The New Black Mask (No 6)

It Was a Hard Fall Harold Walls

Harold Walls is a pseudonym. He describes himself as a “dyspeptic misanthrope with no real desire to reveal my identity or my motive in writing fiction to the world at large. That’s why I write under a pseudonym.”

It was called the Celebrity Club, but the closest thing to a celebrity that had ever sipped stale, warm beer from a chipped bar glass at Johnny-O’s joint was Marblehead Dexter Simpkins, especially the night before his picture was on the front page of the Jamestown Journal as the prime-and-just-apprehended suspect in the rape and murder and then mutilation of the fourteen-year-old daughter of a very prominent man-about-town who just happened to be a white accountant, public and certified.

Marblehead’s rise to fame in the city at large was meteoric, but he has faded from memory fast. He is scheduled to make the front page one more time about four years from now, when his appeals run out and he gets to choose three witnesses to his untimely and unnatural demise. One way or the other, Elgin Balfour means to be there.

Marblehead was the main man to the Celebrity Club regulars, who still talk, three years later, about how he got framed. And the man had such promise, such talent, such style, they say. They remembered when Marblehead played football, and oh, how he dived into that line — head first and feet driving, never stopping till he was down, and even then always grinning like he had the world by the balls and knew just when to squeeze. He was just biding his time, they all said then.

Marblehead Simpkins used to walk like a king through Roosevelt Village, and the boys stood back and the girls came forth and Marblehead showed the girls that he was the man, their man. He was six-feet-four of prime fullbacking scholarship meat, wrapped in proud and shining ebony the year he left high school. That was the summer a going-on-drunk rent-a-cop caught Marblehead behind the concession stand by the football field one moonlit night, his shiny black ass pumping and glistening between the unshaven legs and turned-down toes of Marissa Balfour, who didn’t practice discrimination and never stopped screaming that she wanted it all, till it was all gone.

Marblehead wanted her to have it, too, but the DA felt their desires were improper and that the man had to learn some humility, or at least discretion, even if he was just eighteen and Big-Ten-bound, so he put the boy’s ass in the can for two to ten on a charge of rape statutorily. There he could ponder what might have been if Marissa’s daddy, Elgin, had his way.

“You’re gonna have to get used to white boys from now on, son.” The bailiff laughed, and Marissa cried, because Elgin was sending her north to get her head straight and her ass in line in a place where the moon might as well never rise and the sun might as well never shine.

Marblehead emerged from stir a changed man. “I used to be the best-dressed motherfucker in Roosevelt Village, before I learned to spend my cash making my body feel good instead of look good,” he used to say after they set him free. And Marblehead knew how to feel good when he came back to Jamestown. Speed-balls, red devils, white magic, and soul dust, 99 percent pure. Mainlined, streamlined, down-the-hatch, and gone. Marblehead took it the way it came. And he learned that every front door has a silver lining, especially if you go in through the back, real quiet, when nobody’s home. A man with a habit has got to cop seven days a week, every week of the year.

Big appetites don’t attract attention at the Celebrity Club, but Marblehead’s hungers left the regulars in awe. It took twenty-four long-neck bottles of Miller High Life beer, two long-legged, pelvis-pumping sugar plums, and one pop every four hours of vein-warming glory dust to keep Marblehead satisfied, each day, every day, and he got mean when he wasn’t satisfied.

That’s how he came to fall hard. He got mean when he should have been patient, and talked when he should have listened, and he forgot that you don’t have to be big to get revenge. Like Papa Monk Sanders says, “You fuck over a man that’s got balls, and you better kill him, because beating him’s not enough.” Elgin Balfour’s got balls like tangerines.

Marblehead’s rise to the heights of celebrity, his subsequent fall, and his understanding of the wisdom Papa Monk spoke began at 7:00 A.M. Thursday morning, August 13, 1981. Marblehead was having the first beer and third cigarette of the day, standing outside the Celebrity watching the honkies motor officeward down Chesnutt Street. He felt bad. Sherrille Ann Cleveland — Pucker Puss, she was called in the Village — had kicked his ass out of bed. The cost of her affection came high, and Marblehead was short the price that night because his coffers were close to bare and he could cop for one, but not two. “You want to light my fire, you come back with the fuel,” Puss said firmly, and she turned her man out into the street.

It was all a matter of coincidence that morning that Marblehead flipped his butt just a little too hard; and Elgin Balfour drove by just a little too slow; and the window of the 98 Oldsmobile, four-door deluxe with luxury package was down just a little too far; and Marissa was in the front seat, just back from boarding-school-and-locked-room exile; and that still-lit butt landed in the lap of her pretty, off-white, not-quite-virgin silk dress; and — well — there was smoke where there used to be fire.

