I had a little money in the bank, but I was scared that wasn't going to last too long. So I got a job working at a joint called Hamburger Heaven. This was a real drag. It was something terrible. It was on Madison Avenue, and you had to be a real Tom. Most of the cats there were from the South and weren't too hip. They hadn't been in New York long, and they didn't know anything. Most of them were really dumb— farmers.
I stayed with that for a while. The thing that bothered me most—I didn't know it would, because I'd never thought about it before—was that only white people came in there. I started off as a busboy. Later I became a waiter—white coat, black tie, and black pants. You had to smile at the white folks, hoping they'd throw a big tip on you. You had to watch what you said, and you had to watch the way you acted, because they had an old, dumbhead waiter who was a real Tom.
If you said anything to one of the customers and didn't put a "sir" on it, he'd run up there and say, "Boy, what's wrong with you?" and all this kind of simple shit. It was pretty hard to take, but I needed a job.
I stayed on for about a year. Behind the panic coming on, I couldn't get any pot, so I wasn't dealing anything then. I still had my contacts, and as soon as the stuff came in again, I would go back into business.
The first time I heard the expression "baby" used by one cat to address another was up at Warwick in 1951. Gus Jackson used it. The term had a hip ring to it, a real colored ring. The first time I heard it, I knew right away I had to start using it. It was hke saying, "Man, look at me. I've got masculinity to spare." It was saying at the same time to the world, "I'm one of the hippest cats, one of the most uninhibited cats on the scene. I can say 'baby' to another cat, and he can say 'baby' to me, and we can say it with strength in our voices." If you could say it, this meant that you really had to be sure of yourself, sure of your masculinity.
It seemed that everybody in my age group was saying it. The next thing I knew, older guys were saying it. Then just about everybody in Harlem was saying it, even the cats who weren't so hip. It became just one of those things.
The real hip thing about the "baby" term was that it was something that only colored cats could say the way it was supposed to be said. I'd heard gray boys trying it, but they couldn't really do it. Only colored cats could give it the meaning that we all knew it had without ever mentioning it—the meaning of black masculinity.
Before the Muslims, before I'd heard about the Coptic or anything like that, I remember getting high on the comer with a bunch of guys and watching the chicks go by, fine little girls, and saying, "Man, colored people must be some-thin' else!"
Somebody'd say, "Yeah. How about that? All those years, man, we was down on the plantation in those shacks, eating just potatoes and fatback and chitterlin's and greens, and look at what happened. We had Joe Louises and Jack Johnsons and Sugar Ray Robinsons and Henry Armstrongs, all that sort of thing." ' ^
Somebody'd say, "Yeah, man. Niggers must be some real strong people who just can't be kept down. When you think about it, that's really something great. Fatback, chitterlin's,
greens, and Joe Louis. Negroes are some beautiful people. Uh-huh, Fatback, chitterlin's, greens, and Joe Louis . . . and beautiful black bitches."
Cats woutd come along with this "baby" thing. It was something that w5nt over strong in the fifties with the jazz musicians and the liip set, the boxers, the dancers, the comedians, just about every set in Harlem. I think everybody said it real loud because they liked the way it sounded. It was always, "Hey, baby. How you doin', baby?" in every phase of the Negro hip life. As a matter of fact, I went to a Negro lawyer's office once, and he said, "Hey, baby. How you doin', baby?" I really felt at ease, really felt that we had something in common. I imagine there were many people in Harlem who didn't feel they had too much in common with the Negro professionals, the doctors and lawyers and dentists and ministers. I know I didn't. But to hear one of these people greet you with the street thing, the "Hey, baby" —and he knew how to say it—you felt as though you had something strong in common.
I suppose it's the same thing that almost all Negroes have in common, the fatback, chitterlings, and greens background. I suppose that regardless of what any Negro in America might do or how high he might rise in social status, he still has something in common with every other Negro. I doubt that they're many, if any, gray people who could ever say "baby" to a Negro and make him feel that "me and this cat have got something going, something strong going."
In the fifties, when "baby" came around, it seemed to be the prelude to a whole new era in Harlem. It was the introduction to the era of black reflection. A fever started spreading. Perhaps the strong rising of the Muslim movement is something that helped to sustain or even usher in this era.
I remember that in the early fifties, cats would stand on the corner and talk, just shooting the stuff, all the street-corner philosophers. Sometimes, it was a common topic— cats talking about gray chicks—and somebody might say something like, "Man, what can anybody see in a gray chick, when colored chicks are so fine; they got so much soul." This was the coming of the "soul" thing too.
"Soul" had started coming out of the churches and the nightclubs into the streets. Everybody started talking about "soul" as though it were something that they could see on people or a distinct characteristic of colored folks.
Cats would say things like, "Man, gray chicks seem so stiff." Many of them would say they couldn't talk to them or would wonder how a cat who was used to being so for real with a chick could see anything in a gray girl. It seemed as though the mood of the day was turning toward the color thing.
Everybody was regilly digging themselves and thinking and saying in their behavior, in every action, "Wow! Man, it's a beautiful thing to be colored." Everybody was saying, "Oh, the beauty of me! Look at me. I'm colored. And look at us. Aren't we beautiful?"
Around November of 1953, I went up to Wiltwyck. I hadn't seen Papanek since I'd gotten out of Warwick for the last time. I guess I didn't want to see him. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was in street life for good. I'd be going to jail soon, and I'd be doing a lot of time. I liked Papanek, but we could only be but so tight, because I was going the crime way. That's all there was to it.
I went up to Wiltwyck for Thanksgiving to visit the people and see what the place looked like. Maybe it was a kind of homesickness that took me up there. When I left, Papanek drove me to Poughkeepsie to catch a train back to New York City.
He said, "What are you doing, Claude? Are you going to school?"
"No, I'm goin' to school next term, when it starts in Febniary. I'm gonna go to night school." I was only joking with him.
"Yeah, that's good. You can really do it if you want to, and I'm glad to hear that you want to."
I looked at him and said to myself, Well, danm, this cat really believes me. I just didn't think too much more of it after that.
Before I left Wiltwyck, I had been talking to Nick and had told him that I was dealing pot. He was a hip guy and knew how life was on the streets and knew something about Harlem, so I just came out and told him, "Like, man, I'm dealin' pot, and I'll probably be in jail in another couple-a months or so. But right now, I'm doin' good."
He could see I was doing good. He saw tl^jway I dressed. After that Nick started telling me about what Papanek was saying to people about me. He said, "Papanek really thinks a lot of you. He thinks you're gonna make out just great.
He keeps tellin* people that Claude Brown is gonna be a real success."
I said, "Yeah, man. Uh-huh. I'm gon be a real success. I'm liable to be ^e biggest drug dealer in Harlem. . . . Nobody from here is gonna make it too far. I don't think anybody is gonna make it farther than Floyd Patterson has made it." Floyd was Golden Gloves champion at that time. I said, "Maybe Wiltwyck ought to be satisfied with that."
Nick finally said, "Well, Claude, you never know how the cards are stacked up for you, and if it's in the cards, maybe Papanek is right."
I looked at
Nick, and I thought, Danm, 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 Warwicks. 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 kiU 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 Uked 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. And I'll kill you, nigger, if you make me."
I told him where the drtigs 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 hcTrse.
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, Renq, 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 hving 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 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 bum 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 saying', 'Give me what you got.' I mean, if I did that kinda shit, if I let the cat go on livin', motherfuckers 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 abouL 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'r 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.-v.
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."
Manchild in the promised land Page 21
