Manchild in the promised land by Brown Claude 1937-

Author:Brown, Claude, 1937-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: [New York] New American Library
Published: 1965-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

of the Warwick Annex at Hampton Farm, he was big and burly, almost as big as a bam. I suppose just his size frightened a lot of people. He was a nice cat, and he'd always been a nice cat. Of course, if he hit a cat—and he would hit a cat if he got mad—^he would usually wreck the side of his face.

I think Jim had boxing on his mind when he first came out of the Annex. I don't know what happened. I think he came out and found this spot waiting for him in the numbers and found that all he had to do was come out and stand on Eighth Avenue most of the day. He walked right into the big time. I guess he just lost interest in boxing. Perhaps it was less appealing. His brother Zack was running around with the fine whores, he had a big Cadillac, he was the big numbers man. It was a more glamorous life than boxing.

After being out for about a year, Jim got busted sitting in Zach's big Cadillac smoking reefers. When he came back on the scene two years later, he was still in the big time. I remember when he first came out of the Annex, he looked for cats from the old crowd. Rock was out on parole. He'd say, "Have you seen Rock?"

I said, "No, man, I haven't seen Rock."

He said, "Damn, I'm looking for that cat. I want to get him high."

This was the way he was. He was always trying to do something for the old crowd, the cats he use to bebop with up and down Eighth Avenue and Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue and Amsterdam, all around the neighborhood.

But when he came out of Elmira, he seemed to look down on everybody as small-time hoodlums. He was ready for the big time. He used to hang out with a lot of Italian cats. Everybody thought they were members of the Mafia. He'd bring them uptown. He started snobbing the old crowd. He even started smoking a big cigar. I guess he was heading for the short life. People started saying that he'was a gorilla, that he was going around shaking down people, shaking down numbers controllers and cats who were dealing drugs. The word was out that he would just walk up to somebody and say, "Man, give me five hundred dollars." They tell me that Shorty Mannlin gave it to him once. Shorty Mannlin was a big-time numbers controller on 146th Street. He was Zack's competitor, and Jim just walked up to him and asked for five hundred dollars. Never laid a hand on him. He was so

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