The Choirboys Read Online Free PDF Page A

wished, after having seen all of the world he cared to see, it was that there was a word as dirty as "nigger" to apply to all mankind. Since he had little imagination he had to settle for "asshole." But he realized that all Los Angeles policemen and most American policemen used that as the best of all possible words.
    Calvin Potts, the only black choirboy, agreed wholeheartedly with Roscoe when he drunkenly expressed his dilemma one night at choir practice in the park.
    "That's the only thing I like about you, Roscoe," Calvin said. "You don't just hate brothers. You hate everyone. Even more than I do. Without prejudice or bias."
    "Gimme a word then," Roscoe said. He was reeling and vomitous, looking over his shoulder for Harold Bloomguard who at 150 pounds would fight anyone who was cruel to the MacArthur Park ducks.
    "Gimme a word," Roscoe repeated and furtively chucked a large jagged rock at a fuzzy duckling who swam too close, just missing the baby who went squawking to its mother.
    Everyone went through the ordinary police repertoire for Roscoe Rules.
    "How about fartsuckers?"
    "Not rotten enough."
    "Slimeballs?"
    "That's getting old."
    "Scumbags?"
    "Naw."
    "Cumbuckets?"
    "Too long."
    "Hemorrhoids?"
    "Everybody uses that."
    "Scrotums?"
    "Not bad, but too long."
    "Scrotes, then," said Willie Wright who was now drunk enough to use unwholesome language.
    "That's it!" Roscoe Rules shouted. "Scrotes! That's what all people are: ignorant filthy disgusting ugly worthless scrotes. I like that! Scrotes!"
    "A man's philosophy expressed in a word," said Baxter Slate of 7-A-l. "Hear! Hear!" He held up his fifth of Sneaky Pete, drained it in three gulps, suddenly felt the special effects of the port and barbiturates he secretly popped, fell over and moaned.
    There was however one thing which endeared Roscoe Rules to all the other choirboys: he was, next to Spencer Van Moot of 7-A-33, the greatest promoter any of them had ever seen. Roscoe could, when he cared to, arrange food and drink for the most voluptuous taste-all of it free-for the other choirboys, who called him an insufferable prick.
    At first the only thing Roscoe didn't like about his partner Dean Pratt was his styled red hair. But he soon came to hate his partner for his drunken crying jags at choir practice. There was another thing about Dean Pratt which all the choirboys despised and that was that the twenty-five year old bachelor's brain became temporarily but totally destroyed by less than ten ounces of any alcoholic drink. Then it was impossible to make the grinning redhead understand anything. Any question, statement, piece of smalltalk would be met by an idiotic frustrating maddening double beseechment:
    "I don't get it. I don't get it." Or, "Whaddaya trying to say? Whaddaya trying to say?" Or, most frequently heard, "Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?"
    And so, Dean Pratt eventually became known as Whaddayamean Dean. The first few sessions of the MacArthur Park choirboys found Roscoe Rules, Calvin Potts or Spermwhale Whalen eventually grabbing the lanky redhead by the front of his Bugs Bunny sweatshirt and shaking him in rage with Dean in drunken tears babbling, "I don't get it. I don't get it. Whaddaya mean? Whaddaya mean?"
    Yet Whaddayamean Dean became , the first policeman Roscoe Rules ever took home to meet his family. Roscoe, one of three choirboys who were married, lived on a one acre piece of ground east of Chino, California, some sixty miles from Wilshire Station. Even the few friends Roscoe had made these past four years would not drive that far to be sociable. Roscoe loved it there and made the daily trek gladly. His children could grow up in a rural setting as he had. Of course they would not have to work nearly as hard. His two boys, eight and nine, only had to hoe and weed and water his corn, onions, carrots, squash and melons. Then after cleaning the animals' stalls, picking the infectious dung and hay from the horse's hooves and treating the swaybacked pony