Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  The Back-to-Africa followers believed. They wanted to believe. They didn’t have any other choice.

  “Now we will take up a collection to help pay for Reverend O’Malley’s defence,” Reverend Washington said in a quiet voice. “And we will delegate Brother Sumners to take it to him in his hour of Gethsemane.”

  Five hundred and ninety-seven dollars was collected and Brother Sumners was charged to go forthwith and present it to Reverend O’Malley. The precinct station where O’Malley was being held for the magistrate’s court was only a few blocks distant. Brother Sumners returned with word from O’Malley before the service had adjourned. He could scarcely contain his sense of importance as he mounted the rostrum and brought them word from their beloved minister.

  “Reverend O’Malley is spending the day in his cell praying for you, his beloved followers — for all of us — and for the speedy return of your money, and for our safe departure for Africa. He says he will be taken to court Monday morning at ten o’clock when he will be freed to return to you and continue his work.”

  “Lord, protect him and deliver him,” a sister cried, and others echoed: “Amen, amen.”

  The congregation filed out, filled with faith in Reverend O’Malley, blended with compassion and a sense of satisfaction for their own good deed of sending him the big collection.

  On many a table there was chicken and dumplings or roast pork and sweet potatoes, and crime took a rest.

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed always slept late on Sundays, rarely stirring from bed before six o’clock in the evening. Sunday and Monday were their days off unless they were working on a case, and they had decided to let the hijacking case rest until Monday.

  But Grave Digger had dreamed that a blind man had told him he had seen a bale of cotton run down Seventh Avenue and turn into a doorway, but he awakened before the blind man told him what doorway. There was a memory knocking at his mind, trying to get in. He knew it was important but it had not seemed so at the time. He lay for a time going over in detail all that they had done. He didn’t find it; it didn’t come. But he had a strong feeling that if he could remember this one thing he would have all the answers.

  He got up and slipped on a bathrobe and went to the kitchen and got two cans of beer from the refrigerator.

  “Stella,” he called his wife, but she had gone out.

  He drank one can of beer and prowled about the house, holding the other in his hand. He was looking inward, searching his memory. A cop without a memory is like meat without potatoes, he was thinking.

  His two daughters were away at camp. The house felt like a tomb. He sat in the living-room and leafed through the Saturday edition of the Sentinel, Harlem’s twice-weekly newspaper devoted to the local news. The hijacking story took up most of the front page. There were pictures of O’Malley and Iris, and of John and Mabel Hill. O’Malley’s racketeer days and prison record were hammered on and the claim he had been marked for death by the syndicate. There were stories about his Back-to-Africa movement, bordering on libel, and stories of the Back-to-Africa movement of L.H. Michaux, handled with discretion; and stories of the original Back-to-Africa movement of Marcus Garvey, containing some bits of information that Garvey hadn’t known himself. He turned the pages and his gaze lit on an advertisement for the Cotton Club, showing a picture of Billie Belle doing her exotic cotton dance. I’ve got cotton on the brain, he thought disgustedly and threw the paper aside.

  He went to the telephone extension in the hall, from where he could look outdoors, and called the precinct station in Harlem and talked to Lieutenant Bailey, who was on Sunday duty. Bailey said, no, Colonel Calhoun’s car had not been found, no, there was no trace of Uncle Bud, no, there was no trace of the two gunmen of Deke’s who had escaped.

  “The noes have it,” Bailey said.

  “Well, as long as the head’s gone they can’t bite,” Grave Digger said.

  Coffin Ed phoned and said his wife, Molly, had gone out with Stella, and he was coming over.

  “Just don’t let’s talk about crime,” Grave Digger said.

  “Let’s go down to the pistol range at headquarters and practise shooting,” Coffin Ed suggested. “I’ve just got through cleaning the old lady.”

  “Hell, let’s drink some highballs and get gay and take the ladies out on the town,” Grave Digger said.

  “Right. I won’t mind being gay for a change.”

  The phone rang right after Coffin Ed hung up. Lieutenant Bailey said the Back-to-the-Southland people were assembling a group of colored people in front of their office for a parade down Seventh Avenue and there might be trouble.

  “You and Ed better come over,” he said. “The people know you.”

