For about six months or more, the guys in Aggrey House used to try to get high by taking a cigarette and sticking the teeth of a comb into it. All it did was stink when you smoked it. It didn't really get cats high, but you could'-make believe if you had enough imagination. Then I think it was Stumpy who came up with putting camera film into a cigarette. We tried this, and a lot of cats got sick, got headaches, and got everything else, but I don't think anybody ever really got high. When we heard about this horse thing, every cat who
knew about "it wanted to try some. I'd gotten some guys high off reefers when ^ took them home with me or when they came to visit me. Now we wanted to get some highs off horse. K.B. had told me that this was something real big in Brownsville too. I wanted to turn him on before he could turn me on. He thought he was as hip as I was and was into as many things as I was, but I knew he wasn't. If he was the first one to come up with some horse, I would feel bad about that, so I really had to get some horse somehow. I wanted to turn K.B. and everybody else on and show them that I really knew how to get high. I started scheming and thinking that maybe we could steal some from the infirmary. But I didn't know what it was. All I knew was that it was medicine, that it was white, and that for a dollar, in the streets, you could get a capsule. But I didn't know what to look for if I went into the infirmary. So for some time, I had a lot of guys stealing all kinds of caps with white powder in them out of the infirmary. We got some of everything but horse.
Cats were getting sick around there from some of the stuff they were snorting in those white caps. We'd always get a guinea pig, and the guinea pig was usually Teddy D. He'd snort just about anything. He was from Harlem, too, and he'd heard a lot about horse. He was ready to try something new because it was time to move on. I think everybody up there had the feeling it was time to move on. It was time to stop smoking reefers and stop drinking wine; it was time to start getting high. They were snorting this horse, and this horse was making them bend; it was making them itch and nod and talk in heavier voices. It made you sound like a real gangster or like a real old cat. And everybody wanted to sound old.
I heard somebody talking about horse one night, but I didn't know it. It was Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson was one of the counselors, and he had heard some of the guys in our house talking about horse. He came in and told us that it was heroin and that heroin could kill you. He said that when he was going to college, he knew a boy who liked to use this horse. He said that they called it "snow" then but that the real name of it was heroin. And this heroin was something that you take a little bit of for a while, and then you would take more and more and more, and soon you ha^.^ to take so much that you couldn't take anything else. You couldn't eat, you couldn't drink any water, and after a while, guys just dried up and died. And it was so expensive that you had to
steal and rob and do a whole lot of other stuff. What Mr. Johnson was telling us about heroin really sounded frightening, but I knew that horse wasn't heroin; I knew that ii was something altogether different. But Mr. Johnson sure scared the hell out of me.
The guys I had seen using it, like Butch and Danny and the others, had just started, of course, but it wasn't doing anything bad to them. It wasn't drying them up. They seemed to feel good. That's what really made me want to use it. Those guys seemed to feel like they were flying, like they were way up in the air; they felt a way that they'd never felt before. And to see so many people going around on those streets feeling so good—I just knew I was missing out on something really big. It would be a drag for someone to come up to you and say, "Man, you ever snort any horse?" and you would have to say, "No." Hell, I wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, man."
I'd forgotten about everything but horse when I went back to Wiltwyck, but then something terrible happened. When I came back to Wiltwyck from that visit in 1950, I found out that K.B. was going home. I couldn't believe that. I panicked. I said, "No, man. You must be jokin'."
He said, "No, man. Stilly told me."
I ran to the office. I looked for Papanek. He wasn't around. I found Stilly. I said, "Stilly, I wanna go home. I gotta go home. If they don' let me outta this place, I'm gonna go crazy. I'm gon tear the place down."
"Don't get excited," Stilly said. "Didn't I promise you a year ago that you would be going home before I left?"
"Yeah," I said, but I had never paid too much attention to Stilly.
He said, "Look, I'm leaving here in a couple of months. I won't be here when school starts, and you won't be here either. Do you believe that?"
