I didn’t know when I first saw him that he was the pin-striped snake who would poison the core of our lives.
I certainly had no inkling that last day at the shop as live billows of steam hissed from the old pressing machine each time Henry slammed its lid down on a garment.
Jesus! It was hot in that little shop, but I loved every minute of it. It was school-vacation time for me and every summer I worked in the shop all day, every day helping my stepfather.
That day as I saw my reflection on the banker’s expensive black shoes, I was perhaps the happiest black boy in Rockford. As I applied the sole dressing I hummed my favorite tune “Spring Time in the Rockies.”
The banker stepped down from the shine stand, stood for a moment as I flicked lint from his soft, rich suit, then with a warm smile he pressed an extravagant fifty-cent piece into my hand and stepped out into the broiling street.
Now I whistled my favorite tune, shines were only a dime, what a tip.
I didn’t know at the time that the banker would never press another coin into my hand, that for the next thirty-five years this last day would be remembered vividly as the final day of real happiness for me.
I would press five-dollar bills into the palms of shine boys. My shoes would be handmade, would cost three times as much as the banker’s shoes, but my shoes, though perfectly fitted would be worn in tension and fear.
There was really nothing out of the ordinary that day. Nothing during that day that I heard or saw that prepared me for the swift, confusing events that over the weekend would slam my life away from all that was good to all that was bad.
Now, looking back remembering that last day in the shop as clearly as if it were yesterday, my stepfather, Henry, was unusually quiet. My young mind couldn’t grasp his worry, his heart break.
Even I, a ten year old, knew that this huge, ugly, black man who had rescued Mama and me from actual starvation back in Indianapolis loved us with all of his great, sensitive heart.
I loved Henry with all my heart. He was the only father I had ever really known.
He could have saved himself an early death from a broken heart if instead of falling so madly in love with Mama he had run as fast as he could away from her. For him, she was brown-skin murder in a size-twelve dress.
That last night at eight o’clock Dad and I flicked the shop’s lights out as always at closing.
In an emotion muffled voice he spoke my name “Bobby.”
I turned toward him and looked up into his face tense and strained in the pale light from the street lamp. I was confused and shaken when he put his massive hands on my shoulders and drew me to him very tightly just holding me in this strange desperate way.
My head was pressed against his belt buckle. I could barely hear his low, rapid flow of pitiful words.
He said, “Bobby, you know I love you and Mama, don’t you?”
His stomach muscles were cording, jerking against my cheek. I knew he was going to burst into tears.
I said as I squeezed my arms around his waist, “Yes, Daddy, yes, Daddy. We love you too, Daddy. We always will, Daddy.”
He was trembling as he said, “You and Mama wouldn’t ever leave me? You know Bobby, I ain’t got nobody in the world but you two. I just couldn’t go on if you left me alone.”
I clung tightly to him and said, “Don’t worry Daddy, we’ll never leave you, I promise, honest, Daddy.”
What a sight we must have been, the six-foot-six black giant and the frail little boy holding on to each other for dear life, crying there in the darkness.
I tell you when we finally made it to the big black Dodge and were riding home my thoughts were turning madly.
Yes, poor Henry’s fears had foundation. Mama had never loved my stepfather. This kind, wonderful man had only been a tool of convenience. She had fallen in love with the snake all right.
His plan was to cop Mama and make it to the Windy. The dirty bastard knew I would be excess baggage, but the way Mama was gulping his con, he figured he could get rid of me later.
Only after I had become a pimp years later would I know Steve’s complete plot, and how stupid he really was.
Here this fool had a smart, square broad with a progressive square-john husband, infatuated with him. Her business was getting better all the time.
Her sucker husband was blindly in love, and the money from his business was wide open to her. If Steve had been clever he could have stayed right there on top of things and bled a big bankroll from the businesses in a couple of years.
Then he could have pulled Mama out of there and with a big bankroll he could have done anything with her, even turned her out.
I tell you she was that hot for him. She had to be insane over the asshole to walk away from all that potential with only twenty-five hundred in cash.
Steve blew it in a Georgia-skin game within a week after we got to Chicago.
I have wished to Christ, in four penitentiaries, that the lunatic lovers had left me in Rockford with Henry when they split.
One scene in my life I can never forget and that was that morning when Mama had finished packing our clothes and Henry lost his inner fight for his pride and dignity.
He fell down on his knees and bawled like a scalded child, pleading with Mama not to leave him, begging her to stay. He had welded his arms around her legs, his voice hoarse in anguish, as he whimpered his love for us.
His agonized eyes walled up at her as he wailed, “Please don’t leave me. You are sure to kill me if you do. I ain’t done nothing. If I have, forgive me.”
I will never forget her face, as cold as an executioner’s, which she was, as she kicked and struggled loose from him.
Then with an awful grin on her face she lied and said, “Henry, Honey, I just want to get away for a while. Darling, we’ll be back.”
In his state she was lucky he hadn’t killed her and me, and buried us in the backyard.
As the cab drove us away to the secret rendezvous with Steve sitting in his old Model T, I looked back at Henry on the porch, his chest heaving as tears rolled down his tortured face.
There were too many wheels within wheels, too much hurt for me to cry. After a blank time and distance we got to Chicago. Steve had vanished and Mama was telling me in a drab hotel room that my real father was coming over to see us, and to remember that Steve was her cousin.
Steve was stupid all right, but cunning, if you get what I mean.
Mama, at Steve’s instruction, weeks before, had gotten in contact with my father through a hustler brother of Mama’s in Chicago.
When my father came through the hotel room door reeking of cologne and dressed to kill, all I could think was what Mama had told me about that morning when this tall brown-skin joker had tossed me against the wall.
He took a long look at me. It was like looking in a mirror. His deep down guilt cream puffed him and he grabbed me and squeezed me to him. I was stiff and tense in the stranger’s arms, but I had looked in the mirror too when he came in, so I strung my arms limply about his neck.
When he hugged Mama, her face was toward me and stony, like back there with Henry. My father strutted about that hotel room boasting of his personal chef’s job for Big Bill Thompson the mayor of Chicago.
He told Mama and me, “I am a changed man now. I have saved my money and now I really have something to offer my wife and son. Won’t you come back to me and try again? I am older now, and I bitterly regret my mistakes of the past.”
Like a black-widow spider spinning a web around her prey, Mama put up enough resistance to make him pitch himself into a sweat then agreed to go back to him.
My father’s house was crammed with expensive furniture and art pieces. He had thousands of dollars invested in rich clothing and linens.
After a week, my hustler uncle brought Steve to visit us, and to case the lay out. My father bought the cousin angle and broke out his best cigars and cognac for the thieves. It was another week before they took him off.
Remember, at the time I had no idea as to what really was going to happen. I would learn the shocking truth
