A NOVEL

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON
1 95 7 : THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE


First printing
Copyright © 1957 by Herbert A. Simmons
All rights reserved including the right to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number: 57-12108
TOje •Ribersibe $rett
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Printed in the U.SA.


C6U\
To Rubye
who caused a boy's dreams to crumble
and a writer's vision to grow . . .
And my thanks
to Professor Jarvis Thurston
whose guidance made it possible
for me to write this book





BOOK 1
Spots on the Wall
page 1
CONTENTS
BOOK 2
The Hollow Echo
page 149





ounging under the lampposts on the comers
of the city, crowded together in the dark back alleys and
gambling dens, you'll find them. Worn-out men with young
faces, scattered through the cities you'll find them, young
men as old as the oldest man in the world.
Take eighteen-year-old Jake Adams. Tall, slim and solid
in silhouette as the lamppost he leaned against. On his face
was a look that could only be described as casual tenseness.
This look came often to his face and was one of the things
that made him attractive to women. He held a cigarette
loosely between his lips and the smoke spiraled lazily upward
to linger in the hazy light from the lamp bulb. Out in the
street hurrying cars blared angry horns at foolish pedestrians.
"Hey, Jake, what you trying to do, get a suntan?" a guy
called from across the street and dashed bravely through the
traffic over to where Jake was. It was Scar, Jake's best friend,
3


[5
"Who you talking 'bout, Maxine?" Jake took his eye off the
ball momentarily and glanced sidewise at Booker.
Booker brushed vainly in an effort to wipe some of the
chalk dust from his gray-and-white houndstooth vest. "Aw,
I know Maxine," he said impatiently. "This broad was short,
but stacked up real tough, with black, pretty hair and a crazy
smile. She had some cute eyes too, something like a Jap
girl's only they didn't slant as much."
"Where were you to notice all this?" Scar cut in.
"'Cross the street from the school, sure is fine."
"Sure is," Scar agreed.
"Who is she?" Booker said. "Got a switch to give you an
itch for."
"Eleven ball in the side," Jake said, trying to keep from
sounding annoyed. The ball hit the Corner of the pocket and
spun off. "Need one," Jake said disgustedly.
"Who is she?" Booker persisted.
"Girl named Armenta," Jake said casually, hoping Booker
would drop the subject.
"She's tough," Booker said.
"Ain't she," Scar said. "Got lots of sense too."
"Is she!" Booker said, making it sound like a statement.
"Your shot," Jake told Scar.
Scar called a cross-corner shot and made it. "Eight ball
three rails in the corner."
"What's Maxine going to do?" Booker wanted to know.
"What's it to ya?" Jake said quietly.
"Need one," Scar said, watching the eight ball just miss
the corner.
"Don't be getting mad, what's he getting hot about?"
Booker said to Scar.
"Leave him alone," Scar said.
"Can you beat that, I've been bull-skating for years with


6]
this guy about his ole ladies and now he's getting hot. What's
so diff'nt about this broad, she got a gold-plated —"
"Shut up," Jake said quietly.
"Leave him alone," Scar said. •
"Well of all the — " Booker threw up his hands and walked
away.
"'Nother game?" Scar said after sinking the eight ball.
The door of the poolroom opened with a flourish and
Spider walked in. "Say, man, they got a crowd over at
Zodie's, let's drift." Spider had on a new suit, a gray shark-
skin single-breasted, with the New Look front and seamless
back. The shoulders were almost bare of padding and the
suit looked neat on his tall, rawboned frame.
"You ought to wear light-colored clothes all the time,"
Scar said. "They look good on you."
"Come on, man, let's dig the happenings at Zodie's,"
Spider said.
"What kind of crowd, old or new?" Jake wanted to know.
"New, think I'd play to an old crowd?"
"Think they'll catch on?" Jake said looking at Scar.
"Naw, man," Spider said. "Come on, let's drift."
Jake shrugged. "What the hell, let's try it."
They hung up the sticks and paid for the game. "If Monk
comes in tell him I'm at Zodie's."
"O.K., Jake," Booker said. "You guys take it easy."
2
Zodie's was across the street down at the other end of the
block. Called the Zodiac, it combined a bowling alley with a


[7
tavern and did a thriving business. They went through the
tavern into a small room in the back. The closed door shut
out the sound of intoxicated voices and the whine of an alto
sax, backed by a piano, drum, and bass fiddle.
Inside the back room were a crowd of men and a few
women. Caldonia was there too. Caldonia, who wore
women's clothes and a poodle hair cut, and took douches be-
cause all girls took douches.
Smoke hung in the room like fog in a swamp. Small round
dots of fire bit the atmosphere; the harsh burning ring of
the cigarette, the feeble glow of the cigar, the ash-splattered
flame of the pipe, gave off a poignant scent of tobacco. In the
comers the cold, hard, bright red glare. It gave the foggy
room a sweet intoxication. People crowded around the
table where the man in the black pin-striped suit was throw-
ing the dice.
"Dig the square," Spider said.
"Aunt Jeremiah's country cousin fattened for the kill."
The square was winning. The square caught nine for a
point and made it. The square caught five for a point and
made that too. The money started piling up. A baldheaded,
wrinkle-faced old man said something unheard and walked
away from the table. Nobody wanted to fade the square,
but the man to the right was supposed to, if he wanted to
stay in the game. That was the house rule. The money was
piling up, the square was hot.
The sweaty little man in overalls didn't want to fade the
square. His high voice rose excitedly from thin lips. His
flat nose quivered. Grease trailed onto his narrow tan face
in smeary blotches from the straight, sticky patches of his
conked hair. The cold, impersonal marble-brown eyes of
the houseman fixed themselves indifferently upon the sweaty
little man. The heavy lips on his stony face moved slowly.


[9
"Pay me," Jake said.
The little man with the conk tossed Jake a dollar. The
grain-colored woman tossed Jake a dollar. The fat man,
whose nose sang when he breathed, reached into his cream-
colored pants and tossed Jake a half dollar. The tall muscular
guy, at Jake's elbow, knitted his brow and tossed him a half.
Somewhere, from out in the crowd, quarters flowed. Every-
body wanted to get in on a sure thing. Jake was laying two-
to-one odds that Spider would hit. The fat man reached into
his pocket and snatched a large green-and-white handker-
chief. He put the cloth to his nose and sniffed. He made a
pretense of wiping the beefy face under his curly black hair.
Spider collected a dollar, on a private bet, from the guy in
the pin-striped suit. Spider hit eight straight licks at two
dollars a wop. The money was reluctantly pulled from
Scar's pocket. Then Spider caught a point and missed. The
dice finally arrived at the sweaty little man. He threw craps
and cursed. He threw seven and gave a desperate laugh. He
threw five and blew on the dice. He cajoled the dice. "Five
dice, five!" The dice turned up three. "Five, come on, dice,
five!" The dice bounced crazily, spun as if they were being
pulled down a whirlpool and turned up six and one. The
little man laughed derisively. The dice came to Jake. The
little man would not fade Jake for more than a half dollar.
Jake caught eight for a point and made it. The stone-faced
houseman took the fifty-cent piece and threw Jake four
dimes. The little man placed another fifty-cent piece gingerly
on the table and held his breath. Jake threw the dice and the
little man caught them. Jake let the dice go again and the
little man stopped them. Jake smiled. The little man ran his
fingers over his greasy hair. Jake threw the dice and the
Htde man let them roll and they turned up seven. Jake
smiled. The little man ran his fingers over his greasy head,


10]
and left the table. "Fifty dollars, sweet Jesus, fifty boons you'll
never see again, lord have mercy! A whole week's pay, God
damn!"
The dice passed to Scar. The dice rolled out clinging like
lovers. Spider bet that Scar would hit; Scar bet on himself.
They gave odds to get somebody to bet against Scar. People
bet against Scar and lost money. "That wipes me out," Jake
said and left the game.
Spider got the dice again. After Spider hit him for five
straight licks, Scar decided he had had enough also. Now
Spider started catching points instead of seven on the first
roll. Spider was hot, he even made four the hard way. He
made five points before missing. Leaving the game, Spider
lost his balance and bumped into the houseman. In the
houseman's pocket were three ten's that hadn't been there
before. "Get hot, dice, get hot. Don't have to share your
luck no more," the pin-striped square said
3
On the lot, next to the Greasy Spoon, they divided the
money. "Wow," Spider said. "Just about seventy-five skins
apiece."
"When do you think they'll get wise?" Scar said.
"They'll never get wise," Spider said. It was his standard
reply. Spider kissed the small dice in his hand that matched
the set in the Zodiac.
Jake whistled for a cab cutting across Welch on Thir-
teenth Street.
"Where to, Jack?" The voice was a part of the street.


[11
Where to ... step into my cab and I will show you my wares.
I will whisper of bars that open after legits close down, of
cool, dark corners where intimacies and strangers are one,
of close revolving atmospheres where the hard red glare
glows, or the plunger, and love for sale. I can lead you to a
cross stream, whose current is the swift pace of a big city on
the move, in the dark, while the tissue-paper morals of so-
ciety are soggy with sleep, and if you tire of the pace, or
flounder in the stream, I can always take you home . . .
"Ninth and Welch," Spider said.
"Fifteen-o-six South Thirteenth," Scar said.
"Thirteen-thirteen Wisconsin, what the hell, I ain't ready
to go home yet."
Thirteen-thirteen Wisconsin, of course. Where else
would Jake be going? All the same Scar wished he hadn't
been around to hear Jake say where he was heading. Well,
she was his ole lady, wasn't she?
"Say, you guys still moving around in circles?" Spider
said. "I guess when Jake moves out on Maxine for Armenta,
you move in, then when you move out for Armenta, Jake
moves in on your ole lady, ain't that the way it goes?"
Jake and Scar looked at Spider. "Yeh, I guess," Jake said
listlessly. He didn't mean it though. It made him sick to
think of Scar moving in on Armenta. He tried to shake off
the feeling. He and Scar had often exchanged girls, so to
speak. But not Armenta. A guy had to draw the line some-
where.
Spider talked on and on about the things they used to do.
Spider was too engrossed in talking and Jake was too involved
with his own thoughts to notice Scar's silence.
"This is me," Spider said. "Later on."
"Later," they said. The cab pulled away as Spider ran
across the street and disappeared into a gangway between


12]
the corner tavern and the delicatessen on the southeast side
of Welch Street.
Forget her, Scar was thinking. You don't want her, not
now. Not much you don't. She alone you wanted for your-
self, just for yourself. It's too late now. Yes, it's too late,
because you can't get her on that basis. Well, neither can
he get Armenta on that basis. Didn't you and Armenta
years ago? But how were you to know Jake was going to
become crazy about Armenta? Jake didn't know about you
and Armenta. You wonder if he would feel the same about
her if he did. Or would it be different, like the way you feel
about Maxine is different? Different, and yet all the same.
Well, Jake didn't know how you felt about Maxine either.
Forget it, Jake's your friend, your best friend. No woman
is worth breaking up that.
"Later on, Scar," Jake said.
"Later."
Scar watched the cab head south toward Wisconsin Ave-
nue. The hell with it he told himself. He couldn't go di-
rectly to sleep. There was the spoon, the flame, the plunge.
He floated a long time, riding his habit hard . . . Armenta
is the best thing could have happened to Jake, his mind
said. Who is Armenta? his other self wanted to know. Lucky,
lucky guy. Not as lucky as you. You're a king, you have a
palace in the clouds, you're up so high, the height's so long
you need a parachute to go downstairs. I wish I was in col-
lege. What you want to go to college for, man, that's for
squares. They said I was a great halfback. You great now,
man, don't you feel great, up in the clouds? What could be
greater than that? Maxine. Jake's girl. I really used to like
Maxine. Armenta is Jake's girl. I still go for Maxine. That's
Jake's girl, fake's, Jake's, JAKE'S! It was. She still is . . .
Yeah, she still is. College, football, beating your legs against


[13
the line, running, running to Max . . . one of these days
going to college. Going to go, go, go, be great, somebody.
Man, I done tole you, you great now, you in the clouds, you
getting your kicks way up high, don't nobody live up here
but you. Lonely — taking the long lonely road. Man, I done
tole you, you great, you in the clouds, man, ain't I done
tole you —
4
The steps complained as Jake galloped up to the second
floor. He was careful not to touch the wall, and stain his
jacket. There was no light coming from her room. He
rapped lightly on the door.
"Is that you, Jake?"
"Nobody else but."
"Just a minute."
"Here Rover," a young female voice drifted up from some-
where in the streets. Screaming tires, trying to hold, mingled
with the night sounds. A rustle of garments. Light flood-
ing under the door. Minutes dragged —
"I thought you weren't coming," Maxine said, opening
the door. Her coarse black hair was in a net. Even now, in
her black-and-gold Chinese style bathrobe, a faint blush
spanked her light-brown skin. Her wide, attractive mouth
broke into a grin. "I cursed you out," she said, wrinkling
her small broad nose at him.
"How could you?" Jake said. "You don't even know the
words."
His touch was as familiar as if they had been living to-


14]
gether all their lives. She broke away from him shyly. She
sat down on the bed with her head turned toward the wall.
She did not look his way when he casually started taking off
his clothes.
5
Evelyn Keyes turned off the radio she had been listening
to for the past three hours. She was peeved with herself be-
cause she had not put her hair up for the night. Maybe she
should let it slide just for the night. No, Spider might come
over tomorrow. She had to keep her hair looking nice; it
was her one good point. She knew she was for the main part
a plain girl, but Spider said she had nice hair. He told her
that way back in grade school. She had to try to keep it look-
ing nice. Her hair was thick and black and wild. It took
her hours to pin it up, and there was not a home permanent
kit on the market that could keep it in curls, nor was there
a beauty parlor that could turn the trick, for that matter.
No, her hair wouldn't curl, but if she took enough pains
with it, it would be in thick fluffy waves in the morning.
She started doing her hair. A slow, methodical process.
Spider was so wild. He didn't have a regular job, just as
an extra waiter now and then, but he always had money, and
he always wanted to take her some place where he could
throw it away. Not that she didn't like to go out, it was just
that she couldn't ever see them getting any place at the rate
they were going. He said he wanted to marry her. She won-
dered what kind of life that would be. Not that she didn't
want to marry him, but she knew he gambled. She won-


16]
"Good, I hope you're not having no kids."
"How long does this go on?"
Jake got up without answering and began to dress rapidly.
"Jake, I'm talking to you."
"I hear you."
"Well, why don't you say something then?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I hate you."
"Do you?" Jake said raising an eyebrow.
"You're impossible to reach. You won't let anyone talk
to you."
"You're talking to me."
"I don't mean that way, I mean really talk to you, you
know what I mean."
"Uh-huh."
"I thought I knew how to reach all of you. Maybe I'm
wrong, maybe there isn't any more to you after all."
"Why don't you go to sleep, Maxine?"
"Before you go, Jake, I want to know something."
"Sure."
"How long does this go on?"
"You mean —"
"I mean you seem content to go on like this forever.
We're different. I want to do things."
"Like what, get married?"
"Someday, what girl doesn't? But I wasn't speaking exactly
about that."
"You mean you want to become a famous dancer, and tag
a husband along behind you."
"You have an awful way of putting things."
"That's it though."
"Well, you could be a doctor or something."
"And we'll live happily ever after," Jake said mockingly.


[17
"Look, baby, let's get it straight. I wish you all the luck in
the world on that dancer deal and I'll help you all I can, but
you're right when you say I'm satisfied. Why shouldn't I be?
I'm beginning to make that long bread in a short time and
the sky's the limit."
"How?" She shot the accusation at him almost bitterly.
"That's incidental."
"Go away, leave me alone," she said.
"You're too sensitive, Slim, the world's made of sticks and
mud."
"That doesn't mean you have to tear it up, smoking pod
and—"
"Doing what?" Jake said, surprised and unnerved.
"I know you smoke pod," she said simply. Too simply
for Maxine.
"Who told you?" Jake said defensively.
"No one had to tell me, I saw you with my own eyes. Last
week when we came back from the dance you were loaded.
You stayed so long in the bathroom I thought you had passed
out, so I looked in to see. You were on the weed. I knew
'cause the cigarette was so skinny and had a funny smell."
"Well, don't worry about it."
"I won't," she answered just as brusquely. "I'm warning
you though, you start fooling with Boy and Girl and I'm
through with you. I don't want no junkies hanging around
me.
"Don't worry," Jake said. "You think I'm stupid?" Max-
ine did not answer. "You got any friends on junk?"
"What do you think I am?"
So Maxine didn't know about Scar. He wondered what
she would think if she knew. Scar had been a great high
school athlete. All the girls had been crazy about Scar.
"How do you know so much about junk then?"


18]
"Don't worry about it, I know," Maxine said.
The change taking place in Maxine struck Jake with the
force of a blow. She had been smart in books, but dumb
when it came to worldly things. He watched the smoke curl
into her nose as she french-inhaled. To think he'd gone
with this babe a whole month before she came across, al-
though she had not been a virgin, and here she was three
short months later talking like she had been on the corners
all her life. "You better get some sleep. Morning, Slim."
"Morning, sugar." That was the way they always said
goodbye. Maxine felt the tenseness return as Jake went out
the door. Must it always be like this? But she had im-
proved. She really had. Hadn't she? She hadn't ever lost
control of herself since she had been going with Jake. She
hadn't ever cried over anything that had happened between
them. That was certainly true. Not physically, she hadn't.
At four o'clock in the morning the city had one eye
closed, but it never shut them both. It merely rested them
one at a time. Slightly disturbed by something he couldn't
quite place in Maxine, Jake ducked under the stairs leading
to the basement of the tenement in the tin-can-filled back
yard, splattered with rubbish and dog excrement . . . suck
it in. Pull it in, don't let it out . . . trap it. Swallow, put
your hands over your face so it can't escape. Breathe hard
— it will give you a flight. . . the hard red glare.
7
Jake's room was neat. It had the look of being seldom
occupied. He rubbed the frosty encrusted traces of sleep


[19
from his eyes and turned on the radio to station WYBZ to
listen to "Willard Sadder and His Mad Discs of Platter."
There were two metal closets in the left corner of the room
where Jake kept his wardrobe. He had seven suits: three
bold-look, single-breasted sharkskins, one dark blue double-
breasted conservative cut — the only dark suit in his ward-
robe — a single-breasted tan, a double-breasted gray flannel,
and a single-breasted gray flannel. He had five pair of shoes:
a pair of black patent leather loafers, three $21 suedes with
single white threads running around the top of the soles,
and a $25 pair of brown Stacey Adams, with a single thread
of white around the soles. He had four weskits of various
designs, a large assortment of Slim Jim ties of striped and
solid patterns, twenty-five pairs of Argyle socks, and ten
pairs of ribs. He also had ten pairs of $25 Dak french-
waisted trousers. He had only three sport coats, but they
cost $55 apiece and looked it. His three gaucho-styled
jackets — with the elastic waists, zipper in front and hand-
stitched flaps over the pockets — were favorites for all guys
in the know, and of these three his gray suede was the cool-
est. Of course, he had some stingy-brim hats, and a french-
styled houndstooth topcoat with raglan sleeves. Two belt-
in-the-back heavy topcoats assured him that he would be in
style when winter set in. There was also a tuxedo which
he had not worn since graduating from high school a year
ago.
His wardrobe was the envy of all the cats on the corners,
and caught the eye of all the babes and he knew it. He had
a physique made to hang clothes on, and knew that too. He
had Maxine, who half the guys on Welch Street would give
their right arm to have, and another little girl, who really
sent him, on the verge of becoming his. He had a car, and
money coming in every day. He was sitting on top of the


20]
world, and that was a damn good place to be. Maxine was
crazy to think he wouldn't be satisfied with all of that. Who
wouldn't be?
Enroll Garner was giving out with "Pastel" and in the midst
of the enraptured spell of the music, Jake decided he was
hungry. He threw back the army blanket that served as a
spread and sprang out of bed. After reaching over on the
lamp table and turning the radio up loud, he slipped into
wooden shower-shoes and clomped into the bathroom across
the hall. Jake's was one of the few houses in that part of
town that had a shower as well as a bathtub. Jake had had
it installed and was proud of that.
After showering, he cooked a breakfast of ham and eggs.
Louis Jordan's "Run Joe" calypsoed from the radio and he
drummed his hands to the music. After cleaning up the
kitchen, he read the note left by his father. Jake smiled at
the last lines in the message. "I wish you wouldn't stay out
so late at night. You're going to get into trouble yet. Knock
up some gal or something. I should have straightened you
out long ago. Too late now, you're a man now ..." Jake
knew his old man had raised a lot of hell in his day. His
mother, when she had been living, had often told him about
his father. Must be getting wilder than my old man, he
mused, him worrying about me like that. For the past week
the old man had been preaching, mainly by note, for they
seldom saw each other except on weekends, or on rare oc-
casions when Jake came home for supper. Going out the
door to pick up the groceries his father had requested, Jake
suddenly ran back and shut off the radio, cutting off Sarah's
"Everything I Have Is Yours." A good song, he thought.
A damn good song. That was just how he felt about the
world. Everything it had was his. He looked at himself in
the vanity mirror and decided his hair was not exactly to his


[21
liking. He primped until his thick black hair lay in slightly
kinky curls. He pushed the part so that his hair rose straight
up to the top of his head. He pushed the hair that jutted
over his forehead back an eighth of an inch or so, and
pinched the front part square. He rechecked himself in the
mirror. He had the perfect crew cut, a half inch of hair per-
fectly flat on top. It was square in the back, on the sides,
where the part divided it on the side, all around. He smiled.
He couldn't help wondering about his old man. He wouldn't
be trying to lay down the law, would he? The absurdity of
the question changed the smile on his face into a grin. His
father never tried to interfere in his activities. Once, a year
ago, he asked Jake where was he getting so much money.
Jake told him a woman was giving it to him. His old man
shook his head, muttered something about those damn
women, and said nothing more about it. Even when Jake
had started buying a lot of clothes, and a car last month, his
father had not reopened the subject, except on one occasion
when he had said "Those damn women sure getting good to
you lately. I'll be glad when some woman tames you and
makes you settle down."
"Is that what happened to you?" Jake had said with a
twinkle in his eye.
"Aw, go out and play with some bitch," his old man had
said.
Jake checked his golden Longines, with the blue crystal,
with the electric clock on the mantelpiece. He set the watch
back two minutes. It was slightly chilly outside. He'd better
wear the gray suede over the charcoal gray jersey with the
striped collar. He pulled on the jacket, placed a gray stingy
brim on his head, and caught a final glance at himself going
out the room — sharp!


8
The Garvelis had been in business on the northwest corner
of Peabody Avenue for sixteen years. They were some of the
few whites who still lived in the steadily expanding black
belt. The black belt had spread ten miles in each direction
in the last twenty years, and the white families had fled, to
avoid the plague, farther west and north, so that now the
downtown district was almost completely surrounded by
Negro communities. The Caucasians had to come alarming
distances to go to work and to shop.
Pop Garveli was working among stacks of cans, built neatly
in rows on the floor, that rose almost up to the level of his
five-foot-six beefy frame.
"Come on, Pop, I'm late," his daughter Georgia said.
"Pop" was not a family endearment. The name had become
fastened to Papaseppe Garveli by the neighborhood, which
was quickly convinced his first name was too long and diffi-
cult to pronounce, and so he had been "Pop" from almost the
first day he opened for business in the then salt-and-pepper
neighborhood.
"Hi Pop," Jake said.
"'Lo Jake."
"Hi Jake, you look real cute in that outfit. Doesn't he
look cute?" Georgia said teasingly.
"Yeah, sure does. Looks real sharp, as you cats say," Pop
added with a good-natured grin. The Garvelis were friendly.
That explained, in part, how they managed to do a thriving
business in the neighborhood. There seemed to be an un-
written law among the youngsters, who were notorious for
stealing, to pound the hell out of local merchants but never
Pop Garveli, and the neighborhood, living on credit and con-
stantly in conflict with merchants because of unpaid bills,
always paid Pop; most always anyway.


[23
"You in a hurry, Jake?"
"Naw, Pop, sure ain't."
"Tell you what, how 'bout holding down the fort while I
take Georgia to school before she has a nervous breakdown?"
"Oh Pop," Georgia said.
"Sure, Pop," Jake said.
"Bye, Jake."
"Later, Georgia." Jake sat down in a chair by the vegetable
bin and picked up one of Georgia's comic books, an epic
featuring Superman in a struggle with a mad scientist. Jake
had been almost like one of the family with the Garvelis.
From the time he was seven until he started high school at
thirteen, Jake had worked for Pop. He had often eaten sup-
per with them at their insistence, and on occasions gone on
outings where curious glances of both races had marked their
activities. Georgia had been as close as a sister to Jake, who
was an only child, but this relationship had been buried be-
neath social codes during the last four years and the fondness
they felt toward each other was now blunted. Jake was not
alone in his fondness for the Garvelis. The whole neighbor-
hood seemed warm to their presence and forgave them the
most unpardonable crimes. Once, a few years back, Jake and
a group of friends were lounging, as usual, under the corner
lamppost around ten-thirty at night when the voices of Mr.
and Mrs. Garveli carried quite easily from the bedroom
window to the loungers below. Mrs. Garveli, quite obviously
as high as her husband, objected to the hat her husband had
bought that evening. A native of Texas, Mrs. Garveli slipped
now and then, especially when drunk, into the language
common in her home town. Mrs. Garveli, in a voice that
carried clearly from the bedroom window down to Jake and
his friends, shouted, "I don't see why the hell you had to go
buy a straw hat with a yellow band. You ought to know by


24]
this time don't nobody wear straw hats but you and the
niggers."
Instead of taking offense Jake and the boys laughed at this.
The tale spread through the neighborhood and business
boomed, a far cry from situations in other stores where racial
sentiments, unconsciously or in a fit of anger expressed, led
to boycotts or freezeouts that had caused more than one store
over the years to fold.
At sixteen Georgia was getting cute, Jake thought. The
buds on her chest had blossomed, her legs had filled out, and
her auburn hair, cut short in the current poodle-cut craze,
looked good on her. She had better watch out, Jake mused.
All the boys at Creighton High will be trying to make her.
He grinned at the thought of Georgia handling or mishan-
dling the situation. That was the way he thought of Georgia
then.
When Pop returned, Jake rounded up his groceries and
paid Pop from his own pocket. He was feeling good. Last
year this time, they had been credit customers.
"How's the old school?" Pop said.
"Same, only it's getting more crowded all the time."
"Ought to build another or send everybody to the same
schools. Now —"
"Yeah, Pop, see you," Jake said, embarrassed as always
when they happened to get on one of those topics.
9
Jake got off the streetcar at Fourteenth and Olivette. He
walked briskly into the plush showroom of the Carson Buick


[25
Dealers. The Dynaflow was ready. He had to take it back
last week because something was wrong with the steering
wheel.
In the Dynaflow, with a tank full of gas, Jake felt like he
had just climbed off a stick of tea . . . in the clouds, you're
living, he told himself.
Half an hour later he pulled up across the street from
Marshall High. Scar, standing on the southwest corner of
Bishop Street, directly across the street from the school, sang
a few bars of Stan Kenton's "Dynaflow" in a loud, off-key
voice. Most of the fellows hung around across the street from
the school waiting for the girls to come out, because the
police seemed too happy to use cave man persuasion to show
the "Young Punks" they shouldn't hang around on school
grounds.
"'Lo Jake."
"What' going on?" Jake opened the door and Scar got in.
The guys gathered around.
"Hey, Jake, why you get a black Dyna?" Red piped. Red
was short and thin, and a junkie.
"To be different, you know all colored folks like red."
The guys laughed. "That's me," Red said.
"Hey, Jake, who's Miss Big Stockings the boys tell me you
done latched onto?"
"Man, she's tough," Jake said, not revealing her name and
getting wound up for the coming bull session.
"Yeh."
Out of the eight guys gathered around the car, the only
blank expression in the crowd belonged to Scar. He sat in
the front seat with Jake, a knowing look in his eyes, detached,
unimpressed.
"Built like a brick ..." The guys cut off Jake's comment
with laughter.


26]
"Aw, who in hell is interested in a babe built like a crap
house?" one of the guys said.
"Jealousy," Jerry sang and got one of the few laughs of his
career.
"What a swing on that frame. Big headlights and a sexy
fishtail," Jake said. Unlike in the old days, he was not enjoy-
ing talking about Armenta in this way. In the old days this
had been part of the fun in having a girl. Building her up in
the fellows' eyes and then watching them look at you in envy
when you walked down the street with her. In fact, going to
bed with a babe didn't mean nothing if you couldn't tell the
boys. Of course he never openly bragged about who he was
going to bed with, he was too cool for that. He just let the
fellows sort of draw their own conclusions and didn't bother
to deny it, and besides people talked, it didn't take them long
to find out what you were doing, if you didn't try to cover
it up.
"You mean the babe is built like one of them there —"
"Just like a Cadillac," Red said. "You know how it is with
them Cads, they just roll away."
"Do tell," Slim Jim Willcott said, fingering the Windsor
knot in his gray-and-blue-striped Slim Jim tie, pulling the
corners of his mouth down and wrinkling his forehead, bur-
lesquing an impressed countenance.
"Lawd, lawd, lawd." That was Jerry again. Dark and
hefty, he had developed into a first-class guard on last year's
football team, but it was doubtful he would make this year's
because he had a bad habit of stopping somewhere before he
got to school and not quite being able to break away.
"You ain't kidding," Red said wistfully. "Man, that broad
would make a bulldog stalk an elephant with rape on its
mind."
"Got me popping my shoelaces," Jake said.
"Do tell."


