Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes Read Online Free PDF Page A

singing:
         “If you evah go to Fut Wurth
         Boy you bettah ack right
         You bettah not ar-gy
         An’ you bettah not fight!
         Shruf Tomlin of Fut Wurth
         Cay’s a foaty-fouh gun
         If you evah see ’im com-min
         Well it too late to run!
         Cause he like to shoot rab-bit
         Like to shoot ’em on de run
         Seen dat Shruf hit a rab-bit
         Wif his foaty-fouh gun!”
    “Well, tell ’em ’bout it, Blind Tom!”
         “An’ he like to shoot de spar-ry
         An’ he like to shoot de quail
         An’ dare ain’t many nig-ger
         In de Fut Wurth jail!”
    “Goddam, sing it, Blind Tom!”
         “Yes he like to shoot de spar-ry
         An’ he like to shoot de quail!
         An’ dare ain’t many nig-ger
         In de Fut Wurth jail!”
    The crap-game progressed through the afternoon; by four o’clock there were about fifteen shooters. Harold had seen C.K. cleaned out three times, and each time leave the bar, to come back a few minutes later with a new stake. The last time though, he had only come back with another 39-cent bottle of Lucy.
    “Put this bottle aside for me, my man,” he said to Wesley, “till I call for it later, in the cool of the evenin’.”
    “Who’s winnin’?” asked Old Wesley.
    “I wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout that aspeck of the game I assure you!” said C.K.
    “Big Nail winnin’!” said a boy about Harold’s age who was picking cigarette-butts off the floor by the bar. “Big Nail hot as a two-dollah pistol!”
    C.K. gave a derisive snort, and wiped his mouth. “I jest wish I had me a stake ,” he said. “Now I can feel it! Lemme have two-dollah, Mistah Wesley, I give it to you first thing in the mornin’—on my way to work! I ain’t kiddin’ you!”
    “Where you workin’ now, C.K.?” asked Wesley, winking at Harold.
    “I ain’t kiddin’ you now!” C.K. said crossly, but then he sighed and turned away.
    “Man, I can sure feel it now! ”
    He started snapping his fingers, staring at his hand, fascinated. “Ump!” He made a couple of flourishes, and his shoulders hunched up and down in quick jerks, as though through spasms outside his control. “Ump! Man, I’m hot now, I jest had me a goddam stake!”
    “Here you is, boy.”
    The two bills, wadded together and soft with sweat, landed beside C.K.’s glass. He stared at them without looking up.
    “Go enjoy yourself,” said Big Nail who was standing next to him and appeared to be absorbed in counting and arranging his money, a great deal of it.
    C.K. picked up the crumpled notes and slowly straightened them out. “Shee-iit,” he said, and then walked over to the game, taking his bottle with him.
    Blind Tom was singing:
         “De longest train
         Ah evah did see
         Was one hun-red coaches long. . . .”
    Back in the game, C.K. waited for the dice.
    “I only bets on a sure-thing this time of day,” he said.
    “Here old Crow tryin’ to make his come-back!”
    “What you shootin’, C.K.?”
    “ Two-dollah? My, my, how the mighty have fallen!”
    “You jest git on that , boy,” said C.K., “you be havin’ all you want in a ver’ short time!”
    He rattled the dice, soft and then loud, he rolled them between his palms like pieces of putty—he blew on them, spit on them, rubbed them against his crotch, he raged against them like a sadistic lover:
    “ Come , you bitch, you hot mutha- hit ’em with it, SEVEN!”
    “ Baby , now one moah time hot SEVEN!”
    He made five straight passes without touching the money, and across the room Blind Tom was singing:
         “An de only gal
         Ah evah did love
         Was on dat tra-in
         An’ gone. . . .”
    “What you shootin’ now , C.K.?”
    “You lookin’ at it, daddy.”
    The $2, doubled five times, was now over $60—and mostly in ones, it lay scattered between them like a