Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [81]
“I wasn’t the only one. There was cats all over that college wakin up scared. Some of em did it for fun, you know, sittin around drinkin coffee an talkin about life; with this now there aint no God so what the hell we gonna do time; some of these cats would come an bang on my door and come in an want to talk about niggers, what a hard lot they got, an want to score for some benny or make me take them down to a colored whorehouse, and laugh and yell an get drunk and have a high old time, but they was just as upset as I was, an we all knew it; we was all scared of the Army an life an all that shit; an what we really wanted most of all was to get comfortable, you know?
“It wasn’t money, I found that out in a hurry. Money, man, I could get money. I had money. That’s how goddam dumb I was then. I thought me an my brains and my good right arm could get me all the money I wanted. You know? The big problem was I guess I was just empty most of the time. When I first got out of the house, run off to Portland, that’s when I met you, an had a bed of my own, I thought that was the best goddam thing in the world; a bed you could spread out in, a room that was quiet. You know that feeling? But, shit, it got old, not that I ever wanted to go back to the housing project an live like a hog; but I was just plain empty. A long time before I went to college I thought, well, fuck the niggers, I aint gonna worry about that. I don’t want no troubles I aint made for myself, I aint gonna join no black club; that’s just lookin for protection cause you’re scared. I wasn’t scared, I told myself, cause I had my brains an my right arm, an that made me different; I was unique, like Willie Mays. Because you know all that keeps the niggers apart an down is the lack of money; and I could get all the money I wanted. And if any white cat wants to call me nigger an spit in my face, I figured I could take that. It happens, you know. Some cat in some backhole poolhall says somethin about the smell, or somethin. He says, `Man, what’s that awful smell? ’—meanin me, an I come back at him real quick, `I guess that must be the smell of big money; I guess you aint ever smelled a fifty-dollar bill,’ an haul out my wad and ask the man, `Do you want to take some of this home and get a good sniff at it?’—and some of them dumb fuckin crackers’d get so mad they’d play me, and I’d take their money home an smell it, and it smelled good.
“Well, an sometimes they’d lose their tempers, too, and take me out an beat me up an take the money back, and mine too, but that’s a lot tougher than it looks when my money is on the line. I left a few surprised cats around, man.
“Don’t ask me what happened next, man. It was too funny. I was goin with this chick from the college, and one night I get real scared and can’t sleep and can’t think an lay there in my bed feelin the horrors come down and sit on my chest an I’m thinkin about all that shit, you know, there aint no God and the world is the worse fuckin place there is an we’re all out to eat each other up and everything goes, an I’m just a speck in a universe full of specks an one of these days there’s gonna be one less speck an nobody will know; all that cryin shit, you know, an somehow it got stuck in my head that love was the answer, an I was goin with this girl, so I must of loved her, so I gets up out of bed and jumps over to her place, she was livin at home, an bangs on her window, an in about twelve seconds I was married, workin at the bowlin alley and had two kids. Wham! My old lady wanted to be a social worker, dig, and I was gonna work