by George Cain
“Georgie,” she shouted down the stairs and I stuck my head in the well and shouted up to let her know I was all right.
“The halls are full of bad people,” she’d said. Only people trying to escape the day. On every landing they sat. Men and women alone, together, bowed heads, smelling of themselves and cheap wines. They opened red eyes at my approach and I wondered could they see with eyes so filmed and dull. Women with skirts pushed to their hips, trying to scratch and cool the dark between their thighs, showed scabby scarred legs and torn panties. Patting their hair in place, they gave me guilty gummy smiles. They didn’t frighten me, they were as much a part of the building as the creaking stairs, swaying banisters and dumbwaiter squeaking between floors. Pieces of living statuary, friendly and familiar placed along the stairs like channel lights to guide me. What harm were they, they gave me a security in dim forty-watt lit halls, but how had they come to be that way, still as rocks and trees yet retaining the form of man?
Sun and I stand waiting, hear her wheezing and plodding up the stairs, she’s a big Aunt Jemima woman.
“I don’t dig this shit, copping in hallways. This is how a sucker gets taken off. Those sick junkies hanging round down there laying for a lame copping dope. You got a knife on you Georgie?”
“No.”
“I ain’t got my shit with me either, we’d really be uptight if . . .”
The arrival of the big woman interrupts him. She hands him the two packets and takes the money.
“How’s the stuff?” Sun asks her.
“Dyno. Dig Sun, you and your man be cool going down.”
“Why baby?”
“Broadway’s downstairs with Boy and Sugar. Think they’re laying for you.”
Remember the sawed-off shotgun in Broadway’s belt. Boy and Sugar are legendary, kings of the takeoff artists.
“I’ll catch you later Sun,” and she starts downstairs.
“Look Georgie. You take the dope and wait here, I’ll go down and decoy them. Wait about ten minutes, then come down. I’ll meet you at the house.”
I sit on the stairs, putting the stuff in my shoe, listening to him go down. I’m not surprised at what’s happening and having anticipated the encounter am calm. Wait for what seems ten minutes, then start down when I hear someone run in the building. Looking down the well, see three hands coming up the banister. It’s too late to hide. Start upstairs quietly. They come noisily behind, stopping on each floor to search the shadows. Hear disturbed junkies and winos protesting. Reaching the roof, push through the door and stand a moment listening. They’ve heard the door and are running. I take off toward Madison Avenue, bounding across the four-foot spaces between buildings six stories in the air. Looking back, see Broadway point me out to Boy and Sugar. They continue after me while he runs down into the street to cut me off. Coming to the corner house, run in and dash downstairs. Reaching the ground floor, peer cautiously out. Broadway is patrolling the street looking up at the roofs. Going to the back of the hall, I try the door to the backyard, it’s locked and Boy and Sugar are coming down the stairs. Can hear them talking, “Kill that motherfucker,” and suddenly I’m afraid. Fear, the sudden realization that your life can be taken, that it can be taken and you aren’t ready to die. This is the only fear and standing there I realize that these fools can kill me and no one will care. When they stretch me out and see the monkey marks on my arm it will go no further, just another dead junky good riddance.
Hunted. I tense like an animal, am keen, the hair on my body raises on end. Gathering myself I burst from the building running to Madison. Spotting me Broadway shouts, “Georgie wait a minute!” Boy and Sugar come from the building shouting, “Catch that motherfucker!” I fright and take off.
Sprint downtown, hoping to lose them in the crowds on 116th Street. La Marketa is jammed with shoppers, but it doesn’t hinder the chase. Panic speeds me and over my shoulder I see them pushing through and getting closer. The avenue becomes a bizarre tropical forest. Cars are wild unmanageable beasts prowling and blocking the streets, coughing and barking noxious breath into the air. Sun-softened tar sucks at my soles like quicksand. People block and snatch at me like serpents or vines. Break free of the crowds and race madly ahead, afraid to turn left or right into a side street with few people where they can have their way with me.