I said, "Yeah, man, I believe you." I did, but I still wanted to talk to Papanek. I wanted to scream and let everybody know how I felt about still being at that place after two years—two years and about four months. I had to get out of there. ' "^
But Papanek wasn't there, and nobody else was there, and after ranting and raving for a little while, I got used to the idea of being there and not having my old sidekick any more. It was okay when K.B. left. We made plans to see each other when I got out. And we kept those plans. K.B. told me
to come to Brownsville when I got out and he would have some horse^for me—all the horse I wanted.
I believed him^ I knew K.B. would try damn hard and would probably succeed. He had a lot of older brothers, and they were hip guys. Most of them knew things. They'd been m the old gangs in Brooklyn—the Nits and the Robins and the Green Avenue Stompers, the real hip gangs. I couldn't wait. 1 kept dreaming about that horse that was waiting for me when I got out of Wiltwyck.
For two weeks I had been counting the days, and it seemed that the nineteenth of August would never come. But one beautiful morning, it finally came around. I didn't feel too sad about leaving Wiltwyck. I kind of thought I would. Maybe it was because I had been there so long, two and a half years.
I remember waving good-bye to everybody, happily, trying hard to smile. I guess I felt a little sad, but I wanted to get ] to New York and to all the new things that were waiting i for me there—the new girls I'd met on visits home, the new J highs, the horse that K.B. was going to have for me. I'd be I running with Danny and Butch and Kid again, and I'd be doing the same old things, but I'd be doing them better be-i cause I was older and bigger and hipper now. I thought. Oh, j Lord, Harlem, let me git to youl It was an exciting feehng ] —going home.
It was exciting being home for the first few days, the first few weeks. Then I don't know what happened, but suddenly it just seemed to be gone. Harlem had changed a lot. Everybody had changed. I had changed too, but in a different way. I was moving away from things. There was no place for me. I felt lonelier in Harlem than I'd felt when I first went to Wiltwyck. I couldn't go back to Wiltwyck—I had been trying to get away from there for yeart to get back to this. Now it seemed as though "this" wasn't there any more. It really was confusing for a while.
It seemed as though Butch and Danny and Kid weren't doing the things we used to do, and they didn't want to do the things that I wanted to do. All they wanted to do was
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get high off some horse and nod, go to dances and things Hke that, and maybe shoot somebody occasionally if they had been messeSl with. But they said that bebopping was gone, it was out of style, it was for kids. And since I was one of them, I had to say it was for kids too, and I had to put it down.
After a while, I decided I wasn't going to hang out with Butch and Kid any more. I liked hanging out with the guys I had been at Wiltwyck with better. ITiey were all coming around, and these were the guys I felt more like, so I had to be with them. We had to do the same old things, or we had to find our own new things to do. We couldn't gang fight anymore. We were all kind of lost. Nobody knew what to do. All we knew was that we had to find it, whatever it was, and do it together.
When I first came home, I went over to Brooklyn to see! K.B. and to get some horse and to see what this beautiful black bitch by the name of Linda looked Uke. Linda turned out to be everything K.B. had said she was. She was pretty, with long hair and real white teeth. Linda was the
darkest girl I had ever seen, even darker than Jackie. But the thing that moved me most was her long hair. I had never seen a girl so dark with hair so long and pretty, not nappy. I wondered what her parents looked like.
But K.B. couldn't get any drugs. His brothers and all the older cats were into horse, but they wouldn't let him mess with it. They wouldn't let him do anything more than smoke, reefers, so that was all he had. We'd been smoking pot before, and this was no big thing. After that first time, 1 didn't go over there much any more. I couldn't see going j way over there to Brownsville just to smoke some pot. So ' I just stayed in Harlem. I knew I'd get some one day.
I didn't know Johnny D. before I went to Wiltwyck, but he was about the hippest cat on Eighth Avenue, the shckest nigger in the neighborhood. Johnny D. lived in the same building I lived in, but on the top floor. I had met him when I came down on visits from Wiltwyck, but I didn't know the cat real good. All I knew was that he Uved in the building, and that he was kind of old. He was a man, anyway, twenty-one. His mother seemed too young to have a son as old as he was. I knew his mother had been living in the building for a few years, but I'd never seen him before. It turned- out that Johnny D. had been in jail since he was seventeen, and during that time his mother moved
into our building. He got out while I was up at Wiltwyck.
