Chicago Hustle

by Odie Hawkins

  Elijah decided to join the circle around the speakers.

  He slouched with a cigarette in his jibbs, a cynical attitude showing for all to see. The same old bullshit. Every monk in the cell had been a major league player out in the world, every holdup man had been a bank robber, all of them were innocent.

  The talk was so often lost in the stars, abstractions poured out by semi-literate mack men.

  “The only difference between you and him, between you and the upper echelon rip-off artist, who is the white boy, don’t make no doubt about that! you unnerstand! The only difference between you and them is that they’ve convinced and conditioned your black ass to a certain level!

  “Dig it!” The speaker, a bull-voiced toad of a black man, with biceps running all up behind his neck, flung his arms out to have his statements embrace the whole group. “Do you realize how devastatin’ the white boy’s game has been on your ass!? huh!? do you!? Are you aware, brother?! are you aware that we got geniuses standin’ ’round here, right now! motherfuckers who be standin’ out on corners dealin’ with mo’ complications, mo’ bullshit and I don’t know what all, than the average college boy ever dreamed of?”

  The man speaking opposite him attempted to pop back in, on an ego trip more than anything else.

  Elijah felt surprised to hear his voice joined to those who shouted the ego tripper down. “Be cool, man! Let brother speak on! brother speaks well!”

  The bull voice looked around the group with a cold glint in his eye, hard to tell whether he was trying to dish out sincere info, or play the new game.

  “When I say that we all are hostages of the state, what I mean is that because they’ve never had any categories for the various sections of streetologists, which takes in most of us, we wind up doin’ shit that is declared illegal, but actually is shit that they be doin’ legally, and gettin’ away with it! Now what I’m sayin’ to you, about truth, is this! As an element of nature and consequently, one of being, is this!”

  Elijah wandered away from the group, back over to his corner, a slightly irritated frown on his brow.

  It never failed. No matter how much sense some of the jailhouse debaters seemed to be making when they started off; somehow, to his mind, they always seemed to veer off somewhere.

  The brother did have a point, though, he admitted to himself as he slumped back down into his spot. Yeahhh, the brother did have a point … they were hostages. He had two points. They were also conditioned like hell to stay where they had been programmed to be. He smiled, in spite of the sadness he felt settle over him. “Conditioned to be slaves in another kind of way.”

  Yeahhh, they were slaves all right. New World slaves in another time, another dimension, playing the same old games.

  The sounds from the men across from him became noises. He nodded to himself, as though agreeing to something someone had said. That was the other thing about the whole business.

  No matter how logically they started off, it always seemed to degenerate into some kind of formless merry-go-round, something like a group of pick-up conga drummers in the park who refused to play together because they feared success.

  No wonder niggers have such a helluva hard time gettin’ it together … we all afraid that we’ll lose our whatever it is we got to lose if we get together.

  Elijah looked at one of the drag queens filing his nails and thought about his woman Leelah, and Dee Dee, and Mabel Stewart. He crossed his legs, trying to push his hardening jones down between his thighs, to keep his thang cooled out, like, after all, three more months was a pretty good piece of time to remain unfucked. Three more fuckin’ months! He found himself wishing that they had laid a case on him strong enough to stick him into the penitentiary anyway.

  The penitentiary was clean, the guards were long-winded civil servants doing time along with the cons, looking forward to a vacation every year and a pension at the end of thirty-five years on the job.

  “Could I get another one of your cigarettes, brother?” the alimony man asked politely, trembling from his nicotine addiction.

  “Buy your own cigarettes, motherfucker!” Elijah bristled up at him, wanting, for some reason, to kick the square in the ass.

  The man backed off, startled to find the generous type that he had conned out of a cigarette a short time ago so mean and evil.

  Elijah uncrossed his legs and enjoyed the feeling of having his dick swell up along the side of his thighs.

  Three more fuckin’ months. Ninety more days. He uncoiled himself to wander over to the drinking fountain, and back to the edge of the circle, two more speakers scuffling with each other’s logic, or lack of it.

