Hard City

by Clark Howard

  Knowing she would be watching out the window, Richie hurried down the street until he rounded the corner on Kedzie. Out of sight he slowed down and lagged along at a spiritless pace that matched his mood. As he walked, he fingered the notes in his pocket. He knew what the notes said, at least in general. Chloe’s “medicine” was something called paregoric. Sometimes one of the white-coated men to whom he handed the note would open it and read it aloud. “Please send me a 25¢ bottle of paregoric to take for a toothache,” it would say—or a headache, or female cramps, or arthritis, or something else. His mother, Richie thought, had many things wrong with her. At first he had been troubled by that; he hadn’t minded going to get her medicine. But when the number of drugstores he had to visit continued to increase—there were now more than two dozen of them, some so far away he had to ride the streetcar—and when his mother never went to the doctor, and never complained about anything but “splitting headaches” and her “nerves,” Richie began to resent the daily chore to which he was subjected.

  Richie hated going into the drugstores. His mother had a daily routine planned for him that only required him to visit each drugstore once a week. Even so, he still got suspicious looks and at times was even questioned. “Weren’t you just in here for paregoric a few days ago?” Richie always said no, as his mother had coached him to do; he lied and said they had just moved to the neighborhood, and if necessary gave his pretend name.

  Mustering up as much mettle as he could, Richie entered the first drugstore of the day. The counter where they sold paregoric was in the rear; always in the rear, those suspicious white-coated men. At the pharmacy counter, the man in the white coat said, “Yes?” Richie handed him the note with the quarter wrapped in it. The man read it, glanced at him, grunted softly, and stepped behind a frosted glass partition. Momentarily he returned with a three-ounce bottle of whiskey-colored liquid, which he put in a small brown bag, twisting the top closed. Punching a key on the cash register, he cranked a handle on the side that rang a bell and opened the cash drawer. Tossing in the quarter, he handed Richie the bag and a dime change. Richie walked out, feeling the man’s eyes on him all the way.

  Outside, Richie began to dawdle even more; the next stop was the colored drugstore on Lake Street. It was one of half a dozen colored drugstores that Chloe sent him to; he dreaded and feared them all—not the places, but getting to them. Young colored boys who lived and played around the drugstores did not like pale little white boys walking their streets; Richie invariably was harangued, challenged, even chased. It was a lucky day that he made a trip to any of the colored drugstores without incident.

  No matter how slowly and reluctantly he moved, eventually Richie reached Lake Street. Once there, he immediately began to walk faster to get in and out of the neighborhood as quickly as possible. His eyes moved in constant scrutiny checking doorways, corners, empty lots, any place where the black kids might congregate. When a black adult passed him, Richie glanced away, never meeting his eyes. He kept to the outside of the sidewalk, where he could break and run.

  At the black drugstore he made the long walk to the rear and handed the second note to the black pharmacist. The man glanced at it, clamped a cigar between his teeth, and without looking reached under the counter and got a five-ounce bottle of paregoric. He wrapped it in white paper and sealed it with a strip of brown tape. Richie took the bottle and left the store without a word being spoken.

  Three black boys were waiting for him when he got back outside.

  “Say, boy, what you got there?” one of them asked, pointing at the wrapped bottle. He was no taller than Richie, but had muscles that Richie had never developed.

  “Medicine for my mother,” Richie said. He started walking. They walked along with him.

  “Wha’s the matter wif yo’ mamma?” the same boy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Richie shrugged. “She’s just sick and has to take medicine.”

  “She got the V.D.?”

  “What’s that?” Richie asked.

  “Wha’s that!” another of them exclaimed. “Shit, boy, don’t you know nuffin’? Tha’s the ven’ral disease.”

  “Womens gets that from too much fucking,” the third boy said.

  Richie felt his face turn hot. “That ain’t what my mother’s got.”

  One of them grabbed his arm and stopped him. “How you know?” he demanded. “If she ain’t got the V.D., what has she got?”

  “She’s got headaches,” Richie said. Twisting his arm loose, he resumed walking.