My new gang, the cats from Wiltwyck, used to steal a lot of stuff and sell it to Johnny. Johnny did everything. He used to sell all the horse in the neighborhood. In fact, he seemed to have been the one who brought it into the neighborhood. But, then, Johnny was fast and way ahead of everybody else anyway, so he was expected to do all those things. He was a pimp. He had all kinds of chicks hustling for him. He even had a Chinese girl hustling for him, and that was some shit that nobody else in Harlem had ever done. He sold guns. He had chicks sleeping with cats in nice cribs downtown, and while a chick was sleeping with a cat—or while the cat was sleeping after she'd knocked him off— she'd steal his keys and give them to Johnny. Johnny would give them to Butch or Kid or Danny or some of the older thieves in the neighborhood, and they'd go down there and loot the cat's crib. He was into just about everything.
After I'd been out of Wiltwyck for about six weeks, a guy named Dunny and Tito and I stole some cigarettes from a grocery store's warehouse. We had something like a hundred cartons of cigarettes. We took them to Johnny, but he didn't want to give us too much money. Anyway, that's how he put it. He said, "Why don't I give you cats fifty dollars— and some of the best horse you ever tasted in your life?"
Everybody's eyes perked up. This was the first time anybody had ever offered us any horse, and we had been dying and trying so goddamn hard to get some horse, it was almost like a dream coming true. I don't think any of us even heard about the fifty dollars. We just heard the word "horse."
Dunny looked at me, and I looked at Tito, and we all looked at Johnny. We didn't want to seem too anxious. Maybe he would just give us a little bit of horse and take back twenty-five dollars. So I hesitated.
I said, "Man, I don' know."
Johnny said, "That's some good horse, Sonny." And he took up one of the bags and shook it.
I had never seen horse in bags before, and it^ seemed Hke a whole lot. All I'd ever seen was caps; that's what everybody was snorting back then. They were buying dollar caps; they'd snort half a cap, get high, and save half a cap for some other time. You could stay messed up all day long. All you did was nod; you didn't want to eat anything, you
didn't want to do anything. I wanted some horse so bad I could taste it. I'd'been tasting it for months.
So we said, "Okay, okay, man," after we had waited a while, long enough not to seem like we wanted it real bad. We said; "Okay, man, we'll take that."
We went up on the roof, and I picked up a matchbook. Everybody was crowding real close, and I said, "Like, be still, man; you don't want to waste this stuff, 'cause this stuff cost a whole lotta money." We didn't know it at the time, but Johnny had only given us a five-dollar bag. He had said that it was twenty-five dollars worth of horse. We didn't know that much about horse. All we knew was that it was good and that it was expensive. And since we were going to get to snort some, we didn't care anyway. We just wanted to get high off some horse, and here it was.
Tito said, "Give me some first."
Dunny said, "Let me. . . . Look man, let me get that. Man, it's gon spill." And everybody was grabbing.
I said, "Look man, here; you cats, just take it, man, and take Vv'hat you want." This was how I used to always calm these cats down. I'd say, "Here," and walk away, and they'd start acting like some niggers with some sense.
Everybody cooled down then, and they said, "No, you go on. Sonny. You get straight, man. Here, you take some first.'*
I knew this was what had to come. Everybody looked at me. I scooped a little bit out of the bag into a piece of matchbook cover the way I'd seen Kid do it so many times. He always looked like he'd hit the ceiUng and gone right into another world after a snort. I was anxious. I almost wasted it, I was trying so hard. My hands were shaking because I was trying to do it too fast. And when I put it up to my nose, I couldn't believe it was really happening. I almost wanted to break out and laugh for joy, but I held it back, and I snorted.
Something hit me right in the top of the head. It felt like a little spray of pepper on my brain. But I didn't pay too much attention to it just then. I took some more and put it in the other nostril. The other cats were looking; they were real quiet, everything was real quiet.
