by George Cain
Nandy, Nichole, all the women known in life pass before my mind. Faces and bodies without name, smile and call in the dark. Awailing, howling in heat, positioned to rouse they show all. Sweat and sucking noise of rocking contorted bodies heat me to fever. Hungry mouths. Sleeping with every woman in the world, black, yellow, white, a queen, the raggediest whore in the street. All come before the indiscriminating organ. That woman with the gentlemen. Young girl holding friend’s arm, grandmothers and granddaughters, women at all stages of life. You old bitch riding a subway watching me out of eye’s corner. Have seen your wrinkled dusty hole stuck between loose fleshed thighs. I have had you all, virgins are not virgins.
Done, no feeling. Like breathing, a necessity. An act of joy to overcome the clumsy flesh and come nearer to spirit, now done from need and lust. Retain the faculty but have lost all else, dead to rapture, despair. She sleeps quietly on my chest, feel life moving in our bodies and I want to leave and walk the streets.
I slide out from under, the junk has taken her and she doesn’t stir except a sigh. Her nature is revealed in her face, soft and loving, the mask of consciousness is gone. I kiss the hot face, gather my clothes and split. I’m on the streets again, they hold me more than any drug. The peopled asphalt is home. Like the slums of Calcutta, people live in the street. Moving from one condemned tenement to another or in winter standing the night around a fire barrel on 115th between Fifth and Madison. I walk down Lenox lost in lights feeling the night pulse in my brain.
A big money domino game is being played on a card table lit by a first floor apartment. The loud banging as they’re slammed to the board. The players sit and a gallery of challengers stands waiting their turn. A pause in the game, a crucial moment as one studies his play.
“Come on, play. Do I have to call the police to get you to play. Officer, officer make this man play.”
They laugh at the banter they’ve heard so often.
“Did I bring my partner?” He shouts exuberantly having made the correct play.
“I’ll stick big hurt to a chump.”
“Big six to the board.”
Another game begins.
“Go ahead, wolf queen counts fifteen.”
The pegs move up the board counting points, the gallery taunting and jeering each play till someone shouts, “Bogus! You played bogus!”
“Bullshit!”
“You got treys in your hand!”
“I didn’t pass on no treys!”
Those who know what happened, the gallery, remain mute, their silence the thumbs-down gesture of bloodthirsty Romans, spectators of death waiting for one to pull a knife and shank the other. This is what they’ve really come to see, for violence is in them. This place makes violence and anger a virtue. All are angry at the injustice of life. Children when angry have fits of passion telling of their frustration. So are these people turning on themselves the anger they’re afraid to vent on the oppressor. Countless blacks walking the streets have taken life over some bullshit. Like those noble Romans, the gallery waits for blood, to feel it themselves. The combatants knowing all eyes are on them feel what they’ve never felt before. Aloof, above the anonymity of their nothing lives and once there, on that high place, it is easy to take life, give life for the gratification of the moment. They know to hesitate and let the moment pass is sacrilege, for then neither will act and both will descend lower than they were, for the others, the blood-thirsty gallery, will have nothing more to do with them and banishment is still the most severe of punishments.
A crap game is in the next doorway. Dice rattle in a palm, clicking on the pavement, come up I don’t know how. The players crouch absorbed and kids sit on ashcans for a quarter watching for the Man.
“Little Joe. My point.”
“Make my point.”
“Come on baby.”
“Four in the door.”
“Fade it, who’ll fade?”
“I’m hot. Lord I’m hot.”
“Rollem.”
“Come on. Come on.”
“Be good to me dice, babies got to eat, my woman needs, my mother is dying. Be good to me.”
They click and silence, everyone waiting, they face up. Little inanimate ivories, holding the mind and will as nothing else can. Groans and squeals of delight as they win and lose. It is an activity different from dope and dominoes, but its purpose is the same—diversion. To occupy the mind in those hours between wake and sleep so it will never be free to see its situation.
A skirmish breaks out over the domino game and everyone goes to see and urge it on. Two cops on the corner stand watching also.
