Runaway
Page 15
“Man, I could use some,” he said.
The big man laughed again and reached out for Johnny’s arm. He tried to pull away, but he wasn’t quick enough, and he winced in pain, and when the strangled cry came from his throat, the big man looked at him curiously.
“You hurt, huh, kid?” he asked. There was no sympathy in his voice. There was, instead, a crafty sound, as if the man had made a very valuable discovery and was putting it away in a deep, black satchel.
“Come on,” he said, his voice oily now. “We’ll get you that java.”
They started up the steps together, the man walking several paces behind Johnny. When they reached the third floor, he took Johnny’s elbow and said, “This way, kid.”
Johnny peered into the darkness. He could see a glow in one corner of the room, and he could make out the muted hum of voices coming from that corner. The heavy mats were stacked all around the room, and he glanced at these briefly and then turned his attention back to the big man. The man led him to the circle of men huddled in the corner of the huge, concrete-floored room. An electric grill was plugged into an outlet, and a battered coffeepot rested on the glowing orange coils. Johnny looked at the circle of bearded faces, four men all told, four white men, five counting the big man who’d led him to the group. The men were smiling, but there was no mirth on their faces.
“Who you brung for dinner, Bugs?” one of the men asked.
“A nice young coon,” the big man answered. “Hurt his poor little arm, though, didn’t you, sonny?”
The eyes of the men fled to the bulkiness of the bandage under the shirt. He tried to move his right arm, but the eyes followed the movement and calculated the size of the bandage, and then shifted to his face, the mouths still smiling, but the smile never reaching those calculating eyes.
“Didn’t you, punk?” Bugs asked. “Didn’t you hurt your arm?”
Johnny wet his lips. “Yeah, I … I got cut.” He didn’t like the sound of the conversation, and he knew what “punk” meant in prison jargon, because he knew enough guys who’d been in and out of Riker’s Island.
“Well, now, that’s too bad, punk,” one of the men in the circle said. “Now, that’s too bad you got a cut on your arm.”
“Maybe we got a nurse here can fix it up,” another man said.
“Sure, we got a lot of nurses here, kid. We’ll fix you up fine, kid. Hey, how about a cup of coffee for the coon?”
He wasn’t sure now. He wasn’t sure what they meant, and he wasn’t sure whether they intended him harm or whether they were giving him sanctuary. He knew only that there were five of them, all white, and that he had only one good arm.
One of the men put a spoon into the pot and began stirring the coffee. Johnny watched him, saying nothing.
“How’d you hit on this place, punk?” Bugs asked.
“I just knew it, that’s all.”
“Oh? You from the neighborhood?”
“Harlem,” Johnny said.
“Oh? A little far east, ain’t you?”
“I guess,” Johnny said.
“Well, don’t you worry, kid. You come to the right place, didn’t he, fellers?”
“He come to the right place, all right,” one of the men in the circle said.
“You’re just what we been needin’,” another man put in.
Bugs chuckled. “Yessir, it was real lucky, you coming here. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
One of the men poured the coffee into a tin cup, and the strong aroma reached Johnny’s nostrils, clung there. He wanted that coffee very badly, he wanted it almost desperately. There was an empty hole in his stomach, and he thought again of how little he’d eaten since he began running, and the hole seemed to enlarge itself. The man handed the cup to Bugs, and the steam rose in the orange glow of the grill, curling up around his smiling face.
“Harry makes a good cup of coffee,” Bugs said. “Harry should have been somebody’s wife, eh, Harry?” Bugs winked at the other men, and Johnny’s eyes watched the circle. He spotted Harry then, a skinny guy with hardly any beard, a skinny guy with frightened eyes and a narrow mouth. Harry winced when Bugs spoke, and then he shrank farther back out of the circle.
“No more now,” he said pleadingly, “huh Bugs? No more now?” He looked hopefully to Johnny, and Johnny felt the panic rise in him again, and he counted the men once more. Five of them. That hadn’t changed. Not one bit, it hadn’t.
“You can still make our coffee, can’t you, Harry?” Bugs asked tenderly. “Now you can still do that for us, can’t you, boy?”
