Chapter 5
Snake turned quickly from the window and held up a long bony hand in a sign of caution.
"Three times already this morning," he said to Claw who slouched arrogantly in the one easy chair, his good left hand toying with the stiffly curled fingers of his right. They riding four to a ear and the mother-fuckers in back are holding riot guns. They looking for us, baby!"
"We are okay, here," Claw said. "If they had Sam's number they would a been on us yesterday. Cool it, man. The fuzz will wear out on this bit in a day or so. If the cop don't flake off."
He looked across to where Sam Price and his solemn-faced father, Ben, sat on the ragged sofa. Sam was all right, solid, but his old man was a put on. Not one of them had left the house since Sunday noon when it became glorious that he and Snake needed a place to hole up until the heat came off. The heat was due to a red-neck fuzz-fucker who had finished out of the money in Saturday's little melee in front of the City Hall. Somehow, the policeman had been paid off with a split kidney and Claw's right foot still tingled with the sweet trip into the blue back. He'd taught the son-of-a-bitch that a Panther coidd kick as well as scratch.
He heard a noise and came to his feet, spinning. It was Bonnie. She was dressed and under her arm was a book and a cheap imitation leather folder.
"What's your bag, baby?" he demanded. "1 have to go to school," she said positively. He swung his long left arm and slapped her. She spun and dropped her book and folder. "Hold it, old man!" he snapped to Ben who came half to his feet in protest. "You make the line! She ain't going no damned place until I say so, and I don't! The scene is bad, y' understand? No little fat mouth going to run blabbing that me and Snake is bagged out in her house. Everything going to be just fine long as everybody remembers I'm the man, get it? Now, go on back to the kitchen and fix us something to eat, chick."
Bonnie, recovered, stood looking at him with no expression on her face. "There isn't much of anything to fix," she said.
"Fix something, goddamnit!" "Do like he says, sis," Sam said. "There they go again," Snake said from the window. Eater, their nervousness came to a head when all Bonnie could produce from the kitchen were small portions of fried mush, watered syrup and a slice of bread apiece. Claw had them all empty their pockets and the total came to nine dollars and forty-two cents. Ben Price chuckled. "What you laughing at, old man?" Claw rasped. "You, you no-account nigger," Ben replied. "Big man. You got it all figured. You going to take over the world and teach it about Black Power-on nine dollars and forty-two cents! Hit kids and threaten old men. If I never had a reason for wanting to be white, I got one now! Just to be different than you, big man!"
"Sam, you talk like God to your old man or he ain't going to come off no better'n that fuzz with a hurt back! Ain't no old Uncle Tom going to put me down." Claw snapped his switchblade from his jeans pocket. "I got problems, old man, but you ain't one of them!"
Sam shouldered his father back. "Pa, you go ahead on to the room, huh? We got a lot on our mind and this ain't no time for speechmaking. Go on, now. Ain't nothing bad going to happen if we uptight."
Ben snorted and started to walk out of the room. Claw closed his knife and stood glowering. At the door, Ben stopped and beckoned to Bonnie, gathering the sleeked dishes from the dining room table.
"She stays, old man," Claw snarled. "You try anything like a sneak out and I want her close so I can pay you off, get it?"
"Aw, Claw," Sam protested. "We all friends here. Pa's all right. He just old and nervous-like. Anyway, we got to send somebody out for vittles. Either Pa or Bonnie. Cool it.
The logic pained Claw. He knew exactly what kind of a bind they were in. The night before, he had had visions of the Panthers coming on with maybe two carloads of cats to take him and Snake out of the slot, but they hadn't shown, The logic of that had burned in his belly half the night; Saturday they had been a roaring, rock-pitching mass, standing together in defiance and demand. Then the cop had gone down, stomped into the concrete, bleeding at the mouth and ears and kicking like a beheaded chicken. Tear gas and oak clubs had split the Panthers and the slow ones had made the bucket. One of the burrheads had talked because when he and Snake had made their pad it was coated with fuzz. A bad scene, and they were outside looking in with no bread and no way to go. Snake was wheeling. He could shave and change his clothes and skin out, but he didn't have a crooked wing to hide. Claw ground his left fist into the useless hand and cursed bitterly He fished his last joint from a shirt pocket and lit it inhaling the soothing smoke, swallowing it to extract every bit of the psuedo-narcotic, then letting the faded vapor draggle out his nostrils. No bread, no beer, no pot. And no friends coming on.