  “Say, lemme have a dime,” the muscular boy said, still walking next to him. “I pay you back nes’ time you come to get yo’ mamma’s medicine.”

  “I ain’t got a dime,” Richie said. “Maybe I’ll have one when I come back.” One hand was in his pocket, closed tightly around fifteen cents and the third note.

  “ ‘Lonzo, I think he’s lying!” another boy said. “I think he gots a dime!”

  Alonzo grabbed Richie’s arm and stopped him again. “If you lying to me, I gon’ whip yo’ ass.”

  “Okay,” Richie said with a pained expression on his face, “lemme see if I’ve got one.” Alonzo let go of his arm and Richie began to feel around inside his knickers pockets. Under the elevated tracks, traffic moved in both directions. On their side of the street, a large, canvas-covered produce truck cruised toward them. “Oh yeah, I think I got one,” Richie said. Alonzo and his two friends smiled. Richie smiled too. “Can I ask that policeman if I have to give it to you?” he said, pointing behind them. All three of their heads snapped around.

  Richie broke and ran. Darting between two parked cars, he bolted in front of the produce truck, hearing its tires screech, its horn sound sharply and angrily. Dodging an oncoming car from the other direction, he heard a second horn but no screech of tires. Reaching the opposite sidewalk, he glanced back to see a glowering Alonzo and his friends run around the back of the produce truck after him.

  Richie tore down the sidewalk and around the next corner. He was not as afraid now as he had been when they were close to him. He was a fast runner and he knew it; all he needed was a headstart and he could get away nearly every time. Picking up medicine for his mother, he had been chased before; only twice had he been caught and the money he was carrying taken away. When he arrived back home, frightened and crying, Chloe had paddled him with a shoe and then gone out herself to get her medicine. Later, when she returned and had taken it, she had made up to him with money for a Dixie Cup from the ice cream truck.

  The secret in getting away on the streets, Richie had learned, was turning corners. At the first alley he came to, he changed direction and entered it; several doors down, he turned into the gangway between two buildings and cut out to the street. Rushing down the street half a block, he crossed, went through another gangway, turned into another alley, and kept going. After two or three quick turns, he could not see Alonzo and his pursuers behind him. He kept going for several blocks anyway, just in case.

  When he was back in the comparative safety of a white neighborhood, Richie slowed down and headed toward Talman Street, glad that it was his last stop of the day.

  It had been Estelle who introduced Chloe to paregoric, during their first stay in Chicago before Richmond showed up. Estelle had learned of the opiate in one of the drugstores she worked in.

  “This stuff,” she praised to Chloe, “must be God’s way of trying to make up for menstrual cramps. I’m telling you, honey, a teaspoon full of paregoric and you won’t care what time of month it is. Be sure to mix a little sugar with it, though; it is the awfulest tasting stuff in the world. There’s a price to pay for everything, I guess.”

  At first Chloe only used paregoric like Estelle did: two or three days a month during her period. After the attack by Lew Grubb, she had begun using it daily to help her relax and get through the emotional anguish the rape had caused. Jack Smart had gently warned her about it. “You w-w-want to be careful of that st-stuff, honey. It can g-get to be a h
abit.” Gradually, as Jack ingratiated himself into her life, Chloe was able to cut back on the doses, not yet having used enough to become addicted. For a while she resumed taking it only for her period; Jack was the substitute that calmed her nerves.

  Then Chloe learned that Richmond was out. Out and looking for her. And apparently in Chicago. Unknown to Jack, as she urged him to get on with the plan to move to Gary and start a bowling alley, she again began to use the drug daily to steady her nerves. During her brief interlude with Richmond, which began at Jack Smart’s funeral and ended the following morning when they got off the train in Lamont and parted company, and during the subsequent ten days that she spent there, Chloe had no paregoric at all; it was not sold over the counter in Tennessee. Without it, and burdened by the growing realization that Richmond was not coming back, she became a fingernail-biting, lip-chewing, chain-smoking example of living jitters. From restless and apprehensive, she went to fearful and fidgety, and ended up, again, just plain scared and on the verge of hysteria. That was when she had packed up, taken Richie, and returned to Chicago.

