The pimp? That just might be me. Just might.
Yet neither one of those stupid bulls so much as noticed a mink chubby lying across the front bar.
Now every few minutes I heard the big door at the block’s far end being opened. Yet I never heard it being shut. As if it had opened just far enough to let people with bills in their hands in to squeeze through. If you can’t let somebody out for free, I thought, for God’s sake let somebody in for nothing.
Then I heard a whole pack coming and got back out of the way in case they came through my door.
“Brideswell! Brideswell!” some kukefied broad was hollering, “have consideration!”—but it wasn’t Beth-Mary.
Someone was slammed against the door like the mother-cops had backed her up flat against it and were milling around. I could hear them milling: she couldn’t get loose. Then all the feet began going away fast way down the line. Till a cell door slammed.
That was when it came to me that Enright might already have bonded out my fool. She might be back at the front bar this very moment, the chubby in front of her, listening to whatever the old man was telling her she ought to do next. Like letting her Little Daddy kick his habit cold turkey in Cook County Jail while she went on feeding her own.
O Shining City Seen of John I thought, if that fool of mine lets that old man talk her into that, there’ll be no use of her waiting on the courthouse steps when her Little Daddy comes down them; because she won’t have a Little Daddy anymore. Because Little Daddy’ll be clean, he’ll be his old self once more. What need then will he have for a country whore with marks on her arm?
No, Little Baby, there’s no hardluck story in the book that’ll work then. Because Little Daddy won’t even rap to you. He’ll walk right on by, hop a cab to the Trailways depot and be back in Old Shawneetown, never to leave again, by morning.
And when the baby is big enough to understand, Little Daddy’s going to tell her her real mother died young. And never give that piece of trade he left on the courthouse steps further thought.
Yet I really couldn’t believe Beth-Mary would come in on me.
On the other hand, there was the time in L.A. when she spent a whole afternoon in a movie with a nab. But maybe that was just because she liked the movie. Besides, that was different. I was setting home in my red foulard robe—the one with the tasselly sash—reading Mad. I wasn’t setting behind a solid door in blue jeans with a patch in the seat. Little Baby, aren’t you ashamed to let your Little Daddy walk around in tennis shoes in midwinter? Don’t you want your Little Daddy to look sharp?
And what does she have to show for five years of hustling, except that mink chubby? That, chances are, she’s had to forget by now.
The cold began coming up off the floor. But I knew it was from inside myself that it was really coming. I hadn’t used anything except paregoric for almost sixty hours; and that had been by mouth.
I got a cigarette out of my pocket and got it lit with one hand. I didn’t draw the smoke up my nose because I wasn’t sure what happens when nicotine hits paregoric. Hold tight, Little Baby, I told Beth-Mary, Daddy may be about to drowse about.
Way up and far off I heard a church bell inviting everyone to Sunday mass. Everyone except Beth-Mary and me. Us two fools; the only place we get invited is jail. Just jail.
Can we help it if we’re cute?
Then all the doors, both sides the other side of the solid door, were standing wide. All the broads had gone home. All the mother-cops had taken them home and not one of them was coming back. I was the only one left locked up.
Then someone pulled the shade.
I was in some kind of old country bam with just one weakass bulb burning high high up and swinging a little. All I was wearing was the red silk foulard robe with the tasselly sash. That I thought Beth-Mary had hocked in L.A. I had nothing on under it. And there was a smell of burning; like in a lion-house.
I saw their shadows moving whenever the bulb swung a little; they were all lionesses. That I had to fight one by one.
That was to be my punishment for not being a broad.
Then the burning smell came stronger and I came to with my cigarette burning out on the floor under my nose.
I’d never had a dream like that before.
I got down off the bunk and put my eye to the string of light beneath the door.
“Beth-Mary!” I called under the door, “are you alright, Little Baby?”
Not a sound, not a whisper the other side of the solid door. If I could only hear her whining, “Little Daddy, can’t we just drowse about?”
