said: “Hate you for what, Greg? You're going to be the biggest entertainer in show business someday, and you did what you had to do. Someday you’ll sit back and you’ll see we didn’t go through anything.”

I couldn’t believe this woman existed. We slept and we talked and we cried and laughed together for three days, and we began to know each other. So shy and bashful, that little girl I married, and now she was a woman. We talked about naming the baby. Michele Rene Gregory.

“You know, Greg, when I was lying on that floor I thought—Dick Gregory’s

child is going to say: ‘Dick Gregory’s my daddy,’ never going to say: ‘I was born on the floor.’ Just say: ‘Dick Gregory’s my daddy.’ You can do anything you want to do, Greg—you know that and I know that—and don’t let anything stop you.”

I told Lil that I was thinking about quitting show business. Hell, I’m nothing but a peon, never worked in a big nightclub, never even been inside of one. She shook her head and touched my cheek. We held each other very tight those days and nights in St. Louis, and I began to discover who I had married, and I found out I loved her, and I learned, again, how a woman can give strength.

“Those things you told me about your mother, Greg,” Lil would say, “if she could do all those things for six of you, I can do anything you want me to do. I understand you can’t always come down here. I look for you every day, and when the day is gone and the week is gone, I just keep seeing you coming. And I know you’re on your way.”

I went back to Chicago that weekend, and the weather was clear and bright and warm, and the highways were dry and smooth and the Apex Club was packed. It was June and the long winter was over. Real live crowds now. The money was starting to come in. We’re going to hit, baby, because we suffered through the whole storm, and now the weather has broken. June went, and July came, and there were lines outside the door. Every time I stood on that stage I felt the monster seep right up me, and I was funny and every show was a masterpiece. I had spent six months in my own nightclub creating and developing my own comedy. The crowds came and the Apex Club . . . beginning to really hit.

I lost the nightclub in July.

 

Old lady Wells was very nice, but there was all that money I owed her, and she was getting on in years. There were some buyers looking over the place now.

The place had a name. This was the time to sell. Sally Wells gave me a chance. There was the money I owed her for the licenses and the heat and the electricity and the water and the taxes. There was four months’ worth of back rent: fifty-six dollars a night times three nights a week four weeks to a month times four months.

“Has to be in by Sunday, Mister Gregory.”

 

That was it. There were no more tomorrows or next weeks, there were no more

people to borrow money from. The last weekend the owners-to-be came out and looked the place over again, and smiled at each other at the size of the crowd. I remember giving my show while they walked around the room and talked to each other about how they would decorate the club when they took it over.

Well, we went out like champs. After the last show on Sunday night we threw a big party, and drank and danced and talked. But mostly cried. We had worked together through one of the worst winters in Chicago and we hadn’t made any money, but for six months, every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we could look forward to being somebodies, to being part of something ethical and honest and decent, a place where the customer was always treated right and the employees got respect, a nightclub that had never had gambling or prostitution or bootleg whiskey, a nightclub that—for us—had been something like a home.

It was early in the morning before that party broke up. I looked at those sad faces, and I made a speech. I thanked them for their faith. I told them what they had seen. A boy had turned into a man before their eyes. I told them, if you carry fifty pounds on your back and don’t weaken, you strengthen your back to carry a hundred, and then a thousand, and if that doesn’t break you, someday you’ll be able to carry the world. And walk with it. That’s how strong I feel.

At dawn, I walked down the steps of the Apex Club for the last time, thinking of all the trails I had made across the street, the people I had known, the lessons I had learned, the tests I had passed. Good-bye, Apex good-bye and thank you so much. There will be no turning back now.

I’m ready.

IV

 

I lost the Apex Club in the summer of 1959, and the next year and a half was up and down, in and out, hustling and scuffing and pestering people to listen to me, hire me, pay me. But I was moving now, and tasting that thing. The Apex had put the monster back in me for good. In August I got my old job back at the Esquire, at ten dollars a night. I started bugging Herman Roberts, the owner of the biggest Negro nightclub in America, to come out and catch my act. He wouldn’t move. So I brought the mountain to him. The Pan-American Games were in Chicago that year, and I knew a lot of the athletes. I borrowed some money, and rented Roberts Show Club for one night to throw a party for the teams. Naturally, it was a one-man show. Afterward, Herman Roberts came up to me and asked how much I wanted to be master of ceremonies at his club. I said $125 a week. He nearly slipped and said: “Is that all?”

All the top Negro acts played Roberts in those days—Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Sammy Davis Jr., Billy Eckstine, Nipsey Russell, Dinah Washington. There was Red Saunders’ big house band, an eight-girl chorus line, and more than a thousand seats. When I stood on that electrically powered stage and introduced the acts and gave the coming attractions, I felt like a top Negro act, too. I rented a furnished apartment for twenty-five dollars a week and brought Lil and Michele into Chicago. The kitchen was in the basement, but it was home and we were together. Told everybody I was on my way. Had me a few words with that dumb Esquire management. Too quick. The Roberts job folded a month later; I didn’t know he only kept his MCs four weeks at a time.

Lil got her old job back at the University of Chicago, and we bought a ten-year- old Plymouth for fifty dollars. No insurance and no floorboards, but every day, with six-month-old Michele on the front seat, the old car made the rounds.

Booking agents, nightclub owners, people who knew people. Now and then we’d come up with something, $10 here, $50 there, once a $175-a week gig at a white honky-tonk. I lasted only a week there. Told the management they’d have to stop those B-girls from tricking the tourists so badly if they wanted to retain an artist of my caliber.

So Michele grew a little older in the front seat of that Plymouth. She never cried, never carried on, just lay there all wrapped up in blankets against the wind coming in from underneath. We pestered more people, kept going around to the

union, the American Guild of Variety Artists. On Monday nights, AGVA members got a chance to audition in front of an audience of white nightclub owners and agents. Every time I asked them to put me on an AGVA night they asked me if I could sing or dance.

“I’m a comedian, sir.”

 

“We’ll have an opening for you in about a year and a half.”

 

Whenever things got too tight, I’d pick up a little money washing cars, doing little things here and there. Then Herman Roberts called again. Only ten dollars a night to start during this time, and I’d have to help the waiters seat the customers during the Sammy Davis Jr. engagement. But I could stay for as long as I was funny. It was at Roberts that I learned one of the greatest lessons in show business.

Sammy Davis Jr. and Nipsey Russell were appearing on the same bill at Roberts, probably the biggest attraction the club ever had. They were playing to 90 percent white audiences, and for many of those customers it was their first trip to the South Side of Chicago. For most, it was the first time they had ever been to the South Side at night. The club was packed with white executives who were slipping the waiters fifty-dollar tips for ringside tables. Nipsey would open the show, with a lot of racial comedy, and he absolutely slayed that white audience. They couldn’t laugh hard enough. Nipsey stole that show, even against Sammy Davis with all his talents. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to figure it out.

A few nights after Nipsey had opened at Roberts, he was called down for an AGVA night. The word had gotten out how well he was going over uptown. I went downtown that Monday night to a white club and watched Nipsey work that audience of white nightclub owners. It was the same routine he had killed the customers with at Roberts, but that night Nipsey just sat up there and died. He couldn’t get the same response he got at Roberts.

And then I began to figure it out. A white man will come to the Negro club, so hung up in this race problem, so nervous and afraid of the neighborhood and the people that anything the comic says to relieve his tension will absolutely knock him out. The harder that white man laughs, the harder he’s saying, “I’m all right, boy, it’s that Other Man downtown.” That white customer in the Negro club is filled with guilt and filled with fear. I’ve seen a white man in a Negro club jump up and say “Excuse me” to a Negro waitress who just spilled a drink in his lap. If

that same thing happened in a white nightclub, that man would jump up, curse, and call his lawyer. That was the kind of audience that Nipsey slayed in the Roberts Show Club. But when Nipsey went downtown for AGVA night he was in the white man’s house, and the white man felt comfortable and secure. He didn’t have to laugh at racial material that he really didn’t want to hear.

This gave me something to think about, to work with. Someday I’m going to be performing where the bread is, in the big white nightclubs. When I step up on that stage, in their neighborhood, some of them are going to feel sorry for me because I’m a Negro, and some of them are going to hate me because I’m a Negro. Those who feel sorry might laugh a little at first. But they can’t respect someone they pity; and eventually they’ll stop laughing. Those who hate me aren’t going to laugh at all.

I’ve got to hit them fast, before they can think, just the way I hit those kids back in St. Louis who picked on me because I was raggedy and had no daddy. I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second. I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man. I’ve got to act like a star who isn’t sorry for himself—that way, they can’t feel sorry for me. I’ve got to make jokes about myself, before I can make jokes about them and their society—that way, they can’t hate me. Comedy is friendly relations.

“Just my luck, bought a suit with two pair of pants today . . . burned a hole in the jacket.”

That’s making fun of yourself.

 

“They asked me to buy a lifetime membership in the NAACP, but I told them I’d pay a week at a time. Hell of a thing to buy a lifetime membership, wake up one morning and find the country’s been integrated.”

That makes fun of the whole situation.

 

Now they’re listening to you, and you can blow a cloud of smoke at the audience and say:

“Wouldn’t it be a hell of a thing if all this was burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nothing?”

Now you’ve got them. No bitterness, no Uncle Tomming. We’re all aware of what’s going on here, aren’t we, baby? Now you can settle down and talk about

anything you want: fallout shelters, taxes, mothers-in-law, sit-ins, freedom riders, the Congo, H-bomb, the president, children. Stay away from sex, that’s the big pitfall. If you use blue material only, you slip back into being that Negro stereotype comic. If you mix blue and topical satire that white customer, all hung up with the Negro sex mystique, is going to get uncomfortable.

In and out of Roberts in 1960, I had plenty of time to think. I realized that when I started working the white clubs, one of my big problems was going to be hecklers, ’specially in the beginning when I’d be in honky-tonk white clubs.

Handling a heckler just right is very important to a comic. Unless you’re well known as an insulting comedian you can’t chop hecklers down too hard or the crowd will turn against you. Most hecklers are half drunk anyway, and you will lose a crowd if you get mean with a drunk. On the other hand, you have to put a heckler down. If a heckler gets the best of you, that crowd will start to feel sorry for you. I had worked it out pretty well in the Negro clubs. I’d put a drunken heckler down gently: “Man, I’d rather be your slave than your liver,” and that would go even better in a white club. Whenever I got a vicious heckler, I could say something like: “Now how would you like it if I came to your job and kicked the shovel out of your hand?” That would work fine, too. But someday, somewhere, I’d be in a white club and somebody would get up and call me a nigger.

I worried about that. When that white man calls me nigger, every other white man in that club is going to feel embarrassed. The customers are going to tie in that uncomfortable feeling with that club—even after I’m gone—and the club owner knows this. He would rather keep me out of his club than take a chance on losing customers. It was the same thing when I got kicked in the mouth as a shoeshine boy—the bartender ran me out of the place, even though he felt sorry for me, because he couldn’t afford to have the customers fight. But now I’m a man and I have to take care of myself. I need a fast comeback to that word. That split second is all the difference between going on with the show or letting the customers feel pity and a little resentment for the entertainer who got put down.

I used to make Lillian call me a nigger over the dinner table, and I’d practice the fast comeback. Somehow, I couldn’t get it right. I’d always come back with something a little bitter, a little evil.

“Nigger.”

“Maybe you’d feel more like a man if you lived down south and had a toilet with your name on it.”

“No, Greg, that’s not right at all.”

 

I was lying around the house one night, watching television and feeling mad at the world. I’d been out of work for three weeks. The snow was so deep I hadn’t even been outside the house for four days. Lil was sitting in a corner, so calm and peaceful, reading a book. There was no one else to pick on.

“Hey, Lil.”

 

“Yes, Greg.”

 

“What would you do if from here on in I started referring to you as bitch?” She jumped out of the chair. “I would simply ignore you.”

I fell off the couch and started laughing so hard that old stomach of mine nearly burst. That was it. The quick, sophisticated answer. Cool. No bitterness. The audience would never know I was mad and mean inside. And there would be no time to feel sorry for me. Now I’d get that comeback.

I got my chance a few weeks later, in a run-down neighborhood club on the outskirts of town. The customers were working-class white men, laborers, factory hands, men whose only marks of dignity were the Negroes they bossed on the job and kept away from on weekends. It happened in the middle of the late show on the second night. Loud and clear.

“Nigger.”

 

The audience froze, and I wheeled around without batting an eye. "'You hear what that guy just called me? Roy Rogers’ horse. He called me Trigger.”

I had hit them so quick that they laughed, and they laughed hard because that was what they really wanted to believe the guy had called me. But I had only bought myself a little time. There was an element in the house that really knew what he had called me. I had the crowd locked up with that fast comeback, so I took a few seconds to look them over and blow out some smoke.

"You know, my contract reads that every time I hear that word, I get fifty dollars

more a night. I’m only making ten dollars a night, and I’d like to put the owner out of business. Will everybody in the room please stand up and yell nigger?”

They laughed and they clapped and I swung right back into my show. Afterward, the owner came over and gave me twenty dollars and shook my hand and thanked me. I had made my test.

The weather broke, and Michele and I got back into the Plymouth and made our rounds. Another gig in a white club, a little place in Mishawaka, Indiana, ninety- eight miles from Chicago on the other side of South Bend. I drove the distance every night because at ten dollars I couldn’t afford a hotel. That club was a big thing in Mishawaka, and the white folks lined up early to get in. It was on a Saturday night, the place was packed, and I kept noticing a group of white girls sitting on the lounge chairs near the back. They were drinking pretty heavily, and laughing at all the wrong places.

