Trick Baby (34 page)

A frightened face turned and stared at me with freezing blue eyes.
I froze in my tracks. It wasn't the Goddess! It was a wrinkled horse-faced broad with a large mole on her chin.

I managed a garbled apology. I could see roller stenciled on her angry face as she bee-lined for her front door. I brushed by the open-mouthed chauffeur in the driveway and jumped in the Buick.

I got back to black town in record time. Fifty-fifth Street was thick with early Saturday hellraisers. I parked in front of the bar across from my hotel. I went inside and drank myself into alternating joy and deep depression.

Around ten
P.M
. I got one of my bright ideas. I knew that horse-faced broad had phoned the rollers a rundown on me and the Buick. I couldn't go to Shaker Heights anymore. But hadn't I met the Goddess on a Saturday night slumming for kicks in Chicago's Nigger Town?

But I was too drunk to realize that the Goddess, in her probable state of mind, wouldn't be itching to seek reminders of her recent nigger headache.

I got a run-down on the cabarets from the bartender. At eleven
P.M
. I struck out to make a tour of them. I ducked in and out of joints on Central Avenue, Euclid Avenue and a Hundred-and-fifth Street.

I had at least one drink in each of them. But I didn't even see a broad, black or white, with platinum hair.

After midnight I found myself at the shabby corner of Thirty-ninth Street and Scoville Avenue. It was central headquarters for dope peddlers and whores.

I'll never know why I was stupid enough to park and stumble into a funky bar on the corner. It was crowded with profane whores and drunken tricks. I took a stool and a double shot in a corner near the back door.

The heat in the crowded room was terrific. I couldn't take off my overcoat because of the roll of dough stashed in the lining. I was afraid the coat might get away from me.

I stood up and was bending my elbow to drain my glass when a
toothless old black whore reeled into me. Runny sores covered her face.

I staggered back and said, “Goddamn, watch it, grand-maw.”

She grinned up at me vacantly.

She wiped the snotty sleeve of her mangy rabbit fur coat across her drippy flat nose and simpered, “Whitey, I got the hottest pussy on this corner. C'mon and have some fun. You can go three-way for a tray. C'mon, Whitey, and spend something with Louise.”

I backed up to the wall from her stinking breath and the clouds of crotch rot.

She clutched the front of my shirt and shouted, “Why don't you spend a chicken-shit tray with Louise?”

I knocked her hand away with my elbow. She grabbed and twisted her fingers into my shirt front again. I was angry and dizzy. I had to escape the bedlam of the spinning room.

I blurted, “Louise, you're a joke. You're old and funky and ugly. You should have retired fifty years ago. Get your scabby black hand off me.”

She jerked her hand away and glared up at me. I stumbled out the back door. The snowy ground was revolving like a giant record on a wobbly turntable. I threw my hands out as the frightful whiteness catapulted up toward me.

I stirred. I felt something crawling, patting and moving across and into my clothes. I opened my dazed eyes.

A dark crouching shape was silhouetted against the star-infested sky. I tried to move away from the busy shadow with the familiar rotten stink but my muscles were paralyzed. Then the shape moved out of sight behind me.

Suddenly the sky was blotted out, and I seemed to be trapped in a pitch black tent. And the familiar stink was overpowering.

I heard a cackling giggle and a hot pungent rain splattered my face and scalded my eyes. I lay there groaning and twisting my head from side to side in the stinking blackness.

I felt a feathery sweep of the tent across my face, as it slid away to bare the cold blue stars again. I lay there gasping, and sucking in the wonderful wintry air. I felt my muscles quivering back to life.

I was rising on my elbows when a horde of shadows came through the back door and stood in a silent circle around me. They fumbled at their flies. I jerked up and sat there screaming at them, as I had screamed at the toughs who chased me with knives on Chicago's Forty-third Street long years ago.

“I'm a Nigger! I'm a Nigger!”

The cruel bastards just laughed and started kicking me. I wrapped my arms around my face against the crushing barrage of feet ripping into me from head to ankles.

I crashed on my side and faintly heard the steady patter of terrible rain against my numbness. Then the laughter, the numbness and the patter of the reeky rain was lost in a yawning black pit of nothingness.