Marissa screamed, and Elgin slammed on the brakes, and Marblehead didn’t notice, because he felt too bad, until Elgin Balfour stood, his nose six inches from the gold medallion around Marblehead’s neck and spit out a threat: “You’re going to be sorry, boy.”

Marblehead said, “Ain’t nothing stinks like Listerine and Jade East cheek by jowl, so would you get outta my face?” And he laughed like a man without a care in the world and looked at Marissa and said, “Hey, baby, long time no see.” Spitting in the wind.

Elgin pronounced a death sentence and left. Marblehead adjusted his dick and had another beer. He had his day to plan, opportunities in suburbia to explore.

This day Marblehead would be a plumber’s helper. He took off his gold and put on his old clothes. He borrowed for $50 an about-to-be-painted pickup from Shine Like New Auto Repaint, and stole into the bright morning of Quail Pointe Estates, shovel rattling in the back. He had a rag in one pocket, a bag in the other, a beer in his fist, and Puss on his mind. When he found a house that looked just right, he parked his truck in front and dug a hole in back — by the flower garden. That was just for show, while he waited to see if some busybody housewife, bored with soaps and call-in-to-win radio, would spoil his day. Forty-five minutes of digging, and Marblehead was ready to work.

He wrapped his rag around the end of that shovel like a craftsman, and broke a windowpane so skillfully that even he didn’t hear it shatter. He climbed inside, dirt-clogged feet first, gave himself a pop, and started separating the dross from the gold, as they say.

Marblehead was a careful man, but quick about his business, and inside of an hour, he was out and grinning, on his way to liquidate his assets. He left behind a dirt-stained hand-knotted Persian rug that drove the lady of the house to trembling, fearsome fury, and an unfilled hole in a zoysia carpet outside that cut to the quick of her husband’s soul. Never mind insured losses of $18,384.98, replacement value covered. State Farm paid that. A fence named Mouse the Mule paid Marblehead seven bills even and the matter was closed.

The main man went hunting sweet, soulful solace at Puss Cleveland’s, his pockets bulging. She lifted his burden and relieved his tension, hauled his ashes and stoked his furnace before they went to the Celebrity to party. Drinks were on the man; that’s how a celebrity acts at Fifth and Chesnutt. And that’s why a roomful of gentlemen of leisure and ladies of the evening know damn well that Dexter aka Marblehead Simpkins perpetrated neither rape nor the least degree of assault, not to mention mutilation, on anybody fairer than sweet, dark chocolate, more or less the shade of Puss Cleveland, that night.

But somebody did.

And he left his mess in Elgin Balfour’s backyard.

Screaming and yelling, weeping and wailing were the Friday-morning sounds on Chesnutt Street when four carloads of determined young officers of the law, shotguns loaded and billy clubs drawn, descended on one slightly buzzing ex-fullback who could not comprehend their anger. They dragged him off fighting to await the opportunity to plead his case before the bar of justice. A speedy trial was his right, and Elgin saw to his rights.

“I didn’t do no wrong,” the man lied, but we knew what he meant.

“Fry his ass,” Elgin Balfour cried.

“I saw Dexter Simpkins in the vicinity of the crime,” Marissa Balfour wept spitefully; “he tried to get me, but daddy scared him off.

“He was with me and fifteen others at the Celebrity,” Puss Cleveland countered.

“You’re a whore, and reliable witnesses don’t frequent that haven for the lawless,” the DA replied.

“You’re a nubbin-dicked piece of shit,” Johnny-O piped up.

“You’re in contempt,” the judge declared. “Order in the court.”

The jury said guilty in the first degree.

“Fry his ass, Judge. You owe it to the community,” Elgin Balfour demanded.

The judge concurred, Elgin winked. A hod carrier named Andrew breathed a sigh of relief. And that settled it.

The night of the judgment there was a mournful gathering at the Celebrity Club. Puss Cleveland sobbed and bought for the house, courtesy of her used-to-be old man, and they drank to his honor.

“We were gonna get married,” Puss announced, tears swelling up in her eyes.

“Be glad you didn’t,” Johnny-O allowed, lust swelling up in his pants.

Papa Monk Sanders said, “The boy had it coming. He was predesigned for a big fall. But Lord, he knew how to act at party time.”

And they drank one more bottle of beer to his memory.