Suddenly, one of the girls shouted: "You're handsome.”

 

Every white man in the place froze. That’s that sex angle, thrown right in your face, and the whole room hates you for it. Okay, here we go.

“Honey, what nationality are you?” “Hungarian.”

“Take another drink. You'll think you’re Negro. Then you’ll run up here and kiss me and we’ll both have to leave town in a hurry.”

That busted it. The room came all the way down again, and you could hear the relief in that explosion of laughter. If there was any hate left in that room, it was for that girl.

I felt stronger and stronger now, more confident that I could handle anything that came up. I went back into the Roberts that summer for another engagement. The Republican Party Convention was in town then, and some of the delegates went slumming one night and caught my act. They talked about it. A few nights later, John Daly’s crew from the American Broadcasting Company came by. He was doing a television documentary about the race situation in the North, Cast the First Stone. He wanted to tape my routine. I was signed to a contract, got a dollar to make it legal, and a crew came out and taped me for two hours. I ran all

the way home to tell Lil. This is it. Prime time, baby, network. John Daly. We have to plan strategy now, make sure everybody in the whole country sees me on television. “Lil, you know that paper you type things on at the university.”

“Yeah, Greg ...”

 

“Can you get some of it?” “Sure.”

“Now, we’ll need about eighty thousand sheets of that. . .”

 

Next morning I dressed Michele and drove out to the university. The lady out there knew Lil and was very nice, but a little confused. Eighty thousand sheets? Finally we decided to cut a stencil and have someone run it off on the mimeograph. As soon as I borrowed some money I’d buy my own paper and pay for the labor.

I had no idea how much eighty thousand of anything was until I picked up those boxes of paper. It was like working the levee just to load it into the car. Now I had to hand them out.

It was a simple handbill, it said something like—make sure you watch Cast the First Stone on September 27, 1960, on the American Broadcasting Company station, then write a letter to the network telling them how much you loved the show, especially Dick Gregory.

For two weeks I passed out those handbills, on street corners in the Loop, in South Side bars, in restaurants, outside movie theaters, in schoolyards, outside factories at lunchtime. Sometimes people read them. Sometimes people just dropped them on the sidewalk, and I’d run over and pick them up. It was as if my blood was spilling on the pavement.

Sometimes it seemed like the more handbills I passed out, the more were left. I borrowed a car with floorboards and drove down to St. Louis and passed them out in front at the high schools, drove down to Carbondale and passed them out in the Student Union. I borrowed some more money for postage stamps and envelopes and started mailing out hundreds at a time to friends and relatives and to every NAACP chapter in the country.

I was still handing them out on street corners the night of the show, mad as hell at all the people who had the nerve to be away from their television sets on a night like this. By the time I got home, the show was fifteen minutes old.

“I been on yet, Lil?” “Not yet, Greg.”

And then it happened. John Daly said something about a new young comic sensation. Right after this message. This is it, baby, hold on. I could see eighty thousand letters, at least, in the mail before morning.

Eight thirty. John Daly took about two minutes to introduce me, and there I was, staring at myself on national television, coast-to-coast. Prime time. The whole country was watching me.

Two jokes. Two quick jokes. About twenty seconds. Then it blacked out, and there was a commercial.

“That’s a good sign, Lil, a commercial. Means I’ll go all the way through the rest of the show. This was just a teaser.”

“Sure, Greg.”

 

We sat there until nine o’clock when the program went off, and I never came on again.

“Maybe that was just part one, Greg. Maybe next week they’ll have part two.” “Call up and find out.”

She did. We stared at each other and cried. Eighty thousand handbills. Twenty seconds. I couldn’t believe it. And they had taped my act for more than two hours.

What the hell, back to work. I went into a beatnik coffeehouse off Rush Street, The Fickle Pickle. Seven nights a week, $125 a week, one month. I began to meet some people who were going to help me. There was Tim Boxer, a young newspaperman from Canada who was out of work and sleeping in his car. We got friendly, and he said he’d do some public relations work for me. There was Bob Orben, one of the top comedy writers in the world. I couldn’t afford having

him write special material for me, but he sent me his monthly pamphlet of general jokes, the best school for comics there is today. There was Joe Musse, who signed me to a contract with Associated Booking, the biggest agents in the country. And he introduced me to Freddie Williamson in Associated’s Chicago office. Freddie never came to see me work, but I used to go to his office nearly every day to bug him into getting me jobs. Between his phone calls and his other clients, I made Freddie listen to my material. I’d just stand in his office and do my act for him. He said he liked it, and that he would try to book me into the Playboy Club in Chicago. They were always looking for new talent. Meanwhile, in November of 1960, he got me a week at Eddie Salem’s Supper Club in Akron, Ohio. I’ll never forget that gig.

It was the biggest job I ever had, in the biggest white club I had ever seen. My first real out-of-town engagement. Two hundred dollars a week and I was on the same bill with Don Cornell, the singer. A big white club with a big white star.

The response to my material was pretty good. Eddie Salem let me eat in his club on credit. He lent me money so I could send Lil enough for the groceries, and so I could spend money like the top Negro entertainer I was pretending to be. After my act I’d sit at the bar like a big man and buy drinks for the customers. But sooner or later I would have to go back to my room in the Negro section, a ten- dollar-a-week room, the only room I could find where I didn’t have to pay a week in advance.

It was on top of a restaurant, and I told the owner I had just come from a big engagement in Las Vegas and the only reason I was staying in his place was to spread a little money around my people. I let racial prejudice work for me that time.

There was no heat in that room, and one naked light bulb, hung from the ceiling. The toilet was broken, and a woman across the hall kept dumping her overnight bucket in the public bathtub. Even when I came back drunk, the stench in that room sobered me up. It was first time since St. Louis that I had to pile on extra clothes to go to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning there was a blanket of bugs across the bed. I was cold and miserable and I cried like a baby. I had always stayed away from after-hours joints because I was afraid they would be busted by the police, but I went to every after-hours joint I could find in Akron.

But sooner or later I had to go back to that room, just like sooner or later I used to have to go back to that house on North Taylor. No matter how many track meets I won. It seemed like I was a kid again in high school—all those years and

all those things that had happened and I was still coming back to a place with no heat and no light and no running water.

I wasted a lot of tears in Akron. I had no way of knowing I was less than two months away from hitting the big time.

V

 

Christmas 1960. Michele had a fever and the apartment was cold and I was out of work again and there were three pounds of fatty white hamburger meat on the table. Poor people are always embarrassed at not having turkey and cranberry sauce for this one day—the same turkey they can’t afford in October, the same cranberry sauce they can’t afford in May. You try to think that Christmas Day is only twenty-four hours long, just like all the days you were satisfied with beans. But you never really stop believing in Santa Claus. When Momma was Santa Claus you could almost accept having nothing, but when Momma is gone and you’re Santa Claus you can’t accept not being able to give. Maybe that’s why honest people steal at Christmas time. Christmas isn’t right unless you give.

We didn’t really steal that Christmas, but we bought a lot of things we weren’t sure we could pay for. First there was the television set. The radio had advertised a set for $114, and Lil and I called up for a demonstration. A man came by the next day with a big television set, plugged it into the wall, and told us that the price was three hundred dollars. When he found out that the old set we were using belonged to the landlord and that we couldn’t trade it in, the price went up to four hundred dollars. No down payment, seventeen dollars a month for two years. It was a trick, but it was worth it. It was the first piece of furniture Lil and I had ever bought in almost two years of marriage. And it was new, something no one else had ever owned before.

On Christmas Eve, we went down to The Fair, a big department store in the Loop. I sat in the car, nervous, while Lil went inside to try to open a charge account. I was gambling that on Christmas Eve the store was full of stuff they had to get rid of. If Lil said it just right, about her husband being Dick Gregory, the comic, and being employed by the University of Chicago, they wouldn’t question her. After half an hour she came out with her face shining.

“We got it, Greg, up to seventeen hundred dollars.” We bought everything we thought we’d need all year, coats and clothing and blankets and plates and pans and baby things and gifts for kinfolks we had only heard of, and lights for a Christmas tree. We had to hold the packages on our laps so they wouldn’t slip through the floor of the car. We only had two dollars in cash, so we bought a raggedy Christmas tree for a dollar, and on the way home we stopped at a grocery and bought three pounds of cheap hamburger meat, thirty-three cents a

pound. It was so fatty that the grease overflowed the pan and put the fire out. But Lil ate that hamburger with all the grace in the world, and she fed it to Michele like it was the finest food a mother could offer her daughter. The Gregorys were eating hamburger because it was just what they wanted.

“Honey, this is the last time we’ll ever be poor on Christmas, this is the last time you’ll ever have to cook Christmas meal in a basement kitchen and carry it up two flights of stairs.”

“It’s all right, Greg.”

 

“I just made you a promise, Lil, not a threat. This will be the last Christmas you’ll spend like this.”

“Greg?” “Yeah, Lil”

“I got something for you. Under the tree.” “But, Lil, we got all our presents at The Fair." “This is something special, Greg.”

I opened it up. It was a brown leather briefcase with my initials on it. That little brown bag I had always thought the top comics carried. Lil, oh, Lil, how did you ever know?

How we talked that night. She told me how she had done extra typing for graduate students at the university, and she had saved the money. And I told her about old Sally Wells, the lady who owned the Apex Club, the old witch doctor who had predicted I would get married soon and that I’d be flying around the country with a little brown bag. I had never told Lil the story before, never told her about the little brown bag. There was such excitement in her eyes and in her voice.

“Is this it, Greg, is this the bag?” "Yeah, baby, this is it.”

There was no fear in me now, no fear about paying off the television, or paying

off The Fair, or supporting my wife, or getting money to take my daughter to the doctor. I couldn’t get scared even when there were no jobs for the rest of the year, when January came and there was nothing for me to do. I had me my little brown bag.

On January 13, 1961, my agent called. Irwin Corey, the comic at the Playboy Club, had gotten sick. They needed a replacement that night.

I borrowed a quarter from the landlord downstairs. I took the wrong bus downtown, and it let me off twenty blocks from the Playboy Club. I started to run, and the wind knocked the water out of my eyes, and the cold crawled up my sleeves. They gave me the news at the door. They were very sorry. They hadn’t realized that the room had been booked by a convention of frozen food executives from the South. They would give me fifty dollars for the night. They would try to work me in again soon. But they didn’t think this would be the best kind of audience to break in with.

If I hadn’t been so cold and so mad and so broke, I would have accepted it and gone back home. The room manager was very nice, and maybe he was right. The Playboy Club was a very sophisticated place, the most publicized nightclub in the country, and a room filled with well-to-do southerners would be tough to handle. But I was cold and mad and I had run twenty blocks and I didn’t even have another quarter to go back home. I told him I was going to do the show they had called me for, I had come too far to stop now. I told him I didn’t care if he had a lynch mob in that room, I was going on tonight.

He looked at me and he shrugged. Then he stepped aside and opened the door to the top.

VI

 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent twenty years there one night. . .

It’s dangerous for me to go hack. You see, when I drink, I think I’m Polish. One night I got so drunk I moved out of my own neighborhood. . .

Last time I was down south I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: “We don't serve colored people here. ”

I said: “That’s all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken. ”

About that time these three cousins come in, you know the ones I mean, Klu, Kluck, and Klan, and they say: “Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin'. Anything you do to that chicken, we ’re gonna do to you. ” About then the waitress brought me my chicken. “Remember, boy, anything you do to that chicken, we ’re gonna do to you. ” So I put down my knife and fork, and I picked up that chicken, and I kissed it.

I went all the way back to childhood that night in the Playboy Club, to the smile Momma always had on her face, to the clever way a black boy learns never to let the bitterness inside him show. The audience fought me with dirty, little, insulting statements, but I was faster, and I was funny, and when that room broke it was like the storm was over. They stopped heckling and they listened.

What was supposed to be a fifty-minute show lasted for about an hour and forty minutes. Every time I tried to get off the stage, they called me back. When I finally said good night, those southerners stood up and clapped, and when I started toward the door they took money out of their pockets and gave it to me. And one of those southerners looked at me and said: “You know, if you have the right managers, you’ll die a billionaire.” It was the greatest compliment I had ever gotten.

Hugh Hefner, the owner of the Playboy Club, caught the second show I gave that night. He signed me to a three-year contract, starting with $250 a week for six weeks in 1961. It was a hell of a thing for people to ask if I was working. I could stick out my chest and say: Yeah, baby, I’m over at the Playboy.

After Hefner hired me, all kinds of things started to happen. I started to get press notices, the newspapers sent people to review my act, the columnists started quoting my jokes. I’d buy every paper every night, and if I saw my name in one I’d run over to another newsstand to make sure all the copies of that newspaper had my name in it. Time magazine ran my picture and a rave review. There were calls from agents and managers and nightclubs and record companies. The phone never stopped ringing.

I got a lot of help that year. Tim Boxer, the newspaperman I met at The Fickle Pickle, was working hard as my press agent. Associated Booking was getting me jobs. Alex Drier, a big Chicago television personality, invited me by his house to talk about proper management. Alex lived on the Gold Coast of Chicago, and the night I drove out there the police stopped me three times along the way. They figured that any Negro there after dark could only be there to steal. I should have worn a chauffeur’s uniform. But it was worth it. When I finally got to his house, Alex was warm and friendly and encouraging and as helpful as usual. He introduced me to Ralph Mann and Marv Josephson, who became my managers. I got lawyers, Dick Shelton and Bernie Kleinman, to handle my account. When you’ve been busted as long as I had been busted, and suddenly people are waving contracts and money under your nose, you need good, honest, smart businessmen around you. You can’t go downtown to wheel and deal for yourself because you aren’t used to thinking like a big entertainer with a future; you’re still thinking like a guy who is busted.

