CHAPTER ELEVEN
When I came out of the apartment in the freshness of daybreak, it was right nippy. It was early for frost, but you could feel the coming of it in the air. It made a man feel glad he’d a snug place to hole up in, with winter coming on and all.
One thing I could say for Santini, he didn’t stint any on the grub. We had cases of tomatoes and peaches in cans, a sack of sugar, plenty of flour, beans, dried fruit, rice, some big cans of Arbuckle, and cans of pork and beef.
When I’d kindled the stove I said to Jaquan, "We can take turns cooking if you’re a mind to, but after you taste mine, you may feel you’ll like to take over. I was never a good cook."
"I don’t care if I do. Only I want to and I’ll never learn how in this here apartment."
"You got any good woman? Make love too?"
"Never heard of love."
"Love…romance…main woman? Or whatever you’re a mind to call them."
"I never loved."
So if I got shot, life is life.
But I wasn’t harboring any illusions. Nothing in life had given me cause for hopefulness. A man went ahead doing the best he could, but it always seemed there was more shit lurking just around the bend of the road. I had seen some folks to whom it didn’t make a difference, but that wasn’t the way it was with me.
One time I was telling some young bucks about life on the street. A young buck, he was a fat, comfortable guy eating three big meals a day, had a fine family, and he said to me that he wished he could live my adventurous life. Me, I just looked at him. Then said to him, "If you’re there on the street hustling, you should crawl out of bed on a chilly morning, suit up to the corner in sneakers, and your work, and a pistol that would take the head off somebody’s shoulders and then post up. Then you should get off your work and re-up before the cops get on to you. Then go buy yourself and something for your family and hustle up what you will and get out before you get addicted to the cash flow."
"You should work yourself half dead, and come dragging up to the 24hr restaurant long after dark, eat food that you wouldn’t feed your dog, and then roll up in that same cold bed."
Jaquan I could understand. He would get a better shake out west than almost anywhere. He might find some folks a bit standoffish. Some people believe because a man looks different that he feels different, but out in the world, a man is judged how he does his job and stands up to the world.
Me, I wasn’t going to do him no favors. If he did his job well and good, I couldn’t care what or who he was or even if he had two heads, so long as both of them didn’t eat. I’d already seen him shape up on that trip across country and I liked the way he did things. He was a stand up man with pride and strength.
That first day we rode out and around getting aquatinted with the community. Moving a little. For most of that work, we were riding out twenty miles or better, but now we were just getting the cream of the crop. As we rode, I talked to Jaquan telling him what being a part of the squad was like.
"Winter is a time when a member if he isn’t out of a job and lollygaging, is supposed to catch up on his quality time, holidays with the family. I never got that lucky. Seems to me I always were in a category where I worked harder than ever.
"Now Santini put us out here to find out where he’s been missing weed and to bring in as much money through the winter. And as much as we can. Mainly we’ll have to keep warm and gloves and barrel fires to warm our hands. You scatter newspapers and wood in the barrels and a few pieces of firewood keeps a long barrel fire."
Jaquan was listening as I went on talking.
"The ground here is mostly firburish and dirt. And there’s nothing like the concrete. It’ll stand a lot of grip and track shun. If you can get to the grass, it will do all right when dumping the work and running from the cops, even in the winter."
"First we will start across town, day and night moving work closer to the apartment. There’s many vehicles we use so we won’t be recognizable so easily. Pay attention to the scenery. We may need to bail out."
"But most of all, you never stop looking. You look for old faces and new faces. You look for junkies, and you will look for solicitors. You will look for anything different or out of the ordinary, for strange activity, lights on all night, vehicles with occupants, out of state license plates.
"Left to themselves, no one would notice or walk far to suspicious vehicles… they duck around here and yonder, or they will lye down in the vehicle. If they move and drive off, they are suspicious. If not, they are simply another drunk sleeping a drunkenness off."
It was long after dark when we got back to the apartment. And we came up on it mighty slow and careful. But everything was as it should be when we left the apartment. After I took inventory and counted the cash, I looked around a bit.
Not that I was looking for anything special. I simply wanted to get the feel of things after nightfall. Everything has a way of looking different at night. So I walked around sizing up the layout from all angles studying the outlines of things against the sky testing the night smells.
