TALES OF THE CITY The Lonesome Ballad of Pete Hamilton

Pete never hung around at the Drug Corner, not Pete Hamilton. There was burglarizing down there, and shoot-outs. Pete heard of two or three already shot over there. It was out there, back of the Projects and then two rows over, or maybe it was three rows, Pete can’t remember now, these jailhouse days and all. The dates get lost, and the places.

It was two rows. Yeah.

Two rows over from Shaw Street is where Pete killed Robert Thompson. It wasn’t right on the Drug Corner, Pete wouldn’t be going around the Drug Corner.

I hope God forgives me, Pete says now. I shot the man. God forgive me. Everybody in the Projects knew it was Pete, too.

Pete still remembers the look on Robert Thompson’s face. It was what you would call a mean look.

“Nigger, I’m gonna pick you clean,” is what the man said and he kept on coming. “I’m gonna take care of you,” and Pete shot him in the stomach and he was on the ground and Pete was running. That’s the way it happened, that’s all there was to it. Pete could have told the police Robert had a gun, but he didn’t. Pete ran off to South Dallas and hid out for a month. But the police already had his name by then. That many people in the Projects know about something, they’re sure to turn you in to Crimestoppers, just for the reward money. So Pete went on down and made a statement and said, yeah, he shot Robert Thompson and killed him and he was still scared of him, and that’s how bad it was. And then they wrote down “Murder” and now there was nothing to do but wait.

Pete was tired. It was too much in the last four years, ever since he quit the forklift job and came back across the river to West Dallas. He still worked weekends then at Brook Hollow Golf Club, where he was about the most popular caddy they had and where he once won a city-wide junior tournament before he had to give up competitive golf and make a living for his wife and two children. Sometimes Pete would go out in the vacant lots around the Projects and chip balls and show the kids how the game was played. It relaxed him. But most of the time he had to put in on his new business.

Pete and his friend came up with the idea. It was selling day-old Wonder Bread in the Projects. They’d get up early in the morning and drive over to the bakery, load up the car with bread and cinnamon rolls, and then call on all the families Pete had known since he was a kid. Pete was born in those same Projects, they all knew him, even though his family had enough money to move out and get a place in South Dallas-in the good part of South Dallas-he was always quick to add. Pete even sold to a few restaurants on his route, and after a few months he and his partner were already into profits.

Then, one morning in the fall of 1983, the blood sickness came on him. Pete saw his hair falling out in the shower one day and ended up over at Parkland. He had sickle-cell anemia. Had it so bad he started to shrivel up until he’d lost almost half his body weight. When it started he weighed 160 pounds. Six months later he weighed ninety. Nobody really thought he’d make it, but his friends from Brook Hollow and the Projects kept him going, took up money for him, prayed to the good Lord. A lot of it’s a blackness to him now, but something or somebody saved him. He came back out of it.

When he got back to West Dallas, his business was gone, his car was gone, and his wife was gone. The blood sickness got everything that made Pete what he was.

Pete felt like he was getting too old to caddy for money, and he wasn’t ready to go back to the lumberyard. So, for the first time in his life, he asked somebody for a business loan. In fact, he asked one of the wealthiest men in Dallas for a loan, a man he’d worked for for fifteen years as a forklift operator. The man knew Pete better than any white man in town: he handed him $2,500 to start his new life. It wasn’t even a loan, the man said. He called it a “grubstake.”

The first of the money went for a car- $700. Pete figured he wouldn’t need an apartment .for a while; he could move in with his three sisters. He strolled excitedly through the Projects, telling everyone he was back in the bread business and he’d be coming by the next morning with his usual deliveries. That night he went over to Steve’s house to look at a set of golf clubs, and after a while they walked down the street to get a beer.

Pete paid for the beers, drawing a sixty-dollar roll of bills out of his pocket and peeling off two ones.

Robert Thompson saw him do it.

Pete knew who Robert Thompson was, although he tried to avoid talking to him. Thompson ran that neighborhood. Thompson was a four-time loser: armed robber, burglar, heroin trafficker, child molester. He had just been back from Huntsville prison about eight months, and most of that time he’d spent hanging around on the Drug Corner.

That’s why, one hour later, when Thompson showed up at Steve’s house, pointed a .38-caliber handgun at Pete, and said “I want your money, nigger,” Pete didn’t hesitate. He gave him what he asked for, including a silver bracelet and all the cash he had in his hip pockets-$1,700 of the money given to him as a grubstake. Thompson was so surprised at the size of his haul that he stopped at the door as he was leaving, ignoring Pete’s pleas to “give me just some of that money back,” and flung the silver bracelet across the room.