  Oh well, what the hell … who knows? somebody might lay something on me that I can use when they cut me loose.

  Wonder what Leelah’s doing? Haven’t heard from her in three weeks now.

  An endless parade of bowls of watery oatmeal, dried-out toast and slimy coffee-days slid back and forth in front of Elijah’s eyes.

  Why in the fuck don’t they come on and cut me loose? As he restlessly wandered around the bullpen, it seemed that his fellow inmates were constantly bumping into him, getting in his way, causing him to be pissed off about one thing or another.

  “Baker! Barker! Brookes! Burns!” the guard bellowed out to a suddenly silent group of men.

  Elijah tossed his cigarette pack over into the alimony man’s lap and gathered his shoebox bull of belongings together.

  “Thanks, man,” the alimony man called out to him, hating him for being freed.

  “Brookes, Elijah?”

  “Righteously!”

  “Don’t be funny, asshole,” the guard spoke in a monotone, checking names off on his clipboard.

  Elijah kept a straight face, his armpits suddenly damp from nervous perspiration. Anything! Anything! anything at all, Mr. Guard! just please let me out of this terrible fucked-up hole! Let me out of this open shithouse with all the do-do running down the dank, gray, institutional walls, filled with the scratchings ’n scribblings of a thousand penned-up minds. Let me out, please, let me out, please …

  “Okay, you dudes are being processed for release, follow me.”

  The four men followed the guard and his precious clipboard through one clanging, barred gate after another.

  Funny, Elijah thought, as they came into the administration section, all clean and sterile. Funny that the only dudes getting out with me are last-named B. Ohh well, what the hell! I’m getting out! damn coincidences.

  Look out streets! here I come!

  CHAPTER 6

  Elijah braced himself up on his knuckles and stared down into the woman’s face.

  What difference did it make that it wasn’t Leelah, or Dee Dee? What difference did it make? pussy was pussy.

  He studied the contorted expression on her face. Was she in pain, or did it feel good?

  He “smiled … had it been that long? so long that he couldn’t tell whether or not he was causing a woman pain or pleasure?

  He frowned, studying her expression more closely under the dim blue bulb … yes, it was pleasure. What bitch wouldn’t feel pleasure snatching a nigger’s nuts out of the sand that had been dragging as long as his had.

  She looks a li’l bit like Mabel. Wowwww! the thought jarred his movement to a sudden stop. Mabel …

  For the first time since they’d picked each other up in the Swan Song, she asked him a question. “What’s the matter, baby?”

  “Nothin’, ain’t nothin’ wrong”… he answered her lamely, revving himself back up to a slow jelly, trying to come again.

  Nawwww, ain’t nothing wrong, Momma … nothing at all. I just got out of the slams, my true blue lady didn’t come for me, and ain’t where we used to be, my gritty-nitty girlfriend is shacked up with a jealous card player, one half of my so-called friends don’t know me and the other half don’t want to know me … like, what good is a player with no play?

  He jacked the tempo of his movement up and gently curled the woma
n’s thighs up over his hips … she responded to his movement with a belly dancer’s thrust of her pelvis.

  Wowwww! this bitch really knows how to fuck!

  “Uhhh, what’s your name?”

  The woman went slack for a moment and then tightened up all over him laughing.

  Her laughter was so contagious that he found himself caught up in it, each muscular contraction of her stomach forcing him closer to a climax.

  “Hahhhhahhh … uhhh … what’s so funny?” he asked, trying to slide back into the mellow groove they had.

  “You are,” she answered in a heavy, whiskey-scarred voice.

  “Oh yeahhh, why is that?” he probed, sustaining his moves and praying that he hadn’t grabbed a neurotic off the bar stool.

  “Men never seem to be satisfied ’til they find out the lady’s name, they even ask whores, what’s your name?”

  He responded to her observation with a slow nod and stopped his dance.

  “You’re right! you know that?”

  “I know I am,” she answered, and looked at him with a challenge in her eyes.

  The dim blue light, the grime of the drab hotel furniture arranged around the bed quietly faded out of his consciousness as he felt her vagina grip his penis and milk the sap from it.

