Manhunt. Volume 2, Number 10, December, 1954

A dance was set for the next night. I’m thinking of the Pelicans, if they’ll be there. I hate them punks. Going to get one yet.

I listened to some blues and boogie. Then I took me a bath, dressed, chipped in for a bottle of Five Star and got a little high. We was ready for the dance by that time and somebody called a taxi. When we got to the Hall we swaggered in. Damn, them girls was drunk and dizzy with wine and reefers already.

Pelicans there, too. One of their punks stepped on my shine while I’m dancing. “What you doing?” I say to him.

“Mother-jumper, I’ll step on your throat next. I’ll bang your head and rock your foundations.”

“Yeah, maybe you want a pistol butt for a self-raising eye,” I said, moving my hand inside my jacket.

That ended it. Boys from both sides broke it up, but there was a bad feeling the rest of the evening. Me, I played the field, looking for trouble. We was all looking for trouble. I wandered up to the balcony and made a pass at a man’s wife. The man showed me a knife.

I took a fast walk and found one of my boys and a girl sitting out a slow-drag. They was chewing benzedrine. Me, I don’t chew today to get drunk tomorrow. Benny don’t make you high, it makes you lazy. That’s what I told them.

The girl laughed and I didn’t like that, so I walked. Another like her once tried to grandstand on me. I could hear her voice in my head yet, saying, “You ain’t going to do this, and you ain’t going to do that.” I told her, I don’t want no girl giving me orders. “You jiving turkey, I don’t want no man I can beat,” she said. “I want a man and therefore you ain’t nothing but a flunkie.” That was when I swung and knocked her down the stairs.

The dance was over at two and I’m all reefed up. Got evil thoughts about them Pelicans. One of them is going to die yet.

Me and my boys stood across the street from the Hall with the girls. The Pelicans stood out front. One of their girls threw a can of lye and started the rumble. I’m thinking of my face, so I got under a truck when that lye flew. That fight didn’t last. Somebody yelled cops and we scattered.

Me, I hustled over to Fat-Stuff’s. We all met there and ate fish sandwiches. Coming out, I see a squad car at the curb. Two cops got out and lined us up against the windows. Me and my boys all had blue club hats on.

“What’s all the blue hats for?” one of them cops says, and nobody answered till he picked me out.

“My hat matches my blue wrap and blue suedes,” I tell the flatfoot, and he turned to Big Jim.

“What’s your blue hat for?” he asked.

Big Jim had an answer. Everybody did.

The cop swung back to me. “Where’d you come from?” he asked.

“My girl’s house,” I say. Big Jim tells him the same.

“Next guy tells me that, I’ll beat him till he bleeds from the nose. Next!”

“I was at my girl’s house,” Conky said.

That cop looked disgusted. His eyes moved to Little Jim. “You,” he said, but knew what the answer would be and bashed him. “I’d kill my own mother if she told a lie like that,” the cop said. “Next one that does, I’ll cripple him for life.”

“What are we supposed to have done?” I asked.

“You guys were fighting outside the Hall, that’s what.”

“How do you know it was us?”

“Cause I can smell rats a mile away. Now get the hell out of here!”

He swung on me. A bad cop with a big fist. Yeah, but I set my hat back straight, wiped blood from my lips with my yellow handkerchief. “If it wasn’t for the women, we wouldn’t be in that. I wouldn’t have got that poke,” I said.

“Yeah, they’re all pepperheads. That Rosie is a tough one,” Little Jim said. “Throwing that lye. I want this handsome face yet.”

Conky nodded. “A mad witch, that one. Real mad.”

By three o’clock we was scattered, home. The streets was quiet, but soon as I hit the bed and close my eyes I hear a siren. A squad car running wild. I followed the sound with my eyes closed.

Then dreamed I was smoking a reefer in Zelma’s house, dreamed she had gobs of them, and a bottle of gin. I had another dream. Two of them and nothing more.

Morning I got up and hung around the house, playing records. No pep, nothing inside me till I read the invitation that came in the mail. It was brief. “You’re invited to a party. There’ll be lots of fun.” That meant only one thing, a pot party.

I came with a bottle of wine, even if it was a pot party. Somebody eyed me through the peephole and said, “Show your invitation, brother.”

“Punk, open them portals or I’ll kick them down,” I said and the door opened.

“Why it’s Jesse James himself!” a girl screamed when I came in.

And there was Conky. He looked worried. “Where’s your girl? You ain’t getting mine,” he says.

I shove him aside. “All the women in the world is mine,” I said, looking around.

A dim light in the room, shades down, reefers on the table, music, a slow-drag, the Orioles singing A Kiss and a Rose. Couples sitting, the keyhole jammed, weather-stripping at the door cracks, windows closed; that room stunk to hell.

A girl passed me a bomber and said, “This is a high party, handsome man.”