Entrapment and Other Writings

  “If you deserved it, it wouldn’t be punishment,” the tougher party tells.

  “Then let me get it all and be done. Let me come to the end of suffering then.”

  The stronger cat just scorns all that.

  It goes and it comes, it creeps or it runs, there is no end and it’s never done.

  “Then why just dole it? Let me have it all at once,” the weak cat begs.

  “If you could see an end it wouldn’t be punishment.”

  It’s all so useless. It’s nothing like sleep.

  Once my eyes cleared and I saw Daddy plain; he was watching the light beyond the shade, waiting for the dark to come down. “Here I am,” I could guess what he was thinking, “without a penny, without a friend. And a W on my forehead. If I get picked up it’ll be a long deal before us two fools sleep side by side again. Who would fix a poor broad in a rented bed then?”

  “Daddy,” I whispered to him, “I got too many worries to go through with this.”

  He tried to give me something by mouth but my lips felt pebbly. I spit it all out. Daddy ought to have known better than that. Your mouth doesn’t want it, it’s your vein crying out. You can’t ease a vein habit by mouth. Not even with graham crackers.

  I felt him unstrapping my Longine. “You’re getting it all spittly,” he told me. I tried to swing my arm but I was too weak.

  I must have dozed, because I heard Daddy’s voice near at hand; yet he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking on the phone.

  “What time can my wife and I catch a bus to Shawneetown, sir? We can’t go directly? Nearest stop is Morganfield? But are you certain it won’t be overcrowded, sir? I don’t mind for myself, but I’m traveling with my wife and little girl. I want them to be rested when we get home. Yes, sir—that’s the reason we prefer traveling by Greyhound, sir. O no sir, not by far, I should say this isn’t our first trip by Greyhound. ‘We know we’ll travel in comfort when we take Greyhound’ is how the little woman puts it. Our little girl prefers Greyhound too. ‘And leave the driving to them, Daddy’ is how our little girl puts it.”

  I opened one eye.

  It seemed a peculiar time to be putting me on.

  But there he was, making all arrangements.

  I was too tired to follow. He just went on and on. I didn’t hear him hang up and when I came around again he seemed to have cancelled with Greyhound.

  “Bluebird Lines? What time is a bus available to Shawneetown, sir? Shawneetown, Illinois, yes sir. No, we don’t want to charter it, there are only the three of us—my wife, little girl, and myself. I don’t mind standing up myself—I’d stand up all the way, it wouldn’t bother me in the least. But I have to think of my wife and little girl. You’re sure it won’t be overcrowded? Plenty of seats for everybody? I see. Yes, one next to the window—for the little girl, of course.” He hung up.

  Grey is for Greyhound. Blue is for Bluebird. But what color is a pimp who thinks it’s funny to make comical phone calls over a dead telephone when his old lady is preparing to die for lack of a fix?

  He came over to the bed. He touched my hair and said “Lay back, Beth-Mary.” So I knew he’d give up trying to amuse me. “Just rest. Your Little Daddy’s with you.”

  My Little Daddy’s with me alright. The Jesus God, what can be said of a man who can even make a failure of pimping? There we were with movie directors putting hundred-dollar-bills in my hair, so faggy they didn’t even mind Daddy coming along, having the both of us out on a yacht in The Bay; him in clothes so classy he called himself a “technical advisor” whatever that may mean. And me so cute they used to brag about me all over the boat.

  Then he has to get on Stuff and I have to get on because he’s on. How do you like that for a man who once had good sense? Honest to God, when I think of the silk shirts, the lounging pajamas, the watches I wore and the French-heel shoes, the black lace undies and smoking jackets, the dresses I looked like an actress in—all down the drain like the sixteen-gauge hype you’d fixed with.

  All gone. All down.

  “You’re still my one true tiger, Beth-Mary,” he told me with his hand still on my hair.

  I felt like his one Old Faithful. I didn’t feel like nobody’s tiger. I just felt bowed.

  Poor pimp, he does his best.

  “Let me take your Longine now, Sweetheart,” he told me, “else you’ll crack the crystal when you start to swing.”