Something about those smells worried me. There was the smell of stale air, exhaust fumes, smoke... but there was another faint, hardly noticeable smell. Whatever it was brought a feeling of loneliness almost of homesickness, and that I couldn’t figure. I’d had no home that really felt a home in so many years that I…
For the next five days we had time to think of anything and anybody. We worked the state west toward Camden, and north as far as Hopatconge, far Point Pleasant, toward Wildwood. It was early for snow.
Jaquan was a rider no question about that. And he was a fair hand with a pistol, so it took him no time at all to get the hang of it. Of course know the turf comes with experience, and no man is going to get that overnight, but I told him what I could and the rest, he’ll have to learn.
The clientele were in good shape, although it could pick up. We found no trouble that day except the few junkies who were short.
Along in the late afternoon we pulled up on a ridge near the head of Trenton and looked down the Delaware River.
"It’s a booming spot," Jaquan said softly.
"It is that," I agreed.
The bright glare was gone, the shadows softening the distance and the coolness of evening was coming on. Far off a sex-fiend approached a hooker… soon he will be going on with her somewhere and getting it on. I saw a stray cat sloping along through the trees, head down, nose reaching out for the scent of game.
We stood motionless and patient, just taking in the money of the evening time. Finally Jaquan said, "It was no wonder they fought for it."
"Yeah," I said. And they fought too. Not many could beat out the Sioux or a Cheyenne for the spot when it came right down to it.
We turned our hides of the rise and headed toward the apartment.
"Out here, a man gets away with murder. I mean, out here, there’s money," Jaquan said.
"Tons if it," I said, "And many chances. But a man can’t get all money. You can get rich, but you can’t be a dead man and rich. Money makes the world go round and so does pussy."
Yet what he said worried non at my mind. Was that why I was here? Was I afraid of something? Not being rich? I wasn’t sure about that. Even when I thought about it, it sounds ridiculous. Afraid of not being rich. Ha! More and more I thought about it, it’s absurd. We just plain kept getting money with no angry thoughts towards nobody…unless a man tried to arm rob or disrespected. Odd thing…I had a whale of a temper, but I couldn’t remember when I’d been mad to remember to kill em’.
Maybe what I was afraid of and avoiding was the need to try and better myself, and really better myself. That had never seemed so all-fired important. I’d heard a lot of talk about success, but I never seen a successful person, what people called successful, who was happy as if happy.
Jaquan had a way of starting me to thinking like when he said, ‘A man gets away with murder.’ Well, he was right. A man gets away with murder. And there was money.
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I had a plan. Get money. I knew street conditions, and had learned a lot from the men I worked for and some of them could have learned a lot from me.
Bullshit is what they’ll say when it’s really just to talk you out of doing something or going for something. If a man said something was bullshit, he’s a liar.
It was time these days to start establishing another spot. Not to thinking of so much of owning many spots, but of owning good spots and quality work. The old days on the streets were gone. A man needed less negative now. What thought were positive were negative to others.
Needed a disguise, the best in the world.
But who were bonkers, me or them?
Quality were better than quantity. A man could hustle quantity, but a man needed to work much longer for the amount compared to quality, because the clientele wanted quality. The steady regulars will accept quantity or quality, because they were regulars.
It was thoughts like these that were in my mind as we rode back, but a gunshot broke in upon them.
There’s a lonesome sound to a gun shot in the evening. It sounds then sorts of echoes away and die off somewhere against the hills.
We both drew up and stood there listening to it dying out.
"That was close by," Jaquan said.
"They weren’t shooting at us neither," I said.
No answering shot sounded.
We listened for a minute or two and then we started down the road.
Riding slowly for we didn’t know what might lay before us.
"It might have been some junkie murdered," I said. And Jaquan agreed, but neither of us believed. From that moment, I think we were sure of what had happened. Somebody, though we didn’t know who, had been killed.
And that somebody had been shot from ambush.
Reaching down, I slicked my pistol from its place. And afterward Jaquan did the same. We rode carefully down the road ready for what might await us.
During the last few days, I felt a change taking place within myself. Not that it was unfamiliar, for I’d experienced it once before, a long time ago, and I knew it was something that happened when danger impends.
All my senses, every part of me was becoming more alert, more watchful, and more careful. Where before I might have hurried, might have brushed by a lot of things. Now I was listening, I was watching, and every bit of me was wary of danger.