Daddy Was a Number Runner (16 page)

Then Sterling was there in his long drawers peering down into the hole with me. “It's only a cat, Francie,” he said quietly, sensing I was out of my mind with fear. “It's only a damn cat.”

Now I could see the rest of the furry head, a cat's nose and whiskers around the thin line of its mouth.

“Scat.” Sterling stamped on the hole three times. “Get out of here.” When he moved his foot the eyes were gone.

Mother came out of the kitchen. “What's the matter?”

“There was a cat in the hole,” Sterling said. “Looked like Max the Baker's cat. Must have climbed up here through the walls somehow.”

“Lord, what next?” Mother said. “When you come home from school, Sterling, tack a piece of cardboard over that hole. Looks like that stingy landlord ain't never gonna fix it. Francie, you ever gonna get dressed this morning? You gonna be late for school again.”

I dragged my eyes away from the hole. It was only a cat, I kept telling myself, but the panic wouldn't die down. Even when I finally got dressed and was in the kitchen eating my
oatmeal, I couldn't stop shivering and it wasn't from the cold. I kept remembering that feeling of being on the edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, like Humpty-Dumpty, and all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty-Dumpty together again.

O
NE
afternoon I went with Daddy to the barber shop on Lenox Avenue to pay off a hit from yesterday because the barber shop had closed early the night before when Daddy got the money. Daddy wasn't staying out most of the night playing poker like he used to but coming home early now, and if James Junior hadn't been cooped up down there in that jail, things would've been nice.

Daddy knew just about everybody and we stopped and talked to people on the way.

“Hello, Francie, hello, Mr. Coffin. How's the missus?”

“She's fine, Mr. Lipschwitz. And your wife?”

“Great, great.” It was the Jewish plumber. “Mr. Coffin, you know how my wife likes to buy new furniture.”

Indeed we did, I thought, most of our furniture upstairs and the piano was a result of his wife's love for new things.

“Our old furniture is gorgeous yet,” Mr. Lipschwitz said. “A fortune it cost me, but already the missus got to buy a new couch to match a picture frame. Can you imagine? So if you want our old couch, Mr. Coffin, which is like new, believe me, I would—”

Daddy interrupted him. “I sure appreciate that, Mr. Lipschwitz, but the couch we have is in excellent condition. But thanks just the same.”

Daddy must be sick, I thought.
Our
old couch in excellent condition? The springs were poking up so bad that if you weren't careful when you sat down you could get stabbed to death. We walked on.

Mr. Rathbone and his pretty daughter, Rachel, were entering the candy store, her rosy cheeks peeking out over the collar of her fur coat.

“Hello, Mr. Rathbone, hello, Rachel.”

“Ah, Mr. Coffin, nasty day we got already, ain't it?”

We turned the corner of Fifth Avenue.

“Mr. Coffin. You just the man I was hopin' to see.”

“Hello, Slim Jim. What can I do for you?”

“What you like for the middle figure, Mr. Coffin?”

“My chart gives a four and my chart been hittin' pretty good lately.”

“You really think it gonna be a four?”

“Yeah,” Daddy laughed. “I feel it in my left hind leg.”

“Well, I got one last dollar and two minutes to get on down to the corner and play it on a four.”

“How do, Mr. Coffin.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Petrie.” Daddy tipped his hat. “How are you and the little one?”

Mrs. Petrie smiled and patted her stomach. She looked like that little one was gonna drop between her legs at any moment. “Mr. Coffin, if you get a minute tomorrow could you come by and show us how to make a jumper? Our electricity was shut off this morning.”

“I'll be happy to, Mrs. Petrie. I'll come about five, before it gets dark.” They both laughed.

“Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” Daddy said. “How's your rheumatism?”

“Tolerable, Mr. Coffin, just tolerable.”

We went inside the barber shop. Only two other men were there besides Mr. Robinson, the owner, and they were both barbers, too. One of them was cutting the other's hair.

“Hello, Francie,” Mr. Robinson said. He was bald, head as clean as a baby's behind, and he seemed anxious for everybody
to follow his lead. “When you gonna let me give you a boyish bob?” he asked me.

“I'm trying to get it to grow, Mr. Robinson, and you always want to cut it off.” We smiled at each other.

“That's my business, Francie. That's my business.”

Daddy handed Mr. Robinson his money and he returned five dollars of it to Daddy as a tip. “Here comes Larry,” Mr. Robinson said, as Daddy was thanking him, “coming to get his.”

The door opened and a young white cop entered. “And how is everybody this evening?” he smiled.

In answer, Mr. Robinson held out a bill which the cop pocketed, still smiling, and walked out.

“It ain't fair for them to be collecting twice,” Daddy said. “The bankers pay them off.”

“I made the mistake of opening my big mouth and talking to him just because he seemed so nice and friendly,” Mr. Robinson said. “He was always asking me what number I liked and when he found out it played yesterday he came in saying how he knew I was gonna remember him. The bastard. Excuse me, Francie. But who you gonna complain to?”

“Nobody,” Daddy said. “When you got a district attorney as crooked as Dodge, what can you expect from the rest of them? They're all gangsters except Mayor La Guardia and give him enough time and he'll catch on to how it's done.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Robinson said. “He's a peckerwood like the rest of them. I kinda like the Little Flower though and hope he stays clean. Lord knows we need one honest man down there with them bunch of crooks. How's your boy, Mr. Coffin? They still got him, huh?”

Mr. Robinson's voice had changed, like most everybody's
did when they asked about James Junior, like they was talkin' about somebody already dead.

“Yeah,” Daddy answered. “They still holding all of them.” He shook his head slowly. “I still can't believe it's happened, though I been warning that boy and warning him. Keep away from that gang. Stay in school and get you an education. But what you gonna do these days with these hardheaded children? I done beat him till I got sick.”

