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Ebook has 156 lines and 10047 words, and 4 pages

THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T QUITE

Illustrated by WALKER

You could say Jonesy and/or I were not all there, but I don't see it that way. How much of Stanley was or wasn't there?

Have you ever been clear down there on skid row? Oh, sure, every city has one and no doubt you have given it one of those look-away-quick side glances. That isn't what I mean.

Probably not. And, if you haven't, I could make a suggestion.

Don't go.

Skid row is a far, remote way and there are all kinds of horrors down there, the seen and the unseen. To each his own, as they say, and everyone there has his own personal collection. All right. General opinion is to let them be there and the hell with them, people and horrors too, if there is a distinction. Unfortunate, but what can you do? Nothing. Look the other way. That's all right with me. I don't know anything better to do about the horrors that are, or that may be on skid row than to hope they will stay there where they belong--and let me forget them.

That's why I'm writing this. I want to do the story of what I saw, and what I think I saw or felt, and what I didn't see, to get it off my mind. Then I am going to do my damnedest not to think of the whole thing.

Who are the misfits and derelicts on skid row? Anybody; nobody. Individuals, if they are individuals, come and go. The group, with few exceptions, is always the same. It is built of the world's rejects--lost souls, bad dreams; shadowy, indistinct shapes, not a part of life nor yet quite altogether out of it, either.

I was down there. I left. But I kept passing by every once in a while to pay a little visit. For that I had two reasons. One, I could sometimes pick up a lead on something for a Sunday feature for my paper. The other--just taking another look now and then at where and what I had been was a sort of insurance for me.

So, from time to time I would stop by The Yard for an evening. I would spring for a jug. I was welcome. Those in the regular group knew me and they held me in no more than the same contempt they had for each other and themselves. Being no stranger--or, perhaps, not too much less strange--I fitted well enough with the misfits of that half-world where the individual rarely stands out enough to be noticeable.

Wino Jones, though, and his friend Stanley were, each in his own way, quite noticeable.

I first ran across Wino Jones and Stanley one early spring evening. It was a Thursday. I was beat. It had been a tough week--a political scandal, a couple of fires and a big "Missing Kid--Fiend" scare. Turned out the kid had skipped school to catch a triple-feature horror show and was scared to go home when she came out late, so she went to hide out at Grandma's. The suspect fiend was a cockfight sportsman from the Caribbean colony smuggling home his loser under his leather jacket.

But it had been a rough week with a lot of chasing around and getting no place that left me in one of those hell-with-it moods. Like, maybe, I ought to take a week or so off and--and the hell with that. It was time for me to pay a little remembrance-of-things-not-so-far-past visit down on the row.

I left the city room, tired, dirty, needing a shave. Where I was headed, this would put me ahead of the fashion parade, but it would serve. I stopped for a bowl of chili at Mad Miguel's and then wandered down to those four blocks on South River Street, known as Bug Alley, that make up the hard-core skid-row section of our city.

Across from St. Vincent's in Scott Square, called the Yard, by the old wall, there was a group of six or eight passing the time and a nearly dead jug. I shambled over and squatted down. Got a hard, bloodshot look or two, but not because the jug in the public park was against the law. Even if I was the law, so what? These, they made the jail now and then, if there were too many complaints, if they made a disturbance. But not even the jail wanted them. The hard looks wondered only if the jug should be passed to me or by me.

I lit a cigarette, took a couple of drags and handed it on. Bootnose Bailey, big, old, bald, with the cast-iron stomach and leather liver, settled the jug question by handing it to me. I lifted it, letting only the smallest trickle of the sticky sweet cheap wine past. It is not for me; no more. It is sickening stuff. But, as always, the effort of holding back left me shaking. All right; with shaking, I had plenty of company. The next man looked pleased at the two gulps left in the bottle and drained it.

"Ed?" Bootnose asked in his hoarse canned-heat whisper. "You gonna spring for a jug?"

I squatted a minute or so and then stood and started fumbling around through all my pockets. This is local protocol. Coin by coin, I spread a dollar and a half in silver out on the flat collection stone in front of me. A huge, powerful-looking colored man, new to me, hunkered down against the wall, smiled gently and added a quarter. Bootnose scooped it up and went to make the run for the jug.

I was, I guess, stretching the ground rules a little by the way I stared at the big fellow. But he surprised me mildly. For one thing, he looked in good shape; strong, no shakes, no fevered ghosts back of the bloodshot curtain of the eyes. And, apart from that, you don't find very many Negroes on skid row, at least in our area. I don't know why.

"Jones," he said, softly, politely, "Wino Jones. You're Ed? Ed, this here is my friend Stanley." He waved a big hand at a wispy little man beside him.

This time, I smiled and nodded. "Wino Jones, Stanley, welcome to our city, our little garden spot."

"Huh? Yeah, sure I see him. Why not? Does he think he's invi--"

Jones interrupted me, "Look, there comes Mr. Bailey back already."

