Manchild in the Promised Land (24 page)

I tried to buy that album from Gus, but it was Gus's favorite, and he wouldn't part with it. But the cat was really moved. Since I liked it, it made him feel good. He lent it to me for another week. After that, I asked him to lend it to me for one more week. Gus was really moved by the whole thing, so he let me keep it for one more week. Gus never got it back. Skylo, the area man, hit Gus soon afterward, and Gus hit him back, knocked him out. By the time I heard about it, Gus was already in the Annex doing two years.

That was how I got my first Charlie Parker album. For a year, I didn't like any of the jazz artists but Charlie Parker, and I still liked the singing groups, the Orioles and the Clovers, these people. But little by little, I started liking other people. I remember that a year later, “Moody's Mood for Love” by King Pleasure came out. I really liked that. I guess I was growing away from that rock ‘η' roll thing and getting closer to jazz. So I found jazz at Warwick too, among all the other things.

On my first visit home, I met the Albees. The Albees were crazy-acting people who were always having family fights on Eighth Avenue. There were two girls and three boys in the family. I'd never seen them before. I think they'd just come up from Georgia somewhere, and they acted like it.

I had a fight with Tony Albee, who was about my age, and we started a rivalry. Every time I came home, we'd have this little feud. Pimp would tell him, “I'm gon git my brother to kick your ass,” if Tony or his younger brother would mess with Pimp. This became a
regular thing. It meant that there was always something to come back to in those streets

Mama told me that Jackie had asked her if she could come up to see me, and she told her, “Hell, no.” Mama said that's what she told her, but Carole said Mama had really cursed her out. I told Mama she didn't have any right to be looking down on this girl just because she was dirty sometimes and because she was dark-skinned. Mama said that Jackie didn't have any business asking to come up to see somebody as sloppy as she looked.

When I came out, I found out that Jackie wasn't looking so sloppy any more. As a matter of fact, she dressed real nice, but Mama still didn't like her. Mama said she was still just a dirty little neighborhood whore, even if she had learned how to dress.

When I came home, that was one of the first places I went, to see Jackie. It made Mama mad, but it was my life. I was older now. I had grown a lot at Warwick, so I think Mama and Dad didn't think I was a little boy any more. And they didn't try too hard to keep me under their control. If I went out and stayed at Jackie's house all night, it was all right. Whatever I did was all right.

Sugar came around to my house that first time I came home from Warwick. Carole must have told her I was home. Sugar was getting kind of nice looking. Her teeth still weren't straight, but she was getting a shape. I asked her why she hadn't come to see me in the hospital when I had gotten shot. I'd never thought about it before, but when I saw her I said, “You were one-a the first people I expected to see.” She told me that she didn't know anything about it until after I had come out. We stayed in the hallway and talked for a long time, a real long time. Then she left, and I went up to see Jackie.

After the first time I came home, Sugar just stopped coming around. She didn't want to see me any more. I forgot about her for a long while.

After about eight months at Warwick, they told me that I'd be going home in about a month. When K.B. heard about it, he panicked. He said, “I want to go home too, man. These people better let me outta here.”

“Look, K.B., I been tellin' you ever since I came her, if you want to git outta this place, you got to stop fuckin' up. It's, like, you gotta stop all that beboppin' and you gotta stop all that fuckin' up with the area
men, like, just goin' around tryin' to be bad. You can do that shit with the cats around here, but if you start screamin' on the area men like that, you can't possibly win, man. Because these are the cats who can keep you up here all your life if they want to.”

“Look, Claude, you don't understand. I'm from Brooklyn. There's a whole lotta stuff goin' on up here that I can't stay out of. You know, like, when my fellas, the Robins or the Stompers, go to war, it's, like, I've got to git into it too, because cats gon be lookin' for me to kick my ass or stab me or some kinda shit like that even if I don't come right out and declare war, because they know, like, I'm in this clique, man. Just about everybody who comes up here from Brooklyn, they know who's in what gang.”

