When I got back to Milwaukee, Mama, and the street, my mind was straitjacketed into the pimp game. Back in the joint I had dreamed almost nightly. They were cruel playets.
They were fantastic. I would see myself gigantic and powerful like God Almighty. My clothes would glow. My underwear would be rainbow-hued silk petting my skin.
My suits were spun-gold shot through with precious stones. My shoes would be dazzling silver. The toes were as sharp as daggers. Beautiful whores with piteous eyes groveled at my feet.
Through the dream mist I would see huge shaped stakes. The whore’s painted faces would be wild in fear. They would wail and beg me not to murder them on those sharp steel stakes.
I would laugh madly. Springs of scarlet would spurt from their behinds as I joyfully booted them crotch first onto the sharp pikes. They would flop around like dying chickens. They would finally fall away in a welter of blood into two red halves.
When I awoke my ticker would be earthquaking inside me. The hot volley of the savage thrill lay sticky set between my trembling thighs.
I had other terrible dreams. I would be very tiny. A gargantuan Christ in a sea of light would be towering above me. In his anger his eyes would be blazing blue suns. His silky platinum hair would stand on end in his rage.
A shaft of purest white light would shoot from the tip of his index finger. He would point toward a woman. Her back would be turned to me. He would hand me a barbed leather whip.
Like a crash of summer thunder he would command, “Punish this evil woman. Destroy the devil inside her. The Lord so directs thee.”
Eagerly I would grab the heavy whip in both hands. I would bring it down with all my force on the woman’s back. She would just stand there. The scarlet would drain down from her slashed back. She would be standing to her knees in a river of blood.
She would turn her brown agonized face toward me. It would be Mama. I would be shaking and screaming in my sweat. It was horrible. I could never cut the dream off until its end. It had to run its fearful course. The dreams about Mama came until her death.
For a day or two following them, these dreams would recreate in day-dreams. Sudden dark arrows of depression and regret would stab into that open sore in my mind. I would get high. The narcotics seemed to ward off like armor the stealthy arrows.
After a week of rest and Mama’s soulfood, my color and strength came back. On a Saturday night I decked myself out in one of the vines and topcoat I had bought the day before Dalanski busted me.
I remembered the pimp rundowns at the joint. I had learned my first step had to be a fast cop. I needed a whore to hit the city scene. I had to get on that fast track to pimping.
I was only several months away from age twenty. My baby face was gone. I was six feet two. I was as thin as a greyhound on a crash diet. I went into an underworld bar, The 711 Club, crowded with pimps, whores, and thieves.
I stood at the far end of the bar stalling with a coke. I faced the front door. I turned and asked the slightly familiar elephant beside me about Weeping and Party.
He turned his head. His dime-sized eyes got stuck in my fly’s zipper as he looked me over head to toe. He remembered me.
He said, “About a month ago your boon coon Party caught sixty in the county. One of them tight pussys opened his nose wide enough to drive a freight train through. He caught a stud whamming it into her. The stud quit the scene. The broad had to go to a croaker to get Party’s shoe outta her ass.”
Then after pausing to thumbnail a ball of snot from his trunk, he said, “Old Weeping fell dead outside a shooting gallery in Saint Paul. Musta’ shot some pure, cause a lookout on the sidewalk heard him mumble before he croaked. Well kiss my dead mammy’s ass if this ain’t the best smack I ever shot.”
The elephant again raised his hoof toward his filthy trunk. The sissy barkeep sat a fresh bottle of coke on the log before me. I yanked my eyebrows into a question mark.
He lisped, “The runty black bitch in the middle of the bar sent you a taste.”
Without taking my eyes off his thin yellow face, I said, “Sugar, run her down to me. Is the bitch qualified? Is she a whore? Does she have a man?”
The corners of his mouth see-sawed. He slugged his soggy, dirty bar rag against my reflection on the bat top.
He almost whispered, “The bitch ain’t nothing but a young skunk from Saint Louis. She ain’t nothing but a jazzy jive whore. I’m more whore than she is. She ain’t got no man. She’s a come freak She’s Georgied three bullshit pimps since she got here a month ago. If your game is strong you could play a hog outta her ass. She ain’t but eighteen.”
