The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  He learned that, with variations, the same thing worked in the A&P market when he got caught. But he couldn’t pull that too many times, so the best thing to do was steal only what he could eat and duck down behind the counter and eat it right there in the store and walk out with a small legitimate purchase. The thing to do was become popular with the old people of the neighborhood who needed a boy to run errands and buy fifteen or twenty cents’ worth of foodstuffs for them. The penny he got for the errand was nothing compared to the quarter’s worth of food he had the opportunity to consume in the store.

  But as always, he got caught.

  He could never forget the beefy face of the clerk who found him behind a display shelf while he crammed cookies and bologna into his mouth. He had been jerked to his feet by the neck and carried through the store, his feet not touching the ground, a huge hand strangling him. He had felt a devastating pain between his buttocks as a kick sent him sprawling on his face. But big Mr. Ed Dixon at the other market across the street had seen it and run across and paid the outraged clerk from his own pocket.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Mr. Dixon apologized to the white man. “I been knowin this little boy all his life and I’m terrible sorry. His auntie ain’t the kind of woman who would appreciate this stealin. This yella nigger boy is gonna get one hell of a whuppin.” And later to Jimmy he said, “You don’t have to steal, son. If you ever gets that hungry, come to me.” And he gave Jimmy a nickel and sent him home.

  So Jimmy Smith learned that if he cried, or looked like he was going to, or just didn’t act like he wanted to be Number One Dude, well then, somebody would always take care of him. And it was the same on the corner, the same hustling on the street. Just let Number One think he is Number One and he has all the headaches and ends up doing what Jimmy wants him to do.

  It was only a short walk from Fifth and Stanford to Second and San Pedro. To a tourist passing through Los Angeles both streets would look very similar—downtown, shabby, in or on the fringes of skid row—forbidding.

  To a crippled fifty-three year old black woman there was all the difference here at Second and San Pedro. With the Japanese returning from relocation camps this commercial neighborhood was thriving. She didn’t believe there were dangers on this street for a teenager. Jimmy had his own hotel room now two doors down the hall from her room, and no longer had to sleep on the floor. But Fifth and Stanford was only a short walk away.

  Fifth Street, from Main Street east, is the heart of skid row, the one street in Los Angeles which can compete with the worst of eastern slum neighborhoods. Bars line both sides of the street, and numerous liquor stores stock more Sneaky Pete and Sweet Lucy than the rest of metropolitan Los Angeles combined, most of it in short dog bottles which the derelicts can afford.

  The derelicts were of all ages and races, a plentiful number of women among them. Fat and bloated squaws, emaciated toothless whites, with flaming swollen hair-covered legs, and faces like red balloons. Ancient bony black women past the age for ordinary hustling. All of them prowling, snuffling through blackened hotel hallways, conducting business there on the dirt-crusted slimy floors with a rag of a dress pulled over the face because who wanted to see what she had to feel and smell? Until at last she could no longer feel or smell.

  Most were thankful that oral copulation was what the men wanted, because it was so much easier, and some of the derelict whores could line up three men in an alley in broad daylight and be through with them in less than ten minutes, making as much as a dollar for their work. Often, an impotent alcoholic would plead dissatisfaction, and a drunken business dispute would erupt between the two staggering wretches. But more often, these women were able to protect their earnings from the male predators.

  It was a dangerous neighborhood to grow up in, and if you had lived there since arriving from Fort Worth you would of necessity have grown very tough or very cunning. Jimmy Lee Smith was cunning.

  The true derelicts, the down-and-outers, gave up Fifth and Stanford, surrendered it to the blacks, and seldom roamed that far east. There was no need. What could be begged from a black neighborhood? The winos roamed west toward downtown, toward the live ones, and left Fifth and Stanford to the blacks, the pimps and prostitutes, the bootleggers, dope dealers, the thieves and con men.