  After a few seconds, the intensity of it taking him on a quick, magic ride, he kissed her mouth very gently and whispered into her ear.

  “I love you, woman … whatever your name is.”

  She squeezed his face into her breasts and mumbled, “You guessed it, that’s exactly what my name is, Woman.”

  He rolled slowly off of her body, spent … and stretched out to stare up at the bulb.

  What’s next? After a woman, it would be nice to have some girl, but first, in order to do that he would have to get in touch with Browney the Fence.

  The woman curled up into the crook of his shoulder.

  “Tell me what your name is, you didn’t, you know?”

  “My name is Man, baby … my name is Man,” he said softly and faded off into a deep sexual catnap.

  Elijah found himself breathing a little harder with excitement as he stepped into the telephone booth to call Browney. Automatically he dialed into their code … three rings, hang up … two rings, hang up, and then let it ring.

  If there was anybody who would help him get his shit back together again, it would be old cold-blooded ass Browney. Hmmf! for all the good it did me, I may as well have had a public defender and not blew all that dough … at least I would’ve had something left for a stake when I got back out here.

  “Yeah!” the gruff voice suddenly replaced the dial tone. Same old Browney …

  “What’s to it, Browney? This is Elijah.”

  “Eli … Elijah, well, I’ll be! is it really you? I figured you for next month.”

  Elijah curled his lips down with a frown. Chickenshit motherfucker, probably got a calendar with every nigger’s jail term marked off that he be dealing with.

  “You can X me for this month. I’m back on the scene. Can you do me any good?”

  Elijah’s mind flickered to the patented picture of Browney, leaning back in his stuffed leather chair, waving his secretary out of the room, telling her to accept no more calls from anyone for the next three minutes.

  Browney the Fence, used cars, a piece of a record company, a vehement supporter of capitalism in every form, a wheeler dealer.

  “Whatcha got, buddy-o?” Browney asked cautiously.

  “I ain’t got a goddamned thing, man … that’s why I’m callin’ you.”

  Browney’s caution skipped from there to outright coldness, now that the reading had been made.

  “Uhh, what can I do for you?”

  Elijah, mistaking the chill for someone requesting a price list, shot back, “I need a whole gang o’ thangs … but they all add up to one thing. Money, honey. I need some clothes and a decent ride.”

  Browney shifted his bulk around in his chair and swung his heels up onto his desk, searching in his desk drawer for a pack of cigarettes.

  “Damn it!”

  “Huh?!”

  “Awwww hahh hah, I wasn’t talkin’ to you, buddy-o, I just discovered I was out of cigarettes. ’Scuse me a sec. Uhhh, Norene! come in here a minute, willya doll?”

  Browney’s secretary, a Chicana and an ex-wise lady of the barrio, stood in the doorway with an inscrutable expression on her face. The fat greasy bastard!

  “How ’bout runnin’ out for a pack o’ cigarettes, doll? Take it out of petty cash. How much do you figure, buddy-o?” He slid from the lady in the door back to Elijah without a pause.

  “I could really get down on two grand or thereabouts, yeahhh, two grand would do it. I still owe my lawyer a few …”

  “Two grand? that’s a lotta dough, buddy-o?”

  “How much do you want on it?” Elijah snapped. “I need it for a month, maybe less.”

  “Awww Elijah, EEElijahhh,” Browney responded with a large dose of contrived sympathy in his voice, “you wouldn’t hafta gimme anything on it, nothin’! if I had it you could get it, like that!”

  The telephone booth suddenly seemed much smaller.

  “Sounds like you tryin’ to tell me somethin’.”

  Browney paused for a few seconds to allow what he had said to Elijah to sink in.

  “Well, two grand is a lotta dough, Elijah.”

  “Awww c’mon on, man! don’t gimme that shit! When I was out in the streets I was layin’ at least two grand worth o’ stuff on you every week, and what was I gettin’ for it? peanuts! and now you gon’ try to tell me you can’t stake me for …?”