I eased a bone from my pocket, put it on the bar for the fresh coke. I frantically remembered those pimp rundowns in the joint.
I said, “Tell the bitch no dice. I’ll take care of the little things, and if she is qualified maybe I’ll let her take care of the big things. Give the bitch a drink on me.”
On the juke box Ella Fitzgerald was crying about her “little yellow basket.”
The bar keep twinkle-toed toward her with the wire and drink. Through the blue mirror I zeroed my eyes in on the target. My ass bone starched on stiff point. Her big peepers were two sexy dancers in the velvet midnight of her cute Pekingese face.
Hot scratch fever streaked through me. I thought, if I could cop her and get a pimp’s terms she would be out of pocket poison to all white tricks that pinned her.
Those pimps back in the joint sure knew basic whorology. I was glad my ears had flapped to all those rundowns.
They had said, “Chase a whore, you get a chump’s weak cop. Stalk a whore, you get a pimp’s strong cop.”
My turn down of her measly first offer had her jumpy. It was a slick sharp hook twisting in the bitch’s mind. Her juicy tongue darted out like a red lizard past her ivory teeth. It slithered over the full lips. She wiggled toward me in an uneven race with the bar keep. He was sliding her green drink between me and the elephant.
I heard a low excited trumpeting in the trunk of the elephant. He had dug her flawless props and gourmet rear end. It was rolling inside her glove-tight white dress.
I painted a lukewarm indifferent grin on my face as she perched on the stool. I noticed a roll of scratch wedged deep between the black peaks.
She said, “Who the hell are you, and what is that ‘off the wall’ shit you cracked on the bartender?” My eyes were sub-zero spotlights on her face. I said, “Bitch, my name is Blood, and my wire wasn’t ‘off the wall.’ It was real, like me. Bitch, you sure got a filthy, sassy job. It could get your ass ruptured.”
The big vein at the temple in the tiny dog face quivered. Her rapper was shrill.
She bleated, “I ain’t no bitch. I’m a mother-fucking lady. The stud ain’t been pulled outta his mammy’s womb that kicks my ass. Goddamnit, call me Phyllis. Be a gentleman and respect me. I’m a lady.”
The icy blasts busted the thermostat in my spotlights.
I could feel my cool spit on my lips as I roared, “You stinking black Bitch, you’re a fake. There’s no such thing as a lady in our world. You either got to be a bitch or a faggot in drag. Now Bitch, which is it? Bitch, I’m not a gentleman, I’m a pimp. I’ll kick your funky ass. You gave me first lick. Bitch, you’re creaming to eat me up. I’m not a come freak, you are. I’m a freak to scratch.”
My blast had moved her. Those joint rundowns sure worked. I could see those sexy dancers were hot as hell there in the midnight. She was trying to conceal from me the freakish pain-loving bitch inside her.
She was comical like that fire-and-brimstone preacher. He was trying to hide his hard-on from the cute sister in the front pew flashing her cat for him.
The broad was speechless. I had called all the shots. I turned toward the crapper.
As I walked away I bombed her. I said, “Bitch, I’m splitting when I come out of that crapper. I know your pussy is jumping for me. I know you want me for your man. Some lucky bitch is going to steal me from you. You better toss that bullshit out of your mind. Get straight Bitch, and tell me like it is on my way out. You had your chance. After tonight you don’t have any.”
Inside the crapper I ripped a wad of paper from its holder. I wrapped the saw buck and the four singles around it. Whatever happened out there, I had to show a bankroll.
I stood there in the crapper. I was letting the heat seep deep into that bitch out there. Was I going to cop my first whore? My crotch was fluttery at the thought of it.
I walked out of the crapper. She was outside the door. I almost trampled her. I ignored her. I walked to the bar to pay my light tab. She was peering over my shoulder. I peeled the saw buck off.
I told the barkeep, “Steal the change and cop a hog.”
His bedroom gray eyes sparkled. His delicate pinkie scooted the saw buck back to me across the log.