  “Put it where I can see it,” I asked him and he strapped it onto a handle of the bureau. I could see the shiny golden circle hanging even though I couldn’t see the time. At least I knew where time was to be had.

  “Baby,” he told me, “you got the worst part over.”

  Then the big sick hit me bigger and sicker than before.

  It comes on real quiet, like nabbers at work—the only thing that’s something deep inside you and something far outside, too. The only thing that feels so soft that hits so hard. The only thing that’s more like nabbers at work than nabbers at work.

  Nabs holding both your arms—then letting you pull loose just to see where you’ll hide. There’s a key in your door but it won’t turn. Nabbers coming down both sides trying all doors—Get your back flat against the wall. Maybe they won’t try this door at all. Maybe they’ll never find you.

  They’re trying it, they’re telling our name doorway to door—“Beth-Mary Kindred. Beth-Mary Kindred. Beth-Mary”—I saw my Daddy’s face, so dear, so sort of pulled with care—“Beth-Mary, I’m right here beside you.”

  Then I knew nabbers at work had just been sounds inside my fevery ears.

  Spook-docs and croakers, bug-docs and such, meatballs and matrons, nurses and all, there’s not one cares whether you live or you die. For not one knows what true suffering is. But Daddy who stayed on my side and beside me that sorriest day of any, you know. And you’re the onliest one who knows.

  People like to say a pimp is a crime and a shame. But who’s the one friend a hustling broad’s got? Who’s the one who cuts in, bold as can be, when Nab comes to take you? Who puts down that real soft rap only you can hear to let you know your time is up and is everything alright in there Baby? And when a trick says, “Where’s the twenty I had in my wallet?”—who’s the one he got to see? Who’s the one don’t let you get trapped with the monstering kind?

  When ten o’clock in the morning is dead of night, who still keeps watch over you?

  “What time is it Daddy?” I asked him.

  “Time to get off the wild side, Beth-Mary,” he told me like he’d found out for himself at last. Then just set on. So pale, so wan.

  I turned my head toward him so’s he’d know I was with him.

  “Is it getting a little darker, Christian?”

  “It’s nigh to dark, Beth-Mary.”

  All I could do was touch his wan hand. My fingers were too weak to hold it. Yet he took it into mine and pressed my palm to let me know.

  “Baby,” he told me, “I’m sorry for what I done to you on South San Pedro Street.”

  And said it so low, poor just-as-if-macker, as though I were part of his very heart still. That I heard it clear as little bells.

  I must have slept then for a spell, because I dreamed I was buying seeds for some flower that blooms under water and when I woke it was raining. And someone kept humming from ever so far. When the rain stopped the little hum stopped. And all was wondrous still. When the rain began the hum began, from ever so far I could scarcely hear.

  “Is that you humming, Daddy?” I asked.

  Nobody answered. Nobody was near. The hum came closer—a little girl’s humming. How could such a tiny hum come from so terribly far?

  “You need sleep, Mother,” she said my name. Sick as I was, my heart sank yet farther.

  I lay on my pillow, how long I can’t tell. After a time I noticed my Longine was gone. But it was all one by then.

  I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that Christian was gone too. I didn’t care, one way nor another.

  I di
dn’t care for anything.

  I was the one the law had wanted all along.

  Then I heard his step.

  My Daddy’s step way down. Then the key turned in the lock and his voice came to me—

  “Are you going to sleep all day, Little Baby?”

  “Not if Little Daddy is going to make me well,” went through my mind; but I was too weak to say it. All I knew, by his voice, was that he had scored. I felt myself getting well before I could tell where he was at. Then I felt his arm holding me up and the slow press of the needle—he hardly teased me at all this time—though that’s Daddy’s pleasure and I don’t begrudge him—he hit me then in a way no doctor or nurse on earth ever could. It takes a junkie to fix a junkie. And nobody knows how to fix you like your own Little Daddy. Little orange fires began to glow deep inside me. I felt myself getting warm.