“Sure,” Harry said, almost eagerly, smiling. “Sure, Bugs. You know that.”
“Makes a good cup of coffee,” Bugs said, facing Johnny squarely now. “You want the coffee, punk?”
“I’d like a cup,” Johnny said warily.
“Well,” Bugs said, “he’d like a cup, fellers.”
“Go on, Bugs, give it to him.”
“Oh, now, wait a minute, just wait a minute. I mean, coffee is coffee, now ain’t it? You got the money to pay for this, punk?”
Maybe that was it. Maybe all they wanted was money.
“No,” Johnny lied. “I’m broke.”
“Well, now, ain’t that a shame?” Bugs said, winking again at the other men.
“That’s a real shame,” one of the men in the circle said.
“My heart bleeds for the punk.”
They sat around the orange coils, grinning like demons, leaning forward eagerly now, enjoying the way Bugs was handling this.
“How you ’spect to get any coffee unless you pay for it?” Bugs asked. “Coffee don’t grow on trees, now.”
“I guess not,” Johnny said slowly. “Forget the coffee. I’ll do without it.”
“Aw, you hurt the punk’s feelings, Bugs,” one of the men said.
“Well, I didn’t mean to do that. I sure didn’t mean to do that.”
“But you did, Bugs. Look at how he’s sulkin’ there.”
“Now, now,” Bugs said, “no need to take that attitude, is there, boys? We’ll let you have the coffee, won’t we, boys?”
“Sure, Bugs,” one of the men said. “Hell, the punk don’t need no money.”
“That money you use up in Harlem prolly wouldn’t be no good here, anyway.”
“Why, sure,” Bugs said. “Naw, you don’t need no money, punk. We willing to barter. You know how to horse-trade, punk?”
“I don’t want the coffee,” Johnny said firmly. He was already figuring how he’d make his break, because he knew a break was in the cards, and the way the cards were falling, he’d have to make the break soon. The orange glow of the grill was the only light in the room, that and the feeble moonlight that came through the window. He calculated this, and he watched the other men, all seated crosslegged like Indians. They’d have a tough time getting up once the fireworks started, especially in the dark. He had one guy to worry about, and that guy was Bugs, and that guy was big, and that guy didn’t get the name Bugs for nothing. There was a “Bugs” in Harlem, too, and the kid was as loony as April Fool’s Day.
“Come on, punk,” Bugs said. “Take the coffee.”
“I don’t want it,” Johnny said.
“You see?” one of the men said. “You hurt his feelings.”
“Aw, you take the coffee,” Bugs said. “Here, punk, take the coffee. You drink it and get nice and warm, and then we’ll see about paying for it. Go ahead, kid.”
“Go ahead, kid,” Harry said eagerly, thankful for the substitute Johnny had presented. “Go ahead, kid, drink it.”
Johnny wet his lips and moved closer to the glowing grill. Bugs eyed him steadily, a stupid, vacuous smile on his face.
“All right,” Johnny said nervously. “Give me the cup and I will.”
Bugs extended the steaming tin cup. “That’s a good little punk,” he said. “That’s the way we like it. No arguments. Now go ahead and drink your coffee, punk. Drink it all down fine. Go ahead, punk.”
He threw the coffee into Bug’s face, lashing out with his left hand. He heard Bugs scream as the hot liquid scalded him, and then Johnny’s foot lashed out for the grill, kicking wildly at it, hooking the metal under the glowing coils. The grill leaped into the air like a flashing comet, hung suspended at the end of its wire, and then the wire pulled free of the outlet, and the grill plunged down, and another man screamed. The grill glowed hot for an instant, with the man still screaming so that Johnny knew he’d been burned, too, and then the orange glow began to dwindle and the coils turned pale.
He did not hang around for the Technicolor exhibit. He started to run.