[27
Jake was wishing the bell would ring, so that he could
break away from the fellows without them getting the idea
he didn't want to shoot the breeze. What was wrong with
him anyway? A broad was a broad, what difference did it
make talking about 'em? Anyway, everybody knew his repu-
tation as a gash hound. Everybody knew Jake Adams' girls
came across. Didn't he and Scar have the toughest reputation
of anybody that ever went to Marshall High? The hell with
it, Jake thought. A broad's a broad.
"What's the matter, Scar, the beast don't move you?" one
of the guys said noticing Scar's silence.
"Not particularly."
"Try Ex-lax," Red said.
Slim Jim laughed, being the only one in the crowd not
having heard Red use that expression before.
"Scar ain't so hot with women," Jerry drawled, try-
ing in his dull-witted way to break into the humor of the
thing.
"Oh yeh," Scar said. "That beast of yours doesn't think
so." Scar was mixed up. He wasn't particularly angry at
Jerry, it was just the way things had been going lately.
The guys laughed uneasily, watching Jerry. They knew
Jerry's girl liked Scar.
"Do tell," Slim Jim said. Being a newcomer to the city, he
could afford to be blase" about the thing. Neither Jake nor
Scar had walked off with one of his girl friends before.
"Say, Jake, if this babe's so tough, maybe you need to de-
vote all your time to her, so good Christian as I am, I'll do
you a favor and take Maxine off your hands." That was
William, the guy who had been hanging around the school
for the last eight years. Nobody knew how old he was, what
he did for a living, or anything about him. All they knew was
that he would show up at the school every day, regardless of
the weather. He, like the school, seemed to be waiting to


28]
engulf the students. Like the school that appeared to droop
a little more with each succeeding year, he just hung around
on the corner.
Jake looked at Scar as if asking permission to tell one of
their secrets to the crowd. "Hell, baby," he said with a wink.
"Any babe of mine you can get, take. I always say, if a man
does his job right, he ain't got nothing to worry about. If he
don't, he might as well forget it."
"Amen," Scar said nodding his head solemnly. That was
the truest thing Jake had said today.
"And the bedroom's your battleground," Red said.
"Amen."
"I ain't lost a battle there yet," Jake said.
"Do tell."
A loud, clattering bell broke up the bull session.
"You guys take it slow," Jake said pulling off.
"Play it cool man, play it cool," Red said, turning his
hands palms upward and looking dreamingly up in the air as
if expecting something to fall into them.
Jake stopped in front of the steps leading up to the main
doors of the school. Students streamed out of the peeling,
red-painted brick schoolhouse like lava oozing down a moun-
tainside. They came, a rainbow of colors thundering down
the steps in a crescendo of confusion, the din of hundreds
going somewhere and all talking at the same time.
"Marilyn doesn't think I saw her trying to talk herself in
with Joe," a dumpy, bobby-soxed girl said to her feminine
companion, "the bitch. Hi, Joe!"
They came out of the school in the uniforms of the teen-
age set. The girls wore slacks and pedal pushers of all pat-
terns and designs. They wore white shirts with jeans and
bobby sox, and dirty black and white saddle oxfords. They
wore tight-fitting sweaters, with wide belts and pencil skirts


[29
which had slits in the sides. They wore sloppy Joe sweaters
and corduroy skirts, and blouses that looked like printed
newspaper sewn together, that had headlines and catchy say-
ings printed on the material. They wore checked vests and
their legs and arms were adorned with identification brace-
lets. Girls who were debs for teen-age gangs wore berets, with
identifying letters of the organization sewn on the headpiece,
and sweaters with emblems of the gang their boy friends be-
longed to. Some of the girls wore school sweaters chiseled
from some athlete. A few girls came dressed up in high-
heeled pumps, box-back suits, and shortie coats.
The boys wore sweaters and levi's, or corduroy trousers.
They wore sport shirts with outer-seamed or hand-stitched
pants and suede belts of a variety of colors. Their shoes were
leather, or suede, with double white threads stitched along
the soles. They were partial to checkered weskits, bold New
Look suits, Slim Jim ties, and spread-collar shirts. They
strutted in checkered sport coats and gaucho-styled jackets.
Their heads were crowned with stingy-brim hats, or the large-
brim type which they wore unblocked and pulled down on
their ears, or they wore the beret patterned after Diz Gilles-
pie. They wore fancy tie clasps and carried long, black um-
brellas, regardless of the weather, and multi-colored, encased
pool sticks . . . they were sharp, gone, in the know . . .
Armenta finally came whirling down the steps in the shout-
ing crowd. She was wearing the maroon-and-white school
sweater with a track letter on it. Her head, with the black,
glossy hair bobbing up and down, vanished and reappeared
in the sea of people. Once Jake, watching her head go down,
almost thought it wasn't coming up again.
"Short people sure have a hard time."
"Yeh," Scar said. "'Specially if they're girls."
At the bottom of the steps a curly-haired, mustache-


30]
sprouting, thin guy in beret and shades, a popular type of
sunglasses, grabbed Armenta as she was passing by.
"Leggo," she said.
"Oo-wee, baby, will I ever?"
"Not you, baby, you'll never."
The exchange of conversation drifted to Jake and Scar.
"That's my girl," Jake told Scar.
"How you gonna sound, baby, how you gonna sound!"
"Like a Cadillac, baby, shoom!"
"Or like a Dynaflow," Jake said coming over from the car.
"Hands off."
"Who sez?"
"I sez. Maybe if I rub your face off on the sidewalk you'll
understand better," Jake said quietly.
"Jake."
"Quiet, babe, I'll handle this."
"She your girl?"
"That's her business," Jake said in an even softer, matter-
of-fact tone. "You better make it yours to lay off. Don't even
speak, you dig? Unless she wants to talk to you; in that case,
that's her business and I ain't got nothing to do with it."
"You ain't got nothing to do with it now. Think you
tough, huh? 'Cause you got your boys," he said looking at
Scar. "Coota!" The battle cry rang out over the multitude
of voices. Six guys pushed their ways swiftly through the
crowd. They wore blue sweaters with gray barracuda fish on
the chest. They swaggered in the manner of the tough guys
on the blocks. Their walk was the gait of corner boys. The
handkerchiefs tied around their fists said they meant business.
"No, Jake," Armenta said as Jake's double fist flashed
through the air and crashed into the tip of the guy's nose.
"What you so hot about, Jake?" a guy with a conk, thick
lips and slits for eyes said, pulling the guy with the shades
away from Jake.


[31
"What the hell you pulling me away for?" the guy whined.
"He's the one looking for a war!" ,
"He didn't mean no harm," the guy with the conk said.
"Take it slow, Jake. See you man. Let's go you guys! Come
on Shades." The Cooters swaggered away in the manner of
a tough club.
"You don't watch that punk, you'll see me sooner than
that."
"He didn't mean no harm," the guy said pushing Shades
ahead of him.
"Then I don't mean none."
"Later, man."
"Take it slow, Slits."
With the blood now splashing on his checkered vest,
Shades tried to get away from the restraining arms of the
Cooters. "But, but, Slits —"
"Shut up, you stupid bastard," Slits whispered hoarsely.
"That's Jake Adams you fixing to war with."
"You mean the president of the Termites?"
"He was, till he got out of the club. Mix with him, you
got the whole club down on our necks. We ain't fixing to
rumba with the T's, not yet we ain't."
Shades looked at Slits, not knowing what to say. He took
out a handkerchief and dabbed at his nose. The Barracudas
pushed their way further into the crowd.
"Jake Adams, you're awful!" Armenta said, meaning it.
"What was I supposed to do, stand there and watch him
paw you?" Jake opened the door of the Dynaflow.
"Boy, you have an awful temper," Armenta said.
"His bark's worse than his bite," Scar said.
"Jake, I don't want you fighting over me."
"I wasn't fighting over you, I was fighting for you."
"I don't get you?"
"I wasn't fighting 'cause I was trying to keep somebody


34]
Roy Milton's Solid Senders jammed away on the frantic
notes of jazz. It was one of the few square pieces Jake went
for. At four-thirty would come the cool sounds, a mingling
of mostly bop and progressive jazz, with a few performers
like Nellie Lutcher, Louis Jordan, and Ruth Brown thrown
in, who belonged to the corn-bread crowd, but were con-
sidered good listening by the guys in the know.
Old man Adams came home promptly at six, as usual, and
was surprised to find Jake there. "Man, I'm beat," he said.
He hung his work coat in the hall closet and put on his house
shoes. "Why don't you stir up some chow, since you're here?"
"Sure," Jake said, pleased at the request because his old
man usually considered anything he cooked unfit to eat. Jake
would have liked to prepare something fancy, but knew his
father would rather settle for a can of pork and beans and
some more of the ham he had eaten for breakfast.
"That damn factory's getting me down, sometimes I don't
think I can make that other five years before I retire."
Jake was silent. He knew better than to tell his father he
could get him a good deal, maybe even a small business or
something. He wasn't kidding himself either. He knew
Monk could swing it, but more than likely his old man would
swing on him.
Old man Adams was too proud to take help from anybody.
That was one of the things that made it difficult for him to
talk to his son, since it was obvious Jake was doing much
better than he was. How could a father tell his son to give
up all of that and come back to the kind of life he was living
a few years ago? Besides, he couldn't actually say Jake was
doing anything wrong. Gambling, women — hell, all young
studs did that. Jake just happened to be able to turn those
situations to his advantage. What was so wrong with that?
He's a Adams all right, no doubt about that. He fought the


36]
"Come on, Henry, let's let the young people be." Ar-
menta's mother led her husband away from the front room.
"But Edna, my favorite program's on now."
"Henry," she said firmly. Her voice drifted from the hall-
way. "He seems like a nice boy."
"Seems like he could have picked a better time to come
visiting. S'after eight o'clock."
Mrs. Arnez laughed. "Oh, Henry," she said. "If he had
come by earlier, you would have sworn he came to eat supper
with us."
Jake listening from the front room could not help com-
menting, "I don't think your old man likes me."
"Oh, Daddy's just upset cause you didn't call him 'sir,'"
Armenta said.
"This is the twentieth century, babe. Nobody expects to
be called 'sir' nowadays."
"Daddy's a throwback. He thinks it's disrespectful if
young people don't say 'sir.'"
"You say 'sir' to him?"
"Of course."
"Well, I'll be damn," Jake said. "Where's your old man
from anyway?"
"Oh, forget about Daddy," Armenta said, pulling Jake
down beside her on the davenport. "Can't you think of better
things to talk about?" They were very close. That smell had
him again. He felt uncomfortable, like he was being used
for a pincushion, especially the way she was looking at him.
"You like B and Sassy?"
"Natch."
"How 'bout Pres and Bird?"
"Crazy," Jake said. "Got anything by Miles, Ventura, Diz,
or Kenton?"
"Natch." She smiled at him.


"You're a pretty down ole babe."
"I live in the twentieth century," Armenta said matter-of-
factly.
"Your old man, he's strictly —" Jake drew a huge square
in the air with his index fingers.
To her surprise Armenta found herself laughing. "Lay off,
will you. I like my old man, even if he is —" She made the
square with her fingers.
"How 'bout me?"
"I like you too, Jake," she said demurely. "Dig this crazy
jam, I bet you never heard this." She walked across the room
and placed a record on the turntable of the huge combination
radio and record-playing set. The record she played was an
instrumental, featuring a tenor sax with a tone that caught
Jake's fancy, and some terrific execution.
"Who's that?" Jake asked. "Sounds like Pres on tenor."
"Getz."
"Who?"
"Stan Getz, played with Woody. Remember 'Early Au-
tumn'?"
"Getz, that his name? Yeh, I remember his drift. He's
tough. What's the name of the jam?"
"Sweety Pie."
"Sharp. Dig him the most to say the least."
They had a session via the record player. Now and then
they danced, especially when Sarah Vaughan or Billy Eckstine
sang, but mostly they just sat and listened. Armenta played
all the killers from Bird on down. She had a record of The-
lonious Monk, but both confessed they weren't down enough
to understand it. "You're my kind of babe," Jake said.
"From what I hear about you, all girls are your kind of
babe."
"Well, I've always liked girls," Jake admitted. "One of


38]
those unexplained mysteries of life. I guess I'm just funny
that way."
He had her laughing again. "So I hear."
"You seem to hear an awful lot. Where you hear all of
this?"
"At school," Armenia said. "A lot of the girls talk about
you, especially Geneva and Flordell. They make me sick.
Every time I go down the hall, all I hear is you."
Jake decided to change the subject. "You the only child?"
"No, I've got five sisters."
"Five."
"Yep, my old man and Eddie Cantor."
"Where are they?"
"Married. I'm the baby of the family."
"You're my baby," Jake said.
She told him about her sisters. Two had married doctors.
Joyce, who was twenty-seven and the oldest, was married to a
famous lawyer in Milwaukee. Sue had married a college pro-
fessor and was considered the black sheep of the family, and
Wilma, who was only twenty and next to Armenta in age,
was somewhere in Africa with her missionary husband.
"Jim!" Jake said. "Don't you people like plain, ordinary
folks?"
"Not to marry," Armenta said. "Daddy would never ap-
prove of it."
"Well, I'll be damn," Jake said. "S'cuse me for cussing,
but I'll be damn! What is your man anyway? I mean what
does he do?"
"He's in real estate."
"He the Henry Arnez head of the Arnez Real Estate
Agency?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, I'll be damn. I thought he was a white man."
"He's West Indian," Armenta said.


[39
"Don't make a damn bit of difference. He ain't white.
Well, I'll be damn." It was all he could say.
"You haven't changed much, Jake Adams."
"What you mean?"
"You always were awful."
"I don't dig, babe. You sound like you been knowing me
all my life."
"I've known you long enough," she said. "Since grade
school."
"You're mad, woman," Jake said, not believing her.
"Like hell —" she caught herself, noticing the mocking
expression on Jake's face. "I mean — you can make me so
mad at times Jake Adams," she raged at him. "I used to be
one of those little girls that used to stand around and watch
you all the time in grade school. You used to get into so much
trouble."
"In grade school, huh?"
"And high school." a
"I didn't never see you. How long you been living in this
town?"
"All my life."
"I didn't never see you. How long you — I don't see how
I missed something as cute as you."
"I used to be bashful," she said.
"You ain't now."
"I outgrew it."
"I still don't see how I missed you," Jake said.
"Well, the fact remains, I used to like you."
"You mean you don't now?" Jake said, raising an eyebrow.
"I used to expect to hear about you being put in jail every
day, when you ran around with those awful Termites."
"I didn't run around with them — I was President," Jake
said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.
"Well, I'm glad you don't run with them any more."


40]
"That's kid stuff," Jake said. "I'm too old now."
"Was that kid stuff this afternoon?"
"That punk made me hot," Jake said. "I'd get mad behind
anybody goofing over you."
Armenta was flattered though she didn't feel she should be.
"Then you should be mad at yourself," she teased.
"For what?"
"For ignoring me all these years."
"I didn't know you existed." ,
"I don't see why not. I thought you said I was cute," she
pouted.
"You are cute. You know you're a good-looking babe.
You see yourself every day in the mirror. How come I never
met you before, anyway?"
"I told you, I was bashful. Anyway, Rudolph held me
pretty tight in high school."
"That whose sweater you wearing?"
"Yes."
"He's a good track man," Jake said. "So you're the
Armenta he was always talking about. Man, he used to talk
about you like you was a queen or something. How come I
never saw you with him?"
"You were too busy flirting with other people."
"Where's Rudolph now?" Jake wanted to know.
"In college."
"Where at?"
"Lincoln, that's where I'm going after I graduate in June."
"Yeah!" Jake's left eyebrow was rising again.
"It's not like you think. I'm going to get an education."
"Lots of people consider that an education."
"You have a nasty, lowbrow mind," Armenta said. "I don't
know why I put up with you."
"Simple," he said. "'Cause I like you and you like me."
He kissed her then. Her mouth opened only slightly under


[41
his, her arms remained in her lap, her eyes open, her lips
cold.
"That the way you do Maxine, just grab and kiss her?"
"What's Maxine got to do with this?" It was the only thing
he knew to say. He hadn't known she knew about Maxine.
"She's your girl friend, isn't she?"
"She's a girl that's a friend of mine."
"That's just it, Jake," she said briskly. "All girls are just
friends of yours. You got too many friends."
"What you looking for — a little dream cottage with a
white picket fence around it?"
"Maybe, but any guy that was my ole man, I'd like to know
he was mine and not every clutching female's that happened
along."
So there it was; he hadn't met a girl yet that didn't want to
put the ball and chain on him, stick a sign on his back saying
Hands off, I own him, don't touch. "What makes you think
you're woman enough to hold a man strictly to you?"
"Sometimes I wonder if you're enough man."
"I don't dig you."
"Sometimes I think you run around seeing how many
babes you can make, as you call it, to prove to yourself that
you're a man, that there's nothing wrong with you."
Jake flushed. Most of what she said he knew to be true.
It was what happened to a guy when he was poor and looked
around and found out the whole world wasn't like that. It
made you want things. You wanted a lot of clothes, a big
shiny car, money, and plenty of babes, unless you were a
square. You had to prove you were somebody, didn't you?
"You got me wrong," Jake said simply. "I really go for you.
I have ever since the first time I dug —" He watched the
smirk creep across her face. "Aw forget it." He got up. "I'll
see you," he said.
She followed him to the door. Once he turned, then


12
Spider and Evelyn sat on the warped steps of her front porch.
The top of the moon appeared just above the ragged flats
across the street. A lone firefly circled the broken picket
fences along the block.
"He's out early this year," Evelyn said watching the firefly.
"Yeh," Spider said solemnly. "That's where we should
be, out!"
"It's nice to stay home sometimes. Isn't it nice outdoors
tonight."
"I don't like to stay at home," Spider said. "It gives me the
creeps."
Evelyn didn't say anything. She knew all too well what
Spider meant. She often got that feeling herself. Seeing the
rundown neighborhood rubbing itself away on each new
generation, and looking about her in the flat where she and
her parents stayed, knowing it looked just as shabby, if not
worse than the other houses on the block. She remembered
her mother saying they couldn't afford to have any more
children. She remembered the bread and sweet cakes, some-
times, that her father used to bring home, that the bakers
used to give him when he worked on the garbage truck for
the city. He had a more respectable job now, as janitor in
one of the grade schools, only no cake any more. She thought,
if her father didn't drink so much, and gamble all the time,
they could be living in a better neighborhood. It wasn't
children her mother and father couldn't afford. Her father
was always talking about buying a house out somewhere,
away from the riffraff as he called it. He was always talking
about getting lucky someday, and winning a lot of money.
I can feel it coming, he was always saying. One thing was
sure, they were always broke. Her mother wouldn't let her
put any of her money in the house, though. She tried to see


44]
to it that her husband didn't borrow money from Evelyn,
but now and then he did. Evelyn couldn't turn him down,
even when she knew she wasn't going to ever see it again.
"What you thinking?" Spider said.
"Oh, nothing. I wish we could get away from here."
"We will."
"We won't live around here, will we, Bert? Our house
won't be anything like this?"
"Hell, no!" Spider said. "Only the best. We're going to
live. We're going to really pop."
That was what she liked about Spider. He was so sure, so
certain of everything. The only trouble was she couldn't see
him actually doing anything to make their dreams come
true. She realized with a shock, he was something like her
father. She shuddered when he kissed her, and pushed him
away.
"What's the matter? What you do that for?"
"I didn't mean it, Bert," Evelyn said. "I'm tired, I think
I should go to bed, so I'll feel like going to work tomorrow."
"We both should," Spider said.
"What do you mean by that?"
"You know what I mean. When a guy plays it straight with
a babe all the time like I do, she should treat him right."
"Don't I treat you right?"
"I guess," Spider said. "But I just stay excited about you
all the time, I can't help it. I guess that's just the way I am."
"I'm glad that's the way you are," Evelyn said.


13
The front table in Booker's was crowded with guys playing
New York, even Booker was in on it, but Scar was leaning
against the wall trying to get his eyes in focus. Scar knew he
should be in on it. It would be weeks before they got that
many guys in the game again. He could really clean up, but
he wasn't up to it. He was sick. He was sick as hell. Those
guys were good for at least twenty skins. That thought didn't
make him feel better. So Scar leaned against the wall and
tried to watch the game, think about the game, anything but
admit to himself what was wrong with him. It was a tough
game, all right, you had to admit that. A perfect sucker's
game because they never realized they couldn't win — the
pain again, gnawing at him, demanding to be fed . . . Don't
think about it, think about something else, anything else.
The pool game, New York, the perfect sucker's game. You
played it with pills, up to eight guys play in it. You shook the
leather container and dropped out two pills that held the
number of the balls you were supposed to make. You had to
run the balls from the one up to the sixteen or backwards in
order to get to the balls that had the same number as the pills.
Naturally the suckers thought it was a game of luck, that the
guy who pulled the pills closest to either end would win.
But like all games that involved skill, the guy who could
execute the best was going to come out on top — but it wasn't
any use in thinking, he needed a fix, he had to get one quick.
He tried to straighten up, look natural, before the fellows
noticed what was really wrong with him, before they tagged
him a junkie like they had done Red. But it wasn't any use,
he couldn't concentrate on anything. He didn't even see
Jake come in the door.
"What's the happenings, man," Jake said, coming over to


46]
him. Jake didn't like the way Scar was looking. There was
something about that look. Jake didn't want to admit to
himself what it was. Just then Monk came in — white man
in the black belt.
"'Lo Monk."
"Hey Booker, hi fellas. Come out to the car a minute, will
ya kid," Monk said to Jake.
Outside Monk got in the front seat of his Lincoln and
Jake got in beside him. "How you doing?" Monk said.
"Fine," Jake said.
"Got a heavier load this time, think you can handle it?"
"You know me," Jake said.
"I think I do," Monk said, looking him in the eye. "You
stick with me, kid, I'll see you straight. Little more groom-
ing and you'll be ready for the big time." He punched Jake
playfully in the ribs. "Got four hundred skins of stuff; you
got the bread or want me to stake you till you clear?"
Jake got a boost from that. Wasn't many guys Monk
would let have junk without cash on the line. In fact, it
wasn't many guys Monk would let push for him. Jake ad-
mired Monk, he was a smooth operator. "Sure," Jake said.
"Look," Monk cautioned. "Besides Pod, Boy and Girl, got
some Coke with this load. Sniffers coming into the Paradise
Saturday. They got into a jam with the locals last place they
gigged, so you got to play it chilly. They might still be hot."
"Thought you ran the force in this town," Jake said.
"Not yet, but I will."
"I'll watch it," Jake said.
Monk handed Jake the package. This was the risky part,
the exchange, if the bims should happen along right now —
Monk pulled off and Jake hastily got into his Dynaflow with
the package and stashed it under the front seat. He knew
he wouldn't feel safe until he had placed it under the boards


[47
in his room at home. He stood to make over two hundred
on this run, maybe two hundred and twenty-five. That was
seventy skins more than he ever made before. This was
going to be a tough week, he concluded. There was pod
for the light heads, boy and girl for the mainliners and now
snow for the sniffers. He was branching out, and he didn't
run much risk, because all of his trade were established con-
tacts of Monk's, mostly entertainers that came in every week.
That was the way Monk worked it. He told Jake who to
push, anyone else was taboo. Their organization wasn't like
the others, the guys that fed anybody's habit; with these
guys a pusher never lasted long.
Scar came out of the poolroom and over to where Jake
was parked. "Man I'm sick," he said.
"What's the matter, Scar?" Jake said, knowing all the time.
"Son-of-a-bitch sold me some lemonade," Scar said having
a hard time talking. "Four cents for the plunge, and it's
lemonade."
Four cents, then Scar wasn't just starting on the kick. He
wondered what Scar was going to do when he got up to
fifteen and twenty a day which would happen eventually, if
he didn't kill himself first trying to break off the habit. He
helped Scar inside the car.
"Son-of-a-bitch. Man I'm busted."
"Take it easy, Scar."
"Man, I'm popping my cap."
"Easy, Scar."
"My wig is split," Scar moaned.
Jake drove around in the alley in the back of Welch Street,
pulled over to a coalshed and cut the lights. Somewhere
in that long tunnel of darkness, angry curses . . . nickel I
shoot . . . winos, gambling with each other, each trying to
win enough money to buy another bottle of muscatel which


48]
all would wind up drinking. The flicker of a match in the
blacked-out car — the rubber band, the heating of the spoon,
the suck of the syringe, the plunge of the needle —
"Don't look so uneasy," Scar said when he could finally
relax. "I been knowing you push."
"How'd you know?" Jake said.
"Damn little of what you do escapes me." Scar cut off what
Jake was thinking with an impatient wave of his hand.
"Don't worry, the cats don't know."
Jake did not know why, but he knew Scar knew what he
was talking about. "What started you on the jive?" Jake
asked.
"I don't know," Scar said carelessly. "Just one of those
things, I guess. One day you're not, the next, you're on."
That was Scar talking to Jake, his best friend. Scar, who knew
he started on junk because he wanted to play football in
college more than anything in his life, maybe even pro ball,
but he had to turn down six scholarships, any one of which
he would have been glad to take. He had to go to work and
take care of his invalid mother, because his father, who crip-
pled his mother one night in a drunken rage, got killed two
days after Scar graduated from high school last year when he
crashed into a lamppost in another man's car while he was
drunk. His old man tore up the car and Scar's dream. He
scattered Scar's dreams like confetti in a hurricane. And so
Scar had worked in the stockyard in that animal smell, and
grew bitter, and kept it to himself, and even Jake had never
known how he felt. Then, one day he grew tired and wanted
a lift, and not the marijuana he fooled with in high school,
and Red had whispered of how terrible the mainline was, and
now he was hooked, and his mother had died, and he was
free to go to college, only who wanted a football player full
of junk? And so he had not written to see about his chances


[49
of getting his scholarships renewed, and so he stood around
on the corners and made his living over the pool table, or
with a set pair of dice, and so now he was a junkie, and didn't
know how to tell the conductor to let him off. Red had been
right about the mainline though.
"How much I owe you, Jake?"
"Forget it." He gave Scar a week's supply.
"I'll straighten you."
"I said forget it."
"Why don't you let me get my charge from you?"
"I don't sell junk to my best friend." Jake spat the words
out as if they tasted unpleasant.
"I dig what you mean," Scar said. "I'll get unhooked yet."
Jake didn't say anything. He knew Scar meant what he
said, but he didn't believe Scar could do it. Poor Scar. He
drove around and let Scar out where he lived. "Later."
"S'long, Jake." That was Scar.
It wasn't the same with Maxine that night. It wasn't ever
the same with Maxine after that night.
14
Two p.m. on a sunny afternoon. Jake sat with the gang
across the street from the school in the Chicken Shack, a small
cafe that catered to the teen-age crowd, and sold hot dogs and
hamburgers, french-fries, a variety of ice cream dishes and
drinks, and soda pop. The Chicken Shack didn't have a
chicken on the premises, or anything else in the higher price
category. It was a very popular spot with the high school
kids, because the jukebox had all the latest records, and there
were booths where young lovers could sneak a smooch or


50]
explore a little. Mrs. Jackson, the elderly proprietress, was
called Mom by all the kids. Her place, she boasted, was like
one big happy family.
"Man, dig Diz, ain't never heard a cat that could ride like
he does on trumpet."
"Give me the lower register with Miles, but Diz's a crazy
stud too." The guys stood around the jukebox applejacking,
and hucklebucking to the music . . . oh he's got a fine brown
frame. I wonder what could be-ee-ee-ee his name . . . Man,
don't Nellie kill you?"
"She's a gas, man, a natural petrol." . . . he looks good to
me and all I can see, is his f-i-n-e, brow-w-nn frame . . .
"Say man, you hear 'bout the crazy happening at the gas
station?"
"Yeh, Ethyl got pumped."
The guys lived it up. There among the hot dogs, ham-
burgers, and the milkshakes sucked through straws, they
smoked and held bull sessions.
"The trouble, Jake?"
"Nothing, man. Everything's crazy."
"That's the quietest I ever seen you," Spider said. Spider
had on another new suit.
"You're really getting sharp," Scar said.
"Well, you know the successful man's got to look the part."
"You'll be sharp as Jake afterwhile," Scar said.
"You know me," Jake said.
"Man, I ain't never seen anybody lucky as you with the
dice."
"That black boy sure got a way with them dice," Spider
said, verbally patting himself on the back. They laughed
good and loud.
"Keep that noise down, boy," Mom said. "I ain't running
no after-hour joint."


[51
It was the gang's turn to laugh.
"Yeh, take it slow. You get put out of here, you'll have to
find a new home."
More laughter . . . run Joe . . . "Crazy, man. Louie's a
square, but he's in there." . . . run Joe, run Joe the man's at
the do . . . "Run Joe" calypsoed from the jukebox, its beat
setting the gang's feet to racing, fingers to snapping, hands
to clapping. "Run Joe" calypsoed from the jukebox, filling
the small cafe, seeping out, spiraling gaily down the street.
"Run Joe, yo mama's done told ya," someone said.
"Yeh, I told you 'bout fugging with that pod."
It went on like that until five to three. Then everybody
had to go out and greet the girls coming out from school.
"This younger generation," Mom said, hands on her hips,
watching them stream out of the door.
"Come on, Jake," Scar said. "Got a new broad on the
line."
"When you meet?"
"Couple nights ago at the flick."
"How come we didn't pick her up yesterday?"
"You know how I operate," Scar said. "Give 'em a few
anxious moments before cutting in."
"He's not conceited," Spider said.
"Let's cut our wheels, man."
They departed behind the fleeing crowd. The guys stood
on the corner in checkered vests, unblocked hats pulled
down on their ears, leaning on black umbrellas, crowding
the lamppost.
"Man, dig that crazy cutta on the big beast in the plaid
skirt!"


15
Three p.m. on a sunny afternoon. The school gave up its
responsibilities for the day and turned them back over to
their parents. The responsibilities rushed out going a thou-
sand different places before going home.
"Hi, Scar," Pearl said, her big gray eyes smiling at him.
"Whoof, Miss Big Stockings herself," Scar said, making her
blush as his eyes traveled her body.
"Hey Curt! Here's Scar," Pearl shouted.
"Hi, Scar," Curt said, pausing but not stopping, her thick
eyebrows making a question of her face.
"Hi," Scar said. Curt continued walking, carrying her
books high in her arms, swaying with a rhythm that was a
part of her natural walk.
"See you," Pearl said, running after Curt. "Bye, Jake."
"Take it slow," Jake said. "Tell Curt, she didn't have to
speak."
"Obviously," Scar said. "She didn't."
Spider got out of the car. "Pick me up on the corner, man."
"Who's Spider's ole lady?" Jake said.
"He's still going with Evelyn."
"Man, he's been tight with that babe ever since grade
school."
"That's what happens when you get a good thing."
"They don't make 'em that good," Jake said.
"Could be they make 'em in five-foot-four packages with
pretty black hair."
"You know me," Jake said. "I don't see you walking no
straight and narrow."
"My time has run out," Scar said.
Jake looked at Scar, wondering what he meant, or maybe
he wasn't wondering. Maybe he ...


[53
"There comes my beast," Scar said. "Hey Kenny!"
Kenny came over to the car. She was a dark girl, short,
with a good build and attractive features. How does Scar do
it? Jake wondered, looking at the long welt on Scar's face.
He don't look like he's got nothing, but whatever he's got
the babes know about it 'cause they sure go for him.
"How you doing?" Scar said lazily.
"Hi, Alonzo," Kenny said.
Jake laughed. Alonzo, it had been a long time since any-
one called Scar by his name. "His name's Scar," Jake said.
"Down, boy. Hop in, public service at your service." Scar
got out and opened the back door for Kenny to get in and got
in beside her.
"This here's Jake. Jake, Kenney Waston."
"Kenny," Jake said. "Where you get that name?"
"From her parents, where you think?"
"They found the name in some book they read," Kenny
said. "They liked it, so they called me Kenny."
"Yeh, well I like corn bread and mustard greens, but I
won't be naming no kids that."
Scar laughed. Kenny looked at both of them, a puzzled
expression twisting her sharp features.
"He's getting his kicks teasing you," Scar said laughing.
"Don't let him get you down."
"Oh," Kenny said. She was smiling again now.
"You're all right, Kenny," Jake said.
"Down, boy."
"You Jake Adams?"
"Yeh."
"I heard about you."
"Who?"
"Lot of people talk about you," Kenny said. "You go
with Armenta?"


54]
"Ha!" Scar said. "Guess you'll shut up now." Scar
laughed.
"I heard about you too," Kenny said.
It was Jake's turn to laugh. "Couldn't have, I'm scared
of girls."
They all laughed.
"You fellows are awful."
"That's me, awful good," Scar said pulling her over and
tickling her until the pout vanished. When she laughed
she had dimples.
Jake and Kenny began talking, finding out what mutual
friends they had. Jake started flirting again.
"Well, hell," Scar said. "Y'all seem like a good match.
You should get together."
"Oh, Alonzo," Kenny said, pulling him closer to her.
"Act your age."
"Sounds like a proposition," Scar said, putting his arms
around her and acting as if he was going to kiss her.
She laughed, pushing him away. "You're a mannish
thing."
"He's a man."
"I ain't funny, honey, if that's what you mean," Scar
said in a high feminine voice. "Hey, there's Armenta.
Hey, Armenta, where you going?"
"Hi, Scar," Armenta said. "Hi, Kenny — Hello, Jake."
"Hi," Jake said.
"Well, don't stand there, get in," Scar said.
Armenta looked at Jake. "I've got to—"
"Will you get in, you're holding up traffic," Scar said.
"What you trying to do, stand there and upset all the little
boys, put grown-up ideas in their little childish minds?"
"Get in," Jake said.
"I_"
"Get in."