He said, “Sweetie, it’s on me. Come back at two and cop a real girl.”
She tugged at my sleeve as I turned from the bar. She looked up at me. Those dancers had stripped.
I looked down at the hot runt and said, “Well Bitch, it’s your move. Do I cut you loose?”
She grabbed my shoulder. She pulled me down toward her. I could feel her hot breath on the side of my head. She popped that lizard tongue into my ear almost to my eardrum. It sent hot shivers through me. I stayed cool. I turned my head and knifed my teeth into the side of her neck. I don’t know why she didn’t bleed. She just moaned.
Then she whispered, “You cold-blooded sweet mother-fucker, I go for you. Let’s go to my pad and rap.”
We walked to the slammer. I glanced back. The elephant was staring at us. His tongue was frenching his chops. His trunk was twitching for a party.
On the sidewalk she handed me the key to her yellow thirty-six Ford. I was lucky. I had been taught to drive the laundry truck back in the joint. The Ford’s motor sang a fine tune. It wasn’t a pimp’s “wheels,” but it sure would make the trip to the city track.
I drove to her pad. On the way she played on me. She was setting me up for the Georgia. That lizard thought my ear was a speedway. It did a hundred laps inside it. I was still green. I shouldn’t have let her touch me.
Her pad was a trap for suckers all right. She had pasted luminous white stars on the hotel room’s blue ceiling. There was one blue light. It glowed sexily from behind a three-foot plaster copy of Rodin’s “The Kiss.”
There was a mirror over the bed. There were mirrors on the walls flanking the bed. There was a polar-bear rug gleaming whitely in front of a blue chaise lounge.
I sat on the lounge. She flipped on the portable record player. Ellington rippled out “Mood Indigo.”
She slipped into a cell-sized bathroom. Its door was half shut. The peke was digging a washcloth into her armpits and cat. She was nude. She sure was panting to swindle me out of my youth. I wondered if and where she had stashed that roll of scratch.
She came out belly dancing to the “Indigo” sex booster. She was a runt Watusi princess. Her curvy black body had the sheen of seal skin. I had one bitch of a time remembering the dialogue that covered this kind of a situation.
What had the pimps in the joint said: “You gotta back up from them fabulous pussys. You gotta make like you don’t have a swipe. You gotta keep your mind on the scratch.”
“Stay cold and brutal. Cop your scratch first. Don’t let ’em Georgia you. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll cut you loose like a trick after they’ve flim-flammed you. Your scratch cop is the only way to put a hook in their stinking asses.”
She danced toward the head of the bed. She stooped over and raised the edge of the red carpet. Her rear end swayed to the “Indigo.” It was grinning at me. It was theatre in the round for sure.
She danced toward me. She had two thin reefers in her hand. That box at the side of the bed had rejected and “Indigo” was encoring.
She stood between my legs. Even through the trouser cloth I could feel the hot dampness of her outer thighs. The inner surface of my kneecaps tingled under the heat.
She quivered and rolled her jet satin belly under my nose. Her humming of the “Indigo” was low and throaty. She sure qualified as the package the pimps had warned about. My twenty-one month cherry was aching to chunk out.
She took a lighter off the cocktail table. She ran the sticks in and out of her mouth to get an even burn. She lit them and handed me one.
She said, “Daddy, this is light green pot from chili gut country. It will make us mellow. Why don’t you take your clothes off?”
I took a deep pull on the stick of reefer. I looked up into the sultry dreamy eyes.
I parroted, “Bitch, don’t put shit in the game. Business always comes before pleasure in my book. I’ll take my clothes off when I know I’m taking them off with my whore. I don’t sucker for the Georgia. Jar loose from respectable scratch, Bitch.”
I had heard it verbatim in the joint. It worked like a lie detector. The motor in her belly threw a rod. Her eyes had a far away look.
She was busy tailoring the con for me. She collapsed to a yogi squat on the polar bear rug. Her moon was winking at me. Her voice was bullshit sweet.
She warbled, “Sweetheart Daddy, you already shot me down. I’m your sweet bitch. I got a C note coming from a trick with his nose open for me. He’ll spring for it tomorrow night. It’s yours, but you got to wait. Now come on and put your freak baby to bed.”
