The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim by Iceberg Slim Page B

and moaning, she started working me out the straight way.
    Suddenly a shower of kitchen light rained down on our mad thrashing. Rosie’s old man stood glaring down at us. It was lucky for me that I was sneaker shod. I yowled and leaped straight up out of the squishy valley like a black tomcat from the top of a red-hotstove. I slipped through his clutching hands like a buttered eel. He didn’t have even a remote chance of catching me. I vaulted the backyard fence and torpedoed down the alley. I heard his angry bellowing and the pounding of his feet die in the sultry spring air.
    That was the first event that makes me certain I met the goddess on a Sunday morning. The second event happened less than an hour after the first.
    Recreation has its valid place. Unless you’re a yard-wide square, you need a bit of excitement now and then. Except for the chase scene, the grass game with Rosie was pure recreation.
    In small towns a guy has to search out his excitement in the most common ways and places. Perhaps I was hopelessly jaded, but I could never get goose pimples watching the neighborhood mechanic tune up a car motor. Watching the sky for shooting stars gave me no celestial bang. And I would even completely ignore a bustling construction site.
    Believe it or not, I got a charge watching mock murders. I guess you have to be black and live in a ghetto to be able to understand and appreciate that kind of thing. But look into it sometime when you have nothing else to do.
    On a Saturday night, I’d spend hours at my upstairs window. I’d watch old drinking buddies horse around down on the sidewalk in front of Steve’s Bar. Even though it was almost always drunken play, it was still exciting to see their knives and pistols flashing under the street lamp.
    I guess it was so exciting because at first I couldn’t ever be sure that it wasn’t for real. Let me tell you, when those savage pranksters bared their teeth and rolled their eyes in fake madness it was hard to tell. Often one of the phony victims would flop around on the sidewalk like a dying chicken.
    The night before the morning I met the goddess, I saw Giggling George on the sidewalk. His best friend, Slick Shorty, was standing looking up at George.
    Shorty had his back to me screaming up at George, “George, gimme mah dime you owe me. I saw you bust that half a buck across the bar. Gimme mah dime, George. Ah don’ wanta croak you. Gimme mah dime, George.”
    George exploded, “Man, you ain’t only slick, you crazy too. You been paid that lousy dime with interest when you guzzled my bottle of gin dry. Now get outta my face, little nigger. This is Saturday night, and I ain’t for wasting it waiting around county hospital for them doctors to take my foot outta your ass.”
    George turned his back on Shorty and lumbered toward his jalopy at the curb. He was giggling up a storm. Then I saw Shorty slip a gleaming butcher knife from his waistband. Even when Shorty bear-hugged George from behind, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just another mock murder. Poor George screamed like a sledge-hammered calf in a slaughterhouse. The butcher knife in Shorty’s hand was blood streaked when he leaped back from George. I heard a dull clatter when Shorty hurled the blade into the gutter and sprinted away.
    George spun around facing my window. He stood there looking down at his ragged belly. His guts gleamed in the glow of the street lamp like ropes of crimson pearls. He tore his phosphorescent eyes away and tried to pump his leaden legs to flee the oozing horror at his waist. His legs buckled and twisted and entwined like magnetized pretzels as he slammed to the sidewalk on his back.
    I rushed down the stairs to the sidewalk, where a small, silent crowd stood looking down at him. I looked at his face. His eyes were bucked wide, and his fat black lips were moving. I stooped down close to him.
    Through a gout of blood he burbled in