Manchild in the Promised Land (28 page)

I looked at Nick, and I thought, Damn, what the hell is wrong with Nick? He must be gettin' old. Here I just told the cat that I was into the street life and was dealin' pot and cocaine. I just looked at him and said, Poor Nick, to myself. Aloud I said, “Yeah, man. You never know,” and I just forgot about it until I got in the car with Papanek and he started asking that business about school.

I'd always been aware throughout my delinquent life of the age thing, and I knew that I didn't have a sheet yet. I knew that I didn't have a criminal record as long as I was sent to the Wiltwycks and War-wicks. But I also knew that since I was sixteen and out on my own, the next time I was busted, I'd be fingerprinted. I'd have a sheet on me for the rest of my life. I thought, Yeah, I could still make it, but, shit, what would I want to make it for ? I knew I didn't want to go to school, because I would have been too dumb and way behind everybody. I hadn't
been to school in so long; and when I was really in school, I played hookey all the time and didn't learn anything. I couldn't be going to anybody's school as dumb as I was.

I got back out on the streets, and I forgot about what I'd told Papanek on the ride from Wiltwyck to Poughkeepsie. I knew what I was going to do, and there was nothing to think about. When I got back to New York, I did the same things I'd been doing. I kept on working. I kept on dealing pot. I kept on dealing a little cocaine.

One night, I was uptown on 149th Street. I had gone to see some cute little girl up that way. She was a beautiful little brown-skinned girl with long, jet-black hair. She looked like an Indian, so everybody called her Cherokee. I had come out of Cherokee's house about twelve-thirty or one o'clock, and as I started into the hall leading to the outside, somebody from behind the stairs called my name.

“Sonny!”

I said, “Yeah,” and turned around. The first thing I saw was a gun in a hand. Then I saw a cat. I'd seen him around. They called him Limpy. I don't know why. He had a sort of hunched back, but he didn't have a limp.

He just said, “Sonny, I want all your shit. I don't want to have to kill you.”

I knew he was a junkie, and I knew about junkies. When their habit comes down on them, you can't play with them. It's kill or be killed. I didn't have a gun at the time, because last time I'd gotten busted, I'd lent my gun to Danny.

“Look, Sonny, I don't want to kill you, man. All I want is your shit, now. It's, like, I gotta have it.” He started talking real fast. He seemed to be nervous but not scared. His habit was down on him, and he was trying to say all this before anything happened. He wanted to explain.

I liked the way he respected me, and I thought maybe he was a little “religious.” He must have seen a look in my eye, and he said, “Now, look, nigger, I'm not scared-a you, and I'll kill you if I have to. But I don't want to. All I want is what you got on you.”

I didn't say anything, and he started toward me. I said, “Man, I ain't got nothin'.”

“Look, Sonny, I don't want to hear that shit.” He put the gun up to my face.

“If that's all you want, man, go on and take it.”

“Where is it, man? Don't get crazy and try anything, because my habit's down on me; I got to have some drugs. The way I see it right now, it's you that's standin' between me and some drugs. And I'll kill you, nigger, if you make me.”

I told him where the drugs were. I had them in an eyeglass case in my inside jacket pocket.

He reached in there, got it, and looked in it. He said, “Okay, like, you stay here, man. You in my neighborhood now, and I know the backyard; I know the people and everything around here, so don't try and act like you crazy.”

He told me to just stay there for about two minutes, and he ran in the backyard. He just took the drugs and was gone. He took about a hundred and ten dollars' worth of coke and pot from me. He'd sell it for horse.

I felt bad. Nobody had ever stuck me up or shit like that. I knew that this would get around, and you couldn't deal any drugs if you were going to be letting cats stick you up and take it. I knew that I'd have to get a gun, and that when cats heard about it—cats like Bubba Williams, Big Freddie, Reno, and Tommy Holloway—they would also want to hear that the guy had been killed. This was the way the people in our set did things. You didn't go around letting anybody stick you up. Shit, if you let somebody stick you up and go on living behind it, you didn't have any business dealing drugs. Everybody who wanted some free drugs would come by and try to stick you up. I didn't want to, but I knew I had to get another piece and find that cat.

