Maybe You Never Cry Again (11 page)

“Nigger, you was off tonight.”

“No, nigger—you stank.”

But they said it nice. They were my friends.

And I didn't listen anyway. If I stank, I knew I stank. A thousand people could tell me I killed, but in that place deep inside me I knew otherwise. I've never been much good at lying to myself, and if I were, I still wouldn't do it. Can't see the point.

 

I started doing more private parties. Someone would see me at one of the clubs and ask for my number, and a few weeks later they'd call and offer me a little work. Two hours of joking would net me forty, fifty bucks. And I was happy to do it. I was getting paid to do something I loved, getting money to hone my craft.

I did children's parties, too. I went as a clown called Smoothie. Rolled my eyes and made the kids laugh.
Most
of them, anyway. Sometimes they'd take one look at me and run away cryin'. Some of the adults ran away, too.

Also did discos from time to time. Met a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who owned a disco. Had me come by one Saturday to work the crowd; said to get out on the floor when the DJ took a break, do my thing.

I'll tell you, those were tough crowds. They were there to dance, not to hear some clown tell jokes. They were determined not to crack a smile.

I was back to doing my thing on the El train, too. And weekends, summertime, I'd try my luck downtown. At the parks. The museums. Competing with street musicians and mimes. My hat on the sidewalk in front of me. Not because it was about money—it was never about money—but because that's how it was. If you didn't put your hat down, people didn't understand why you were there.

 

But the stage was where I belonged. It's where I wanted to be. Don't get me wrong, the rest of it was fine. Parties, kids, discos, the El, whatever. Comedy was comedy. Funny was funny.

But the stage was a different league.

When that curtain goes up, you're in a special place. The spotlight's on you. When you're riding the El or out in the parks or at the discos, you have to win them over, draw them in. But at the clubs, people are there to be entertained—and you're the entertainment. It's as simple as that. They're expecting something from you—
Make me laugh, motherfucker
—and the pressure is on.

It's a challenge, and a challenge generally brings out the best in me.

For example, if I saw a guy in the front row slouched in his seat, not laughing—I'd work twice as hard. I needed to see that man laugh. Not to make him happy, but to make
me
happy.

Every time I was on a stage, I evolved. I learned something new. And my comedy was getting stronger. But the truth is, it was far from good. I was still a joke teller. A clown. I was looking for the easy laugh. My comedy came from the outside, from the world around me. I wasn't looking within. I wasn't going down inside me, to where it counted.

But I kept at it.

 

Some nights I'd be out till all hours, and come morning I couldn't get my sorry ass out of bed.

“Bernard, it's seven-fifteen,” Rhonda would say, ridin' me.

I had to be at UPS by eight. “Tell them I'm sick,” I said.

“You been sick three times this month already.”

She was right. I'd sit up. My bare feet would touch the floor. Cold motherfuckin' floor. I'd get back under the covers.

“Bernard McCullough! Are you going to work or not?”

Je'Niece would start hollerin' in the other room. “Bring me my baby,” I'd say. “Bring her here to cuddle with her daddy.”

“Her daddy's going to lose his job pretty soon.”

Shit. It's when you least feel like doing something that you most got to do it. I tried to remember that, but I didn't always succeed.

 

It was a day like that, with me putting my best foot forward, that I got to UPS and was told to turn in my uniform. Me and about a dozen other guys. It was all over. They weren't going to put us on the permanent payroll. Seems like, with all the benefits and everything, it was more profitable to just keep hiring new guys, training them all over again.

I went home and told Rhonda the bad news, but I wasn't worried. I'd been hearing a rumor that the university was going to put me on the janitorial staff full-time. On my way to work that night, I told myself I was gonna shine those floors till they hurt
my got-damn eyes. But when I got to work, everyone was standing around in a daze.

“What's going on?” I asked.

Lady named Henrietta spoke up. “Mac,” she said. “This is our last night.”

“
Last night?
That's crazy. Can't be. I don't believe you.”

Lose both jobs on the
same damn day
? That was impossible. I really honestly didn't believe her. I went up to the fourth floor, my floor, and I worked that buffer like never before.

Break time, supervisor showed up. “I guess you've heard the bad news,” he said. “But I don't want you to worry.” He was full of mess. “I'm gonna get to the bottom of this.” He was waving his fist like a preacher. “You're good workers, all of you. I'm not gonna let them do this to you!”

I packed up and left, and for several days I still hoped they might call. But I never heard from them again.