“Well, Mr. Coffin, everybody knows you're a good family man, and you can only raise your kids to the best of your ability and that's all you can do. And Junior was such a nice boy, too, well mannered and friendly. No, he really wasn't the mugging type, but that friend of his. What's his name? That Sonny. I don't like to talk about other people's children but he'd mug a dead man. And he wasn't even arrested, was he?”

“No,” Daddy said. “He wasn't in the cellar when the cops raided it.” He spoke quietly like he'd been doing ever since Junior was arrested. I thought he would have yelled and cursed something awful when he found out about it, but he didn't. Never raised his voice, talked quiet like he was doing now, as if all his anger had gone now that Junior had finally gotten into trouble.

“I'm a grown man,” Daddy said. “I play a little poker and the numbers because I can't see the difference between betting at the races or in Harlem. Either gambling's a crime or it ain't. But I've never hit a man in the head, black or white, and robbed him of his money.”

“Peckerwood ain't had no business in Harlem in the middle of the night nohow,” Mr. Robinson muttered. “Heard he'd been to see that whore, Denise. Excuse me, Francie.”

“That's all right, Mr. Robinson,” I said.

“You been down to see him yet, Mr. Coffin?”

“Four or five times. Went down there the night they arrested him and I had to threaten to tear that place apart brick by brick before they'd finally let me in, but they did. Junior told me he didn't do it and I believe him. He may be hardheaded but my boy ain't nobody's liar.”

“A nice boy Junior was,” Mr. Robinson said, “and polite. Always spoke nice and polite to everybody.”

“Well, I gotta be getting on back home, Mr. Robinson,” Daddy said. “Thanks for the fiver. You get another good dream like that let me know so I can put something on it myself.”

“I'll do just that,” Mr. Robinson said. “Nice seein' you again, too, Francie, and soon's you want that haircut you let me know.”

We walked back down to Fifth Avenue, me slipping and sliding on the icy streets and holding on to Daddy's hand. The snow was banked up in the gutters in raggedy piles, taller than me, and it was filthy with dog pee and garbage just like I'd known it would be. But I hardly noticed it or the cold. I was still thinking about Junior. The Tombs. That's where he was. That sounded like he was already dead, too, but he wasn't, and I wished people would stop talking about him like he was gone forever.

When we got back to Fifth Avenue three of the skinniest black people I'd ever seen was standing in front of Max the Baker's window looking at the rolls inside. The woman was no bigger than a minute and the two men beside her not much larger. We watched them for a moment and it didn't take a magician to see that they were hungry. Then they turned and walked down the avenue.

Slim Jim passed by and said: “You were right, Mr. Coffin. It's a four in the middle. Thanks for the tip. I got it for a dollar.”

“Me, too,” Daddy said. He rushed into the bakery and came out a few seconds later with a bagful of rolls. Running down the street he caught up with the three people just as they were crossing 117th Street.

Daddy brought them back to the stoop with him, each one of them devouring one of Max's cinnamon buns. “This here is my little girl, Francie,” Daddy said, introducing me to Mrs. Snipes, her husband, Tom, and her brother, Joshua. “They're gonna sleep downstairs in the basement tonight. Run upstairs and ask your mother if we got an extra blanket they can use.”

I opened my mouth to say we didn't have any extra blankets and was sleeping under old coats ourselves, but I kept quiet and went on upstairs and did like I was told.

“We ain't got no extra blankets,” Mother said. “What your father think? If we had any extra blankets we'd be using them ourselves.”

The next morning was Saturday and I went down to the basement to visit Lilah. That was her name, and if she hadn't been so skinny and puny looking she might have been pretty with her brown-skin self.

We sat on two old stained mattresses, with the stuffing coming out, piled in front of the furnace. That's where they had slept, with all those rats running loose. But I guess even with the rats, sleeping in front of the furnace was better than being out in the cold.

Lilah said they were from Virginia, sharecroppers, but things had been so poorly down there that after her baby died they decided to come north where things might be better. But now, having no home at all, they were sorry they had ever left the south.

“You had a baby?” I asked.

She nodded. “A little girl. She died when she was a week old.” She touched her flat chest. “I didn't have no milk.”

Her husband and brother had gone out early that morning to try and hustle up a day's work.

“They ain't gonna find nothing,” Lilah said, “but they scared to break the habit of looking, like that might jinx them or something.”

Daddy brought home some greens and salt pork around midday and Mother cooked them and made some corn bread and gave me some to take down to the basement.

Tom and Joshua were quiet and soft-spoken. They smiled at me when I handed them the food and said: “Thank you, ma'am.” It was the first time anybody had ever called me ma'am and it made me feel funny and grown-up.

I took them down one meal a day after that, whatever we had. Mother got so hard up that she had to fall back on that gold-can jive. She didn't even have no tomatoes to doctor it up with and we was eating it warmed up straight from the can.

I had told Mother, laughing all the while, how Daddy had refused Mr. Lipschwitz's couch, saying ours was in excellent condition. Now I was sorry I had opened my big mouth 'cause Mr. Lipschwitz's couch appeared in our living room a few days later and Mother and Sterling hauled our old wreck down to the basement.

Daddy had a fit when he saw the new couch and stormed into the kitchen to find Mother. “I told that old Jew we didn't want his hand-me-down furniture,” he said.

“How come you told him that when our old couch was looking so bad?” Mother asked.

“Because I didn't want it, woman. Can't you understand plain English?”

“All the insides was hanging out of our couch and the living room looked so tacky I was ashamed to have anybody stop by. Mr. Lipschwitz always gives us his old furniture. How come you—”