“Pull his heart out!”
“Kill the bastard!”
“Stick him good!”
Cries from the gallery. They close, clinch and part. Their blood leaving them as they circle for another pass. Eyes bright, expectant at sight of blood, the onlookers are infected, calling for more, hurrying them together. They meet and close, desperate movements of shiny steel slash and parry. Screaming as if hurt, the spectators urge them to greater exertions till one lies down with knife in his belly. Purple blood spurts regularly from the wound. The other moves off a few feet and falls, arm hanging strangely, blood-covered, receives the plaudits of victory, smiles wearily to all and the night, then lies down and bleeds to death.
The police come and move the crowd. “Okay. Show’s over, let’s move it.”
They move it, discussing the faults and merits of the fighters, no one knowing what’d started it. Passing the two bodies, running, I head downtown for Sun’s. Coming to the park, I assume my furtive stance and cross the border. Down Central Park West on foot.
IT IS GETTING UP TO STORM. Clouds move on the moon. Wind tears night with frenzy of frustration, doubling effort at failure. Screaming then silent, scream silence. A repeated phrase, changed only by tenor of voice. Trees stand stilled. Harbinger of storm. Dry wind chased by calm. Long torrential rain. Earth to runny rivulets and bog-down mud. My shadow on the ground, ringed by shadow trees sporting insanely, lashing me. Trees rattling noisy, wind-blasted. My shadow more substantial than their faint outline, looming powerful, larger than life above all, wind, rain, oncoming storm. Forming storm fails to rouse me. Strange feeling of unfeeling, no sensation. To feel it in my stomach, move in it, be blown broken breadth of the plain, dismembered parts scattered over the world, be one with the storm. Insensible senses, dead, burned out, overflowing and puking on themselves.
The sky breaks, rain comes down like crazy. Strip my shirt to feel it on my skin. Washing the filth off me.
COME TO SUN’S BUILDING, the warmth and light make it welcome. It’s jammed like a bus station at a holiday. All abuzz and milling people. The dead and many just ducking the rain. Familiar faces smile and greet. Poor John an old crapshooter who’s lost his skill and life to dope calls me over.
“Hey Cain. Hear what happened to your man?”
“Who? Sun?”
“Yeah, he and Flow got flagged this afternoon. That young gray broad Flower be with all the time? She give em up.”
“Tracy?”
“Yeah, that’s her. Told Sun about fucking with them whiteys. They ain’t nothing but a tip. Police see a whitey round here knows what he’s doing. Why else they in a fucked up place like this except to buy dope. Told him about that, but you can’t tell Sun nothing. He kept saying she brought him a lot of business. All the police got to do is follow them and they’ll take them to the connection every time. Man, niggers ain’t got no sense, for a fucken dollar they’d do anything. Think he had a thing for the bitch anyway, wanted some of that young white pussy. She was fine. Say she made good money out there too. Sun left the bitch in his room and went uptown to cop this morning, come back and she sitting there with the police waiting for him. They say she’s wrong anyway, ain’t the first time she done it. They ran her from downtown so many people was looking to kill her.”
Police sirens scream, coming closer and everyone freezes mid-action hoping they�
�ll keep on past. They do and the relief affects the very building with sighs. Immediately there is a commotion to leave and nervous chattered speculation on what the police are up to. There are sirens all over the night. Sojo rushes in soaking and breathless to report that a bar has just been held up and some people shot. Knick Knack comes up to us with details.
“Ain’t that a bitch. These kids is something else, two of em just stuck up the bar and when the cat didn’t get up off the bread fast enough, blew him away. Those young boys don’t be jiving, they mean business and the sooner these people out here realize it the quicker they’ll give up that cash, bet we don’t read about too many hold-up heroes for the next week or so if this makes the papers.”
“Yeah, but they making it hot as a motherfucker out here.”
“Damn John, you done got old. Don’t understand nothing no way. You from that old school. These kids out here is fast, fast, fast. Know what they want and how to get it.”
“Yeah, but they still making it hot.”