My system had been clean. The reefer was powerful. She didn’t know how desperately I needed to pimp. She couldn’t know she was the first. I couldn’t let her escape.
I had to have a whore. That reefer was sending currents of anger and hatred through me in time with “Indigo.” My mortal enemy squatted on that white rug.
I thought, “I’m going to murder this runt black bitch if she don’t give me that scratch she had in her bosom.”
Like a brute cop giving a heist man a last chance to confess, I said, “Bitch, give me that scratch you had between your tiddies.”
Her peepers ballooned in surprise and anger.
She gritted, “You’re pimping too hard skinny ass nigger. I have changed my mind. Get your lid and benny and split.”
The “Indigo” was on a torrid upbeat. Like brown-skin lightning I leaped erect from the chaise. I flung my right leg back.
I could feel the tendons at my hip socket straining. My eyes sighted for a heart shot. My needle-toed eleven triple-A shoe rocketed toward her.
The lucky runt turned a fraction of a second in time. The leather bomb exploded into her left shoulder blade. It knocked her flat on her belly. She lay there groaning.
Then like in the dreams in the joint, I kicked her rear end until my leg cramped. Through it all she just moaned and sobbed. I was soaked in sweat. Panting, I lay on the bear-skin beside her. I thrust my mouth against her ear.
In an icy whisper I said, “Bitch, do I have to kill you to make you my whore? Get up and give me that scratch.”
She turned her head and looked into my eyes. There was no anger in them now, only fear and strange passion. Her tremulous mouth opened to speak. For a long moment nothing came out.
Then she whispered, “You got a whore Blood. Please don’t kick me any more. I’m your little dog. I’ll do anything you say. I love you, Pretty Daddy.”
Her talons stabbed into the back of my neck as she tried to suck my tongue from its roots. I could taste her salty tears.
She wobbled to the record player. She lifted a corner of it. She slid that wad of scratch from beneath it. She rejected “Indigo.” She put another platter on the turntable.
“Lady Day” was singing a sad lament. “My man don’t love me, treats me awful mean. He’s the meanest man that I ever seen.”
I was standing on the bear skin. She came toward me with the scratch in her hand. She laid it in my palm. I riffled it in a fast count. It was respectable. It had to be over two bills. I was ready to let that cherry pop.
I scooped the ninty-pound runt up into my arms. I bit her hard on the tip of her chin. I carried her to the side of the bed. I hurled her onto it. She bounced and lay there on her back. She was breathing hard. Her legs were a wide pyramid.
I got out of my clothes fast. I snatched the top sheet off. I ripped it into four narrow strips. I tied her hands to the bed posts. I spread eagled her legs. With the longer strips, I tied her legs to the top of the springs at the sides of the bed.
She lay there a prisoner. I put her through the nerve shredding routines Pepper had taught me. She blacked out four times. She couldn’t pull back from the thrilling, awful torture.
Finally, I took a straight ride home. On the way I tried to smash the track. I reached my destination. The blast of hate was big enough to spawn a million embryo black pimps.
I untied her. We lay there in the dim blueness. The fake white stars glowed down on us. “Lady Day” still moaned her troubles.
I said, “Bitch, I want you to hump like Hell in these streets for a week. We’re going to the big track in the city. Oh yes, this week we got to get that title to the Ford changed. I don’t drive no bitch’s wheels. It’s got to be in my name, understand?”
She said, “Yes, Daddy, anything you say. Daddy, don’t get angry, but I was bullshitting about that C note trick.”
I said, “Bitch, I knew that. Don’t ever try to con me again.”
I got up and put my clothes on. I peeled a fin off the scratch and put it on the dresser.
I said, “I want you in the street at six tonight. Stay out of the bars. Work the area around Seventh and Apple.”
“I’ll come through sometime tonight. You be there when I show. If you get busted your name is Mary Jones. If you forget it I can’t raise you fast. Have some scratch whenever I show.”