  From the very beginning of her second tenure in the city, Chloe was determined to stick to more stable ground. She promised herself not to get involved with anyone like Jack Smart again, not, as a matter of fact, to even get involved with Estelle again, because, as much as she had always cared for Estelle, there was something about her that instinctively attracted the wrong kind of men. Married men, hustlers, drinkers, gamblers—Chloe wanted nothing to do with any of them. So determined was she to avoid future occasions of such involvement, that she found a furnished apartment for herself and Richie, moved in, and lived there a week before even contacting Estelle to let her know they were back. Estelle was hurt.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she lamented when she came to visit. “It’s almost like I’m being punished for doing something. Like I was being disowned.”

  “It’s not anything of the sort, ‘Stelle,” Chloe defended. “It’s just that I have to think of Richie now. He’s getting too big to be around the things that go on when you and I share a place—”

  “Things I do, you mean,” Estelle challenged. “Go on and say it.”

  “Things we both do. I was just as bad as you; only difference was I was just doing the things with Jack, and you had a whole string of men—”

  “I don’t have to put up with this,” Estelle simmered, rising from the kitchen table, taking her purse. “You are as much as calling me a slut, Chloe.”

  “I am not!” Chloe disclaimed.

  “I love that boy of yours like he was my very own and you know it. And you sit there and practically tell me that I’m not fit to be around him!”

  “Estelle, I didn’t say anything of the kind!”

  Richie heard it all from the living room where he was tracing a figure of Charles Altas from a magazine ad and drawing Buck Jones Western garb on it. Arguments between Chloe and Estelle usually did not last long, but this one, Richie eventually found out, did. Chloe’s decision not to live in the same apartment with Estelle any longer apparently cut her friend far more deeply than Chloe had expected it would. Chloe had expected Estelle to be peeved; in fact, Estelle was emotionally mangled. She fled the apartment in tears and it was months before she and Chloe spoke again.

  Chloe resumed taking daily doses of paregoric as soon as she got back to Chicago. She told herself that she was only taking it to calm her nerves and give her a steady approach to the responsibilities she had to face. She had no one on whom to depend now but herself, but she was firmly resolved that she would be smart enough and strong enough—for her and Richie. No one had ever thought she could do anything on her own, not her mother, not Richmond, not Jack, not even Estelle. Well, she would show them. She would show them all. She didn’t need anything or anybody.

  Except the paregoric.

  When Richie got back home with the three bottles, Chloe patted him on the head and gave him a nickel. “Did you have any trouble?” she asked.

  “No.” Telling her about Alonzo and the other colored kids chasing him would have done no good. The one time he did tell her, his mother had said, “Well, sugar, you’re just going to have to learn to take care of yourself, that’s all there is to it. Sometimes it’s a cruel world.” Now she nudged him toward the door. “You run on down to the candy store now and spend your nickel. I have to take my medicine now and lie down for a while. This headache is about to drive me crazy.”

  Richie left the apartment and went down to Kedzie Avenue again. The candy store was on the corner across from Biedler Elementary, where he attended second grade. He had gone to the first grade at Charleston Elementary, then Drake. Whenever his mother moved them to a new apartment, he usually had to transfer to a different school. He hated it. A new school meant a new schoolyard and new kids to test first his courage, then push him around for a week or so until they got tired of the sport, after which they would leave him alone most of the time except for daily ridicule and an occasional shove.

  In fact, next to going for his mother’s medicine, the thing Richie hated most was moving, which they did every couple of months. It would be after his mother had fallen behind in the rent and the landlord had come around with a final warning. When that happened, they usually moved out that night.

