Free Young and Violent by Vin Packer

Gober.”
    “Because you’re my girl, Baby — and there ain’t a Jungle breathin’ don’t know it. Even Flat Head Pontiac, who ain’t breathin’ seeing as he’s got a hole in his head the air leaks out — even he knows you’re my girl!”
    “Everybody knows it but me,” Babe Limon says. “I’m glad the news is out. I’m going to hear it any day now.”
    “You don’t know it, huh?” Gober walks over to her.
    “No.”
    “You don’t, huh?” He stands spread-legged, the smoke from his cigarette spiraling up past her face; his eyes fixed on her. She has her head bent, looking down at his feet, his black trousers, and his long arms dangling at his sides, his fingers with the cigarette clutched between them.
    “Gober, I’m only human — a girl.”
    “You sure you’re human, Baby. Or are you just all — ”
    “You talk to me in this kind of voice and expect me to know I’m your girl. Well, I don’t! I’m tired of being treated like something less than the dirt on this floor!”
    “You don’t know it, huh?” Gober says again.
    “No. No, no, no, no! I don’t!”
    Gober tosses the cigarette down and grinds it out with his heel. He bends over and pulls her up by her arm. Her pocketbook falls open, the contents spilling out of it. She tries to pick it up, but Gober jerks her to him. He holds her by her shoulders. “You’re going to learn it,” he says. “I’m going to teach you it, and you’re going to learn it, and you’re going to remember it!”
    Gober grabs her; pulls her down with him on the couch. His mouth finds hers and he kisses her, and under him she struggles, writhes in protest while his lips still hold hers. His hands come on her sweater, yanking it out of her skirt. Then Babe Limon fights less earnestly; her movements change from the bolting, frantic ones they were, to slower, more rhythmic ones. Her smooth arm slides around Gober’s back, and she pushes her lean body up against his.
    He says finally, “I’m going lock the door first.”
    “Do you love me, Gober?”
    “Sure,” he says. “Sure.”
    He gets up and walks across the cellar, ready to slide the nail on the door, into the hole. “Get your gear off!” he tells her quietly.
    She says, “You can be nice, Gobe. When you want to, you really can.”
    • • •
    Down 102nd Street Junior Brown goes like sixty. His eyes are big as mushrooms and his face is soaked in sweat, but he stops for no one. He runs like crazy.
    “Hey! Hey, where you think you’re goin’, Nothin’ Brown,” the news dealer over the Kings’ clubhouse shouts as Nothin’ streaks past him, “Hey, you little jigaboo, you know you ain’t allowed down there! Hey, you — hey!”
    Down the cement steps Junior Brown races, nearly tripping over the cartons stacked at the bottom, and reaching the door, he hears a lock being slipped into place; and he shouts, “Don’t lock up, Gobe! I’m friendly. It’s me, Nothin’. I gotta tell you somethin’!” He pounds on the door. “It’s me, Gobe. I gotta tell you somethin’!”
    Then the lock slips back, the door opens, and Gober steps outside of the clubroom.
    “Nothin’ Brown, you going to get your face slammed into that wall, if this ain’t damn important!”
    “I swear!” Nothin’ says, panting. “I swear. I run the whole way.”
    “Well!”
    “She want see you, Gobe. She want see you.”
    “What! Jesus Christ, Nothin’, what the hell you saying! C’mon, man, spit it out!”
    “ ‘At’s right! She want see you. She say you come the luncheonette and she talk to you. She say you come there, Gobe. She say it all right cause her old man gone be out.”
    “When!”
    “Now, Gobe. Right now. That why I run so fast. She say you come between five ‘n six and her old man be outa there, ‘n it five after five right now.”
    But Junior Brown does not have to say it another time, for like a shot Gonzalves has taken the steps by threes. Nothin’ stands before the door of the clubroom of