The cat pulled a fadeaway. Danny heard about it. Danny and I were still tight. He was still coming around. Cocaine couldn't do much for Danny, because Danny was strung out on smack. When you're using heroin, nothing else is going to do but so much for you. I used to always give Danny money to cop, or if I came by some horse by accident—somebody might have given me some for some cocaine—I used to give it to Danny. Danny was a cat who appreciated this sort of thing.

I saw him the day after Limpy had stung me in the hallway on 149th Street. I went up to him, and I said, “I got to get me a piece, baby.”

He said, “Yeah, I heard about it, Sonny, but I want to ask you somethin', and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

“Sure, Danny, you know, speak your piece, baby.”

Then Danny said, “Look, Sonny; like, I know you, man, from way back. We came outta the house together, you know?”

“Yeah. So, what you want to ask me, Danny?”

“Do you really want to burn this cat, man? I mean, you want to waste Limpy?”

I said, “Look, man, it's like you said; we came the street way together, and you know how that shit is. You know if I don't kill that mother-fucker, I can't come out on the street any more with any stuff in my pocket talkin' about I'm gon deal drugs. Niggers will be laughin', comin' up in my collar, and sayin', ‘Give me what you got.' I mean, if I did that kinda shit, if I let the cat go on livin', mother-fuckers would be tryin' to rob me without a gun. That would be the end of it all.”

He said, “Yeah, I know how that shit is, Sonny. But, like, look, man, you got a whole lot goin' for you. You got a lot on the ball. I never told you this before, but I think you're smarter than all these niggers out here, Sonny. And I think if anybody on Eighth Avenue ever makes it, I think it could be you.”

I said, “Danny, what you talkin' about?” That shit surprised me. This wasn't supposed to be coming from Danny. This just wasn't him, and it wasn't the stuff we used to talk about. I said, “What's wrong with you?”

“Look, Sonny, I got a piece, but I'm not gon let you have it. What I want you to do is forget about Limpy, not just forget about him, but let me take him, man, let me worry about him.”

Danny had been strung out for about four years. I guess he felt that he didn't have much going for him. His folks had cut him loose; he couldn't go home. None of his relatives wanted him coming by. He was ragged all the time. He'd been in and out of jail. He'd been down to Kentucky a couple of times for the cure. He'd been to a place called Brothers Island. He'd been a whole lot of places for a cure. He'd caused everybody a whole lot of trouble. He felt that life was over for him.

“Look, Sonny; I'm already through. Like, I'm wasted. You got somethin' to live for, but me, I can't lose no more. So let me take care-a the nigger for you, and we'll be squared away. You did a whole lot for me, man. I remember the times I was sick and you gave me some drugs. I couldn't go anywhere but to you. I feel if there's one nigger out here on the street who I owe somethin' to, one nigger I should give my life for, man, it's you. And, besides, I'm not really givin' my life. I'm already fucked up. I gave my life the first time I put a little bit-a horse in my nose.”

“Look, Danny, thanks a lot, man, but we're not back in the short' pants days. If somebody stings me out here, it's not like somebody
bigger than me fuckin' with me in school or some shit like that. We're out here man for man and playin' for keeps, baby. Everybody's gotta be his own man, you know?”

“Okay, Sonny, like I kinda understand it, but I'm still not gon give you my piece, man, because I don't want you to do it. And if I see the nigger before you do, I'm gon beat you to him.”

“Yeah, Danny, like, thanks a lot, baby,” and I walked. I went up to Robby Ohara. Robby Ohara was a stickup artist, and he used to sell all the guns in the neighborhood. He lived in my building. Just about all the criminals lived in my building.

Robby had heard what happened to me, and when I came up to his crib and said, “Robby, I need a piece right away,” he asked me what kind of piece I wanted. I told him I wanted something small but effective, like a .25 automatic.

He said, “All right.” He went into another room, came out, and threw me a .25. He said, “You know how to use it?”

It was a Spanish-make gun, and he showed me some things about it. I took out some money. He said, “Forget it, Sonny, that nigger is suppose to be dead. That's a gift from me.”