  Grave Digger called back Coffin Ed and told him to bring the car as Stella had taken his. Coffin Ed arrived before he had finished dressing, and they got into his gray Plymouth sedan and took off for Harlem. Forty-five minutes later they were rapidly threading through the Sunday afternoon traffic, heading north on Seventh Avenue.

  A self-ordained preacher was standing on the sidewalk outside the Chock Full o’ Nuts at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, exhorting the passersby to take Jesus to their hearts. “Ain’t no two ways about it,” he was shouting. “The right one is with God and Jesus and the wrong one with the devil.”

  A few pious people had stopped to listen. Most of the Sunday afternoon strollers took the devil’s way and passed without looking.

  Diagonally across the intersection the Harlem branch of the Black Muslims was staging a mass meeting in front of the National Memorial Bookstore, headquarters of Michaux’s Back-to-Africa movement. The store front was plastered with slogans: GODDAMN WHITE MAN … WHITE PEOPLE EAT DOG … ALLAH IS GOD … BLACK MEN UNITE.… At one side a platform had been erected with a public-address hook-up for the speakers. Below to one side was an open black coffin with a legend: The Remains of Lumumba. The coffin contained pictures of Lumumba in life and in death; a black suit said to have been worn by him when he was killed; and other mementoes said to have belonged to him in life. Bordering the sidewalk on removable flagstaffs were the flags of all the nations of black Africa.

  Hundreds of people were lined up on the sidewalk in a packed mass. Three police cruisers were parked along the kerb and white harness cops patrolled up and down in the street. Muslims wearing the red fezzes they had adopted as their symbol were lined in front of the bookstore, side by side, keeping a clear path on the sidewalk demanded by the police. The shouting voice of a speaker came from the amplifiers: “White Man, you worked us for nothing for four hundred years. Now pay for it.…”

  Grave Digger and Coffin Ed didn’t stop. As they neared 130th Street they saw the parade heading in their direction on the other side of the street. They knew that within five blocks it would run head-on into the Black Muslims and there’d be hell to pay. Already some of O’Malley’s Back-to-Africa group were collecting at 129th Street for an attack.

  Police cruisers were parked along the avenue and cops were standing by.

  The detectives noted immediately that the parade was made up of mercenary hoodlums, paid for the occasion. They were laughing belligerently and looking for trouble. They carried knives and walked tough. Colonel Calhoun led them, clad in his black frock coat and a black wide-brimmed hat. His silvery hair and white moustache and goatee shone in the rays of the afternoon sun. He was calmly smoking a cheroot. His tall thin figure was ramrod-straight and he walked with the indifference of a benevolent master. His attitude seemed that of a man dealing with children who might be unruly but never dangerous. The blond young man brought up the rear.

  Coffin Ed double-parked and he and Grave Digger walked over to the raised park in the center of Seventh Avenue and assessed the situation.

  “You go down to 129th Street and hold those brothers and I’ll turn these soul-brothers here,” Grave Digger said.

  “I got you, partner,” Coffin Ed said.

  Grave Digger lined himself opposite a wooden telep
hone post and Coffin Ed crossed to the sidewalk and stood facing the concrete wall enclosing the park.

  When the parade reached the intersection at 130th Street, Grave Digger drew his long-barreled .38 revolver and put two bullets into the wooden post. The nickelplated pistol shone in the sun like a silver jet.

  “Straighten up!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

  The parading hoodlums hesitated.

  From down the street came the booming blast of two shots as Coffin Ed fired into the concrete wall, followed by his voice, like an echo, “Count off!”

  The mob preparing for the attack on the parade fell back. People in Harlem believed Coffin Ed and Grave Digger would shoot a man stone cold dead for crossing an imaginary line. Those who didn’t believe it didn’t try it.

  But Colonel Calhoun kept right ahead across 130th Street without looking about. When he came to the invisible line, Grave Digger shot off his hat. The Colonel slowly took the cheroot from his mouth and looked at Grave Digger coldly, then turned with slow deliberation to pick up his hat. Grave Digger shot it out of his hand. It flew on to the sidewalk and with slow deliberation, without another glance in Grave Digger’s direction, the Colonel walked after it. Grave Digger shot it out into 130th Street as the Colonel was reaching for it.

  The hoodlums in the parade were shuffling about, afraid to advance but taking no chances on breaking and running with those bullets flying about. The young blond man was keeping out of sight at the rear.

  “Squads right!” Grave Digger shouted. Everyone turned but no one left. “March!” he added.