I got back on the bunk and read the question again that that fool had chalked there in yellow chalk, right over my head. And suddenly I had the answer.
“At your mother’s house, fool,” I told him right out loud.
But I didn’t have a piece of chalk, of any color at all, to write my answer down.
Out of the comer of my eye I saw a cigarette come rolling under the door. It came a full two feet into the cell before it stopped rolling.
And heard my fool’s high heels go clickety-clacking down the corridor.
And keep clickety-clacking away.
You’d think a pimp could do no wrong, for God’s sake, the way them two stick up for one another. You know what that old Southsea bartender told me before I come out here at this ungodly hour?—“You been a bad girl, Beth-Mary, you got to make it all up to your Daddy now. You can’t spend a whole night turning one trick anymore.”
I flew right at him—“You take care of your customers, old man, ’n I’ll take care of mine.”
For God’s sake, just because he goes my bond he thinks he can talk to me like my Little Daddy. Nobody talks to me like my Little Daddy. What do I care if people say he’s no good? Don’t I know that? Of course he’s no good. But he’s the best connection a hustling woman ever had ’n I’ll go all routes with him.
Don’t douse the light yet, mister. Just hang some old tie over it. Else I’ll sleep till the buses stop. Then I’ll have to hail a cab. One cab less, my Little Daddy’s out one day the sooner. I know he’s working up a perfect tit at me as it is out there.
He’s lucky to have someone outside working to get him out, as I see it. How many them locked-up cats got anyone outside hustling for them?
And had it not been for me forcing the old man to bond Zaza out with me, he’d have left her set until her day in court. Only I wasn’t about to leave her—Why should I? Was it her fault he walked into a flying shot-glass? So what if she swung on him with what was nearest to hand? What did he expect after almost knocking her to the floor?
When she opened that handbag at the station we both broke up. But the mother-cop just shook her head ’n asked “What happened here, honey?”
The inside of the bag was a mess of cold-cream, broken glass with kleenex and bobbie pins stuck in it. What she’d hit Enright with was a two-pound jar of Pond’s cold cream; that she’d swung with on her way to work. Small wonder that old man went out cold.
She didn’t even claim the bag when we got sprung. “Nothing in it but a quarter and a few pennies,” she told me, “and I’d have to scrape cold-cream off them.”
Climb into bed any time you feel like, mister. I’ll jump in in no time. I just feel like yakking first for a while. Do you mind? It all just strikes me as so comical. I never robbed nobody my whole life. Even that credit-card we got the chubby on was by my Daddy’s hand. I couldn’t get my own hand in a rain-barrel. But I’m in and out of jail like a fiddler’s elbow all the same.
I’ll say this for Little Daddy—he never lets me set for long. Even when he had a W on him in L. A., and couldn’t show up in the courthouse hisself, he sent a bondman down to spring me. I know he’s mad enough at me to eat snake, lettin’ him set there a week already. I’m going to have to answer a lot of questions when he comes down those court-house steps.
First thing he’ll want to know is how much did Enright put up for the chubby. When I tell him I sold it
outright for three hundred to the old man, he won’t believe me. Not until I tell him the old man don’t know the coat is hot. That’ll put him in the switches—especially if Enright has turned it over. We can’t go back there if he has.
When he gets around to asking why three hundred, when bond is only a hundred-fifty, I’ll have to tell him I got Zaza out. He’ll find out anyhow.
Enright thinking he got us all three on the hook is the biggest laugh of all time, Zaza thinks. He figures to get five hundred for the coat, tell us all he got is three so we’re all square, and make hisself two hundred.
“Keep the coat, old man,” I told him, “it’s yours. Just get us out of here.” Zaza kept her mouth shut when I told him that. And she was good as gold when we were locked up together, too.
“Please take these stupid earrings back, honey,” she asked me, “as a favor.” I took them back even though they don’t mean a thing to me. For a fact I don’t even remember who put them on me. It wasn’t the earrings, I told Zaza, it was the way Daddy went about getting them that got me burned—“I don’t hold nothing against you,” I told her—“if it wasn’t for my bad aim you wouldn’t even be settin’ here.”