Robby was a killer, and he understood this sort of thing. I took the piece and left.

I looked for Limpy for about a week or more, and I couldn't find him. After a while, I heard that he had gotten busted trying to stick up a doctor in his office. Somebody said he'd gotten shot about four times. This took me off the hook and saved my face, but I still had the piece. I knew that the next time somebody stung me, I was going to have to kill him. I started thinking about it. It didn't seem right for me to be killing a junkie, because these cats were usually harmless. And when they weren't harmless, it wasn't really them, it was smack that was at fault.

I started talking to Tony. I said, “Look, Tony, I'm gonna give up dealin' pot.”

He said, “Yeah, I'm gon give it up too,” but I knew he couldn't, because he didn't have a job.

I told my customers I was going out of business, and I started sending them to Tony and other people who were dealing. A lot of cats who were dealing stuff would ask me, “Look, Sonny, you need some money? You can't get any good stuff?” I guess they just didn't want to see me stop dealing. I told them I didn't need anything and didn't want anything.

I started going to night school. I went to Washington Irving, because that was the first one I had heard about. When I'd come uptown, I'd see the cats on the corner at night. They were still making that money, teasing me, and laughing. They called me Schoolboy and said that I must be dealing pot downtown someplace, that I was pulling everybody's leg about school. Some of the cats I knew said I wouldn't go to school even when I had the truant officer after me, so why should I be going now.

But after a while, they saw that I was serious, and everybody stopped teasing me about it. I hadn't felt too bad when they were teasing me, because I knew they couldn't call me square or lame. Most of the cats who were out there on the corners dealing stuff now were the newcomers. Most of the cats I came up with were in jail or dead or strung out on drugs. I'd been out in street life long before these cats ever knew how to roll a reefer. I could do what I wanted. I could turn square now, even straighten up if I wanted too, and not worry about anybody naming me a lame. I'd been through the street-life thing. At seventeen, I was ready to retire from it. I'd already had ten or eleven years at it.

After the cats saw I was serious about what I was doing, a lot of them starting coming along with it and trying to find out about it. They'd say, “Sonny, I'm goin' back to school, too, man.”

I'd say, “Sure, man, it's a lot to it. You can do a whole lot of stuff. Like, if you want to come out in the street and be a hustler, if you gon be a good hustler, man, you got to know somethin' about arithmetic and business. You got to know how to read. You could be a better hustler if you knew how to read and if you knew a little bit-a math.”

A lot of cats came down there with me, but most of them couldn't stay for more than a week or two, because that math was whipping their asses. They didn't know what they were going for. I didn't know what I was going for either, but I knew I wanted to go. I suppose that was more than any of the other cats who'd gone down there knew.

They all dropped out in two to five weeks. Tony stayed the longest He was determined. I had put him into a whole lot of things, and he just wanted to stick with me. He felt that if he stuck with me, he couldn't go but so wrong. We two started this school thing, and we stayed in there.

I was having a rough time in school. I was taking an academic course, and the only thing that I knew anything about was English, and I only knew a little bit about that. Geometry and algebra were kicking
my ass. When I was going to high school during the day, I told them I wanted to take an academic course, but they said I couldn't take that because my math wasn't strong enough. They put me in a commercial course. I didn't know anything about algebra and geometry. So when I went to Washington Irving High School at night, I was starting right from the beginning. The people at Commerce were right. My math gave me twice the hell because I'd had a weak math background. But I stuck with it. I had to take intermediate algebra over, and I had to take geometry over twice. But when I did pass them, I got something like ninety or ninety-five.

I'd had a big disappointment in my love life when I came out of Warwick the third time. I wasn't in love with anybody; I hadn't been in love with anybody since I was in love with Grace, as far as I knew. And that was when I was nine years old. When I came out, I saw Sugar, and Sugar was something beautiful. She had gotten a shape on her that was the finest shape on Eighth Avenue, maybe even in Harlem or New York City. She had always had a beautiful complexion, and she always was a sweet girl. She still had her beautiful ways, and she wasn't ugly any more.