112th Street. Have run five blocks and am dying. Chest burning and legs turning rubber. A cop walks onto the avenue and I slow, thinking here is help. I’m being robbed, but he cannot help me. I’m being robbed of dope, contraband, fair game for all. Am not of his world or protected by his law. Beyond the pale. Once past him we begin the chase again. I spot a cab and dodging traffic, jump in. Lock the doors and start to roll the windows up. “Downtown, Sixty-sixth and Columbus.”
Broadway rushes up, knife in hand and forces the window down. I punch and kick at him but still he hangs on. The old Jew behind the wheel frights and floors the gas dragging him half a block till he falls sprawling to the street. Sitting on the ground holding his knees, a grin splits Broadway’s face and he waves.
“What was that all about?”
“Nothing.” I fall back into the seat. It would do no good to tell him what happened, he can’t understand. It happened in another country, a place where his concepts and values have no meaning.
Turning downtown at 110th Street onto Central Park West, relief washes over me. The energy that possessed and sustained me leaves, am free, no longer prey to the menacing mood of the jungle or marauding Broadway. The black brick wall bordering the park at 110th Street is only three feet high, but unscalable and impenetrable as any wall closing off a prison guarded by towers and guns. I’m safe beyond it. Broadway cannot chase here. He has lived behind the wall all his life and is imbued with its lifeway, which so contradicts this world, that here he is rendered impotent and unable to function. Consider that he goes days without seeing a white face, and living in the street is not influenced by TV and newspapers, so is not even reminded of them in that way. That he knows whites only in positions of menacing life-and-death authority, policemen, judges, and prison screws. That he hates and fears them.
He would not pass the wall and enter this place, confusing and uncomfortable. If he were to, he would vanish, he and all those despairing blacks, because in this world they do not exist.
II
LEAVING THE CAB AT LINCOLN CENTER, descend into the arcade connecting avenues, avoiding the crowds around the splashing fountains and outdoor eating area. Hate walking through the Center, its massive buildings, institutional and temple-like, their formality, all whiteness and glass.
Halfway through the arcade it begins. From the tunnel’s mouth, a racket so loud, as of huge insects buzzing and as you get close, you identify the sound of people, spics and niggers, talking loud, screaming and shouting over the roar of traffic and commerce. An ice cream man’s bell clangs. Exiting, you are plunged in uproar, your eyes are tortured up to the gaping raw façade of a housing project stretching four blocks long and thirteen stories into the air. It is the casbah, the quarter, the hum of hawkers at bazaar and breeze blown curtains flapping madly from windows. There is something exotic about this dislocated piece of Harlem, the teeming crowd that trundles ceaselessly about the towers. They’re everywhere, hanging from windows, cars, mailboxes, each other, anything that will support their weight. The men posed before the bar, hands in pockets, or leaning on a fence, watching the young girls and women cart kids and groceries past. Everywhere the kids, hundreds of them, running and milling about like beasties under glass, yelling out their favorite obscenities, vicious and tough.
Hurrying across the street, I enter the project, greeting acquaintances. I lived here for years and know most of the five thousand residents. Every few feet I’m stopped by someone asking the health and fortunes of myself and family. From windows and doorways come shouted hellos. The ritual of greeting carried out when meeting on the street, I perform ten to twenty times before I get where I’m going. Once
this filled me with self-importance, being hailed and saluted by so many. That so many recognized and knew me. I was a hero, raised and adored, set above by them. I was going to make it for them and get out of this stinking pocket of existence. They knew Georgie Cain, All-American basketball player and student. They told their children, “Be like him, not like me.”
And I failed them, falling back into the pit they so wanted me to escape, for their sake, my sake, just to see it done. Even now, few know or would believe where I’ve been these last years. They only know that I’ve failed, not caring how or why, only that I’ve failed and because of it am somehow more like and closer to them. Their acknowledgment is pleasant and necessary now, giving me a sense of being in a world constantly negating my existence.
Passing the playground, I see kids running ball. It’s unchanged since I played. Benches crowded with onlookers, old men, young men, girls and women. The old men serve witness and testify to the generations of neighborhood ballplayers they’ve seen and compare them with those out there now. The young men recall themselves a few years ago and the young girls and women love the dripping black bodies running in the sun.
