Manhunt. Volume 4, Number 6, June, 1956

A Helluva Ball by Jack Q. Lynn

She had no money to ride the pink cloud. But there was one friend who would help...

The day’s no good. It’s raining.

Rain does something strange to me. Bugs hatch inside me, crawl down into my thighs and up into my chest, and I think if something don’t happen soon, I’m gonna walk up a wall.

The class bell rings. Thank God! I walk past old Long-Nose Kelly, the flat-faced preacher who feeds the English crap. She looks at me like maybe she’s feeling sorry for me. Only I know different. Nobody feels sorry for Jackie.

Anne is in the hall when I walk out of the classroom. Anne is fifteen, my age. She’s a cute cat and smart. She’s got red hair and a figure the studs go for. You can hear stories about her if you wanna listen.

Me, I got a figure too. And I guess you could say I’m kinda cute. Only there ain’t so many stories about me. Cause I got a deformity. No fingernails. I got the fingers, but no nails. I was born that way. It makes a difference with the studs.

The class bell rings.

I say to Anne, “Le’s cop a walk.”

We go down the hall. The other studs and cats are chicken. They’re hurrying to the classrooms. Me’n Anne go out of the building and up the street. I don’t have a jacket. The rain is a miserable mist against my face. It plasters my blouse against my skin. We stop at a corner drug. It is one of those run-of-the-mill drugs you find in every run-down neighborhood: a soda fountain up front, dust-coated junk cluttering the single aisle leading back to the booths. We flop in a booth and call for Cokes. I pull my blouse loose from my skin and look around, fidgeting uncomfortably. Sweet Jesus, I’ve got worms!

“The monkey on your back?” Anne says.

I look at her. “It’s the rain. The stinkin’, lousy rain.”

She gives me a wise smile. “There’s a cure, doll. Know what I mean?”

I know what she means. You dance on a pink cloud and you thumb your nose at the world.

“It gets worse, doll,” Anne says. “You get horrors inside. Ice and fire. Somethin’ eatin’ out your guts. Then you gotta get the fix, Jackie-baby. Skin-pop to the big pipe. Yeah.”

Little red-head. Big talk. I bite my lip. “No H for Jackie. No stick. No nothin’. Me, I’m stoney.”

“The Fixer,” she says softly.

“Sweet Jesus, no!”

“He won’t hurtcha.”

“Not him!”

“You gotta have a fix, dontcha?”

I gotta get a fix like I gotta go to the john bad. But the Fixer! I’ve never been to him, but I know him. I hear stories. Young cats don’t need money with him. He likes young cats. Ugh!

“Soon somebody starts pullin’ off your skin,” Anne says.

I know. More bugs. The bite is deep and harsh. I itch.

Anne rolls out of the booth. She’s grinning down at me. “The big fun. Le’s go.”

We go out of the drug. It’s quit raining, but it’s almost dark. The clouds are low. We go up the street fast. Anne knows where she is going. This is our territory, familiar turf. A short time later we turn off the street and step into a dim vestibule of a smelly fleabag. I follow Anne up the three flights of dirty steps. She stops at a door, puts an ear against the thin partition and then she beats on the wood.

“Yeah?” The voice on the other side of the door is harsh.

“Anne.”

She looks at me over her shoulder and winks. I try on a smile. She opens the door and we go inside the flat. Light comes from a lamp. The flat is a garbage heap and it’s got a stink like sweat.

The little guy facing us from a deep chair near the lamp is in his underwear. He has a walnut-shaped head with sharp, beady eyes and a face pitted like an army of bugs has been digging foxholes in his skin. His color is bad, a peculiar unhealthy sheen, and his scabbed arms are mute testimony to the needles.

He has been reading a newspaper. Now he regards us from behind an open mouth, the newspaper forgotten. I see the hungry look crawl into his eyes and I don’t like the look.

“We’re hot, Fixer,” Anne tells him. “We wanna fix.”

He doesn’t move. His eyes don’t move from me, either. And I know what he’s staring at. I’ve got on a thin blouse. It’s damp, almost like a wet veil. He can see my bra plain.

Anne walks across the room to a sagging couch and sits down with a bounce. “You wanna give us a fix, Fixer?”