  The hoodlums turned right on 130th Street and shuffled towards Eighth Avenue. They went straight past the Colonel, who stood in the center of the street looking at the holes in his hat before putting it on his head. Midway down the block they broke and ran. The first thing a hoodlum learns in Harlem is never run too soon.

  The mob at 129th Street turned towards Eighth Avenue to head them off, but Coffin Ed drew a line with two bullets ahead of them. “As you were!” he shouted. The Colonel stood there for a moment with three bullet holes in his hat, and residents who had come out to see the excitement began to laugh at him. The blond young man caught up with him and they turned back to Seventh Avenue and began walking towards their office, the jeers and laughter of the colored people following them. The Black Muslims had looked but hadn’t moved.

  Then the mob herded by Coffin Ed relaxed and started laughing too.

  “Man, them mothers,” a cat said admiringly in a loud jubilant voice. “Them mothers! They’ll shoot off a man’s ass for crossing a line can’t nobody see.”

  “Baby, you see that old white mother-raper tryna git his hat? I bet the Digger would have taken his head off if he’da crossed that line.”

  “I seen old Coffin Filler shoot the fat offen a cat’s stomach for stickin his belly ’cross that line.”

  They slapped one another on the shouders and fell out, laughing at their own lies.

  The white cops looked at Grave Digger and Coffin Ed with the envious awe usually reserved for a lion tamer with a cage of big cats.

  Coffin Ed joined Grave Digger and they walked to a call box and phoned Lieutenant Bailey.

  “All over for today,” Grave Digger reported.

  Bailey gave a sigh of relief. “Thank God! I don’t want any riots up here on my tour.”

  “All you got to worry about now are some killings and robberies,” Grave Digger said. “Nothing to worry the comissioner.”

  Bailey hung up without commenting. He knew of their feud with the commissioner. Both of them had been suspended at different times for what the commissioner considered unnecessary violence and brutality. He knew also that colored cops had to be tough in Harlem to get the respect of colored hoodlums. Secretly he agreed with them. But he wasn’t taking any sides.

  “Well, now we’re back to cotton,” Coffin Ed said as they walked back towards their car.

  “Maybe you are; I ain’t,” Grave Digger said. “All I want to do is go out and break some laws. Other people have all the fun.”

  “Damn right. Let’s put five bucks on a horse.”

  “Hell, man, you call that breaking the law? Let’s take the ladies to some unlicensed joint run by some wanted criminal and drink some stolen whisky.”

  Coffin Ed chuckled. “You’re on,” he said.

  17

  The telephone rang at 10:25 a.m. Grave Digger hid his head beneath the pillow. Stella answered it sleepily. A brisk, wideawake and urgent voice said, “This is Captain Brice. Let me speak to Jones, please.”

  She pulled the pillow from over his head. “The captain,” she said.

  He groped for the receiver, experimentally opening his eyes. “Jones,” he mumbled.

  He listened to the rapid staccato voice for three minutes. “Right,” he said, tense and wide-awake, and was getting out of the bed before he hung up the receiver.

  “What is it?” she asked in a tiny voice, frightened and alarmed as she always was when these morning summonses came.

  “Deke’s escaped. Two officers killed.” He had put on his shorts and undershirt and was pulling up his pants.

  She was out of the bed and moving towards the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

  “No time,” he said, putting on a clean shirt.

  “Nescafé,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  With his shirt on he sat on the side of the bed and put on clean socks and his shoes. Then he went into the bathroom and washed his face and brushed his short kinky hair. Without a shave his dark lumpy face looked dangerous. He knew how he looked but it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t have time for a shave. He put on a black tie, went into the bedroom and took his bolstered pistol from a hook in the closet. He laid the pistol on the dresser while he strapped on his shoulder sling and then picked it up and spun the cylinder. It always carried five shells, the hammer resting on a empty chamber. The shades were still drawn, and the long nickel-plated revolver glinting in the subdued light from three table lamps looked as dangerous as himself. He slipped it into the greased holster and began stuffing his pockets with the other tools of his trade: a leather-covered buckshot sap with a whalebone handle, a pair of handcuffs, report book, flashlight, stylo, and the leather-bound metal snap case made to hold fifteen extra shells he always carried in his leather-lined side coat-pocket. They also kept an extra box or two of shells in the glove compartment of their official car.