  After Jimmy and his Nana moved to Second and San Pedro there were many reasons for Jimmy to run the few blocks back to Fifth and Stanford, back to a life infinitely more exciting than a lonely hotel room when his Nana was at work at the laundry folding sheets. For one thing, at Fifth and Stanford there was the shine stand and the promise it held.

  Before they’d moved up to Second Street Jimmy had persuaded his Nana to let him work in the shine stand across from the hotel, convincing her that she could look through the window and see him shining shoes. Finally she agreed. But of course much more could be made by running wine across the rooftops for the bootleggers than by shining shoes. Jimmy could go up a fire escape on one end of the block and come down through a skylight at the opposite end with a case of wine and never set foot on the street where the cops were. The bootleggers were small timers who brought their wine from Delano in barrels and diluted it for sale on the street. An enterprising boy like Jimmy Smith knew that every hotel roof in the neighborhood had caches of wine for the taking if you were sly and quick enough. So the men came to admire the clever boy and began calling him “Blood” and “Youngblood.”

  The jukeboxes of most of the east Fifth Street establishments hunkered out on the sidewalks in those days, and raucous music mingled with car horns and tire sounds and laughter and occasional screams, the ordinary sounds of skid row.

  Then there was Carole Lombard.

  She was big, brown, and smooth, with loose full breasts and a blue satin dress which was tearing at the seams because there was so much woman to cover. Jimmy didn’t care that she was thick through the middle and past her prime. To him she was beautiful.

  He was thirteen when the big car stopped and a white man beckoned him to the curb. He saw at once it was not a plainclothes police car. It was a Buick, with snowy whitewalls, and a fatcat white man in an up-to-date, wide, hand-painted necktie.

  “Hey, kid, know where I can get me a colored woman?”

  Jimmy just shrugged, not walking too close to the car.

  “I’ll give you a quarter, boy. A quarter just to point me in the right direction.”

  “Over there,” said Jimmy quickly. “In back of that shine stand. There’s a room. Jist go on in. They gonna find you.”

  “Thanks,” said the white man and tossed him a quarter.

  It was so easy he could hardly believe it! So easy! Was that how pimps got started? And he had always thought there was something magical and infinitely complex to learn before you could stand tall in front of the hotel, hands in your pockets, leaning forward at the waist, with marcelled hair, in orange gabardine—billowing, sharp-creased slacks, pegged tightly to the ankle—pointed black and white wingtips and a long sport coat with big shoulders, and a broad-brimmed felt hat with a feather. Not too much feather, just enough to be lookin sharp, lookin good. And cool was what you had to be, pretending you didn’t know everyone was admiring you, just busting out with a hee haw once in a while to show you knew you were the boss of this corner. You had the girls, six in your stable, you had the big Caddy, you had the power, man.

  But he never really believed he could be one of them, not a real pimp. He was already resigned to a secondary role in life, a number two man, making small stings, someday hoping to drive a decent transportation car, taking a back seat to the big timer. It had its advantages. The big man was always ready to do a favor for the smaller man who was no threat. If something bad went down, like from a police bust or from an infringing rival, well the big timer was knocked off, but the number two man did business as usual. It was much safer not to aspire to high position here on east Fifth Street.

  But when he got that quarter from the white man he saw how it could be don
e, and he ran across the street to the shine stand and waited. Soon the white man came out of Carole Lombard’s room, and Jimmy worked up his courage and ran around back and knocked at her door.

  “Who’s knockin?”

  “Jist me,” Jimmy said softly, and that was another thing he learned about being a number two man. To talk softly. It was more cool and safer. And everyone liked it. Talk softly.

  “Who the fuck is jist me?”

  “Jist the one that sent the trick.”

  The door opened and there she stood, not completely tucked into the blue velvet dress, barefoot, her breasts all but in his face, just buttoning the front.

  “Looky here.” She smiled cheerily and another black woman, leaner and darker, also half-dressed, came out from the closet carrying a roll of toilet paper.

  “Come in, honey,” said Carole Lombard, and Jimmy obeyed, his eyes furtively glancing from the toilet paper to the bared bosom.