[55
"Not in back, up front. I ain't your ole man," Scar said.
"Thank God for that," Armenta said, looking at Kenny
and winking.
A crowd was milling around a group of fellows on the
corner. The Barracudas had found someone they didn't
like.
"Those Cootas are awful," Kenny said.
"They think they are," Scar said.
"Ho, man, don't go another further," Spider yelled. He
erupted out of the milling throng on the corner and ran
over to the car. He got in the back with Scar and Kenny.
"Hi, Kenny."
"Hi, Bert." Kenny didn't seem to like to use nicknames.
"Man, the Cootas tangled with one of the Counts. They're
still working him over."
"Get stomped?"
"Yeh."
"Tough," Jake said.
"They know who to mess with," Spider said. "Don't see
'em ganging no T's."
"They're in for a hell of lot of trouble handling the
Counts," Jake said.
Jake dropped Spider off first since he lived only six blocks
south of the school. Kenny lived over on Bell Avenue in
the same district as Maxine. He dropped Scar off with her.
Kenny lived in one of those tenement houses. There were
a bunch of kids milling over the decaying wooden steps.
Some were shooting marbles in the front yard, playing big
ring. "Hi, Sis," one of the little grubby-faced, pigtailed
girls said. "Marvin, Willa, Sis's home."
"Whose' that car?"
"Don't know, sure is fine." The kids ran up to the car,
putting dirty fingerprints everywhere they touched.
"Stop all that noise," Kenny said. "And you Billy and


56]
Thomas, why don't you stay at home sometime?" she said
angrily. "Mess up your own yard."
"Mama's working late tonight," Willa said. "Who's that?"
she said, looking at Scar and noticing his checkered sport
coat and outer-seamed trousers. "Your ole man, he's sharp."
"See you," Jake said.
"Yeh, take it slow." That was Scar.
Jake made the long drive over to the other side of town
where Armenta lived.
"Bye, Jake, thanks," Armenta said, running up the steps
and into the house before Jake had a chance to say anything
without hollering at her and seeming foolish. Jake drove
away, trying to feel gay, don't-give-a-damn. The feeling
wouldn't come. Four p.m. on a sunny afternoon.
That night Jake got rid of one hundred dollars of junk
at the Paradise. He went up on the dance stand and re-
quested a favorite number. He told the players where to
pick up the junk; he was told where to pick up the money.
That was the way it went. Nobody ever welched, nobody.
16
Friday night Jake stopped running from Maxine; he knew
what he was going to do. As always Maxine was looking
good. She had on a fashionable, chic dress that gathered
tightly at the waist and billowed out from her hips, a
swinging circle of skirt framing her well-developed dancer's
legs. Maxine was tall for a girl, but she wasn't thin. Her
nickname, Slim, came from the litheness, the grace of body
and limb that was always present in her movements. He


[57
got out and opened the door for her. She kissed him lightly
on the cheek.
"Good thing you did that before I started driving," Jake
said.
"Why?" Maxine said as he got under the steering wheel.
"Would have raised my blood pressure so much I wouldn't
have been able to control this thing," Jake said.
Maxine laughed a hollow laugh. Both of them were play-
ing with each other, and both knew it.
After the movie they went across the street to the Paradise.
The pretense that everything's the same, the warding off of
the inevitable with small talk.
"Isn't Gregory Peck the sweetest hunk of man? He really
sends me."
"For some strange reason he don't move me, but that
Jones girl, whoof. Never seen such a terrible cutta in all
my life. Did you see how she was busting out of those over-
alls—"
"Jake." She hit him playfully.
"She looks almost as good as you —" The guilty pause.
"You're a heel."
"And —"
"I like you," she said. They sat at the bar sipping scotch
and water. Off in the back the band blew loud and fast on
the raised stage. Fatigued musicians exhibited their wares.
"I like you more than like you," she admitted.
He told Maxine good night at her door. He got rid of
$100 worth of junk. He got his own kicks on the hard, red
glare.


[59
pushed him into an air of indifference. Spider beamed at the
good fortune of getting Evelyn to go out. Kenny kept her
eyes on Scar.
Champagne bubbled on their table, scotch glowed. They
were successful businessmen. They drank only the best.
Drinks, jokes —
The floor shows came and went. Shake dancers, chorus
girls, vulgar, slapstick comedy, exhibitions of prowess from
members of the band. That was the way the night went,
and somewhere during that dizzy flow of activity Jake trans-
acted business.
"Look," Jake said, his head reeling to the buzz of alcohol.
"Can you do this?" He started clapping his hands to the
bongo beat. He brought his hands together once on a
beat, then two times to a beat, then three, then he missed
the beat altogether his hands fanning rapidly by each other
without touching. He held up a certain number of fingers
indicating how many times to clap on a beat; he made a
zero with his thumb and index finger when they weren't
supposed to clap at all. Then he made it more complicated
by missing a certain number of beats instead of simply clap-
ping one beat and missing the next. The fingers on his other
hand indicated which beat to clap on. Heads turned from
the direction of the band to focus on their rocking table.
A few people joined in, the rhythm became jumbled as the
crowd tried to catch the beat. The whole place started rock-
ing, the rhythm carrying up to the band members who
joined in clapping their hands with the crowd. They had
a rocking good time to the tricky rhythm of the handclaps.
The band got carried away and gave an impromptu floor
show. They jammed for twenty minutes, hot wild notes of
screaming dissonance, slow, sweet, tricky counterpoint fol-
lowing a basic pattern of rhythm and melody. The band


60]
loved itself. The crowd loved the band. They got what
they had come to see — the night wore on, the band screamed
the night away.
18
Five o'clock in the morning, the sun throwing a feeble ray
into the blacked-out sky. The milkman and his bottles, the
cabbie on his last early morning hustle, the ragman driving
his lonely, bony old horse and wagon down the alleyways,
punching at the refuse spilling from the overstuffed ash-
pits. The swing shifter going home, the early morning crew
on the way to work A few slow-moving buses, the streetcar
reeling on its early morning route. After hours cubby holes
give up their load; the policeman, shivering in the early
morning mist, curses silently, walks his deserted beat. The
twenty-four hour restaurant, where the waitress sleeps, her
scarred shoes listing on the floor, her run-filled stockings
pulled under her as she curls in the booth. The old man
drinking coffee at the counter, while the jukebox starves
for nickels. The paperboy wiping the dripple from his nose
with the back of his hand, the wheels of his bicycle singing
on the pavement wet with dew. The dull thump as the
paper hits its mark on the lawn or porch in the still air.
The light in the kitchen, the strong aroma of percolating
coffee. The first yawn and the stifled impulse to fall back
in bed. Somewhere strong and shrill, in a back-yard pen, a
rooster crows. Five o'clock in the morning, a new day.
"I had a good time," Maxine said. "Come on in."
Jake went in; the protest died in his throat. In the dark


[61
and not wanting to be there, and wanting to be there all at
the same time, and unable to stop it. The rustling whisper
of garments, intertwining limbs, and the betraying squeak
of the bed, and giving up at last and being lost and tossed
about on love-splattered timelessness, on a rocket ship, on
a trip to the moon.
19
"What's your mother going to say when you come in this
late at night?" Scar asked Kenny. "Or should I say early in
the morning?"
"How late is it?" Kenny wanted to know.
"Quarter to six."
"I thought it was just a little after four."
"It was when we left the club. We stayed at Bill's a long
time," Scar said.
"He has some good barbecue."
"We've been talking out here almost an hour," Scar said.
"That was some of the best barbecue I ever had in my
life."
"I should have brought you home a lot sooner," Scar said.
"I had the best time I ever had in my life," Kenny said.
"Kenny."
But Kenny was feeling the effects of the champagne and
intent on following her own line of conversation. "You
haven't even kissed me," she said.
He kissed her. "Oh, I wish we could go somewhere," she
said.
"Tomorrow."


62]
"Tomorrow I might not feel like this."
"You will. Don't you think you better go inside?"
"Mama will kill me," Kenny suddenly realized.
"It's not that serious."
"You don't know Mama. Let's try the back door," Kenny
said. "Maybe I can sneak in that way."
They went around the back, trying not to make any noise
in the trash-laden gangway, dank and peppery with urine.
"Mama works hard for us kids. She says we better not give
her no trouble. She says she ain't going to put up with it,
and she won't. I know Mama."
"How many of you is there?" Scar said.
"Ten."
"Ten!"
"Shush, you'll wake up Mama. It's just four of us here.
The rest are married, or in the Army. Two of my brothers
got killed in World War Two."
"Tough."
"The insurance money helped a lot. Sometimes my broth-
ers and sisters send money home. Everybody but Arthur.
Mama put him out. We ain't heard from him since," Kenny
said.
"Think you can make it in all right?" Scar said, finding
the back door unlocked.
"If I don't, you'll hear me holler. You take off and run
like hell," Kenny giggled. "Good night —" He cut her
off with a kiss. She waved at him, tiptoeing up the steps
with her shoes in her hand.
Man, you're hell, Scar told himself. Who's the babe you
can't make? They don't exist. Satisfaction wouldn't come.
It had gotten so that now a guy couldn't even joke about it.
Who's the babe you can't make? They don't exist. Too
bad no one ever told that to Maxine.


[63
Afterwards Jake could never get it straight in his mind
how he finally broke with Maxine. He couldn't actually
say that he told her, or that she realized it was over and
saved him the trouble. It did seem to him she did most of
the talking. He remembered she took it good-naturedly.
She was cool, she didn't seem particularly bothered. Good
ole Slim, she was dependable. She was realistic about the
whole thing. Nothing lasted. Hell, everybody knew that.
He was glad Slim took it the way she had. He liked her for
that.
Over at Armenta's, when she opened the door and looked
questioningly at him standing there, he found himself unable
to say anything. He must have stood there a few minutes
without moving before realizing she had invited him in.
In the front room he sat on the sofa still not saying anything.
Armenta asked him if he wanted to hear some records. He
nodded. Armenta had nothing to say. Jake felt foolish. In
those moments he actually hated Armenta, because he
thought she was ridiculing him and silently laughing at his
uneasiness. So they sat listening to the records in silence. Fi-
nally, Jake decided to hell with it. He wasn't going to let no
babe get away with treating him like dirt. He picked up
his hat, stood up stiffly and said he would see her later.
"I don't want to see you," Armenta said. She followed
him to the door.
Jake was bewildered, but he wasn't going to let her know
it. He wasn't going to do anything else to give her a chance
to laugh at, but on the threshold of the door, instead of
walking coolly out without looking back, he found him-
self in the ridiculous position of hesitating. He would have
felt a masochistic delight if she had shoved the door against
his back and pushed him off the threshold. Why should
he be acting so silly around this broad anyway? She didn't


64]
care nothing about him. He stepped onto the porch still
hesitating. When the door did not slam shut, he turned
around to see her standing at the door looking at him. He
would have said her face held no expression because he
could not think of any expression to describe what he saw
there. "Good night," he said.
"Good night."
"I just dropped by —" He paused. "I just wanted to tell
you me and Maxine broke up."
Armenta said nothing, but Jake was sure she was silently
laughing again. He felt like watching his shoes drag down
the steps looking through hunched shoulders. "I guess I
had you tagged wrong, kid," he said indifferently. "Never
let it be said Jake Adams ever insisted on coming some
place where he wasn't wanted. Later." He turned swiftly
and walked down the steps with his shoulders squared. He
had to get away from there; he had made enough of a fool
of himself already.
What was it Armenta felt watching Jake going down the
steps? Whatever it was, it wasn't pity. No one could ever
pity Jake, she thought. He seemed like a little boy, almost.
Armenta had never seen Jake like that before. She could
never imagine Jake as a little boy. As conceited, cold, even
brutal at times, she could imagine him. But she had always
interpreted this as a defense of his to prove how tough he
was, to hide the person he was underneath. The constant
display of arrogance and indifference in Jake had always fas-
cinated her, but he tried so hard to show everyone he was a
man, especially since he had started getting money and dress-
ing nice (he had been so shabby in grade school), that he was
childish about it at times. But she had never thought of Jake
before as a little boy, not even in grade school. She could not
understand how that could be, because she had always, ever


[65
since she first met Jake, wanted to mother him and make him
act nice. He was so bad, he was the baddest thing in the
world. "Jake." He turned at the bottom of the steps. "I
don't mind you dropping by when you're in the neighbor-
hood. If you want to," she added coquettishly.
Jake turned back around, walked out into the street and
unlocked his car door. He drove away without looking back.
"That babe don't jive," he told Scar at Booker's.
"How you figure?"
"She's playing with me."
"Or trying to keep you from playing with her."
"You know me."
"And so does she."
"She don't have eyes for me," Jake said.
"She's got eyes."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeh, and I mean what I know. That babe goes for you,
and you're goofed behind her. So quit trying to hide it from
her and you'll get along fine."
"Up yours," Jake said.
"She's yours."
Monk came by. He had the same deal to offer. The night
wore away rubbing against the stubborn light of dawn.
20
May came, frustrated flowers silently bombarded their way
up through the earth. Green vegetation returned to the
threadbare countryside. On the trees, green skin stretched
itself around bony limbs. The faithful starlings now were


66]
joined again by the wanderlust robin, the saucy bluejay, the
scarlet cardinal. Their colors dazzled in the sunlight. The
Mad Platter show exhibited the new turnover of records to
the teen-age listeners. There was a thing called "East of
Suez" by Charlie Ventura. The Chicken Shack had an un-
known, George Shearing, occupying space on the jukebox.
His "East of the Sun," "Continental," "September in the
Rain," established him a following among the guys in the
know. The kids played hide-and-go-seek when night ap-
proached. At night army blankets crowded the park. The
winos switched from muscatel to mulberry. The Barracudas
got bolder. Emma Culpard, the thirteen-year-old girl who
lived down the street from Jake, bore evidence of conception.
Gussy, her little brother, was constantly reminded of this by
the snickering street. Wino Jepe went to jail on a morals
charge. Pop Garveli wore his straw hat. Spider, Scar, and
Jake had another good night at Zodie's. A rookie policeman
was reassigned to the county after trying to hang a charge of
narcotics possession on some name performers at the Para-
dise. Spring was back in all its glory.
Over on Bell Avenue, Scar and Kenny sat on the wooden
steps of the front porch. People were crowding out of the
tenements all along the block, boys and girls strolling along
the streets and gangways. The tamale man, with his steam
wagon loaded with pigs' knuckles, sausages, pigs' feet, and
tamales, held fast to his station on the corner. His apron was
crusty with mustard. Bubbles of perspiration popped from
his face. His tired feet ached in worn-out shoes. The shop-
worn smile with the crooked, remnant teeth leered hopefully
in the night. The steam whistle shrilled erratically, wooing
the roustabouts to the tamale man's wares. Boys gathered
around the lamppost on the corner, discussing girls they had
known, girls real and imaginary. Since the girls were dis-


[67
cussed so vividly and exactly, every account was taken as
factual. The coalshed was a rendezvous for teen-age love; in
the alleys they gambled. Wine and pod stimulated their
blood. Soon they would roam around looking for trouble
and if unable to find it would fight among themselves.
"Mama will be coming home soon," Kenny told Scar.
"She cuts some mean hours."
"Only eight, except when the hotel has a late party or
something, then she has to stay late. You know dishwashers
have to stay later than anyone else."
"Yeh, and you always have to be dishwashers."
"Huh?"
"Nothing," Scar said. "You know, Kenny, it's hard to get
a good job, 'specially if you don't have a good education."
"Well, Mama never went past the fifth grade, but she's
smart. She's self-educated. She's awful smart when it comes
to life, though she don't know much about books, and stuff
like that."
"Yeh," Scar said, knowing it was hopeless to get Kenny to
see what he was talking about. "What are you going to do
after graduation?"
"I don't know," Kenny said. "Civil Service or something,
I guess."
"How you figure?"
"Lots of colored girls work for the government. Take
Max —"
"Maxine's smart. She graduated with a 91.8 average in
high school," Scar said. "Right behind me."
"So what?"
"You have to pass a test to get those jobs," Scar said.
"They're good jobs," Kenny said.
"A lot of people think so."
"I suppose you think you can do better?"


68]
"I might one of these days."
"You think you're so smart, Alonzo Carroway."
"I don't think you're smart enough to get a job in Civil
Service."
"Oh no? Well, just what do you think I'm smart enough
to do?"
"Wash dishes in somebody's kitchen."
Kenny looked at Scar, that puzzled expression crossed her
face again.
"Don't let me get you down, kid," Scar said.
"That's all you ever want to do," Kenny said. "Take me
somewhere and get me down."
Scar was surprised. He had never suspected Kenny of
being capable of coming up with a comment like that.
"Here comes Mama," Kenny said.
Mrs. Waston came up the steps in the tired shuffle of
people who work for long stretches of time standing on their
feet. Streaks of gray criss-crossed her woolly hair. She was a
large and muscular woman, stretched out of shape by too
many tiring hours of hard work, and the pull of too many
children conceived too fast. Her stockings were a highway of
runs. How many husbands have you had, Mrs. Waston?
How many did you marry?
"Hi kids," Mrs. Waston said. "I sure is tired. Lord knows
I is." She rubbed a plump hand across her aching back.
"Never seen folks could make such a mess as them high-
polluting white folks. Don't you kids stay out here all night,"
she said going into the house. "Don't you go sitting out there
hugging and kissing," she said laughing. "If ya'll got to get
all hot and bothered, come on inside where ain't nobody
goin* pay you no mind."


21
Most nights Jake spent over at Armenta's. Jake felt that
Mr. Arnez did not like him and told Armenta about it.
Armenta told Jake not to worry about it. Armenta never
allowed herself to look realistically at her father's attitude
concerning her and Jake. She was afraid to. Such was not
the case with Mrs. Arnez. She always took her husband
quite seriously. Her husband was a man who held an atti-
tude on everything and his attitudes seldom changed. Mrs.
Arnez had learned, through long experience, the only way
she could change his attitude was to belittle or doubt the
seriousness of whatever her husband was set against.
The night Jake took Armenta to the Drive-in, Mr. Arnez
told his wife he didn't like it.
"I think he's a nice boy," Mrs. Arnez said.
"That eighteen-year-old mystery man? She won't tell me a
thing about him. Acts all hurt when I mention a simple ques-
tion like who his folks are, where he works, and things like
that."
"She doesn't want you to pry," Mrs. Arnez said.
"Pry! A man has a right to know who his daughter is
spending her time with, and I tell you right now, there's
something wrong with that boy."
"Oh, Henry, you can get so upset over nothing."
"That girl always did have poor taste when it came to
boys."
"My parents said the same thing about me."
"Take that Rudolph fella. A knuckle-headed athlete. Now
what did she see in him?"
"I heard he was a pretty smart boy, Henry. He's going to
college."
"On an athletic scholarship."


[71
"It's still the same old story," Jake said, thinking out loud.
"What?" Armenta wanted to know.
"Just thinking of a song, remember the movie Casablanca?"
"Sure, Tony Martin."
"I preferred Humphrey Bogart."
"You would. What's the matter?" Armenta said, noticing
Jake's uneasiness.
"Nothing."
"You look strange."
"Do I?"
"I said you did."
"Well, I ain't funny," Jake said.
"You aren't?" She was looking him straight in the eye. He
couldn't tell whether it was a challenge or mockery smiling
under the long silky lashes. His hands became bold. She
looked at him with the look a mother reserves for the favor-
ite naughty boy. The look infuriated him and he kissed her
more in anger than anything else. She trembled against him
and the roof of his mouth was on fire again. The eyes, that
he had sworn were busy mocking him, were tightly closed
when he pushed her down on the front seat of the car. She
murmured "Stop," weakly, but her legs responded to the
command of his body. Then her rapid breathing gave way
to a moan.
Afterwards she looked at him with that look in her eyes.
"Let me up, Jake," she said matter-of-factly. She acted as if
she was going to sit over in the corner of the car away from
him, but he grabbed her and held her close with her head
resting on his chest under his chin.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said awkwardly.
She smiled weakly. He could feel the blush burn her
body. "I did it once before," she said.
"Why?"


72]
"Out of curiosity."
"Curiosity get the better of you now?"
"None of your business." She slapped him playfully.
"What are you thinking?" she said uneasily.
"I'm crazy about you," Jake said. "I've never known any-
body like you before. I didn't know it was possible for
anybody to move me like you do."
"You ever try Duz?" Armenta said. "Duz does everything."
"Armenta." He kissed that look from her eyes.
"You don't have to lay it on so thick," she said. "You got
what you wanted, didn't you?"
"Why in the hell you go out with me if you don't like me?"
Jake said.
"Who said anything like that?" Armenta said surprised.
"Well, you act like it. Everything I say, you make some-
thing funny out of it."
"You think I — I would — if I didn't like you?"
"Well, you did," Jake said angrily.
"Why you — you —" She looked warm enough to blow
smoke signals. They suddenly burst out laughing.
"Why do we always fight?" Jake said pulling her close to
him again.
"You're so bad," Armenta said. "You're the most impos-
sible thing in the world. Do you really like me?" she said
glancing at him through the corner of her eyes.
"From your navel to your knees," Jake said. He grabbed
her wrists before she could slap him and kissed her until she
stopped struggling.
"Oh, you," she said.
"And your legs, and your ankles, and your feet, and your
toes, and your breasts, and your arms, and your shoulders,
and your neck, and your chin, and your mouth, and your
stuck-up nose, and your eyes, and your hair, and you and
you and you," Jake whispered in her ear.


[73
"Jake Adams, you're so silly," she said smiling. "What
time is it?"
"Five after twelve."
"Take me home. You know I promised Mother to be
home by twelve," she managed to blurt out while they tussled
and fondled each other.
23
One week later, at the Paradise where he had gone on
business matters, Jake ran into Maxine sitting at the bar.
She was between two men. It was obvious what they were
trying to do. Jake recognized one of the guys. His name was
Benbow. He had a reputation as a lady killer. The men were
buying Maxine scotch on rocks. Maxine was trying to keep
that sexy look in her eyes, but the whisky kept pulling them
out of focus. She wore a black sophisticated dress that hugged
a grown-up frame. Light, sophisticated laughter spilled from
lips pulled tense by a mocking smile. Whisky was slowly
stripping away sophistication. Jake walked over to the bar
and touched Maxine on the arm. "Hi, Slim, what you trying
to prove?"
"Jake! Hello, heel," she said.
"Who's your friend?" the guy on the right wanted to know.
"This is Jake," Maxine said in a confidential tone. "Jake,
this —" she paused. "What did you say your name was?"
Maxine giggled to cover her embarrassment.
"Eddie."
"That's right, Eddie." She tapped Eddie lightly on the
shoulder, and turned back to Jake. "Benbow, this is —"
"I know him," Benbow said.


74]
"Oh!" Maxine looked amused.
"How you been, Jake?" Benbow said.
"Everything's crazy," Jake said.
"I've been having a wonderful time," Maxine told Jake.
"There must be a million bars in this town. They've got
more bars in this town than I thought they had in the whole
world." She gulped down her drink. "Whoops," she said
straightening out her legs and wiggling her toes through her
open-toed shoes. She giggled again. Somehow she could not
stop giggling. "Doesn't even burn going down. That's funny,
isn't it? Why doesn't it burn going down any more, Jake?
Remember how you used to always tease me about making
faces when I drank? I don't any more. Watch, I'll show you.
Charlie, bring me another drink. Bring Jake one too. Ben-
bow and Eddie don't mind, do you?" she said, looking at
them.
Benbow and Eddie nodded.
"I don't want one, and you don't need one," Jake said.
"What's the matter, heel?" Maxine said. "You never used
to try to keep me from drinking."
"I never used to have to."
"Tsk, tsk," Maxine said. "Maxine, you're a very naughty
girl. The heel won't like you if you drink. Why do I always
have to do what you want to do? Why can't I ever do what I
want to do?" Maxine said. She was crying and she knew she
mustn't cry, not ever, especially in front of Jake.
"Say, is this cat bothering you?" Eddie said.
"Be cool," Jake said quietly.
"I'll —"
"Try it," Jake said matter-of-factly.
"Let's everybody be friends," Maxine said smiling, dab-
bing at her eyes with an inadequate feminine handkerchief.
"Come on, Slim," Jake said. "I'm taking you home." He


[75
lifted her off the stool by the shoulders. He was disgusted.
He thought Maxine knew better.
Eddie started to get up, but Benbow restrained him by
placing a slim hand on his shoulder. "Who in hell does that
guy think he is?" Eddie said.
"Forget it," Benbow said, raising a glass of scotch to his
lips and sipping the drink calmly.
"But I spent four bucks on that broad!"
Benbow looked at Eddie disgustedly. He adjusted his
blond straw hat with the brown band to the proper angle
over his slender face. "That's the way it goes," Benbow said.
He wound the stem of his expensive Benrus Citation and
rubbed the heavy gold band of the watch on his dark, light-
weight suitcoat sleeve. He looked at himself critically in the
mirror over the bar, and adjusted the dark brown tie. He
noticed his fingernails were a little bit shabby. He reminded
himself to stop by the manicurist tomorrow.
Outside, Maxine was giggling again. "Benbow invited me
to a party in his rathskeller. He's got a new Cadillac," she
said. "Better than your ole Dynaflow."
"Man, dig the switch on the bitch," a guy said to a fellow
lounger on the corner.
"You can do better than that, Slim," Jake said, irritated
by the way Maxine was weaving along in her highheel shoes.
"Why don't you leave if you don't like the way I'm walk-
ing?"
"If I wasn't a fool, I would."
Maxine looked at Jake. "I don't think you're a fool," she
said softly. She pressed his arm tightly with her hand.
He intended to leave Maxine at her door, but he didn't.
Maxine talked in circles like an intoxicated person, and yet
Jake knew she wasn't drunk. "Stay with me, just for a little
while," she told Jake. She made him sit down on the bed and


76]
cuddled in his lap with her face against his shoulders. She
told him a lot of things. She told him she didn't want to be
silly, and act like a little girl. She told him her father was
dead and she had no one to turn to. She said she was afraid
and ashamed of being scared of life, that she had tried to
learn to be like he told her, but she just wasn't as tough as
he was. "I still like you, Jake," she admitted in a shaky voice.
"Even though — everything is through between us."
Why had she looked at him then? Why couldn't she keep
her face against his shoulder and not look at him like that?
He thought he felt every muscle in her body vibrate as she
breathed. She squirmed in his lap, pressing her body against
him, while the tears began to sneak from the corners of her
eyes. She held him tighter, trying to control herself. Her
hands massaged his shoulders in a slow, circular motion. It
was like lighting a match to a gas-filled oven. He didn't even
feel her teeth on his neck. She was the eager one, she gave
him no time to prepare himself. His shoulders became
smeared with her tears.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Slim," Jake said.
She was incapable of speech. Her nails left their mark on
his shoulder. In the apartment across the hall the radio
blared through the thin walls of the apartment house . . .
/ wonder where our love has gone . . . the rich, baritone voice
of Arthur Prysock crooned.
24
The high school auditorium was crowded with relatives of
the graduating students. Jake and Scar sat in the upper bal-


[77
cony four rows from the back. From where they were the
stage appeared to be a mass of maroon robes with white stoles
and shades of brown blotches where heads were supposed to
be. The school band played movements from the New World
Symphony. The choir sang spirituals, the surprisingly ma-
ture deep bass voices forming a colorful background for the
high flying voices of the spirited sopranos. The bald head
of the principal caught the beams from the light and cast a
glittering reflection into the audience as his head bobbled up
and down in rhythm to the trite speech he made every Jan-
uary and every June. The bald head of the man seemed to
accentuate his personality. He had bowed and scraped for
years and probably rubbed all his hair off doing so. His life
was a direct opposite of the inspired message he delivered to
the students. His weak voice attested to the fact that that sort
of words had no business emerging from the lips of that sort
of man. The audience grinned at the principal. The grin
could mean anything.
Jake, who had been concentrating on trying to find Ar-
menta among the robes, finally gave it up as hopeless. Scar
had a more effective way of getting around listening to what
the principal was saying. He went to sleep. Finally, the
students strolled down the stage one at a time to get their
diplomas. The audience was asked not to clap as each pupil
received his diploma. The request was ignored. The popu-
larity and number of relatives present for each pupil was in-
dicated by the handclaps. Consequently, it was no surprise
to Jake or Scar that Armenta received very many and Kenny
few.
The audience dispersed to meet the graduates in the second-
floor hallway. "We'll see you at the car," Scar told Jake and
led Kenny away from the boisterous relatives swarming
around the students. No one was present to greet Kenny and


78]
Scar did not want to give her a chance to think about it. He
remembered how lonely Maxine had looked last year.
Mr. Arnez was almost cordial to Jake when he finally led
Armenta away from congratulating relatives.
"I hope they don't stay out too late," Mr. Arnez told his
wife.
"They won't," Mrs. Arnez said.
"Well, graduation takes care of that problem. When we
send Armenta off to college, we won't have to worry about
that bird following her up there. Once she's up there, with
the right kind of people, she'll soon forget about him," Mr.
Arnez said with satisfaction.
25
On the night of the high school prom Kenny and Armenta
wore off-the-shoulder evening gowns — Kenny's a smart imi-
tation of the high-priced model, Armenta's the real thing.
Jake and Scar stood correct and uncomfortable in tuxedo
shirts, the lightweight summer jacket and tux pants, the
highly polished black leather shoes.
Kenny was the talk of the prom. She had a white orchid
pinned above her breast on her blue gown. "Baby, are you
doing that to the dress, or is the dress doing that to you, or
are you doing it to each other?" Scar said.
"Oh shut up," Kenny said.
"You having a good time?"
"That's a silly question," Kenny said. Her eyes were alive
with excitement.
"People should have a good time some of the time," Scar
said.


[79
"Oh, Alonzo," Kenny said, caressing his neck with her
fingers. "You're so crazy."
"You're a good kid," Scar said. "I hope you'll be happy
some day."
"I'm happy now."
"Now is such a short time," Scar said. They danced to the
music of Percy White, a local band.
"Scar double-crossed me," Jake told Armenta as they sat
over in the corner watching Scar and Kenny dance.
Armenta smiled. "How?" she said.
"That white orchid. We agreed to get orchids, but Jim,
he must have paid a fortune for that white thing."
"This beat-up ole purple thing is good enough for me,"
Armenta said.
"They don't grow orchids good enough for you."
Armenta squeezed Jake's hand. She smiled. It was a sad
smile.
"What's wrong?" Jake said.
"Oh nothing," Armenta said. She squeezed his hand again.
"Come on, give," Jake said. "Don't this setup bugg you?"
"That's just it, it does. I only wish —"
"I thought you outgrew being bashful?"
"I was just thinking about Mary," Armenta said.
"Mary?"
"Uh-huh, Mary Ballard. She didn't graduate," Armenta
said puzzled.
"There's always somebody who don't make it," Jake said.
"But she was third-ranking student," Armenta said, shak-
ing her head. "We were good friends," Armenta said. "We
were supposed to go to college together."
Out on the dance floor Kenny pushed Scar away from her.
"Don't hold me so close," she said. "You'll mash the orchid."
"If I had known that damn thing was going to keep me


80]
away from you, I would never have bought it," Scar said.
"You shouldn't have," Kenny said smiling through misty
eyes.
Scar shrugged. Unlike Jake, he was always embarrassed
when someone thanked him for doing something and so he
shrugged it off as if it were nothing. He saw Pearl dance by
him and told her he would be over after the number was
over. On the next dance he left Kenny with Armenta and
Jake and danced with Pearl. Scar felt like a sponge. He felt
he had to absorb every minute with all of his friends here.
He wondered if they realized this would be the last time
many of them ever saw each other?
"She's still carrying the torch for you, Curt is, I mean,"
Pearl whispered in Scar's ear.
"They burn out," Scar said.
Scar saw some of his old teammates over in a corner and
joined them after leading Pearl from the floor.
"We sure missed you last year," Mike said.
"You did O.K.," Scar said.
"Yeh, but we didn't have nobody could pull 'em out of the
fire at the last minute like you used to."
"Well, I never saw anything like that Flakes-Hill combina-
tion," Scar said. "Remember that pass he threw in the last
minute of the Riddick game? I don't see how he even man-
aged to get the ball away, the way they were riding him
down, much less throw that thing so far. That ball must
have gone fifty yards, and did you see how Hill came out of
nowhere to take it? With one hand too. How he ever got
his hands on that ball I'll never know."
"He catches all of 'em with one hand," Flakes said.
"Only the hard ones," Hill said.
Armenta sat over in the corner sipping punch, watching
Jake and Kenny dance. Rudolph would have tried to dance
every dance with her. Rudolph was so dependable. Rudolph


[81
was dull. Jake had better remember who's his ole lady,
Armenta thought.
Burnell came over and asked Armenta to dance. They
glided over the floor. Burnell could really dance. "How you
and Jake making it?" Burnell wanted to know.
"We're living."
"If I had an ole lady as fine as you, I sure wouldn't be
dancing with no one else," Burnell said.
"What's so bad-looking about Beatrice? She's got all the
boys in school after her."
"She ain't as fine as you."
"You've sure got a line."
"I'm just talking," Burnell said.
"I know it. I know you're goofed behind Beatrice."
"I wish I was sure how she was about me."
"Are you kidding?"
"We're getting married," Burnell said uncertainly.
"Wonderful," Armenta said meaning it. "I'm glad to hear
it."
"I don't know how it's going to work out, I'm going into
the Air Force."
"It'll work out," Armenta said. "'Cause you want it to."
"I wish I was as sure about it as you are," Bumell said.
After the dance Armenta told Jake about Burnell and
Beatrice.
"Proves my theory that women are dangerous," Jake said.
"He's going into the Air Force," Armenta said.
"Tough," Jake said raising an eyebrow.
"What's wrong with that?"
"They always told me absence makes the heart grow fonder
— of somebody else," Jake added.
"Jake," Armenta said. "Don't you believe a girl can be
true?"
"Women or men either," Jake said shaking his head.