“I’m just sorry about your having to give up your chubby,” she told me, “your old man is going to be hot at you for that.”
“Not for long,” I told her, “you don’t know my Little Daddy.”
Nobody knows my Little Daddy. Once in L.A. somebody gave him one of those tennis-bats. Right away he got to be jumping nets all over town. He has the flash notion he’s going to be a tennis-player and he don’t even know where the places are they play for God’s sake. My part is to buy him a box of balls and a pair of white shoes. Then everything’s going to be perfect.
“You want to be a tennis-player,” I told him, “be a tennis player. And I’ll get me a pimp who is a pimp.” I never all my days heard tell of a pimp jumping over a net. Or one tennis player asking another would he like to say hello to the girls.
“I don’t need a tennis-bat to swing a smalltown hide like you,” he told me—“the flat of my shoe will do.” After all the times I put him to bed when he was hitting the bars, and after that the times I scored for him when he was too weak to score for himself, he called me “smalltown hide.” What could I do? I bought him the box of tennis balls and the white shoes and a T-shirt to match and we march into the bar where we hung out, him holding his stupid bat.
The bartender took one look, hollered, “O look girls” and made swishy moves like a little girl throwing a balloon.
That put an end to Little Daddy’s tennis career. He traded off the lot, that had cost me a twenty-dollar trick plus cab-fare, for six sticks of lowgrade pot. Then tells me, “Forget it, Little Baby, let’s just go home and drowse about.” As if nothing had happened at all.
Now he comes leaping into Enright’s—“I’m mastering the licorice-stick!”
He’s going to join the musicians’ union, he’s going to play with a big-name band, we’re going to send for the baby, hustling and hypes and shakedowns and busts are just a thing of the past—yet he doesn’t even have the stupid flute out of the hockshop window.
“Everything’s going to be perfect, Beth-Mary—only we got to get down there before someone else grabs it!”
But I know it’s just another just-as-if deal like with the tennis-bat.
“Daddy, couldn’t you learn to play a clarinet first, from someone who already owns one?” I asked him—“When you get the hang of it we’ll get you one of your own—not a secondhand one—a new one, Little Daddy.”
“Is that all you think of me and the baby?” he asked me. “Doesn’t your husband’s career mean anything to you? You want your daughter to grow up in your footsteps?”
Daddy, I thought, if you weren’t so weak inside you wouldn’t come on so hard.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve about decided, Joan-of-Arc”—he never calls me that unless he’s furious with me—“I’ve decided it’s time for you either to get on a bus to Lexington or taper your habit down within reason.”
Nothing, not a word, about his habit of course.
“So’s you can build it up higher than before?” I put it to him; which seemed to take him by surprise. “Little Daddy,” I went right on, “I’ll hustle for you, I’ll work for you. I’ll go to jail for you. If I have to be sick for two for you I’ll do that, too. And, if you want, I’ll roll you the biggest stick of tea in town. You’re the best connection I ever had and I think you’re here to stay.”
He doesn’t know that, when he took me from my baby, something in my heart shut hard on him.
Poor just-as-if boy, I was sixteen when he came by and became a sickness in my heart. I’m going on twenty-four and he’s a sickness to this hour.
I knew something was gnawing him from that first night, down by the river. When he told me he’d just done two real hard years at Boys’ Industrial I thought that that was it.
That wasn’t it at all. All his mother had had to do to keep him from doing a single day, was to claim him from the court. But she’d tied up to marry some fool who wasn’t about to let an outlaw boy in his house. She had her choice between having a husband or a son. She couldn’t have both so she picked the husband. Some husband.
That’s what is still gnawing Little Daddy.
Yet Mother always gets a pass: “Mother done what she thought best for both of us.” So who’s left to blame for what happened then? Me! I didn’t know he was on earth at the time; yet the whole thing is my fault now. He don’t say it in so many words; but it’s what he feels all the same.