  “Ain’t you a pretty child?” Carole Lombard said, putting a soft, long hand on his head. “He got us the trick, honey.”

  “Well bless you, little boy.” The other one smiled and went back to the tap to run the water.

  The smell was everywhere in the shabby little room. Overpowering, sickening, yet more exciting than anything he’d ever imagined. And he thought of them in this little room, these two big steaming women and that sweating fat white man. He looked at the walls almost expecting to see the wallpaper soppy, curling off the walls. Muggy as a jungle, that’s what lovemaking with a grown woman would be.

  “Guess you deserve fifty cents for what you done,” said Carole Lombard, and sauntered to a closet where he heard coins clinking in her hand. He watched the big shivering buttocks as she walked. When she gave him the two quarters she put her hand on his head again.

  “My, you got nice soft hair,” she said. “You ain’t woolly at all. Martha, come here and feel this boy’s hair.”

  “I ain’t got time, less he got three dollars,” said the voice from the other room.

  “You got three dollars, honey?” asked Carole Lombard looking down at him.

  “No,” he whispered, gaping at the breasts.

  “You so pretty,” she said. “You got features kinda fine, know that? And so bright. You know, you put some pomade on, that’s all, don’t need no process, and I bet you could almost pass. You so pretty.”

  Jimmy was trying to think of something to say. Something about working a deal where he could send them maybe two, three tricks a day. Only he wanted seventy-five cents a trick, not fifty. He was trying to get up the nerve to say it, when she pulled his face into her breasts.

  “You pretty boy, you run along now, hear me? You send me a good trick once in a while and when you get big you come see ol Carole. Carole wanna take you on your first ride, little jockey. But right now you ain’t no bigger’n a doodle bug, and I gotta turn you loose.”

  “I’m … I’m … big,” said Jimmy, and his throat and mouth were so dry, his lips popped. Carole Lombard held him back, and laughed uproariously.

  “You devil,” she said. “You pretty little devil. Git on outta here.”

  And she opened the door and swatted him on the bottom as he stepped out. The swat humiliated him and he felt a rush of anger and turned to see her watching him.

  “Don’t you go abusin yourself too much while you growin up,” she said, still chuckling. “You save it up for ol Carole Lombard and then you come back. Soon as you old enough to pay three dollars. Hear me, pretty child?”

  “I got three dollars now,” Jimmy lied. “I got it right now.”

  “Then come on back, little jockey.” She laughed.

  “No. I wouldn’t give it to you. I wouldn’t spend it on you. You ain’t the best around here.”

  “Now you know that ain’t true, little jockey.” She laughed, and Jimmy ran out into the sunshine holding back tears of anger.

  “You gonna see me agin, bitch,” he whispered. “I’m comin back to you with twenty dollars someday. And you gonna do everything to me I want. Everything, nigger. Jist like a dog! Everything!”

  There were other things he learned at the shine stand. Like the eye game. “Jist stare em down, Jimmy,” said the boy they called Hip-enuff. “Jist look a whitey in the eye and stare and watch em look away. See, they’s afraid of you, man.”

  “Afraid of me?”

  “Uh huh,” said Hip-enuff. “This ain’t Texas. You livin in Los Angeles, man. They’s afraid of you. They thinks you is some wild nigger. Stare at em and watch. Especially the pussy. Stare at some white bitch and watch how quick she go shaky in the lip and look the other way. Hot damn!”

  “But why I wanna do that? What do I git from that?”

  “Git from it? Sheeeit, you know you the man, that’s what you git from it. Huh! Git from it. Boy, you ain’t got no sense, you know?”