Then I got a call to come to New York for The Jack Paar Show. The day I went was a hell of a day. First time I was ever in a jet, first time I ever stayed in a big white hotel. I met Joe Glaser, the head of Associated Booking, a man worth millions. He told me if there was anything I wanted in the hotel, just pick up the phone and call downstairs. His office would take care of the bill. By the time I got on the Paar Show, so much had happened to me that I wasn’t as nervous as I should have been. But it was a hell of a thing to be on national television, on the biggest show in the country, and be allowed to make honest racial jokes right in everybody’s living room. Being on The Jack Paar Show made me in America.

When I got back from New York, I called Lil from the airport. “Hey, baby, anything done happen in my life?”

“Well, Greg, David Susskind called, he wants you on his show, the Paar people called, they want you back again, and are you ready for the big one?”

"Yeah, baby, lay it on me.”

 

“They just came and repossessed your television set.” “Good. Honey, don’t you worry about it.”

On the way back home, I stopped at my lawyers’ and asked them to get me the biggest color television set on the market.

“How big, Dick?”

 

“Tell them to go by my apartment and measure the doors. I want the set so big, they got to take all the doors down to get it in the house.”

And I told my lawyers to pay off the people who took the other set. Tell them to keep it. They pulled a trick on some poor people. But the trick was on them.

They had given me time to pacify my family.

 

I didn’t have to pacify them anymore. There were more television shows, and big nightclub contracts, and concert offers, and articles about me in national magazines. I bought Lil a Thunderbird for her birthday that year. I got a kick out of the Thunderbird. Lil didn’t know how to drive, and that Thunderbird just sat out in front of that furnished apartment on Wentworth Avenue. That was getting back at the system.

And then the big one. That August, Lynne Lucille, our second daughter, was born. In a private hospital.

I was growing by the minute, meeting fascinating people like Hefner and Paar and Bob Hope. I was flying first-class to California and New York. One day, one of biggest record companies called. They wanted me to cut a comedy record for them. I was thrilled. I’m sure I would have done it for them, but the man who came to talk to me took me to the wrong restaurant—a fancy place called London House that scared me to death. The man ordered lobster tails, so I ordered lobster tails. When the waiter brought the lobster tails, I realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea how to eat them. So I watched the man from the record company. He squirted some lemon on his lobster, so I squirted lemon on my lobster. But by the time I finished squirting, he had already taken his first swing at the tail and cut it open. I had missed his move, and I didn’t know what

to do. So I told him I had an upset stomach, and I walked out of the restaurant.

 

But a little while later, Colpix Records offered me a twenty-five-thousand-dollar advance for two albums. I took it. That really tied up a loose end for me, that twenty-five-thousand-dollar check. I wished I still had my telegram. I hadn’t really told a lie after all.

There were some other loose ends that got tied up that year. In May, I went back to Southern Illinois University with Dizzy Gillespie, for a concert. Doc Lingle was there, and the dean, and the president. I was a hero again.

And that summer, in San Francisco, I met Big Pres. We didn’t talk very long. There wasn’t very much to say. He was married again, he had other children. He was working hard and living right. I still felt a lot of resentment toward him.

And I was surprised to find he was only about my height, five-foot-ten. I had always thought of him as a giant.

I felt a little sorry for him, too, and I promised him that he was still the grandfather to my children, and that they would visit him. They would give him the respect they would have to give to any grandfather. I didn’t see him again that year, but I kept my promise about the children.

That fall, I went to Buffalo for an engagement, and after a show a guy came up and said there was a lady who wanted to see me. For some reason I knew immediately who it was. I knew she had been living in Buffalo for some years, and I was so nervous that I went back to my dressing room to smoke and go to the bathroom before I went to her table. And when I sat down and looked at her, I found out that when a man waits for something and begs for something and prays for something for twenty-two years, from the time he’s seven years old until he’s twenty-nine, that thing just doesn’t qualify anymore. No, I didn’t want Helene Tucker anymore. I was after a Helena, and I had her at home and her name was Lillian.

That was a big year, 1961. Made it to the top, and found my daddy and found Helene Tucker, and wiped out that twenty-five-thousand-dollar lie. I came off the road in November, back to Chicago, thinking how I was going to wrap up this beautiful year in a final beautiful package. I had me a brilliant idea, and I schemed out one hell of a plot.

A friend of mine, an interior decorator, was in on the trick. We went and found

an apartment in the Hyde Park section, an integrated building near the university. I told him to take that apartment and spare no expense. I want to move in on Christmas morning, and the only thing I want to take with me from the furnished apartment on Wentworth is the color television set, so I can watch them tear the doors down again. I want this place to be perfect. I want to walk in here on Christmas morning and start living in it, I want to open up that new refrigerator and cook ham and eggs.

He did a hell of a job, went and bought furniture and carpeting and drapes, and when I went back I nearly flipped. I couldn’t believe we were going to live in anything so beautiful. Now I brought my lawyer in on the trick. Three days before Christmas, I had him call Lil. He was supposed to tell her I was having trouble with my income tax. The Internal Revenue had taken every penny I had made for the entire year. We were broke again. I lay there in bed that morning, listening to Lil talk to him over the phone. I lay there waiting for her to come in and give me the bad news. And I waited. Finally, I couldn’t stay in bed anymore.

“Anybody call me while I was sleeping, Lil?” “No, Greg.”

“But I heard the phone ring.” “Oh, it was just the lawyer.” “What about?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

 

I called him back, and asked why he hadn’t given Lil the message. He said he had.

When you have that Helena you’re just not going to hear any bad news from her lips. Nothing sounds bad to her when you’re around.

“Lil?”

 

“Yeah, Greg?”

 

“We’re going to have to sell the toys we bought the kids, and we’re going to have to give your car back.”

“That’s okay, Greg.”

 

“Baby, I’m sorry but it’s going to be the worst Christmas we ever had.”

 

“Don’t worry about anything, Greg, we’ll be all right.” I had planned to stage a big eviction scene, but just looking at all that peace and trust in her face, I canceled that plan out.

There were still a lot of things that had to go into the new apartment that nobody but Lil could buy. So two days before Christmas, I told her that a friend of mine had called to ask if we could help out a young couple who had just moved to Chicago. The couple had some money, but no credit in town. Since the stores probably didn’t know yet that Dick Gregory was busted, we could open a charge account in our name for them, and we could help them buy their furnishings.

Lillian said she’d be glad to help them.

 

We spent all that day shopping with this couple Lil didn’t know. Lil helped that woman pick out dishes and silverware and sheets and bedspreads and towels as carefully as if she were picking them out for herself. And somehow, Lil never caught on to the clever way that other woman made sure Lil liked something before she charged it. When we left the store, we had about ten cabs full of stuff, plus my car and my friend’s car. I sent Lil home in another cab, and we took the stuff to the new apartment.

We had no tree Christmas Eve, no toys for the kids, no gifts for each other. I told Lil I couldn’t take her to the club with me that night because I couldn’t afford to run my tab up. But after the show, I picked her up and carried her to a party in the Hyde Park section given by a big Chicago columnist, Tony Weitzel, and his wife, Carmen. He was in on the trick. Lil was fascinated by Tony’s apartment.

“If you really want to see something, Lil,” said Tony, “let me show you what one of these apartments looks like brand new.” He took a bunch of us up to the ninth floor.

Lil walked in that door, and it was beautiful to see the way her face lit up. “Oh, it’s lovely, it’s so fine. Those people will be so happy in here.”

She walked around and looked at the apartment, and her face was so full of happiness I almost cried. She was being happy for somebody else.

Then she noticed some of the things she had bought in the store two days before, and she grabbed my arm. “Greg, oh, Greg ...”

And her eyes got wide, and her mouth fell open, and she saw one of Michele’s toys underneath the Christmas tree in the middle of the living room floor. Lillian screamed, and she fainted.

That was Christmas 1961, so different from all the Christmases I’d ever had. It was as if I had rolled it all together in one big ball, and bounced it, and while it was up in the air, said:

It’s get-even time, Santa.

VII

 

And suddenly you wake up one morning with a smirky smile because you’re standing on the other side of that plate-glass window and you say: Damn, this wasn’t hard, this wasn’t hard at all. In January 1961, you were putting cardboard in your shoes to keep out the cold, and in 1962 you have more shoes than you’ll ever wear. You buy suits like jelly beans. You can take your kids to the doctor before they get sick. You play a show on Broadway. You take your wife to Hawaii for a vacation. Baby, you got it made in the shade.

But the old monster is still hanging around, he’s not satisfied yet. You got to work for him, too. You take twenty-one juvenile delinquents on a road trip to Detroit to let them meet Walter Reuther and the governor and have a dance with some local Helene Tuckers, and get a little dignity. You make those nightclub owners advertise in Negro papers in cities where they advertise in the white press and there is also a Negro press, and you put a non-segregation clause in your contract. You start doing a lot of benefit shows for CORE and the NAACP. You start doing shows in prisons.

Two of those shows I’ll never forget as long as I live. The one that scared me the most—physically—was at the Maryland State Penitentiary. Until I walked into that cell block, I had no idea the prison was segregated. The white prisoners were sitting in the middle, and the Negro prisoners were sitting on the sides. I told the priest who had brought me in that I had never worked in front of segregated audience and I wouldn’t start now. He told me that the prisoners had been waiting for my show all week, and that if I didn’t go on there would be a riot. I told him to integrate the seats and I’d go on. He went and got the warden.

The warden said there would be a riot if I didn’t go on. He said that the convicts had been sitting that way for thirty-two years, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He told me that for the first time in history they had let the Death Row prisoners out to watch a show. They were in the balcony.

“Let me out the back door, Warden. Tell the boys I had a heart attack.”

 

He begged me to go on. He promised me if I did this show, the very next one they had would be integrated. But that monster was jumping, that dry taste, that hot water seeping up.

“Okay, man, you say if you try to integrate them there’ll be a riot, and if I don’t go on there’ll be a riot. Tell you what. Either I can walk out that back door, and never give it a second thought, or I can go out there and try to integrate them.

That way, at least I’ll be here to get killed with you.”

 

The last thing I heard before I went out on the stage was that priest’s voice. “Do it with humor,” he was saying. “Do it with humor.”

It seemed like a mile out to that microphone, and I was petrified all the way. There were twelve hundred men in that room, and now that I was in front of them I’d never get to that back door if this thing rips. If anything happens, I’m dead. And the papers will say it was my jokes that incited a race riot.

“Gentlemen, I’ve worked many pens before, and believe me when I tell you I enjoy entertaining you fellows. But I want to tell you we have a problem here today.”

They were looking at me, puzzled. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the warden whispering into a telephone.

“I’ve never worked before a segregated audience and I don’t intend to. Now, if you fellows want one hell of a show I want to see you switch those seats.”

I’m waiting for it to happen now, and my eyes are half closed, and I’m wondering whether the white cons are going to bust first, or if the Negro cons are going to take offense for me and bust first. And then there’s screaming and hollering and a white man in the front row jumps up and walks to the side and a Negro con yells, “Thank God, baby,” and they’re switching seats. Not all of them, a lot of the white men never moved, but that morning I saw five white prisoners lifting a crippled old Negro to the center row, and I saw smiles on black and white faces as they got up and changed their seats.

Now back to the show, hit them quick. I look down at that beautiful white guy who made the first move. “Hey, baby, I dig integration and all that, but I still don’t know if I’d give up that good seat.”

They were laughing now and I poured it on for forty-five minutes, strictly racial material because I didn’t want to let them relax for a minute, but I wanted them to know what had happened. After the show, I was scared again when I realized how close it had been. Most of the audience gave me a standing ovation, but

there were a lot of white men who wouldn’t even look at me when I went down on the floor to shake hands.

As I was leaving, the priest tried to apologize in his own way. “There’s a lot of good white people in America, Dick. All the white folks in the South aren’t bad. It’s just going to take time and education.”

“Father, they’re the same kind of people who crucified Christ. And you stand there and defend them? Impossible.”

But it was the show at the Michigan State Penitentiary that really scared me—in a different way. It had been a good show—prison audiences are so hungry for entertainment. As I came off the stage, the warden introduced me to an old Negro who had been in jail for fifty years. He was an artist, and he asked me if I’d like to see his work. I did.

When I saw it I got weak in the knees.

 

He had drawings of women, of what he thought women looked like. But every one had a man’s face, a man’s eyes, a man’s nose, a man’s jaw, a man’s lips. They had long hair and they had breasts and they were wearing lipstick and dresses. But every one was really a man.

It was so weird that a man should think he was drawing a woman and he was really drawing a man. But that convict had seen only men for fifty years; those male faces were all he knew. And I talked to Lil about it and the more we talked and the more I thought about it, the more frightened I got. If you had told that old man that his drawings were all wrong he would have called you a liar and been ready to fight. And then Lil and I carried it one step farther. If you were born and raised in America, and hate and fear and racial prejudice are all you’ve ever known, if they’re all you’ve ever seen . . .

