The moment that somebody heard that anybody had gotten cooked, they would say, "Well, man, what did he say?"
I never heard of anybody ever saying it was worth it. They said a lot of things, but nobody ever said it was worth it
One day Carole called me and said that Butch had fallen off a roof. Just about all the roofs were five stories high, and I couldn't imagine anybody faUing off a roof and living.
I went to the hospital to see Butch. He was all broken up. He didn't know anything. He was hung up on one of those bed contraptions that seem to be holding people together with wires, holding each joint in place. He couldn't talk, and a couple of days later he died.
I couldn't think about it. Butch had always been such a strong person to me. He was one of the people whom I
admired most when I was very young, before he got on drugs. I thought he was one of the strongest cats in the neighborhood. I thought if anybody could come back off drugs, it would be Butch. I just never thought that drugs were going to be a fatal thing with Butch and Danny. Maybe with Kid, but I just knew it wouldn't be fatal with Danny and Butch. I just figured they were stronger than drugs. Maybe if Butch hadn't fallen off that roof, he might have been strong enough to come back and kick. But he'd already been down to Kentucky about seven times, and he hadn't kicked. He'd stayed in the Army for a short time, and he still hadn't kicked.
I remember going by his house to see his mother afterward. I'd heard from a lot of the fellows that she didn't want any of them coming around. There were stories that somebody had given him an O.D. on the roof and that they threw him off when they couldn't bring him around. There were stories that he was trying to break into somebody's apartment to steal some money to get some drugs and that some cats who were holding the rope had just run and let him drop in the backyard when they saw the police or when somebody came up on the roof.
When I walked into her house, there was sadness all through it. He was the only boy. His mother had three girls, and I suppose Butch was pretty close to her. I went in, and I said, "Look, Mrs. Crawford, I came to pay my respects." She didn't say anything for a long time. I didn't know what to say, because I'd never been around the parents or the family of any friend of mine who had died. I'd never had a close friend die before, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
I knew that as a friend I was supposed to be able to offer something. Even though we hadn't been hanging out together much for the past few years, I was still close to Butch. I felt close to him. I doubt if any of the cats he had been hanging out with could have felt anything for his family, because they were junkies. They were'always dying. These cats would run away and leave each other when one of them passed out from an overdose.
I used to wish I'd been there when it happened, whatever happened. Since I hadn't been, I felt that all I could do now was try to give his family a word of comfort, say something that might help. After fumbling for words and sitting there
feeling uncomfortable for what seemed like hours but really wasn't more than fifteen minutes, I got up to go.
Just as I got up, Mrs. Crawford said in her West Indian accent, "Why, Sonny Boy, didn't you start using the damn dope too? Why did my Butch have to use that danm dope and go and kill himself?" She said, "All of the boys on Eighth Avenue, just about, is killing their damn selves with that damn dope. Sonny Boy, why didn't you?"
I told her I didn't know. She didn't say it, but I had the feeling she was saying, "Why aren't you dead too? Why aren't you dead instead of my Butch? Or if he has to be, why aren't all you boys who came up on Eighth Avenue and did all the same things together? . . . You played hookey together, you stole together, and you stayed out together." She knew these things, so I guess she felt we were all supposed to die together. I suppose that when a mother's son dies, she hates all sons, all sons who are alive.
After I got out of there, I just couldn't go to the funeral. Butch was a good friend of mine, but it was too much. I was getting tired of funerals. I was getting tired of seeing cats I knew die from overdoses, cats who had promising futures, who had good heads on their shoulders, cats I ran the streets with when we were in short pants. I was tired of seeing their famiUies looking at me and saying, "I wish he could have been Uke you," or something Uke this. I was tired of being alive, not being strung out on dope at somebody's funeral who had been strung out and finally died from it. I was tired of going there and watching what duji was doing to everybody.
People came back and told me about Butch's funeral. I looked all over town that night for Danny. I finally went around to his parents' house and found him there. His mother was happy to see me. Mrs. Rogers was always nice to me, and she always wanted me to keep hanging out with Danny. It was kind of hard, seeing as how he was a junkie, and junkies couldn't be trusted too much.
Mrs. Rogers asked me if I had been to the funeral. I told her no. She said, "Why? He was a good friend of yours." She looked at me for a long time, and she said, "Why didn't you go to that boy's funeral?" She was angry with me.
I said, "I saw him before, in the hospital, and I saw his family yesterday." Then I saw myself, and I thought. Damn, I don't have to explain to you. She didn't know anything about him or me. She didn't know anything about how I felt
about him, and she had no business asking that. I got angry with myself for feeling as though I had to explain my not being at his funeral to her.
I could halfway understand her fears and her anger, because I guess she figured if I had forsaken Butch, perhaps I wouldn't appear at Danny's funeral if he should ever take an O.D. or be shot by a cop or fall off a roof. After a while, I just walked away from her and went into Danny's room.
Danny wasn't high. He was packing. I sat on the bed, and I said, "Danny, where you goin'?"
He said, "I'm going to Kentucky."
I said, "Yeah, again, man?"