He passed Bugs, and Bugs screamed and grabbed for his right arm. He felt the big man’s fingers close just below the elbow, and he opened his mouth, but his own scream was drowned in the bedlam around him. He threw his fist at Bugs’s face, but the man clung to his arm, and he felt the tightening fingers there, felt the cut rip open in protest. He began to get weak. He felt his head spinning, and he kept throwing his left fist at Bugs’s face, but Bugs would not let go. The arm felt as if it would fall off now. He knew he had to do something. The other men were getting to their feet now.
He kicked out. He brought his foot up into Bugs’s groin, and Bugs let out a yell, and then the fingers magically dropped from Johnny’s arm. He staggered across the room, wondering if he’d make it. He heard Bugs yelling wildly behind him, and he heard footsteps, and he could hear the low moaning of the man who’d been burned by the kicked grill. He headed for the steps, his arm throbbing and aching, with the sounds angry behind him, the footsteps thudding against the hard floor. His own feet hit the iron rungs of the steps, and he started down, hearing the clattering, resounding footsteps above him, clanking down the steps, like the distorted sounds in a terrible nightmare, down, down to the main floor and then across the darkened room with the piled dusty furniture and the shouts and cries behind him all the way. He leaped up for the window and jimmied it open, and then shoved the loose bar aside.
“I’ll kill that black bastard!” he heard Bugs shout, but he was already outside and sprinting for the fence. He jumped up, forced to use both arms, and he saw the wild blood streak he left on the fence, and that was when he knew his arm had started bleeding again. He panicked for a moment, and then he was over the fence and dropping to the sidewalk, just as Bugs squeezed through the loose bar in the window.
He was tired, very tired. His arm hurt like hell now, and his heart exploded against his rib cage, and he knew he could not risk a prolonged chase with Bugs behind him, because the bastard would surely catch him.
He was at the corner now, and Bugs still hadn’t reached the fence. He spotted the manhole, and he ran for it quickly, stooping down and expertly prying open the lid with his fingers. He’d been in manholes before. He’d been in them when the kids used to play stickball, and a ball rolled down the sewer and the only way to get it was by prying open the manhole cover and catching it before it got washed away to the river.
He was in the manhole now, and he slid the cover back in place, feeling it wedge firmly in the caked dirt, soundlessly settling back into position. He clung to the iron brackets set into the wall of the sewer, and he could hear the rush of water far below him where the sewer elbowed into the pipes. There was noise above him, the noise of feet tramping on the iron lid of the manhole. He held his breath because there was no place to go from here, no place at all.
The footsteps clattered overhead, and the iron lid rattled, and then the footsteps were gone. He waited until he heard more footsteps, figuring them to belong to the other vags who’d been with Bugs. And finally there was no sound overhead any more.
He was safe. They didn’t realize he’d ducked into the manhole. They were probably scouting Third Avenue for him now, and they’d give up when they figured they’d lost him.
To play it doubly sure, he edged his way deeper into the sewer, holding to the iron brackets with his good hand. The stench of garbage and filthy water and the bowel movements of a giant metropolis reached up to caress his nostrils. He was tempted to move up close to the lid again, but it was darker down below, and if someone did lift the lid, chances were he wouldn’t be seen if he went deeper.
The walls around him were slimy and wet, and the stink was all around him, like a soggy, vile blanket that smothered him. He felt nauseous, and he didn’t know whether the nausea came from the dripping slime of the sewer or his dripping arm, and he remembered then that his arm was bleeding again.
He clung to the brackets, and he watched the blood spread on the bandage, and he shook his head wearily and wondered what he’d done with the orange-crate stick he’d used for a tourniquet so long ago, so goddamned long ago.
But at least he was safe here, and Bugs and the boys were upstairs. Upstairs. The thought frightened him a little. He descended deeper in the manhole until the elbow of the sewer was just beneath his feet, and he could hear the rush of water loud beneath him.
He was very weary, more weary than he’d been in all his life. The weight of the entire city seemed to press down on him, as if all the concrete and steel were concentrated on this one hole in the asphalt, determined to crush it and him into the core of the earth.
He hooked his left arm onto one of the brackets, and he hung there like a Christ with one arm free. The free arm dangled at his right side, the bandage soaked through now, the blood running down and dropping into the rushing water below.