I said, “Yeah, man, but that's not the main thing. The main thing is to stop screamin' on the area men. You can go and have your rumbles and shit if you want, but you know if you stab anybody and they find out about it, you're through. The only way you gon make it outta here is to cool it. Didn't I tell you I wasn't gon stay up here a year when I came? And now I'm walkin', right? So it must be somethin' to it.”

K.B. said, “Yeah, Claude, it's, like, yeah, man, I should-a listened to you, ‘cause I know you usually know what you're talkin' about. I'm gon change my whole way-a actin' up here. And I'm gon be gittin' outta here soon. I'm gon be gittin' outta here in about three months now, just you watch.”

I left Warwick after staying up there for about nine months and three weeks. I came home and went to the High School of Commerce, down around Broadway and Sixty-fifth Street.

I didn't go for school too much. The cats there were really dressing, and I didn't have any money. The only way I could make some money was by not going to school. If I told Dad I needed about four or five pair of pants and some nice shirts, he would start talking all that nonsense again about, “I didn't have my first pair-a long pants till I was out workin'.” That shit didn't make any sense, not to me. He had been living down on a farm, and this was New York City. People looked crazy going around in New York City with one pair of pants, but this was the way he saw it, and this was the way he talked. I think the nigger used to talk this nonsense because he didn't want to get up off any money to buy me some clothes. So I just said, “Fuck it, I'll buy my own.”

The only way I could buy my own was by selling pot when I went
to school. And I'd take some loaded craps down there, some bones, and I would beat the paddy boys out of all their money. They were the only ones who were dumb enough to shoot craps with bones.

After a while, I just got tired. I never went to any of the classes, and if I did go to one, I didn't know anything. I felt kind of dumb, so I stopped going there. The only time I went to school was when I wanted to make some money. I'd go there and stay a couple of hours. Maybe I'd take Turk with me. Turk would sell some pot, and I'd shoot some craps, and when we got enough money, we'd go uptown. We'd go to 114th Street, to Tito's house, and we'd party up there. His mother was never home; nobody was there. Nobody cared about him. There were always a lot of girls, and we'd have some pot and some liquor; we'd smoke and we'd jugg some of the old funky girls down there. It was fun. It was something to do. But after a while, I found myself getting tired of the school thing, getting tired of the Harlem thing.

Dad found out what I was doing and said, “The boy ain't no good; he ain't never been no good, and he ain't never gonna be no good.” He told me not to come back in the house, so I thought, Fuck it, I don't want to come back in the house no more anyway.

I was only about fifteen, and I couldn't get a job. I couldn't do anything. I didn't like the idea of not being able to get a place and having to stay out on the street. So I just got fed up one day and went back to Warwick. I went down to the Youth House where the bus used to pick up all the boys going to Warwick every Friday. I just told the bus driver and the other cat that was on the bus that my name was Claude Brown, that I had stayed down from Warwick, and that they were looking for me. They said, “Hop on.” So I just hopped on and went up to Warwick.

When I got to Warwick, everybody was glad to see me. It was like coming home, a great reunion. I had only been home for about four months, and most of the cats I'd left at Warwick were still there, so there was a place for me.

During my first stay at Warwick, I had been transferred from C2 cottage into B1. They said that I started a riot between the colored cats and the Puerto Ricans. Well, I didn't start it. Maybe I kept it going a little bit, but I didn't start it. They had a big investigation. The assistant superintendent told me that if my name “got associated with this sort of thing again,” there was a good chance that I'd get into a lot of trouble, so I'd better cool it. I told him I felt that the Puerto Ricans were
getting better treatment than I did, and I told the other cats this, and after a while, everybody could see it.

When I came back to Warwick the second time, they put me back in B1. I stayed there for about three months and went home in September. Warwick was crowded then, and it was easy to get out when the place was crowded, because there were a whole lot of cats in the Youth House waiting to come up there and they had to make room for them. I told them that I was going down South, and I got Mama to tell them the same thing, so they let me out. When they did that, I was back on the streets for a couple of months. I didn't have any intention of going down South; that was one place I never wanted to go any more. I was back on the streets doing the same things I had done before.

