E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
Bunker Death Row Breakout Stories
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84243-763-6
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-84243-763-6
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Edward Bunker, Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs, was the author of No Beast So Fierce, Little Boy Blue, Dog Eat Dog, The Animal Factory and his autobiography, Mr Blue, all published by No Exit. He was co-screenwriter of the Oscar nominated movie, The Runaway Train, and appeared in over 30 feature films, including Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman, the film of his book No Beast So Fierce. Edward Bunker died in 2005 and another novel, Stark, was discovered in his papers.
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The year was 1927. In Washington, DC, the Ku Klux Klan put on full-hooded regalia and marched ten abreast down the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue with American flags flying.
In Los Angeles, nineteen-year-old Booker Johnson looked at the front page photo of the march in the Daily News and was glad that he was far across the continent in California. Sure, there was prejudice and bigotry there, but there was no Jim-Crow bullshit.
Back in Tennessee, all the colored kids in town went to a two-room schoolhouse, grammar school in one room, middle school in the other. After the ninth grade there was no school. Out here everybody went to school together. True enough, colored kids were a small minority in LA. The great westward migration of The War was still fifteen years away. When Booker reached Los Angeles, he was sixteen years old and could barely read. Because he had to work and help support his mother (his father had died in a farm accident when Booker was twelve), Booker was given a work permit; he had to attend school four hours a week. At seventeen he stopped going altogether. No truant officer ever stopped him. At sixteen he carried a hundred and ninety pounds on a 6’1” frame. His stomach muscles had the ridges of a washboard, hardened from bending over with an ‘Aggie’, a very short-handled hoe. Indeed, his whole body rippled with muscles conditioned by hard work. From age ten, he’d picked cotton, dragging a long sack between his legs down a turn row, pulling the little balls of white fluff from the bushes and dropping them in the sack. At thirteen he began cutting sugar cane in the hot sun; his sweat attracted insects and the cane leaves had edges that cut the skin. In autumn, he had chopped many cords of firewood that were stacked in the front yard and sold to people passing by.
Now nineteen, he had a job in a Texaco gas station on Wilmington Avenue and 43rd Street. Monday through Wednesday, he pumped gas and checked oil, but on Thursday and Friday he was the on-duty mechanic. Mostly, he changed oil and fixed flat tires, but there were real mechanic’s jobs, too. He had a knack for it, and had even managed to resuscitate an eight-year-old Model T the station owner sold him for $25.00. His weekly wages were $32.50, and they were pretty good for a time when the house rent was $30.00 a month. On Saturday, the boss let Booker use the service bay and the tools to work on the Model T. This was a Saturday in September, and the desert heat, which was usually dry, was uncommonly humid. Booker had sweat stinging his eyes. The motionless air weighed him down. None of that bothered him at the moment; he was enthralled by the immense, gleaming engine of the 12-cylinder Packard that had been tuned up.
A shadow fell over him. He looked around. Ned Wilson was in the doorway. A tow-headed young man two years older than Booker; Ned was the weekend manager.
“I don’t feel good, Booker.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Maybe something I ate, maybe the heat. I dunno. I just threw up out there… Don’t worry, I hosed it down before it started stinking.”
Booker said nothing; he had nothing to say and it was his nature to say very little anyway.
“I really wish you could do me a favor and cover for me? Stay here and close up. It’s only three hours. I’ll give you ten dollars.”
Ten dollars! God knew he could use an extra ten dollars. “I wish I could,” he said, “but I got a date. Belle don’t have no phone.”
Ned Wilson smiled, showing discolored teeth, the product of his family’s poverty. “I thought of that already. I called Phil. He said you can close an hour early tonight.”
Booker felt manipulated. Phil was the owner. Calling him before asking took a lot for granted. Yet ten dollars was ten dollars. He could take Belle to the Club Alabam. It was the hottest club on Central Avenue. “Yeah, man, I’ll be glad to work for you.”
“Hey, I really appreciate that. No shit.”
Booker nodded and extended his hand. Ned frowned; then understood and grinned and reached for his billfold. “You takin’ all my money,” he said as he handed it over.
A car pulled up to the pumps outside. “I’ll get that,” Ned said, starting out; then he stopped, reached in his pocket and handed Booker the keys. “You’re runnin’ things now, boy.” He gave a mock salute and went out.