They play more than a game here, for this is the battleground where so many heroes die unknown. Whites amuse themselves by asking who was the greatest performer in a sport, they quote figures, statistics, give college and professional records and show you a picture. Ask me the same question and I say Bootsy was the best. Who is Bootsy? What school did he go to? I don’t know. I don’t even know his name and he didn’t go to school, but you can find him nodding on the corner of 116th Street and Lenox.
Nowhere except in play can blacks compete fairly, for unlike life the rules of the game are indiscriminate. The spectators know this and esteem their athletes raising them high above. I played harder in this playground before fifty people than in Madison Square Garden before twenty thousand.
Pop, an old man, self-appointed referee and scorekeeper waves and calls me over. It’s between halves, the players are resting and those not good enough to play toss shots waiting for the action to resume.
“Still got your eye?” Pop calls out. “That corner used to be your spot. How you been Georgie? Still playing ball?”
“No Pop not anymore.”
“What? Always expected you to make the pros, you could really play. But maybe it’s best. You remember what I use to tell you about the pros? They’re crooked. It ain’t like out here, the best man can’t always be the best. Gamblers run the pros. It’s a fix. They tell a man they want a close game tonight, so cool it, don’t score so many. That’s how it goes down and if a cat wants to play, he got to go along with the program, where else is he going to play?”
“Game time!” somebody shouts out.
“I got to call the game Georgie, catch you later.” He saunters onto the court, a tired old man knowing the whole world’s a fix, and the best never is.
The playground is the promenade of the area, where people gossip and enjoy the sun. Sitting in groups they discuss their own and the world’s situation. Young mothers with newborn occupy the sunniest spots, talking girl talk and dreaming of marriage. Their youth and the radiance of life-giving are still in them and they’re proud of their offspring. They’ve been told but cannot believe their lives are over. At sixteen while still young and pretty? Every summer, a new group of innocents grace those benches, children bearing children, innocence begetting innocence while the men laughing repeat an old adage, “Summer will show what winter has done,” and try guessing the fathers of the children.
In the shade, from a litter of broken bottles, winos bother passersby. The toughs stand at the entrances, clean and pretty, talking shit and jingling chump change in their pockets. Kids run everywhere, knocking balls and riding bikes dangerously, tonight they’ll make sport of snatching purses from the patrons of the art center. In a corner away from prying eyes junkies nod and dribble surrounded by shopping bags of loot they haven’t sold yet. I wonder if anyone has a radio for sale.
Someone calls me from over there and unable to see that far, walk over. It is J.B. the storyteller. The storyteller found in all civilizations, preserver of unwritten histories, keeper of legends and the oral tradition. Daily he holds forth, as if in an African marketplace. Surrounded by black faces reflecting the moods of his narrations, he translates what is in the white mind and media into the idiom of his audience. Every corner has its J.B., that funny nigger who makes a crowd dance with laughter at themselves and their shortcomings. A comical conscience who tells the hurting truth so sweetly you love to hear it. It is a weekday afternoon and only the bad boys and young surround him, the rest of the world is workaday and rushing living a lie that James is revealing to his audience.
Many dismiss him as bullshit, unable to see his role or contribution, but like all poor black people, they’re respectful of knowledge so don’t protest him too vehemently. On weekends even the squares hang out and learn the subliminal truth, then go home and tell friends and family the incredibly funny lies they heard. All the while spreading his gospel. In the absence of truth-telling media James and those like him evolved. Street corner philosophers with all the technique and craft of gifted actors they hold the most difficult audience in the world.
The bad boys, Poly, J.J., Pigknuckle, Ray, Mo, Beefy, Snake and the rest. Approaching, I sense their hostility and childish fear raises in me. As a child, was told to stay away from them because they were bad and I came to think of them as inherently evil and able to draw one to hell merely by association. I’ve passed them a thousand times in the street without speaking. I didn’t believe they spoke but grunted, communicating in an argot peculiar to blacks of which I then had no ken. But I was different, better than they somehow. Behind my guise of superiority, I feared them, with their tough speech, rude manner, their unpredictability and knife in pocket violence. But that was long ago.