  “Don’t try to sit up yet, Little Baby”—and when he said that I saw him clear. I saw my own Little Daddy’s face. My onliest Little Daddy. His face so old so young. So sort of pulled with care. He dried my nose and mouth and patted me with a warm damp rag. Then he dried me ever so gentle. Nobody can gentle me like my Little Daddy.

  “You’re the best connection a working girl ever had,” I told him then.

  “Don’t try to talk yet, Little Baby,” he told me. “We’ll have good times again—This is the old Christy talking now.”

  He didn’t look like the old Christy. Not by far. I remembered the old Christy.

  Yet I’ve tried to live without him and it’s like living without a heart at all.

  How old was I when he came past looking so young yet old? Seventeen? I was needing someone to lean on.

  “I want to get up, Christian,” I told him again. He brought me my slip and turned his head while I dressed. When I looked in the bathroom mirror I gave a bit of a jump to see how thin my face had got. Still, it had a bit of color now. I added a little more.

  “I’m ready to go to work,” I told him when I came out.

  “Sit down, Beth-Mary,” he told me, “I don’t know whether you’re ready or not.”

  I thought he meant I wasn’t strong enough yet. But that wasn’t it at all.

  “We won’t make a bankroll tricking bums,” he let me know.

  I felt his drift. Yet I wasn’t sure.

  “Is there some other kind of trick?”

  He got up and walked around. Daddy had something on his mind.

  “It’s time to go the kayo route, Baby,” he told me.

  “You didn’t want that route in LA,” I reminded him. “How come you want to go it now?”

  “Different circumstances,” he told me.

  “What different circumstances?” I wanted to know.

  “Look around you, Beth-Mary. Just look around you.”

  I looked around. I looked at the bed still damp with sweat and the walls the brick was showing through; the wash-basin like something stole off a junk-wagon and four inches of alley-window that gave down the last of day.

  “I see what you mean, Little Daddy,” I told him. “Where you going to get the prescription?”

  “A place called the Southsea. A bartender name of Ram.”

  “You’ve been covering a lot of ground, Christian,” I praised him. “If we score do I get back my Longine?”

  I remember a time he would have clobbered me for checking him like that. Now he grinned weak-like.

  “Get your handbag,” he told me, “I want you to meet some classy people.”

  “What about my Longine, Daddy,” I made bold to press him harder.

  Then he pulled his wallet and flashed me the pawn ticket.

  “You keep checking me out,” he warned me, “next time I’ll hock you.”

  “I just wanted to know whether you’d sold it or hocked it,” I let him know.

  And out we went, down the stairs and onto the street.

  Just two fools leaning on each other.

  3. O Shining City Seen of John

  O Shining City Seen of John I thought, if that country fool of mine has but the country sense to phone Enright, that he can keep the chubby if he’ll go our bond and forget who threw the shot-glass, at least one of us can make the street and it had best be me.

  If she don’t we’re both going to get too sick to call for help on anyone but God, and God can’t help you from behind a solid door. The solid door is where they lock you when you deny being a user but they know you’re one all the same. It’s part of the treatment, I’ve had it before.

  That’s why I was keeping an eye on that string of light between the floor and the door. Because that time we were busted in LA and they wouldn’t let Beth see me, she rolled a cigarette under my door to let me know she was making the street. For a country fool to get city-smart takes but five days in Los Angeles.

  Poor piece of trade who needed someone strong to lean on—Who’ll you lean on now if your Little Daddy gets time? What’ll you do when the dolaphine gives out? Ride Trailways to Shawneetown?

  Who do you think’ll be at the station to meet you? The Shawneetown Parent Teachers Association? I doubt you’ll be able to score for your midnight fix at the Shawneetown General Store, Beth-Mary.

  Face up to it, Little Baby: you were born unfit to be anybody’s mother and you’re unfit yet.

  Where Can I get a Good Piece of Tale, some fool had scratched in yellow chalk, on the wall just over my head. I couldn’t think of an answer.

  I didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel bad. Just a little low in mind for knowing I was never going to play the clarinet after all.

  “But Daddy”—the fool complained after I told her I’d seen the clarinet, marked down to twenty bucks, in the hockshop window—“Daddy, how do you know that you can play that thing right off?”

