[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine December 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
You could say Jonesy and/or I were not
all there, but I don't see it that way.
How much of Stanley was or wasn't there?
Have you ever been clear down there on skid row? Oh, sure, every city
has one and no doubt you have given it one of those look-away-quick
side glances. That isn't what I mean.
What I mean is, have you ever been really _down_ there?
Probably not. And, if you haven't, I could make a suggestion.
Don't go.
Skid row is a far, remote way and there are all kinds of horrors down
there, the seen and the unseen. To each his own, as they say, and
everyone there has his own personal collection. All right. General
opinion is to let them be there and the hell with them, people and
horrors too, if there is a distinction. Unfortunate, but what can you
do? Nothing. Look the other way. That's all right with me. I don't
know anything better to do about the horrors that are, or that may be
on skid row than to hope they will stay there where they belong--and
let me forget them.
That's why I'm writing this. I want to do the story of what I saw,
and what I think I saw or felt, and what I didn't see, to get it off
my mind. Then I am going to do my damnedest not to think of the whole
thing.
Me, I know about skid row because I was there. That's my personal
problem and another story, before this one, and the hell with that,
too. I once had a wife and a couple of kids. I had a lot of problems
and then no wife and no kids and I made it to skid row. It was easy.
For a while I was there, all the way down, where the gutter was
something I could look up to. Well, turned out I had friends who
wouldn't quit. By their efforts plus, as they say, the grace of God, I
came off it; most of the way off it, at least. No credit to me, but not
too many ever manage to make a round trip of it.
Who are the misfits and derelicts on skid row? Anybody; nobody.
Individuals, if they are individuals, come and go. The group, with
few exceptions, is always the same. It is built of the world's
rejects--lost souls, bad dreams; shadowy, indistinct shapes, not a part
of life nor yet quite altogether out of it, either.
I was down there. I left. But I kept passing by every once in a while
to pay a little visit. For that I had two reasons. One, I could
sometimes pick up a lead on something for a Sunday feature for my
paper. The other--just taking another look now and then at where and
what I had been was a sort of insurance for me.
* * * * *
So, from time to time I would stop by The Yard for an evening. I would
spring for a jug. I was welcome. Those in the regular group knew me and
they held me in no more than the same contempt they had for each other
and themselves. Being no stranger--or, perhaps, not too much less
strange--I fitted well enough with the misfits of that half-world where
the individual rarely stands out enough to be noticeable.
Wino Jones, though, and his friend Stanley were, each in his own way,
quite noticeable.
I first ran across Wino Jones and Stanley one early spring evening.
It was a Thursday. I was beat. It had been a tough week--a political
scandal, a couple of fires and a big "Missing Kid--Fiend" scare. Turned
out the kid had skipped school to catch a triple-feature horror show
and was scared to go home when she came out late, so she went to hide
out at Grandma's. The suspect fiend was a cockfight sportsman from the
Caribbean colony smuggling home his loser under his leather jacket.
But it had been a rough week with a lot of chasing around and getting
no place that left me in one of those hell-with-it moods. Like, maybe,
I ought to take a week or so off and--and the hell with that. It was
time for me to pay a little remembrance-of-things-not-so-far-past visit
down on the row.
I left the city room, tired, dirty, needing a shave. Where I was
headed, this would put me ahead of the fashion parade, but it would
serve. I stopped for a bowl of chili at Mad Miguel's and then wandered
down to those four blocks on South River Street, known as Bug Alley,
that make up the hard-core skid-row section of our city.
Across from St. Vincent's in Scott Square, called the Yard, by the old
wall, there was a group of six or eight passing the time and a nearly
dead jug. I shambled over and squatted down. Got a hard, bloodshot look
or two, but not because the jug in the public park was against the law.
Even if I was the law, so what? These, they made the jail now and then,
if there were too many complaints, if they made a disturbance. But not
even the jail wanted them. The hard looks wondered only if the jug
should be passed to me or by me.
I lit a cigarette, took a couple of drags and handed it on. Bootnose
Bailey, big, old, bald, with the cast-iron stomach and leather liver,
settled the jug question by handing it to me. I lifted it, letting only
the smallest trickle of the sticky sweet cheap wine past. It is not
for me; no more. It is sickening stuff. But, as always, the effort of
holding back left me shaking. All right; with shaking, I had plenty
of company. The next man looked pleased at the two gulps left in the
bottle and drained it.
"Ed?" Bootnose asked in his hoarse canned-heat whisper. "You gonna
spring for a jug?"
I squatted a minute or so and then stood and started fumbling around
through all my pockets. This is local protocol. Coin by coin, I spread
a dollar and a half in silver out on the flat collection stone in front
of me. A huge, powerful-looking colored man, new to me, hunkered down
against the wall, smiled gently and added a quarter. Bootnose scooped
it up and went to make the run for the jug.
* * * * *
I was, I guess, stretching the ground rules a little by the way I
stared at the big fellow. But he surprised me mildly. For one thing,
he looked in good shape; strong, no shakes, no fevered ghosts back of
the bloodshot curtain of the eyes. And, apart from that, you don't find
very many Negroes on skid row, at least in our area. I don't know why.
"Jones," he said, softly, politely, "Wino Jones. You're Ed? Ed, this
here is my friend Stanley." He waved a big hand at a wispy little man
beside him.
Funny I hadn't seen Stanley before, but there he was. That I want to
make clear. Stanley was there; no question about it. Only he was such a
totally remote, insignificant, unobtrusive little man, it is hard for
me to remember him even now. Hard to remember what he _was_ like, that
is. He wasn't colored. He was small. His eyes, his hair, I don't know.
He must have had some or I would have noticed. And he had a sort of
sour, distant, hurt bitterness about him, I recall, and that is about
all I can recall ever seeing in Stanley. Except for the last time I saw
him--he looked mean then.
This time, I smiled and nodded. "Wino Jones, Stanley, welcome to our
city, our little garden spot."
"There now, Stanley," Jones beamed, "he can see you well enough. You're
doing fine, Stanley, getting better all the time. You _do_ see him
plain, don't you, Ed?"
"Huh? Yeah, sure I see him. Why not? Does he think he's invi--"