Read Online The Dying Crapshooter's Blues by David Fulmer - Free Book Online Page B

he saw that the game had stopped and the boys were all staring back at him in the light of the fire they had built in a can on the concrete floor. When one of them asked for details, Robert mumbled something and made a clumsy exit—another mistake. He should have stayed and explained that what he was saying was actually secondhand, that it was some other fellow who had heard the cop and then the gunshot and had peeked around the corner of the building to see Little Jesse Williams fall. Though he could barely remember who had been in the game, he had no doubt that among their number was at least one rat who would hurry right out on the street to try to trade what he’d heard for something.
    After that, Robert went to his room and fell into bed, wishing he could crawl under it. Unable to sleep the rest of that night and into the day, he hurried down to Schoen Alley to ask Jesse what he should do. Somewhere in this addled mind was the notion that he could erase what he had heard and seen, or maybe play it backward like one of the funny bits in the moving pictures, so they could forget the whole thing. But Jesse was in too sorry a state. He couldn’t talk if he wanted to. There were at least a dozen people crowded about his rooms.
    Then Robert saw Joe Rose, the white man or Indian or whatever he was, looking at him with those shining black eyes, like he could see inside his head. Right away, he was sure Rose knew, and back out the door he went, and down the stairs and around to Hilliard Street before Rose could catch and corner him.
    Now he walked along, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. He figured the best he could do was leave it be. Keep his mouth shut and wait for things to calm down. Maybe those crapshooters would think him nothing but a drunken fool and would forget what he’d said. Or they might figure that he’d just been bragging on something someone else had seen. Maybe he’d be fortunate that way. Though he’d never been lucky before.

Five
    Little Jesse had spent tortured hours with his fever spiking and falling and his guts twisting like someone had parked broken glass in there. When the morphine ran out around midnight, he woke to moans and groans, then realized they were coming from his own throat. He thrashed about, his sweat soaking the sheets. Shapes moved in and out of his field of vision, and he felt a woman’s hands on his face, soothing his burning brow. Other kind fingers changed the dressing on his wound. One of the women, trying to joke him out of his pain, slipped her hand under the sheets and between his legs, whispering that everything seemed quite all right down there. Jesse smiled, even though he couldn’t feel a thing.
    When he cried for more dope, someone said,
There ain’t no more, Jesse,
and he yelled a curse, swearing some goddamn fuck of a low-down rounder had found it and stole it away. He kicked off the covers and had to be held down. He wept for mercy. There were more whispers and someone left in a hurry, slamming the door. An hour passed by, then another. A shade flitted through the doorway, and a few seconds later, the point of a needle glistened over his bare thigh.
    The relief came on him like a warm dawn, a shot of amber
light that went down to his last toe. His eyes drooped, his flesh melted from his bones, and he sighed long and low. Through the dirty window, he saw the first red rays of sun coming over the buildings. The rain had gone and he would wake to the new day.
    Â 
    When he got to Atlanta, Joe liked to eat breakfast at Lulu’s, the tiny diner diagonally across Houston Street from the Hampton. The weekday cook, an ex-convict named Sweet Spencer, had a way with a plate of sugared ham and eggs, and his cathead biscuits were the best in downtown. He’d learned his skills in the joint.
    Joe considered other choices for his morning meal, then decided to make his visit to Lulu’s and get it over with. The last thing he