by Odie Hawkins
Bessie laughed out loud, a fine gin ’n Squirt film clouding her vision, good vibes and her man cooling out all negatives. They made their way through the crowd, portions of it milling around as though they had been led astray, while others sat, patiently waiting, hoping that Kanoon, after the “girl” and the woman, would return for another set.
It was never possible to know what was going to happen in the Pot, mainly because the place belonged to Kanoon, or possibly, as rumor had it, to one of his numerous lady-friends. It was said that Kanoon, weeks after his opening, got onstage one night and explained, in no uncertain terms, what the policy of the Pot was going to be. The versions varied with the people telling the story, but it was generally agreed that he had said that the Pot would be on from Monday to Saturday, that it might only be simmering sometimes, to allow the amateur cooks a chance with their unorthodox recipes but, for the most part, they would be cookin’!… everything that was musically edible.
Bessie and Fred Lee struggled into their coats in the crowded foyer of the club and then eased out into the cold night. Bessie held Fred Lee’s arm, fending off competition with the move, admiring her man’s wide-brimmed, silver crowned hat, his full, beaver brush mustache and the peacockish way he carried imself.
He broke into laughter as they walked.
“What’s funny, baby?” she asked him, already smiling, the contagion spreading.
“I was hahhhahhahhh I was thinkin’ about one night, remember? one night at the Pot when Kanoon came onstage, sat down and started readin’ the newspaper.”
Bessie’s laughter echoed his, “Yeahhh! yeahhh! I remember that!”
“What was it he said when people got pissed off and started fat mouthin’ ’im?!”
“Well, aside from callin’ the people in the audience a bunch o’ stupid motherfuckers and tin-eared baboons and a bunch o’ other ol’ weird-ass things he said … he said.…”
“Oh, I remember if Beethoven was up here, you wouldn’t be askin’ him to perform on cue, like a fuckin’ trained seal or somethin’, so why should I? or somethin’ like that, and walked off the stage.”
Bessie shook her head, “Kanoon is crazy as hell.”
“Really!” Fred Lee agreed, “but that motherfucker be playin’ a whole lotta music.”
Fred Lee slowed his step, thoughtfully checking out the dark areas on the street ahead of him, alert for midnight fliers, delinquents and the pigs. “Uhh,” he continued, satisfied that the way was safe, “uhh, yeah, yeah, I guess you could say he was crazy, in a way. But dig what the dude done did. First thing he did, which was really superslick, right after he made a lil’ bread off his first few albums, was to buy a club, right in the neighborhood.”
“Well, you know what they say ’bout that, ’bout who got the club for him?”
“Uhh huh, yeah, well, that may be true. But the fact remains, the dude got a place to play his own music, I mean, like he can git funky as a motherfucker up in the Pot and ain’t got to answer to nobody No-body!”
“I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”
“Yeah, dig it! I was standin’ ’round, me ’n Jake the Fake.”
“You ’n who?” Bessie eyed him suspiciously.
Fred Lee smiled and lowered his hand to pat her affectionately on the rump.
“I said me ’n Jake the Fake, baby but don’t be gettin’ all excited ’n shit. I ran into him one evenin’ and we stopped for a taste in the Pot. No, baby no deals, no schemes, we just stopped for a taste, to rap a lil’ while.
“Anyway, Kanoon was talkin’ to a bunch o’ dudes at the bar, tellin’ them that he represented the New Breed, that he was one o’ them new niggers that didn’t have to give the white boy shit, didn’t have to play what they wanted him to play, didn’t have to pay them no rent, and wasn’t waitin’ ’round hopin’ that they would decide to recognize his black ass, he was doin’ his own thang, and them what didn’t like it could kiss his ass, the red, inner meat part of it.”
“Well, I’ll say!” Bessie exclaimed as they strolled on, pride in her man bubbling her up like a pigeon. She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. Was that stuff Miss Rabbit gave me to use, after he got out of the joint, really responsible for him being the way he is now? Or what?
“Why you lookin’ at me outta the corner of your eyes like that, woman?” he asked, a humorous glint in his own eyes.
“’Cause I love you, Fred Lee, that’s why.”
