Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

Somebody in the crowd laughed, but stopped when Sammy looked past me at whoever it was. Sammy said, “Man, you ain’t a cop. You’d have a gun out by now if you was.”

“I seen you come from the liquor store,” I said. “I’ll take the money back.”

“Sure you will, Pussycat.”

“I mean it.”

“Hey,” somebody giggled. “Pussycat’s a hero. Sure ain’t no cop.”

“No, man. Cops ain’t heroes like pussycat.”

“Old Pussycat, he just chases little birds, don’t he?”

I was still looking at Sammy. “I want the money,” I said.

He grinned again. “Pussycat, that’d hurt lots of people’s feelings. You don’t want to go hurt people’s feelings, do you?”

“Hey, Pussycat,” the big boy who had faced me before said. “How come you run after him?”

“I just seen it and I run, that’s all.”

“Just run? Just take off like a hero every time some cat runs down a alley?”

“Go to hell,” I told him. I heard a shuffling of feet, the kids moving in a circle around me. I said to Sammy, “Give me the bag. I’ll take it back to the guy at the liquor store, and nobody’ll know. Lots of kids like you do stupid things sometimes, but once that guy gets his money back, you can forget it.”

The others laughed, but Sammy’s face became serious, his eyes troubled. “Man,” he said quietly, “you was crazy to come running after me. You don’t know, Mister.”

“Give me the money,” I said. “I’ll forget your name.”

Sammy’s eyes narrowed and he shouted “No!” at somebody behind me just a second before one solid fist smashed into the back of my head. All I could think of was that he tried to stop it, and that nobody had put a knife in me. Then I spun down to the cement of the alley.

I woke up more than an hour later. For a while after I started to hear sounds and opened my eyes and could see where I was, I lay on the concrete, my head feeling like somebody had used a battering ram on it to knock out half my brains. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and asked: What brains? I couldn’t have been more stupid if I’d stood on my head in the middle of the streetcar tracks on Grand Avenue. Running after some punk who robbed a liquor store, stupid! Dumb! Kids are robbing liquor stores and grocery markets every day in St. Louis, but I had to play hero. Like I was a cop or something. Stupid!

I groaned for a little while before I got to my feet, and when I stood up I had to shake my head and rub my face with my hands to keep from getting dizzy. I staggered back for a few steps until I could walk straight, and went out on the street by the juke joint. The red and yellow neon lights were still flashing, the green bugs and white moths were still fluttering about, and the kids inside were having a real gay time. But out on the street was nothing and nobody. I pushed open the screen door of the juke joint, stood there wobbly for a minute with all the cats and broads staring at me, and went to the bar.

“Gin and beer,” I said to the fat bartender. He had bloodshot frog eyes in a sweat shining face. He nodded dumbly, brought me the gin and beer, and stood looking at me even after I paid him. “What you got to stare at?” I demanded.

“You lay off them boys,” he said.

“What boys?”

“You know what boys, smart man. Just lay off.”

“They clobbered me. Who’s to lay off?”

He stared at me with his bloodshot frog eyes. “They was put up to it, man. You lay off.”

Gulping down the rest of my beer, I shoved the glass across the bar at him and got out of the place. When I slammed the door behind me the kids all started talking again. The street was still empty. Sammy lived at Maple and Twenty-Third, if I could believe what the little broad had told me in the alley. I started to walk up toward West Pine, but when I got to the corner I stopped. I thought for a change. Already, for no reason, I had run after a guy and wound up getting my head boomeranged. Why try again?

Sammy was a good enough kid. I could remember his face. And he didn’t want the other punks to pound me, but they did it before he could stop them. Still, it wasn’t my concern. I turned and walked up West Pine to Grand Avenue, wondering all the time: What did Sammy mean when he said I didn’t know? What did the bartender mean when he said they were put up to it? Talk? Coverup? You could always count on one kid covering up for another one, I guess.

I looked at the sign on the front of the liquor store before I went inside. It said: Kelly’s Liquor. Inside was a guy behind the counter, bald-headed, what hair he had left was a cross between gray and red. He had a big nose and little pig eyes set close together. He was serving a broad about forty, who was buying a carton of cokes and two boxes of snuff. I knew what they did with it. They dumped a half box of snuff into a bottle of coke, shook it up, and drank it. They said it gave them kicks. Who knows.

When the broad left, the guy looked at me. I said, “You Kelly?”

“Kelly Burke,” he said.

“Maybe you don’t remember me. It was only a couple of hours ago.”