I went down to the street. I got into my Ford. It roared to life. I drove toward Mama’s. I felt good. I wasn’t doing bad for a black boy just out of the joint.
I shuddered when I thought, what if I hadn’t kept my ears flapping back there in the joint? I would be a boot black or porter for the rest of my life in the high walled white world. My black whore was a cinch to get piles of white scratch from that forbidden white world.
Mama was pressing a young customer’s hair. She saw me get out of the Ford in front of the shop. She called me inside with a waggle of the pressing comb.
She said, “I have been worried. Where have you been all night? Where did you get the pretty little car? Did you find a job?”
I said, “A friend of mine let me borrow it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me. I stayed with him all night. He’s got a hundred-and-three fever. I’ll try to find a job tomorrow.”
She said, “There’s a roast in the oven. Shut the gas off and eat. I hope, Son, you haven’t been with Pepper.”
I looked down at the nut brown, shapely girl getting her hair pressed.
I said, “Pepper? She’s too old for me. I like young pretty brownskin girls. Pepper’s too yellow for me.”
The young broad flashed her eyes up at me. She smiled. I winked and ran my tongue over my lips. She dug it. She blushed. I put her on file.
I turned and walked to the sidewalk. I went upstairs and attacked the roast.
I took a long nap. At five-thirty P.M. I went down and got into the Ford. I drove to Seventh and Apple. I parked.
At five minutes to six I saw Phyllis coming toward me. She was a block away. I fired the engine and pulled away.
It sure looked like I had copped a whore. I went back at midnight. She looked mussed up and tired. She got into the car.
I said, “Well, how goes it Baby?”
She dug in her bosom and handed me a damp wad of bills. I counted it. It was a fin over half a C.
She said, “I’m tired and nasty, and my shoulder and ass ache. Can I stop now, Daddy? I would like a pastrami and coffee and a bath. You know how you kicked me last night”
I said, “Bitch, the track closes at two. I’ll take you to the sandwich and coffee. The bath will have to wait until the two o’clock breakdown. You needed your ass kicked.”
She sighed and said, “All right Daddy, anything you say.”
I drove her to an open-air kosher joint. She kept squirming on the hard wooden bench. Her butt must have been giving her fits. She was silent until she finished the sandwich and coffee.
Then she said, “Daddy, please don’t misunderstand me. I like a little slapping around before my man does it to me. Please don’t be as cruel as you were last night. You might kill me.”
I said, “Baby, never horse around with my scratch or try to play con on me. You blew my stack last night. You don’t have to worry so long as you never violate my rules. I will never hurt you more than to turn you on.”
I drove her back to the track. She got out of the car. As soon as she hit the sidewalk, two white tricks almost had a wreck pulling to the curb for her. She was a black money-tree all right.
The next day I took her to a notary. In ten minutes we walked out. She gave me the three bills back that I had paid her for the Ford.
It was legal now. She wasn’t beefing. Her bruises were healing and she was ripe for another “prisoner of love” scene. She finished the week in great humping style. I had a seven-bill bankroll.
Sunday evening I packed the runt’s bearskin and other things into the trunk of the Ford.
I parked around the corner from Mama’s. I went up to get my things together. Mama caught me packing. Tears flooded her eyes. She grabbed me and held me tightly against her. Her sobbing was strangling her.
She sobbed, “Son, don’t you love your Mama anymore? Where are you going? Why do you want to leave the nice home I fixed for you? I just know if you leave I’ll never see you again. We don’t have anybody but each other. Please don’t leave me. Don’t break my heart, Son.”
I heard her words. I was too far gone for her grief to register. I kept thinking about that freak, black money-tree in the Ford. I was eager to get to that fast pimp track in the city.
I said, “Mama, you know I love you. I got a fine clerk’s job in a men’s store in the city. Everybody in this town knows I’m an excon. I have to leave. I love you for making a home for me. You have been an angel to stick by me through those prison bits. You’ll see me again. I’ll be back to visit you. Honest, Mama, I will.”
I had to wrestle out of her arms. I picked up my bags and hit the stairs. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the front window. Mama was gnawing her knuckles and crying her heart out. My shirt front was wet with her tears.