Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  I said, “Yeah, baby, well, it seems like your prayers are finally bein’ answered, because I think the Lord gave me the message. I feel like now the time has come for me to start goin’ to church.”

  I told her, “I’m gon start goin’ every week,” and she started waiting for me to go to church with her. I started going every Sunday, religiously. I’d sit there in one of the front rows and stare at Mrs. Rogers when she started throwing up her hands and sweating and hollering about the Lord and good Jesus. I’d pat my foot and look like I was really getting the message. Occasionally, I’d even say an amen or a hallelujah. I didn’t even know what it was all about, but I heard the other people saying it who were supposed to be in on that stuff, so I did it too.

  Mrs. Rogers started getting the feeling that I was a real good boy. I was working, and I gave a lot of money to the church. Every time I came, I would give them five dollars or something like that. I used to tell the people that the reason I started going to evening high school was that I wanted to better myself, that I wanted to get ahead in life, and this sounded good. The real reason was that I wanted to get the hell out of Harlem. I needed a change, and I started going because of that reason. But they liked the other one better, so I told them that. Mrs. Rogers thought that was real nice. As a matter of fact, she thought that I was a nice young man who was going to be something someday and that all I needed was God. I went along with it.

  After I’d been going to church about three weeks, I figured it was time for me to go into my act. I was having a fever to get next to June. I had to do it soon. I figured if I was saved, Mrs. Rogers wouldn’t mind me coming by and taking June out sometime, like to a nice movie, a religious picture, something about Jesus or the Bible. I could take her to the museum or down to the Coliseum. All I needed was just one chance to get her down to my place, to my quaint little loft room in the Village. I knew she would like the idea. She was nice, and she was very religious. But I knew she had a lot of animal in her, and all I wanted was a chance to unlock that animal and let it out. There’s just something fascinating about religious chicks anyway. It’s the high potentiality for corruption that’s so fascinating.

  On the fourth Sunday, I made plans. I put on a brand-new hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, my thirty-dollar shoes, and my ten-dollar shirt and went uptown.

  I sat in the front row, and I waited for Mrs. Rogers to reach the climax of the sermon. Mrs. Rogers was a big, burly, dark-skinned woman. I suppose this was why most of her children were so nice looking—she was big, dark, and burly, and her husband was lean and real light-skinned. He looked almost white.

  This Sunday, Mrs. Rogers started throwing up her big arms and raising her voice and hollering about the Lord and how good Jesus was. When she really got excited and carried away with the sermon, she said, “Talk to Jesus, everybody!” She shouted it out; she threw both fists straight up in the air and preached at the top of her voice. The veins were bulging in her forehead, and the sweat was pouring down.

  June was banging on her tambourine real hard and getting excited too. Deidre was on the piano, and somebody else had a cymbal. Everybody was really going at it. I felt that this was the time—when Mrs. Rogers hit her most excited point—this was the time I’d planned to pull my saved scene.

  I jumped up and started hollering, “Oh, Jesus!”

  Mrs. Rogers looked at me and said, “Yes, son, call on Jesus.”

  I started clapping my hands and jumping up and down and saying, “Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Please, Jesus!” This was the way I’d heard the people do it before when they’d been saved. After a while, I fell on the floor and started rolling around in my brand-new suit. This looked good; I knew it had to be convincing.

  I rolled down there for ten or fifteen minutes, and Mrs. Rogers came over. She took my hand and said, “Call on the name o’ the Lord, son. Call on Jesus!”

  “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, save me!”

  “Tell Jesus to come into your heart, son.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, please, Jesus, come into my heart.”

  “Call on Jesus.” She just held my hand, and she said, “Call on Jesus, son, call on Jesus!” And she started squeezing it.

  I wanted to call on Jesus and say, “Jesus, please tell this woman to let my hand go!” She was almost squeezing it off.