 

Every day I'd get Boops ready for school, and walk over with her. And when I dropped her I'd feel lonely inside. Lonely and useless. I'd go by the coffee shop and get me a coffee and look through the newspaper. You could see other guys had been into the newspaper already; classifieds all greasy. Maybe they were getting to the jobs before me. I figured I might have to start earlier.

But near the bottom I saw that Loomis Armored Car was hiring. The money wasn't much, but they had benefits—and with a wife and child those benefits meant the world to me.

So I went down to see them. I sat through an interview and aced the written test. They seemed to like me. They liked the fact that I'd already driven a truck for Sears and had my operator's license. They said it looked good. All they needed now was the background check, and then I could come back for the polygraph. “We're going to be training you in the use of firearms,” they explained.

I went home happy. Went back two days later. Background had checked out fine; now it was time to hook me up.

The man that ran the polygraph got all the wires in place and began asking questions. “What's your favorite color?” “Is your name Bernard McCullough?” “You like cheeseburgers?”

Then we got into it deeper—drugs and liquor and whatnot.

And right quick, it was over. He told me to go wait in the other room. Someone would be with me shortly. I went off and waited. Ten minutes later, they took me back to the office. There was a look on the man's face.

“What's up?” I asked. I could see something was wrong.

“Why don't you tell me?” the man said.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

“You didn't do so hot on the polygraph, Mr. McCullough.”

“Oh?”

“In fact, you failed.”

“Failed? How's that possible?”

Man showed me where the needle jumped. “See that. That's the part where they asked you about drugs. You lied about your drug use.”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don't do drugs. Must be a mistake. I'm known for
not
doing drugs. You can ask anyone. Call any of my references. A beer-and-a-half and I'm light-headed.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Maybe I can take the test again,” I said. “I really need this job. I know I'd be good at it.”

Man looked at me. “I'm sorry, Mr. McCullough,” he said. “The position's been filled.”

“Okay,” I said. I got to my feet and stayed cool. “Thanks for the opportunity.”

 

Two days later I was driving a school bus for the handicapped, and I did that for a couple of months. But it only paid a hundred bucks a week and I needed more than that to make ends meet.

I called my buddy Kevin Carter, at Dock's Fish Fry, and asked if he had anything. He'd been working there since high school, when Dock's only had one store. Now they had about twenty of them, and he was managing one of them.

Kevin said the Fourth of July was coming up, and they always got crazy busy on the Fourth. He said he might be able to put me downtown as a cook, and I told him I would take anything he had.

“I'm not going to lie to you, Kevin. I'm pretty desperate.”

“I'll see what I can do,” he said.

Within the hour, he called back and gave me the particulars, and the next morning I made my way downtown.

Guy there taught me how to cook. It was just fish, fish and shrimp and fries, but fish mostly, and there was an art to it. You had to pat the fish dry, throw it in the flour, flip it over, do it again, and lay it into the deep fryer real smooth. The fish had to come out nice and flat, not all curled in on itself.

Man, it was
hot
in that place. I was making three twenty-five an hour and I was on my feet fourteen hours straight and I was sweating like a stuck pig. I was there all weekend. It was so bad I almost wept from the heat. I must have lost ten pounds. My feet were killing me.

By the time my last shift finally ended, at the close of the holiday weekend, I could barely walk. But I didn't know anybody there to ask for a ride, so I said good-bye and made my way over to the El. The streets were still crowded with people, must've been a million of them, and it seemed like all of them were on their way home at the same time. It was a good thing the train was crowded, though: Only thing propping me up was the bodies around me.

The following week, Kevin called. “They like you,” he said. “They want to hire you full-time.”

It was humiliating. I'd gone from making seventeen dollars an hour at General Motors to eight dollars as a janitor to a lousy three twenty-five as a fry cook, maybe the hardest work I'd ever done. And all I could think to say was, “Thanks a lot, Kevin. I really appreciate it.” And I
did
appreciate it. Honest to God.

The next day, I reported for work at the Dock's on 35th and Wabash. All day long, people screaming:
Large shrimp! Gimme another bucket! Twenty piece! Fish and chip—three times!
Sliding the filet into the oil real smooth, come out flat.

It was regular work. Things were going along at home. They was tight, but we were managing. I was in charge of the groceries and the phone and the electric bills. Rhonda took care of the rent—she was making more than me. She also made sure there was always a cold beer waiting for me when I got home.

Some nights I'd stumble through that door, dog-tired, and reach for my ice-cold beer and drop onto that
Alien
couch of ours. Beer went down good. I'd drink it and go look in on Boops after. Baby's sleeping. Left a little note for me. “Daddy, they having the
hot lunch tomorrow at school. I need two dollars.” I would reach into my pocket and lay the money on the dresser, even if it was all the money I had left.