I kept thinking about that old convict all that year. It was a big year, a busy year. San Francisco, New York. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the sophisticated supper clubs, the big one-night concerts. More publicity, more television, more magazine articles. Went back and did some free shows for some of the people who helped me along the way, laid some bread on those cats who gave me money when I needed it. And I kept pushing my material farther, more topical, more racial, more digging into a system I was beginning to understand better and attack more intelligently. I was speaking at more and more rallies and benefits

now, getting to know and talk with the civil rights leaders—Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, James Farmer, Martin Luther King—beginning to realize just how large and complicated this problem is. I was learning that just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

When I was in San Francisco that year, a civil rights leader asked me to come over to Oakland and speak before a rally of a thousand Negro plum-pickers. I told them I’d be glad to. He offered me some literature. I refused it. What did I need literature for? I could talk before any group about racial problems. But I was wrong. What could I tell these people about migratory workers taking their jobs away? What could I tell them about their women being forced to climb too high on plum-picking ladders? Their problems were racial, and yet they weren’t racial, they were geographical, and yet they affected all Negroes. And could the plum-pickers fully understand the Negroes who wanted to be allowed to try on hats and shoes in the department stores of Birmingham?

That fall, Medgar Evers called and asked me to speak at the voter registration rallies in Jackson, Mississippi. When he told me that the Jackson NAACP headquarters was on Lynch Street, I felt a little nervous. But I told him I’d be down just as soon as I could make the time.

I was afraid of the South, afraid of all the cities where I could fall down accidentally, break my head open, and be left to bleed to death in the gutter because the ambulance from the Negro funeral home had to come all the way across town.

VIII

 

In November of 1962 I was sitting on the stage of a jam-packed auditorium in Jackson, Mississippi, with Roy Wilkins, waiting to go on. I was a little restless. I had flown in just for that night, and I wanted to make my speech and get out of town. And now I had to sit up there and wait while they were introducing some old Negro who had just gotten out of jail. I hardly listened. He had killed a man, they said, another Negro who had been sent by the whites to burn the old man’s house down. The old man had been leading a voter registration drive. I should have listened carefully. But I had no way of knowing that old man was going to change my entire life.

The old man shuffled out to the microphone. I think he said he was seventy-eight years old. I’ll never forget what he said next.

“I didn’t mind going to jail for freedom, no, I wouldn’t even mind being killed for freedom. But my wife and I was married a long time, and, well, you know I ain’t never spent a night away from home. While I was in jail, my wife died.”

That destroyed me. I sat there, and my stomach turned around and I couldn’t have stood up if I had to. Here’s this little old Mississippi Negro, the kind of big- lipped, kinky-haired, black-faced verb-buster every other Negro in America looks down on. And this man bucked and rose up and fought the system for me, and he went to jail for me, and he lost his wife for me. He had gone out on the battle lines and demonstrated for a tomorrow he would never see, for jobs and rights he might not even be qualified to benefit from. A little old man from a country town who never spent a night away from his wife in his married life.

And he went to jail for me and being away killed her.

 

After the old man finished speaking, I went to him and told him thanks. I told him that I hated to come to him with money after what had happened to him, but if he had a child or loved one anywhere in the world he wanted to see on Christmas, I wanted the privilege of sending him there. He said he had a son in California, and later I gave Medgar Evers a train ticket and a check for the old man.

I don’t remember what I spoke about that night, I was so upset. As I came off the stage, Medgar introduced me to a woman named Leona Smith as if I should know her. When I didn’t react, he said she was the mother of Clyde Kennard.

That name didn’t mean anything to me either. So Medgar told me a story that made me sick.

Clyde Kennard was thirty-five years old, and for the past three years he had been in jail. The charge was stealing five bags of chicken feed. But the real reason was that he had tried to enroll in Mississippi Southern College. Before I left Jackson that night, I promised Mrs. Smith that I would do everything in my power to get her son out of jail. When I got back to Chicago, Medgar started calling me about the case and sending me more information. I couldn’t believe it.

Kennard was born in Mississippi, and he attended the University of Chicago. When he got out of the paratroopers after Korea, he bought his parents a farm in Mississippi. His stepfather got sick, and Clyde went down to run the farm. He wanted to finish his college education, so in 1959 he applied to the nearest school, Mississippi Southern. He was turned down and harassed by the police, and finally somebody planted five stolen bags of chicken feed on his farm. The price of feed was raised to make the charge a felony, and Kennard was sentenced to seven years at hard labor. When another Negro admitted stealing the feed, the white authorities told him to shut up.

On New Year’s Eve, from the stage of Mister Kelley’s in Chicago, I made a resolution for 1963: get Kennard out of jail. I thought that if all the facts were dug up and printed in the newspapers, America would get Kennard out of jail. A white UPI reporter who came by to interview me was so upset by the story that he volunteered to go into Mississippi and gather more information. The first bit of information he dug up was that Clyde Kennard was dying of cancer.

Irv Kupcinet, the famous Chicago columnist, broke the Kennard story. My new researcher came up with Kennard’s medical records, and gave them to the press. Kennard was transferred to the prison hospital. Then a Chicago millionaire called business connections in Mississippi, and Kennard was released from jail. He was thirty-five years old when we flew him to Chicago to start cancer treatments, but he looked eighty-five. And it was too late. He died six months later.

I met James Meredith that year, too—one of the most brilliant and courageous men in America, a man who gave dignity to every Negro in the country, who put every Negro in college, who played one of the biggest parts in setting up the

revolution in the history of the American Negro struggle. Negroes looked a little different and acted a little different when James Meredith was graduated because they all were graduated with him, graduated from the derogatory stigma that all Negroes are ignorant, that all Negroes are lazy, that all Negroes stink.

I was different, too. An old man’s wife had died. Two young men had tried to integrate schools that the biggest fools wouldn’t want to go to. One had failed and died, and the other had succeeded and suffered. For the first time, I was involved. There was a battle going on, there was a war shaping up, and somehow writing checks and giving speeches didn’t seem enough.

Made in the shade? Hell, as long as any man, white or black, isn’t getting his rights in America I’m in danger. Sure I could stay in the nightclubs and say clever things. But if America goes to war tomorrow would I stay home and satirize it at the Blue Angel? No, I’d go overseas and lay on some cold dirt, taking the chance of dying to guarantee a bunch of foreigners a better life than my own momma got in America.

I wanted a piece of the action now, I wanted to get in this thing. I got my chance sooner than I expected.

Some people in Mississippi were having problems with food. A guy came by the nightclub one evening in Chicago and asked me to sign a fund-raising letter. I told him I never lend my name to anything. If it’s an organization I can work with, I’ll work. I told him I didn’t get through at the nightclub until 4 am but if he’d leave some literature under my apartment door I’d read it before I went to sleep. He did. I got another lesson on how dirty this situation was.

Leflore County in Mississippi had cut off its shipments of federal surplus foods, most of which went to Negroes. This was in retaliation for voter registration drives in Greenwood, the county seat. The white authorities claimed they couldn’t afford the thirty-seven thousand dollars a year it cost them to store and distribute the free food to the poor people. I endorsed the letter that morning and sent a check for a hundred dollars.

Later that day, the fund-raisers called me and asked if I would come by for a press conference. I asked for more information so I could answer questions intelligently . And I sent my new researcher down to Greenwood. Then I went into the streets of Chicago. Daddy-0 Dayley, the disc jockey, and I collected fourteen thousand pounds of food. I chartered a plane, and on February 11, 1963,

we flew the food into Memphis. We loaded it into trucks there, and drove 134 miles to Clarksdale. From there it was taken to Greenwood. I was still afraid of the South, and I wanted to leave that night. That’s why I picked February 11 to go to Mississippi. The next day was Lincoln’s birthday and President Kennedy had invited Lil and me and eight hundred other people to a celebration at the White House. So we handed out the food, and I promised the voter registration workers from SNCC—the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee—that I’d come back when the demonstrations began. Then I headed back to Memphis, flew to Chicago to pick up Lil, and flew on to Washington.

It was a wonderful affair. We shook hands with President Kennedy, and with Lyndon Johnson. Lil was almost nine months’ pregnant at the time, and I was hoping she’d give birth right in the White House. Waited around as long as we could, but the party was over and she didn’t even feel labor pains. So we went back to Chicago.

I started getting reports from my researcher. Through February and March there was violence in Greenwood. Cars were wrecked, a Negro registration worker was shot in the back of the neck, the SNCC headquarters was set on fire. Bullets were fired into Negro homes. SNCC workers were beaten up. When Negroes marched in protest, the police put the dogs on them. They arrested the eleven top registration workers. And I had promised to go down to Greenwood.

I was scared to death. Making speeches, giving money, even going down South for a night or two at a time— that was one thing. But getting out on those streets and marching against bullets and dogs and water hoses and cattle prods . . .

I knew they were laying for me down there. The Mississippi newspapers and public officials were on me for the food lift. They claimed that I hadn’t brought down fourteen thousand pounds of food after all, that it had been much less.

They said that if Dick Gregory was going to take care of their poor Negroes, let’s send them all up to Chicago. They said I was just doing it for publicity.

And then the time came to make up my mind. The big push for voter registration was scheduled to start on April 1. Most of the SNCC people were in jail, and they needed leaders in Greenwood. And they needed a well-known name that would bring the situation national attention. On Sunday, March 31, I lay on a hotel bed in Philadelphia and changed my mind a hundred times. I thought of a lot of good reasons for not going.

They’ll kill me down there, those rednecks, they’ll call me an outside agitator and pull me into an alley and beat my head in, they’ll shoot me down in the street.

What’s that going to prove? And what about Michele and Lynne and Lil, lying in a hospital right now with Dick Jr., my son, who’s going to grow up with nothing but some press clippings for a daddy?

If Whitey down south doesn’t kill me in Greenwood, then Whitey up north will kill me in show business. Everybody I talked to but Lil told me not to go. It would ruin me as a comic. Nobody’s going to come to laugh at an entertainer who goes marching and demonstrating and getting himself arrested.

I had two airline tickets in my room, one for me and one for James Sanders, a brilliant young Negro comedy writer. I dropped them in the wastebasket. I’ll call SNCC headquarters, tell them I’m sick, I’ve changed my mind, I can’t break my contract and leave town. I called Lil instead, at the hospital. She told me not to worry about anything, to go down if I wanted to, and suddenly I was telling her about that Mississippi Negro, the man that other Negroes called nigger, that cotton-picker in his tar-paper shack who could rip this thing, who could give courage to every Negro in America, who could wake up the nation. I had faith then that when America saw what was happening in Greenwood, it would make sure that it never happened again, anywhere. I wanted to be a part of this thing, but I was scared.

Sure, I had made speeches that every door of racial prejudice I can kick down is one less door that my children have to kick down. But, hell, my kids don’t have to worry . . .

I lay there all that night, into the morning, going, not going, picking the tickets out of the wastebasket, throwing them back in, but never tearing them up. And as I lay there my own life started spinning around in my mind, and my stomach turned over, and I thought about St. Louis and Momma and Richard, running off to buy himself a dinner of a Twinkie cupcake and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola, little Richard whose daddy was so broken by the system that he ran away and came back just to take the rent money out of the jar in the kitchen. Goddamn, we’re always running and hiding, and then I thought about an old man whose wife had died, and about Clyde Kennard, and about James Meredith, they didn’t run away, and now it was almost dawn in Philadelphia and there was a familiar dry taste in my mouth, and that old hot water was seeping into a cold body and my

room was the grandstand of the biggest stadium in the world—America—and the race was for survival and the monster said go.

One Less Door

I

 

“What are you going to do if they spit in your face, if they hit you, if they knock you down?” an old man asked me. “’You going to hit back?”

“I’m going to try not to.”

 

The old man shook his head. “We can’t use you.” “’You can’t use me? Why the hell not?”

“Mister Gregory, you got to know you’re not going to fight back.”

 

I couldn’t believe I was standing on a Greenwood street and listening to an old Mississippi Negro, a man I had come down to do a favor for, tell me he can’t use me. I told him I’d have to think about it. He nodded his nappy old head and said he’d be back, and shuffled away.

I thought about it, and the more I thought the more I realized how beautiful this thing really was. It was my second day in Greenwood. Monday morning, Jim Sanders and I had caught the eight o’clock flight from New York to Memphis. The plane was filled. I didn’t find out why until we landed and a man came over and said he was from the Department of Justice.

“How long are you going to be here, Mister Gregory?” “I’m not staying in Memphis. I’m going on to Greenwood.” “I know that. We have orders to stay until you leave.”

A SNCC car picked us up and drove us to Greenwood. The press was there, the national magazines, the national television networks. They all asked me how long I was going to stay because they had to stay as long as I did. I couldn’t believe it. Just for me. I didn’t know, until I got to Greenwood, that the SNCC kids had announced to the press that I was expected.

There were no demonstrations that first day, but I spoke at a crowded church rally that night. First I answered all the charges that the local newspapers and public officials had made against me. I told them if they didn’t believe I had

brought fourteen thousand pounds of food, they should check the records of Delta Air Lines. I told them that they weren’t just dealing with Dick Gregory when they threatened to take all the Negroes off relief, they were dealing with America. They weren’t big enough to threaten the whole country. And I’d be glad to take a lie detector test if the governor thought I was doing all this for publicity.

Then I got on the Negro church. There were fifteen Negro churches in Greenwood, and only two of them had opened their doors to the demonstrators. I stood up there and told that crowd how the Negro preachers had brought us all the way to the battle lines and then had abandoned us. They were scared of losing their jobs, of having their churches bombed, of coming up empty in their collection plates. Our church was failing us in this battle for civil rights. It was the preachers’ fault that whenever we made a gain we said: “Thank the United States Supreme Court,” instead of saying “Thank God.”