  Somebody would have thought it was her up there being saved instead of me. The times when she told me, “Call on Jesus,” and I was saying, “Oh, Jesus!” real loud, it was the pain. She was squeezing my hand so hard, I was screaming to get away from that. I just went on calling on Jesus, and after about twenty-five minutes of this, I felt I had convinced everybody in the church that I was good and saved. I was all set to go on and get tight with June.

  I got up, and Mrs. Rogers said, “Son, the Lord is callin’ you, and you almost came to Him just then. Jesus almost walked into your life. You just keep on prayin’. You just keep on prayin’, and I know you gon be saved, because the Lord wants to come into your life.”

  I never felt so low in all my life. Here I was lying and rolling on the floor all that time, and this woman was saying I was almost saved. I was really disgusted, and I just never went back there anymore. I felt that it wasn’t worth the time and effort. If I couldn’t convince this woman I was saved, I’d never get next to June; she’d never let her out of the house by herself. I just chalked it up to experience—and to a cleaning bill.

  I stayed away from that religious thing and let Carole go on and walk that way if she wanted to. I felt that this was something she needed, the way everybody in Harlem needed something. Some people needed religion. The junkies needed drugs. Some people needed to get drunk on Saturday night and raise hell. A lot of people needed the numbers. Me, I needed to get out of Harlem.

  8

  I CAME uptown one night and met Danny on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 145th Street. We were just standing there talking. Danny was telling me for about the fiftieth time that he was going to kick his habit. I kept saying, “Yeah, man, yeah. I know you’re going to do it eventually.” I just happened to ask how Jim was doing.

  He said, “Goldie?”

  “Yeah, Jim Goldie.”

  Danny said, “Oh, man, you didn’t hear about it?”

  “About what?”

  He said, “They’re having Goldie’s funeral Tuesday night. Somebody shot him in the head four times.”

  I said, “Who and why? What happened?”

  Danny asked me if I knew somebody on 141st Street by the name of Eddie Carter. I said I didn’t know him. He said this was the cat who had wasted Goldie. I asked him why, and he told me about it.

  As he told me about it, I couldn’t listen very well. It was kind of hard for me to believe that Jim was dead. Jim was a big guy, and he was good with his hands. He had been to Warwick. He had done a couple of years in Elmira. He’d gotten back on the street and made the big time right away. He had brothers in numbers, so when Jim came out, there was a spot waiting for him in the numbers racket. His family was running the whole show.

  We all used to hang out together. Jim had had a whole lot of heart, maybe too much. He would fight anybody, and this was when we were only thirteen or fourteen. He wanted to gang fight, and he was always real game. When he came out of the Warwick Annex at Hampton Farm, he was big and burly, almost as big as a barn. I suppose just his size frightened a lot of people. He was a nice cat, and he’d always been a nice cat. Of course, if he hit a cat—and he would hit a cat if he got mad—he would usually wreck the side of his face.

  I think Jim had boxing on his mind when he first came out of the Annex. I don’t know what happened. I think he came out and found this spot waiting for him in the numbers and found that all he had to do was come out and stand on Eighth Avenue most of the day. He walked right into the big time. I guess he just lost interest in boxing. Perhaps it was less appealing. His brother Zack was running around with the fine whores, he had a big Cadillac, he was the big numbers man. It was a more glamorous life than
boxing.

  After being out for about a year, Jim got busted sitting in Zack’s big Cadillac smoking reefers. When he came back on the scene two years later, he was still in the big time. I remember when he first came out of the Annex, he looked for cats from the old crowd. Rock was out on parole. He’d say, “Have you seen Rock?”

  I said, “No, man, I haven’t seen Rock.”

  He said, “Damn, I’m looking for that cat. I want to get him high.”

  This was the way he was. He was always trying to do something for the old crowd, the cats he use to bebop with up and down Eighth Avenue and Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue and Amsterdam, all around the neighborhood.