He squeezed her waist, slimmer now by twenty pounds since she’d gone on a strict diet. “C’mon, we got a block to go, you used to be pretty fast, I’ll race you to the front steps.”
Bessie bent over, snatched her shoes off and struck out, giggling like a teenager before Fred Lee realized she had put forty yards between them.
He eased into a sprinter’s stride after a few yards, the years of doing wind sprints in the prison yard showing up in every smooth movement. Yeahhh suhh, it was sho’ ’nuff lookin’ good, he thought, as he breezed past Bessie with a grin. Woman lookin’ good, I’m lookin’ good, only thing wrong is this jive job I got gotta do better than this mail-clerk messenger bullshit gotta do somethin’ else.
He dashed to the top step of the porch fronting their apartment building, barely breathing hard, and watched Bessie pause at the bottom, exhausted.
“You cheated, Fred Lee!” she accused him, mounting the steps.
“How in the hell could I cheat when you started out first?”
“You just did!” she responded with impeccable logic and eased past him, glowing from the run, feeling giddy.
He followed her up the dimly lit stairs, carefully checking out the dimples in the back of her legs and her lately found, hourglass figure.
Yeahhh, thangs was definitely lookin’ up.
Chapter 2
Getting There
Sweet Peter Deeder, now known by his given name, Peter Dawson, but still better known by the regulars as Sweet Peter Deeder, ex-pimp, ex-dope peddler, ex-gambling house owner, ex-conman, ex-ex … calmly shuffled his pages of notes, sitting onstage at St. Anastasia’s College for Girls. He stared up through the slitted Gothic windows at the clear, bright autumn sky. Tuesday weather, an ol’ con buddy once called it.
He glanced down at the first row of multicolored, fleshy teenaged knees, catching sight of a thigh crossed over a thigh, the taut young meat straining under its short, pleated covering … and sighed. God! he asked himself, directing his eyes back up through the slits, God! what the hell am I doin’ up in here?
Very simple, his mercilessly logical side spoke to him, you gittin’ over, motherfucker! gittin’ over like a fat rat!
The assembly hall filled, the fresh, sparkling complexions of the school girls glowed, the pledge to the flag was listlessly recited and the Mother Superior introduced Mr. Peter Dawson, lecturer on Sinfulness.
Sweet Peter D. limped over to the lectern, hip mod garments cloaking his slight paunch, a dazzling silk scarf covering the grillwork of scar tissue on the left side of his neck, a memo from Kwendi and company, from years ago, that and the ankle that never healed right.
He stood as straight as a tin soldier for a few beats, taking the measure of his audience and allowing them the same liberty. For a moment, the hot flash of the urge to pimp again made him shudder, the mad feeling of wanting to fly out into the middle of this audience of seventeen, eighteen and nineteen year old cunts, to spool off yards of honey language, of lovestick and knuckle sandwiches, to crack their innocent young skulls open with an Arabian Nights tale of the glories to be found in whoring for him.
The lights in the hall seemed to dim as he leaned forward, the theatrical effect created by a passing cloud, and said in a super mellow tone of voice, “Today, young ladies I would like to talk to you about the second oldest profession, pimpin’,” and then added, almost as an afterthought, “and the dangers and evils of the first oldest profession, whorin’.”
He leaned back, pausing for effect, and roamed his catchin’ e
ye up and down the first row.
His eyes took them in three times around, involuntarily, the first three at the end. A black black girl with sacrilegious breasts spitting up at him through a tense blouse like twin cobras, a Mongolian princess next to her, her cheeks all flat planes with slittled goggles for eyes, slouched down so far in her seat that the school’s pleated uniform skirt fell between her strong yellow thighs like gauze. And next to her; Sweet Peter caught himself, sucked in a little air for strength, next to her was a cornstalked monster of a blonde with a lush rose bow mouth and creamy thighs that started under her armpits and almost stretched across the division of space between the first row and the stage apron.
He shook his head sadly, as though lamenting the evils of pimpin’ ’n whorin’. smiled accidentally at the crusted face of the Mother Superior seated onstage to his left, and turned back to face the eight-hundred and forty-six challenges to his self control.
