Charles Beaumont

        Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then. Our sax man got a neck-full of some of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn and you could tell. So we played a little bit too rough and the head arrangements Collins and his crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way.

Black Country
Charles Beaumont
1954
first published in Playboy

       Chicago born writer of mostly experimental horror/fantasy and science fiction ,only occasionally something with a crime theme, Beaumont wrote the novel and screenplay for 1962's The Intruder which confronted issues of racism. He died aged only 38 and was best known as author of many Twilight Zone episodes as well as contributing a number of stories to the emerging Playboy and more established Esquire magazines.

The Intruder