Pete and his friends stayed up most of the night anguishing over what to do about the lost money. Everybody agreed on one point: the police should not be called. They were incapable of handling a man like Thompson, whose friends would still be around to deal with Pete even if Thompson himself went to jail. Besides, if he did go to jail, then Pete would never see the money again. It was better, they all agreed, for Pete to go see the Big Man.

The Big Man was named for his size-280 pounds or more-and not for his influence. The reason Pete needed him was that he knew where Thompson lived, and he might be able to reason with him. Pete thought maybe the Big Man could tell Thompson who Pete was, tell him how he had the bread route in the Projects and wasn’t some rich man who could spare that money. So the Big Man listened to Pete’s story and said yeah, it was possible. It was possible Thompson would give some of that money back, but Pete would need the Big Man’s help.

The next afternoon Pete and the Big Man went calling on Thompson. Thompson’s wife came to the screen door and told them he wasn’t home. They told her what they’d come for, what Pete was hoping for. She didn’t say much.

It was two days later that Pete’s girlfriend, Ram, heard Thompson say he wanted to kill Pete. Said he didn’t want no sorry nigger coming around and bothering his wife and saying stories. Said he might kill Big Man, too, for bringing people around his house and telling people where he lived and stirring things up like that with his wife. Pam wasn’t the only one who heard it. Wherever Thompson went he was telling people how he was going to need to kill Pete.

Pete wasn’t scared at first, but every day his friends would come around to tell him something new. “He’s a mean mother.” “You’re gonna need a gun, my man.”

Two days later, while Pete was standing in a vacant lot, chipping golf balls, Thompson stuck a rifle out of a bathroom window across the street and fired one shot. He was too far away to be accurate, but Pete ran for his life. That night, with friends pushing him to defend himself, Pete reluctantly accepted the gift of a .38-caliber pistol. He tucked it into his pants and promised to carry it until the crisis had passed.

He only had to wait three days. He never should have gone so close to the Drug Corner, he would think later. But when Pete walked out of Red’s house, he was staring Thompson in the eye. Thompson had already gotten out of his car and was starting up the walk. “I’m gonna pick you clean, nigger.” His face was twisted, contracted, mean. “I’m gonna pop you upside the head.”

Pete drew the gun, fired, and ran. At the corner Pete flagged a car and jumped inside. The driver knew Pete casually, and Pete breathlessly poured out what he had just done. They drove back by and looked at Thompson’s inert body, then drove straight to South Dallas.

Pete was on the lam for a month, talking mostly to his girlfriend, who told him to stay out of sight for fear of Thompson’s friends. She said Pete Hamilton was wanted; Crime-stoppers had his name. She said they were looking for him.

One night, after drinking a whole bottle of Thunderbird Red, Pete walked into a South Dallas police station and told them he wanted to confess. They kept him waiting for an hour while an investigator was called to the station. Then, during the interrogation, someone suggested that the Dallas police weren’t entirely unhappy to be rid of Thompson and that perhaps, just maybe, Thompson had pulled a gun and Pete had been forced to shoot Thompson in self-defense.

Pete said no, Thompson hadn’t pointed a gun at him.

Then someone suggested that perhaps, just maybe, Thompson had fired at Pete with the rifle immediately prior to the shooting. If the two events occurred, say, within twenty-four hours of each other, then the homicide might be considered. . .

No, Pete said, three days passed between the rifle shot and the killing.

Still a little drunk on the Thunderbird, Pete signed his confession-and was booked into jail for murder.



Pete prayed for the Lord to forgive him. He prayed to remember everything clearly, even though he couldn’t recall squeezing the trigger. He prayed for a white jury-fearful, he said, that black jurors are tougher on black defendants. But when he got to the courtroom in March, the judge was black and so was the prosecutor. Fortunately, he was a respected judge who had the sensibility to somehow recognize Pete’s case as “special” and appoint a highly paid defense attorney, Preston DeShazo, to defend him.

The case was simple-the signed confession versus Pete’s testimony about Thompson. The facts were hardly disputed. The jury stayed out for eleven hours-and informed the judge they could not reach a verdict. Reluctantly, the judge declared a mistrial.

In June the trial came up a second time, and the second jury agreed on a verdict in less than an hour: guilty. But they agonized for three days over the punishment. After sending a “hopelessly deadlocked” message to the judge, they reversed themselves and reached a decision. Twenty years.

Down at Huntsville they have this prison gang called the Mau-Maus. Thompson was one of their members. Pete is praying again, praying they don’t find him once he gets there.