“Yes, today … young ladies, I’m goin’ to talk to you about two of the world’s worst professions. I speak to you as an ex-member of one of those professions, I leave it up to your imaginations to guess which one I was into.”
He felt a slight dampness swell under his armpit as the Mongolian princess, an overgrown Lolita, holding eyeball to eyeball contact with him, gently scratched her crotch.
I’m gon’ have to tell my goddamned agent not to be bookin’ me into no more girls’ schools, he mumbled subconsciously as he bent to pick up his fumbled notes.
Mr. Chickens, his four super-obedient hens delicately high-stepping around him and his ace, the Spinning Top Dude, stood under the lengthening shadow of a fire escape, just around an alley corner’s edge, trying to defeat the autumn evening’s chill with a pint of cheap pluck.
They said nothing to each other as they passed the bottle back and forth, ignoring the people who passed, glancing at the two of them with a variety of attitudes. The Spinning Top Dude killed the corner and stooped quickly to set the empty bottle down behind him as the squad car turned the corner of the alley.
“One dime, one show!” Mr. Chickens sang out, hip to the ways to gain the upper hand over the police mentality. “One dime one show!” he called out again, a note of urgency in his gravelly voice, and began to cluck to his chickens, to line them up at the side of the alley.
The Spinning Top Dude, a master of the string and hourglass top, or the spherical top or any other kind of top that would slide up a string, a wizened brown man with soft almond shaped eyes, thirty-eight years away from Luzon, in the Philippines, had already uncorked his works and had three hourglass forms doing figure eights in mid-air, handling them almost telepathically as he hummed a quiet little tune in Tagalog the whole time.
“One dime, one show!” Mr. Chickens almost screamed into the squad car’s window, clucking furiously out of the corner of his mouth for his chickens to roll over in unison. Mr. Chickens and the Spinning Top Dude performed with an air of desperation around the fringes of their movements, doing anything not to be hauled in on a vagrancy pop. Both of them, having had it happen before, knew the dangers of incarceration.
For Mr. Chickens, it meant that his precious chickens would be disposed of in somebody’s skillet, the Spinning Top Dude’s tops confiscated, their art lost.
The Spinning Top Dude hummed louder, paraded his three sandalwood carvings through an intricate cat’s cradle behind his back, while Mr. Chickens half-stepped through a rhumba with his hens.
The two pigs, one black and the other white, looked at them contemptuously from the warmth of their squad car. The black one sarcastically tossed a half-dollar at Mr. Chicken’s feet, “Lets see that fucked up tightrope thing you guys do.”
With an athletic movement, surprising to see in someone Mr. Chickens’ age, he scooped the half-dollar up, slipped it under the layers of his coats, sweaters and shirts, into his watch fob pocket and turned to the Spinning Top Dude without a word.
Their movements synchronized, the Spinning Top Dude popped the last top off of the string and into his side pocket, held the end of the string out to Mr. Chickens as they both knelt on the cold pavement of the alley.
Mr. Chickens flicked a few corn chips out of one of his many pockets to his ladies, clucked them lovingly onto the lowered tightrope one by one, and pulled it taut as they scrambled across, wings flapping, bills opened for balance.
The Spinning Top Dude spooled a cylindrical top onto the string behind the last highwire hen and, with the finesse of hundreds of hours of practice, popped the top high into the air as he, Mr. Chickens and the hens made a deep bow to their snobbish audience, catching it on the string behind his back, almost as an afterthought, seconds later.
The two creatures in the car threw their heads back, laughing uncontrollably for a few carefree moments, at the sight of the two pathetic figures, a dirty brick wall with obscene scrawlings on it their backdrop, a pile of smelly garbage to the left and right of them.
The white pig, still red in the face from laughing so hard in his tight collar, leaned across his partner to say, as they slowly pulled away, “Awright, that’s enough of that bullshit for today, you bums clear this alley, next time we catch you two loitering we’re gonna run ya in!”
The black one nodded in agreement, still smiling.
Mr. Chickens removed his scarecrow’s hat, revealing a mass of tattered, Shirley Temple forelocks, and bowed graciously the Spinning Top Dude created the momentary illusion of a top spinning through his head by whipping the string around his head five times. They watched the car reach the end of the alley in respectful silence.
