Central Avenue, Hot Springs, Arkansas, Detroit Publishing, 1900
NEW YORK
1910
“Yer not gonna welch out on us, are ya?” I said, trying my best to intimidate the old geezer. It didn’t seem like I was very threatening to him, even though I’m a big fella—bigger than most of the fellas around here, anyway. I could see the old geezer looking up at me like he wasn’t scared—not like the others we shook down earlier—and it made me want to hit him again.
So I did.
“Jee-sus Christ, Mel, how many times I gotta tell you? Are you simple, or what?” Jimmy yelled, throwing a rolled up wad of paper at me.
He was sitting on one of the restaurant’s six tables, swinging his leg back and forth like as if he was one of those clocks you see on a piano—back-and-forth, back-and-forth—like maybe he was keeping time with some tune in his head that only he could hear. I don’t know, maybe he was whistlin’ Dixie to hisself, or something like that. Not that he’d know it if he heard it.
“If I tol’ you once, I tol’ you a h…
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