  He was standing at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, when Coffin Ed blew for him. Stella tensed. Her smooth brown face grew strained.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He stepped around the table and kissed her. “Ain’t I always?” he said.

  “Not always,” she murmured.

  But he was gone, a big, rough, dangerous man in need of a shave, clad in a rumpled black suit and an old black hat, the bulge of a big pistol clearly visible on the heart side of his broad-shouldered frame.

  Coffin Ed looked the same; they could have been cast from the same mold with the exception of Coffin Ed’s acid-burned face that was jerking with the tic that came whenever he was tense.

  Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, it had taken forty-five minutes to get to Harlem. Today, Monday morning, it took twenty-two.

  Coffin Ed said only, “The fat is in the fire.”

  “It’s going to burn,” Grave Digger said.

  Two white officers had been killed and the precinct station looked like headquarters for the invasion of Harlem. Official cars lined the street. The commissioner’s car was there, and cars of the chief inspector, the chief of Homicide, the medical examiner and a D.A.’s assistant. Police cruisers from downtown, from Homicide, from all the Harlem precincts, were scattered about. The street was closed to civilian traffic. There was no place inside for all the army of cops and the overflow stood outside, on the sidewalks, in the street, waiting for their orders.

  Coffin Ed parked in the driveway of a private garage and they walked to the station h
ouse. The brass was assembled in the captain’s office. The lieutenant on the desk said, “Go on in, they want to see you.”

  Heads turned when they entered the office. They were stared at as though they were criminals themselves.

  “We want Deke O’Hara and his two gunmen, and we want them alive,” the commissioner said coldly without greeting. “It’s your bailiwick and I’m giving you a free hand.”

  They stared back at the commissioner but neither of them spoke.

  “Let me give them the picture, sir,” Captain Brice said.

  The commissioner nodded. The captain led them into the detectives’ room. A white detective got up from his desk in the corner and gave the captain a seat. Other detectives nodded to Grave Digger and Coffin Ed as they passed. No one spoke. They nodded back. They kept the record straight. There was no friendship lost between them and the other precinct detectives; but there was no open animosity. Some resented their position as the aces of the precinct and their close associations with the officers in charge; others were envious; the young colored detectives stood in awe of them. But all took care not to show anything.

  Captain Brice sat behind the desk and Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge as usual. Coffin Ed drew up a straight-backed chair and sat opposite the captain.

  “Deke was being taken to the magistrate’s court,” the captain said. “There were thirteen others going. The wagon was drawn up in the back court and we were bringing the prisoners from their cells, handcuffed together two by two as customary. Two officers were standing by, supervising the loading — the driver and his helper — and two jailers were bringing the prisoners from the bullpen through the back door and herding them downstairs to the yard and into the wagon. Deke’s Back-to-Africa group had collected in the street out front, a thousand or more. They were chanting, ‘We want O’Malley.… We want O’Malley,’ and trying to break through the front door. They were getting unruly and I sent the extra officers out into the street to herd them to one side and keep order. Then they began getting noisy and started rioting. Some began throwing stones through the front windows and others began battering the gate to the driveway with garbage cans. I sent two men from out back to clear the driveway to the street. When they opened the gates to go out they were mobbed and disarmed and the mob streamed into the driveway. Deke had just come from the back door on his way down the stairs, handcuffed to a suspected murderer, one Mack Brothers, when the mob came in sight and saw him. Six prisoners had already been loaded. Then, from what I’ve been told by a trusty looking out a jail window — all the officers were out front trying to contain the riot — the jailers slammed and locked the door, leaving the two officers alone with the wagon. And at that moment the two gunmen came up from both sides of the high back wall and shot the two officers dead. The gunmen were dressed in officers’ uniforms so at first they didn’t attract much attention. Then they jumped down inside, put Deke in the wagon and closed the door and got into the front seat — and took the wagon out of the yard.” He stopped and looked at them to see what they would say but they said nothing. So he went on. “Some of the mob had jumped astride the hood and onto the front bumpers and others were running along beside it. They were shouting, ‘Make way for O’Malley! Make way for O’Malley!’ and they rode the wagon out into the street. The rioters went wild and the officers could only use their saps and billies. They couldn’t shoot into those thousand people. The wagon got through. We found it parked a block away around the corner. There must have been a car waiting. They got away. We captured the other prisoners in a matter of minutes.”