“Your frien’, yor frien’,” he says impatiently.

“Her name’s Jackie. She wants a stick.”

“Jackie,” he repeats. “That you?”

I nod my head.

“Jackie’s a good girl,” Anne says. “Me too. I’m a good girl. But right now I gotta get on. Please, Fixer?”

“Yeah, yeah. I fix you, kid. First, I talk to frien’.” His eyes look me up and down again. “How old you?”

“Fifteen,” I say and my voice cracks.

He grins. “You wanna stick?”

“I... I don’t know.”

“Sure, she wants one,” Anne says from the couch.

“What you give Fixer?” he says, paying no attention to Anne. “You pay?”

“She’ll pay,” says Anne.

I don’t say a word. Now I can’t look him in the eye. Now I look around the room. Anywhere. And then suddenly he gets up and walks out of the room. He comes back almost immediately and walks up close to me and puts a stick in my mouth. He scratches a match against a matchbook and he fires up the stick. Then I feel his finger hooked in my bra strap.

I jerk away from him, half scared.

“Easy, doll, easy,” Anne says. Then: “Goddamn you, Fixer, fix me!”

His eyes are hooded, his breathing fast and deep. Suddenly, he laughs in my face and turns away and walks over in front of Anne. He stands there a moment staring down at her. Then he says, “I cook for you, kid.”

He picks up a pair of pants. The needle is in the double flap of the fly. Slick. He goes out of the room and I hear water running and the hiss of a gas burner.

Anne is sprawled on the couch now, her body twitching around bad. What’s going on inside her? Suddenly, she cries out, “Jesus, hurry, Fixer!”

After a while he comes back, holding a needle in his mitt. He is grinning wickedly. With one hand he pushes Anne’s skirt up her leg.

“The big pipe!” she sobs.

I watch the Fixer. He ain’t in no hurry. He baby-pats her thigh with his fingers and drools a little. “Sweet Annie,” he says. And then he jams the needle into her leg.

“Ahhhh, God!” Anne arches her back high in the air and stays that way a long time before she flops back on the couch, all relaxed. A silly grin spreads across her mouth and her eyes are closed. The Fixer hovers over her, breathing harshly, his fingers still exploring her leg.

It is a long time before Anne opens her eyes and sits up straight. She pushes the Fixer’s hand away and gives a laugh and looks at me. “How you doin’, doll?”

I shrug. “I don’t feel nothin’.”

It’s the truth.

“You’re too nervous to get high. Relax, doll.” She looks up at the Fixer. “You give her another stick, huh?”

He goes out of the room again and comes back with the stick in his hand. He gives it to me.

Anne stands up. She unbuttons her blouse and then she walks over to a closed door. She opens the door and I see the lumpy bed beyond her. She looks at me over her shoulder and grins. Then she says to the Fixer, “Le’s get it done, man.”

He follows her like a dog into the bedroom. They don’t trouble to close the door.

I find the couch and smoke in silence. Ahead of me the bedroom is dimness. But I can see. Only I can’t look too long. It makes me shake. I fire the new stick from the roach of the first and smoke slowly, clamping one hand against my mouth. I hold the smoke in my lungs like the studs say to do. The boom is beginning to take hold. I’m climbing.

I don’t know how long it is before Anne and the Fixer come back into the front room. Anne is buttoning her blouse. Her mouth is a red smear. Some of the red is on the Fixer’s mouth.

Anne says, “How you doin’ now, doll?”

My breath is hard to get and I feel a tiny pulse beating in my throat. My head feels like it is drifting upward, stretching my neck. Something is funny. I throw back my head and laugh wildly. Then I struggle to my feet, almost fall. I’m reefed up good.

“Right now, I’m walkin’ off a mountain.”

“She’s hit,” Anne says to the Fixer.

“I’m hit, hit, hit. Daddio, get me—”

The Fixer’s hand on my arm stops me. And I ain’t hit no more. I’m cold turkey all over. He’s steering me to the bedroom. I plant my feet hard. He wraps one arm around my waist and I feel his crawling fingers on my hip.

“You come,” he says. “You pay.”

“Goddamn you—” I jam one knee up between his legs. He doubles forward with a pain-filled oath. I reel away from him. Revulsion shakes me. I want to cry out, but nothing will come past the tightness in my throat.