Sure enough, there'd be days I got to work with twenty-three cents in my pocket—not even enough to get home. But I wouldn't worry. I would do my job. I had fourteen hours of work ahead of me. I'd worry later.

One night, near about closing time, I was beginning to worry. I hated to borrow money, but I needed a dollar for the train. Just then, I heard a woman calling: “Sir! Sir!” I looked over. It was this lady I'd seen in there lots of times before, a regular.

“Yes, ma'am?” I said.

“This is for you,” she said, and she slid a five-dollar bill toward me.

“For me, ma'am?”

“Yes,” she said. “You always so nice to me. You always smile so pleasant. I wanted to show my appreciation in some small way.”

Little things like that happened to me all the time.

Another time, one Saturday, I was home going through the bills, and I realized I needed $150 by Monday. The phone rang. Man said he saw me at Dingbats a few weeks back and wanted to know would I do a party for him.

“Would a hundred and fifty dollars cover it?” he asked.

Times like that, I know someone's watching over me.

That's right, brother. I believe. I believe in God with all my heart, but I stopped going to church a long time ago. I don't need a church. I carry my church with me at all times, inside my own self.

When I think of prayer, you know what I think of? I think of my mother telling me to go down into the darkness to be alone with my thoughts. That dark place is where my prayers get answered.

God helps those who help themselves.

If God had told me to put up my microphone and follow Him down a different road, I'd have done it, brother. That's how deeply I believe. I wouldn't even have
thought
about it. But God wasn't telling me any such thing. God was telling me to make people laugh.

And that's what I was going to do.

I was a cook at Dock's Fish Fry, and I was working sixty-hour weeks. But I was also a comedian. I believed that with all my heart. And I kept at it. I was going to keep my promise to Rhonda. One day, I was going to own the town.

Everything was clicking.
Ding ding ding.

Meanwhile, I had some fish to fry.

Rhonda used to come to the clubs to watch me from time to time, but she was doing late shifts at the hospital. Most of my friends had jobs, too. Morris was at Merrill Lynch and A.V. was building up his Realtor business and Big Nigger was putting in long hours at the post office. Still, they came when they could.

The one who seldom missed a show, though, was my man Billy. Of course, it was easy for him: He was always between jobs.

I loved having him there. He was fun to be with, he was smart, and he was a bit of a comedian himself. Some of the stuff I did onstage, it came from him. I ain't lyin'. The man'd be scribbling jokes on paper napkins till it was time for me to go up.

“My wife, she know how to take care of herself. Her hair, her nails—she always just right. I get home, and she look
hot,
and I want me some of that. But I'm hungry; a man needs fuel. I ask her what's for dinner and she don't even get up from in front of the TV; says for me to look in the fridge. I look. I find one egg in there, cracked. Some old potted meat, all black and hard. I go back and tell her, ‘Woman, you want to get laid—I need some food in me!' She still lookin' at the TV. She don't even turn to look at me. ‘Who says I want to get laid?' she axe.”

That was Billy Staples's humor. The women in his humor always kind of mean. But that's the kind of women he picked. He wasn't smart about women. He could have been something, that Billy, but he didn't believe in himself. He had no self-faith. So he'd find women who'd take care of him. That was the “pimp” side of him.

 

Billy was seeing a girl at the time; I'll call her Shawna. They'd been together for about a year, and Billy thought she was it—a real class act. She had her own hair salon and drove a Mercedes-Benz and usually popped for dinner. Took care of him, like his women always did. But there was a big downside to Shawna,
which is that she was very jealous.
Pathologically
jealous. Billy couldn't go anywhere without her knowing where he was going or why, and how long he'd be away.

Shawna was mostly okay with me. She knew Billy and I were close. But lots of times she wouldn't let him out of the house. She had about seven locks and chains and shit on her front door, and one of them was a dead bolt. And on more than one occasion Billy called from her place to say he wasn't going to make it; Shawna had locked him in.

He didn't make it for my grandfather's funeral but showed up later, at the house, with Shawna. She was clinging to him, holding on for dear life, and when he finally tore free for a moment, he came over and said how sorry he was about missing the service, and how Shawna had locked him in again, and he gave me that little broken-faced look of his.

“Hey, Billy,” I said. “You're here now, man. So don't worry about it. You done it. You came and showed my grandfather your respect and that's what counts.”

That's all the words I got out, because suddenly Shawna surfaced between us like a shark. “I'm ready to go now,” she said.

“Honey,” Billy said. “We just got here.”