I looked at those people in that church, those beautiful people who were taking chances with their lives, with what little they had in the world. There wasn’t a single Negro doctor in Greenwood. When Negroes demonstrate they forfeit their medical attention. A Negro couldn’t even afford to get sick. And they were going out, maybe to die, without any of their local Negro leaders. The preachers were scared, and the Negro schoolteachers and principals were too afraid for their jobs to go out in the streets. That night, standing in front of those people, I told them I’d be proud to lead them in demonstrations the next day. I really hadn’t planned to lead the marching, but looking at those beautiful faces ready to die for freedom, I knew I couldn’t do less.

It was the next morning, while we were getting ready to march on the courthouse, that the old man came up to me. We were standing in front of the SNCC headquarters, about fifty of us and dozens of press and television people, when he told me he couldn’t use me. By the time he came back again, my anger was gone. I understood what he meant.

“We’re ready to go, Mister Gregory, what do you think?” “Okay, I’ll do it.”

So we marched. Old people, kids, voter registration workers, women. We marched for one block, and every step of the way I was scared, waiting for that bullet to come from a rooftop, waiting for that car to come by and shoot me from

the ground.

 

The police stopped us after one block and told us we couldn’t parade through the city. So we jumped into cars, made the two-mile trip to the courthouse, and reassembled. We caught the cops off-guard. They closed the courthouse early that day so no Negroes could register to vote. We started walking away in small groups, and suddenly there was a hand on my stomach and I heard a cop say: “I oughta kill him,” and the next thing I knew someone had twisted my arm behind my back and was pushing me across the street. It was a Greenwood policeman. “Move on, nigger.”

“Thanks a million.” “Thanks for what?”

“Up north police don’t escort me across the street against a red light.” “I said, move on, nigger.”

“I don’t know my way, I’m new in this town.”

 

The cop yanked on my arm and turned his head. “Send someone over to show this nigger where to go,” he hollered.

They were pushing the marchers around, dozens of regular policemen and auxiliary policemen with clubs and guns, and the press and the cameramen moved in and out of the crowds of white men and women and children standing on the street corners. I pulled one of my arms free and pointed at the crowd.

“Ask that white woman over there to come here and show me where to go.”

 

The cop’s face got red, and there was spittle at the corner of his mouth. All he could say was: “Nigger, dirty nigger ...”

I looked at him. “Your momma’s a nigger. Probably got more Negro blood in her than I could ever hope to have in me.”

He dropped my other arm then, and backed away, and his hand was on his gun. I thought he was going to explode. But nothing happened. I was sopping wet and too excited to be scared. We walked on back to the headquarters, the police yelling and shoving and harassing us all the way. We decided to march again

that afternoon.

 

I learned a lot that day. I felt the poisonous hate in an American city, a nice- looking little town that had a Confederate flag flying just as high as the American flag on the US Post Office. I saw the beauty of those college kids from SNCC, day and night, around the clock, hardly ever sleeping or eating as they sat in hot and dirty rooms teaching old Negroes how to read and write so they could pass the voting tests. And I saw the southern white man who has nothing between him and the lowest Negro except a segregated toilet. No wonder so many of them have shit-house ways.

When we started back to the courthouse late that afternoon, a skinny old woman who said she was ninety-eight years old came up to me. “Mister Gregory, you be embarrassed if I walk downtown with you, me and my snuff box? I want to come down and be with you today. I don’t mind dyin’.”

And so we marched again.

 

Demonstrating in the South must be a little like being in a battle in a war. There’s noise and confusion and pushing and quick huddles over strategy and running back and forth on both sides. You're never really sure of what’s happening. You see snatches of things, hear sounds, you keep moving long after you’re exhausted because you’re too excited to know how tired you are.

There are little victories that make you feel good for a while. That afternoon, we changed our route to the courthouse, and instead of marching through the center of town we cut through a white neighborhood. It took the police almost a half hour to catch up with us.

“Dirty nigger.”

 

“Your mother’s a nigger,” I told the cop. “Damn black monkey.”

“Who you calling a monkey? Monkey’s got thin lips, monkey’s got blue eyes and straight hair.”

“Just keep movin’, boy, just keep movin’ ...”

 

The police seemed disorganized. They tried to break us up again and one of

them shoved a woman pretty hard. She stumbled and smashed her head against a brick wall and fell on the sidewalk. One of the SNCC workers couldn’t stand that, and he turned on the cop. They dragged him off into a police car, and five cops climbed in after him and started working on his head and stomach. One of the cops was saying in a loud voice, mostly for the benefit of the other demonstrators: “George, gimme ma knife ... I’m gonna cut the balls right off this little nigger, he ain’t never gonna do nothin’ no more.”

Now I was at the head of the line and I refused to move an inch until they brought the SNCC kid back. Two cops grabbed me and threw me into the back of a police car. One of them asked the driver: “You want any help with this nigger?”

“Why you always think a Negro’s going to hurt somebody? Close the door and let this fool take me to jail.”

He slammed the door and walked away.

 

The cop who was driving turned around and started slapping at my head. I held my hands up over my face.

“Get your hands down, nigger,” he yelled and kept swinging at my head. He didn’t do much damage. Then he started the car and drove about three blocks, away from everything. He pulled the car over to the curb, and when he turned around again he was crying.

“My God, what are you trying to do to me?”

 

He sat in that car and he looked at me and he told me that when he went home at night his kids looked at him funny, that they made him feel bad. I sat there, and I couldn’t believe I was hearing these words from a white cop who had been hitting me and niggering me a few minutes before. He said: “As right as you are, you’re down here helping these people and I got to stop you and I can’t and sometimes I think you’re a better man than I am.”

He didn’t take me to jail. He drove me back to registration headquarters. I got out of the car and handed him two dollars.

“What’s this for?”

“I always tip chauffeurs. Hell, if you don’t take me to jail, you’re my chauffeur.”

 

I got into a SNCC car and rushed back to the demonstration. When I climbed out, the police commissioner, Hammond, came right over.

“Boy, what you come back here for?”

 

“Hammond, anytime you arrest me you better carry me to jail because if you don’t that’s kidnapping and that’s a federal offense.”

A little cop came over. “Nigger, you want to go to jail.”

 

I said: “Come here, boy, let me tell you something. I could take you to Chicago today and let you walk through my home, then come back here and walk through your home and out of the two of us you’d know which one was the nigger.”

Then the cops turned their backs and walked away, leaving us there on the corner. The parade was over and we did exactly what they had been screaming at us to do—we broke up into twos and threes and went in different directions.

That night, Jim Sanders and I drove fifty miles to a mass meeting in Clarksdale. There were more than eight hundred people jammed into the Centennial Missionary Baptist Church there, and we had to push our way through the police to get inside. I was sitting on the stage, waiting to speak, when the bomb came flying through an open window. It hit a man on the head bounced off a lady’s hand, then rolled to the middle of the floor.

I just sat there, frightened, and saw my wife and my kids and everything decent in my life and wondered why I was sitting here, fixing to die and leave all that, and it flashed through my mind that it was worth it. When I looked up, I saw the reporters and the photographers standing still, writing in their notebooks and taking their pictures while hundreds of Negroes around them were on their feet running for the door. I jumped up and grabbed the microphone.

“Where are you going? The man who threw it is outside God’s house. The Man who’s supposed to save you lives here.”

They stopped in their tracks. Somebody picked up the bomb and threw it back out the window.

I walked outside the church after a while, and looked at the cops lounging

around outside, leaning on the hoods of their cars in the evening, talking softly and laughing. I walked across the street and into a Negro grocery store to make a phone call. The police commissioner was in there. He didn’t know who I was yet.

“Hey, boy, come over here.” “Yes, sir.”

"You just come from the church, huh? That Gregory’s in there. He funny, boy?”

 

“How could any man be funny when a dumb superintendent of police lets these heathen cops do the things they do?”

He got red and walked out. I went back to the church.

 

We found out that the bomb had been a special US Army gas grenade, more powerful than tear gas, which could have killed the people nearby had it gone off. Whoever threw the bomb forgot to pull the pin. And people were surprised a few months later when they blew up that church in Birmingham.

We held our meeting and I spoke. The Clarksdale Negroes weren’t as responsive as the Greenwood Negroes because they were more scared of the police, of losing their jobs. And they were all pretty shook up by the grenade. When the meeting was over, a man came in to tell me that I was going to be killed that night. A road block had been set up for me on the highway back to Greenwood. The messenger was a Negro, but he said he had been sent by the police commissioner.

Outside the church I could hear one of the police officers screaming, almost hysterical. “If one of our men threw that bomb you’d better believe it would have gone off, we don’t make mistakes like that, no, sir, we don’t. Our boys don’t miss, no we don’t.”

The folks from the church made a ring around Jim Sanders and me and took us around the comer. We ducked into the drugstore owned by Aaron Henry, the powerful Negro leader, and lay there for an hour until a car was brought up to the back door. Jim and I crouched in the back of the car, and we were taken to the home of a Clarksdale Negro.

We didn’t sleep that night, lying on the floor of the house, keeping away from the windows. The Negro had a telephone, and we weren’t sure just how afraid he was, and who he was afraid of. We stayed awake to make sure nobody used that phone that night. In the morning, we were driven back to Greenwood along side roads.

They knocked down that ninety-eight-year-old lady that day, right in the streets, and I’ll never forget the way she looked up at me from the gutter, her head bleeding. “Don’t let them make you mad, honey. They ain’t after me, it’s you they after.”

They arrested Jim that day, the first time he ever went to jail. I told the press I thought it was a good experience for him, make him a better writer. But I was worried, he’s such a sweet, patient, good-natured man. They hauled eighteen other Negroes away, bouncing one kid along the pavement, slamming another down on the floor of a bus. They grabbed the Reverend Robert Kinloch so hard his collar came off. One cop threw his club at a registration worker who was taking pictures. It only hit his shoulder. And the police were on their best behavior that day because there were FBI agents in town with movie cameras.

They wouldn’t arrest me. Shoved me a little and pushed me around some, and got mad when I started bad-mouthing Hammond, but they had decided that putting me in jail would bring too much publicity. One cop came up to me and spat right in my face. I started to jump him, but I remembered what I had promised the old man and I held myself back. Just stood there and let the spit run down my face and into my mouth.

“I guess that makes me as white as you now, boy. I got your spit inside me.”

 

It was another long day. I called Lil, who had just come home from the hospital, and told her to take the first plane on down. I wanted her to see the beauty of this southern Negro, the old people learning to read and write, young and old marching, the women cooking all day so there would always be food ready on the chance a demonstrator might run in for a bite to eat. Lil said she’d be down by morning.

That third day in Greenwood—Wednesday—turned into night and I was alone and scared. You never know what fear is until you walk through the streets of a quiet town at night and it suddenly dawns on you that if anyone attacked you, you couldn’t even call the police. You know if you tripped on a curb and broke

your ankle, when the ambulance pulled up and found out who you were it would drive away. Or run you over. It’s a feeling that takes all the guts out of you.

And on you walk and pace the streets because you have no place to sleep. You're afraid to go into a Negro home. They might see you go in there and blow the house up and you have no right to take a chance with someone else’s family. Or it might be the house of a very scared Negro and he might tell them where you are.

And I thought about St. Louis and how we used to rap for Mister Roosevelt every night, and how he once said that there was nothing to fear but fear itself, and I said: “Bullshit.” Out loud. Sometimes it makes you feel a little better to talk to the dark. “Bullshit.”

I walked around a corner with my head down and when I looked up I saw one of the most vicious white men I ever saw in my life, a big, fat man with a bald head and tobacco juice running out of his mouth. He swung that double-barreled shotgun like it was a toy. It was no toy. He stuck it right into my stomach.

“I’m going to blow your black nigger guts out.” And I was too tired and too gut- scared to move. Then I felt that goddamn monster rise up and I looked in his eye.

“Is that all you plan to do, boy, just kill me? Pull that fucking trigger, boy, you just pull that fucking trigger.”

And that no-good dirty motherfucker was so hung up on his hate weed that he lowered his shotgun and turned and walked away. He just couldn’t do anything a Negro told him to do.

On Thursday and Friday I marched with Lil. To the cops, she was just another demonstrator, another face in the crowd. A lot of people said I was crazy to have her come down, but I wanted to share this thing with her, I wanted her to see this beauty and ugliness. We stayed in the home of the Reverend Tucker. The police harassment picked up, and the television people started asking us to demonstrate early so they could make the six o’clock news with their film clips. As it turned out, we didn’t do much more demonstrating. When the police began taking pictures of the marchers, I turned the group back. The police would use the pictures to permanently blackball and harass the local Negroes, and I didn’t want that to happen. They would have to stay in Greenwood long after we left.

I left Greenwood on Saturday morning, April 6. Things had quieted down. Deals had been made. The demonstrators were released from jail, and the city promised to supply the Negroes with buses so they wouldn’t walk through town on their way to the courthouse to register. In return, a federal injunction against local harassment was dropped and I promised to leave town. I had learned a lot and I felt so much stronger now; less afraid, like a soldier who has been through his first battle.

A lot happened down there that I’ll never know about, a lot happened that I can’t talk about now because this war is still going on. And when I got back north, a lot happened that scared me all over again, in a different way.

I found out, for example, that some of the northern press had reported that the bomb in Clarksdale was only a football bladder. And some had reported that we had lost in Greenwood and I had played the fool. I knew it couldn’t have been the newsmen who had been down there but it was editors up north who turned and twisted the stories that were sent to them.