"Sonny, I think I've seen something." He grabbed me by my shoulders as though he wanted me to know that he wasn't just talking this time. He grabbed me by my shoulders and started squeezing. He said, "Sonny Boy, Sonny Boy, look at me."
I looked at him; I thought he was going crazy for a while.
He said, "Sonny Boy, you know what my mama told me?"
I said "No, Danny."
Danny told me that she had said that Butch's death was the way God was giving the message to him and Kid. He said he was going to kick his habit. He was going to really kick it this time. He was going to Kentucky, and when he came back, he was going to be through with drugs.
I said, "Yeah, Danny. I think you just might do it this time."
He sounded serious. I guess he had been serious all the other times too, although we had never really talked about it before.
I went with him to a cab. We talked about the time he and I and Butch and Kid had done things together—when I cooked shrimp in hair grease, that sort of thing.
As Danny got into the cab, I prayed for him. I found myself praying that he had gotten the message, if not from God, from someplace, at least into himself. I had the feeling that he'd found something.
When he got into the cab, he held out his hand and said, "Sonny Boy, say good-bye to Danny the Junkie, because when I come back, I'm gon be a new man. I'm gon be bigger than drugs. I'm gon be bigger than Harlem. I'm gon be bigger than anything that's against me."
When Danny got in the cab, I felt really alone. I decided to
go uptown and look for Tony. I just had to fine somebody, because Harlem had become sickening to me. Butch was gone; Danny was gone, in a way; and Kid, I felt that he would be following Butch soon.
I was wondering what had happened to the Harlem I used to know, to my Harlem, the Harlem of my youth, to our Harlem, Butch's Harlem, Kid's Harlem, Danny's Harlem. Young Harlem, happy Harlem, Harlem before the plague. I had to find something to show me that my Harlem was still there, that it wasn't just falling apart. I had to find something that was still intact.
I couldn't find Tony or anybody else. I wanted to talk to Pimp.
I wanted to find out just how he had taken this thing, if he was aware of what was going on. I went to my parents' house and sat and talked with Pimp. I asked him if he knew that Butch had died. He said that he'd been to the funeral. He told me about somebody else on 146th Street, a guy I didn't know, who had died from an O.D. about two weeks before.
I asked him if he was still drinking wine. He said that he was. Then I asked him if he'd started smoking yet, because he was about fifteen. He said that he smoked a cigarette now and then and that Mama said it was okay.
"Look, nigger, don't play with me."
"No, Sonny, you know I ain't smokin' no pot yet.'*
"Why? Aren't you curious? Gome on, let's get high for a first time."
"No, I've found out what it was like. I know it. I'd rather spend my money on other things."
Then I told him that I was going to come up the next day and spend the evening with him.
He said, "Yeah, I could show you a lot of things."
Pimp tried to talk to me, so it seemed, but I don't think I gave him the right answers. He told me things that I thought he didn't really feel. He was trying to emulate me. He was tired of Dad nagging him. He said, "Man, that cat gets on my nerves."
It seemed that his favorite conversation with me was tearing Dad down. I didn't want to encourage him in it, but this was what he wanted, and if I didn't do it, I felt as though I wasn't giving him what he wanted. I couldn't give him what he wanted, because he had to stay in that house and learn how to get along with Dad. He wasn't old enough to get a
job and move out. If he started staying out in the street and getting himself into trouble, he wouldn't have had anyplace to go or anything to do.
He would talk that talk, and I'd try to change the subject. Or I'd say, "Yeah, man, he seemed that way to me too at one time."
Then, he'd say things like, "No, Sonny, you can't say that now, because you outta here; and, like, you know, I know you didn't feel that way when you were here. You been out of it for so long you forgot what it's like."
I knew that there was some truth to it, and I could almost agree with him. I did, to myself, but I couldn't let him know. I couldn't say, "Yeah, man, you're right. You're gonna have to get out. You're gonna have to put the house down and get away from them."
Pimp was getting big and wanted to declare his independence, but he was just too young. I couldn't encourage him, and my failure to encourage him was pulling us apart. I was afraid of this, but there was nothing I could do. I felt as though I was losing out on all fronts in Harlem. I was losing my bearings there, and I was losing whatever hold I'd had on my old stamping ground, my home town, my family, and my friends. I was just losing my place.
I decided to run. There was nothing else I could do. I was going to go back down to the Village and just stay there. I was going to try to find something new, because every time I went up there, it was almost sickening.
When I went back home after that night, I decided I wasn't going to go uptown for a while.
I gave up pot. It used to make me think too much, and the things I thought about bothered me. So I wouldn't get high. I just stayed down there in the Village. I went to school and read a lot. I drank a lot of wine. I tried to stay away from Harlem and forget it, but I couldn't do that. I guess it was too much in my blood to stay away for long.
Something happened to me just about that tirne. I was staying downtown, and I'd call up to see how people were. There was a guy I knew from Washington Irving Evening High School. I called him up one night, and we were talking over the phone. I heard a record playing on a disc-jockey program coming from the Palm Cafe. I asked him, "Man, what's that playing?"