“You ought to hate your old lady for what she done,” I made bold to tell him once, “not me.”
I’ll never make that mistake again. He’d never hit me in the face before. It was my first time. Poor just-as-if boy, what’s ever to become of him if anything happens to me? I needed someone strong to lean on when he came along ’n now it’s just two weak fools leanin’ on each other.
Poor useless boy—I’d rather have his hate than some fat square-fig’s love. Love or hate, whatever, it don’t matter so long as it’s real. My daddy’s hate is realer than any old squarefig’s love. His hate is more beautiful, I think, than love. Because it’s what he truly feels.
It’s why I told him that time, “Little Daddy, I’ll hustle for you, I’ll work for you, I’ll get sick for two for you, I’ll go to jail for you, I’ll go all routes with you. If you want I’ll roll the biggest stick of tea in town for you.”
What I’ve never told him is that, when he took me from my baby, the best part of my heart closed on him.
Mister, I don’t think that old tie across the light is working out. I can smell it starting to scorch. Try your cap instead. You only got two caps? In that case hang up the best one.
That’s better. Now crawl in here before you set yourself afire. I never chippied yet on my Little Daddy.
So I guess it’s time to try.
THE LAST CAROUSEL
I wonder whether there stands yet, on a lonesome stretch of the Mexican border, a green legend welcoming Spanish-speaking motorists to an abandoned gas station:
SINCLAIR se habla español SINCLAIR
A sign I once sat beneath, between a chaparral jungle and a state highway, shelling black-eyed peas. With a burlap sack, a pan and a pocket-size English-Spanish dictionary beside me, I shelled through the searing summer of 1932.
I’d painted that green welcome myself. Above a station that was home, storehouse and operational base for me and a long, lopsided cracker named Luther. I was proud to be his partner and proud that the station was in my name. I’d signed the papers.
We were occupying it, ostensibly, to sell Sinclair gas. What we were actually up to was storing local produce, bought or begged, for resale in the border towns. We had sacks, buckets, pails, pans, Mason jars and crates filled to overflowing with black-eyed peas. When word got around to valley wives that they could now buy black-eyed peas already shelled, they’d b
e driving up from all over southeast Texas. The Sinclair agent would think we weren’t selling them anything but gas. By the time he caught on, we’d be rich.
Sitting bolt upright at the wheel of a 1919 Studebaker, under a straw kelly the hue of an old hound’s tooth, Luther turned my memory back to the caption on the frontispiece of The Motor Boys in Mexico: “We were bowling along at 15 miles per hour.” He lacked only duster and goggles. I feared for the Mexican farmers.
“Protect yourself at all times, son,” was Luther’s greeting every single morning. “Keep things going up.”
I hadn’t seen a newspaper for weeks. For news of the world beyond the chaparral, I awaited Luther’s evening return. I did the shelling and he did the selling.
There were deer in the chaparral, buzzards in the blue and frogs in the ditch. Once a host of butterflies, all white, came out of the sun and settled about me as though they’d been sent. Then they rose and fled as if they’d been commanded to leave. In the big Rio heat I shelled on.
Luther was the man who’d discovered the unexploited shelled-pea market. I’d make him foreman of my ranch in return. The Mexican help would love me, too. “Got the whole plumb load for only two dolla’,” Luther announced smugly over his latest outwitting of a Mexican farmer: He’d returned with another carload. We sat down to a supper of cold mush and black-eyed peas; in the kerosene lamp’s faltering glow. Our kerosene was running low. We were short of everything but peas.
“Collards ’n black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day means silver ’n gold the whole plumb year,” Luther assured me. He was full of great information like that.
“They thought they had Clyde, but they didn’t.” He gave me the big news once the meal had been eaten.
A sheriff had nearly trapped Clyde Barrow and Ray Hamilton in a farmhouse outside Carlsbad, New Mexico. But Bonnie had held the sheriff off long enough for Clyde to come around the side of the house and get the drop on him with a shotgun. New Mexico police had subsequently brought in a body, found in a ditch beside a highway.
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