“Goddamn mother-fuckers!” the Spinning Top Dude muttered fiercely.
Mr. Chickens dismissed the hostility with a smiling, “Fuck them! they ain’t shit!” and held up the shiny half-dollar “C’mon, Tops, le’s go git another short dog.”
The Spinning Top Dude and Mr. Chickens shuffled out of the alley, stumbling against each other for support, on their way to the corner liquor store, trailed by four dirty, funky chickens, stepping abreast.
The neighborhood, returning from their eight-hour spirit drainage sessions on the plantations about town, smiled fondly at the sight.
The Holt family, minus son number one, Perry, off on a date with his bride to be, sat around the card table-dinner table in the front room, looking at an eight by ten photograph of a two-story house. Nathan Holt, at fifty-one, rangy and lean, passed the picture back to his wife, Diane a sour look pulling the corners of his mouth down.
Mrs. Holt placed the photo between her and her youngest son, rubbed shoulders with him excitedly. “Isn’t it just lovely, Byron?” she asked him, her eyes shining.
“Yeahhh, it’s really outta sight, Momma.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair and lit an after-dinner cigarette, a heavier scowl crinkling his mouth, looking at his woman and son admire their prospective home.
“I sure wish Perry was here,” he grumbled.
“Why, Daddy?” Byron asked in a very respectful voice.
“Well,” he directed his answer to his wife, “he’s gon’ be livin’ in this place too, so I don’t see why we couldn’t all sit down like folks and decide what we was goin’ to do, together.”
Diane, slightly exasperated, pursed her lips. “Now Nathan, we’ve been over this fifty times in the last two months. Perry has already told us he’s gettin’ married and that he won’t be livin’ with us, so I don’t think what he would have to say would be too important, one way or the other.”
Nathan mumbled into his mustache and blew a thick patch of smoke across the table.
Mother and son exchanged meaningful glances.
“Nathan, we’ve got to get this straightened out right here ’n now, for all time. We have a home paid down on, we’ve made all the legal arrangements and everything … Now just tell me, do you or don’t you want to move out of this lousy ass neighborhood and into this nice home out south, or not? Which is it, damnit?!”
Father and son both reacted, sli
ghtly shocked to hear the lady of the house use profanity, an unusual act for her.
“Awwww bay-beee,” Nathan began, trying to cool her out.
“Don’t awwww bay-beee me, Nathan Holt! We’ve been up ’n down, in ’n out about this thing, and all you come up with is negative vibes, now let’s get it ironed out now, once ’n for all!”
Nathan straightened up a little, determined not to be bullied. “Ahhemmm, Byron, leave us in here for a lil’ while, me and your mother have some important business to discuss.”
Byron, Momma’s boy, nineteen years old and feeling older, bristled slightly at his father for the second time in his life, confident that his mother was going to back him up. “Why should I have to leave? This concerns me just as much as it does anybody. I mean, like, after all, I’m still livin’ at home, and I’m gon’ be helpin’ to make the payments ’n everything.”
Diane Holt shot protective words between them quickly, preventing Nathan from heaving the table onto Byron’s rebellious head. “He’s right, Nathan! right! right down to the bone! This concerns the three of us more than anybody me, you and Byron, he’s right! Whatever you and I have to say should be said, right here ’n now, in front of By’,” she concluded, patting Byron’s shoulder protectively.
Nathan Holt, his eyes squinched half shut with anger, slowly relaxed, seeing, despite his urge to kick Byron’s ass, the validity of her statement.
“Awright! awright! I’ll say what I got to say. Number one, I told you a long time ago, Diane, that I didn’t give a mule’s fart for the idea of ownin’ no house, nowheres, bein’ stuck for no twenty year mortage …”
She interrupted, bearing down, “Yeah, uhhn huh, that’s true! but you did agree, if I remember correctly, that it wasn’t makin’ too much sense to keep on payin’ the kind o’ money for rent that we’ve been payin’ for the last twelve years.”
“With all the rats ’n roaches,” Byron added helpfully.
“Number two, if you all will kindly let me go on?” he continued sarcastically. “Number two, I was against the idea of movin’ way out south where this place is, with all them ol’ saddidy niggers ’cause …”