“Ain’t that a bitch.”
Knick Knack breaks up laughing at John. “Nigger it’s always been hot for me, ain’t never been cool, so it ain’t no big thing. You just done got old and don’t know what’s happening. Guess John told you what happened to Sun?”
“Shit, long as Sun been on the set, he knows the name of the game, cop and blow. He let his cunt collar overrule his reason.”
The police burst in the door and everyone stampedes up the stairs hollering and screaming like mad as if noise is somehow going to help. Poor John leads up to his top floor room and entering slams the door on us. We bang on the door.
“Get out of here, go over the roof!”
We can see and hear the police coming upstairs. Taking their time, methodical. Guns drawn, rapping on doors, busting in those where there is no answer or refusal to open, herding the tenants into the hall. Lining them against the wall while an eyewitness to the robbery looks them over.
“I’ll kill that nigger when I catch him. Come on Cain.”
We climb the ladder to the roof thinking to cross over and come down in another building. Pushing through the trapdoor we jump into wet night, pausing to get accustomed to the dark then running over to the next building. The hatch is locked and adjacent buildings too far away. We scramble around like rats looking for a way off. None. I remember the dope in my pocket and stash it behind a chimney. Knick stands on the edge of the roof emptying his pockets of identification into the backyard. I do the same.
The light beam picks us out.
“Move and I’ll blow you off this building.”
“On the roof! There’s two of them up here,” one shouts down to another.
“Turn around and walk over here with your hands up.”
We obey, moving carefully to give them no excuse to shoot. Six cops, waiting, guns drawn, grim looking. Throw us against the chimney and shake us down. Finding nothing they turn us around and throw the light in our eyes.
“What you doing up here?”
“Man I saw ya’ll coming and I got scared.”
“You call me man again and I’m going to push you off this roof.”
“I’m sorry officer, didn’t mean no harm. I’m just scared that’s all.”
“I ain’t done nothing. I swear afore God officer I ain’t done nothing.”
The others stand in the shadows, guns on us, looking down the hatch and calling to the rest to bring the eyewitness up. They’re disarmed by Knick and the tension leaves the moment.
“What’d you run for if you didn’t do nothing?”
“I was scared.”
“What’s your name?”
“Clarence Williams from Yazoo City, Mississippi.”
“Didn’t ask where the fuck you came from. Be still.”
“I’s sorry sir but I’m wet.”
While he questions Knick, I think of answers. It doesn’t matter what I say as long as it’s not the truth. I have no papers to say otherwise.
“Where do you live at?”
“On Ninety-first Street sir.”
“What you doing in this building?”
“I got some friends from home that live here, came by to see them, they wasn’t in and it start raining. Was just waiting for the rain to stop.”
“You. What’s your name?”
“Charles Johnson.”
“You live here?”
“No.”
“What you doing in the building then?”
“Getting out the rain.”
“What you doing on the roof?”
“Trying to get away from you.”
“Why? You do something wrong?”
“No.”
“That don’t make no sense. What you running for if you didn’t do anything wrong?”
“You know. I saw the police and tried to get away.”
“Still don’t make sense. You haven’t done anything, but you run when you see the police.”
“Ever been arrested before?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. Then why you running from us? Where you live at?”
“Sixty-third Street.”
“You use drugs?”
“Use to.”
“Let me see your arms.”
He throws the light on my arm.
“Haven’t used drugs for a while I see. How’d you stop?”
“Just did.”
“You should know better than to hang around a place like this. Especially since you’re clean. These people, this building can’t get you nothing but trouble.”
The witness comes up the hatch.
“These the two stick the place up?”
“No I ain’t done nothing like that,” Knick whines.
“Look, I’m tired of your sniveling. Shut the fuck up.”
“No that’s not them.”
“Look around see if you find anything else up here. Take your shoes off.”
I remove them and hand them over, feeling the wet come through the socks. He inspects and hands them back.
“We can take them in for burglary. They ain’t got no business on this roof.”
“But I ain’t done nothing,” Knick whines again.