82]
"Jake," Armenta said pouting.
"I only believe one thing."
"What?"
"People will fugg up."
"You believe I would do you like that?" Disbelief lowered
Armenta's voice below its normal deep range.
"I wish I could believe otherwise."
"Well, I wouldn't."
"I hope I never have to find out."
"I wouldn't," Armenta said.
"It's easy to say."
Over in the rest room the girls stood around and talked.
"Might have known Armenta Arnez come in trying to
show off," one of the girls said.
"Yeh and Kenny's getting just like her since they started
running together."
"Who ever heard of anybody wearing a white orchid to a
high school prom?"
"Honey, you're just jealous 'cause your ole man didn't get
you one."
"Well, those look like plain ole dollar-and-a-half carnations
you're wearing, baby."
"Ain't it the truth. Just like yours, honey, and I sure wish
William would have brought me one of those fragile little
expensive white things."
"Scar always has been a show-off anyway. You have to
expect things like that from him."
"You're probably stuck on Scar yourself. What you trying
to prove anyway?"
"I ain't trying to prove nothing. I just wish William was
a show-off like Scar."
"Wonder what he sees in ole black Kenny."
"Calm down, you high yellow bitch," Pearl said. "Kenny's


[83
one of the cutest chicks ever went to this school, and she's got
a fine shape too, honey, and she don't have to go downtown
and buy falsies like some people I know."
"Are you insinuating—"
"I ain't insinuating, I'm signifying. You can tell by the
feel, mine are real."
The air grew tense. "Oh, Kenny's O.K.," a girl said, "but
that Armenta —"
"What about her?" Curt said.
"I don't see what Jake sees in her."
"You ever compare legs?" Curt said.
"Or chests?" Pearl added.
"Well, they won't be together long."
"Naw, Jake don't spend too much time with no one girl,"
Geneva said.
"He sure is a fine-looking dark boy."
"I've seen 'em darker."
"I've seen 'em lighter."
"He's sure got some fine clothes."
"An' money."
"An' a Dynaflow —"
Jake was dancing with some other girl again. Armenta
sat in the corner talking to Gertrude, a skinny, freckled-faced
girl who graduated at the head of the class. "Girl, I don't
like to say this. I know I shouldn't —"
"Shouldn't what?" Armenta said. Jake had better come
on back here, she was thinking.
"Don't you know about Mary?"
"No."
"That was her baby they found in the toilet," Gertrude
said. "That's why she didn't graduate."
"Mary!" Armenta said.


[85
"I got a ship to Central State," Flakes was saying. "I'm
going to be the toughest little quarterback ever hit the place."
"You're the only braggart I know that's as good as he says
he is," Scar said.
"Then, he ain't a braggart. He's just stating the facts,"
William said.
"Where you going, Country?" Scar said.
"Xavier."
"That means you and Scott will be playing against each
other when Xavier and Southern tangle."
"Yeh."
... Hey little girl, I got eyes for you . ..
"Too bad all of you couldn't get ships to the same school,"
Scar said.
"Ain't it the truth."
.. . Hey little girl, what you gonna do . . .
"You ought to come on down to Central with me," Flakes
told Scar. "Nothing to keep you from going to school now."
"I might," Scar lied. "I'm going one of these days," he
added almost believing it.
. . . Hey little girl, ain't you mighty fine . . .
"Don't wait too late," Flakes said.
.. . Hey little girl, ain't you mighty fine . ..
"I better go see 'bout my beast," Scar said, not wanting to
talk about it any longer.
"Bettern we all."
Scar sat in the corner waiting for Kenny to come off the
dance floor. Everything was gone now. The thrill of the
evening had been dispersed by the hard facts of reality. He
saw Jake and Armenta dancing cheek to cheek on the dance
floor. He's sure got it bad, Scar thought. Man, I need a lift.
.. . Hey little girl . . .


86]
Scar hoped he could make it through the dance without
getting sick, before his habit came down.
. . . Hey little girl, I'm in love with you . . .
And so went the night, the bittersweet prom, the last
gathering of the class.
. . . Hey little girl, I'm in love with you . . .
The parting of the ways —
... I'll do anything baby, anything in the world for you . . .
26
July was always hot. This July was no exception. The bars
and public establishments on Welch Street were air-condi-
tioned, except places like Molly's and Booker's Billiard Par-
lor, where you had to wait until two o'clock in the morning
for nature to cool things off. There were a lot of places like
that. The pace of the street was torrid as the weather. People
dressed for the weather; they did not slow down because of it.
People shuffled over the street like flying cards under the
erratic manipulations of a bungling dealer. Welch Street
sweltered.
The guys hung around Booker's in ten-dollar panamas, T
shirts, levi's and Stacey Adam shoes. The New York game
was rapidly drawing to a close. Scar had dampered enthu-
siasm in the game. The guys in the know had double-teamed
on Scar, telling each other the pills they held and setting each
other up by ducking up or making each other balls, but Scar
was still winning. The more pressure they put on him, the
better he shot. When they were unsuccessful in hiding him
behind some ball, so he couldn't hit the ball he was supposed


[87
to shoot at, which happened too often to suit them, Scar ran
the table. The guys got mad at each other. Scar knew what
they were doing and was amused. Scar was also ten dollars
ahead when Jake came in.
"What's happening, President?" Booker said, trying out
the new expression that had sprung up among the teen-agers.
"It's 'What's happening, Pres,'" Scotty said.
"Pres, President. What's the dif?" Booker said.
"Hey, man," Jake said, speaking to all of them. "What's
going?"
"Hear your ole lady's going to college," Booker told Jake.
"That's what they say."
"Man, ain't you worried 'bout them college cats cutting
in? With all that book learning, psychology and all that, and
you not there. Man, I'd be worried if I was you."
"You ain't me," Jake said.
"O.K., President, you cool," Booker said.
"Say man," Jake said to Scar. "Give the studs a break.
Come on and dig Tree with me at Zodie's. Cage is in town
and you know how they always jam when he comes in."
"They gonna curse each other out?"
"Don't they always?"
"That's some crazy happenings, man," Scar said, "but the
boys might want to try and break even."
"Are you kidding?" Scotty said. "With you out of the
game maybe some of us can make some bread."
Scar laughed. "Pure luck, man. Pure luck." Scar hung up
his stick. The game went on.
Out on the street the night sounds. The baby cries, the
kids chasing each other through the gangways. In the hall-
ways the fellows and the girls. The shrill ringing burglar
alarm at Judiheimer's pawn shop where the gaping hole in
the window protested of trespassing.


[89
the successful home-town boy. Tree's husky frame vibrated
like the sax, clear, sharp notes rang from the force of power-
ful lungs.
Small, smiling Cage stood in the door, his frail body
wrapped around an alto sax almost as big as he was. Cage
glittered with success. The gold tooth glittered from the side
of his mouth when he grinned. The gold rings on his fingers
glittered as he raised the shimmering golden saxophone up
to his mouth. Cage answered Tree with the sharp, flippant
tongue of the alto sax. The crowd roared, the session had
begun.
Da-da-da-da-da-da, Tree blew. Kill that mother fug—
Sce-de-da. Sce-de-da. Cage answered. Your mother, your
mother.
Applause thundered.
Da-de-da-de-sce-dop, Tree blew.
You're another one, the alto answered.
Trimmed your Fanny Brown.
Is that chick still in town? the alto inquired.
Tree blew hot, short notes daring Cage to come up on the
bandstand where Tree could show him up.
Cage answered the challenge. He applejacked through the
aisle leading up to the stand blowing wild insults as he went
along. Tree answered, screaming loudly on the tenor.
Applause ricocheted.
"Man, those studs are crazy."
"They're the coolest," Scar agreed.
See, ba-de-ba-sce-, be-sce-ba. Better get yourself a white girl,
Cage blew mounting the stand. Sce-ba, de-de-sce, de-ba, sce-de.
And leave these nigger women alone.
Sce-ba-bop-ba-bop-ba-ba, sce-ba-ba-bop-ba-ba. How you
gonna sound baby, how you gonna sound!
Blowing a pretty little white girl, is better than a saxo-
phone.


90]
See, da, ba, de, de, sce-d-da, de-de. He's funny that way,
he's funny that way, Tree blew.
The crowd laughed. "What did he say?" a woman wanted
to know. People looked at each other, swept along by the
rhythm of the music but not understanding the meaning.
People cajoled the guys in the know about what was hap-
pening. The guys in the know said Be cool, so they could
hear what was going on. The squares went along with the
guys in the know caught in the fervor of the music.
You can have your pretty ofay girl, with her pretty little
golden curled head. I'll take a flat-tongued klinker top,
'cause she knows what to do in bed. Cage almost dropped his
horn laughing.
See, da-d-be-bla-aa, Cage blew.
Sce-de-bop, sce-de-bop.
Tree and Cage got real nasty.
"When you going to quit it?" Scar asked Jake.
"Not until the session's over, man," Jake said.
"I mean the city, man."
"Hey, pick up on Tree," Jake said.
"I'm digging," Scar said. "You must have found a gold
mine, man, to leave the corners with all that bread you're
making."
"I'm going to hit on Monk for the same deal in J City,"
Jake said.
"You mean where Lincoln is?"
"Yeh."
"You mean you're going up there with Armenta, man?"
"If I can talk Monk into it."
Scar did not know what to say. Jake was goofed behind
Armenta, he had to be, but Jim — to go to college just to —
Maybe he was just jealous because he couldn't go. Still, how
in hell did Jake figure Monk would let him do something


[91
like that? "You scared somebody might make it to your ole
lady if you're not around?"
"You and Booker think just alike," Jake said. "I just
thought I might want to pick up on some college happenings,
that's all. A little education can come in handy they tell me."
Scar let the subject drop. This was the first time he had
ever known Jake to be a dreamer. Anybody with any sense
at all knew Monk wasn't going to let Jake go to J City, not
and keep working for him, he wasn't. Scar wondered what
Maxine was doing.
Jake had started to tell Scar the real reason he wanted to
go to J City, but Scar had guessed. In fact everybody had
guessed. He was glad he had not told Scar. Man, how they
would have laughed. They would laugh anyway. The hell
with them, let them laugh. How was he going to talk Monk
into it though? Man, there had to be some way, if he could
just figure it out. He wasn't going to give up pushing, that
was for sure, not for anything, not even for Armenta.
Tree blew an idea on the tenor, but before he could
finish, Cage finished it for him. Tree called Cage a son-of-a-
bitch. Cage blew an idea and Tree cut him off with one of his
own.
Applause mingled with the music.
27
Spider came out of the Brook Brothers Tailor Shop down
on Kinkel and Broadway. Brook Brothers was one of the
most exclusive tailoring shops downtown. He carried his
new suit in a box under his arm. His new gray Greenfield


92]
suedes were not quite comfortable to his feet yet. Man, I'm
really getting sharp, he told himself. He took the dice out of
his pocket, kissed them and returned them to the pocket.
He went across Broadway down to Third Street, turned left
at the corner, walked down to the end of the block, and
leaned on a paper stand.
"Paper, mister?"
"Never read the things."
"How you expect to keep up with what's going on in the
world mister?" the news hawk said.
"I know what's going on in my world." It was five o'clock.
Evelyn should be coming along any minute, Spider thought.
Employees filed out of Lane Bryant's like swiftly scurrying
ants. Spider watched five minutes before seeing Evelyn. She
saw him and started across the street against the traffic sign
and the traffic cop angrily waved her back to the sidewalk.
"We got jay-walker laws in this city," he told her, finally
motioning her to cross the street.
"Sorry," Evelyn said. "I don't know what I was thinking
about."
Evelyn smiled and linked her arm in Spider's.
"Work hard?"
"Not too hard."
"You ask the people about Kenny?"
"Uh-huh. I've been asking for weeks. I know she'd like
to get away from the sweaty ole laundry, but they're all filled
up right now."
"Let's go somewhere and peck."
"Mother's looking for me to eat at home," Evelyn said.
"Then sip on a milkshake or something while I peck,"
Spider said. "I don't like the food at home."
"Oh, Bert," Evelyn said exasperated as he guided her into
a Walgreen Drugstore. "I'm going to be late getting home,"
she said as they sat in a booth waiting to be served.


94]
"Man, that was good," Spider finally said. "I don't see
why you worry about bread all the time. It's easy to get if
you know what tree it grows on."
"You've got to stop gambling too; I can't marry a gambler."
"Oh, hell. O.K.," Spider said. "I'll look for a regular job
tomorrow." What the hell, he could get a part-time hustle
somewhere, tell her he had a regular job and she would
never know the dif. Only a crazy man would cut long hours
when he could bounce some bones across the table and know
he was going to come out on top. "Hey, I want to show you
my new front," Spider said. "I'll show it to you in the taxi."
28
Scar was over in Maxine's neighborhood, but in Kenny's
house. Kenny was not very talkative. She finally told Scar she
did not have a job.
"What happened to the one you had?" Scar said.
"I quit."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
"Why?"
"I couldn't stand all that steam! It made me sick," Kenny
said apologetically. "You mad at me?"
"Who, me? Naw. A laundry's a pretty hard place for a girl
to work."
"I'm glad you're not mad," Kenny said. "Mama had a fit.
She said I was no good. She said she spent eighteen years
raising me and buying me decent clothes to wear and soon
as I get up where I can help her out I'm too ornery to work."


[95
"Say, it's not that bad," Scar said, seeing the tears starting
to roll from Kenny's eyes.
"She's putting me out the house."
"The bitch."
"She's my mama."
"She's still a bitch."
"Alonzo, don't talk like that."
"Where you going to stay tonight?" Scar said.
"I don't know. I've got to be gone when Mama comes. I've
been praying you'd come by tonight," Kenny said. "Let me
stay with you till I find something."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"I won't be no trouble," Kenny said. "I won't eat much."
"You don't get what I mean. A girl can't afford to put
herself in that position."
"I gotta stay somewhere."
"Yeah, you gotta stay somewhere."
"Please!"
"I'd rather you wouldn't," Scar said.
Next day he went by for Kenny's clothes. Mrs. Waston
was there. She came to the door just as Scar was putting the
key into the lock. "I thought you would be at work," Scar
said.
"I just knowed you would. Living in sin with my daughter.
I spected as much first time I ever laid eyes on you. Oughta
put the law on you. You needs to be in jail. That's where you
both needs to be."
"Kenny needs to be at home."
"Don't you sass me in my house."
"I came for Kenny's clothes," Scar said.
"Give me the key you let yo self in here with."
"Not till I get Kenny's clothes."


96]
"Well! Of all the damndest nerve. Get out of my house."
"I want Kenny's clothes."
"I'll bring 'em to you," Mrs. Waston raged. "You just
get yq black ass out of my house!"
She brought Kenny's clothes to him all right. She threw
them all over him while he stood out on the porch. Neigh-
bors watched in idle curiosity.
"Hey, Jack," the cab driver, who was waiting for Scar,
said. "You sure got yourself in a hornet's nest, didn't you?"
"I'm getting my ole lady out of one," Scar said.
"I just don't know what my daughter is getting into,"
Mrs. Waston said, taking the key from Scar.
"You should have thought of that when you put Kenny
out," Scar said.
"Nigger, I'm tired of yo sass. Shut yo black mouth and
get away from my do." She slammed the door in Scar's face.
"Tell that no-good Kenny she ain't no daughter of mine no
mo," Mrs. Waston screamed through the window at Scar as
the cab pulled away. "And tell her not to come crying
around here when she gets all bigged from messing around
with you!" Mrs. Waston put a sweating, beefy palm on her
throbbing temple. "I raised a no-good bitch. My baby, my
baby," she sobbed.
Kenny wasn't there when Scar came back to the apartment
loaded down with her clothes. The bed, which they had
shared the night before, was neatly made. There was clean
linen on the bed, Scar noted, and the floors had been swept.
The dishes were gone from the sink. There were roses in
the vase on the coffee table in the front room by the daven-
port. The clothes he had worn yesterday were not hanging
on the nail outside the closet door where he had left them.
He opened the closet and found them hanging neatly with
the rest of his wardrobe. The three-room apartment was
looking nice. It reminded him of how it looked when he


[97
first moved in and had fixed it up. He had been surprised
to find such a nice-looking furnished apartment in that
section of town. He had loved the color scheme the first
time he saw it. A blue living room, with a gray davenport
and upholstered chair. A gray coffee table that matched the
lamp table which held a balloon-shaped blue lamp. He had
bought a small gray radio and set it on the table with the
lamp. The bedroom was pink with blond bedroom furni-
ture. The kitchen had gassed him too. The walls were ivory
down midway to the black paneled wood that met the ivory
halfway up the wall. The floors of the kitchen were inlaid
linoleum, in large black and white checks. The bathroom
followed the same color scheme of the kitchen, but what had
really knocked him out were the hardwood floors. They were
grimy and pocked with black marks when he first moved in,
so much so that he had not realized they were hardwood.
When he found out, he rented a sanding machine and got
them looking nice again. Now, once every week, he waxed
them. It was a crazy crib costing sixty-five a month, but to
him it was worth it. The apartment house he lived in was
behind a rundown shoeshine parlor. The apartment house
rose two stories above the shine parlor. The outside of the
house was ugly, blending with the other buildings. The
insides of the apartments were something entirely different.
It was hard to believe you could take a short walk, through
that foul gangway between the shoeshine parlor and the
tavern, walk up a few flights and run into something like
this.
Scar put his clothes in the front-room closet and hung
Kenny's clothes in the closet in the bedroom. She's a good
kid, Scar thought. I wonder where she is?
Kenny walked until her feet were sore. It seemed to her
that she tried every business downtown. Stores, factories,


98]
plants, everything. She stopped by the employment office
twice; once in the morning and later in the afternoon.
"The only thing we have open is for a dishwasher in the
Astoria Hotel," a Negro woman clerk told Kenny, with an
air of superiority, the second time when she came in.
"Don't you have anything like a stock girl, or drugstore
clerk? I have a friend that's stock girl at Lane Bryant's."
"We only have what I said we have," the clerk said.
"What about hospital work?"
"I told you what we have."
"I took the Civil Service test," Kenny said. "But I haven't
heard from them yet."
"They'll call you if you passed the test," the clerk said.
"But it's been over a month."
"Then you probably won't hear from them," the clerk
said with a knowing smirk.
When Kenny came back to the apartment she found Scar
lying on the davenport listening to the radio.
"Where you been, kid?" Scar said.
"Looking for a job."
"Any luck?"
"No. They offered me a job as dishwasher at the Astoria,"
Kenny said.
"That's no luck."
"What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"You look funny, your eyes look glassy," Kenny said.
"Just waking up from being sleepy," Scar said. "I'm
hungry."
"I'll fix supper," Kenny said. "What you want? You got
a whole lot of stuff back there."
"I don't care. Anything," Scar said.
After eating, Scar put on his panama. "I got to go," he
said.


[99
"Why?"
"Got to get some bread to pay for these groceries."
"You working?"
"I'm making a living."
"Doing what?"
"This and that."
"What is this and that?"
"A hustle here and there," Scar said shrugging.
"You're going to get in trouble with the law."
"Naw, not for doing this," Scar said.
"Maybe you ought to teach me how to hustle."
Scar smiled. "Uh-uh. You stay here. Try to find you a
job if you can."
29
"What's with this going to J City talk?" Monk said to
Jake, who was sitting beside him in the front seat of his 1948
Lincoln.
"I got my reasons," Jake said.
"You know what you're asking?"
"Yeh, Monk, I know what I'm asking."
"Who you know in J City?"
"Nobody. I ain't trying to cut out, Monk. You know
that."
"I don't know from nothing. That's what I'm trying to
get straight." Monk nipped the glowing cigarette butt out
of the car window and turned to face Jake. "Look, kid.
I've just about got things set up in town like I like it. Soon
as elections come along, I'll have everything clicking just
right. I got every district in the swing. I got a good man


100]
in each section, you follow me? I think I got a good man
in each section," Monk said, looking at Jake.
"You know I wouldn't go against you, Monk. I ain't
trying to cut out. Why should I? Ain't no other gig in town
I can make this kind of bread."
"Then why this J City talk?"
"It's hard to explain," Jake said. "I — I dunno —"
"You know? You really want to know something? I looked
around a long time before I found somebody in this section I
figured could push without goofing. I had to find somebody
who wasn't so old he'd figure he was a smart-assed punk that
could hold out on me. Then I had to find somebody that
was willing to take a chance and could keep his mouth shut
while he was doing it. That's a pretty rough deal finding
somebody like that, you know that? Besides that, this guy,
I had in mind had to be smooth, the kind everybody likes and
nobody asks questions about. He's got to be a pretty sharp
boy, you know? 'Cause if he ever got excited, just a little bit,
when the bims sorta happened to put on pressure, he was
going to screw up, and in this business you can't afford to
have no goof balls. Maybe I was wrong when I put my finger
on this guy for the job. How 'bout that, huh?"
"I ain't trying to get out, Monk. I just got business in
J City. What I thought you could do was let me push in J
City and bring that stud here."
"A switch?"
"Yeh."
"Why should I?" Monk said. "What's with you anyway?
In the first place you would hafta learn the ropes all over
again in J City, 'cause none of these towns are ever set up the
same way, and don't think they are. Then the guy I bring
in from J would have to learn your section. That's a lot of
trouble and risky. Don't seem very practical to me. How's
it sound to you, kid?"


[101
"O.K., all right, Monk, forget it," Jake said.
"Can't very well do that either. Would you forget it if
you were in my shoes?"
"I ain't in your shoes, Monk."
"Naw, that's right, you ain't. I think they're a long ways
too big for your feet, you know what I mean?"
"Damn, Monk, you think I — I ain't on the stuff, man,
I just peddle it"
"Then talk sense. Let's have it. What's eating you?"
"Monk, let me ask you this. The best guy for doing any-
thing is the guy who knows his business backwards and for-
wards and is happy doing it, right?"
"That's a real bright observation, kid."
"O.K., then, I ain't happy here. I got business in J City."
"What kind of business?"
"Nothing that's got anything to do with the org."
"Then I don't see hows I can let you go."
"Monk, have I ever crossed you? Haven't I always taken
care of my end of everything?"
"So far."
"Then you gotta do me this favor. You just got to, that's
all."
"Why?"
"It ain't — aw I just want to go to college, that's all."
"You what?"
"What's wrong with that? It won't hurt nothing, will it?"
"Naw, I don't see where it could. I just don't see your
point, that's all."
Jake sat silent for a long time knowing Monk was watching
him. "I got a girl going," he said.
"That's what's eating you?"
"It may not sound like much to you, Monk."
"You really go for the broad, huh?"
Jake shrugged. "Yeh, I go for her," he said.


102]
"What's going to happen when she finds out where you're
getting all those fancy clothes and pocket change?"
"Why should she find out?" Jake said.
"She's going to college, so she couldn't be lame. She's
going to wonder and she's going to start asking questions."
"She don't ask no questions."
"She will. When you start thinking about a broad like
that the next thing you know you're wanting to get married.
You think she's going to marry you knowing you're doing
something funny?"
"We ain't getting married," Jake said steadily.
"You'll get around to it."
"I ain't worried about it."
"You will, when you have to choose between her and the
organization if she ain't the kind of babe that won't ask
questions and go along with it, and most of 'em won't. Which
way you riding when it gets down to that, kid?" Monk was
staring at Jake hard. Jake lit a cigarette, getting his hands in
action so they wouldn't betray him.
"You're talking crazy, Monk. You're just making a whole
lot out of nothing," Jake said quietly.
"Look, kid. In this game you can't afford to like no dame,
not the kind you got anyway. That's one reason I got you
to push for me. You didn't let none of them broads get next
to you. Now, you're so goofed, you want to run to college
behind some dame. O.K.," Monk sighed. "Go on, chase the
skirt, I don't give a damn."
"You mean I can go, Monk?"
"Yeh, I guess. But get it straight. You're going on busi-
ness. I don't give a damn what you do in school, but don't
you goof on the org's business. If you do — if a guy can't
carry the ball, he's got to get off the team before he messes
the team up, you know that?"


[103
"Yeh, Monk. I know that," Jake said annoyed.
"O.K.," Monk snapped. "And you know what that means?"
Jake shifted in the seat. He looked at Monk. "Yeh, I
know what that means," he said.
"O.K.," Monk said, brushing his hand across Jake's hair.
"Go on with your skirt," he said smiling. "Now tell me some-
thing."
"Yeh, Monk."
Monk was still smiling. "When it gets down to choosing
between me and the broad, which way you going to ride?"
"It won't get down to that."
Monk's smile broadened. "Suppose it does," he said.
"I'm with you, Monk." The cigarette tasted queer in his
lips. "You know that."
"Yeh, sure," Monk said. He punched Jake playfully on
the shoulder. "I'll make arrangements."
Monk was the only person Jake knew who could talk to
him like that and get away with it. He liked Monk no mat-
ter what. Monk was like that.
Monk thought about it. He thought it over real careful
like. I'm with you, Monk, you know that. Yeh, sure. He
could bring in Joe. Joe was a bright boy. He could learn
the new setup fast and Jake wouldn't have any trouble work-
ing into the routine at J City. Still, it just wasn't smart. But
you had to keep the boys happy, didn't you? Jake was right
about the guy doing the best job being the one that was
happy doing it. It should work out. Yeh, sure. He knew
his men, didn't he? He knew every guy in his organization.
He knew 'em real good. He made it his business to. He
knew the colored boys, the Dagos, the Poles, the Mexes, he
knew 'em all. He knew. You were damn right he knew. He
had spent all his life around the political precincts running
the dirty jobs for the precinct bosses. He knew the city like


104]
he knew his own mother, and he knew J City, and Calls-
town where he also had an org going. His org was solid. He
had handpicked his men to peddle to the people they were
a part of. His men really knew who they were pushing to
because they pushed to members of their own race. He was
smart, there was no doubt about it. He had really been
smart to set it up like that. He had been real careful. Sure,
he could trust the boys. I'm with you, Monk, you know that.
He would be rich in five years. Just five more years was all
it would take. Then he would get out, go some place and
take it easy without any worries. He had that all figured out
too. Yeh. If Jake goofed? Naw, he could trust Jake. Jake
wouldn't run away from all that dough. Jake wasn't stupid.
Jake was smart. And the elections, hadn't he fixed the elec-
tions? Could they touch him after the elections came in?
Hell no, nobody could touch him, unless some joker — I'm
with you, Monk. He knew that. He damn sure better know it.
30
Scar did not go into Booker's much any more. It was getting
so he couldn't make any bread there. The night before last
was the first night in weeks he could get enough studs in the
game to make it worth while, and he had a bad night, of all
the times to have a bad night, but that's the fugging breaks.
He went down on Third Street, where the railroad tracks
ran across Welch Street. A few years ago it would have been
suicide to come in here without the rest of the T's. This was
where he had got cut in a wild running gang fight between
the T's and the Ratz. This was where Jake shot Bouie. Jake
had really been wild then.


[105
A wide, thick-lipped guy, resembling an icebox in height
and build, squinted under the unblocked hat resting on his
ears, straightened up and wiped his hands on his levi's and
brushed at the blue chalk dust sprinkled on his rust-colored
jacket.
"Well, I'll be damn," the guy said. "Hey, man, look who
just breezed in."
"Hey, Scar, where you been?" the guys said, crowding
around when he walked in the poolroom door.
"You know I live out west," Scar said. "I can't be associ-
ating with you 'cross-the-track bums." They laughed loud
and long at that. "Hey, Perk," Scar said, speaking to the
guy with the icebox build, "I hear you got respectable over
the last two years. Not even Pres of the Ratz any more."
"I don't fight no wars no more," Perk said, "if that's what
you mean."
"Neither do I," Scar said.
"I'm a pro now," Perk said. "I have my first fight next
week."
"No kidding?"
"He'll bowl 'em over," one of the guys said. "They ain't
never seen nothing like Perk."
"You can say that again," Scar said.
"Hey, remember the time we had that tough war when
the Ratz and the T's was both trying to take over the town?"
"Man, I ain't going to never forget that," Scar said.
"Looks like I kinda left my mark on you," a thin weasel-
faced guy said.
They felt each other out with laughter.
"Yeh, Frenchie, it's showing where I ain't never going
to forget it."
They laughed nervously. It grew quiet.
"Those were some hell-of-a days," Perk said.


106]
"Yeh," Scar drawled reminiscing. "Say, what happened
to Bouie?"
"Bouie's in the hospital with TB. That slug clipped off
half a lung," Perk said.
"Yeh?"
"Yeh."
"Tough," Scar said.
"Yeh, tough," Perk said.
"Man, we sure was a bunch of crazy studs in those days.
You know something? I'm glad we stopped," Frenchie said.
"Yeh," Scar said. They laughed good and loud.
"What brings you down, Scar?"
"Getting too good for those punks down on the other end
of town. Thought I'd come down and take some of you
punks' bread."
"You hear that," Perk said, pointing at Scar. "This punk
thinks he's a shark." The guys doubled up laughing.
"Dig, man. The cat thinks he can swing a cue across the
green."
"Sucker crying to be picked."
"What's your game?" Perk said.
"You name it."
"You're on."
They got a New York game going on the front table.
Eight players. Scar followed Perk. Frenchie followed Scar.
Perk won the first game, making his balls before the others
had a chance to shoot.
"You're pretty good," Scar said.
"Man, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till you see
Frenchie execute."
"Frenchie'll be lucky if he gets a chance to get a decent
shot," Scar said.
They laughed. Frenchie got two decent shots the whole


[107
time they played. They played fifteen games at two bits a
man. Scar won ten. It was a scramble among the others for
the other five. Frenchie did not win a game. Looks changed
from mockery to pure astonishment as Scar made the ball
do everything but talk. Perk would constantly draw the cue
ball behind other balls to keep Scar from a shot, only to see
Scar play a combination of rails and hit the ball and even
make a lot of those shots.
"I'm just warming up," Scar said.
"I'm just getting out," Perk said. "I know when I'm out-
classed."
"Me too," the guys agreed.
"He's just lucky," Frenchie said.
"You play him heads up then."
"Not now, some other time, I'm tired now, man."
"You do that," Scar said. He hung around another half
hour shooting the breeze.
31
The words of Kenny's mother came back often to haunt
Scar . . . Tell her not to come crying around here when she
gits all bigged from messing around with you. Though he
knew it was not in Kenny's best interests, he liked her staying
around him. It helped him to forget, and that was impor-
tant. He had to become adjusted to sleeping with someone.
He got used to it after awhile and it caused no discomforts.
It made them greedy for each other though.
"You're rough," she would say.
"Gentle as a lamb."