K.B. had gotten out about a month before I did, and he went back co Brooklyn and started dabbling in horse. As a matter of fact, he was selling horse, and he wanted to know if I wanted to sell some. He had a connection for me. I told him I didn't want to be messing around with any horse because I didn't care for junkies. If you were dealing horse, junkies were always around you, and junkies were some treacherous cats. I'd known junkies who had robbed their mothers and fathers and pawned everything in the house. They just couldn't be trusted, and I didn't want them around me. I just didn't want anything to do with them.

K.B. just stopped offering, but he started using the stuff. This was one way of putting down bebopping. When you were on horse, you didn't have time for it. And in Brooklyn, a lot of cats were using horse to get away from bebopping. It gave them an out, a reason for not doing it, and a reason that was acceptable. Nobody would say that you were scared or anything like that; they would just say that you were a junkie, and everybody knew that junkies didn't go around bebopping.

So when K.B. started messing with horse, I stopped going to Brooklyn, and I didn't see him any more. I just stayed in Harlem. Alley Bush and Dunny and Turk and Tito and Bucky and Mac were all back on the streets, and we were all hanging out together.

One night in December of 1952, I was sitting at home at about seven o'clock in the evening, when I heard a knock on the door. It sounded just like the police knock, and I knew that knock pretty well by now. So I stopped with the cards and just listened.

I heard a white voice ask, “Is Claude Brown here?” I just went in
my room and got my coat. I knew I hadn't done anything, and I figured I'd just have to go down to the police station and see about something and I'd be right back. But I'd forgotten about what had happened the day before. Alley Bush and Bucky and another cat from downtown had broken into somebody's house and stolen some silverware and furs. They brought it uptown for me to off it to a fence for them. I did it and forgot about it.

Mama said, “Yeah, he's here,” and I came to the door with my coat on.

One of the white detectives asked me if I knew Alley Bush and Bucky, and I said, “Yeah, I know 'em.”

He said, “You want to come with us?”

I just walked out of the door, and Mama kept asking, “What's he done; what's he done?”

They just said, “Well, we don't know yet.” And they told her where they were taking me.

I went to the police station and found out what had happened. Then I knew I wasn't going to be coming home that night, and I knew I wasn't going to be there for Christmas. It seemed that one of the furs was a cheap piece that wasn't any good; but Alley Bush, who was kind of stupid and did a lot of stupid things, went around in the same neighborhood trying to sell this piece of junk. I had told him to throw it away. Instead of throwing it away, he tried to sell it, and he got busted—and he mouthed on everybody he knew. He didn't know the fence or he would have mouthed on him too.

The police told me I could get off if I would tell them who the fence was and if they could get the stuff back. I told them that I didn't know, that it was the first time I'd ever seen the guy. They never found out who it was. And a few days before Christmas, I was on my way back up to Warwick, for the third and last time. I was fifteen, and that was the only thing that saved me. Alley Bush was sent to Elmira, but Bucky, the luckiest cat I ever knew, got out of it somehow or other. A couple of weeks later, Tito got busted with a gun, and he was sent to Woodburn. Just about everybody was gone off the streets.

About a week after Christmas, I was sitting in the cottage that they'd put me in, C3. Al Cohen came in. Mr. Cohen was the superintendent of Warwick, and I had known him before, but only slightly, just to say hello to. I didn't think he really knew me. He used to call
me Smiley, since I was always smiling. This time he said, “Hi, Smiley, what are you doin' here?” He looked sort of surprised, because he knew I had gone home.

I just looked up and said, “Hello, Mr. Cohen. Like, I just didn't make it, you know ? I had some trouble.”

He didn't say anything else. He just left.

I still had my rep at Warwick. Before I left the second time, I was running BI cottage; I had become the “main man.” The cottage parents and the area men thought I was real nice. I knew how to operate up there. I had an extortion game going, but it was a thing that the cats went along with because I didn't allow anybody to bully anybody and that sort of thing. Since I didn't get many visitors from home, I made other guys pay protection fees to me when they received visits or packages from home. I just ran the place, and I kept it quiet. I didn't have to bully anybody—cats knew that I knew how to hit a guy and knock out a tooth or something like that, so I seldom had to hit a cat. My reputation for hurting cats was indisputable. I could run any cottage that I'd been in with an iron hand.