  But Jimmy never played the eye game. Never stared anyone down, white or black, still unconvinced that it would show that he was the man. He proved to himself he was right one afternoon while walking by a Main Street shoe store. A young white girl with a pretty pageboy hairdo was trying on shoes. When the salesman went in back Jimmy walked in the store, hoping he could grab a good pair of men’s shoes off the rack and run. But instead of paying attention to business he found himself staring at the girl, who was no more than nineteen. She didn’t see him and she had pulled her pale blue pleated skirt up to mid thigh and was touching up the orange-tan leg makeup just above the knee. It was during World War II and nylons were all but impossible to get.

  Her legs were shapely and elegant and Jimmy completely forgot what he had come for. And then she saw him and they locked eyes and Jimmy suddenly remembered the admonition to stare down a white bitch like a wild nigger. But he didn’t. He dropped his eyes. And deliberately he tried his own ideas by saying, “I’m sorry for starin, miss. You’re an awful pretty girl and all. I couldn’t help lookin at you.”

  “Why, that’s a nice thing to say!” she said. And he looked up and she was beaming at him. “That’s not something to apologize for.”

  Then he turned and ran out, but waited outside, and in a few minutes she came clicking out in white, toeless wedge heels with little taps on the soles.

  “Can I help you carry your things, miss?”

  “Why, yes,” she said handing him the paper bags with women things inside, and Jimmy walked two blocks with her to the bus station. He was oddly at ease and not self-conscious, and told her eight or ten lies as they chatted during the walk. He stood with her while she waited for the bus and when it came, he was bold enough to say, “If you ever comes down here agin, let’s go to the movies.”

  She laughed and looked him in the eye for a moment and then shook her head still smiling and said, “Thanks for the help.” She handed him fifty cents which he put in his pocket.

  And that night he lay in bed in his room at the hotel and thought of a slim white girl with shiny hair and painted legs and the way she looked at him and gave him money. And then he laughed aloud as he thought of Hip-enuff, who claimed he got his from staring them down.

  We all got our ways, Hip-enuff, Jimmy thought. You git yours by starin em down. Some guys git theirs by jackin off in a black leather glove. I git mine with my smile and my soft voice, and my curly hair, and let’s see who’s the biggest fool after all. He lay there giggling until he fell asleep.

  “And one day the police brought Jimmy to my door,” his Nana told a jury. “They knocked on my door and told me that Jimmy and three other boys had broken in a warehouse and stolen some boy scout things. Jimmy had been a boy scout when he was younger but he never had any boy scout things. Then they left Jimmy there with me and told me to bring him to court.

  “Jimmy was raised in church. Church and Sunday school. Church and Sunday school is something that any kid live with me gets because I believes in God. I told them that.

  “Yes, I took Jimmy down there. There was six other boys and they asked him why. And well, he said, he n
ever had any boy scout things and he wanted them. I don’t know anything about the boy scouts, but he got up and he recited several verses in the boy scout code he still remembered, and the man asked if Jimmy had any people that I could send him to to get him away from this bunch. And I sent Jimmy to Wyoming to his real mother.

  “Well, his mother didn’t understand. She didn’t understand children. They called me up one night and Jimmy was cryin that she had choked him and he wanted to come home. I wired him the money that night.”

  Jimmy’s Nana did not mention that he had conceived a child on this trip to Wyoming. He was to deny paternity, but two years later Jimmy was to see a photo of the handsome, yellow-skinned child named Ronnie, and there was no doubt. But he never saw the boy and wondered vaguely about him only once or twice over the years.

  Now Jimmy was back at the shine stand. It was also a good place to score a few cans of pot which could be cut and resold. The stolen wine could be diluted to water and as long as there was a bit of color someone would buy it. There were lots of ways to make a sting at the shine stand and his Nana would never take any money from him, only cautioning him to save what he earned. She was proud of him when he got a job selling papers. It didn’t last long, because he got too greedy and stole too much from the paperman on collection day. Yet it wasn’t bad while it lasted because he had the opportunity to stuff cotton in some pretty good pay phones along the paper route, and later collect the coins that didn’t fall through. And it was nice riding a bike around his route. Of course he had the finest, because why steal a cheap one when people were so careless with good ones?