I first ran across Wino Jones and Stanley one early spring evening. It was a Thursday. I was beat. It had been a tough week—a political scandal, a couple of fires and a big "Missing Kid—Fiend" scare. Turned out the kid had skipped school to catch a triple-feature horror show and was scared to go home when she came out late, so she went to hide out at Grandma's. The suspect fiend was a cockfight sportsman from the Caribbean colony smuggling home his loser under his leather jacket.

But it had been a rough week with a lot of chasing around and getting no place that left me in one of those hell-with-it moods. Like, maybe, I ought to take a week or so off and—and the hell with that. It was time for me to pay a little remembrance-of-things-not-so-far-past visit down on the row.

I left the city room, tired, dirty, needing a shave. Where I was headed, this would put me ahead of the fashion parade, but it would serve. I stopped for a bowl of chili at Mad Miguel's and then wandered down to those four blocks on South River Street, known as Bug Alley, that make up the hard-core skid-row section of our city.

Across from St. Vincent's in Scott Square, called the Yard, by the old wall, there was a group of six or eight passing the time and a nearly dead jug. I shambled over and squatted down. Got a hard, bloodshot look or two, but not because the jug in the public park was against the law. Even if I was the law, so what? These, they made the jail now and then, if there were too many complaints, if they made a disturbance. But not even the jail wanted them. The hard looks wondered only if the jug should be passed to me or by me.

I lit a cigarette, took a couple of drags and handed it on. Bootnose Bailey, big, old, bald, with the cast-iron stomach and leather liver, settled the jug question by handing it to me. I lifted it, letting only the smallest trickle of the sticky sweet cheap wine past. It is not for me; no more. It is sickening stuff. But, as always, the effort of holding back left me shaking. All right; with shaking, I had plenty of company. The next man looked pleased at the two gulps left in the bottle and drained it.

"Ed?" Bootnose asked in his hoarse canned-heat whisper. "You gonna spring for a jug?"

I squatted a minute or so and then stood and started fumbling around through all my pockets. This is local protocol. Coin by coin, I spread a dollar and a half in silver out on the flat collection stone in front of me. A huge, powerful-looking colored man, new to me, hunkered down against the wall, smiled gently and added a quarter. Bootnose scooped it up and went to make the run for the jug.

I was, I guess, stretching the ground rules a little by the way I stared at the big fellow. But he surprised me mildly. For one thing, he looked in good shape; strong, no shakes, no fevered ghosts back of the bloodshot curtain of the eyes. And, apart from that, you don't find very many Negroes on skid row, at least in our area. I don't know why.

"Jones," he said, softly, politely, "Wino Jones. You're Ed? Ed, this here is my friend Stanley." He waved a big hand at a wispy little man beside him.