  At the candy store, Richie bought a pack of Cowboy Heroes gum. Inside the waxy wrapper was a round, flat piece of pink chewing gum stamped with an outline of a mounted cowboy. Under the gum was a pasteboard card, also round, which was the real reason for the purchase. On the face of the card, in color, was a cowboy movie hero; on the back a partial list of movies and serials in which he had starred, as well as other essential information, such as the name of his horse. The cards were notched so that by the use of rubber bands they could be strung together into a belt of sorts, or a bandolier to wear across the chest. Half the boys of Richie’s age in the neighborhood were wearing them.

  As soon as he got out of the candy store, Richie tore off the wrapper to look at his new card. It was a smiling, white-hatted Tom Tyler. “Goddamn son of a bitch,” Richie said to himself, using the swear words he was most familiar with. It was his third Tom Tyler in a row. Turning his head, he glared through the window at the candy store owner. “Goddamn dirty son of a bitch,” he swore at him, certain it was somehow the man’s fault. He wondered if the packs were sorted and stacked in some special way so that a kid would get a lot of the same ones and have to keep buying and buying. There were twelve different cowboy heroes in a set; so far, Richie had got only five of them: Tom Tyler, Bob Steele, George O’Brien, Charles Starrett, and Johnny Mack Brown. He had bought at least twenty, and got only five cowboy heroes. All the others had been duplicates. The one he wanted, of course, was Buck Jones. He would have traded every card he had for one Buck Jones.

  Stuffing the gum into his mouth, the card into his pocket, and throwing the wrapper into the gutter, Richie walked slowly back home. When he got there, his mother, as he knew she would be after taking her medicine, was feeling very good: smiling, soft-spoken, solicitous. “Sugar, would you like a nice hamburger for supper tonight? And some fried potatoes? And a nice bowl of tomato soup? I’m going to fix your supper now and let you eat while you’re listening to your radio shows. Then I’ve got a surprise for you. Guess who’s coming over to see us tonight? Helen’s little sister. Dorothy—remember her? From when we lived on Walnut Street. When Helen used to take care of you sometimes, she’d take you and Dorothy to the Kedzie Annex. Well, Dorothy’s as old now as Helen was then, and she’s coming over to stay with you tonight while I go out.”

  “Go out where?” Richie wanted to know.

  “Oh, just for some Chinese food maybe, and to a picture show.”

  “Who with?”

  “A real nice fellow I met. His name’s John and he’s from Tennessee, just like us. I met him at the diner.” Chloe worked from seven to three as a waitress at Denny’s Diner, about eight blocks from where they lived. “He works the early shif
t at a tool-and-die plant across the street and stops in for pie and coffee every day at two when he gets off. We’ve been talking for a couple of weeks, ever since it came up that we’re both from Tennessee. ’Course, he’s from east Tennessee and we’re from west Tennessee, but it’s still a coincidence. Anyway, he asked me out tonight for Chinese. That’s why I’m feeding you supper early.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Go on now and listen to your shows. When supper’s ready, we can move the radio in here.”

  Sullenly, Richie turned on the radio and stretched out on the floor with his head under the table. But he did not listen to the radio; he lay there staring up at the underside of the table, wondering if Dorothy was going to be as mean to him as Helen had been.

  Wondering if she would slap him in the face.

  And threaten to cut off his thing.

  Dorothy, like her sister, had always taunted him about not having a father. She was probably going to be very glad to find out that he still did not have one.

  Goddamn him, Richie thought of his father. Goddamn the dirty son of a bitch.

  Goddamn him for not being there.

  20

  When Richie met John Eaton, his mother’s new boyfriend, he found, to his chagrin, that he immediately liked the burly, easygoing Southerner.

  Chloe invited John over for supper one night and when he came in, she said, “Johnny, this is my little boy, Richie.” To Richie, who was lying on the floor looking at the latest Action comic book, she said, “Sugar, this is Johnny. I told you about him, remember?” She nudged Richie with her shoe. He looked up at the fixed smile on her face. “Get off the floor, sugar, and meet Johnny.”

  Richie rose to stand before a big, muscular man with a round, somewhat bland face and curly black hair that was already well receded. Looking down at him, Johnny stuck out a beefy hand and said, “Shake, partner.”