But what scared me most was when Negroes asked me if it was true that I had gone down to Greenwood for publicity.

And it dawned on me that anytime you help a Negro in America, even the Negroes will question your intentions. I could have quit show business and joined the Peace Corps and gone to Vietnam and no one, white or black, would have questioned why I did it. But to help Negroes . . .

I was just beginning to realize what a long hard row it would be.

II

 

It’s a great thing to go to jail for right, but whether you’re there for right or wrong, when you hear that big steel door close and that key turn, you know you’re there. That was Birmingham, May of 1963. Martin Luther King asked me to come down. I arrived at 11:30 am on a Monday, and an hour and a half later I went to jail with more than eight hundred other demonstrators. It was my first time in jail to stay.

"You Dick Gregory?” “I’m Mister Gregory.”

Somebody snatched my collar and my feet didn’t hit the floor again until I was in solitary confinement.

Later in the afternoon I was brought downstairs and put in a cell built for twenty- five people. There must have been five hundred of us in there. When they moved us out to eat, the corridors were so crowded you couldn’t walk. Just stand still and let the crowd move you along. The last one back in the cell didn’t have a place to lie down and sleep.

There was a little boy, maybe four years old, standing in the corner of the cell sucking his thumb. I felt sorry for him. He didn’t even have someone his age to play with. I kind of rubbed his head and asked him how he was.

“All right,” he said. “What are you here for?”

“Teedom,” he said. Couldn’t even say Freedom but he was in jail for it.

 

The older kids sang church songs, sitting and waiting for the night to pass away. None of us knew how long we were going to be in jail. We were hoping new people would come in with information about the movement outside. We didn’t really know, squatting there in that Birmingham jail, that the first really great battle of the revolution was going on outside. That a man named Bull Connor was becoming a symbol to the world of how low and vicious and stupid one American could be to another. That an Alabama city was becoming a symbol to

the world of the cancer eating away at our country. On the other side of that wall were dogs and fire hoses and guns and clubs, and the blood of black men and white men, good men and bad men of both colors, and children and women and old people. We were in the battle, but the rest of the world, outside that jail, saw more than we did. Bombs and soldiers and killings. And some of them outside were horrified that Martin Luther King used little children and some of them understood that Freedom was for little black children, too, that in an all-out war for survival there are no civilians. There were little children in Hiroshima.

The jailers fed us in the morning, and it tasted good because some of us hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. They harassed us, too, and that second day they opened the cell door and tried to reach in and pull some of the kids out. The kids wouldn’t go, and we were trying to close the door while the guards were trying to open it. Part of my arm was hanging outside the bars and one of the guards slammed down on it with his billy club. Before I could remember about nonviolence I threw the door open and jumped out after him. Right into the arms of five guards.

It was the first really good beating I ever had in my life, a professional job. End to end, up and down, they didn’t miss a spot. It didn’t really start hurting until about midnight when I tried to touch my face, and I couldn’t get my arm up that high. What the hell, if you’re willing to die for Freedom, you have to be willing to take a beating. For a couple of days, though, I thought that dying was probably easier. It was just body pain, though. The Negro has a callus growing on his soul and it’s getting harder and harder to hurt him there. That’s a simple law of nature. Like a callus on a foot in a shoe that’s too tight. The foot is nature’s, and that shoe was put on by man. That tight shoe will pinch your foot and make you holler and scream. But sooner or later, if you don’t take the shoe off, a callus will form on the foot and begin to wear out the shoe.

It’s the same with the Negro in America today. That shoe—the white man’s system—has pinched and rubbed and squeezed his soul until it almost destroyed him. But it didn’t. And now a callus has formed on his soul, and unless that system is adjusted to fit him, too, that callus is going to wear out that system.

I thought about that for five days in the Birmingham jail while Martin Luther King was waking up America.

III

 

The nightclub audiences were a little more respectful when I came back from Birmingham. After Greenwood there had been hecklers who accused me of demonstrating for publicity. After Birmingham people came backstage to shake my hand and God Bless me and tell me to keep up the good work. White and black. I was surprised. I had thought that being in jail and getting beaten up would cool me off in show business.

I began taking more and more time off, flying to fund-raising benefits, to rallies, to meetings. In May I opened at the Hungry I in San Francisco and I wasn’t there long before the demonstrations began in Jackson, Mississippi. Medgar Evers was the key man down there, and I called him to ask if I could help. In many ways, Medgar was the man responsible for my being in the civil rights fight. If he hadn’t invited me down to Jackson in 1962 I would never have met the old man who lost his wife, and I would never have heard of Clyde Kennard. Medgar asked me to come.

I went to Enrico Banducci, the owner of the Hungry I, and I told him I wanted to leave, that my people needed me. A white man, and he had waited all year for my engagement, but he never batted an eye.

“I admire you, Greg. Good luck.”

 

It was that last night in San Francisco, a Saturday night, that I first felt death. Just a funny little feeling in my stomach, a sixth sense that said someone was going to die. I called my lawyer to make sure my will was in order. Then I flew to Chicago to talk to Lil. If I was killed in Jackson, I didn’t want my children raised with hate.

She sat on the couch, her eyes wide and tearful, and I told her what I wanted my children to hear. Just tell them that Daddy was doing right, Lil, tell them it takes a strong soldier to fight when he’s outnumbered and the other side has all the dogs, all the fire hoses, all the prods. Don’t let them come up with hate, Lil; just show them the beauty in what their daddy was doing.

I went into the bedroom and I kissed Michele and Lynne, and I kissed Richard Claxton Gregory Junior. He was two and a half months old, and I hadn’t had time to know him.

Jim Sanders was waiting for me downstairs, and when I got there I discovered a little switchblade knife in my pocket I had used in my act. I went back upstairs to leave it, and Lil was in the bathroom. Richard Junior had soiled his diaper and he was crying. I picked him up and he stopped crying and smiled. Lil came in and smiled, too.

“That’s the first time you ever played with him, Greg.”

 

“There’ll be time, honey, time’ll come we’ll sit and talk father to son.” I kissed him again and promised Lil I’d call as soon as I got to Jackson.

I didn’t. The demonstrators put Jim and me up at a Negro minister’s house Sunday morning. I figured I’d call later from a pay booth. Jim and I had just gone to sleep when the phone rang. It was Medgar Evers.

“Greg, you better call home.”

 

I got chills. His voice sounded just like Doc Lingle’s when the coach came to the movie theater the night Momma died.

“What happened?”

 

“I don’t know. Just call home. Your son’s sick.”

 

“No, Medgar, he’s not sick. I just held him last night.” “Call home, Greg.”

“Why?”

 

“Just call home, Greg.” “Medgar?”

“I’m sorry, Greg. Your son is dead.”

 

I was numb and I was sick but there was still hope. Until Lil answered the phone, hysterical.

“I’ll be right home, honey, I love you very much.”

 

I called Medgar back and told him I was sorry, that I knew what he was doing in Jackson was more important to America than my son dying, but I was leaving.

He said he understood. Jim and I left our clothes in Jackson and flew back to Chicago. It was a very short flight because I didn’t know how I was going to face Lil, a woman who had to be mother and father to her children because her husband was a stranger in the house. And I couldn’t understand how I had been so sure that I was going to be killed in the heat of battle, only to find out that someone safe and protected had died.

Lil was sitting on the couch when I came in the door. Bob Johnson, editor of Jet magazine, was with her. Her eyes came alive for a second when I walked in, then they went dead again. I started toward her and the phone rang. It was a long-distance call from Alabama, collect. I accepted the charges. It was a white woman.

“Mister Gregory?” “Yes, ma’am.”

“I just heard on the radio your son died, and let me tell you it serves you right, I’m real glad that happened, you coming down here where you don’t belong and stirring up all. . .”

“I’m glad, too. I had five million dollars’ worth of insurance on him.” There was a long silence, and then she said: “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

It was a very long night. Sometimes I got through to Lil for a few minutes, but mostly she just sat still, her hands in her lap, staring at the wall. When she talked her voice was chilly and far away. It was always the same story. She had gone to bed at midnight the night before, soon after I left. At 4 am she woke up to give Richard a feeding. He was the healthiest of all the babies, the best eater. She went back to sleep, knowing that he would wake her at 8 am with his crying, like he always did. But he didn’t and she woke up with a start at nine, ran in and picked him up. He was warm, but dead. She ran into the hallway, screaming, and the neighbors called the fire department. They brought an inhalator. One of the doctors at the hospital said he thought it was a kind of overnight pneumonia, a common thing with babies. Later, we found out he was right. Thousands of

babies die every year that way.

 

There were a lot of phone calls that night. All kinds. Most were sympathetic. Some were cruel, and asked for Richard Junior. Some were from ministers because it was suddenly open season on Dick Gregory. It would be a big prestige move to get his son’s funeral. One minister taped his five-minute radio show and came by the house just in time to turn the radio on and sit in my living room and listen to himself talk about Dick Gregory’s heavy moments. I asked Bob Johnson to get a minister who wouldn’t turn the funeral into a carnival, who wouldn’t try to take Richard Junior to heaven right in the funeral parlor. He called the Reverend Mack.

The phone rang again. Greenwood. He had a southern dialect, and for a moment I thought he was a Negro. “Mister Gregory?”

“Yeah.”

 

“When you coming back down here?” “First chance I get.”

“How come you ain’t in Jackson now?”

 

I heard someone whisper on the other end of the line: “Ask him about his son, ask him about his son.” I knew they were white.

“How’s your son, Mister Gregory?” “Just fine, just fine.”

“How come you ain’t in Jackson now?”

 

“Didn’t feel like going down, you know us niggers are lazy.” “Thought you were in Jackson this morning.”

“Oh, man, how can you be so dumb? How could I be in Jackson this morning and talk to you from Chicago tonight? You know, white boy, niggers is scared of airplanes.”

“Mister Gregory, tell me some jokes.”

“Listen, white boy, us niggers up North are more sophisticated than you white folks down there. We never work after eleven thirty at night. You'll have to call me back during my working hours.”

For some reason, when they didn’t hear the cry for pity or sympathy or tolerance in my voice, they became ashamed. In their own little way they said they were sorry.

“Good night, Mister Gregory,” the voice said softly, and the line went dead.

 

I went back to Lil. I told her about the phone calls. It upset her, she started to sob.

“Now you understand when I say this thing is bigger than you or me or the kids. When a grown man will call and ask to talk to Richard Junior, you know this thing is bigger than all of us.”

She said she understood. Then her mind wandered away again. Michele and Lynne were very quiet, taking care of each other in another room. Lil hadn’t told them yet, and I took Michele into the bathroom.

“Michele, honey, where’s Richard?” “Richard’s gone, Daddy.”

“Gone where?” “To the hospital.”

“When will he be back?”

 

“He’s not coming back, Daddy. You'll have to get another Richard.” “How do you know?”

“I looked at Mommy’s face.”

 

It was midnight then, just twenty-four hours since I held him in my arms. I wanted to get back to Jackson, back to the demonstrations, but I had a woman here who was losing her mind. I talked to the minister and told him to go ahead and make the arrangements. I said good night to Bob Johnson, and I put the girls

to bed. Now I’ve got to take care of Lil. And I have to do it fast so I can get back to Jackson with a clear mind.

I walked into our room, and she was lying across the bed looking at the ceiling. Richard’s blanket was clenched to her breast. I decided to take a chance on pulling her out of her shock fast or pushing her deeper in. I knelt next to the bed.

“Lil, can I talk to you?” I touched her and she jerked away. “Lil, he was my son, too. Can I share it with you, just a little?”

She looked at me and held the look for the first time since I had gotten into town. She grabbed my hand.

"You remember how I thought I was going to be killed in Jackson?” “Yeah.”

“Remember how I came the long way through Chicago to explain not to bring the kids up with hate, and how for the first time I picked Richard Junior up and hugged him and kissed him and played with him?”

“Yes, yes ...”

 

“I kissed him and said that Daddy’s going to make it a better world for you, not knowing that his world would be over in a few hours. Right?”

“Yes ...”

 

“Honey, I left here and went to Mississippi last night knowing it was very easy for me to get killed, thinking I was going to get killed. You know, Lil, if you had been sick, if Richard had been sick and they called me to come out of the South, I never would have come. Right?”

“Yes ...”

 

“Remember last year when you had the miscarriage and there was trouble in New Orleans, I just put a blank check in your hand as they were wheeling you out of the house because I had a plane to catch? You know that nothing short of death would have pulled me out of the South today?”

“Yes, Greg, I know that.”

 

“Good, honey, because I wonder if it ever dawned on you that maybe if I hadn’t come out of the South today I would have been killed.”

“No, it didn’t.”

 

“Well, does it make sense to you?” “Yes.”

“You know, Lil, maybe this is the work of God. Maybe to spare my life he took our son’s life. Do you believe God could do something like that?”

“Yes.”

 

And then I grabbed her hand hard because I was ready to do the most awful thing I had ever done in my life. I held her hand and looked into her eyes.

“Forget about God. I want you to make the choice.” “What do you mean, Greg?”

“You have the decision now, Lil. Forget about God. If you had the decision to make this morning that I was to be killed in Mississippi, and the only way you could spare my life was to take Richard’s, which one of us would you have taken?”

I knelt there and I looked at a woman’s face that was so distorted it wasn’t even human, a face with two holes for eyes that were filled with hate for me. She jerked and twisted and I jumped up and pinned her down on the bed and I screamed at her.

“Forget about God. It’s your decision, you make the decision, me or Richard Junior, me or Richard Junior . .