“Didn't you hear me, Billy? I said I was ready to go.”

Said it loud, too. Everybody watching now. No respect at all in that woman.

“Shawna—”

She wouldn't listen. She stormed out and slammed the screen door on her way, slammed it hard, and everyone turned to look at Billy, see what he was going to do. Everyone knew the girl had her claws in him deep. He was so embarrassed he hung his head.

“Billy,” I said quietly, not wanting him to feel even worse. “You go ahead with your girl.”

And he said, “Beanie, I'm sorry, man.” And he hurried after her and got in her Mercedes-Benz and they left.

The next day I got with him again, and he was all apologetic. And I said, “Billy, I'm going to tell you something. We're brothers. That girl is nothing but trouble. You should get away from her. The sooner, the better.” He didn't answer me. He looked at the wall. I remember thinking that Billy seemed like drug addicts I'd seen, all morose and missing it. Only his drug was Shawna, of course.

Sometimes he'd try to fight it. I'll give him that. One time he got a big carpentry job at a housing development and looked like he was going places. He was happy, and he liked it. But Shawna didn't like it. She was so insecure that she'd pop up on the job to make sure he wasn't fooling around with any of the secretaries. He wasn't fooling around with
anyone.
He loved Shawna. And he asked her nice to please not keep coming by the site; she was jeopardizing his job. But she kept coming by and sure enough he got fired, and he called me to come get him. I pulled up and he was waiting on the corner with all his tools. We went for a beer.

“You got to leave that girl,” I said. “She gonna kill you.”

Sure enough, one morning I get a call that Billy's in the hospital. He and Shawna had been at a party the night before and he ran into this old girlfriend from high school, and the girl hugged him. And Shawna went off and threw a drink in his face and started hollering like she was being murdered or something, and security came by and told them to leave.

Billy said he was going home without her. He'd had enough. And he stormed out and got on a bus. But Shawna followed with her car, and when he got off at the bus stop, she ran him over. If it hadn't been for the concrete bench at the corner, her car would have climbed right over the sidewalk and killed him for sure. As it was, he had a cracked rib and a fractured ankle and contusions all over his body. The ambulance came to get him. And the police, too. Plenty of witnesses had seen the car and got the license plate, but when the cops went to the hospital to talk to Billy he wouldn't press charges.

I was furious. I was tight. He came over to my house on crutches, and I had to practically carry him up the stairs. “Billy,” I said, and I read him the riot act. “I'm going to tell you again. That girl is going to kill you.”

“No, man, Beanie—you don't understand. Shawna's a good girl. She's just never had anyone in her life be good to her. Everyone always abandons her.”

“Sure they abandon her! They abandon her because she's no good. The girl is crazy.”

“No, Beanie. Don't say that.” He wanted so bad for me to like her. “She just needs help.”

“I ain't arguing with that! Girl needs lots of help. From a
professional.
Not from you.”

He went back to her. Like a beaten-down junkie. Reminded me of that singing wino in the old neighborhood, fighting with his own self about the damn bottle. “Give it back, nigger!”

 

Whenever I called over to her place to talk to him, I was very respectful. But Shawna liked to taunt me. She knew I didn't like her. “Mr. Mac Man! Big Bernie. How's the funny man?”

“Doing good,” I'd say, and eventually she tired of it and put Billy on the phone. I'd tell him I was going to a club that night, and asked could he come. But things were tense over there; lots of times she wouldn't let him, and it shamed him.

 

One night I did a party for this girl I'd met through work, and Billy came along—and brought Shawna with him. I did my show and had them rolling on the floor. Even Shawna was laughing.

After the show I sat with them for a beer, and when Billy went off to find a bathroom, Shawna got all earnest with me. “Bernie,” she said. “Why don't you like me?”

“I'm sure I'd like you fine if I knew you,” I said. “What I don't like is the way you treat Billy. Billy is my main man. I love that boy. I hate to see him hurting.”

“He's my main man, too,” she said. “And I love him, too.”

“I don't think what you do is called loving,” I said. “This ain't my business, but you asked. And I'm going to tell it like it is. I can't pretend it's okay.”

Billy got back to the table, and he could see we was tense. He hated that. He loved Shawna, or
thought
he loved her, and he didn't want his best friend and his woman not getting along.

A few days later he came over to the house and sat there and hugged me hello and played with Boops while I got dressed. Like I said, Billy was funny. He could do Woody Woodpecker and stuff and get Boops laughing till there were tears in her eyes. He was her favorite uncle, good old Uncle Billy.