At 8:15, Booker started closing up. He emptied the wastebasket, locked the rest rooms and pulled down the garage doors. At precisely 8:30, he locked the pumps and turned off the lights.
The Model T refused to start. When the starter wouldn’t turn over, he used the backup hand crank. It had never failed before. He turned it until his arm ached. Nothing. “Damn! Shit!” he cursed and kicked the tire and felt disheartened. What was Belle going to say? How was he going to tell her?
Then his eye fell on the Packard roadster. Sight, idea and decision were all simultaneous. For a moment he almost changed his mind, but he thought of Belle’s fine brown frame in the thin summer dress. Nothing could go wrong. The Packard would be back in the garage long before daylight.
The V12 engine kicked over instantly – and roared loud when he pressed the accelerator. What a car. He pushed the clutch and shifted into gear. It was sure easier than the Model T. Outside, he stopped to lock the garage doors. A moment later he turned onto the street, grinning to himself as he anticipated Belle’s reaction when she saw the car. She would be waiting on the front porch.
The traffic signals of the era were red and green, without a yellow warning light. A metal flag swung up simultaneously, “Stop” and “Go”.
Booker hit the brakes. The Packard stopped. The car behind did not. One second of squealing tires; then the dull crash followed by tinkling glass.
Booker lurched into the steering wheel. His ribs hurt, but that was nothing to the sudden pain in his mind. Oh, God!
He opened the car door and got out. Approaching him in the twilight was a uniformed police officer. Booker’s fear was immediate, less from personal experience than from ghetto tales. It was decades before rampant black crime, but not before racist police.
“What the hell kinda stop was that?” the policeman asked. “Let’s see your driver’s license. Whose car is this?”
Booker produced the driver’s license, but ignored the question.
The policeman looked at the license and handed it back. “Ever been in trouble with the law, Booker?”
“No, sir,” Booker said. Mama had been strict about having good manners and showing respect. He was apprehensive about police without feeling hostile toward them. LA still had few Negroes and the police, sure of their omnipotence, were often paternalistic instead of repressive. Booker’s respectful demeanor softened the officer’s initial irritation.
The bumpers were hooked together. The Packard had suffered no damage except a broken taillight, but the police car’s radiator had been punctured. Water was running down into the street.
They tried jumping on one bumper and lifting the other to separate the cars. Had it worked, Booker might have gotten away. Alas, the cars remained hooked together. Two-way police radios were not in use yet. “Stay here while I call in,” the policeman said. “There’s a call box on Figueroa.” He set off down the street and Booker watched the figure disappear. It never crossed his mind to leave. His fears were about his boss’s reaction. It was embarrassing to have a cop car hit him in the rear, but he had done nothing illegal. It was the cop’s fault – and, except for the first few seconds, which were understandable, the cop wasn’t hostile, and Booker was sensitive to any current of prejudice in word or tone or attitude. It was a time in history when, despite Jim-Crow and the Klan and good American writers who used “nigger” without a sense of its insult, there was less black crime than white, and it was substantially less violent. Policemen felt no need for bulletproof vests in the ghetto, or to draw their weapons when they pulled over a carload of young colored men. This particular cop felt sorry for most colored guys, and he had no sense that Booker had done anything wrong. His concern was what his superiors would say about the bashed in radiator. The cop reached the call box and made the report.
The Desk Sergeant thought it was funny. He would send someone right away. He started to walk back to the intersection.
Booker smoked a cigarette and waited, worrying over what he would tell the boss about the broken taillight. Would it cost him his job? He’d taken the Packard without permission.
Another police car pulled up. A Sergeant got out. “You the driver?” he asked.
“Yessir.”
“Where’s the officer?”
“He… uhh… went to make a telephone call… I think.”
The Sergeant grunted and went to look at the hooked bumpers. Booker’s sense of the Sergeant’s hostility was confirmed when the Sergeant turned to him. “Where’d you steal the car, boy?”
“I didn’t steal no car, boss man. Honest.”
“Where’s the registration.”
“I dunno. Lemme explain, please. I work in a gas station with a garage. The car was in for the night –”
“The owner said it was okay to take it?”
“Not the owner – my boss.”
“Your boss, huh? What’s his name?”
“Phil Collins. It’s the Collins Texaco station over on Alameda.”
“What’s the phone number?”
“Nobody’s there now. It’s closed.”
“What’s his...
