Dupree relaxed a little and laughed. “You prob’ly right, Easy. Coretta hear them slot machines goin’ an’ she leave her own momma.”
He slapped me on the back and laughed again.
I swore to myself that I’d never look at another man’s woman. I’ve taken that pledge many times since then.
“RAWLINS,” came a voice from the small office at the back of the hangar.
“There you go,” Dupree said.
I walked toward the man who had called me. The office he stood before was a prefabricated green shell, more like a tent than a room. Benny kept his desk in there and only went in himself to meet with the bosses or to fire one of the men. He called me in there four days before to tell me that Champion couldn’t use men that didn’t give “a little extra.”
“Mr. Giacomo,” I said. We shook but there was no friendliness in it.
Benny was shorter than I but he had broad shoulders and big hands. His salt-and-pepper hair had once been jet black and his skin color was darker than many mulattos I’d known. But Benny was a white man and I was a Negro. He wanted me to work hard for him and he needed me to be grateful that he allowed me to work at all. His eyes were close-set so he looked intent. His shoulders were slightly hunched, which made him seem like an advancing boxer.
“Easy,” he said.
We went into the shell and he pointed at a chair. He took a seat behind the desk, kicked his foot up on it, and lit a cigarette.
“Dupree says that you want back on the job, Easy.”
I was thinking that Benny probably had a bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of his desk.
“Sure, Mr. Giacomo, you know I need this job to eat.” I concentrated on keeping my head erect. I wasn’t going to bow down to him.
“Well, you know that when you fire somebody you have to stick to your guns. The men might get to thinkin’ that I’m weak if I take you back.”
“So what am I doin’ here?” I said to his face.
He leaned farther back in his chair and hunched his large shoulders. “You tell me.”
“Dupree said that you would give me my job back.”
“I don’t know who gave him the authority to say that. All I said was that I’d be glad to talk to you if you had something to say. Do you have something to say?”
I tried to think about what Benny wanted. I tried to think of how I could save face and still kiss his ass. But all I could really think about was that other office and that other white man. DeWitt Albright had his bottle and his gun right out there in plain view. When he asked me what I had to say I told him; I might have been a little nervous, but I told him anyway. Benny didn’t care about what I had to say. He needed all his children to kneel down and let him be the boss. He wasn’t a businessman, he was a plantation boss; a slaver.
“Well, Easy?”
“I want my job back, Mr. Giacomo. I need to work and I do a good job.”
“Is that all?”
“No, that’s not all. I need money so that I can pay my mortgage and eat. I need a house to live in and a place to raise children. I need to buy clothes so I can go to the pool hall and to church …”
Benny put his feet down and made to rise. “I have to get back to my job, Easy …”
“That’s Mr. Rawlins!” I said as I rose to meet him. “You don’t’ have to give me my job back but you have got to treat me with respect.”
“Excuse me,” he said. He made to go past me but I was blocking his way.
“I said, you have got to treat me with respect. Now I call you Mr. Giacomo because that’s your name. You’re no friend to me and I got no reason to be disrespectful and call you by your first name.” I pointed at my chest. “My name is Mr. Rawlins.”
He balled his fists and looked down at my chest the way a fighter does. But I think he heard the quaver in my voice. He knew that one or two of us would be broken up if he tried to go through me. And who knows? Maybe he realized that he was in the wrong.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rawlins.” He smiled at me. “But there are no openings right now. Maybe you could come back in a few months, when production on the new fighter line begins.”
With that he motioned for me to leave his office. I went without another word.
I looked around for Dupree but he was nowhere to be seen, not even at his station. That surprised me but I was too happy to worry about him. My chest was heaving and I felt as if I wanted to laugh out loud. My bills were paid and it felt good to have stood up for myself. I had a notion of freedom when I walked out to my car.
CHAPTER 10
I WAS HOME BY NOON. The street was empty and the neighborhood was quiet. There was a dark Ford parked across the street from my house. I remember thinking that a bill collector was making his rounds. Then I laughed to myself because all my bills were paid well in advance. I was a proud man that day; my fall wasn’t far behind.
As I was closing the gate to the front yard I saw the two white men getting out of the Ford. One was tall and skinny and he was wearing a dark blue suit. The other one was my height and three times my girth. He had on a wrinkled tan suit that had greasy spots here and there.
The men strode quickly in my direction but I just turned slowly and walked toward my door.
“Mr. Rawlins!” one of them called from behind.
I turned. “Yeah?”
They were approaching fast but cautiously. The fat one had a hand in his pocket.
“Mr. Rawlins, I’m Miller and this is my partner Mason.” They both held out badges.
“Yeah?”
“We want you to come with us.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see,” fat Mason said as he took me by the arm.
“Are you arresting me?”
“You’ll see,” Mason said again. He was pulling me toward the gate.
“I’ve got the right to know why you’re taking me.”
“You got a right to fall down and break your face, nigger. You got a right to die,” he said. Then he hit me in the diaphragm. When I doubled over he slipped the handcuffs on behind my back and together they dragged me to the car. They tossed me in the backseat where I lay gagging.