108]
"You hurt me."
"You seem to like to be hurt."
"Are you sorry I moved in with you?"
"Sometimes."
"When?"
"When you're not swarming all over me and I can think
straight."
"You're not human."
"What you mean?"
"You want to do it all the time."
"You're the one. You won't stay on your side of the bed,"
Scar said.
They laughed.
"Why do you play the radio all night?"
"So I can hear music when I sleep."
"You're crazy." They tussled with each other. "Why
don't you offer me one of your old cigarettes?" Kenny said,
watching Scar light up and blow smoke rings toward the
ceiling.
"You don't smoke."
"Teach me."
"You're the one who'll be choking," Scar said. He lit a
cigarette for Kenny and showed her how to inhale. She
tried it. She choked. "I warned you," Scar laughed.
That's the way it went. Sometimes Kenny would jump
out of bed at two in the morning. "I'm hungry," she would
say. She would pester Scar so much with questions about
what he wanted to eat that Scar would end up in the kitchen
with her. About that time "Birdland" would be coming in
very clear over the radio. Scar would want to go back to bed
with his sandwiches, but Kenny would not let him. Finally,
they would get back in bed and listen to the radio and talk
for hours. It was nights like these that led to Kenny feeling


[109
so sleepy in the morning she could not get up to go looking
for a job. There were a lot of nights like that.
Kenny looked though. She wore out her saddle oxfords
walking from place to place. She found a few things, dish-
washing jobs, but had made up her mind, she was not going
to take that. Scar bought her two pairs of strollers.
"Why'd you do that?" Kenny said.
"You can't be running around on highheel pumps all
day."
Scar floated from poolroom to poolroom looking for a
game. He did all right, and there were always the sticky
dice with Spider. Once he went back on Third Street and
saw Frenchie. They played nine ball for a dollar a game.
In an hour Scar had $20 of Frenchie's money in his pocket.
"You might as well admit it," Perk said. "He's too good
for you."
"Man, I dig," Frenchie said. Frenchie was sick. He had
worked all night long carrying a tray through the steaming
kitchen to the dining room at the Astoria for that $20.
"See you around," Scar said.
"Yeh."
"That lucky bastard. I should have killed him when I
had the chance," Frenchie said.
"You might not get no other chance," Perk said.
So went the summer.
32
The Marshall High football team practiced in the frosty
air that was nipping away at Indian summer, the scrubs of
three years ago this year's first string. The days were long,


[Ill
a guy gets carried away like that the next thing you know he's
getting married."
"I guess you're the voice of experience," Scar said.
"You just watch what I tell you," Booker said.
Guys started drifting in. The after-school crowd.
"Hey, Scar."
"What's to it, Scotty?"
"You know my story. Heard your boy went to college."
"Yen."
"What he want to go do that for?"
"He followed his ole lady up there," Booker said.
"Man, some guys'll do anything for trim. Hey Leo, how
'bout a nice sociable game of nine ball?" Scotty said.
"Suits me."
"I'm in," Butch said.
"I'll chalk a cue on the deal," Scar said.
"If you're in, I'm out," Leo said.
"Me too."
"See what I mean," Scar said winking at Booker.
Over on Peabody Avenue the kids started the football game
on the weed-filled lot next to the alley. Peabody was littered
with leaves and paper. All along the block people swept the
scurrying leaves into crumbling piles and burned them in the
street even though the city had an ordinance prohibiting it.
Peabody Avenue smelled of burning leaves and living. Down
in the grocery store Pop Garveli waited on his lone customer
with bodily movements as brisk as the gathering wind.
"Going to turn cold soon," Pop said. "How's Jake doing?"
"All right I reckon. I don't hear from him. He ain't
wrote."
"That's the way with youngsters," Pop said. "Glad to see
him go to school. He's a smart boy."


114]
The rain let up. Vapor like water floated slowly down to
earth like fine particles of snow. The autumn wind whipped
it along in short snappy breaths, stirring up the fallen leaves
lying in the gutters and on the yards, sweeping the leaves, the
trash, and the mist into a miniature tornado, leaves, trash and
rain falling from the main body of the scooped-up refuse like
a tail.
Down on the corner from the poolroom Red leaned against
the sleeping, deserted Paradise, his houndstooth coat hug-
ging his emaciated frame, the collar burrowing under his
neck, the blue suede unblocked hat pressing his ears. Red's
clinched eyes cried at the mist, the black, puffed bags under
them standing like muscles in his fleshless face. He couldn't
stop the shakes. Goddammit, there was only one way to stop
the shakes. He balled his hands tighter in his pockets against
the insistent pulsating pressure of his tortured body. He won-
dered how his legs managed to hold him up. All that he
owned, he wore on his back. The last suit pawned in
Judiheimer's. Walk across the street, right next to the
Circle Theater, and look into the pawnshop. Go back into
the long tomblike back room. There you would find Red,
hanging on the racks in suits, sport coats, shoes, pants; you
could even find him on a radio, and yes a wristwatch, and a
few rings. He was in Judie's locked up tight. He was hocked,
but good; he couldn't figure the formula for getting his soul
out of pawn. Float me on the clouds, man, with a mainline
kick. Red fingered the eighteen crisp one-dollar bills, the
guarantee of peace for another day. Why didn't he come on?
A city trash truck grunted down the alley behind Welch
Street, the back of the truck ringing to the clink of bottles
recently picked up from the rear of the Paradise. Two hun-
dred and thirty-five pounds, spread over a six-foot frame,
swung rusty containers of dripping, soggy trash, ashes, tin,


116]
into the trash can by the gate in the alley. The bag burst
and showered a mixture of paper, eggshells and coffee
grounds over the ashes in the can, some of the rubbish splash-
ing over and down the sides of the container.
"Trashwagon, Trashwagon, here comes ole Trashwagon,"
they chanted.
The huge man's face turned to fuchsia. He dropped the
basket of ashes he was lifting, and it rolled on its sides spew-
ing its contents along the brick alley in a circular trail. "Ah'll
learn ya," Clint yelled, charging down the alley. The kids
fled, terrified by the mountain of angry man with rage chew-
ing up his features.
"Mama," they yelled. Their raincoats, made shiny by the
drizzle, flapped heavily in the rain. "Mama —" As fast as
they could go they went, splashing down the muddy path
leading to the big frame house. A dog yelped hysterically and
was answered by other dogs all down the alley. The squatty,
bowlegged bulldog raced out to the back of the yard and tried
to get his huge mouth under a gap in the fence by Clint's leg.
The big guy stood there, his leg an inch from the bulldog's
face. He stood there shouting, cords standing out rigid in his
neck, strands of sandy hair, dangling from his hat, swinging
over his face.
"Ah'll learn ya, gowdamn niggers!" he said.
The frustrated bulldog snapped madly at the air, a nasty
growl vibrating from his throat.
"At the age they be to know no better."
"Ah'll learn ya, scrawning, stealing, stanking — " the bull-
dog managed to catch the end of one of Clint's pants cuffs.
"Get duh hell out duh way fo ah ram yo teeth dawn yo
throat!" Clint kicked sharply against the fence knocking the
bulldog from the cuff. The bulldog tried vainly to get
through the fence; his nasty growl rode the air.


[117
"He's crazy," Mac said from the cab of the truck, watching
Clint raging hoarsely with the mist rolling down his face.
"Ah'll learn ya, gowdammit. Just wait till elections. Wait
till ah'm on the force. Ah'll learn 'em."
The complaining truck groaned and began to shudder over
the bumpy alley, flanked on both sides by cans laden with
rubbish and the long rows of broken picket fences sagging as
if tired of trying to stand up. Leaves, heavy with cold water,
plastered the alley, shivered in the cold autumn wind.
"Joe," Red said, trying to keep his voice steady.
"You talking to me?"
"Yeh."
"How you know my name?"
"I know everybody that pushes," Red managed to say be-
fore the convulsions caught him. "I need a fix, man, b-bad,"
he stammered.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Joe said.
"Don't screw around, man. Can't you see I'm splitting my
wig?" Red grabbed Joe by the arm in desperation.
"I don't know you, baby," Joe said. "I don't even know
what you're talking about."
"I got bread, man, look!" Red brought the eighteen dol-
lars out of his pocket with his left hand. "You straight man,
just straighten me."
"I don't know you, baby," Joe said again, brushing Red's
hand away from his arm as if it were a dried up twig that had
fallen on him from a decaying tree. The convulsions caught
Red again. By the time he straightened up Joe was across
the street.
"Hey, Joe! Hey, wait!" Red knew he could not go back
to Ricky because he still owed him twelve dollars. He had to
have that fix.
The city trash truck groaned around the corner, bottles


118]
jingling. "Joe, Joel" Red dashed out into the street. The
truck groaned —
Red saw his fifteen-dollar blue suede hat go sailing down
the street; he caught one vivid flash of Fourteenth and Welch.
He never knew he left the ground.
"Goddamn!" Mac said.
"Ah tole that nigger tuh watch out!"
The three men in the back of the truck hurdled the sides.
The crowd was already gathering.
"Is he dead?"
"I dunno."
"Stand back," the tobacco-chewing Mac said. "Goddammit,
Clint, stand back!"
Down the block they poured out of Booker's Billiard Par-
lor, pool sticks still in their hands.
"Who is it?"
"Dunno, never seen him before."
"That guy knows," a dark, fat woman loaded down with
groceries said, pointing at Joe. "They was talking to each
other."
Joe looked at the crowd and cursed himself for coming
back to gape at the junkie lying in the street. What would
Monk say if —? Joe took off his hat and brushed the long
wavy hair back in place. Everyone was looking at him. "I
don't know who he is," Joe said, widening his eyes on his
thin, boyishly handsome face. "He tried to put the bum on
me for a quarter. That's all I know." The eyes of the crowd
darted quickly back to Red, lying in the street with his left
leg twisted under him, the right side of his body mangled and
pumping blood, some of the dollar bills still clutched in his
left hand. The crowd followed the trail of money lying in a
ragged path into the sewer among the twigs, leaves, and rub-
bish carried by the current in the gutter. "That's all I know,"


[119
Joe insisted. Jesus, he had to get out of here, if Monk ever
found out —
"For Christ sake, somebody call a ambulance," Mac said.
"I call one already," a short man in eyeglasses said. He
gasped when he saw Red. »
"You know the guy?" Mac said.
"Sure, I know him already."
"Who is he?" Mac said. "Stand back. Jesus, stand back
everybody."
"Hey! That's Ralph Ewing," Leo said, coming into the
crowd puffing, with a cue stick still in his hand.
"Sure is," Scotty said. "Man! He looks dead."
"He come to my shop fifteen minutes ago!"
"He sure looks dead," Scotty said, shaking his head.
The crowd looked at Mac.
"He came running out in the street when I turned the
corner," Mac said, spreading his hands helplessly. "He came
running out of nowhere."
"Ah tole him tuh watch out. Ah tole that nigger!" Clint
insisted.
"Say, man, you in the wrong neighborhood to be saying
that," Scotty said.
"Yeh, who you calling nigger?" Leo said.
"Stand back. You trying to kill him? Give him a chance
to breathe," Mac said desperately.
"Where you from, baby?" Leo said to Clint.
"That's Trashwagon," someone said. "One of them pecks
from down home."
The poolroom boys started closing in on Clint.
"Maybe we better send him back down home. He don't
like it up here," Scotty said softly, swaggering toward Clint
with the pool stick held over his shoulder like a baseball bat.
"Don' ya start nothing," Clint said.


120]
"You got it wrong, baby," Leo said. "We're finishing it."
"Stop it!" Mac shouted, pushing Scotty away from Clint.
The guys looked at Mac astonished. "This boy's lying here
hurt bad, maybe dying even," Mac said frantically, "and
you're getting ready to trample him because of something
that goddamn Clint called you. So he said nigger! So what?
Nigger! Boot, spook, kike, wop, coolie, greaseball, pecker-
wood, kraut, chink, spik, polack, coon, rebel, ofay, sheeny,
you name 'em! I — I can't think of 'em all. But I know
this —" He paused sucking in his breath. The crowd was
silent, stunned. "Ain't none of them words never hurt no-
body as bad as that boy lying down there. Well, damn it,"
Mac shoved his fists into his hips. "Fight if you want to. Go
on, I don't give a damn if you hang that damn Clint to the
telephone wires! But don't you, don't nobody — you hear
me! Don't nobody lift a finger around that boy. Not unless
you want to whip me too. I hit him, yeh, that's right! I might
have killed him even," Mac said sofdy, with his head down-
cast. Then he raised his head, his eyes blazing defiantly. "But
I'll be damned if I'm gonna let you trample all over him, not
as long as I'm living, I ain't. Now stand the hell back! That
goes for you too, Clint, damn it!" Mac shoved Clint away
from Red.
"Wait till elections," Clint said. "Wait till elections."
"Aw, shut the hell up," Clint's working mate Kelly said,
advancing on Clint with his fists balled.
Scotty looked at Clint for a long minute. Mingled emo-
tions shuffled across his face. He slammed the pool stick to
the ground and walked away. The poolroom boys followed
him.
The ambulance sped up the street, its warning jarring
through the sound of the murmuring crowd. Two squad cars
darted around the southeast corner and stopped.


[121
"I'm getting out of here," Booker said, suddenly feeling
unprotected without the rest of the poolroom guys around.
"Nobody's going anywhere," a policeman said brushing
through the crowd. "What's going on here?"
"Give them room," the other policeman said as the men
carrying a stretcher approached the onlookers.
"That boy with the pretty hair was talking to him just
before it happened," the fat grocery-laden woman said.
Everyone looked around for Joe. Joe was gone.
Scar leaned back on the wall of the deserted poolroom
staring with heavy-eyed indifference at the rain.
Kenny wanted to tell Scar all about Red as she had heard
about it over the radio, but Scar would not listen. Kenny
and Scar went to Red's funeral. There were a lot of people
from Marshall High there. Scar stared at the coffin with
heavy-eyed indifference. The preacher's words did not make
any sense. He could not hear the preacher, he could not
even hear Kenny ... a million years ago — fugg it. They
walked around to peer at Red in the coffin. Scar stared at
Red heavy-eyed with indifference. He did not even see him.
34
Days, days, days, ministrate autumn colors. The period runs
its cycle. Days — cold days. Winter haunts the moon. The
trees bow threadbare branches and quiver in the howling
gale. Smoke belches from the chimneys in puny breaths and
dashes frantically in the atmosphere. Dull, warm light peeps
from lowered window shades and blinking Venetian blinds.


122]
The people stay indoors. The people who are not the barflys,
the hustlers, the corner boys. The corner boys stay on the
block, under the lamppost, huddled together, waiting . . .
Days, and the elections, and Monk is in. Days ... the bonfires
glow. Chanting high school kids form human chains and
crowd the sidewalk, their voices fill the city. Gang wars
among teen-agers flare in the public school stadium. The
officials are glad the football season is drawing to a close. The
public service system reluctantly opens its doors to the charg-
ing teen-age football crowd. The streetcars rock to youthful
enthusiasm. Days .. .
"Looks like your daughter now," Mrs. Arnez said, looking
out of the window and seeing a black Buick glide into the
curb in front of the house.
"I still don't think it was a good idea letting her ride up
here by car instead of coming by train."
"Oh, it was just a three-hour ride," Mrs. Arnez said. "I
think it was rather cute."
"Edna, sometimes I don't understand you."
Mrs. Arnez watched Armenta and Jake come up the steps
of the porch, a torrent of words pouring from Armenta, the
flash of white teeth as they suddenly laughed about some-
thing, lord knows what. It made Mrs. Arnez feel good. It
brought back memories.
Armenta came bouncing in the door all out of breath, say-
ing a hundred things at once. "School's wonderful," they
finally managed to decipher.
"You must be hungry," Armenta's mother said.
"Not too hungry, Mom. We stopped on the way back and
got something to eat."
"How are you doing in school?" Mrs. Arnez wanted to
know.


35
Jake, Scar, and Spider sat at the bar in the Zodiac. Spider
was full of life because they had won $150 in a crap game.
"Say, man, this is a crazy Thanksgiving, huh?"
"Yeah," Jake said softly.
"Yeh," Scar murmured.
Jake looked at Scar hard. "Get off it, man." Jake was
scared. He was actually scared for Scar. "Get off it before it
kills you," he said gruffly.
"I don't know what you're talking about, man," Scar said
slowly. Scar's eyes looked as if they had pinpoints stuck in
them, they were contracted so tight. Scar scratched the dull
itch. He scratched his body. "Man, I'm floating," he said
lazily.
Jake bumped Scar hard. "Man, straighten up. Come on,
Scar," Jake whispered fiercely.
"Cool it, Pres," Scar said. "Spider knows I'm floating. He's
still my friend."
"I dug it a month ago, right around when Red got killed,"
Spider said.
"Goddammit, Scar, everybody'll know if you don't
straighten up. You know what they do to junkiesl"
"Fugg it," Scar said.
"Scar."
"Fugg it."
Jake motioned to Spider. They grabbed Scar and got him
the hell out of there.
"Fugg it."
They took Scar home and put him to bed. "He had one
too many," Jake told Kenny who was watching perplexedly.
"Oh," Kenny said. Kenny looked as if she was going to
cry. "Why does he drink so much? He drinks himself sick


[125
all the time. He started doing it right after you went to J
City."
"He'll be all right," Jake said. "We'll see you tomorrow,
huh?"
"You going to bring Armenta with you?"
"Armenta won't be making it."
"Oh."
"It ain't because you're shacking — you living with Scar
ain't got nothing to do with it," Jake said. "Her family's mak-
ing her spend the holidays with them."
"Oh."
"We'll see you, Kenny," Spider said.
Out in the car Jake drove around pointlessly.
"We could have made at least another hundred if Scar
hadn't been floating," Spider said.
"Yeh. Half the time he missed his cue," Jake said dully.
"Man, I could have used that loot. I'm getting married,"
Spider said.
"Yeh, I heard."
"Yeh!" Spider suddenly turned around to Jake. "Say, man,
you don't sound none too happy yourself. Neither one of
you studs is on my cloud."
"Such is life in the big city," Jake said. Things were hap-
pening too fast. Armenta telling him not to call any more
and that she was not riding back to school with him. And
Scar acting like a trick. Armenta had not given him an ex-
planation. Just don't call any more. What had he done?
What kind of babe was she anyway? Thanksgiving. Yeh.
"Where you going, man?" Spider said.
"You name it."
"I don't care," Spider said. Spider's good feeling was leav-
ing.
"Let's take her out on the highway," Jake said.


126]
Jake went all the way out Welch until he hit 66. He opened
the Buick up. They sped along the highway scaring the
drivers in cars they passed. Jake did seventy-five around a
curve.
"Man, you crazy," Spider said.
"Yeh." Jake started laughing.
"You're drunk."
"Yeh." Jake laughed and pressed the accelerator to the
floor. At one hundred miles an hour the highway was a blur.
They smeared over the highway.
Spider started laughing at Jake laughing.
"You're drunk," Jake said.
"Yeh."
They guffawed. They sailed down the highway laughing
and speeding for all they were worth. A squad car chased
them for ten miles flagging for them to pull over. They
finally did.
"Where in hell ya think ya going?" a big, red-faced cop
said. He grew even redder when he saw Jake and Spider in
the car.
"What's happening, Pres?" Jake said laughing.
"Why, nig —"
"That's enough, Clint," a bespectacled officer said. "Let's
see your driving license."
"You been on the force long?" Jake said.
"Yah do the answering," Clint said. "Dammit, show him
dah license like he ask yah."
"Who's the rook — Hey, Pres, didn't you use to work on
the garbage truck?"
Clint jerked Jake straight up in the seat with one huge
hand.
"Leave him alone, Clint," the other officer said, chopping
Clint's hand away from Jake's collar.


[127
"You damn right," Spider said. "That's against the law."
Jake was now completely sober. "Mister, I don't play that,"
he said quietly through clenched teeth.
Clint started to reach for Jake again, but the other officer
pushed him away. "You better get your license out, buddy,"
he said.
"You're wasting your time," Jake said cockily. "I'm a
friend of Monk's."
"Oh, yen," Clint said.
"Yeh," Jake said. He gave the other officer his license.
"You can check."
"We'ah do that," Clint said. "And God help ya if ya pull-
ing ah fast one!"
Jake thought about it for the rest of the night. He would
have to do something about that Trashwagon guy. He had a
lot of things to do though. It could wait.
36
Spider looked in the window of Judiheimer's at the engage-
ment and wedding-ring sets. He wasn't going to buy no
wedding rings from Judie though, hell no. He just wanted
to look at 'em and kinda get a idea of what to expect when
he went downtown to one of those big jewelry stores. Man,
he would be getting married next month. Wasn't that some-
thing? He looked critically at the rings, paying special atten-
tion to the ones with the gawdy, glittering stones.
It was a cold day, the kind when the wind makes your nose
cry. As usual Welch Street was filled with scurrying people.
A squad car patrolled lazily down the street with a disinter-


128]
ested eye out for trouble. The three-o'clock-in-the-afternoon-
whiskyheads crowded the bars, drinking silently, unlike the
boisterous night inhabitants who could never remain silent
over a drink.
A blind man, new to this section of town, attracted by the
noise, decided this was the ideal corner to peddle his pencils.
Small boys, from eight to ten years old, chased a crying fugi-
tive through the back alley of the thirteen-hundred block of
Welch Street.
"Junior! Stop all that racket down there and go get me a
loaf of bread," a stout, dark woman said, tossing a coin from
the second-floor window down into a crowd of teen-agers on
the sidewalk below. It was a typical day.
Two ragged jalopies pulled up in front of the Paradise
and stopped. Twelve guys descended from the jalopies. Guys
in their late teens who wore heavy leather jackets with a gray
fish with bared teeth painted on the back of the jackets.
"Remember, you studs, when Specs walks in the poolroom
— wait a minute. There's one of them across the street," the
guy with narrow eyes, thick lips, and conked hair said.
"Naw, Slits, that ain't one of 'em," Specs said.
"That's Spider, and he's one of them," Slits said. "Here's
where you get your chance to get even, Specs, if you ain't
chicken."
"You know damn well I ain't chicken, Slits."
"I know you ain't chicken against boys, but we getting
ready to do action with the T's. That frigging bastard Jake
Adams ain't going to like it, and that's gonna make me feel
real good, you know?"
"Let's make contact, man." The Cooters started drifting.
The blind man on the corner tapped his cane against the
unfamiliar sidewalk and shivered. He heard the sound of
many approaching footsteps. The blind man twisted his


[129
features into what he thought was a smile, exposing black-
ened teeth. "Help the poor," the blind man said. "Help the
poor and handicapped."
"I'm the poor," Slits said and knocked the cane from the
blind man's hand. The guys laughed at the blind man's
feeble effort to find the cane.
Spider turned around. "Say, man, you studs run out of
playmates?" he said. He retrieved the blind man's cane and
gave it to him. "Man, you can't make no bread on this corner
in that racket," Spider told the blind man. "What's going
on, Slits?"
"You tell me," Slits said. The guys shifted around nerv-
ously.
"Man, you're in the wrong section to find any Counts."
"I'm wise," Slits said.
Spider shrugged. He turned his back to the Barracudas
and looked in the pawnshop window. The guys stood around
not saying anything. Spider noticed them still around him
by their reflections in the window and grew uneasy. He
wasn't worried though, nobody goofed with the T's. Any-
way, he was a man now, and getting married. He didn't be-
long to the T's no more. He turned around. "You guys look-
ing for somebody?"
"Naw," Slits said.
"Well, I'll see you then, man," Spider said walking off.
The guys looked at Slits hesitantly. Slits seemed annoyed.
"Specs," he said.
Specs ran up behind Spider and hit him in the back of the
neck with a fist packed tight around a roll of pennies, a
handkerchief around the knuckles. Spider's eyes popped
wide, more in amazement than pain, although the blow sent
him reeling into the brick wall of the pawnshop and he had
to fight to keep from blacking out. He swung as he turned,


130]
catching Specs along the bridge of the nose and sending his
eyeglasses flying out into the street. Spider kicked Specs in
the groin and brought a knee under Specs' chin when he
folded over. Then the others were swarming around him.
Sweat broke out on his face, he punched, kicked, gouged, bit,
and yelled at the swirling mob raining blows upon him.
From somewhere in the crowd the deadly sound of an open-
ing switchblade clicked in the air. Now Spider fought si-
lently, panicky. He was fighting for his life.
After awhile it didn't hurt any more. Then he really got
scared because he knew he could not stand up any longer.
Down at the other end of the block the police patrol car
turned lazily around the corner going off Welch Street. The
blind man, cold, nervous, and scared, tapped his cane fran-
tically on the sidewalk, while heavy, white-stitched soles of
popular teen-aged shoes descended on the prostrate Spider.
Spider rolled over on his stomach and covered the back of
his head with his hands. Shoes thundered against his body.
"Jim! I think we mighta killed him," a small, skinny guy
said to Slits in the car.
"Tough."
"We ain't never stomped nobody that bad before," the
skinny guy said.
"What's the matter? It bothering you, Morty?" Specs said.
Specs' nose was bleeding. His lips were swollen. It hurt Specs
to talk.
"Damn, I think we killed him!"
"Specs asked you a question," Slits said.
Morty looked at Slits. Slits' eyes were almost closed. They
were shifting. Fast, flickering around like moths or some-
thing, like they was crazy . . .
"Did it bother you, Morty?" Slits said.


[131
"Naw! Naw — hell, why should it?" Morty said. "I was
just wondering why you had it in for the guy, that's all."
"I didn't have it in for him," Slits said, his maroon eyes
darting beneath the almost closed lids.
"Then why the treatment?"
"You getting nosy? You getting to wondering what the
Cootas going to be doing next?"
"Naw, Slits," Morty said spreading his hands. "I was just
wondering, that's all."
"Well, don't. When I sight the object you just make the
contact, O.K.?" Slits' darting eyes danced over the rest of the
guys in the car. He settled back in the seat tight-lipped. "I
didn't have nothing against that stud. He just happens to be
one of Jake Adams' boys is all." Suddenly Slits pushed away
from the back of the seat and bolted into an upright position.
"Look, you guys, I'm the Pres of this org and I ain't got to
answer to nobody. Don't be making with the questions, see.
You guys better listen and listen close. You been begging
for real action. Well, you going to get it. You damn sure
going to get it. The T's will be looking for us 'fore the night's
over, so you better have your hardware ready, 'cause that's the
kind of war it's going to be."
37
"They gave it to him bad," Scotty said.
"Spider?" Jake said quietly.
"Yeh, Spider. I knew you'd want to know. That's why I
came over to your house."
"You're the Pres of the T's now, Scotty."


132]
"Only 'cause you stepped down."
"Get the boys and tell them to meet me at Booker's at eight
o'clock."
"O.K."
"In full combat equipment," Jake said, his voice hardly
audible.
Jake drove over to Scar's place and let himself in with his
key. Scar was still in bed and Kenny was not there. "Man,
you wanna sleep all day?" Jake said, shaking Scar awake.
"Say, man," Scar said sleepily. "I had a terrible hang this
morning, so I went back in the sack."
"I told you about that junk."
"Junk? Wasn't no junk, man. It was that scotch. Junk
don't hang you till you can't get it."
"Remember that punk I put in the hospital?"
"Bouie?"
"Evidently he's got a whole family of goofs."
"Who you talking about?"
"His kid brother."
"Slits, man?"
"Yeh."
"He didn't have the nerve to tangle with no T's man?"
"Didn't he?"
"Well, we ain't in no more."
"Neither is Spider, but that's who they got to."
Scar did not say anything. He got up and put on his
clothes. You're never out. And don't you forget that. Never.
"Bouie could stand some company," Jake said quietly.
"But he ain't going to get it from his brother, unless he starts
spending his time in the graveyard."
Scar didn't say anything. Jake was talking crazy, but Scar
was feeling crazy. "I wonder where Kenny is," Scar said. "It's
after six, she should be back by now."


[133
Jake and Scar got in the car and started over to the city
hospital. On the radio, in the car, the commentator talked
of how blessed the nation was in the year of our Lord nine-
teen-hundred-and-forty-eight, another year free from war.
The commentator talked of the good Christian families in
good Christian America, who said a good Christian blessing
before a good Christian Thanksgiving dinner and pitied the
millions of people, in other parts of the world, who had so
much less to be thankful for from the bottom of their good
Christian hearts. Scar turned the radio off.
38
Evelyn sat in a chair by Spider's bed in the hospital ward.
"Why?" she said over and over. "Lord, why?"
"It's O.K., baby, I just threw craps," Spider said, trying to
laugh.
"But why, Bert? Why did they do it? You don't belong
to a gang any more. All the times I thought it would happen
it never did, now for no reason —"
"Aw, Jake punched some punk belonging to the Cootas
one day in front of the school. I guess they getting even,"
Spider said.
"Jake! I wish it was him instead of you."
"Evelyn."
"I'm sorry, Bert. But — but he did it. Why didn't they
get him instead of you? You didn't do nothing to nobody.
Why does God let things like that happen?"
"My back feels funny," Spider said. "I can't feel my legs.


134]
That's funny, ain't it? Hey, what you sniffing about? Just
'cause I got a patch over one eye and a hicky over the other
don't mean I'm dying. I'll be kicking around good as new,
you watch."
"Bert," Evelyn said, turning away from him.
"You don't like me no more 'cause I got sores all over my
face," Spider kidded her.
Evelyn put her face down on the bed by Spider's chest.
Her shoulders contracted sharply. She made no sound.
"Gee, gee Evelyn," Spider said moved. "I really think
you're goofed behind me."
The tears fell.
"Gee, I feel funny. I feel funny as hell."
"Bert."
"Gee," Spider said.
Jake and Scar came in. Evelyn did not look up. She didn't
look up the whole time they were there. She heard Jake and
Scar kidding Spider and Spider kidding right back. She
heard Jake and Scar telling Spider they were going to take
care of the Cootas, about the war starting that night. She
remembered times when the Termites were fighting some
gang across town and how often she told Spider how silly it
was, and how she had told Jake the same thing. She remem-
bered the years of fighting. Now it was starting all over again.
Now, it didn't matter much any more what they did.
They made her leave Spider at eight because visiting hours
were over. She told the doctor she was Spider's sister. She
could not stand not knowing how badly Spider was hurt.
When she left the hospital nothing mattered any more. The
doctor would have to tell Spider sometime. She knew how he
would feel. She even knew what he would say. And all be-
cause Jake Adams was still acting like a fool and going around
punching people in the nose. She thought of all the sacri-


[135
fices, the struggling, penny-pinching days, trying to get ahead.
She remembered when she almost gave up because her father
found $40 she had not put in the bank yet for her and Spider.
She had worked overtime for a solid month to make up that
money, and Spider had never known. Spider had gotten
proud of their bank account and had started giving her $40
a week to save because he had gotten a good job as a waiter
and saved his tips. They were getting ahead. They were
going to leave Elm Street behind. Now, Elm Street was the
only thing that couldn't be snatched from under her. She
hated Elm Street. She hated Jake Adams and she hated every
woman who had ever gotten married.
39
The doors were locked at Booker's but no outsiders were
coming in anyway. The neighborhood knew the Termites
were holding a meeting. Booker sat on a stool behind the
counter by the cash register, silent. Thirteen teen-agers,
wearing belt-in-the-back velour overcoats, with matching hats
resting on their ears, crowded around the first pool table
where Jake, Scar, and Scotty were sitting. The guys had on
burnt-yellow cashmere sweaters under the coats. A broad,
black T was sewn on the front of the sweaters.
"You studs know what this council is all about?" Jake said.
"Yeh."
"This is a full-scale war," Jake said. "We're hitting with
everything we got. This ain't kid stuff. This is for keeps."
"Like the last scrimmage we had with the Ratz."
"Yeh," Jake said. "The time we got such a terrible rep
nobody wanted no part of us any more."