  But when he came out of Elmira, he seemed to look down on everybody as small-time hoodlums. He was ready for the big time. He used to hang out with a lot of Italian cats. Everybody thought they were members of the Mafia. He’d bring them uptown. He started snobbing the old crowd. He even started smoking a big cigar. I guess he was heading for the short life. People started saying that he was a gorilla, that he was going around shaking down people, shaking down numbers controllers and cats who were dealing drugs. The word was out that he would just walk up to somebody and say, “Man, give me five hundred dollars.” They tell me that Shorty Mannlin gave it to him once. Shorty Mannlin was a big-time numbers controller on 146th Street. He was Zack’s competitor, and Jim just walked up to him and asked for five hundred dollars. Never laid a hand on him. He was so big, and he had a reputation. Everybody knew he was rugged.

  After Jim had been out of Elmira for about a year, and even though he was only twenty-three years old, he’d gotten big time without a hustle. He went into numbers, and he would take people’s plays. If they had a hit, he’d tell them that they just hadn’t put it in.

  Some people would get their gun and go looking for him. If he wasn’t home or in his stash, people would say, “Tell that nigger don’t come on the street any more until he’s got my money.”

  One of the most dangerous things in the world is to steal from poor people This was what Jim and some other young cats his age were doing. They would start taking numbers, and they wouldn’t pay these people when they hit. They were stealing from the poor, and when you steal from the poor, you gamble with your life.

  Jim had gotten a reputation for not being afraid of a gun because he had once walked into a .45. He hit a cat who had a .45 on him and about six other cats. This was a crazy thing, because everybody else was ready to give the cat the money.

  We used to shoot craps down in a cellar down on 145th Street. There’d usually be a lot of money flying around. Cats would shoot three hundred dollars or sometimes five bills on a roll. When cats were happy, they’d get high, go down there, and shoot craps. A lot of people knew about it, all the hustlers anyway. Evidently, a few others from out of the neighborhood had heard about it.

  One Saturday night we were down there shooting craps. Everybody was hollering and making a lot of noise. The police knew about it. If they came down there, somebody would give them fifty dollars and they were happy. About two o’clock in the morning, two cats came in, two big colored cats. I don’t think anybody saw them come in or heard them. All I recall was hearing a big, strong, mean-sounding voice say, “Don’t a mother-fucker move.” I knew the sound of a voice that meant business. I looked up and saw a cat standing with his back to the door and a gun pointing down at us.

  Over in the far corner, there was another cat. He said, “Drop all the money right there on the floor.”

  Most of us had some money in our hands. I dropped mine in a hurry, without any hesitation, because I knew these cats weren’t playing. Everybody else knew it too. The cat who had told us to drop the money had a revolver, but the cat against the door, the cat with the mean voice, had a big .45.

  A .45 is a frightening thing. Not just because it’s a gun, because all guns are frightening. The thing that’s so terrifying about any gun is that when you look into it, you’re aware that here’s this little black hole that at any time can spit death out at you and take your life. People who have a gun in their face will get up off money in a hurry, especially people who have been shot. Most stickup artists know that if they put a gun to somebody’s face and make him look right into the barrel, it’s going to have much more effect than a gun held way down low.

  A .45 has a big hole. As a matter of fact, it’s the biggest hole I’ve ever looked into. The big holes are twice as frightening. It’s as though if something were to come out of there, it would take your whole head off. This was how we all felt when we looked up into the muzzle of that .45 pointed at us. I suppose everything seems bigger when you look up at it, and we were all kneeling down shooting craps or watching the craps roll. And all of a sudden there was this big black nigger standing there with death in his hand. I wanted to say, “Here, man. Here’s the money; take it in a hurry. Just turn that thing away from me.”

  Nobody rose or anything. The cat with the 45 was so big and mean looking, he probably could have stuck me up without a gun. There were some cats there he couldn’t have stuck up without a gun. But it was surprising that anybody would come in there and do this even with a gun, because most of the cats shooting craps down there had killed somebody at some time or another in their life. Just about everybody on 146th Street who was in street life had the reputation of a killer. It took a lot of nerve for anybody to come in there and even think about sticking up these cats.

  The guy only spoke once, and everybody heeded him in a hurry—everybody but Jim. Jim just squatted down there, almost sitting, like somebody taking a shit in the woods. He had his money in his hand.