A frigid mask on my face opened my eyes. A white face looked down at me. It belonged to a guy stooping down beside me. He was pressing a handful of snow against my face and shaking his head.

He said, “You got a home, buddy?”

I said, “Yes. Are you a cop? What happened?”

He said, “I own the bar. When I came to check the register and close up, my manager told me you were out here. He said you shot your jaw off in the bar. You have to be the dumbest Caucasian in Cleveland.

“You walk in a nigger bucket-of-blood-bar on the wooliest corner in the state and spout stupid insults. You're lucky you're alive. What happened? Those Goddamn dirty niggers beat you, robbed you, and pissed all over you. You stink so bad. I feel like passing out. Here take my hand. But don't let your clothes touch me.”

I took his hand. He pulled me to my feet. I stood there trembling. I felt like I was encased in ice. My clothes were frozen stiff.

He said, “How the hell can you get home? All your pockets are inside out.”

I mumbled, “I'm driving. Please give me a drink.”

I followed him through the back door. He locked it behind me and went behind the bar. He poured me a big slug of Early Times whiskey into a glass.

I gulped it down and looked at my wrist. The Bulova watch that Midge had given me that Christmas was gone. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was two-thirty
A.M
. I staggered to the locked front door. The pink-faced owner came from behind the bar and unlocked the door. He looked at me for a long moment.

He said, “You better get to a doctor. You're not going to beef to the police are you? This joint has enough squeals already to fold it. Mister, I did you a favor. You could have frozen into a corpse out there.”

I said, “Don't worry. I'm not the beefing kind. Thanks for the drink.”

I lurched to the sidewalk past a tittering crowd on the corner. I got in the Buick and searched myself for the ignition key. I rummaged through my rifled pockets.

Finally I found it in my overcoat pocket. Then I remembered my stash at the bottom of the lining. I was almost afraid to feel for it

I ran my fingers around the coat hem. The roll of dough was still there! I turned over the engine and pulled away from the curb.

I was one big pounding icy ache. I was suffocating with the stink on me. Somehow I parked in back of the hotel and got to my room.

I undressed to my black and purple skin. I threw the soggy pile of clothes into a corner. I got in the bathtub and dumped a can of the maid's cleansing powder into the steaming water.

I finally scrubbed all the filth off my throbbing body. I dry-swallowed two red devils and flopped across the bed.

I lay there, waiting for the merciful trip to oblivion but my aching body tore up my ticket. I took two more red devils and rocketed into plush blackness.

My brain staggered awake. The noon sun was high in the sky
hurling blinding daggers of light through the window. I ground my fists into my burning eyes. I ran my fingertips across the lumpy bruises on my body. My tongue and throat felt like they were coated with flaming gravel.

I heard it first! Then I saw it! A fat brown rat with Phala's sister Pearl's face was scampering merrily about on the carpet beside the bed. It stood on its hind legs and stared up at me.

It grinned crookedly and squeaked, “Damn, you look like a peckerwood. That dizzy bitch, Phala just had to fuck your tramp pecker-wood father, huh? She'd open her legs for any bum, wouldn't she?”

I stood up in the bed and clawed the wall. Another black rat scampered before my terrified eyes. It had the face of Double-Crossing Sammy, the fink I punched the puke out of in the poolroom.

It half closed its eyes and squeaked, “Like I told Pocket, I ain't hip to a white trick baby like you so dumb you're passing for a nigger. I just ain't never heard of it.”

I shrieked! More of the squeaking monsters with human heads were frolicking on the carpet.

A lean white rat with the arrogant face of Mr. Wherry stood on its haunches and chattered shrilly, “But my Whisty would rather be dead than have sexual congress with a nigger.”

A small black one leaped to the foot of the bed. It had the face of the little boy leader of the gang in the apartment building on Thirty-ninth Street.

It squeaked in a tiny voice, “I cain't play wid you. You is a nasty trick baby. My papa whup mah ass.”

Then a yellow hairless one streaked blue with pulsing cable veins and the face of the old whore across the hall on Thirty-ninth Street piped up.

She simpered, “Johnny, you're the one to blame for those street niggers raping Phala. You should have been there at the cabaret to pick her up. You're to blame, Johnny.”