136]
Booker picked his fingernails with an old battered pocket-
knife. Booker's mouth was drawn in a tight line. He was
tough, he was hard as they come. His boys could whip any-
body in the world.
"The arsenal been handed out?" Jake asked Scotty.
"Yeh."
"What we got?"
"Two forty-fives and a thirty-eight. Five bayonets, seven
switchblades and two brass knucks. I couldn't locate but two
lead pipes. Leo's brother pawned the German Luger and the
twenty-two. Cal has an M.l. that his brother shipped home
in pieces from overseas, but I left it. I figure it's too hard to
hide."
"You figured right," Jake said. "Here's how we'll work it.
These other studs make a mistake by bunching up in a scrim-
mage. They get in each other's way. We're going to divide
our force into three parts, so we can get plenty of swinging
room. The artillery is going to Scotty, Scar, and me, 'cause
we're the veterans and ain't afraid of using it. Me, Scar, and
Scotty will have a bayonet apiece too."
You're never out of it, Scar thought. Fugg it.
"There's going to be a knuck or pipe in each group. You
say we got two leads, Scotty?"
"Yeh."
"O.K., the extra lead will be in my group, which is going
to be the task force. Let's see, we got two bayonets left, and
seven switchblades, that's nine. So each group will have three
blades. That makes everybody loaded, don't it?"
"Let's see," Scar said. "We got sixteen guys, counting you,
me, and Scotty. If we divide the force we got two groups of
five and one of six. If the six is the task force, they got two
lead pipes, and three blades, not counting the leader's bay-
onet and artillery. The other two groups got three blades


[137
and a knuck, not counting the leader. That makes every-
body covered."
"O.K.," Jake said. "Now here's how we work it. We in-
vade their territory, and scout around till we make contact.
But only the task force is going to do the scouting. We're
going to string out and walk down the middle of the streets.
The rest of you studs are going to stay in a car down at the
end of the block. One car on one end the other car on the
opposite end. You follow me or I got to draw a diagram?"
"We follow you," Scotty said.
"O.K., we work through the section like that till we make
contact. Once the task force connects, the rest of you studs
start down the sidewalks. Scar on the right side, and you on
the left. If anybody does the shooting it'll be me. You and
Scar can't shoot 'cause you might hit one of our boys, you dig?
Now pick up. Some of them punks are going to turn chicken
and try to beat it out of there. That's when you and Scar
start taking potshots, when these guys start running away
from the action. You got it?"
"Yeh," Scotty said.
"O.K., the bull session is over. Redistribute the arsenal
and let's go to war."
Monk sat in the parked car outside the poolroom waiting.
He knew what the locked door at Booker's meant. He had
seen it a lot of times, not only here, but other parts of town,
even in other cities. It hadn't bothered him then, but it did
now. This kind of crap was from nowhere. It was bad for
business. You couldn't afford to have one of your pushers in
on a deal like this. Monk lit a cigarette and waited. Then
he started up in the seat. The T's were coming out. Monk
got out of the car and big-shouldered his way through the
Termites crowding the sidewalk.
"Hey, Monk," Scotty said. "What's going on?"


138]
"Where's Jake?"
"Right here," Jake said, coming out the door with Scar.
"Hey, Monk," Scar said.
"You studs wait for me on the corner," Jake said, following
Monk over to the car.
"Have a cigarette," Monk said in the car and shoved a pack
under Jake's nose.
"Thanks," Jake said. "What's up?"
"That's what I want to know," Monk said. "You tell me."
"I don't dig you, Pres."
"Knock it off. You ain't talking to none of them punks.
Why the war council?"
"No war council, Monk. Educational program. We got
some lessons to teach some studs dumb to classroom work on
the corners."
"You're out of it and that's the way you're going to stay.
Now look, get it straight. I don't give a damn about whose
head the T's cave in long as it don't affect my organization.
But you can't be in on it, kid. You know the org can't afford
that."
"You remember Spider?" Jake said.
"Yeh."
"He's in the hospital and that makes me in again."
"What happened?"
"The Cootas walked him."
"So now you're putting on your boots?"
"I'm going to do more than walk."
"You're going to stay out of it."
"Like hell I am," Jake said softly, rising to get out of the
car.
Monk slammed Jake back down on the seat. "Damn it,
you're getting dumber every day. I went along with you in
everything else, but this time you're going along with me.


[139
Do you know what's going to happen when you go looking
for the Cootas?"
"Yeh, somebody's going to get hurt."
"That's right. Suppose this thing blows real big —"
"Aw, Monk."
"Aw, hell. Suppose it blows so big the newspapers get
wind of it. Suppose somebody yaps to the cops and you get
taken down on a murder rap maybe. What good would you
be to the org notorious? Even if I sprung ya?"
"You're talking crazy."
"You're the one talking crazy. You better grow up. You
ain't got time for kid games no more. I got a org to protect
and I ain't going to let you mess it up by caving in some
Coota heads."
"What the hell you expect me to do, Monk? Go sip on a
milkshake and forget about it?"
"Yeh, before you do what you want to do, you damn
right."
"I ain't built that way, Monk."
"You think you gotta kick in some teeth."
"That's right."
Monk sighed. "O.K., kid, I'll make you a proposition."
"What kind?"
"You want some heads knocked in. O.K., but you don't
have to be in on it."
"I don't dig you, Monk."
"You will. You want the Cootas taught a lesson. O.K.,
now think who could do the job and get praised for doing
it."
"You're crazy. I still don't — wait a minute, Monk, you
don't mean — you don't mean the bims?"
"You're growing up."
"But, Monk, could you swing it?"


140]
"What do you think?"
"I dunno. Damn, I dunno."
"You call off your boys. I'll see the Cootas get taught a
lesson."
"O.K., Monk, I'll go along with that." He was impressed.
Damn, he couldn't have been more impressed if Monk was
God. He stood on the curb watching Monk drive away.
Damn, he forgot to tell Monk about that Trashwagon guy.
The hell with it, it wasn't important. He strolled down to
the corner where the T's were waiting. "The war is off," he
said. He held up his hand against the protests. "If you guys
let me finish, you'll know why."
"We're listening," Scotty said.
"I got connections. You guys know that?"
"Yeh," they murmured, unimpressed.
"I mean big connections. What would you guys think if
I told you the Cootas were going to be taken care of by a
group even more professional than us?"
"I'd say you was twisted, floating on cloud twenty-nine,"
Scotty said.
"Yeh, I'm cracking, and I'm facting," Jake said.
"Who's going to take care of these guys for us?" Leo wanted
to know.
"I suggest you sit around and wait for the grapevine to
bring in the news."
"In the meantime Spider'll be in the hospital thinking the
T's is too chicken to look out for his interests," Scotty said.
"Yeh," they echoed.
"Anybody here think Spider ain't a good friend of mine?"
No one said anything.
"Anybody here want to accuse me of being chicken?" Jake
said softly, looking at them hard.
Again silence.


142]
"I wasn't looking for no job. I went home," Kenny said.
"Oh," Scar said inquiringly, raising his eyebrows.
"I went to see the kids. Mama's never home on Thanks-
giving," Kenny said.
"Oh," Scar said.
40
In the alley behind Percy Drive, one of the series of streets
making up Callek Place, a once wealthy residential section
that had long since turned slums, a slim figure darted through
the darkness and rapped on a closed wooden door three times
in rapid succession, then paused and rapped lightly two times
more. The door opened slightly, cautiously, then swung
open. The Barracudas were sitting around a long rough
planked table. A dim light above the table cast feeble shadows
on the wall. Slits, seated at the right side of the table, glanced
away from the knife planted in the center of the table sur-
rounded by blocks of wood representing battle stations and
looked at the guy who had entered. "You see him?"
"Yeh, I saw him," the guy said.
"What he say?"
"He said he won his fight two weeks ago. He's a pro pug
now."
"Lay off the funny stuff," Slits said, his eyes back on the
knife. "What he say?"
"That's what he said, Slits."
"You trying to be funny?"
"Naw, Slits. That's what he said."
Slits turned around to face the messenger. His eyes were


[143
dancing. "I ain't interested in all the preliminaries; I want
to know what he had to say about the proposition I offered
him."
"That's what I'm talking about, Slits. He said he ain't in
no more. He said he was too old. There ain't no Ratz no
more, Slits."
"What you mean there ain't no Ratz?"
"There ain't no Ratz seniors. All they got is juniors and
midgets."
"That all Perk had to say?"
"Yeh. Frenchie said he wouldn't mind going in, but he
was the only one. He said he could get the juniors and mid-
gets on our side."
"That dirty son-of-a-bitch. My brother got a lung chopped
off acting as his lieutenant. That yellow bastard."
"I wouldn't call him yellow, Slits. Perk ain't never been
yellow."
"You telling me what to say?" Slits asked the messenger.
"Naw, I just —"
"He's yellow," Slits said. "If my brother hadn't been the
brains and planned all the scrimmages, you wouldn't have
ever even heard of the Ratz. You say Frenchie says we can get
the juniors and midgets?"
The messenger nodded.
"O.K., here's —"
"Slits! The bims is busting down the front door," a guy
said, rushing into the back room.
"Stash the arsenal."
"There ain't time, Slits. We got to get the hell out of
here!"
The Barracudas bolted for the back door leading to the
alley. They met blue-coated policemen. Night sticks flew.
Three Negro policemen were in the group.


144]
Editorials praising the police force for curbing juvenile
delinquency received main column space on the editorial
pages. The front pages of the newspapers carried headlines
. . . RECENTLY ELECTED POLICE COMMISSIONER
CRACKS DOWN ON TEEN-AGE TERROR . . . TEEN-
AGE GANG UPBRAIDED . . . POLICE BRING END TO
TEEN-AGE CRIME WAVE . . .
Everyone had praise for this newly elected, uncorrupt
police force.
Specs occupied a bed down from Spider in the same ward.
Jake and Scar walked down to see him. "Let this be a lesson
to you, punk," Jake said softly to Specs lying in bed.
"The T's didn't have nothing to do with it," Specs said.
"Them bims, them damn dirty bims."
"That's right," Jake said. "Them bims. You want to
come back here, start something with the T's again."
"Let me alone," Specs said, the tears welling. "Let me
alone!"
Jake motioned to Scar. They walked away. Specs was
hurting, man, was he hurting.
Spider did not seem to be doing so good. He tried to fool
Jake and Scar by joking about everything. Evelyn sat quietly
not saying anything.
"The Barracudas won't be bothering nobody no more,"
Jake said, "mainly because there ain't no Barracudas no
more."
"Yeh, I heard about the bims splattering them," Spider
said.
"Who you think put the bims on their tail?" Jake said,
winking at Spider.
"You, man?"
"He's got connections," Scar said.
"Jim, Pres! You swing a mean ax," Spider said.


[145
"Nobody gets away goofing with Jake Adams' boys; keep
it under you hat, man."
"You know me," Spider said.
"When they going to let you unhorse that bed, man?"
Scar said.
Spider glanced at Evelyn. He brought his large hands
together, making a vise and cracking his fingers. "I'll be out
pretty soon," he said indifferently.
"That's right," Evelyn said bitterly.
"What's eating your broad, man?" Jake said.
"Aw — she's tired. She put in a pretty tough day at the
store. Why don't you take her home so she can get some
rest? She spends all her evenings over here with me."
"But, Bert."
"Go ahead, Evelyn," Spider blurted. "I'll see you studs
later, man. You come by and sit in with me tomorrow, huh,
Evelyn?" Spider said softly.
Evelyn hesitated.
"Take her home, will you, fellas? I'm sleepy," Spider said.
In the car Evelyn had nothing to say. She sat glumly be-
tween Scar and Jake.
"What do you think?" Jake said.
"He didn't look so good," Scar admitted.
"How's he doing?" Jake asked Evelyn. "You see him more
than us."
"He's doing fine, just fine," Evelyn snapped.
"Man, what did I say wrong?" Jake asked Scar.
"Beats me!"
They let it ride until Evelyn got out of the car.
"Say, Evelyn, we're still friends, ain't we?" Jake said.
"If Bert hadn't been your friend, he wouldn't have gotten
hurt," Evelyn said.
"Jim, baby, I didn't have nothing to do with it."


146]
"You started it," Evelyn said.
"They started it, I finished it," Jake said. "I fixed it so
they ain't going to never bother nobody else."
"You're good at fixing things, aren't you, Jake?"
"Yeh, at times."
"You want to fix everything for Spider, is that it?"
"I did."
"Did you? Me and Bert were getting married next month.
He had a good job and we had a little money put away. Now
he's going to be crippled for life. Can you fix that, Jake?"
She ran into the house leaving Jake and Scar staring.
"So that's what's wrong with the stud," Jake said softly as
if he was talking to himself.
"Damn, that's a tough break," Scar said.
"Yeh, tough." His hands felt clammy on the steering wheel,
his head ten miles above the rest of his body. He got out a
stick of pod and lit it, right there in front of Scar.
"I thought you steered away from the mess," Scar said.
Jake sucked it in, got lost on the burning drag.
41
Spider got out of the hospital one week after Jake went back
to school. Scar went over to Spider's house to see him. Two
of Spider's brothers, who were supposed to be in school, were
playing blackjack on the kitchen table. They nodded to
Scar. The four-room apartment was crowded with the pos-
sessions of seven children and two adults. Spider seemed
pretty cheerful. Scar couldn't think of anything to say, seeing
Spider on crutches like that. He did not stay long. He went


148]
"'Bout three weeks. Good riddance too."
"You don't know where she went?"
"I told you I didn't. A man come and got her things
'bout three weeks ago. I ain't got time to stand here talking
to you, I got work to do. You one of her men? Humph!
Must not think much of you, going off to live with some
other man and not telling you 'bout it." The old woman
grinned derisively at Scar. Then the door closed.
He went over to Booker's. He was tore up. If the cops
saw him now he was sure to get busted. He didn't care.
"Hey, Scar, Jake sure knew what he was doing, didn't he?"
Scotty said.
"Yeh."
Scotty made a cross-corner shot to sink the eight ball.
"You better watch out, Pres," he said laughing. "I'm getting
good as you."
"Man, your boy's sure got connections," Leo said.
"Yeh."
"When Spider getting out of the hospital?"
"He got out last night."
"Good," Scotty said. "Hey, Booker! Rack the damn balls,
will ya?"
"Jake's the toughest all right," Booker said, coming over
to the table.
"Yeh," Scar said. "Yeh."








M
JL/Uaxine blinked her eyes open. At first she
could not remember, then it all came back. The pain, the
screams, the long, long wait for the ambulance. What had
they done to her? She looked around the room, but saw
only other women in rows of beds like hers. Russell? she
said, but no sound came out. She could not feel the tongue
in her mouth. She was not certain how her tongue was sup-
posed to feel, but she knew she was supposed to feel it.
A prissy, stiff-dressed nurse came in carrying a tray filled
with needles and medicine. She came directly to Maxine.
"How are you feeling?" she said.
"O.K., I guess," Maxine said, surprised to hear the words
come out. She frowned at the sound of her voice. Her voice
sounded coarse, ugly, as if she were speaking with feelings
instead of words.
"I'll send the doctor in to see you," the nurse said.
151


152]
Maxine murmured something, her eyes heavy again. When
she woke up the doctor was standing at the foot of her bed
watching her.
"I'm delighted to see you resting so well," the doctor said.
He smiled at her. The room was a mirror of flashing teeth.
"How long will I be here, Doctor?" Maxine said, ashamed
of her voice.
"We should be able to let you go home in a few weeks,
if you promise to take it easy for a while."
"Weeks?"
The doctor shook his head.
"But no one nowadays stays over a week —"
"We had a tough time with you, but —"
"How tough? — Doc — everything was all right, wasn't
it?"
"You're going to be fine — " He was stopped by the eternal
question in her eyes. The question that could neither be
answered, nor avoided. He did as he always did in such
cases, he hedged, he fumbled, he retreated and in that in-
stance Maxine knew. "We did everything we could, you
must rest. I shall have your visitor come and see you later —"
"I have a visitor?" Maxine said dryly.
The doctor nodded.
"Russell?"
Again the nod.
"Could I please see him, Doctor?" she said, her voice tight
and hard.
The doctor nodded and left the ward. A few minutes
later a fat, dark, half-bald man in a rust-colored suit came
in.
"The doc say I can't stay but a few minutes," the man
said.
"Hi," Maxine said. Her eyes felt heavy, but she kept them
open.


[153
"Howya feel?"
"All right, I guess. I feel a hundred pounds lighter and
heavier all at the same time, you know what I mean, Russell?"
"Sure. The doc say you be out in a few weeks."
"Yeh," Maxine said.
"Well, I guess I got to go. I'll tell you 'bout things when
you get better."
"You can tell me now," Maxine said.
"Aw, we'll talk about it later."
"It was nice of you to take care of me all that time. You're
a nice guy, Russell."
"Yeh, that's me."
"I'm not going to welch. You're going to make me a
feature dancer at the Paradise, aren't you, Russell?"
"Yeh, your name in neon, a group behind you, spotlights,
the whole works," Russell said.
Maxine laughed and suddenly her voice was not nasty
any more. She was still laughing when Russell left. Then
she turned her face into the pillow. She should be out of it
by now. She should be hard, sophisticated like everyone
said she was. Her heart was hard as a rock, wasn't that what
Russell said? Yeh. It was hard all right. It was so heavy it
was dragging along her shoes and she kept stepping on it.
She rang for the nurse. A male hospital attendant answered
the buzzer and stood shifting around, waiting for her to say
something.
"Could you get me some supplies so I can write a letter?"
"Well, lady, gee I dunno," the large, baby-faced attendant
said.
"I'll pay for it later. You can trust me," Maxine said.
The attendant still hesitated.
"I'll see that you get a dollar tip, soon as Russell comes
back," Maxine said.
"Russell?"


154]
"The guy with the bald eagle haircut that just left."
"Well — O.K.," the attendant said.
The attendant brought back the supplies and Maxine
wrote Jake a long letter. She had trouble expressing herself
the way she wanted to in the letter. She rewrote the letter
five times before she was satisfied. Then she went to sleep.
2
Spider made it all the way down the steps of the hallway
where he lived. He made it on crutches by himself. He did
not want help from anyone, ever. Ice was on the sidewalk so
he took it easy, not that he could go very fast anyway, but
he sure didn't want to kick up any heels on that ice. Course,
maybe he should. Maybe if he fell down it would knock his
spine back in place. Spider laughed. It was cold, the wind
cut into his gloveless fingers gripping the crutches. He de-
cided to get some gloves before he came back home. "Hey,
taxi!" Spider called. "To the Zodiac," he told the driver.
"Stay inside, man, I can make it." When the driver pulled
up in front of the Zodiac, Spider gave him a dollar. "Keep
the change," he said.
"Thanks, bro," the driver said.
Spider leaned his weight on the door leading into the bar
and went inside. "Hey, Charlie."
"Hey, Spider. How you making it?" the bartender said.
"Everything's crazy," Spider said. He hobbled on back
to the back room.
"Hi, kid," the stone-faced houseman said.
"How's tricks?"


[155
"Everything's dead right now," the houseman said.
"I dig," Spider said.
"Anything, I can do for you, kid?"
"I guess that little hype we had is all blown over."
"Naw, kid. You'll get so you can stand them crutches up
on one end and hit all night. You can still make some bread,"
the houseman said.
Spider said, "Naw, Carl, that's all over. I been doing a
lot of thinking, wasn't much else I could do laying up in
that hospital bed."
"I'm hearing ya," the houseman said.
"That hype couldn't last forever. Sooner or later somebody
was gonna get wise. Then I would of had to take my busi-
ness elsewhere."
"I don't know 'bout that," the houseman said.
Spider shook his head. "It would of happened sometime.
I was getting ready to get married before I got wasted. That
kind of changed things."
The houseman nodded.
"I don't mean I ain't still thinking about getting married,
but I did a lot of thinking and I figure a married stud needs
something steady, you know what I mean, Carl?"
"Yeh, I'm viewing you," the houseman said.
"I was sort of wondering —"
"I can fix you up," the houseman said.
"I don't wanna impose —"
"I need somebody to help run the game," the houseman
said. He winked at Spider. "I'm getting old."
"Gee, thanks Carl, you're a life rescuer, man."
It was the first time Spider ever remembered seeing the
houseman smile. "There's a couple of tricks you got to pick
up on like — Hell, kid, the way you set up that dice deal,
you shouldn't have no trouble picking up on this routine."


156]
You can't keep a good man down, Spider was thinking in
the cab on the way over to Evelyn's. He was feeling good.
He took Evelyn out for dinner. They sat quietly in Pol-
lard's, a high-class Negro-owned restaurant which featured
fancily prepared food, expensive prices, and slow service.
Spider felt big, as big as a mountain. He rubbed his silver
cuff links on the linen napkin beside his silverware.
"You seem to be in a good mood," Evelyn said.
"I should be. I got a job, a good one. A damn good one."
"Spider, you're kidding?"
"Is a bear?"
Evelyn smiled for the first time in weeks. "Tell me about
it," she said excitedly.
"Here comes the chow," Spider said. "I'll tell you about
it after we peck."
"Oh, Bert, this is like old times."
"Yeh," Spider agreed. "Almost." In the old days he had
not even thought about getting a job.
A light-brown-skinned waitress served them steaks still siz-
zling on the platter. Spider ordered dinner wine from the bar
in back of the restaurant. He wanted everything right for his
girl. He just hoped she would always think of him just as
Spider and not crippled Spider. He brought his fist down
on the table, hardl
"What's the matter, Bert?"
"Nothing," Spider said. "Nothing, forget it"
After dinner they sat around smoking and sipping the
remaining half of the bottle of wine.
"Bert, you're miles away somewhere."
"Am I?"
"Yes."
"I was just thinking."
Evelyn reached for his hand. "Tell me about your job,"
she said.


[157
"Not much to tell."
"Where is it?"
"At the Zodiac."
"Zodiac?"
"Yeh, Zodiac, that's what I said."
"Doing what?" Evelyn said, her hand tightening around
Spider's.
"Houseman for the game in the back."
"Oh," Evelyn said.
"I'll make at least seventy-five stones every week."
"Oh."
"Some weeks I might even get up to a hundred."
"Oh."
"Is that all you got to say, just 'ohT'
"You're not gambling, are you, Bert?"
"Housemen don't gamble, they just run the game."
"Oh."
"I just thought you might like to know I had a job."
"I am glad, Bert," Evelyn said, a lump in her throat. "I
think it's a swell job. I do, I mean it."
"You still want to marry me? You don't have to, you know."
"Yes," Evelyn said.
"Yes, what?"
"Just yes, Bert. That's alL"
"When?"
"Tonight."
"Let's wait until tomorrow. We can't get no blood test
tonight."
"We have to wait three days after the blood test before
we can get married."
"I can wait that long," Spider said.


3
When Jake and Armenta came home for the Christmas holi-
days, Spider and Evelyn were married. Jake found Scar and
went around to see Spider and Evelyn as soon as he got in the
city. They were living on Thirteenth Street not far from
Scar. Jake liked the apartment, it was modernistic and clean.
Spider had beer in the icebox. They drank in silence.
Spider wanted to know about Armenta and Jake told him
she had come home on the train so he had not seen her.
There did not seem to be anything else to talk about. They
looked at each other nervously. Jake and Scar did not stay
long. They said they would get together sometime during
the week and celebrate Spider's getting married, but they
knew they wouldn't. Things had changed, they weren't ever
going to be the same. Spider had dropped out of the crowd.
Jake declined the invitation to go out with Scar and Kenny
on Christmas Eve. He spent the night in a crowded bar down
on Third and Welch where he was not likely to run into any
of his friends.
Out north, where Armenta lived, carollers made the neigh-
borhood melodious with Christmas songs. The blocks in
the district were dressed up with sparkling Christmas tree
lights strung over porches, shrubbery, and windows. Snow
fell on the lights and became a dyed mixture of red, yellow,
blue, orange, and purple, soft, splotchy softness. The carol-
lers left their footprints in the ankle-deep snow covering the
stiff grass lawns. Laughter floated from basement windows
where people welcomed in the holidays with bottled spirits
in rathskellers. It was tolling church bells and the Santa
Claus ditty and the barking chest cold with the feverish brow.
At the Arnez house Mr. Arnez and his wife finished deco-


160]
in bed. She took out the small portable record player, last
year's Christmas present from her parents and rilled it with
forty-five rpms. Christmas was for kids. She would never
believe in Santa Claus again. She wouldn't believe in any-
thing. Everyone wanted to tear the world apart. No one
wanted to put it together. Religion was a big joke. Every-
thing her parents had taught her was a joke. Her parents
had always taught her to be neighborly to everyone, but her
father had taken Jake from her. Her parents had also taught
her to turn the other cheek. It seemed she had been doing
that all her life. Her parents were prejudiced, she realized
dully. Her father had always told her how prejudiced white
people were, but Armenta realized Negroes were prejudiced
too. Her old man was a snob and she had to pay for it. She
wondered if there was really a God. Her biological science
course had confused her. Jake wasn't confused by that bio-
logical science stuff. Jake laughed about it. She felt guilty
thinking about Jake. Jake didn't think she liked him any
more because she had not gone back with him instead of tak-
ing the train. She tried to stay away from him the way her
father had wanted her to at school, but they had gotten back
together, not like it used to be though. Her father had
started making her see things about Jake she had never seen
before. She knew he wasn't working, yet he always had
money. She hated her father for making her find faults in
Jake. Jake was waiting for her. He said if she didn't come
it would prove she did not care anything about him. She
would go to see him. She would slip off and — She was a
coward, but she would explain it to Jake, she would tell
him everything.
Jake spent ten dollars over the bar trying to get drunk.
He played Eckstine's "Body and Soul" on the jukebox so often


162]
time, specially when Jake was here. Scar didn't use to be like
that."
"No, he didn't," Evelyn agreed.
"He still makes a lot of money. He says he makes it shoot-
ing pool, but he ain't as good as he used to be."
"Kenny, you think you're doing the right thing? Staying
with him, I mean. I wouldn't be asking if we wasn't friends,
but — well, you know."
"You think I'm doing wrong, Evelyn? I can't find no job."
"I — well forget I said anything, huh?"
"I don't think Armenta thinks it's right. I ain't seen her
since she went off to school," Kenny said.
"None of us have. I hear she's having trouble at home.
Jake said something about it once."
"Is that what it is? That's too bad, I know how that is,"
Kenny said.
"I wish Bert had some other kind of job, but I guess it
ain't much else he can do. I guess I'm lucky he's got that,
but I hate to think of him around all that gambling. We're
going to have a baby, you know?"
"No," Kenny said. "That's wonderful."
"Yes. Spider made me quit working when I told him
about it. I wish I hadn't. I could have worked at least four
more months."
"Well, I guess he figures he's making enough to take care
of you."
"That's what he said. He said he was making enough to
take care of two or three babies and me. He's so proud of
that."
"I guess he is. I'm glad you're getting on so well."
"We ain't had a bit of trouble," Evelyn said.
Over in the Zodiac, in the back room, Spider sat in a chair
at the end of the dice table. His face was blank, as somber


[163
as Carl's. The table was crowded. A lot of people Spider
had won money from were in the game. The guy shooting
threw craps. "Damn," he said. Then his face wrinkled
into a grin. "You're poison, Pres," he told Spider. "Even
on that end of the table you come up winning my money."
Spider shrugged. He took the money the shooter had placed
on the table to cover his bet. "Try your luck with a new
pair," Spider said, changing dice for the shooter.
The shooter winked at Spider. He threw the dice, caught
a point, and made it on the next two tries. He caught seven
three times in a row before he missed. "Well, you can't have
all the luck," the shooter said. The dice traveled the table.
Over in the far corner the houseman ran the Blackjack game.
In front of him was a metal box filled with money to pay
off the winners. The box was getting chocked. No one was
winning.
Spider kept the dice moving. Man, if he didn't have to
cut Carl in on the profits he would really be whaling. Course,
he wasn't complaining. Carl didn't split any of his share of
the Blackjack take though. But, what the hell, it should be
like that; Carl kept everything running. He bet Carl made
more money than the club did in the back room. Man, oh
man, and he had thought he was smart setting up that little
deal with Carl, that crooked dice hype, wasn't that some-
thing? He wondered how Evelyn was doing. He hoped she
was feeling all right having a baby and all. She thought she
had to work, wasn't that a joke? He knew she wouldn't go
for how the game was run if she knew, but the hell with that.
So Carl had shown him how to make the guys throw craps
every now and then so the houseman would get the shooter's
bread. What the hell, she didn't think he could make $75
a week, working a split-shift eight-hour day doing nothing*
did she?


5
School let out the twenty-first of January. Jake packed
everything. He wasn't coming back two weeks from now to
start the second semester. He hadn't said anything to Ar-
menta since school had started again after the holidays. A
few times, when he saw her in the coffee shop, she had
started to say something, but she never did. A broad's a
broad — He had enough of that true-blue stuff. Look what
had happened. Maybe Monk was right. He didn't have no
business messing with her in the first place. He felt as strung-
out as a squadron of B-36's, but he bet didn't nobody know
it but him. He carried the two full suitcases out of the base-
ment of a house down at the foot of the hill from the uni-
versity and dumped them into the trunk of the Dynaflow.
School had been kind of fun for a while, but what the hell,
he wasn't cut out for that stuff anyhow. He unfastened the
room keys from his key chain and went up the stairs of the
porch and knocked on the front door.
"Here's your keys, Mr. Koonce, I'm shoving off now."
"Still won't change your mind 'bout coming back next
semester, huh?"
"Naw, I'm afraid not, Mr. Koonce," Jake said smiling.
"You didn't flunk no courses?"
"Naw. The only C I got was in English. I got a C-minus
in that," Jake admitted. "I can't get the hang of that stuff."
"I knowed you was pretty smart all the time, otherwise I
don't reckon that pretty girl of yourn would have been fool-
ing round you. She got a scholarship, didn't she?"
"For next year."
"Well, that's fine. I haven't seen her around here since
you all came back from the holidays."
"She's around," Jake said.


