Chapter 2

Sammy Wynn fumbled in his pocket for a book of matches, trying to ignore the greasy odor of the burning hamburger that was cooking on the grill. It had taken him nearly ten minutes to get the waitress's attention, and then she had fouled up his order so that he had to tell her three times that he wanted a hamburger with no catsup.

He nervously lit his cigarette and watched her put catsup on the burned hamburger bun, spilling some on herself at the same time. Christ, he thought, what the hell am I doing here?

Sammy had asked himself that question nearly every day for ten years, ever since the night he and his older brother had been caught stealing two cases of beer from an unattended truck. He was twelve years old that night, but with the arrival of two uniformed policemen, he started a record of arrests that would follow him wherever he went.

He picked up the hamburger, remembering his mother's reaction to his minor crime. She had high hopes for him, having already given up on his brother. So when the pair was arrested she cried for days over Sammy. He tried to console her but to no avail. She repeatedly called him jailbird and thief.

Stealing the beer had only been a prank, but with his mother's constant ribbing and the fact that word of his arrest had spread through the overcrowded school he attended, it soon became a badge of honor. Sammy had become a man in the eyes of his peers, a man who had stolen, a man with a record. He tried to resist their praise, but his efforts were hopeless. After his arrest he had become a celebrity, constantly sought after to tell his story of crime and arrest, and the brutality of the police.

He tried to get his school work done, and seemed to possess a great deal more ability than his fellows, but his popularity prevented his study. They demanded his company, revering him as a leader in their impoverished community of underprivileged boys, many of whom would become criminals themselves in a few short years. His studies took second place to his role as a celebrity, and soon were neglected altogether.

By the time Sammy was sixteen it was hopeless. He had to quit school to help his mother support his five younger brothers, all of whom ate more than their share, but all of them studied, and none of them stole. When he quit school he thought he would return within a year, but naturally he didn't. Life in Chicago's south side offered nothing to a young man with little money. He was able to shoot a little pool, and gamble in back alley crap games, but nothing else was left.

There were no girls who could share his thoughts. Most of them had neither the intelligence nor the interest to hear anything but stories of excitement and brushes with the law. Sammy's active mind had no use for them. He refused to take drugs, and more times than he could count, he had refused to take part in crimes that his cronies had offered him a piece of. It was hard enough to get a job without adding more arrests to his record.

Sammy bit into a soggy potato chip as he thought about his past life in the slums. The food in this restaurant was much the same as that in Chicago, except that there were less flies for some reason. He remembered the different warehouse jobs he had held, and the miserable year he had spent in the packing house, cleaning the stomachs of slaughtered cows. He could still recall the smell vividly.

He remembered the night he had come home, the slaughterhouse smell all over his clothes, to find his mother lying on the kitchen floor. He had rushed to her and lifted her limp head but it was too late to do more than call the emergency rescue squad. If he had had a father it never would have happened, he thought bitterly, but it had.

His mother had worked herself half to death trying to support her children. Now she needed support, especially for the hospital bills. It was then, at eighteen, that Sammy turned to crime for his own self-support as well as hers.