Well, it was a little odd. But then, down there the odd is normal, the normal odd. I didn't think anything of it.

I sat a couple of hours. One jug went and then another. It did seem to me that Wino Jones missed by a lot on proving out his nickname. At least he didn't love up the passing bottle as though it might be the last one in the world--which, as every skid-row pro desperately fears, it might very well turn out to be.

Stanley's drinking? I didn't notice.

After a while I wandered off. My appreciation of the fact that I was able to wander off was shored up again and I was glad enough to get back to work the next day without thinking anything much more about it.

I didn't think about Wino Jones or Stanley again till the first of the next week. Then I was on early shift at the paper, due in at six A.M. At quarter to, I yawned my way out of Mad Miguel's after coffee, an egg and hotcakes. Mig's hotcakes were hot, too; made them with chili. Hard on the stomach, but they popped the old eyelids open in the morning. As I stood a minute in the doorway, my watering eyes spotted Wino Jones coming out of the alley that led around to Mig's kitchen side. He saw me but, thoughtfully, didn't crack till I gave him a, considering the time, reasonably bright hello.

"How's it, Ed? You going on early, uh?"

"Yeah, Wino--ah--Jonesy. Mind if I call you Jonesy?" He didn't. "What's with you? Been washing a dish for the Mig?"

He nodded. Some of the upper-level boys from the row worked off and on at odd jobs like that. It didn't make Jones unique, but it made him stand out a little.

"Me and Stanley, we like a little change in our pockets. Right, Stanley?"

He looked down and a little to one side, just as though he were asking agreement from someone. Only there wasn't anyone there. There wasn't anyone in sight on the block but Jones and me.

But Jones smiled and nodded warmly at the short vacancy beside him and then looked back at me. "Stanley here, he come by to meet me after work. Mr. Mig, he let me fix us a bite of breakfast when I finish up the night."

I looked again at where Stanley was supposed to be standing and then, blankly, back at Jones. He shrugged almost unnoticeably and, I thought, barely shook his head.

"Well-l--" he said, "I expect me and Stanley better drift back on down to the Yard before some fuzz comes along and fans us down."

"Yeah?" I said. "Yeah. So long, Jonesy--Stanley."

I don't know why I added the "Stanley" but, obscurely, it seemed to please Jones. He gave me a big smile and then walked off down the street, chatting companionably to--no one. I didn't get it. Well, Stanley present or absent rated very low on the list of the problems I was going to worry about. I went to work.

I ran into Jones every morning during the week I was on early; Jones, coming off work, with Stanley--who wasn't there. Odd, sure. But if Jones was stringing a way-out gag or playing with a mild hallucination, still it was nothing to me.

I did mention it to Mig, who only said, "Si, these one big hombre eat big. He like two plate eat for breakfast, plate he wash, bueno, what for I complain?"

So that was all. Nothing.

Toward the end of the next week, I wandered down to the Yard again and joined the little group of exponents of gracious almost-living by the wall. Jones wasn't there. But as I was settling down I glanced over at the Broad Street side of the square and I saw him strolling along toward us. He was smiling, talking, gesturing. He was alone. I looked twice. There was no one with Jones.

I settled down, took a drag or two on a smoke and passed it along. Lifted a jug. Got back the old lost, gone, miserable feel of the thing again. I looked up then at Jones who was just coming around the mangy clump of bushes by the path. With him was a sour, whispy, scarcely noticeable little man. Stanley.

"Evening, Jonesy," I said, "and Stanley. Good to see you again." I meant it even though, come to think, it didn't really clear anything up. Jones gave me his smile and Stanley nodded suspiciously.

They moved in and joined the group. Somebody made a run; a couple. The talk staggered around as usual. Topics: booze; money, yesterday's and tomorrow's; booze; women--only occasionally and with mild, decayed interest; booze.

Jones put in a soft word or two from time to time until he finally stood up, stretched and said he was going up to Mig's. Stanley stayed. I know he did. I watched him. Afterward, I tried to remember if he said anything, but that I couldn't recall.

I went on home myself a while after Jones left. Stanley was still there, though, when I glanced back from Broad Street, I couldn't pick him out in the dim moon and street light.

Still nothing much, eh?

The next week I came on work at ten and I didn't see Jones--or not see Stanley--all week. Friday, I was back down at the Yard. That was out of my pattern. Usually one visit in a month or so was plenty. But now, for whatever reason, I was getting kind of interested in Jones--and Stanley.

This time Jones was there hunkered down against the wall when I wandered up. Coaster Joe squatted on one side of him. On the other side, no one. I looked; I looked close. There was no one there. Still, when I nodded around, I nodded at the empty space. Noticed that Bootnose Bailey was missing. A mild surprise. Bootnose and a bottle were nearly as much Yard fixtures as Gen. Scott in bronze and pigeons. I settled in. A little time and a jug went by. I still didn't see Stanley.

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