It sounded like someone just playing the piano. He told
me it was a retord playing, just a disc-jockey program. I said, "Okay, I'm going to keep talking, and when the program i goes off, I want you to get the name of that record, because I want to get it." When it went off, he told me that it was Bud Powell playing "A Memorial to Chariie Parker."
I liked a few jazz cats then, and I was living right down the street from a place called the Five Spot. I used to go in there and listen to musicians like Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, Cecil Taylor, Don Schumacher, and those cats, that Village circuit of musicians. I hadn't become too involved in it then. But when I heard this record, it sounded like the most beautiful piano solo I'd ever heard in my life. I decided that I wanted to get a piano. I wanted to play.
It might have sounded like a crazy thing. Here I was, nineteen years old and I was going to start playing the piano. But this was the way I felt about it. I told a lot of people, "Man, I got to get me a piano."
Tony said, "Yeah, man, that's just the thing, because you bound to be good at it." This was Tony. He would say something like that.
A lot of other people said, "Man, you kinda old for piano lessons, aren't you?"
I said, "I don't care, man. I got to have me a piano."
I didn't tell people why I wanted it. I wouldn't say, "Yeah, I heard this cat Bud Powell playing over the telephone, and I have to get me a piano because I want to play like that.'* But this was how I first got the bug to blow a piano.
I had started getting out. I had stopped going up to Harlem every weekend. Sometimes I'd stay away three or four weeks at a time. I'd stay downtown. I was still in the talking stage in this piano thing. I knew I wanted a piano, but I didn't know too much about just how I was going to get it or when or anything like that.
I never heard anybody else who I thought was as good as Bud Powell, but every time I heard somebody good, I got this big urge to play the piano all over again. It would last for a couple of days, but I wouldn't do anything about it. I didn't get the piano right away.
I stayed downtown, and there were a lot of crazy things happening right there in the house. I remember once I had come in, and it was cold. It was a private house, and I had left the front door open but didn't know it. I had a little kerosene stove to heat up my room. After I finished Ughting the stove,
I sat down on my bed and started to eat a sandwich, a kielbasy sandwich. This was something I had found out about when I moved. I used to eat a lot of those sandwiches.
I heard a voice in the hall. Somebody said, "Hey, come out here. Open that door and come out of there or I'll shoot."
I didn't pay any attention to it. I thought it was one of the cats who lived in the house, just clowning. I said, "Yeah, well, go ahead and shoot."
I heard something like Blam! The door flew open. Something hit the door, and I knew somebody had shot. I just froze; I was about to take a bite, then everything just stopped.
Then somebody said, "Are you comin' out?"
I said, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! What you shootin* for?"
He said, "Come out of there with your hands up."
I put my hands up and walked out. There was this dumb rookie cop standing out there with a gun in his hand and shining a flashlight. I was standing there trembling like a leaf in the wind. "Don't shoot, man. What you gon shoot me for?"
"What are you doing here?"
"I live here."
By that time, the cat who owned the house, an artist named Pops, who lived downstairs, had turned on all the lights and was running upstairs. Since he was a white cat, the cop figured right away he owns the house.
He started searching me with the gun still in his hand. Pops jumped back. He probably figured that if the cop turned on him with the gun, he was going to shoot.
The cop said, "Hey, does this guy live here?"
Pops said, "Yeah, be lives here. What's wrong? What's he done?'
The cop said, "He went and opened the door." This sounded stupid to all of us. I was still standing there shaking, because this guy was crazy. I felt he shouldn't be running around loose with a gun and coming in people'^ houses shooting just because they had opened a door. This was what had happened.
Afterward he just went on downstairs. But this was only the beginning.
The next in
cident took place a few days later, maybe about a week later. It was early in the morning. Somebody had come in late at night and left the door open. I had gotten
up about five o'c^pck in the morning and was going downstairs to the bathroom on the second floor to shave.
When I opened the bathroom door to go in, a flashhght beam hit the wall on one side of me. Then it moved over into my face. The voice behind it said, "Hold it right there."
I said, "Yeah, what's wrong?"
"Do you live here?"
"Yeah, I live here."
"Is there a light around here anywhere? Turn on the light."
"Yeah, there's one right here." I turned on the light.
Then I saw this cop. He was in his thirties. He was bent over. You could see that he was sloppy drunk; the guy was stinking. He smelled like wine, but I'd never seen anybody get that drunk off wine. He was bobbing and weaving; he had a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand.
I had a safety razor down in my hand, and I was thinking, Oh, Lord. Here's this nut. He's just liable to fall. And he's just liable to shoot me, the liquor's just liable to shoot me.
He started squinting, as though he couldn't see too well. He said, "Hey, what's that in your hand?"
I was afraid to snatch it up too fast, because the guy might have gotten excited and started shooting. I said, "This is just a razor, you see." My hand wouldn't move. I wanted to raise it up and show it to him, but I was too scared to move.
"Do you live here?" Then he said, "No, you don't live here because there's a white couple who lives in this house."
"Yeah, I rent a room from them."
He said, "I'm gonna wake 'em up." And he started shouting "Hello, hello there I"
Manchild in the promised land Page 27