Drop by drop it hit the slimy surface of the brown water while Johnny hung from the rusted iron bracket, praying that no one would lift the manhole cover, wondering how long it would be before he could go up again. Drop by drop the blood mingled with the brown water, flowed into the elbow where manhole joined sewer pipe, rushed toward the river.
And the rat clinging to the rotted orange crate lodged in the sewer pipe turned glittering bright eyes toward the manhole opening, and his nostrils twitched as he smelled blood. His teeth gnashed together an instant before he plunged into the water and swam toward the source of the blood.
Fourteen
She tried to see beneath the skin of Harlem.
She tried to take her mind off the neons that tinted the night sky. She went up Beale Street, 133rd between Seventh and Lenox, the street that had been called Jungle Alley in the 1920s, the roaring show place that was supposed to contain the heart of Harlem, a phony gaudy street set up for those who had the loot. The old spots were gone now, all of them—the Nest, Mexico’s, Pod’s, and Jerry’s. She stopped in at Dickie Wells’s place, but Johnny wasn’t there.
And then she hit all the bars, the big bars and the little ones, the ones with small combos and the ones with jukeboxes, and the ones with strippers and the ones without. She ignored the clink of glasses and the sounds of music. She studied the faces, and she knew there were about 918,000 Negroes in Harlem, more or less, and she knew that Johnny was one of them, and so she studied the faces. And because she studied the faces with such scrutiny, and because the opening of her coat occasionally revealed the long curve of her flank, she was mistaken for something else, and she got an offer in almost every bar she hit. She ignored the offers when she could. In one bar on Seventh, a man pulled her down onto his lap and thrust his hand under her coat, surprised when he found a silken robe and an almost nonexistent bra, more surprised when he felt the sting of her hand on his face.
The music gave her a background. The music was the music of a dock hand singing to the moon on a New Orleans wharf. The music was the lonesome wail of a cotton-picker, the plaintive cry of a fugitive slave. The music was the blues, and the music was low and soft, or high and hot, the jazz that started with a black man’s horn, the bop that flowed from ten tan fingers. She ignored the music. She was looking under the music, and under the sights and the sounds and the smells, the way someone will look under a rug for a missing coin.
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br /> And when she’d covered all the bars she knew, and all the bars she didn’t know, she began hitting the diners and the all-night luncheonettes, and a few of the drugstores that were open. And she listened to the talk, but the talk did not penetrate because she was looking and not listening.
“This cat, he the end, man. He gi’ me the skin, an’ then he say, ‘Boy, lay a deuce on me, I hungry.’ I tell him to cut out, ’fore I slit him ear to ear, an’ man, he disappear.”
She looked, and she did not listen.
“What kind of a girl do you take me for, Jase?”
“Just a nice girl, that’s all. A nice girl I’d like to take home to Mother. Right this minute.”
“You ain’t got no mother, Jase, and you know it.”
She smelled the coffee, and she saw her reflection in the polished urns, and she saw the deep brown liquid spilling from the spouts.
“This number’s a sure thing, Joe, I know it.”
“There ain’t no number’s a sure thing.”
“This one is boy. It’s on my Social Security card, an’ it’s on my girl’s apartment door. Now if that ain’t a sure thing, you tell me what is.”
“Ain’t nothin’ sure but death and taxes.”
She was cold. She should have put more on. But she walked, and she opened doors, and she looked, and she closed doors, and she walked again, because somewhere in Harlem there was Johnny.
“You missed the whole point what he was talkin’ about.”
“I heard him just the same as you did.”
“He wasn’t sayin’ we should become communists. You hear him once mention communism?”
“No, he was too smart for that.”
“He was only sayin’ we shouldn’t spit on Russia. That’s what he was sayin’. He was sayin’ Russia was our salvation, that’s all.”
“And that ain’t communism, huh? Man, you don’t know yo’ ass from yo’ elbow when it comes to politics.”
“I listened to as many of these guys as you did.”
“But you always miss the point. I can spot a communist at sixty paces. I can smell the bastards. Even their soapboxes are stamped, ‘Made in USSR.’”