  The cat with the 45 spoke again. He said, “Nigger, what you waitin’ for ? Put that money down.”

  Everybody froze; we all expected this cat to waste Jim right then and there. I knew, and everybody else knew, that if the guy was scared to shoot or wasn’t prepared to kill anybody, he wouldn’t have been there. He might have gone and stuck up some other crap game or a check-cashing place or a liquor store. He would have been safer going to stick up the police station if he was afraid to kill somebody.

  Zack was there too. As a matter of fact, Zack had eight hundred dollars going on the roll, and Zack told Jim, “Jim, put the money down.”

  Jim didn’t pay any attention to Zack. He just kept staring at the cat for a little while, the cat with the 45 in his hand. The cat said to Jim, “Man, you ain’t gon put that money down?” And he stuck the gun out in front of Jim. It seemed to be not more than three feet from his face.

  Jim just started rising out of his squatting position, and he said to this cat, who was still standing with his back to the door, “Man, ain’t nobody gon take my money.”

  When he said that, the feeling went through me, Oh, Lord, there goes Jim. I thought to myself that this nigger must be crazy, because you just don’t argue with a 45. You might gamble and argue with a .22 or maybe a .32, but this nigger was arguing with a .45. He had to be crazy—stark, raving mad.

  Everybody tensed. The cat who had told us to drop our money was still standing in the corner and just seemed to be backing the play. The main man in the scene was the cat against the door.

  The cat in the corner with the revolver said, “Look, nigger, I’ll shoot you if you don’t put that money down by the time I pull this trigger.”

  Jim didn’t even look at him; he kept looking at the cat against the door, and everybody else kept looking. I got kind of worried. Aside from being the youngest, I was the only one who hadn’t killed anybody.

  Jim said, “You come and get me up.” Everybody else started backing away.

  The cat in the corner said, “All you mother-fuckers better keep still, because the next cat who moves is dead.” I was scared, because I didn’t know what was going on. Everybody else seemed as though they were going to back Jim’s play if he made a stand for his money.

  Jim started getting up. The cat said, “You get up, and you leave your money on the floor.”

 
Jim just kept rising slowly. As he got up, the cat still had the gun in his face. He never did drop his money. He still had his money in his hand when he hit this cat. He hit him with a straight right that everybody thought had broken the cat’s neck. His whole head seemed to snap right off.

  I just put my head down, because this shit was crazy. I said, “Oh, Lord, we all gon be wasted right here tonight.” I wished that I’d never come down in that cellar that night.

  But everybody just walked away. The cat in the other corner shot his piece off one time. Nobody had been paying any attention to him before, and when he did this, Zack walked over to him said, “Come on, man, give me the piece. Don’t get hurt.”

  The cat said, “Look, man, I don’t want you cats’ money. Just let me out of here.” Everybody moved back. Zack said, “Okay, we gon let you out. Go on out.” The cat started backing toward the door.

  Just before he got to the door, Jim got to him with a right too. It surprised me. I’d been in a lot of gang fights with him, and he’d been a cold cat. But that was years ago, and he was always nice with everybody who was around him. I had seen him stab a cat and not even make any kind of face, not even seem to be the least bit bothered about it. J once saw him stab a girl in the behind with an ice pick. It didn’t bother him.

  He wanted to stomp the two cats, fuck them up good, not let them walk from there. What he was saying made sense, because he was saying that this was 146th Street, and 146th Street had always had a reputation, even when I was in knee pants. When I first started running away from the truant officer when I was playing hookey from school, I could always run into 146th Street. At night, two policemen wouldn’t come in there by themselves. They had trouble getting anybody but the Four Horsemen to come in there.

  Bubba Williams was kind of cold too. Bubba said, “Yeah, let’s break their legs.” I don’t know if they broke their legs or not, but Bubba Williams took these bedposts that were down there. He banged on these cats’ shins until he thought that they were broken. Then we walked out and left them.