Nothing but a little skinny-assed chick to idle out on. He inhaled again, deeply, then handed the reefer to Snake's outstretched hand. He waggled a finger at Bonnie.
"Come here," he growled. "Daddy-o's hands are cold kitten."
Joan was sure that she was able mentally and delightfully, physically, to face Bonnie on Monday morning. She was also sure that she had found the answer to her unreasonable cravings and her weaknesses. Faced with Bonnie's empty seat, her practiced calm was very nearly shattered. A student's absence was not uncommon but to Joan, Bonnie's failure to appear held many connotations. All sharpened by a sense of guilt Joan could hardly explain.
Saturday afternoon had proved to Joan that a degree of sexual license had long existed between Bonnie and her brother, and it had shown beyond question the broken sexual mores of Sugartown. The only strange ingredient in Saturday's orgy had been Joan and without knowing how, she had apparently caused some problem. Then she remembered Sam, his bruised face hovering over hers as hit huge cock churned in her eagerly demanding cunt. He had nibbled at her tits with swollen lips and passed his hands over her exposing skinned knuckles. For a moment she contented herself with sharp, exciting recollections, almost feeling again the power of his squirming, curling body as they thrashed together on the sagged and squeaking cot.
Her fingers tingled with memory of how she had held his prick and fondled the weighty column, wet and sticky from its furious charging in her vagina, only to have it solidify and distend and become a lovely ram she could not seem to get enough of. But behind that weirdly wonderful experience had been something else; Bonnie had said the house would be deserted because her father was spending his paycheck and her brother Sam "-had a thing going at City Hall." Sam had come home unexpectedly because he'd been hurt.
At recess, she sipped her tea and hurriedly read the morning paper, left in the faculty room by some one with earlier interest. There had been a thing at City Hall, all right. There was a dead police officer, mangled under the feet of rioters, and a score of Negroes and white sympathizers in jail. The police were looking for several unnamed Black Panthers, the suspected killers of the Joan's stomach crawled. She searched the columns one by one until she found some reference to the time of the hideous violence. Panting, she closed her eyes and tried to remember. They had left her apartment about one o'clock, They had reached Bonnie's house in Sugartown before two. How long she and Bonnie had been making love on the cot before Sam came, she could not recall, but by every parallel she could draw, at the stated time of the police officer's maiming, Sam had been closed down around her belly, his raging penis tearing and digging into her brutally raped Joan sighed with relief; she didn't even know that Sam was a Black Panther, although he sported the small scraggly beard and the sheap turtleneck sweater, symbols she had learned were particular to the movement. But he had attended the demonstration and he had been hurt. He was a Negro and he lived in Sugartown. He hustled pool, played at dice and smoked pot.
After recess, she summoned enough courage to ask another bright eyed resident of Sugartown if she had heard anything about Bonnie Price.
"No, ma'am."
"Is there-much disturbance in your neighborhood, Marie?"
"No ma'am! No disturbance. Just everybody staying inside the house, because the police are looking for black cats. Bonnie is probably staying home because her big old brother is sure a Panther!"
"I sec. Thank you, Marie. 1 was just afraid Bonnie might be ill, or something."
"Better she be sick than have the trouble Sam Price got!"
"You may go back to your seat, Marie."
"Yes, ma'am. '" If Joan's sense of guilt receded, her concerns did not. She was certain she had no emotional interest in Sam Price and none any more for Bonnie, but she could not avoid a feeling of possessiveness. Sam had raped her, then turned the horror into magnificent ecstasy, and for all the rest of her life she would remember his thrusting, spewing cock her first-and probably her last. She might even be pregnant by him, a frightening thought, but nonetheless, oddly important to her worries.
Then Monday passed and Tuesday passed and Wednesday Joan was asked to appear in the principal's office to discuss a truant officer's proposed visit to the Price home.
"Absenteeism in colored districts is always very high, but we have found that a bonafide excuse is seldom available. On the other hand, if the girl is absent because of the-ah, racial situation and the civil unrest in the district, then she may need some help and encouragement," the truant officer explained. "We would like your personal opinion of the best procedure, Miss Gilbert, before we aggravate any condition over which Bonnie may not have much control."
