Read Online Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether - Free Book Online Page A

Caldwell with her rent, that’s why,” Daddy said.
    â€œHumph,” Mother said, “it wasn’t Mrs. Caldwell got all her furniture set out on the street. And it’s a shame how Elizabeth used to never have milk for her kids but Robert kept gas in that car so he could ride around Harlem like a big shot.”
    â€œA man’s got to have something like that car,” Daddy said, “so he knows he’s a man.”
    â€œI thought making all them babies would have told him that,” Mother said, getting in the last word.
    Mrs. Caldwell was saying now that she didn’t care how Robert felt about it, she was applying for relief, too, and if he didn’t like it he could stop hanging around with all those politicians and find himself a job.
    â€œY’all hear about Mrs. Petrie?” Mrs. Taylor asked. “Poor thing has another one in the oven.”
    Mrs. Petrie was the Twins’ mother.
    â€œHow many does that make?” Mrs. Caldwell asked.
    â€œNine,” my mother said.
    â€œThem Catholics and that rhythm system gonna bust that oven wide open one of these days,” Mrs. Taylor said. They all laughed.
    â€œWhat’s the rhythm system, Rebecca?” I asked.
    She just giggled and looked silly so I knew it had something to do with lovemaking that grownups were always whispering about. Like I said, Daddy didn’t have to worry about me learning anything from Rebecca because she never told me nothing. Well, whatever the rhythm system was the Petries had it down pat ’cause they had a brand-new baby each and every year.
    F IVE fourteen finally played and not a minute too soon.
    â€œSomebody kick me,” Daddy demanded, “kick me for being a damn fool. If I had just kept that dollar on five fourteen we’d be rich tonight. Did I tell you I was playing that number because Francie dreamt a catfish bit her? Then just night before last I dreamt about my mother and switched that dollar to nine sixty-nine which plays for the dead. Somebody give me a good, swift kick in the behind.”
    Daddy was sitting on the piano bench, his back against the piano, facing our neighbors who had heard through the grapevine that Daddy had hit his number for a quarter and also the boleta, and had come over to help us celebrate. Mother caught it, too, for ten cents straight and thirty cents combination. Altogether they collected a fortune, almost three hundred dollars.
    Mrs. Maceo was sitting in the big chair by the window frowning at her husband draped in a corner drinking himself red-eyed on King Kong. She shook her head at him in disgust, but Papa Dan ignored her, his yellow face beaming with his usual grin.
    Mrs. Maceo turned toward Daddy. “The same thing happened to me last week, Mr. Coffin. You all remember that six forty-two played last Tuesday. I’d been playing that number for a month because I dreamed I was back home in Georgia planting sweet potatoes in the backyard. Madame Zora’s dream book gives six forty-two for potatoes, and that same day, first thing I saw in the morning was a car with that number on its license plate. I loaded up on it. Threw my money away on that stupid number for a whole month and then dropped it two days before it came out.”
    â€œI know what you mean,” Slim Jim said. “I missed my main number that same way last month and I’d been playing it for two dollars straight.” Slim Jim was working for Jocko now, ever since he got out of jail a few weeks ago.
    Then Mrs. Taylor and everybody else told how they, too, had messed up on their numbers.
    Papa Dan belched in his corner and Sukie mumbled something under her breath which I didn’t catch. We were sitting on the floor with Maude and Rebecca eating ice cream and cake and sipping that punch Mother had made. Daddy had bought two quarts of vanilla and strawberry for us and a big crock of King Kong for the grownups, though he didn’t drink himself, but