  “Now just a minute!” Browney interrupted abruptly, “hold on there a minute! then was then and now is now. Deals made yesterday are old deals. What we wanna talk about are new deals, right? right! Tell ya what, gimme a ring tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I can hit you with a couple C-notes.”

  Elijah held the phone away from his ear as though he hadn’t heard right.

  “A couple bills, huh? Lissen to me close, you motherless white motherfucker! I tell you what you can do. You can stuff those measly two bills up your fat ass!”

  He slammed the telephone back onto the hook and leaned back against the panes of the telephone booth, perspiration streaming down his face.

  Two of the neighborhood winos slowly made their way past the booth, eyes bleary, looking for another short dog.

  Elijah kicked his heel against the back of the booth with frustration. Who in the hell else could he call on? Damn!

  The booth seemed to get tighter, to almost the suffocation point, as he slowly dialed Browney’s code again.

  “Yeah!” The same abrupt snarl, not caring whether it was Elijah calling back or not, but knowing that it was. Or someone else, no matter.

  “Heyyyy Browney, look, this is Elijah again.” Elijah spoke in deliberately even tones. “Forget about what I just said. How much did you say you’d let me have?”

  “Two bills, tops.”

  “Make it three, okay?” Elijah said, trying not to sound as though he were begging.

  “Why not? we’re ol’ friends. Three bills it is.”

  “Cool. When can I get it?”

  “That’ll be a quarter on the dollar, buddy-o.”

  Elijah’s lips parted for a moment to release some vile language, but reconsidered his position. “Yeahhh, yeah, okay, whatever you say.”

  “My man will get it to you tomorrow afternoon. You still hanging out at that Tiger joint?”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon,” he spoke softly, resigned to dealing with the Dealer. “Thanks, thanks for everything,” he signed off sarcastically.

  “Don’t mention it. Just make sure you don’t miss any payments, I got a couple guys over here who don’t do anything but leg work for me.”

  Elijah hung up the telephone coolly, cursing the voice, the man and everything he represented.

  The thought buzzed through his skull as he left the humidity
of the telephone booth, to hit the heat of the streets. “I got a couple guys over here who don’t do anything but leg work for me.” Best be careful with that bastard, I don’t know what I’d do with both of my legs broke.

  He stopped for a newspaper and strolled slowly down 51st Street, heading for Malcolm X Park and a thorough study of the want ads. One of the good pieces of advice given him by one of the slickest dudes in jail had been: “Get a job, man … work on it for a bit. You know they gon’ be watchin’ you for a while. Throw ’em off a li’l bit, confuse ’em, that way you can get away with a whole bunch o’ shit.” Yeah, a gig. Wowwww! it’s been ten years since I hit a lick at a snake. Let’s see what we got here …

  Elijah carefully wove a sparkling figure-eight pattern onto the length of the long hallway, enjoying the rhythm of the buffer. He suavely flicked the swirling brush around at the end of the hallway, paused to look out at the downtown lights surrounding him, and started back, repolishing the gleaming surface, his mind a little vacant from the monotony of his actions.

  The lady at the County Concentrated Employment office had been diplomatic and helpful.

  “Please, Mr. Brookes, don’t feel for a second that the … uhhh … that your recent incarceration will act against you in any way. We have a large number of brothers coming through our agency who’ve just been released, or who have served time. We try to deal with the needs of the people and not whether or not they’ve been … uhhh … in jail or not.”

  He pressed the off button on the buffer at the opposite end of the hallway, gently laid the handle of the buffer down and dug into his shirt pocket for the last joint in his stash.

  Walking quickly past the empty offices to make certain that no one was working at eleven p.m., he stood at the half-opened window at the end of the hallway and lit up.

  Downtown Chicago, the four-to-twelve shift. A custodian. City lights … his playground. He found himself unable to repress a smile as he sucked down to the roach.

  A working man, an “employee,” a member of the “proletariat,” someone in the joint had once called it.

  Thirty-one years old. The smile faded. Emptying waste baskets and buffing floors. In debt to Nasty Browney. Couldn’t even borrow a dime from supposed to be “friends.”