Dunny grabbed me and said, "Sonny, give me some," and Tito did the same thing. And I just dropped it; I forgot about them. It sSemed hke I had left them. Everything was getting rosy, beautiful. The sun got brighter in the sky, and the whole day lit up and was twice as bright as it was
before. It looked like Tito and Dunny were arguing and scrambling, trying to get some stuff, l5Ut they weren't in the same world I was in. I could reach out and touch them but everything slowed down so much.
Everything was so slo-o-o-w. And then my head started. My head seemed to stretch, and I thought my brain was going to burst. It was like a headache taking place all over the head at once and trying to break its way out. And then it seemed to get hot and hot and hot. And I was so slow; I was trying to grab my head, but I couldn't feel it. I tried to get up, but my legs were like weights. I got scared. I'd never felt this way in my life before. I wanted to fall down on my knees and say, "Oh, Mama, Mama, help me."
I couldn't seem to talk to Tito. I couldn't seem to talk to Dunny. They were right there in front of me, but they seemed to be so far away that I couldn't reach them. I fell down on my knees and crawled over to them. They were down there scrambling for some horse; they seemed to be talking and hollering about horse and horse and horse, and they couldn't hear me. They couldn't feel me. They didn't know if I was here dying or if something had a hold on me.
My guts felt like they were going to come out. Everything was bursting out all at once, and there was nothing I could do. It was my stomach and my brain. My stomach was pulling my brain down into it, and my brain was going to pull my guts out and into my head. And I said, "O Lawd, if you'll just give me one more chance, one more chance, I'll never get high again."
And then it seemed like everything in me all of a sudden just came out, and I vomited. I vomited on Tito, and he didn't even feel it. He didn't even know it. The cat's were still getting high. I was so scared. I thought we'd just killed ourselves. I wanted to pray. I wanted to tell these guys to pray. And they were so wrapped up in this thing; they were still snorting and snorting and talking about nodding and nodding. And it seemed like this went on for years. ... I couldn't talk to them. I tried to touch them, but I couldn't reach them. I was trying to say something. I'was trying to yell, and all these cats could do was nod, nod, nod, nod. I was dying, I was dying. I seemed to roll over fifty times, and every time I rolled over, I thought my guts were going to pour out on the floor.
I threw up, and I threw up
. It seemed like I threw up a million times. I felt that if I threw up one more time, my
stomach was just going to break all open; and still I threw up. I prayad and I pr^iyed and I prayed. After a while, I was too sick to caVe.
The next thing'I knew, Danny had me in his arms, and he was pouring some buttermilk down me, and he was slapping me and calling "Sonny, Sonny, Sonny—"
I'd heard his voice for a long time, and then I started feeling the slap, and I was wondering. What the hell is he doin' slappin' me? I was never so glad to see anybody in aU my life. And I felt maybe it was the work of the Lord, because Danny's mother was a preacher, and it seemed like I had been in hell and he had come and saved me.
After I was wide awake, Danny slapped me again, real hard. I wanted to hit that nigger then—^I didn't go for that big brother thing any more. But I knew I couldn't beat him yet—Danny was more than six feet tall—so I just took it. And after he hit me, he held my collar, real tight, and he said, "Sonny, if I ever again, as long as I live, hear about you usin' drugs, I'm gon kill you. I'm gon git my gun, and I'm gon beat you wit it. I'm gon beat you wit my gun in your head, nigger, until you go in the hospital. 'Cause I'd rather see you there than see you on shit."
I didn't know how to take it. But I had a feeling that Danny meant good, that he meant damn good. Or maybe it was just that I was grateful because I'd almost died, or thought I'd almost died, and he'd saved me. So I Ustened. I kind of felt that this was the last time that he was ever going to tell me anything or play that big brother bit with me—and that he knew it. And since it was the last time, maybe it was something to Usten to.
I said to Danny, "Look, man, you don't ever, long as you live, have to worry about me messin' wit any more horse as long as I live."
Manchild in the promised land Page 13