We went out to Popeye's for chicken later. Loved that spicy chicken and those red beans and the jalapeño peppers. And while we're chowin' down, Billy's mood got dark. He showed me the tip of his little finger and said, “A bullet this size can take your life.”

I looked at him. “What're you sayin' that for, then?”

But he wouldn't answer. He got all quiet.

So I asked him again. “Where'd you come from with that, Billy?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “It was just a thought.”

But I knew it was more than a thought. Next day I called my friend Morris Allen, over at Merrill. Said something was up with our friend Billy. “I'm real worried about him.” We got him over to the house a few days later, me and Morris and another friend of ours, Tony, and had some takeout and a few beers. But Billy wasn't in any festive mood.

“When I die,” he said, “I want to make sure my son's taken care of.”

He had a son with another woman, from when he was in high school. He looked over at Morris and began asking for financial advice, and Morris told him about living trusts and such, and how not to get a big tax bite (as if Billy had that problem), but I stopped all the money chatter and looked dead at Billy.

“Man, what's going on with you? You're among friends here. What's all this talk about bullets and dyin'?”

“Nothing, Bean. I'm just talkin'. I'm thinking about my son. I wish I could be a better father to him.”

But that wasn't what he was thinking about. When I went off to get more beers, he followed me into the kitchen so close he was breathing down my damn neck. Gave me a scare. “Man! What are you creeping around for? Make me jump like that.”

He's all serious. “Bean,” he said. “If anything happens to me, I want you to get Shawna.”

“What?”

“Just promise me that,” he said, and I saw he had tears in his eyes.

I cornered him right then and there, in the kitchen, but he didn't tell me nothin'. He slipped back into the living room and joined the others.

Later, I dragged him to this club called Sandpipers, just the two of us, and I still couldn't get nothin' out of him. My main man wouldn't talk to me. Then these two girls came over and one of them looked at Billy and said, “Come here, you handsome devil. Dance with me.” And Billy went and danced. But he wasn't even looking at this pretty girl. He was only thinking of Shawna. She'd be wondering where he was, maybe even looking for him now.

He came back from dancing and I said, “See that? Everywhere you go, women want you. But you got to pick the one that's trying to kill you. Tell me what the hell's going on, Billy?”

He still wouldn't talk to me. I was getting tight, but he didn't care.

Now it's four o'clock in the morning and he said he was hungry and we went over to Harold's Chicken, on 71st and Racine. Half the
city was there. Hustlers and pimps and gangsters and whores, gettin' their fill of chicken. And we ate and I took Billy back to Shawna's and her car was gone. And Billy put his head down like he knew he was in trouble. I tried to talk to him again, but he opened the door and ran off and left me there, more worried than ever.

 

I was still putting in my hours at Dock's, where they'd raised me to five hundred dollars a week, and I was getting plenty busy at the clubs.

Whenever Amateur Night came along, the emcees knew I'd be there—and they were happy to have me. But they never paid me. They all said the same thing: “It's about exposure, Bernie. You're getting known all over town. You're hot, brother.”

I was hot, too. Other aspiring comics would come looking for me after my bit, to ask me about their own routines. Some of them were terrible, and I said I couldn't help them. But some of them were pretty good, and I started opening doors for them at different venues—the places where I was already known. It was like a little side business for me; I was playing manager. If I got a call about a party or a funeral and I couldn't make it, I'd tell them I had someone who could take my place. It worked out good. I had a good sense of what kind of comedy would work where, and I got very few complaints. Plus if there was a complaint, I always took care of it.

For my own self, though, there was some growing frustration. I felt I was being taken advantage of. I'd see where they might put my name on the marquee, but they still didn't mention any money. But what could I do? Comedy was a
calling.
And it was calling me loud.

People would be coming into Dock's and they'd see me back there at the fryer and do a double take. “Wait a minute,” they'd say. “Ain't you that comedian?”

And of course the guys at work didn't know about that, and when they found out, they'd rag me. “If you so funny, what you doin' fryin' fish, boy? Why you even need this job?”

It didn't bother me. I stayed focused. I was moving forward on all fronts.

 

My only genuine worry at the time was Billy Staples. I never seemed able to get him on the phone, and when I did, he didn't sound like himself. He was blue and short with me and always busy with something else.

“Why you pulling this shit with me?” I told him once, getting angry. “This your brother Bernie you talking to.”

“I gotta go, Bernie.”

“Don't do this, man! You're pissing me off!”

Then I'd hear Shawna hollering in the background: “Billy! You gonna keep me waiting all day?”

“Like I said, Bean—”

“I want you to call me later.”