Pleased to see me J.B. leaps from the bench.
“Hey nigger how you been. My man give me some splow.”
We swap fives and laugh.
“Good to see you bro.” Turning to the others. “You know Georgie don’t you?”
They acknowledge neutrally withholding their acceptance, waiting to see how I show.
“This is my nigger here, me and him been through some shit together. When did you raise?”
“Couple of weeks ago.”
“Been a long time. Man you look beautiful. I ain’t no faggot but I just got to tell you, you’re beautiful. Big, healthy, your eyes clean. Your color, you been out in the sun a long time. You’re pure that’s what it is, like a baby, you ain’t been out here long enough to fill up on that poison. Man I can’t get over it, say Pig don’t he look good. You too use to yourself to see what I’m trying to tell you, but shit you’re looking good, should try and stay that way. So what you doing to them out here in the big world, knocking them dead I bet. See you still fucking around.”
“Ain’t doing nothing.”
“On parole?”
“Yeah.”
“Know that’s a drag.”
A jug passes round and Pig offers me a taste. Once I would’ve refused or wiped the lip of the bottle and soiled the moment, but I know its significance, they’re offering me their blood, acceptance, an opportunity to right my guilty past. I swallow greedily. Feel it fall a warm ball in the stomach, warming me. A restraint lifts from us, have made communion, taken part in a sacrament, their new knowledge of me, the prison, the drinking of wine and word nigger. I’m one of them and silently we acknowledge and accept each other. We feel brotherhood and know we are of the same blood.
“What was the name of the joint?” Pig asks.
“Texarkana.”
Texarkana, a name strange sounding, exotic like so many others. Sing Sing, Coxsackie, Tehachapi, Chino, Longpoch, Tallahassee, Walla Walla, foreign names denoting foreign lands with strange people. There’s a jail or prison in the smallest community, one day they’ll build a wall from Beantown harbor to L.A.
manned with guns and towers cause everyone will know this thing they call living ain’t shit.
“I ain’t never been Texas South, what’s it like?”
“You been in prison Mo and they all the same.”
“Yeah that ain’t no lie.”
We laugh and the bottle comes round again. A radio plays somewhere and a black voice screaming, souls, “Blueschild baby.”
Sudden interruption, an alarmed white voice screams urgently, “Bulletin! Bulletin! We interrupt this program!”
All my life I’ve heard these flashes, tensing with anticipation because one day the voice will tell me that it’s all over, an atomic bomb is coming. Instead, some insignificant natural disaster, flood, drought, earthquake, life will go on. Now it is the governor of New Jersey, “This isn’t revolution, this is criminal insurrection.” There is more but lost to the squeal of static.
“‘This is criminal insurrection.’ Ain’t this a bitch. If the brothers don’t get it together now, they ought to die. You know what the fool is saying? He’s telling us what everyone of us knows but refuses to believe. In this place, we’re criminals and treated like. It’s like prison, every brother should go. When there, keep expecting to feel different but you don’t. Know why? Cause you been in prison all your life. Once you know this, pressure is taken off your brain and you can think, you can do anything cause you got nothing to lose.” J.B. becomes a preacher leading a congregation. “Say it to yourself. Yes, I’m a criminal and I’m free.”
“Ain’t that a bitch. Criminals.” Pig laughs.
Listening to them I know what it is, caught in the wine and fervor I say it to myself, “I’m a criminal.” Feel it build and burst in me. I’m free. Free from illusion, with license and will to think and act without the lies saying you’re free. In prison you know you aren’t, the reality of bars and walls proves it. But we’re free now from the lie that has stayed our hands so long. No less a person than a governor has told us, how can we not believe and not act accordingly? No longer bound now by law we knew wrong but respected, fearing consequences, and all along we’d been suffering the consequences and had yet to commit the crime.