“Doll,” Anne says, “you gotta—”

“No!”

She stares at me a moment. Then: “Okay, doll. Take it cool.” She moves between me and the Fixer. “Forget her, Fixer.”

He reaches out and shoves her aside. She comes back. They fight. No holds barred. She claws for his eyes. I see Anne’s fingernails rake his face. Long, red lines go right down to the point of his chin. He slams a fist against her face, knocking her down hard. But she’s up like a cat, clawing at him again.

“Run, doll, run!” she screams.

I spin around and go out of the flat fast. I hear the Fixer’s insane cry behind me. I pound down the steps. I hear Anne coming.

“Run!” she screams.

I bang out the front door to the street and pull up, not sure just where I’m going or what I’m going to do. It is dark now. Black. I look back at the front door. There’s a light inside. Through the glass, I see the Fixer coming down.

Anne pulls on my arm. “In here.”

I follow her into an alley beside the building. We find a ladder hanging from a fire escape.

“Up,” she says.

Summoning all of my strength, I pull myself up until I’m standing on the bottom rung of the ladder. Then I move fast, scrambling up the three flights of steps until I reach the ladder that goes up to the roof of the building.

The roof is flat. The building wall extends about two feet above the tar surface. Anne scrambles over the wall behind me. Looking down into the alley, my breath stops in my throat. Light pouring in from a street lamp exposes the Fixer. He is standing at a point right below the ladder and he is looking up.

His voice comes up to me. “You gonna get yours, Jackie-kid.”

I see him pull himself up on the ladder.

Frantically, I run across the flat roof. The next roof is two stories down. I race back to the fire escape. The shadowy figure is halfway up the ladder now. I wait for him. My heart is pounding wildly, a vice is pinching my stomach. I back across the roof slowly and bump into Anne. The Fixer’s head appears over the wall. He stops when he sees us.

I can’t say anything.

“Fixer,” Anne says, “you go down.”

He grunts and moves higher.

“Fixer!” Anne cries. “You hear? You go down! She don’t wanna—”

He laughs softly.

“Goddamn you!” Anne screams.

She rushes him, her arms rigidly outstretched in front of her, her hands set to smash against his body and push him out into space. One moment he is there in front of her, his mouth open with surprise. The next moment he is gone.

Anne hits the wall hard. And horror rushes up inside me. I see her topple over the wall, her arms frantically clawing the air. Then her scream is a trail of anguish. I reach the wall in time to see her hit the railing at the first floor. She bounces into the alley. I hear the sickening plop as she splashes into the concrete.

For a long time, I hang over the wall, unable to move. And then I become conscious of the Fixer. He is scrambling down the fire escape fast. I watch him go over the side of the first floor landing. He hangs for a moment by his hands and then he drops into the alley. He runs out of the alley fast.

I go down slow. In the alley, I get down on one knee beside Anne. I’m sick inside. Scared. I try to lift her. She is a sack of wet-wash. And then I hear the heavy footsteps moving toward me. I spin around. The bright light in my face blinds me. A deep voice behind the light says, “Hold it, girl.”

The flash plays down on Anne. The left side of her head is caved in. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open. Some of her brains have spilled out.

“Keee-rist!” breathes the voice.

I know it’s a nab.

He swings his flash up. And I see the Fixer still in his underwear. The uniformed nab is holding him. I stare at the long, red lines on the Fixer’s face, and like a flash bulb going off I know what I’m gonna do. I know how I’m gonna fix it so I’ve got no worrying in the coming days, no being scared.

It’s gonna be the fix for the Fixer. The slammer.

“The Fixer done it,” I tell the nab quickly. “Me’n Anne are on the roof. You know, gettin’ some fresh air. Then he comes up and rapes her. Afterward they fight and he pushes her off—”

“No, cop, no!” the Fixer cries out. “This crazy kid—”

“Not this chick,” I say fast. “Look at his face. The scratches. Me, I can’t scratch. Look.”

I hold out my hands and extend my fingers. No nails.

The nab hangs on tight to the Fixer. And all of a sudden I’m getting a helluva kick. Cause this is getting to be a helluva ball.