And she twisted and rolled and tried to get free and screamed and kicked, and then suddenly she went limp. For the first time her eyes were clear, and her body relaxed and the tears rolled freely down her cheeks.

“Richard Junior ...” she said.

#

 

After the funeral, Jim Sanders and I went back to Jackson. All the way down I wondered if I had a right to shock a woman out of crying, out of a grief a mother has to feel when her only son dies in the same room. And because Lil had pulled out of it so strongly, and because I was now away from it all, I think I went into shock myself, realizing for the first time what had happened. Over and over again I thought about that feeling of death I had, and how it was a little baby, safe and sound, not a soldier on the battle line, who had died. Then we were in Mississippi again.

We didn’t stay long this time. There was a strangeness in the air, the demonstrations weren’t going well. Kids were coming to demonstrate and they were being sent back to get notes from their parents. I saw two young Negroes, one a soldier, walking on the streets and I asked them why they weren’t demonstrating. The soldier said because he was in the army. Sure, I told him, the same army that will send you all over the world to guarantee a foreigner his rights. His friend said he wasn’t demonstrating because he was too violent.

That’s right. I told him, and when the doors of segregation get kicked down and they’re ready to hire their first Negro detective are you going to refuse the job because you’re too violent? They both said they’d demonstrate.

Lena Horne came down to speak, and that did a lot of good for the people, to hear someone they idolized say: “I’m with you.” This is especially important in an area where the church is afraid to wake up and carry the ball.

I talked to Medgar Evers, told him that something bad was going to happen in Jackson, things seemed so wrong. But I didn’t know what it was, and somehow there didn’t seem to be anything I could do here. I remember Medgar cried—I guess he felt it, too. I told him I was sorry to be leaving again, but he knew that anytime he called me I would come back. Anytime. He said he knew.

We went back to San Francisco, started working again at the Hungry I. I apologized to Enrico Banducci for having left in the middle of an engagement, but I told him that as long as I stayed hot as a comic I’d work for him every year.

I don’t know if my mind was really on my work those first two days at the Hungry I, thinking about Lil, about Medgar, about Richard Junior. Somehow I still couldn’t understand that feeling I had a week before in San Francisco about

death, about someone being killed. I was so sure it would be me and then it turned out to be a little baby born in one of the world’s best baby hospitals, born into money and love and care. It didn’t make sense.

And, of course, it didn’t. The second night back at the Hungry I, Billy Daniels drove over from a singing engagement in Berkeley to tell me that Medgar Evers had been murdered.

IV

 

When we walked behind the body of Medgar Evers through the streets of Jackson the line stretched so far back it looked like ants in a parade, old folks, young folks, black and light and white folks, nappy hair and pressed hair and blow hair, Thom McAn and Buster Brown and barefoot, they walked and they walked. It looked like we had enough folks to march on God that day. We turned a corner and the same white policemen who had fought Medgar so hard were directing traffic at his funeral procession. They were holding up their white gloves, telling Whitey in his car he’d have to stop for Medgar Evers now. And Whitey sat in his car and watched the funeral go by, the same Whitey who didn’t say a word when a man was fighting for right and truth and justice, who didn’t open his mouth when that man was shot in the back in front of his house. And Whitey in his car had to be scared that day when he saw that procession go by, scared to realize that when you shoot right and truth and justice down, more right and truth and justice will rise up.

 

#

 

It was hot that day, more than a hundred degrees. I was wet from the cuffs of my pants to the lapels on my jacket, hot and wet inside my shoes. When I pulled out my handkerchief and squeezed it, water ran down my hand.

The press was there that day, and I remember the way everybody gasped a little when a photographer from Life magazine almost stood on Medgar’s coffin to get a picture of Mrs. Evers. I gasped, too, but when I saw that picture, that beautiful picture of a single tear running down Mrs. Evers’ face, I knew that photographer could have stood inside that coffin and it would have been all right.

Jim Sanders and I went back to San Francisco and the Hungry I that night. Jim asked me how I could be funny that night. I told him that when a man sells his talents he’s a prostitute, and when you’re a prostitute you lay like the customer wants you to lay.

I was funny that night.

V

 

It was like being in the forest in the daytime when the sun is shining and everybody’s having picnics and laughing and playing ball, and then suddenly it’s night and you’re alone. You're running through the pitch-black cold, running away from something that’s whipping down on your head and shoulders, maybe running in the wrong direction, and your legs hurt and your stomach hurts and it starts to rain, hard and cold, and finally you can’t run anymore and you lay down and say: “All right, catch me.” And suddenly the rain quits and the sun comes out and you see you’ve been running away from the branches of trees that look so friendly and beautiful in the sunshine again. The birds start singing and the rabbits start running. You just cock your hand under your head and lie there, and you can’t hold back that smirky smile when a little squirrel comes over and licks your cheek and a little bird flies down on your chest. And you ask yourself, “What was I so afraid of a few minutes ago?” And then suddenly it’s pitch-black cold again, and you’re running again and you know the answer. That was the summer of 1963.

The summer began in St. Louis, a week after Medgar Evers’ funeral. The AAU was holding its national track and field championships, and selecting a team to compete against the Russian team in Moscow. I asked the Negro athletes to boycott the Moscow meet. I told them I’d rather see this country embarrassed than destroyed. They didn’t understand.

I talked to them, I negotiated with them, I stood on street corners and passed out handbills. I screamed at them. Damn you, listen. An American Negro can go to Moscow and run in an integrated track meet on enemy territory, but he can’t run in an integrated track meet in parts of his own home country. You can bust this thing if you want to. It’s one thing to defend your country in a track meet, that’s fine, but you have a chance to save your country.

But they were young. They didn’t want to embarrass their country, to bring this thing into the open, to push this thing out on an international level. They couldn’t seem to understand that if Khrushchev came to this country with his Russian track team and demanded that the meet be held in New Orleans he would beat us because no Negroes could compete. I flew back from the track meet in St. Louis disgusted and downhearted. Those athletes could have saved it right there. They would have embarrassed this country so bad it would have

cleaned house. But they didn’t and so this country just swept a little more filth under the rug, and didn’t look to see that the other end was on fire.

After the failure in St. Louis, I took Lil and the kids to Honolulu for a vacation. Over there you can think, you can try to seek wisdom, you can reach out and touch nature. I went to rest and I ended up doing a couple of benefit performances and radio shows. They told me there was very little racial prejudice in Hawaii. Like a woman is just a little bit pregnant.

When we came back to Chicago there was a letter waiting for me that brought tears to my eyes. I had made Who’s Who in America.

That’s why so many people are willing to lay down their lives to save this great country from the cancer of hate that is destroying it. Where else in the world could a Negro, born and raised on relief, make Who’s Who? In 1952 I was a welfare case, and in 1963 I was on a list of famous men. In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don’t know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

I lay on a couch in our living room and I read and I reread that letter from Who’s Who and I cried and I was thrilled and I felt strong. I turned on the radio and heard that they were demonstrating in Chicago for better schools, and that they had arrested some people. I called James, and Lil and I got dressed and went downtown.

In Chicago they arrested us for disorderly conduct. In Birmingham, in Jackson, anywhere in the South I’ve been arrested, it’s been for parading without a permit. In my own town—in the North—I found less dignity and less truth than I found in Mississippi. In the South we were treated as demonstrators—as bad as that might be—and kept together with other demonstrators. In Chicago we were treated as convicts. Our clothes were pulled off, our belongings were taken away. We might have had a very bad time in prison if the authorities were in control, but the convicts ran that prison and they were sympathetic. I guess they had never seen people brought into the House of Correction who refused to post bond, and who were being jailed for right.

It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth to see Negro policemen arresting Negro and white civil rights demonstrators in the North. But it makes you sick to the stomach to see what really goes on in these northern jails. I had never been with convicts before. I couldn’t believe that they ran the prison, that if you wanted

cigarettes or a clean shirt or a telephone call to the outside you just had to go through one of the convict leaders. I think you could have gotten more pure heroin in that Chicago jail than on a South Side street. Any prisoner who didn’t know how to lie and cheat and steal and threaten before he went to jail, sure learned fast there. Many of them carried knives. And they’d fight like dogs over their women—the pretty, younger homosexuals.

We had some trouble in jail—me, James, and a white demonstrator. First they tried to make the white boy work in the junkyard. So James and I refused to go to our clerical jobs. We hadn’t been sentenced yet, and so legally we didn’t have to work off our sentences. We were thrown in solitary confinement.

The convict leader was a southern Negro who had been a pimp, robber, dope pusher, mugger. He had done a lot of reading, because he had spent most of his life in jail; in a year, out a year, in again. He told me he was doing a life sentence on the installment plan. He came to see me in solitary and he said he was impressed with the beauty and truth of the movement. He said he might not be in jail if there were equal rights. Then he said he’d get me out of solitary. I just thanked him. I didn’t believe he could.

I had a lot to learn about prisons. That evening, after dinner, the convict leader went right up to the chief security officer.

“Eat your last can of sauerkraut, Polack, because one of us has to die unless Mister Gregory and his people get out of solitary.”

We were taken out of solitary.

 

It was the trial that really bothered me. It was supposed to be a short bench trial and it lasted all day. It was the first time I had ever been on trial in the North, and the first time the police ever lied on me.

I guess in the South they don’t have to. The cops call you nigger, the judge calls you nigger, and everybody knows you’re going to get time. But up North, where they can’t come out and call you nigger, they have to go through the motions of a fair trial.

They lied from the beginning of that trial to the end. I cried. One of the Chicago policemen accused Jim Sanders of talking back to him and raising his hand to him. Another swore that they had made no arrests until I showed up and the

crowd at the demonstration site got out of hand. It was brought out in the trial that the complaint against me had never been signed. Eleven days in prison and the complaint hadn’t been signed. The judge adjourned the trial, and then he refused to rule on the case. And then he turned me loose, back to Mayor Richard

1. Daley’s corrupt Chicago—Massa Daley’s plantation, as us slaves call it.

 

Then I went out to Los Angeles for a nightclub engagement, but I flew back east for one day, the day that turned that summer into a beautiful thing, that turned the darkness of the forest into daylight. The day we marched on Washington.

That was a glory day. For the first time in history the policy wheel closed down in Washington, and one of the classiest, richest whores in the country asked me to lend her thirty dollars. She said she wanted to go to Washington with clean money.

Whitey expected violence and he had a picnic on his hands. Couldn’t understand how a people with a three-hundred-year-old gripe could gather together in one place without breaking heads. Wars have started over weekend border disputes. Oh, baby, we came with brand-new shoes and wigs and Sunday clothes because it was the first time all of us—not just Mister Nobel Prize Winner or Mister Big Entertainer—were ever invited somewhere. I brought Lil and the kids. I didn’t want them to miss a part of the twentieth century.

When we got off the plane I was so nervous and proud I rushed right to the hotel and changed suits—I didn’t want to wear a wrinkled one. Ossie Davis had asked me to help him MC the television part of the show, but I turned him down. There was some bad feeling among whites toward me for demonstrating and I didn’t want to bug anyone in their living room that day, I didn’t want the least little thing to mar this beautiful day. And you can believe I wanted to stand up before that audience.

We watched the people walking through the streets. A rabbi with a sign written in Hebrew, and just from the expression on his face you knew that sign said something nice. Saw a man bump into another man and they both said, “Excuse me.” Martin Luther King had told us not to put mayonnaise on our chicken because he didn’t want anyone passing out, and we didn’t put mayonnaise on our chicken. And we put those chicken bones in our pockets.

Oh, baby, to stand on the top of the Lincoln Memorial and look down, it was like everyone in the world was standing there, smiling in the sunshine and singing.

Saw Negroes and whites in their best clothes, with their best manners, on their best behavior. And the Negroes, people that Whitey says don’t qualify for first- class citizenship, demonstrated to the world that day that we’re more first-class than a lot of whites. And Bayard Rustin, the man who engineered that march.

When will Whitey realize that men like Rustin can help him solve his world problems?

They came over to me and asked me to say a few words. I told them I didn’t want to. They insisted. I was really happy they did. I said a few humorous words, then went to sit on the grass with my family.

The climax of that beautiful day was Martin Luther King’s speech, “I Have a Dream.” Never have so many people cried, whether they wanted to or not. When it was all over I just sat there because I didn’t know which way to go. Thought of a million and one things, oh, how my mind wandered that glorious day. That day I felt like the Negro had been given his equal rights.

I felt that way right into September, right into the Sunday morning when the forest turned pitch-black cold again. Someone threw a bomb in a Negro church in Birmingham. Four kids were dead.

VI

 

Another funeral. It wasn’t like Medgar Evers’ funeral. This one was by invitation only. But they came anyway, the poor, the raggedy, the verb-buster. Outside the church I saw an old Negro woman in torn tennis shoes holding on to an old Negro man who had a wine bottle in his pocket. I was glad when the television cameras took pictures of that old couple. Those kids died for all Negroes, not just those who were invited.

But I guess the greatest lesson of that Birmingham bombing was for the Negro who thought that civil rights didn’t pertain to him—the principal, the teacher, the doctor, the preacher, the lawyer. Those were his kids in that church, and whether he wanted to demonstrate or not, whether he thought we were going too fast or not, he found out that as long as your skin is black . . .

Three of the children lay inside the church. I talked to one of the mothers. Both of her daughters were in the bombing. One daughter got glass in her eyes, and the mother spent five hours in a hospital operating room waiting to find out if she would ever see again. A few minutes after she learned that one daughter would be not blind for life, she learned that her other daughter was dead.