“Here’s something.”
One of them is messing around the chimney where the dope is stashed. Instead of the stuff it’s a spike someone else has hidden there. It’s all over, we’re busted. He hands it to the officer interrogating us. He looks up and smiles.
“Looks like we got you.”
My mind races frantically, can’t stand a bust, can’t stand to go downtown. My parole, my record, my past, will convict me. Got to cop a plea. Got to talk to this man like a man.
“Look officer, why don’t you give us a break. I need it. Ain’t used no drugs on a year now. You can see that. Ain’t been in no trouble, got a good job, my woman and kids need me. I can’t go to the penitentiary for no bullshit like this. You can see I ain’t using drugs.”
He looks in my eyes. I look him straight in the eyes. He looks back down at the spike in his hand, wheels and pitches it off the roof.
“Get the fuck out of here and don’t let me catch you on any more rooftops.”
Hurry downstairs past the inquisitive-eyed dead fast as legs will carry. The police go to their car and we hustle down to the corner.
“Knick I got to make it back to the building.”
“Let’s go up Ninetieth Street.”
As we hit the avenue, the cops pull alongside and call us to the curb. It’s an old trick to discredit you on the block by being seen talking to them.
“Remember what I told you?”
“You ain’t got to worry about me,” Knick whines.
“Don’t want to catch you again.”
They pull off. We watch to see what direction they turn and go in the other.
“Niggers ain’t shit. They ain’t never going to be shit, cause they ain’t together. Here we are being chased by the enemy, I don’t mean no bullshit, but the sure enough
enemy and that nigger slams the door in our face. I’m going to kill him Cain, I’m going to kill that black motherfucker. Bring him out of this life.”
We return to the building and already people have assembled to argue the robbery and raid. They give us a heroes’ welcome for our heroic act, escaping enemy hands after being captured.
“Here they come. Hey Cain, Knick, what happened?”
Head upstairs to get the dope, stopping to listen at John’s door. I bang and yell for him to come out, know he’s there.
“You better not ever come out nigger, gonna kill you when I see you!”
Go on up, retrieve the dope and kick his door once on the way down. Can hear Knick ranting downstairs about Poor John.
“Let me tell you something, a nigger ain’t shit. That jive motherfucker gave us up. Slammed the door on us and told us to go on over the roof. Like there was some place to go. As long as he been living here he knows ain’t no place to go on that roof. He just gave us up. Like he didn’t know us or what was happening. But that’s a man I done got down with, was talking to when the police came in. He knew what was happening. But it don’t make no difference if he knew me or not. I’m black and so’s he and when the enemy comes, you supposed to help your brother. All he had to do was let us in and wouldn’t nothing have happened. As it was, we almost got busted. Had to play stuff on the Man to get cut loose. Shit, I sniveled like a baby. Lame asked my name, told him Clarence Williams from Yazoo City, Mississippi. Ain’t never been out of New York in life cept one of them train rides upstate. Cain and me played it to a bust though. Shucking an jiving, scratching my head like some stupid nigger just out of big foot country. Here come Cain now. Ask him, he’ll tell you what that punk ass did.
“That nigger in his room? Heard you hollering all the way down here.”
“Yeah he’s up there, but ain’t answering.”
“Well he got to come out sometime. Tell these people what he did.”
“Slammed the door and told us to go over the roof. Just like that, gave us up.”
“Don’t give a fuck what nobody says, a nigger ain’t shit. Here one of my so-called brothers gives me up, and the Man, a whitey, gives me a play. And dig, this police sure enough had us. Found a spike someone else had stashed on the roof, he could of put it on us if he had a mind. Instead, he throws it off the roof and tells us to get the fuck out of there, don’t wanna see us no more. Now this is after a brother put us under the gun, so what am I to think? Ain’t that a bitch, the whitey, the police. Gave us a play when our brother wouldn’t. I tell you a nigger ain’t shit. And that wasn’t even no test. What you gonna do when it might cost your life to hide your brother? Nobody will let anybody into their house and you’ll all die.”