Then they chanted Phala's awful plea on the hospital grounds that
sunny September day, “Lemme feel it, huh? Lemme snatch it off, huh? Lemme mash it, huh? Lemme, huh? Lemme, huh?”

Then all together, in an insane chorus, they filled the room with their squeaking and the thudding of their scampering feet.

I turned away and banged my face into the wall. My teeth punctured my lip bloody. I squeezed my palms against my ears and jumped off the bed.

I ran to the window and raised it. I hung out of it to the waist in the icy air, until the squeaking behind me had stopped. I pulled myself back and looked down at the carpet. They were gone.

My legs shuddered. I bombed face forward to the floor. Finally, I crawled to the phone and ordered two fifths of Cutty Sark.

Time after that was murky passage through a madman's hell. It was shot through with the brain-crushing reliving of the Scoville Avenue filth and the fractured-nude horror. And the rats with human faces visited again and again and again.

The terror, the bottles, the red devils were endless. And then, in the panic-riddled darkness, I heard the Christmas carol, Silent Night blasting from Mother Jackson's room.

Was it Christmas? Why hadn't Blue or Midge told me? And where was the spicy pine tree banked with our gaily wrapped presents? Where was the scent of the holiday feast? Why hadn't Midge cooked?

My leaden eyes searched the gloom. I went to the frosted window and peered out. Green plastic rings of holly and cutout Santa Claus faces with red cheeks and cheerful smiles hung in the neoned windows of the deserted stores across the snow-mantled street.

It was Christmas! But that lonely street down there was in Cleveland, Ohio. What was I doing here so far from home at Christmas?

I sank into the chair and pondered the gnawing puzzle for a long time. Then the jagged bits and pieces fell into place. I called the desk. I had to be certain about Christmas. I thought the clerk would never answer my question.

Finally he said, “Mr. Flanagan, the date is December twenty-first, Nineteen-hundred and Forty-five.”

I said, “Oh, thank you so much. I'm glad it isn't Christmas. I'll be checking out right away. I'm going home.”

I hung up and took a bottle to the chair at the window. I sat there in the darkness and prodded my chaotic mind to chart my way. My filthy clothes in the corner! Dough! How much did I have left, if any?

I flicked on the light. I looked into every corner. I went to the bathroom. I had no clothes! Dough, was it gone too?

I ripped up the carpet all around the room. I looked under the mattress. I looked everywhere. I was trapped. My legs gave way. I fell to the floor. I lay there wondering if I had enough red devils left to take a forever trip into plush blackness.

Then it struck me! The closet! The closet! I crawled to it. I twisted the doorknob. The door opened. My light blue suit, my navy overcoat, my gray woolen sport shirt were hanging there, dazzling and crispy pressed.

Perhaps I had stashed my dough somewhere in my clothes after they got back from the cleaners. I pulled myself to my feet. Frantically, I searched every pocket.

I ran my fingers around the hem of the overcoat. I felt a thin roll of bills. I was strangling with joy. I reached down through the lining and pulled it out. I counted it. It was only sixty dollars.

I wondered how much rent I owed. What if I didn't have enough left for gas to drive home? I went to the bathroom to sponge off. I flinched away from the gray-faced, bearded, hollow-cheeked apparition in the mirror.

I was dressing when a sharp piercing pain shot through my chest, and knocked me to my knees. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was dying. I kneeled there until my wheezing chest caught air.

I finished dressing and got the Buick's ignition key from the dresser top. Somehow I made it to the desk with the key. I stood there weakly with my luggage in my hand, a fifth of Scotch in a paper sack.

The clerk checked his ledger and said, “Mr. Flanagan, your rental is paid up until tomorrow afternoon. Have a pleasant trip and a Merry Christmas. Come back to see us soon.”

I went through a rear door to the Buick. It was shapeless and almost buried under a fleecy shroud of snow. I used the flat side of the paper sack to scrape clear the front and back windows.

I got in and tried to turn over the engine. There was only a dull clicking sound. I was so tired and sick. Shouldn't I lie down out there and rest beneath the friendly winking stars?

A car with inferno headlamps groaned into a parking space beside me. I walked away to Fifty-fifth street and flagged down a cab.