"I-I don't know what to suggest," Joan stammered. Then she decided to gamble. "But I have been to Bonnie's home. Her father seems to be a steady worker, and her brother did not impress me-as the violent sort. Bonnie has been a favorite of mine and we have talked a great deal. I have a slight awareness that some of the rules that apply to- white children, do not apply to the students from-that area. It might be kinder to postpone your visit, Mr. Adams, until Monday. If there is a problem at the Price home, an interference might precipitate a more specific kind of trouble."
And they agreed with her because the truant officer had grown a few scabs sticking his unpopular nose into Sugartown on previous occasions.
Bonnie lay on her cot, weary, hurting and unable to think. The meaner they got, the more they screwed her, as if inventing their insatiable lust, they somehow evaded the fear that in three days, had turned them into animals. Even Sam. Her daddy they kept locked in his room, his face bruised and one eye closed because he had found out on Monday that they had not only recruited her to buy bread and cheese and a few pieces of tough, stringy meat, but they had made her clean and cook and tossed her naked, quivering body from hand to hand when their tempers needed spending.
By dark, it would be worse because the nine dollars and forty-two cents was gone and the larder was empty. She sighed. Time had ceased to mean anything. From the very beginning of her memory, she had learned to accept things as they were, to live in poverty and filth, to wear her black skin with no hope of it ever bleaching, and to walk hand in hand with trouble, no matter if it came from hunger or from the front of a black boy's pants in a shady alley.
She did know that all things passed; there was trouble now, but tomorrow when there was no food in the house, need would change the shape of trouble. The Panthers would make a run for it, or one of the cruising cars would vomit fuzz all over the house or God would quit stirring the trouble pot. She turned painfully and groaned, clinging to only one small certainty in her private mind. They could beat the hell out of her, fuck her until she was blue and curse her vilely, but she would never tell them that she had fourteen dollars hidden away, because when this trouble was over, she intended to take off. Put on her Sunday dress take a few little things and get her black ass out of Sugartown forever.
She dreamed fuzzily; maybe she could live with Joan Gilbert. It was a nice warm place, so clean and pretty. She could learn to take care of the little apartment, and she could sleep on their nice sofa, which was neither dirty nor torn. At night, she could go in and get in bed with Joan for a few delicious minutes. The. nice soft things Joan did with her tongue and fingers did not leave her cunt burning or her asshole aching. She rubbed her bruised tits; they kept pulling and sucking on them, trying to make them bigger or tear them off of her chest entirely. She quivered. The trouble with being a nigger girl was that no matter how you hated black men, they turned you on, and she rolled to her back, suddenly listening to the voices in the front room. They argued and boasted and threatened whitey all day and half the night, and when they reached some point of frenzy, they came after her. Claw-daddy first because he was the man. Then Snake, who was the man's friend and sometimes fag. Sam always came later because he was softer than the rest and he only wanted her when his cock got so hard he couldn't stand it. Abruptly, she wished Claw would hurry up.
Bonnie got up and rough-combed her half-straight hair. Then she touched her dark red mouth with a little lightener. After that, she listened to the rising din from the front room. In self-defense, she opened the half empty jar of Vaseline she used with the hot comb and with one trembling finger, ringed the lips of her swollen cunt with the lubricant, then put another daub to her asshole, rubbing it in and around. Finally she straightened the cot covers and lay down, curling her slim legs up so she could play fingers with the rounds of her bottom, and when Claw came in, she was so hot she could hardly stand it.
To her surprise, he sat down on the cot and his left hand did not grab at her tit nor her ass. It patted her cheek and ran smoothly down her neck to pet her shoulder. "You doing fine, chick," he said. "Taking care of us fine, like King Farouk never had it so good. But it is dullsville, baby, and we got no bread. Sure, we got lots of friends, but the fuzz is leaning on us kind of hard. We make a face outside the front door and we're kidney pie for whitey, y'understand?"
"Yes," Bonnie replied puzzled but not convinced enough to keep from snuggling the bend of her hips to his back. "Your bag is kind of busted, huh, Claw?" His fingers now moved down to her right breast but they were gentle and caressive. "Right, baby. We been cutting up a touch or two, Sam and Snake and me. Well, we got a way out but it's cob-rough and maybe we make it good or go like what hits the fan, right? So we think like well, we got a good chick and maybe she doesn't want to see her brother and her friends go down the tube. It's coming on dark in an hour or so. You think in your best dress and wiggly like, you could skip up in pink-town and maybe hustle a whitey or two for bread?"