6
Scar placed some discs on the player he had bought Kenny
for Christmas. He was glad Kenny was gone looking for a
job or wherever she had gone. Kenny liked boogie-joogie
and Scar was not in the mood for digging corn bread. He
played a scrib of the Duke digging what B could do on
"Sophisticated Lady." He had heard it a few minutes ago
in the record shop and bought it and "Manteca" by Diz.
"Sophisticated Lady" turned out to be real tough. Scar fed
his habit and floated. If he didn't straighten up soon, man,
he was going to get wasted. He was hung-up all afternoon,
but he was straight when Kenny came home. "Hi, baby,"
he said. "Dig this crazy jam." He closed his eyes and started
"Sophisticated Lady" again.
"You drunk?"
"Yeh, on music."
"I wish you hadn't changed so, Scar," Kenny said ruefully.
She crossed hesitantly over to the sofa where Scar was lying
and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I thought you'd want
to know I got a job, sort of."
Scar opened his eyes and sat up slowly. "You have?" he
said not sounding happy about it.
"Ain't you glad for me, Scar? Now I won't have to live
with you no more."
"Yeh. Sure, baby. I'm glad for you," Scar said flatly.
"I guess I better pack. I leave for Sweetport tomorrow."
"You got a hang-over in Sweetport?"
"I enlisted in the WAC's. We leave for training camp
tomorrow."
Scar said nothing, his face said nothing, his whole body had
nothing to say.
"Well, I better pack —"


170]
"Maxine, you know?" Benbow drew a figure with his
hands, smiling at Jake.
"Oh, yeh," Jake said. He walked over to the jukebox and
spent a quarter on Bird, Pres, and Diz. Then he dropped
another nickel in the machine for "Body and Soul." The
place started to get noisy as the barhops started coming in.
A slim woman, dressed in red, wriggled in the door and skimp-
ered down the aisle looking the bar over. She stopped by
Jake and pushed his hat over his eyes. "Hi, Kit. How's
tricks?" Jake said.
"Ain't nothing shaking but the leaves on the trees," the
woman said disgustedly. "And they wouldn't be shaking if
it wasn't for the breeze." She laughed, bounced away and
assumed a provocative wide-legged stance with one elbow
resting on the jukebox.
The guy next to Jake at the bar nudged him. "That one of
yourn?" he said knowingly.
"I knew her in high school."
"Damn, you mean they let whores go to school?"
"She says her ambition was to be a schoolteacher, in the
yearbook," Jake said.
"Where she going to teach classes at, on the corners?"
"It's a free world," Jake said.
"If you got a white face," the man said, laughing and
slapping Jake on his back. "Say-Charlie-bring-my-boy-a-
drink," the man said, pointing to Jake.
"No, thanks," Jake said, slapping the man back. "Buy
Kit one. She might give it to you for nothing."
"What's eating that cat?" The guy spread his hands. "All
I did was —" He stopped in embarrassment. No one was
listening.
Jake went around to the bowling alley part of the Zodiac.
He sat down on the last seat of one of the long rows of seats


[171
connected together. The seven bowling lanes were filled
with players. Tonight was league night and the seven teams
in multi-colored uniforms were going at each other. The
bowling balls blasted into the pins and agitated players
yelled above the din cursing encouragements at each other.
Women hung around in turtleneck sweaters, their slack-
covered legs dangling over seats, mouths stuffed with hot
dogs, hands slippery on cold beer bottles. The air seemed
heavy like it wanted to make you sneeze. Caldonia switched
in with a man hanging on his arm. Caldonia needed a shave.
Jake went into the toilet with the cracked toilet and face
bowls and the dirty four-letter rhymes written on the toilet
walls. He closed the door in front of one of the toilet bowls
and lit a stick. He dropped the match into the yellow-stained
toilet bowl, leaned back against the wall, took a long drag,
swallowed, and watched the ashless glow. The toilet was a
merry-go-round.
Over at Scar's, at two minutes after eight, the phone rang.
"Scar, have you seen Jake?"
"Naw. Who is this, Armenta?"
"Yes. You haven't seen him?"
"Naw. Is he back in town?"
"We got in today. I've got to get in touch with him."
"You try his house?"
"You know that's the first place I called. I guess I should
have known he wouldn't be home."
"Well he's not here."
"Scar, find him for me. You know where to look. I don't
know where to look for— " She faltered.
"Well, damn, I —"
"Please Scar. Tell him to call as soon as you find him, no
matter what time it is, will you?"


172]
"It's like that, huh?"
"Yes."
"O.K., I'll find him for you," Scar said.
"Who was that?" Kenny wanted to know.
"Armenta. I got to go find Jake," Scar said.
Outside of the Zodiac, Jake breathed deeply in the cold
air. He cupped his hands and lit a cigarette against the
wind. He supposed he could go to some of the other joints,
but what the hell, a bar was a bar. He could stay in the
Zodiac if that was all he was going to do.
"Hey, Jake!"
Jake looked around and saw a long lanky figure in a sailor
uniform beckoning to him from across the street. Well, I'll
be damn. He flipped the match out into the surging traffic
and followed it.
"Say man, how you gonna sound?" They laughed at each
other.
"How long you been a swabbie, Ed?" Jake had to look up.
"Damn, when you start wearing stilts?" Jake said.
"I been in ever since a week after we graduated."
"Navy do that to everybody?" Jake said measuring Ed's
six-feet-three inches of lanky frame.
White teeth flashed in Ed's handsome face. "Dig the crazy
mop, man," Ed said taking the navy-blue winter dress cap
off his head and bowing so Jake could get a good look at
the glossy waves pushed up pompadour fashion.
"Jim!" Jake said. "Where you get a burn like that?"
"New York, man. That's where I'm stationed."
"It don't look like a conk."
"It ain't. It's a marcel, latest thing out. Better join the
Navy, man. I was already pretty 'fore I went in. Now I'm
tall, dark, and handsome, ha-ha."


[173
Ed hadn't changed much, except for height, Jake was
thinking. They had some good times in high school. Ed's
hair didn't gas him. It looked artificial. But he had to admit
it looked a hell of a lot better than a conk. "You on leave?"
"Yeah. I got five more days to spend in this hick town.
Man, you oughta go to New York. Ain't no other city like
it in the whole world. Come on an see my short. I'm parked
down the way."
"That what they call cars in New York?"
"Yeh, Pres. Where you been? Don't tell me you goin'
turn square on me? Man, this hick town is got a bad in-
fluence. What you doing now?"
"This and that."
"Man, you looking prosperous."
"I ain't complaining."
"I got something in the short a knock your eyes out," Ed
said. Ed whirled around to get a better look at the figure that
had jostled him as they passed by. "What in hell is that?"
Jake laughed. "Caldonia? He thinks every day is Hallow-
een."
"This is me," Ed pointed to a 1946 maroon Chevy. "Pick
up on the happenings. They're ready to go, drunk as hell.
I was hoping I'd run into somebody wasn't square that
could take one of 'em off my hands."
"Well, I'll be damn," Jake said. "Where you pick them
up?"
"All right, huh, man? I ran into 'em across town."
"They got those kind of bars over there?"
"Hell, naw. This is a square-assed town. It's all white
over there, man."
"Then, how in hell —"
Ed winked. "That comes from being on the corners of
the big city. Get in, man."


174]
"No thanks."
"What's wrong, man? You chicken?"
"Naw, I ain't chicken."
"Man, don't tell me that you going to turn out square
after all these years? A little piece of white ass ain't going
to kill you."
Jake looked at the stringy hair, the smeared make-up, the
dowdy clothes, the skinny frames. "That's just it, they don't
kill me."
"Man, they white."
"I don't give a damn."
"A hard rod ain't never had no conscience."
"Maybe not," Jake said. "But I have." Jake left Ed stand-
ing there. "See you around," he said. He went down to
Molly's to eat a few sandwiches and drink some coffee. That
was where Scar found him.
"Spider told me you had been by the Zodiac," Scar said.
"Just left there not long ago," Jake said. "How you do-
ing?"
"I'm making it," Scar said.
"I just got in this evening."
"Yeh, I know. Armenta told me."
"Armenia?"
"Yeh. She's looking for you, wants you to call her."
"Get off it, cat."
"No joke, that's what she said. She sent me out looking
for you."
"Aw, she's full of feces."
"Feces?"
"Word I learned in college," Jake said. "Only one I ap-
preciated."
"Well, she said to call her no matter what time of night
it was."


176]
proached the bar. "Jake." Scar grabbed Jake by the arm.
"Goddammit, Scar, leave me alone. What you got to do
with it?" Jake said quietly.
"Goddammit, you're going to call that girl. I didn't get
out of bed and come all the way around here for nothing."
"What the hell you doing in bed?"
"Kenny's leaving tomorrow for the WAC's if it's any of
your damn business. Why don't you take care of your own
and call Armenta?"
"Kenny joining the WAC?"
"That's what I said."
"Man, that's a hell of a thing to join. They tell me half
of 'em are hustlers."
"Yeh, I know," Scar said wearily. "I don't guess it's much
else she can do. She can't stay with me forever."
"Naw, you would have gotten tired sooner or later," Jake
said.
"Call Armenta, willya?"
Jake punched Scar on the shoulder. "O.K.," he said.
Scar sat at the bar while Jake went back of the Zodiac to
the phone booths. Armenta answered the phone on the
second ring.
"Hello," Jake said.
"Hello, Jake."
"What you talking so quiet for?"
"My daddy doesn't want me talking to you, that was the
whole trouble."
"Your ole man?"
"Yes. He doesn't want me around you."
"I told you your ole man didn't like me."
"I know. He's sending me to school in New York next
semester."
"After you got a scholarship at J City?"
"He figures I will forget you up there."


[177
"Will you?"
"No."
"Looks like I threw craps," Jake said.
"I'll be back this summer."
"That won't mean nothing with your ole man ordering
you to keep away from me."
"I'll see you anyway."
Jake laughed. A short guttural laugh. "I'm not in your
class, Armenta. I should have known I had no business mix-
ing with the four-hundreds."
"Don't say that, Jake."
"Well, that's right, ain't it? Your father thinks I'm gar-
bage or something. Well, I may not go around with my nose
stuck up in the air and talk all goofy like a professor or
something, but I'll bet you this, I'll be driving a Cadillac
next year and I'll have a house as big and pretty as his by the
time I'm twenty-one."
"I didn't know you ever thought about houses and things
like that."
"I'm going to show your ole man I'm just as good as he is."
"He doesn't have anything against you personally, Jake.
He just thinks I should be interested in doctors, lawyers,
architects, and people like that."
"What difference does it make what you are long as you
got bread?"
"That's what worries him. He wonders what you're doing
to have a new car and things like that. I wonder myself,
sometimes," Armenta admitted.
... So Monk had been right all along.
"Jake! Jake, are you still there?"
"Yeh."
"I'm going to send you my address soon as I get to New
York. Will you keep in touch with me, Jake?"
"Yeh," Jake said ... I wonder myself, sometimes .. .


[179
It was the worst time in the world for this kind of action, as
far as Scar was concerned, but it could not be helped. He
had the choice of watching Maxine floating or sick. Time
went fast for Scar after that and yet everything was slowed
down like it had never been before. He had time to walk
around the world on each second and yet it seemed the show
started right after he got back. Spotlights danced all over
everything. "Man, I'm floating," Scar said. He could see the
music. He could actually see it. B flat was a nice golden
yellow and man those blue notes were really blue. The
notes floated out of the trumpets like silver discs, then
jingled through the air like melting icicles when the trum-
pets screamed them out of shape. The notes from the saxes
were doughnut-shaped and they kept changing from green
to purple and dull orange. The guy on piano was building
ivory stairways to the ceiling. The notes were so solid Scar
bet he could walk all the way up to the top and sit down
on nothing. He didn't know what the bass and drummer
were doing, but they were kicking like wild. The notes kept
exploding. He couldn't keep watching the orange flashes,
it was like sticking your nose in a welder's torch. Then he
saw Maxine come out in a white dress covered with sequins,
open in front, showing her large, well-molded dancer's legs,
going like crazy to the music in black lace stockings. She had
a white hat full of black feathers bouncing on her head and
she came out to the front of the stage and kicked her legs at
the audience. He could see her thighs quiver with each
thrust her legs made into the air. There was a mole painted
on her left cheek. Her cold, intimate stage smile flashed at
the audience. Then she looked down and Scar was sure she
must have seen them because she seemed to freeze for a
second. Then he didn't see her for a while because the
group behind her swerved around her and she disappeared


180]
in the middle. The music stopped; everyone clapped like
crazy. Maxine was good; Scar felt great. The music started
again, this time a slow mambo beat. Maxine's hips filled the
stage, slowly gyrating to the sensual beat. Then she was
standing over them again. "Hello, heel," she said. "What's
wrong with your friend?" She whirled away, drifted around
the stage and came back.
"Hi, Slim," Jake said. "How you been?"
"Hi, Scar," Maxine said. She wrinkled her nose at him.
She slittered back to the other dancers and whispered some-
thing. Then she crisscrossed her way back up the stage.
"She's coming down the steps," Scar said.
Maxine danced down the steps and among the tables, the
spotlight following her movements. She acted as though she
would sit down on an old man's lap, the woman at the table
brandished a pocketbook. Maxine hurried away, waving
back at the man as she went along. The audience roared.
She stopped at another table and poured herself a drink.
She made a toast to the men at the table, took the drink over
to another table and had a man there drink it. The crowd
got a bang out of that too. Then she came over to Jake and
Scar. "Hello, heel. When you start running with junkies!"
"What you talking about?" Jake said.
"Hello, Scar. I thought you had better sense than to get
on the mainline kick," Maxine said contemptuously.
Scar couldn't say anything. He had been dreaming of
seeing Maxine for months, but he couldn't say anything.
"You've changed," Maxine told Scar, shaking her head.
"You had something women liked once. Too bad you didn't
bring it around."
"Is that a proposition?" Scar said dully.
Maxine laughed in his face. She stroked Jake's face play-
fully. "Now here's a heel that's still got what all the women
want."


182]
In bed Scar stared at the ceiling. He couldn't touch
Kenny. He didn't know if he could ever touch any woman
again.
Kenny thought he was drunk. When she got up at six
o'clock he was still staring at the ceiling. "I'm going, Scar."
"O.K."
"I'll write you, hear?"
"O.K."
Kenny came into the bedroom and looked at Scar. "You
was the best friend I ever had, Scar." She came over to the
bed and kissed him quickly. She didn't tell him she loved
him, she just walked out of the door. That was the last Scar
ever saw of Kenny.
YOU ARE NO DREAM, no fantasy created by the mind.
You are a lovely, vibrant woman whose warmth is hidden
behind a veil of sophistication. You were not always so. You
wear the mask of sophistication well. So well that most peo-
ple cannot conceive of the person that you really are, or the
things that you like to do. But, I know. I KNOW THE
REAL YOU. I know you well, sophisticated lady. You are
a career woman and you love your job. You have everything
you want. Isn't that what you tell everyone? Ha, what a
joke. The only thing you ever wanted was that guy that
hung on the corner. The height of your ambition was a little
white cottage full of little plump kids. But he walked out
on you, didn't he, lady? Yeh, he walked out and sophistica-
tion walked in.
The Duke wrote a song about you, lady. You've heard it.
It's called "Sophisticated Lady" and it fits you to a T. How
does it go . . .
They say,
Into your early life romance came . . .


184]
in smoke because of you. You want him, don't you, sophis-
ticated lady? You want him back. You still want him bad,
I know. I know what you want and how you feel. I know all
about you. I know because the very same he did to you, you
are doing to me . . .
The record player was not on, but Scar could hear the
golden, melodious voice of Billy Eckstine very clearly.
7
Jake stood in front of the Paradise, feet planted, hands
shoved deep into the overcoat pockets of the gray velour
overcoat with the belt-in-the-back. He couldn't get over it.
First Armenta, now Scar. Scar moving like that and not even
telling him he was leaving. Scar must not even be in the city
any more, no one had seen him. A guy who was supposed to
be your best friend, doing something like that? The hell
with Scar, he didn't care. He thought about going in there
and seeing Maxine, but he didn't. He walked down the
street instead. He didn't blame Maxine for what she had
done, but damn, how was he to know? Sleet fell like his
thoughts, irritating as hell. He got into the Dynaflow and
drove around, not going anywhere. He thought of going
home and answering Armenta's letter. She had written him
twice and he had not answered — yet. It wasn't that — he
just didn't go in for that letter-writing stuff, that's all it was.
He found himself getting out of the car and going into
Cardoil's, one of those all-night restaurants, and kidding
Sadie, a waitress, who used to like him when they were in
high school. It was too crowded to talk much so he said he


[185
would call her and left. Then he was on the highway going
out to the city limits. The prisoner always returns to the
scene of the crime. He found the motel, left the car, and
hurried through the crazy sleet. He sat and drank scotch-on-
rocks in the Purple Room and all the lights were colored
with memories. He didn't give a damn. He heard the music
and saw the violinist stroll among the handholding couples.
He watched the candles flick their mocking flames over the
checkered tabletops. It didn't bother him at all. He sat, he
drank, he saw, and the crazy sleet fell.
February was a month of sleet. The streets were ice in
February. The air was hoarse, wind-pained. Chattering peo-
ple in bundled coats were trapped to complaining limbs, and
brows were bonded to ice-locked thoughts in February.
8
March came on a dying breath and coughed hard enough
for kites to flop sickeningly in a phlegm sky. Robins paid for
their foolhardiness when night came.
Pop Garveli stood behind the counter arid rang up the
cost of groceries on the cash register. "How's Jake?" Pop
asked.
"Something's wrong with him, but I'm not sure what.
You can't tell from looking at him, but something's wrong,"
Adams said.
"Well, you know how teen-agers are."
"Yeh. He'll be nineteen this month. I thought he was
going to straighten out, but —" Adams threw up his hands.
"I thought sure — when he went off to school and every-
thing —"


186]
"Well, I wouldn't worry none about it, Adams. Likely as
not he hasn't made up his mind what he wants to do yet. I'll
be willing to bet he goes back to school in September. You
wait and see."
"I think he's got woman trouble," Adams said.
"Jake? That's the last thing I'd expect him to have. Ain't
all the gals sweet on him?"
"I think he's found that gal I was always teasing him about
making him settle down."
"Aw, you don't think he's got serious about some gal? He's
too young for that."
"Sometimes I don't think that boy's too young for noth-
ing. He got a couple letters from a girl named Armenta. I
think she was the one in college with him. Anyway, the other
day he wrote her, and he ain't one to write. He takes after
me in that way."
"You think he's really gone and got serious?" Pop was
amused. "Well, there's nothing like it. I remember when
I first met — I'll be doggone if I had the slightest notion one
day we'd have Georgia and — course afterwhile I figured I
might, but by then it was too late to do anything about it.
It's funny how a woman can grow on you, ain't it?"
"Yeh," Adams said dreamingly. "How's Georgia like col-
lege?"
"Well, you know she really wanted to go off to school,
but — well, we couldn't afford it," Pop said uneasily.
"Yeh, I know how that is."
"She don't talk much about it. I guess she likes it well
enough. She wants to be a teacher, so I figure she can get
just as good an education at the city college as anywhere
else. Besides, you know the graduates from City College get
first crack at the jobs around here?"
"Is that right?"


9
Then spring came, and the marble games started along Pea-
body Avenue, the jumping from coalshed to coalshed, the
walking of broad, rotting, wooden fences, the hopscotch
games, the hidespy games with boys and girls going into the
dark together hiding. The skate trucks roared, footballs
sailed through the air. Children congregated on the side-
walks at night, their singsong voices chanting "Little Sally
Walker." Slingshots broke out street lights. Sitting in a
saucer — gambling wineheads found their spots in the alleys.
Rise Sally rise — Welch Street mushroomed people. Wipe
your winking eyes — the arguments in the houses, the splat-
tering eating ware. Over on Bell Avenue the tamale man
permeated the atmosphere with his steam wagon. Boy meets
girl and disillusion. Put your hands on your hips — Molly's
and the fat lonely owner watching overweight roaches run
along the counter among soggy crumbs. The patrol car idly
wanders the street. Radios blare boogie-joogie music through
opened windows. Balls click in Booker's and the little back
room finds the dice roaming. Guys linger on the wooden
porches of the flats on the avenues, hands propped against a
sagging rail, the cigarette smoke climbing, unblocked hats
resting on ears, hats and smoke not quite shading the ques-
tion in their eyes. The girls carry on conversation with their
bodies. And let your backbone slip — night rains, the baby
cries, the car horns sail, the dogs and people make a staccato
street symphony. Parks laugh with people. Old men sip beer
on porch swings. Animation curses the city with activity.
Oh baby shake to the east — a new gang replaces the Barra-
cudas. Oh baby shake to the west — Cugat jackets hit the
market, the latest thing. Cugat jackets parade the streets in
bright colors, blue, red, yellow, burnt-orange, green, the


190]
pointed-collared lightweight jackets hang off the shoulders
of the guys in the know. Oh baby shake to the one you love
the best. The people welcome spring.
Jake was pleased with himself. He drove the new car away
from the dealer's feeling the powerful motor vibrate under
his feet. He had on his gray stingy brim, the new blue suede
gaucho jacket, gray slacks and blue suede shoes. He felt like
letting the top down on the big two-toned convertible with
the blue top and gray bottom, but it was too cool for that.
He wasn't even worried about the whitewall tires. It was
easy to keep them looking good when you could pay some-
body else to do the work. Hadn't he made it to Sadie and
run across Pearl last week and shacked with her? And what
about that new babe working in the ticket window at the
Circle Theater? Her eyes weren't as big or pretty as Pearl's
but anybody could see they were for him. It was a good
world as long as you had money to buy it. So he felt good.
Who in hell wouldn't if they could go out and buy them-
selves a Cadillac on their nineteenth birthday? He tightened
his hands on the wheel of the car, controlling power, man,
tons of it. He didn't much feel like going around the high
school, most of the ole crowd didn't hang around there any
more — Scar, Spider, Red. Well, you couldn't have every-
thing. Feed the suckers the mainline, man, the baby needs
milk, the Cad's got to have gas, the baby needs shoes, you
can't run a Cad without tires. The Cad enjoys a man in the
driving seat. The Cad was the best babe he knew, she gave
you kicks, she performed to your commands and if you took
care of her she took care of you, which was saying a hell of
a lot. Feed the suckers the mainline — Red, Scar? Hell yes,
man, feed the suckers the mainline. Maxine, Armenta —
feed the suckers. He cruised down Welch Street for a while,


192]
"That car of yours, seems to me." Pop put his hands on
his hips. "A 'forty-nine Cadillac — well, if that don't beat
everything. You're not doing anything wrong like robbing
old ladies to pay for that thing, are you?" Pop said laughing.
"Not yet," Jake said. "I might have to next month when
the note comes up."
They laughed, all three together, on the sidewalk.
"Well, back to work for me. Don't stay away long,
Georgia, you've got to cook supper tonight, don't forget.
Maude's making a cook out of Georgia," Pop explained. "I
guess it's about time, she thinks she's grown enough to do
everything else."
"Oh, Pop," Georgia said. Pop waved to Georgia and Jake
and went back into the store.
Georgia got in the car and they drove away laughing to-
gether about nothing. "I hear you say you're boy crazy?"
Jake said teasing Georgia.
"Oh, Pop just likes to exaggerate. Jake —?"
"Huh?"
"What makes boys so vulgar?"
"How you mean?"
"Well, you know how everyone always says 'how you been
doing'?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, all the fellows hang around in the hall and ask all
the girls who have they been doing. Sometimes they can be
so disgusting with their vulgarities."
Jake laughed. "Yeh, well you just watch out when the
vulgarities don't seem so vulgar to you any more."
Georgia hit Jake playfully. She had not done that in years,
not since they had become old enough to know what it meant
to belong to different races. "What are you thinking?" she
said, noticing the expression on his face.


194]
"I don't care," Georgia finally said flippantly, "do you?"
"Me? Hell naw," Jake said.
They laughed. They rode all over the city.
"Remember when I used to be your play sister?"
"Yeh. We sure goofed over the store. I don't know why
Pop didn't fire me. Remember the time we ate all that candy
when we thought Pop wasn't looking and got sick and he
laughed at us?"
"Yeh. I should have known better than to listen to you."
"It wasn't my idea," Jake protested, "it was yours."
"We really got sick all right," Georgia laughed.
"Yeh, we sure did," Jake joined her.
They spent an hour remembering, then Jake took Georgia
back to the store.
"You ought to take me out riding again sometime. I still
need a brother," Georgia said.
"Aw, quit pulling my leg."
"Don't you want to be my brother?"
Jake thought of the car ride and the staring people. The
unexpressed reaction started through him again. "Sure I
do," he said very deliberately.
"O.K., then. I need some brotherly advice with all those
mannish things pouncing at me from everywhere."
Jake laughed. "You're not conceited."
"I didn't mean it like —"
"I know what you mean. It's no mystery why they're
pouncing at you from everywhere."
Georgia smiled.
"Goodbye, kid sister."
Georgia thumbed her nose at him.


11
Smoke fogged the small back room. It was three in the
morning and Spider had only one more hour to work. He
was in a hurry to get home to Evelyn. She had been sick
yesterday and was not feeling good when he left. She had
told him it was to be expected and that sometimes expectant
daddies get sick. He had never heard of that before. Man,
that must really be something. He changed dice for a tall
thin man and watched the game indifferently.
The door to the back room opened and a tall, well-built
woman in an evening dress came in. She looked the place
over rather skeptically. Then her mouth hardened and she
walked over to Spider. "Hi, Spider."
"Maxine!" Spider said, surprised to see her. "Long time
no see. I hear you're at the Paradise now. Me and Evelyn
intended to get around to see you, but I work such funny —"
"I know," Maxine said squeezing his shoulder. "How have
you been getting along?"
"Can't complain, out of touch with everything since I got
hitched. You know me and Evelyn are expecting."
"No kidding?"
"Yeh, one kid anyway, Evelyn that is." Spider tossed a
new set of dice to a shooter.
"Seen any of the ole gang lately?"
"Naw, I ain't. Jake ain't been in here since that first time.
I ain't seen Scar either. I hear he ain't even in the city no
more."
"Is that right?"
"Yeh, that's what they tell me. Funny how things change,
ain't it?"
"Yeh, yeh, real funny, Spider."
"We had a lot of fun in the ole days, didn't we, Slim?"


[197
guising his intelligence behind corner boy talk. Yeh, who
used his brain to figure out how to get another fix — nice.
"Well, anyway, at least you're amounting to something,"
Evelyn told Maxine. "I'm so happy about your big break.
Someday you got to tell me all about it."
Sure kid, tell you all about it. "Nothing to talk about
really," Maxine said. And let your backbone slip. Nothing
to talk about except the mocking sounds in the night, the
endless bars, the price to pay for the spotlight. "You and
Spider are the lucky ones. You don't know how lucky you
are."
"How?" Evelyn wanted to know. "You're the celebrity."
"You've got each other," Maxine said. "I —" She was
about to say that was the most important thing in the world,
but what was more disgusting than a drunk fool crying in
his beer?
"Funny how things work out in the end, ain't it?"
"The end hasn't got here yet, Spider," Maxine said.
Spider smiled. "You always was quick on the trigger, Slim,
that's what Jake — that's what Jake always liked about you,"
he finished.
"You really must tell me about your big break, Maxine.
It's so thrilling to think of somebody we know as a big-time
celebrity," Evelyn said.
"Like I said, there's really nothing to it." Nothing at all.
Oh baby shake to the east. You just trade long lean days
and men for a soft career with hard hours, for security spelled
with dollar bills, and count your breaks on the navels of fat
paunches hovering over you for the pay-off. Oh baby shake
to the west.
They talked about the fun they used to have.
"It's funny about things, how they change, I mean, ain't
it?" Spider said.


198]
No one had an answer. Oh baby shake to the one you love
the best —
12
She read his letter again. The same letter she had read many
times. She remembered how strange he had sounded over
the telephone the last time they had talked to each other.
She had promised to write every day, but she hadn't. She
had written once every week instead, five in all. He had
written her only once, and it was not a long letter. Why did
she like him so much? Was it because he was bad? Maybe
people admired other people when they were bad because
they did not have nerve enough to be bad themselves. She
remembered in grade school and high school he was always
the bad boy that all the teachers liked, though they some-
times pretended they didn't. She blushed because she knew
she wanted to be in bed with Jake, and that was wrong. Was
that what made love, wanting to be bad with someone? They
had been bad together a lot of times. She blushed. She had
been a regular little slut around him. She knew she was not
really a nice girl at all, not like her father and mother thought
she was. She couldn't help it though, she couldn't help it if
she felt like that. She wondered when her father and mother
went to bed did they feel — she really blushed about that.
She was acting silly, she knew all about the birds and bees.
And she hadn't, not with anyone but Jake, except that time
with Scar. Rise Sally rise — One letter after all those times.
She bet he didn't even remember them all. She did though,


[199
in the spring, coming back from the Drive-In, that first time.
Wipe your winking eyes— And the times she thought she
would never again until she did. She could remember all of
them, that last time in the motel — Oh baby — He prob-
ably even forgot that, he better not. Probably just wrote that
one letter because he felt sorry for her. He said he loved her,
not exactly like that, but in a funny way that first time after
the Drive-In — she couldn't stop blushing. Why did she sit
in the dormitory reading an old letter from Jake when she
could be out with Lou Carl, who was going into interning
next semester? All the girls liked him and he was going to be
a doctor. He was real smooth and said he liked her a lot. She
bet. She wasn't going out with him and let him get her some
place where he could do that. Jake. Jake wouldn't even answer
her letters. She threw the letter on the bed in disgust. He
wasn't worth her thinking about for two seconds anyway. He
was just a smooth talker and always had that little boy look on
his face that made girls want to be nice to him. She bet he was
running around with everything he could get his hands on
while she was stuck away up here in New York. He'd better
not. He'd better remember who's his ole lady. To the east
— he wrote such uninspired letters, like they were answers to
a chemistry problem or something. She wished he would have
used some pretty words, some poetry even, but Jake was not
that kind. He would think it was silly. Well, maybe it was,
but she would have liked it. He said he would wait for her,
but in his own way. She wondered what he meant by that.
There was only one way to wait for someone, to be true. He'd
better, she thought. She almost felt he was mocking her for
all the silly questions she had written asking him about. She
wouldn't have only, well after all she had broken things up,
hadn't she, listening to her father and his talk about respect-
ability and the source of Jake's money? It wasn't any of his


200]
business. To the west— She had to admit she wondered,
she had even told Jake she did. She did not want to know
though, she was scared to know. JAKE HAD ALWAYS
BEEN A BAD BOY. He never did anything really wrong
though. People would not like him if he had. The one you
love the best— All at once she was scared, more than she
had ever been before, more even than when she was five and
fooling around in the closet and the door had closed, trap-
ping her in the dark.
13
It was the third time he took Georgia out riding that
bothered him. It had been at night, and he went out on the
highway and really opened the Cadillac up. The state patrol
had caught them and Georgia had been scared, and had
never understood how he had gotten out of a ticket, espe-
cially with that big one getting so mad. Yeh, he had really
been mad all right. It was that Trashwagon guy again. He
was mad because Georgia was in there with him, but it wasn't
nothing he could do about it. Trashwagon wouldn't have
said a damn thing if Georgia hadn't been there, Jake knew
damn well he wouldn't. But that wasn't what bothered him,
that was incidental. What bothered him was the way he had
let Georgia pry him open and get him talking about himself.
Like Georgia said, people only talk to each other about un-
important things. He knew that was the way it was, yet he
had found himself really talking to Georgia about things. It
didn't pay to talk too much to nobody. That was what was


202]
much pent-up energy when he was with her, so what was so
wrong in that?
"Hi, Jake," Georgia called, coming out of the store and
getting in the car.
"Hi, Georgia. How you feeling?"
"Fine, let's drive through the park."
Georgia's hair looked almost black in the semi-darkness of
the car. It had a luster to it, a spark, not like Armenta's
which was jet black, silky and long. Georgia's hair was cut
short, heavier, and the luster seemed more golden in texture.
"You know you growed up to be quite a looker, kid
sister," Jake said.
"I didn't know brothers paid any attention to the looks of
their kid sisters," Georgia said.
"They don't," Jake said.
"We can't be the way we used to, can we?" Georgia said.
"How you mean?"
"You know how I mean," Georgia said.
"Yeh," Jake said. "I know."
"I wonder why?" Georgia said.
"I guess people can't help but change."
"I guess not, it's not that —"
"I know, but it's not the same."
"No, that's right, it's not," Georgia said. "I don't care, it's
still sister and brother, only a different kind." She hit Jake
playfully.
The park was filled with people enjoying the pleasant
weather before the rains came.
"It's nice out,'* Georgia said.
"Yeh, when it gets a little warmer I can drop the top
down."
"Why don't you do it now?"
"I drive too fast," Jake said. "We'd freeze to death."


204]
"You got to prove who's the toughest."
"It doesn't make sense," Georgia said.
"That's the only way to think if you ever think about it,"
Jake said.
"About what?"
"Anything," Jake said. "You take sports. What kind of
sense does it make when you start to think about it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, take tennis. You take one little ball, two big pad-
dles, and a net. Then you wait till a nice warm day and two
people chase that little ball all over the court in the hot sun
to hit it with a paddle, what kind of sense does that make?"
"Oh, Jake," Georgia said.
"Take golf. You take a little hard ball, place it on a pin,
rare back with a club and hit it just as far as you can. Then
you walk after it, to get a chance to hit it again, and the
harder you whack it the longer you got to walk. Then when
you finally get the ball where you want it, what do you do?
You push it in a little hole in the ground. Now what kind
of sense does that make?"
"Aw, Jake," Georgia waved a hand at him.
"That's the truth."
"You make it sound so ridiculous."
"That's the way it is when you start thinking about it.
Another good example is baseball, now —"
"I'll take your word for it," Georgia said with a grin. "But
that's with sports."
"That's with everything," Jake said.
"Such as?"
"You name it."
"O.K., how about religion. What's so silly about that?"
"Are you kidding?"
"I hope not." Georgia laughed. "I mean I heard you play
that smart crack on people before."


