For a long time after my accident I stayed with the milk company. Finally business slowed up. My boss was laid off and so was I. I had a hard time finding any thing to do until the government opened up a big job on Poland and Dauphine Streets. The government was so short of workers that it had to have thousands shipped in from Puerto Rico. What a sight those fellows were! Most of them had scarcely any clothes, and some of them were barefooted like the boys in my neighborhood. We were glad enough to work with them although they had the nerve to look down on us because we were colored. We ignored that and managed to get along with them fairly well.
I was rather proud of that big yellow button I wore for identification when I went in and out of the yard. You can imagine how tough things were when many well-known musicians had to work on that job. Among them was Kid Ory, a carpenter by trade and a good one at that. It was good to see him and a lot of the other boys, and it made me happy to be on that job with them. To my surprise I also ran into my teenage pal, Joe Lindsey. We were as happy to be together again as we were when we played in the little band together. At lunchtime we used to sit together on the logs they fed the pile driver, and talk endlessly. He told me about that woman he had left our little band to go to live with, and how she had finally left him for an older and more experienced man. That pretty near ruined him.
I told him all about Irene and me and about the sensible way in which we had parted. She had gone back to Cheeky Black and had not told me anything about it. Joe had a good laugh when I told him how I found it out.
After I returned from Houma I ran into Irene one day and she asked me out to her place. I was care ful to ask her if she had anybody else.
"Oh, no. Nobody," she said.
So I felt perfectly safe to go up to her room. We were just about to doze off to sleep when I heard the door knob rattle. Irene nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Who is it?" she asked.
I did not pay much attention, thinking it was merely a passing acquaintance. The door knob started to rattle again.
"Who is there?" she asked in a louder voice.
"It's Cheeky Black."
Then I began to think fast. Cheeky was a tough character. In those days when a chick said she had company, the caller outside was supposed to go away. Nothing of the sort happened. I had locked the door carefully myself, but Cheeky threw himself against it and it flew open as though there were no lock at all.
When Cheeky rushed in waving his razor Irene jumped out of bed screaming. She dodged past Cheeky and ran shrieking into the street with scarcely a stitch on. Cheeky was hot on her tail swinging that razor. Outside I could hear Irene's screams and the voices of people trying to pacify Cheeky and crying, "Don't cut her. Don't cut her."
While this was going on I was struggling to get into my clothes and get out of there as fast as I could. There was only one thought in my mind: Cheeky Black. What would happen to me if he came back? Finally I managed to get enough clothes on so that I could run all the way back home to Mayann. When I rushed in all out of breath she said:
"Uh-huh! So you've been in another man's house with his old lady? This will teach you a lesson, won't it?"
"Believe me, I'll never do it again, mother."
Mayann laughed herself sick. She was not afraid of a living soul, and she told me not to worry. She would straighten things out with Cheeky Black. After all, I was innocent. Irene had no business asking me to her house while she was still living with Cheeky Black.
After Joe Lindsey had a good laugh over this story, I told him that if I never saw Irene again it would be too soon. As a matter of fact I never have.
When the government work was over I got a pretty good job with a wrecking company tearing down old houses. The amusing thing about that work is that you always have the hope that you will find some treasure that was hidden in the house years ago and forgotten. The boys I worked with told me they had had all kinds of luck in finding money and jewels. I worked away furiously with my crowbar hoping to be able to shout to the gang, "Look what I found." The foreman had told us, "Finders keepers." A lot of good my hard work did me; I never found a thing. Wrecking is dan gerous business, and many house wreckers have been killed. After some of those brick walls had nearly fallen on me I decided I was not going to wait to find a hidden treasure. I cut out.
My next job was with old man Smooth, Isaac Smooth's daddy. For a long time Ike and I worked for his daddy, who lived in a part of the city called the Irish Channel. I always hated to go up to the old man's house because I was afraid I might run into some of those tough Irishmen who hung out in the saloons. Old man Smooth was a whitewashes and we helped him whitewash a huge building near those produce houses where as kids we used to collect the "soilies." Under old man Smooth's protection we had no more to fear than rabbits in a briar patch.
Ike certainly had beautiful sisters. One of them, Eva, had a very fine rooming house, and she can tell many a story about those good old days in Storyville. She has always been Ike's favorite sister, and her husband Tom was one of the best cotch players New Orleans ever had. That is saying a good deal because cotch is a tough game. It fascinated me so much that every time I could scrape up a nickel I would sit in with the four-flushing hustlers who really knew how to gamble. I always got washed out. Those boys could read my face like a book, and whenever I caught a good hand I always gave it away with a smile. Just the same the game gassed me.
chapter 8
Early in 1918 the flu began to let up, and the United States started to get after the Kaiser and his boys in fine fashion. The last draft call was for men between eighteen and forty-five, so I went down to the draft board and registered. When I could feel that draft card in my hip pocket I sure was a proud fellow, expecting to go to war any minute and fight for Uncle Sam – or blow for him.
One night during that period I was waiting for something to happen and I dropped into Henry Matranga's place for a bottle of beer. The tonk was not running, but the saloon was open and some of the old-timers were standing around the bar running their mouths. I had just said hello to Matranga when Captain Jackson, the meanest guy on the police force, walked in.
"Everybody line up," he said. "We are looking for some stick-up guys who just held up a man on Rampart Street."
We tried to explain that we were innocent, but he told his men to lock us all up and take us to the Parish Prison only a block away. There I was trapped, and I had to send a message to Mayann: "Going to jail. Try to find somebody to get me out."
They did not book us right away and held us for investigation in the prison yard with the long-term prisoners waiting to go up the river. Among them were men with sentences of from forty to fifty years, guys like Dirty Dog, Steel Arm Johnny, Budow Albert Mitchel and Channey. Most of them were Creoles from the Seventh Ward where my clarinet man Barney Bigard came from.
I knew those guys when they used to come up to the Third Ward where we lived, and I remember how Black Benny told them not to start any rough stuff or they would get cleaned out. They took the warning all right. They knew Black Benny meant it. Oh, that Benny!
Among all those bad men in the prison yard I knew that there was not one who could help me. Sore Dick, the captain of the yard, was tougher than any of them. He was a short, jet-black guy, built like a brick house, who had a way of looking the newcomer over that let him know Sore Dick was boss and that he was going to run the yard the way he wanted to. I found that out soon enough. The first day we were in the yard I went up to shake hands with one of the prisoners I had known out on the street. All of a sudden somebody jabbed me in the back with a broom handle and tripped me up. When I looked up I saw Sore Dick staring at me without saying a word. It dawned on me at once that I had better get busy with the broom he was holding. All newcomers, I later found out, had to sweep out the yard whether it needed it or not. That is the way they get you in the groove before you start serving a term.