  “How’m I going to learn to play the licorice-stick if I don’t have a licorice-stick, Beth-Mary?” I tried cold reason on her. Then I forgot about the licorice-stick because she started putting on her chubby.

  “Hang that right back up,” I told her. In no uncertain term.

  Right off she has a story—she needs it to keep the wind off her.

  “You’ll do better to worry about the law than the wind, Little Baby,” is what I told her then.

  There’s no wind blows that that broad fears. All she had in mind was showing the chubby off in front of Enright’s other hookers, especially that one calls herself Zaza. Had Beth-Mary had so much as a pearly-grain of sense she’d know that I was only leading the poor broad on.

  “No!” I told Beth-Mary—“No, Little Baby, you don’t need a furpiece to walk half a city block. Now hang it back up like I told you.”

  “But it’s so cold, Little Daddy, the way the wind cuts right at you I might catch my death!”

  “You have a greater chance of catching your death setting at a bar with that thing wrapped around you, whisking in and out of the cold,” I was forced to point out to her.

  “I wouldn’t wear it in the bar, Little Daddy—I’d take it off till it was time to leave.”

  Allowances have to be made for persons unsettled in the head. Though just when you think Beth-Mary has surely lost one of her marbles, she’ll pull something that makes you think she’s got one extra.

  “Little Baby,” I asked her, getting her down on the bed beside me and one arm around her chubby, “you remember how we agreed your Little Daddy would take care of you in the big things if you took care of Little Daddy in the little ones?”

  I worked the chubby off one shoulder.

  “I never agreed,” she told me; hunching her other shoulder.

  “I agreed for you,” I had to remind her.

  “But Daddy,”—she began trying to pull away from me—“all I want is to wear my own very own mink chubby to work. Why can’t that be one of the little things?”

  “Because if you get busted on that mink in Enright’s, Enright is in trouble too. And that makes it one of the big things.”

  “But Daddy, Enright don’t even know it’s a c
redit-card chubby.”

  “And how do you know the next trick sits down beside you in Enright’s isn’t from the pawnshop detail, looking for that very coat you’ve just thrown across the bar?”

  “I’d put on the coat so’s he couldn’t see the label.”

  “For God’s sake, Beth-Mary, this cop isn’t some two-hundred-pound flatfoot wearin’ a badge and revolver. He’s a long-hair cat wearing glasses, with a book under his arm.”

  “I’d know he was law all the same, Daddy.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’d just know, Daddy, that’s all. I’d just know.”

  “You’d just know, would you? And what if you weren’t even there but he came in with your description to Enright and was waiting for you with a warrant?”

  “Enright wouldn’t snitch, Daddy.”

  “Beth-Mary, why take risks when everything is about to be perfect? As soon as I’ve mastered the clarinet we’ll both get off stuff and send for the baby.”

  She pitched herself face-down across the bed with her shoulders shaking.

  I kicked the mink onto the floor. I never should have mentioned the baby.

  I let her sob for a while then pulled her up beside me and dabbed her eyes with Kleenex from her handbag. It wasn’t too clean because she’d been carrying her needle in it. She dry-sobbed, then got control.

  “What good are things, Daddy?” she asked me then.

  “What good are what things, Beth-Mary?”

  “Having a chubby I don’t get to wear even. What good is that? Hassling every freaky old man on West Madison. What good is that? Just to stay out of jail? What good is staying out of jail? What good is anything, Daddy?”

  It was getting close to her fix-time that was clear.

  “Daddy,” she told me after a while, “I need rest,” and put her head on my shoulder.

  It was getting dark and she hadn’t turned a trick for twenty hours. The telephone wires across the window took on light from the arc-lamp and swung a little in the wind. I let her nod off against me for five minutes by her Longine. “Beth-Mary,” I told her too low for her to hear, “I’m sorry I made a whore out of you.” Then I tied her green Babushka under her chin and got her to her feet. She wasn’t yet full awake, fumbling at the bow I’d just made in the babushka and smiling a little just to herself.