[205
"Well, I don't know if it quite fits you."
"Why not?"
"I can't see why you would be hoping not."
"Why?"
"Well, the Immaculate Conception is one of those silly
things in religion which we were about to talk about."
"Why?"
"'Cause a woman's got to have a man in the driving seat,
if she's ever going to produce something to keep a man up
walking nights."
"I don't see how that —"
"Well, you can see where that applies to you. You have to
have a man to be kidding."
"Oh," Georgia said, her voice inflecting slightly.
"Didn't you know?"
"You're the one that seems so sure I don't know."
"Well, have you?" Jake said raising an eyebrow.
"Have I what?"
"Been doing any driving lately?"
"I've been riding with you."
"I mean in your seat."
Georgia blushed. "I'm not going to tell you."
"Why?"
"It's too personal."
"I thought brothers and sisters were supposed to be able
to talk about personal things."
"Would you talk to me about things that personal?"
"Sure."
"Well, I'm not going to tell you."
"Why not?"
"You didn't ask me as a brother."
"How did I ask you?"
"Like somebody wanting to do some driving."
"I guess that's what it sounded like all right," Jake said.


206]
"That's O.K.," Georgia said. "That's what I sounded like
too."
They looked at each other.
"You ready to go home, Georgia?"
"If you want to take me home."
Jake shrugged.
"Jake?"
"Yeh."
"You ever think much about things?"
"Not unless I can't help it."
"I do all the time. I get so confused. I mean when you
start trying to think about God, and the world and things
like that — I mean my math teacher said you can't think of
religion intellectually. You have to accept it on faith just
like the basic premises in mathematics."
"Yeh."
"But — I mean, it doesn't make sense."
"You sound like somebody else I know."
"Who?"
"A girl named Armenta," Jake said matter-of-factly.
"Do you like her?"
"Why you ask that?"
"Oh, I dunno. You sound like you might."
"I do?"
"Yes, every time you start to sound very casual about some-
thing, it usually means something to you."
"You know me real good, don't you, Georgia?"
"Sometimes."
He looked at her. "I don't feel like your brother," he said.
"You told me that."
"I mean it's different."
"I know that."
"Well —"


208]
you're wondering if they're thinking about doing something
to someone else what seems so great that they do to you, and
like I say, it's the same thing anyway so what difference
should it make, you follow me?"
"I'm afraid I don't," Georgia said.
"Well, what I mean is you get a lot restrictions with love
and worries and everything which you wouldn't have if you
weren't in love, and all you get out of love is the same thing
you can get from someone without being in love, but you
think you're getting something else because you're in love.
See what I mean?"
"A little. Jake, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"I don't know how to put it. Do — what I mean is, do
colored girls go to bed with somebody just because they like
them?"
"It depends on how smooth the guy is, you know what I
mean?"
"Uh-huh. I shouldn't have asked you that, should I?"
"Why not?" Jake said, knowing very well what she meant.
"I don't know. You know what I mean."
"Yeh."
"Jake, our ancestors really messed up the world, didn't
they?"
"Didn't they," Jake said.
"They're still messing it up too."
"Yeh. You know something?"
"What?"
"Other side of the fence, those babes, you know?"
"You mean do they?"
"Yeh."
"They're about the same way, I guess. Everyone says they
don't, but they do sometimes."


[211
"What were you thinking about?"
"You're full of a lot of questions, kid sister."
"Is anything wrong with that?"
"Some of them might not be so good for you."
"I'm three times seven."
"You're not."
"Socially I am," Georgia said primly.
"Since when?"
"Since I started going riding with you."
"If you say so," Jake said.
"Well, what was the line?"
"You know that girl you asked me did I like?"
"Armenta?"
"That's the one."
"What about her?"
"Well, you know."
"Love?"
"Well, we're supposed to be real tight. We were at one
time. She's in school in New York, and — aw, you don't
want to hear about it," Jake said.
Georgia looked at him waiting for him to continue.
"You want to go out on the highway? I feel like taking
a run."
"You mean go speeding like you did the last time?"
"Yeh. You ain't scared are you?"
"Of course not, I think it's foxy. I mean it's so thrilling
and scary."
"I thought you said you weren't scared."
"I'm not. I mean it's fun being scared. You're going to
get a ticket though."
"Not a chance."
"Haven't you ever been scared of having an accident?"
"Naw, you?"


212]
"Uh-huh, that's what makes it so scary and fun."
"You know what, Georgia? I ain't never been scared of
getting hurt doing nothing. I always felt couldn't nothing
happen to me, that's funny ain't it?"
"Yes, how can you feel like that?"
"I don't know. You know what? I don't even believe I
can die. I know I'm going to one day, but I can't believe it."
"I'd be afraid to say that."
"Why?"
"I'd be afraid something would strike me dead for daring
to say something like that."
"You mean God? You think if there was one he'd care
what we said about him?"
"Let's not talk any more about that, it scares me."
"I thought you liked to be scared?"
"Not like that." Georgia shivered. "You know, I bet
that's what girls like about you, you seem so sure about
everything. You even walk around like a little tin soldier.
How do people get like that, Jake?"
"Like what?"
"Like you."
"I don't know. I always felt that way, Georgia."
"You couldn't have."
"As far back as I can remember."
"That's why they like you, Jake. That's the secret of your
success."
"That's why I like you," Jake said teasing Georgia. "You
say such nice things about me."
"That's why you were the leader of the gang instead of
the follower. Maybe that's why I told you — that line."
She turned from him quickly.
I'll be true in my fashion. He felt like he was stabbing
himself in the back. It hurt like hell to twist your arm


,[213
around that way. But, he knew he might do it. He was
capable of doing anything. Georgia his sister. Pop and
Mrs. Garveli who treated him like a son. Who trusted him
with Georgia like they never trusted any boy. Another line,
Georgia, stronger than ten thousand of those other lines,
stronger than ten million, stronger than ten hundred thou-
sand zillion —
"Jake."
"Huh?"
"I was talking to you."
"I'm sorry, I wasn't digging."
"I was talking about —"
"Oh, forget about it Georgia, it's not worth talking about."
The line was drawn, he dare not cross it. He hoped she
didn't want him to cross it, but she was a girl and he knew
girls. He knew the signs. He had spent his whole life around
girls, studied them the way professional baseball pitchers
study their delivery. It was his profession. Women and
money were the only things that mattered in this world. It
took some guys a hell of a long time to find that out, but he
knew it early, damn early. He wouldn't be running after
young girls when he was fifty, he would have burned out by
then, he got his now, in his youth, when any respectable man
was supposed to get them, but not Georgia. After all, what
would it prove? Nothing, another conquest, so what?
"Watch out, Jake," Georgia said, as he almost hit a passing
car.
Jake stopped the car on a lane in the park. "I better stop
awhile, until I get my mind back on driving," he said.
Georgia looked at him strangely, but said nothing. He
noticed the way her breasts pushed against her blouse, the
almost sleepy way she held her eyes. The sharp nose, high
cheek bones, the warm mouth, the full hips pushing against


216]
something like that," Jake said, now beginning to feel cocky.
"You know who you owe your job to?"
"What the hell you talking about? Get out of the car,
you're taking a little trip downtown."
"You owe your job to a certain guy, you want to keep it,
you better lay off me."
"What?" the astonished officer said.
"You don't believe it, you take me down and we'll see who
does what to who. This guy I'm thinking of don't like none
of his boys being drug downtown, and he might take care
of things like that by kicking you off the force so you don't
go around embarrassing him, you dig?"
"Get out," the officer said, drawing his gun.
"Have it your way," Jake said.
"How you know so much about the force?" the police-
man suddenly said.
"I'm on the payroll just like you, just in another depart-
ment, that's all."
"You seem kind of young."
"You seem kind of old," Jake said now more sure than
ever.
"Well, I'll check. I'm taking your license."
"O.K. with me."
"Brother, if you're pulling a fast one, I'll find you if I
have to chase you all over hell."
Jake got out a cigarette and lit it.
The cop flushed. "Say look, why you have to talk so freely
in front of —" He nodded his head toward Georgia, talking
in a low voice.
"You didn't give me any choice," Jake said.
"Well, you better know how to handle it."
"If I couldn't, I wouldn't be on the payroll."
"Well, let me give you a bit of advice. Everybody ain't
on the payroll."


218]
"Yeh, we tried. We tried, Georgia."
"I suppose now, I don't suppose we could ever now."
"I think I could, Georgia. I think —"
"Until some night when — I'm so ashamed."
"Georgia, if we ever — I mean if I feel like, or you do,
when we do we'll say to each other, time to go home, and
then we'll go riding again when we don't feel like that, O.K.?"
"Do you think we could?"
"Sure."
"O.K." She smiled at him. She suddenly buried her nose
in his chest and was his sister again. He knew it. He could
feel it.
"No hard feelings?"
"There never were any hard feelings between us, Jake."
"No, that's right. You know, Georgia, that's why I want
to be your brother. You know something about romance?
It's like a war. Both people are fighting against each other,
you know what I mean?"
"No."
"I mean the stud uses every trick he can think of to get the
babe in bed with him, and the babe uses every trick she can
think of not to go to bed and keep the stud around at the
same time and then get him to go to bed with her when she
figures it's time for it."
"You say such funny things."
"But, it's the truth."
"Jake, I think I can."
"Sister?"
"Yes."
"Me too."
"You can't feel like a sister, silly, you're a boy."
"I mean —"
"I know what you mean," Georgia said.


[219
"Remember that time —?"
"Which one?"
"That time we tied all your hair ribbons on the cat's tail?"
Georgia laughed. "She looked so funny."
"Oh, was it a she? I always thought she was a he."
"I bet you don't have that trouble now thinking a he is a
she."
Jake laughed. He had crossed that line, but everything
had turned out all right. Maybe that was the way it had to
be done. Maybe he had had to cross that line for them to get
that old feeling back. "You still want to go out to the high-
way?" The thought suddenly hit him, it was a good thing
that it had not been Trashwagon who had caught them.
Trashwagon would have shot him. A chill flashed through
his body. He was sure of it.
"You going speeding on the highway?"
"Naw," Jake said. "I don't think I want to ever go speed-
ing again. You know why?"
Georgia shook her head.
"'Cause you give me the feeling I was trying to get speed-
ing. That's funny, ain't it?"
Georgia nodded. "I'm glad," she said.
Jake took the Cadillac out on the highway carefully. "I
once did this curve doing seventy-five," he said.
"That was crazy."
"Yeh," Jake laughed. "Yeh, that's what Spider said."
"Jake?"
"Yeh."
"You're in the rackets, aren't you?"
"Huh?"
"That's how you make so much money."
He had forgotten all about shooting his fool mouth off
back there in the park. He shrugged.


220]
"Jake."
"Yeh."
"I wish you weren't. I guess it's too late now, but I wish
you weren't." She shuddered.
"Why?"
"It's so dangerous. Why do you always have to do things
so dangerous?"
"It's not dangerous," Jake said. "No more than driving
on a highway without a curve in sight."
"But, there's a curve somewhere, over the next horizon."
"Yeh, somewhere."
"But, that's what I mean. The guys in the rackets always
— Oh, Jake, I don't want that to happen to you."
"You've been looking at too many movies."
"Life is full of curves too, Jake."
"Yeh, but you just lean into 'em, Georgia, just lay with
'em, they straighten out."
"Oh, Jake," Georgia squeezed his shoulder.
It was a simple curve, not much of that really, and he
was driving at a moderate speed. As he was coming out of
the curve he saw the big trailer truck, on the other side of
the highway, going at least sixty and jamming the air brakes
to cut down.
"He's waiting a little late," Jake said casually.
"Who?"
"That truck. I'd hate to have to wrestle that baby." A
car appeared behind the trailer. "That fool's following the
truck too close," Jake said.
"Oh!" Georgia caught her voice.
The car lurched, then skidded crossways on the highway
over into Jake's lane.
"Hang on."
"Can't you stop?"


222]
little green weekly tabloid gave the city a warning o£ what
could develop. This tabloid, The Viewer, a scandal sheet
about Negroes, gave it the right-hand slot on the front page
and huge black boldface headlines.
INTER-RACIAL LOVERS COURT DEATH
ON HIGHWAY
Death ended the affair of two teen-aged lovers who —
Peabody Avenue was alive with speculation concerning
Jake and Georgia. The scandal sheet read like a dime-store
novel and was just as imaginative. Business was quiet in the
Garveli grocery store. The proprietor, a broken man,
drummed his fingers absent-mindedly on the counter and
stared vacant-eyed at the empty store. Those were the early
days, the days before the funeral.
Out on Merchant Place Henry Arnez laid his pipe aside
and carefully folded the back sheet of the daily paper. "Hey,
hey Edna," he said to his wife sitting quietly across from him
in the living room.
"Yes, Henry."
"You remember when you were telling me I didn't have
nothing to worry about Armenta riding back with that
Jake Adams bird?"
"Yes, I remember."
"Well, he had an accident out on Sixty-six."
"Oh," Mrs. Arnez said. "He didn't get hurt, did he?"
She looked at the set expression on her husband's face.
"How badly?"
"Aw, he'll be all right. It doesn't say he's on the critical
list, but he killed the girl that was riding with him."
"Henry, what are you talking about?"
"The girl that was with him, she got killed in the wreck.


[223
She was about the same age as Armenta. She was a white girl,"
Mr. Arnez fired the accusation at his wife.
"Oh."
"I told you something was wrong about that guy. You'll
learn to listen to me one of these days. You still so sorry
your daughter's in New York? I knew what I was doing,
getting her away from him."
"Henry, that's no way to talk. You should be sympathetic.
I know the boy must feel dreadful about the girl, and he's
hurt in the hospital."
"But, your youngest is safe in New York. He had a Cadil-
lac too, a 1949 Cadillac, did you know that? That's what
he smashed up. How do you explain that, huh? Nineteen
years old with a Cadillac. I'm almost three times nineteen
and I ain't got one, and I've been working all my life."
"I feel so sorry for him," Mrs. Arnez said.
"Phapst," exploded Mr. Arnez.
15
Armenta read the letter from her mother telling about
Jake and the accident, and the white girl. That was Georgia,
Jake had told her how close he and Georgia were. She bet
everybody was kicking up dirt about it. Just because Georgia
was white, they were saying all kinds of dreadful things about
what they did together. People just liked to be evil-minded.
Jake and Georgia weren't anything like that. Oh, Jake, I
just knew something was going to happen. I knew it. If I
had been there it would never have happened, or would it?
Would she have been the one in the car instead of Georgia?


226]
They weren't driving fast, only about forty. The guy behind
the trailer truck lost control of his car when he tried to keep
from hitting the trailer truck slowing down for the curb.
He skidded clear across the other lane where Georgia and
Jake were. Jake tried to go around, but there wasn't room
enough. The guy said Jake saved his life because if he had
hit him he wouldn't have had a chance. Your boy took it
pretty bad about Georgia, did you know that, Adams?"
"Yeh."
"He said something about a line, it didn't make sense.
He blames himself. I wish he wouldn't."
"If Georgia hadn't been with him."
"Well, it was like brother and sister."
"Yeh."
"I know that's all it was. They were always like that."
"Yeh, ever since they was little."
"It seems like a dream," Pop said choking up. "A silly
dream that don't make no sense, no sense at all, Georgia —
in the ground."
"I wish it was."
"I hope you don't ever lose your boy —"
Adams could not say anything, both of them were choked
up. He had already lost his boy. He knew that. He had
lost him long ago. He couldn't even talk to him when he
was lying hurt in a hospital bed. Jake had told Pop more
than he had told him. He hadn't told him anything, just
looked at him, not saying anything, but there was hurt in his
eyes, hurt for what he had done. Maybe that was why he
couldn't talk to him about it. But he had talked to Pop.
"It's funny being without Georgia," Pop said. He seemed
to shrivel up, he could not say any more. He turned slowly
and walked away.
Adams lingered in the cemetery staring at the fresh grave.


[229
"I don't feel like talking."
"Your guy is sure smooth. I bet you're in love with him,
that's what's wrong with you. No answer, huh? I thought
so, I thought that's what was wrong. I bet —"
"Please, Grace."
"Armenia Arnez, you're just snooty, that's what's wrong
with you. I've been knowing it all the time. Don't think I
don't notice how you act all uppity when I talk to you.
You're just like all those other high yellow gals with long
hair, think you're cute —"
"Grace."
"Yeh, think you're cute. Well we dark-skinned gals can
get a man too."
She had to go down to that newsstand and get a home-
town paper every day, so she would know what was going
on. She knew her parents weren't going to say anything
more about it.
"Yeh, get with that ole light-skinned boy friend of yours.
Think you so smart."
"Grace —"
"Yeh, notice you ain't never gave no dark-skinned boy a
tumble, got to be real light to crawl up on you, well —"
"Grace, shut the hell up before I throttle you!" Armenta
said hoarsely.
Grace saw the look in Armenta's eyes and backed away.
She backed out of the door and slammed it shut.
"Oh, Jake," Armenta said. She buried her head in the
pillow, but to her surprise she found out she could not cry.


234]
didn't even drop in. He did not blame them though, he
knew why. They were scared by all that newspaper hot air
about teen-age gangs and things. He could understand them
but he could not understand Spider, Scar. Fugg it, such is
life in the big city. Man, what he needed was a big eraser
to erase that last month and start all over again. He sure
wouldn't do the same thing the second time around.
The police officers, riding in the car with Jake, kidded
each other. They paid no attention to him. They locked
him up in a cell by himself. He tried to get comfortable on
the bunk which was made of a flat metal hard as steel. The
bunk would not give to the contours of his body. It was un-
comfortable as hell, too uncomfortable to sleep even. He
didn't give a damn.
21
The small, black-haired man paced back and forth across
the room. He had the kind of eyes they said criminals have,
but Jake did not see them very often because the little man
kept his back to him.
"You know what a spot you're in?"
He had been saying that forever it seemed to Jake though
it could not possibly have been any longer than ten minutes.
The small man whirled and pointed a rigid finger at Jake,
his mouth came open, then closed. He turned his back to
Jake and started pacing again. What the hell is this anyway?
"You know what a spot you're in?"
Don't say a word, not a damn thing, that's what Monk
said.


236]
taking all your manhood away, dries up the brain — You
know they don't have any women in jail, boy! No kind of
women, black or white. What are you going to do about
that?"
Caldonia —
"You know what being without a woman does to a man?
Always been able to get your share, haven't you? Well, what
are you going to do all those years you spend in prison? You
ever hear that joke — masturbation is the dearth of a nation?
Humph! That's right, sit there not saying a word. Get used
to time, you're going to have plenty of time to get used to."
The pacing back and forth, the little man blurring before
his eyes. Monk had warned him what it would be like.
"A man's pride has always been his downfall. You're kind
of young to be making that mistake," the little man said in
a weary voice almost as if he felt sorry for Jake.
Jake thrilled to the voice, the voice was destruction and he
was invincible. He shifted to a more comfortable position
in the chair, forcing the indifferent look to remain on his
face. This guy would get tired after a while, then he could
go back to the cell where everybody would leave him alone.
"You know what a spot you're in? You ready to talk now?"
The little man stopped pacing and stood calmly before Jake
with a look on his face that did more to Jake than anything
he had said. Jake felt like a mouse being played with by a
cat. "What good is loyalty? Can it erase time? Can it give
you back the years you spend in prison, can you go to bed
with it, breathe it, eat it? Can it melt those walls between
you and the outside world? I thought you were smart. You
would think a guy as young as you in your racket would
have to be smart, but you're dumb, you're nothing but a
dumb-assed nigger!"
Jake's stomach knotted up. He held his head up as if he


240]
because I'm prejudiced. Just like I told you, I'm willing to
help you get out of it. But if I have to throw you to the
wolves to get Monk, then that's where you're going. I'd do
it no matter what color you were. But a lot of people sitting
out in that courtroom aren't going to be like me. They're
emotional, they sway to anything if it's odious enough. This
isn't Mississippi, but it's going to seem like it to you at times
in that courtroom."
"You dizzy ofay prick," Jake hissed. "You're crazy. You're
crazy, you're crazy!"
The little man could get nothing else out of Jake. He
called in two guards. They took Jake back to his cell.
"Who's the messenger in this dump?" Jake said.
"You act like you don't like it here," one of the guards
said. "What's the matter, you want to go home?"
"You act like you ain't got no home," Jake said.
"A tough guy."
"Yeh, most of 'em are limp as dishwater when the D.A.
gets through with 'em," the other guard said. "I guess we got
a problem child on our hands."
"I want to see my lawyer," Jake said.
"A real problem child."
"I want to see my lawyer, I know my rights."
"The man knows his rights."
"I want to see my lawyer and Monk. I want to see Monk
right away," Jake said quietly, very quietly.
"Who's Monk?"
"Mortimer Newhouser," the other guard said. "The mir-
acle man, the man who makes manna rain from heaven."
"Who's the messenger in this dump?"
"Keep your shirt on boy, you ain't going nowhere, not for
a long time."
"Yeh, you got plenty of time, about ten years I'd say."


[241
"The D.A.'s riding for Governor on your case, boy. He's
going to take real good care of you. You're a blessing in dis-
guise."
Jake ignored the guards, drew into himself. He ground
his teeth together, longing for just one stick of tea. He wasn't
worried. Monk would fix it. Monk could fix anything.
22
ADAMS TO STAND TRIAL FOR RAPE AND NAR-
COTICS POSSESSION —
r
Peabody Avenue was quiet, waiting for the trial. Junkies
along Welch Street, with huddled eyes, crowded out of their
hiding places seeking their daily subsistence now extremely
difficult to get. Now the weather was warm and lazy, sun-
light the kind that caught the metal of skate wheels and made
them sparkle. It was spring without rain, a pleasant time of
year.
The courtroom was crowded. The judge sat in the high
chair overlooking his domain, his obese body inclosed with-
in the dignity of a solemn gown. The judge forced dignity
into the courtroom with a quiet voice laden with author-
ity. Along the front bench the reporters stood ready with
loaded cameras.
Jake was in a daze. He saw and didn't see. He heard with-
out any of the words registering. The jury was all one face —
white. Once he had looked behind him, right into the eyes
of his father and Pop and Mrs. Garveli. After that, he kept
his eyes to the front. Monk had deserted him, Monk of all


242]
people. He couldn't figure that, Monk quitting it. Monk
had turned chicken, deserted him to save his own skin. The
calm expression, on Jake's face, portraying his indifference,
infuriated the pacing D.A., fascinated the jury, and held the
courtroom in the grip of shuffling emotions. Somewhere in
the misty distance the voices of legal machinery in motion
registered vaguely on his self-willed shell.
"Your name, please?"
"Michael Marachy."
"Do you swear —"
Such is life in the big city . . .
"Do you know the defendant?"
"I do."
"Will you tell the court when and under what circum-
stances you came to know the defendant?"
"Well, it was around ten o'clock. I was patrolling the park
as usual —"
Monk can fix anything.
"Well, like I said, I thought there was something suspicious
about that Cadillac being parked out there so I went over
and flashed my light inside to investigate."
"And what did you find, when you flashed your light into
the car, the Cadillac of the defendant?"
"Objection, your honor, the phraseology used by the Dis-
trict Attorney is obviously aimed at arousing prejudice to-
ward—"
"Your honor, I —"
"Objection overruled," the judge said arbitrarily.
"When you flashed your light into the defendant's
ahumrph, Cadillac—"
MAN, I'm busting my cap. Easy, Scar. My wig is split...
"Well, they were, they were —"
"They were what, Mr. Marachy? What were they doing?"


244]
"Will you tell the jury who this poor, misunderstood,
downtrodden, persecuted —"
"Objection!"
Monk can fix anything . . .
"Who was this man?"
"That guy sitting right over there!" Flash bulbs explod-
ing on the policeman rising from his chair and pointing an
accusing finger at Jake.
This is goodbye, Jake, that's what I was trying to tell you
all along . . .
"Order in the court, order!"
"Your witness."
The Counsel for the Defense walked toward Officer
Marachy with a look of complete disgust upon his face. He
looked at the jury as if he were asking them was it necessary
to refute the ridiculous accusations brought by the police-
man.
"Now, Mr. Parakeet —" He paused at the reaction on
Marachy's face. "That is your name, isn't it?"
"Marachy, Ma-ra-chy."
"Oh, yes. I most humbly beg your pardon, Mr. Parakeet,
now tell me — oh did I mispronounce your name again? I'm
sorry, but tell me, if my client is guilty of committing the
act you say he did, why you did not arrest him."
"I told you."
"Oh, you did?"
"I told the whole court."
"Oh, would you mind repeating it again, and I'll promise
to pay closer attention this time."
"The girl wouldn't prosti — persecute!" the ruffled officer
said.
"Oh, the girl wouldn't persecute?"
"Prosti — prosecute, she wouldn't prosecute, that's what
I said!"


246]
"Just answer the question, Mr. Marachy."
The red-faced officer squirms and wiggles in his chair while
a cool, composed appearing Jake Adams is torn to pieces on
the inside.
"Would you approve of your daughter, your neighbor's
daughter or your friend's daughter going out with a Negro?"
"No."
"Yet you expect us to believe that you caught Jake Adams
committing a carnal act with Georgia Garveli and did noth-
ing about it?"
"Well, I explained to you —"
"You don't approve of your daughter or your neighbor's
daughter associating with Negroes and yet you would con-
done sexual relations between the races, is that what you
would expect us to believe Mr. Marachy?"
"Well, no. I mean —"
"Yet you failed to arrest Georgia Garveli and Jake Adams
on a misdemeanor charge which you believe in your mind to
be rape though you have no tangible evidence to support
your suspicions?"
"Well, I —"
"Mr. Marachy, do you realize what you are saying? You
are insisting that you are a negligent officer who fails to carry
out his duties, which you may very well be, but when you
insist that you would consider the effect an arrest would have
on parents who would permit their daughter to carry on ac-
tivities you are definitely opposed to, I'm afraid you stretch
the credulity of the court beyond the limits of its imagina-
tion. Now, isn't it true, Mr. Marachy, that all of these absurd
charges are figments of your imagination?"
"No! I tell you I caught that guy in the car with that
girl!" Marachy shouted.
"The court is not having a hard time hearing you, Mr.


26
He read all about it on a bench in the train station. It was
true all right, Jake was in real trouble. His face felt tight.
He was weak; he felt like someone he had never known. He
walked through the huge train station outside to the taxi
stand. He was hungry, but could not stand the thought of
food. He was tired and sleepy, but he knew he would not
be able to go to sleep. It was like someone had locked him up
in a room all by himself for about a hundred years. A stud
could go crazy like that.
"Where to, Jack?" the cab driver said.
"Fourteen Hundred Welch." He did not remember the
ride. All he remembered was getting out of the cab and
scraping up fare for the driver. Arm and arm in intoxicated
enthusiasm couples patrolled the bars along Welch Street.
Gangs of teen-agers crowded the sidewalk singing boogie-
joogie music at the top of their voices. The good ole days . ..
A mongrel dog scouted the street, then dashed bravely be-
tween weaving cars to cross to the other side. The dog darted
into the gangway by Booker's pool hall. He wouldn't find
nothing to eat around there. Molly's looked like it was
closed. He wondered what had happened. She had the
downest jukebox in town. One of the electric bulbs was out
over Judiheimer's. That was where Spider had — He won-
dered if Red's clothes were still in there. Red was a nice stud,
too bad — Her name was still in neon over the Paradise. He
took a deep breath, then plunged inside. The place was not
lighted very well and he appreciated that, but when he found
a seat the lights up over the mirror, behind the bar, hurt his
eyes. He ordered a beer which he didn't touch. People were
dancing up on the stage with no daylight between. It was
crowded on the stage, but no one seemed to mind. The band


254]
light, in the Dynaflow across the street from the school, shoot-
ing the bull with the fellows, looking at the babes with big
stockings —
"The reason dat white gal got herself killed was 'cause that
nig —" The rumble in the courtroom, the groan from the
tired overworked judge. "— dat guy was speeding!"
That was a lie. That was a damn lie . . .
"Dat guy was speeding. He was going so fast we didn't
have to clock him. Well, when he tried to slow down for
that curve —"
"That's a lie . . . That's a lie!" Jake said through clinched
teeth.
"He killed dat gal!" Clint screamed. "Dat's what happens
when ya don't keep 'em in place. All dey want is ta slick
dey hair back, drive a Cadillac and get a white —"
"Objection, your honor!"
Flash bulbs exploding in a room of ugly faces. The judge
sighed wearily and charged Clint Garth with contempt of
court and ordered a recess until nine the following morning.
All the way out of the courtroom Jake felt eyes turning
his way. At times that courtroom is going to seem like Mis-
sissippi .. .
ADAMS CALLS GARTH LIAR —
28
GARTH TESTIFIES HE FOUND NARCOTICS ON
FLOOR OF ADAMS' CAR —
Ralph Jenkins, the tall, slim, dignified appearing Counsel


[255
for the Defense, looked at Jake inquisitively. "Snap out of
it, kid."
"Snap out of what?"
The lawyer strolled over to the door and closed it. "Look,
I've been paid and paid well to acquit you, not defend you,
acquit you. You understand that?"
"I'll bet."
"What's wrong?"
"Aw, hell, what difference does it make?"
"You're feeling sorry for yourself."
"Naw, I ain't. I ain't feeling one way or the other. I ain't
feeling period. I don't care."
"Well, other people care."
"What other people? You think my old man cares, or Pop
and Mrs. Garveli having to listen to all that dirt about
Georgia and me? Naw, don't nobody care, not my friends
even. Don't nobody care but the D.A. and Trashwagon and
all those studs out to get me."
"And why let them do it?"
"What's the dif?"
"How do you know no one cares?"
"Aw, you wouldn't understand."
"Well, I understand this Monk —"
"The hell with Monk, he was a hell of a friend running
out —"
"Is that what's eating you?"
"What you mean?"
"So you think Monk ran out on you. Would I be here if
he had run out on you? Don't you know this town is loaded
with Feds? Don't you know this town is so hot that nothing
white is moving in it except sugar, and I mean the real stuff?
What did you expect Monk to do, stick around and commit
suicide?"


[263
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Would it have done any good?"
"Humans really make a mess of things, don't they?" Max-
ine said snuggling back up to him.
"Yeh."
They had a good laugh about it.
"I was crazy about you in grade school, you didn't even
notice, I bet," Maxine said rubbing her hands over his
shoulders.
"Sure didn't," Scar admitted. Somehow that struck them
as being funny also.
"I'm glad you stayed on your side of the bed."
"Why?"
"If you hadn't I would have always held it against you, you
know what I mean?" she said continuing to massage his
shoulder.
"Uh-huh," he said. Desire caught Scar again, the intensi-
fied desire a man feels for a woman he believes he can never
get. He twisted in the bed, pulling her to him.
He lay awake thinking about it for a long time. It had
finally happened. Now he had the future all figured out. He
would go to college and then turn pro. He knew he could
make it, they said he was the greatest football player the
school had ever turned out. He had the records to prove it
and with Maxine believing in him — They would make a
great team, he and Maxine.
Maxine had a hard time going to sleep. She knew she could
really go for Scar. Too bad he wouldn't fit into her plans
though. Too bad, she was waiting for the next guy to come
along and offer her that break. Scar would never under-
stand that, so it was a dead end with them. She was sorry
about that, but it couldn't be helped. She was going all the


THE UNIVERSITY
OF MICHIGAN