After a while, Lil and I walked over to the church that had been bombed. We saw a strange and terrible thing. All the windows but one had been completely blown out. The stained-glass window of Christ was almost intact. Only Christ’s eyes and the top of His head were blown out. And it frightened me because I wondered what it meant. Christ with no eyes. The blind leading the blind? Christ with no mind.

We left and I told Lil that she had seen a great work of art because it had taken a hundred years of hate and violence to produce an artist capable of creating that picture. But it wasn’t the only frightening symbol I saw in Birmingham that day.

I saw a state policeman with a tommy gun cradled in his arm, a smile on his face, leaning against a mailbox across the street from the church. The mailbox was painted red, white, and blue.

VII

 

A scared Negro is one thing. A mad Negro is something else. I had always gone down south scared. But in September, when I went down to Selma, Alabama, Whitey had a mad Negro on his hands.

Those brave, beautiful kids from SNCC had started their big voter registration drive in Selma, and had asked me to help them. I was too sick to travel, but I didn’t want to let them down. I sent Lillian in my place. She was pregnant again. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was carrying twin girls. Lillian was in jail a week before I was able to get to Selma. It was a Friday night. I talked to Lillian through a jailhouse window, and she said everything was all right. Then I went to speak at a rally. I walked through a deputized posse of two hundred rednecks, into a church that had been tear-gassed a few days before. I got up on stage in front of a crowd of scared Negroes. They needed some courage. Courage to go out and buck the system, courage to let their children demonstrate, courage to stand up and be counted in a town where the front row of their church was filled that night with policemen pretending to be newspaper reporters and taking notes. I directed my speech at those cops in the front row. I was mad. I told that audience how surprised I was to see a dumb southern cop who knew how to write. The crowd was nervous. They had never heard such talk in front of a white man before.

It always amazes me to see how the southern white folks will knock themselves out, pose all kinds of things to slip into a Negro meeting, and we haven't gotten around to wanting to slip into a Klu Klux Klan meeting. I think that speaks for itself. The whole world wants to slip in and be around right and good and godliness, but only fools want to be around filth.

They looked at each other and giggled nervously.

 

A southern white man. Only thing he has to be able to identify with is a drinking fountain, a toilet, and the right to call me a nigger.

They liked that. A few people clapped, and somebody yelled: “You tell ’em, brother.”

Every white man in America knows we are Americans, knows we are Negroes,

and some of them know us by our names. So when he calls us a nigger, he’s calling us something we are not, something that exists only in his mind. So if nigger exists only in his mind, who’s the nigger?

They laughed and they clapped.

 

Now let’s take it one step farther. This is a Bible here. We know it’s a book. Now if I sat here and called it a bicycle, I have called it something it is not. So where does the bicycle exist? In my mind. I’m the sick one, right?

And they were cheering now, and screaming and laughing and the white cops up front looked pale. The crowd wasn’t afraid of them.

I talked for about an hour that Friday night. I told them how important it was for them to get out and support the voter registration drive on Monday. If they registered, they could vote, and if they voted the politicians would represent their interests, too.

Saturday, Lillian came out of jail, and Saturday night I went back to the church to speak again. Before I began, I asked the audience to sing, “Were You There When They Crucified the Lord?” Then I started, and I wasn’t mad anymore, and I laid it down to them.

It’s amazing how we come to this church every Sunday and cry over the crucifixion of Christ, and we don't cry over these things that are going on around and among us. If He was here now and saw these things, He would cry. And He would take those nails again. For us. For this problem.

It just so happened that in His day and time, religion was the big problem. Today, it is color.

What do you think would happen to Christ tonight if He arrived in this town a black man and wanted to register to vote on Monday? What do you think would happen? Would you be there? You would? Then how come you ’re not out there with these kids, because He said that whatever happens to the least, happens to us all.. .

Let’s analyze the situation.

 

We ’re not saying, “Let’s go downtown and take over city hall. ”

We ’re not saying, “Let’s stand on the rooftops and throw bricks at the white folks. ”

We ’re not saying, “Let’s get some butcher knives and some guns and make them pay for what they’ve done. ”

We ’re talking to the white man, and this is what we ’re saying.

 

We ’re saying, “We want what you said belongs to us. You have a constitution. I’m a black man, and you make me sit down in a black school and take a test on the United States Constitution, a constitution that hasn't worked for anyone but you. And you expect me to learn it from front to back. So I learned it.

“You made me stand up as a little kid and sing ‘God Bless America’ and ‘America the Beautiful’ and all those songs the white kids were singing. I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag. That’s all I’m asking you for today. ”

Something important happened in 1963, and the sooner we wake up and realize it, the better off this whole world is going to be. Because for some reason God has put in your hands the salvation of not just America—this thing is bigger than just this country—but the salvation of the whole world. . .

The Negro in America has the highest standard of living, the highest educational standard, the highest medical standard of any black man the world over and of most white men outside America. And yet there are backward countries getting more respect from this American white man than you people could ever command. Do you know why?

It’s because we grinned when he wanted us to grin. We cried when he wanted us to cry. We’ve spent money when he wanted us to spend money. And we’ve done without when he said do without.

He owns all the missiles in the world, and when he talks to you about owning a switchblade you become ashamed.

He started all the wars, and when he talks to you about cutting somebody on Saturday night you become ashamed.

He makes me feel small. He calls me everything on the job but my name, so I’m aggravated before I get home.

Then he tells me about my education. Well, if it takes education his-style to produce a clown that would throw dynamite in a church, I hope we never get that.

I have a newspaper and I wish I brought it tonight. It embarrasses me just to look at it. It’s a newspaper from 1848, a New Orleans newspaper.

On the back page are ads offering rewards for the return of runaway slaves. Can you believe in 1848 we were running away, rebelling, and we didn’t have anyplace to run to? 1848. Slaves were running away.

Can you imagine what this old Negro had to go through? Can you imagine the day a Negro woman went to a black man and said: “Honey, I’m pregnant, ” and both of them fell on their knees and prayed that their baby would be born deformed? Can you imagine what this Negro went through, hoping his baby is born crippled? Because if he was born crippled, he would have less chance of being a slave and more chance of having freedom.

Think about that. Think about the woman you love coming to you and saying she’s pregnant with your baby and you both pray the baby is born crippled. This is what the slaves went through. And a hundred years later, we have parallels.

A hundred years later and you people are worrying about your kids being in jail overnight, being in jail because they demonstrated for freedom. So many parents who don’t even know where their kids are, for the first time they’ll know where their kids are twenty-four hours a day. In jail. And know that they’re there for a good cause and a good reason.

How many mothers let their sons play football, and all he can get from that is a chance to help his team win a victory. A victory that will be forgotten tomorrow. So can’t you let your son fight for freedom, something that the whole world will profit from, forever?

Sometimes I wonder how much this system has corrupted us. Sometimes I wonder when we will wake up to see that the day is over when we can say: “I’m not involved. ”

Those four kids who were killed in that church in Birmingham, they weren't demonstrating. You don't have to participate. Just be black. Or be white, and for our cause. When the bomb is thrown, somebody has to die.

And do you know that 50 percent of the killings are our fault? That’s right. We let this white man go crazy on us, instead of straightening him out when we should have. Each one of us scratched our heads five years too long.

Sure, tomming was good once upon a time. That’s how we got here. The old folks knew that was the only way they could raise you. What we call Uncle Tomism today was nothing but finesse and tact then. The old folks had to scratch their heads and grin their ways into a white man’s heart. A white man who wouldn't accept them any other way.

But at what point do we stop tomming?

 

A Negro is better off going to a foreign country fighting for America than he is coming to the South fighting for the Negro cause. When he’s in a foreign country, fighting to give those people rights he doesn’t even get, the whole of America is behind him. When he comes down here, there are only a few behind him. So it’s coming down to this. You have to commit. You ’re going through the same thing today that the folks went through when the Lord was crucified.

“ Who else is with Christ? ” the Romans asked.

 

And everybody just stood there. And prayed silently. And they went back and said: “I prayed. ”

No, sister, I didn't even see your lips move.

 

Were you there when they crucified the Lord? It’s a nice song to sing. But this time, you have an opportunity to be there.

Sure would be a heck of a thing, twenty, thirty years from now when they ’re singing a song about these days, and your grand kids and great-grand kids can stand up and say: “Yeah, baby, he was there, my grandfather was there. ”

And when they ask you, you can nod your head and say: “Yeah, I was there. ”

 

I ’d like to tell you a story before I leave. I talked to the father of one of the kids who died in that church in Birmingham. He said to me: “You know, Gregory, my daughter begged me to let her demonstrate, and I told her no. I told her she was too young. And she looked at me, and she said: ‘Then you do it, Daddy. ’. . .”

And that’s what that man will have to live with for the rest of his life. Because if Birmingham had had enough Negroes behind them, there wouldn't have been a bombing . . .

These kids here in Selma aren't doing anything just for themselves. There’s nothing selfish about what they ’re doing here. Freedom will run all over this town. But you have to get behind them. Because there are too many white folks in front of them.

Get behind your kids in this town.

 

Good-bye and God Bless You and Good Night.

 

#

 

The next morning Lil and I went home. It’s hard to say good-bye to people in the South, people you’re leaving behind on the battle line. They have that look in their eyes, thanks a million, please don’t go. They were singing “We Shall Overcome” as we drove out of Selma, and somehow we could still hear them on the plane back to Chicago.

That Sunday we took the kids to a drive-in movie. Michele and Lynne sat in the back of the car, one on each side of Lil. On the way, Michele pointed out the window.

“What’s that, Mommy?”

 

“That’s a filling station, Michele, it sells gasoline. Daddy’s car runs on gasoline, all cars run on gasoline. Look over there, Michele, across the street. That’s another filling station. You see, honey, there are different kinds of gas, there’s Shell, and over there, that’s Standard, and now, look over there ...”

I’m driving with tears in my eyes. Here’s a woman who just spent eight days in jail, and she’s able to sit back there, so patient and kind, and tell her kids about the different kinds of gasoline. I wish I had that kind of beauty. I wish the world was that free from malice and hate.

VIII

 

They burst into my hotel room, a dozen of them, laughing and screaming and singing, and for a moment all I saw were the flickering flames the first one was carrying in his hands. I jumped up and my stomach turned over and then I was angry because they had scared me, and then I cried. It was a cake with candles. It was my first birthday party. I was thirty-one.

Jim Sanders was there, and his new wife, Jackie, and my managers and agents and writers and some of the other performers from the nightclub. We drank and we talked and they didn’t believe this was my first real party. And I told them about Richard, the kid I once knew in St. Louis who used to buy himself a Twinkie cupcake and steal a little pink candle and pretend he was having a party.

Oh, Momma, I wish you could see your little Richard now. He’s all right. I didn’t lie to you, Momma, about people buying me birthday presents, about people inviting me over to their houses. It’s true now, so it’s no lie anymore. And you know, Momma, that old lady who saw a star in the middle of my forehead, she was right. We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn’t it, either. I’m going to be an American citizen. First-class.

Hot damn, we’re going to bust this thing. I feel it when I stand in front of a crowd of people hungry for freedom, and I feel it when we march down a street for our rights. Hot water seeping up into a cold body, that dry taste in my mouth. The monster. But it’s not content to beat some mother’s son in a footrace anymore, and it’s not satisfied to make people laugh and love me. Now it wants some respect and dignity, and it wants freedom. It’s willing to die for freedom.

It’s getting stronger every day. It would frighten you, Momma. But now it has truth and justice and the Constitution of the greatest country in the world on its side. It’s not just a Negro monster. I saw it in a northern white boy who marched with us for freedom through the snow in Georgia. He had no soles on his shoes, and his feet were blue and he never said a word. I asked him why he didn’t go home and take that big engineering job he had been offered. He said that there would be nothing to build on unless every American citizen got his rights first.

When I saw him, Momma, I laughed at every northern liberal who ever said: “Slow down, you people, don’t alienate your friends.” Yeah, baby, were you

there when they crucified the Lord? Or were you just singing?

 

Yeah, that monster’s growing stronger, Momma, I saw it in New York where we marched against school segregation, northern-style, marched to give little black kids a chance for a better education and college and good jobs. And a chance for little white kids to sit with us and know us and learn to love and hate us as individuals, not just fear and hate us as a color like their parents do.

I saw it in Chester, Pennsylvania, with Stanley Branche where we marched for equal opportunities, a chance to be ordinary if we wanted, to be great if we could. Just a chance to be Americans.

I saw it in Atlanta where we marched against segregation in restaurants. I was in my first sit-in there, and I did my first official negotiating. I learned that when honesty sits around a conference table, black men and white men can understand and feel each other’s problems, and help each other.

I saw the monster in Mississippi where we marched for voter registration, so a Negro can cast his ballot for the government he lives under and supports with his tax money, and dies for in wars.

I saw it in San Francisco where white doctors and lawyers marched on the lines with us and went to jail with us and showed the world that this isn’t a revolution of black against white, this is a revolution of right against wrong. And right has never lost.

This is a revolution. It started long before I came into it and I may die before it’s over, but we’ll bust this thing and cut out this cancer. America will be as strong and beautiful as it should be, for black folks and white folks. We’ll all be free then, free from a system that makes a man less than a man, that teaches hate and fear and ignorance.

You didn’t die a slave for nothing, Momma. You brought us up. You and all those Negro mothers who gave their kids the strength to go on, to take that thimble to the well while the whites were taking buckets. Those of us who weren’t destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we’re ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. Nigger.

When we’re through, Momma, there won’t be any niggers anymore.