"They wouldn't pay much to fuck a nigger girl-and where'd I take them?"
Claw chuckled. "You got 'em in a dark spot and come on with the fingers. Whitey'11 find a place to take you. Chick, we got a hangup! Nothing to eat, no beer, no Mary, nothing! All you got to do-" Bonnie listened, and he was very persuasive, sure of her ability to get them off of the hook. She had often thought about abandoning the cheap white kids at school and taking to the uptown streets. Despite the man-handling she'd suffered during the past three days, what he said was true They were black and in a bind, black people had to stick together. And as he talked, he petted her and she began to understand just how important it was that she try to help them. Behind it all and unspoken was the alternative they'd whack her around and get mean. She was had cold and she understood it.
"You get the picture, don't you?" Claw said in a different voice. "Remember, your old man is going to get just as hungry as we do. Like it is something you got to do chick. Soon as it's dark. Now, maybe you better take a bath and fix up some, huh?"
"I can't. No quarter for the gas meter."
Claw laughed and got up. "You got a fingernail file?"
"It's pretty small."
"Give me the fucking thing and show me where the meter is!" "Claw-" He chuckled and patted her head. "You do right, baby, and Claw-daddy will be real nice to you when you bring home the sidemeat!"
She used the alleys, taking care to find a deep shadow if a pair of headlights moved too slowly or seemed to wander. Out of Sugartown, Claw's words and the encouragements from Snake and Sam faded in a blare of neon lights and the impersonal, inattentive bustle of white town. It was almost as if Sugartown and black people did not exist, and trouble was something that happened only to colored people. Even other Negroes she saw did not seem to be of her kind. Fat mamas in clean clothes, carrying paper sacks full of recently purchased items and well-dressed bucks, with briefcases or nothing, peering, walking, moving as if there were no difference between black and white.
Bonnie shuddered. She felt very self-conscious in her brown taffeta dress with a sick zipper. Her legs were cold clear up to her ass because she'd not put on panties in the interest of a quick and dirty. She stood on a corner rehearsing in her mind what to say if she could find some pink standing alone and looking lonesome. "You want to fuck, mister?" -"How about a party, man?"- "You want to go five bucks for a blow-job, daddy?" -"You want to do something with me, stud?" and when she ran out of propositions, she felt like crying. They all seemed so niggerish nothing could come by muttering any of them-except maybe a quick trip to the police station when a startled pink turned her in. She walked along, feeling very black and very small, and terribly hungry. She had no idea of even how to start.
Back in the house, Claw and Snake and her brother would be sitting around, talking big and maybe laughing over the way out she was supposed to be providing them. Her daddy was probably silting in his room, hungry and sad and wondering about everything. The streets of Sugartown were crawling with fuzz, eyes narrowed under their helmets, hands clutching riot guns and pistols, waiting for a chance to kill. None of it made much sense to Bonnie, but what she had to do was very clear in her mind.
Then she saw him standing alone, looking into a clothing store that was closed. She wiped the street with hot, sharp eyes. Then she squared her shoulders and put a twist to her ass, and when she moved to stand beside him, he looked. She chose the direct approach.
"You want to pay a little, say for five bucks, mister?"
"What? Oh. Not really. Say, you're kind of young, aren't your "That's a complaint, mister?" Bonnie giggled. "Or aren't you for nigger girls? " "Hm-mm. What's your name, honey?"
"Honey. What's yours, mister?"
"Mister. If I said, let's go, where would we go?"
Bonnie was suddenly tired and very hungry. "Like maybe over a hamburger and a cup of coffee we could figure that out, mister. I'm uptight."
He nodded up the street, away from the brighter lights. He took one hand from a side pocket and his fingers were warm as he put the folded bill into her palm. "You go first and get what you want. I'll be right behind you, honey."
Her eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't be fuzz, would you?"
He laughed. "So take the dollar and cut and run, honey!"
He had a nice toothy smile and kind eyes, so Bonnie shook her head and started walking toward the lunch room up the block.