“You vomit on my carpet and I’ll feed it to ya,” Mason called back.
They drove me to the Seventy-seventh Street station and carried me in the front door.
“You got’im, huh, Miller?” somebody said. They were holding me by my arms and I was sagging with my head down. I had recovered from the punch but I didn’t want them to know it.
“Yeah, we got him coming home. Nothing on’im.”
They opened the door to a small room that smelled faintly of urine. The walls were unpainted plaster and there was only a bare wooden chair for furniture. They didn’t offer me the chair though, they just dropped me on my knees and walked out, closing the door behind them.
The door had a tiny peephole in it.
I pushed my shoulder against the wall until I was standing. The room didn’t look any better. There were a few bare pipes along the ceiling that dripped now and then. The edge of the linoleum floor was corroded and chalky from the moisture. There was only one window. It didn’t have glass but only a crisscross of two two-inch bars down and two bars across. Very little light came in through the window due to the branches and leaves that had pushed their way in. It was a small room, maybe twelve by twenty, and I had some fear that it was to be the last room I ever inhabited.
I was worried because they didn’t follow the routine. I had played the game of “cops and nigger” before. The cops pick you up, take your name and fingerprints, then they throw you into a holding tank with other “suspects” and drunks. After you were sick from the vomit and foul language they’d take you to another room and ask why you robbed that liquor store or what did you do with the money?
I would try to look innocent while I denied what they said. It’s hard acting innocent when you are but the cops know that you aren’t. They figure that you did something because that’s just the wa
y cops think, and you telling them that you’re innocent just proves to them that you have something to hide. But that wasn’t the game that we were playing that day. They knew my name and they didn’t need to scare me with any holding tank; they didn’t need to take my fingerprints. I didn’t know why they had me, but I did know that it didn’t matter as long as they thought they were right.
I sat down in the chair and looked up at the leaves coming in through the window. I counted thirty-two bright green oleander leaves. Also coming in through the window was a line of black ants that ran down the side of the wall and around to the other side of the room where the tiny corpse of a mouse was crushed into a corner. I speculated that another prisoner had killed the mouse by stamping it. He probably had tried in the middle of the floor at first but the quick rodent had swerved away two, maybe even three times. But finally the mouse made the deadly mistake of looking for a crevice in the wall and the inmate was able to block off his escape by using both feet. The mouse looked papery and dry so I supposed that the death had occurred at the beginning of the week; about the time I was getting fired.
While I was thinking about the mouse the door opened again and the officers stepped in. I was angry at myself because I hadn’t tried to see if the door was locked. Those cops had me where they wanted me.
“Ezekiel Rawlins,” Miller said.
“Yes, sir.”
“We have a few questions to ask. We can take off those cuffs if you want to start cooperating.”
“I am cooperating.”
“Told ya, Bill,” fat Mason said. “He’s a smart nigger.”
“Take off the cuffs, Charlie,” Miller said and the fat man obliged.
“Where were you yesterday morning at about five A.M .?”
“What morning is that?” I stalled.
“He means,” fat Mason said as he planted his foot in my chest and pushed me over backward, “Thursday morning.”
“Get up,” Miller said.
I got to my feet and righted the chair.
“That’s hard to say.” I sat down again. “I was out drinking and then I helped carry a drunk friend home. I could’a been on my way home or maybe I was already in bed. I didn’t look at a clock.”
“What friend is that?”
“Pete. My friend Pete.”
“Pete, huh?” Mason chuckled. He wandered over to my left and before I could turn toward him I felt the hard knot of his fist explode against the side of my head.
I was on the ground again.
“Get up,” Miller said.
I got up again.
“So where was you and your peter drinkin’?” Mason sneered.
“Down at a friend’s on Eighty-nine.”
Mason moved again but this time I turned. He just looked at me with an innocent face and his palms turned upward.
“Would that be an illegal nightclub called John’s?” Miller asked.
I was quiet.
“You got bigger problems than busting your friend’s bar, Ezekiel. You got bigger troubles than that.”
“What kinds troubles?”
“Big troubles.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means we can take your black ass out behind the station and put a bullet in your head,” Mason said.
“Where were you at five o’clock on Thursday morning, Mr. Rawlins?” Miller asked.
“I don’t know exactly.”
Mason had taken off his shoe and started swatting the heel against his fat palm.
“Five o’clock,” Miller said.
We played that game a little while longer. Finally I said, “Look, you don’t have to beat up your hand on my account; I’m happy to tell you what you wanna know.”
“You ready to cooperate?” Miller asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did you go when you left Coretta James’s house on Thursday morning?”
“I went home.”
Mason tried to kick the chair out from under me but I was on my feet before he could.
“I had enough’a this shit, man!” I yelled, but neither cop seemed very impressed. “I told you I went home, and that’s all.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Rawlins,” Miller said calmly.
“Why’m I gonna sit and you keep tryin’ to knock me down?” I cried. But I sat down anyway.
“I told ya he was crazy, Bill,” Mason said. “I told ya this was a section eight.”
“Mr. Rawlins,” Miller said. “Where did you go after you left Miss James’s house?”
“I went home.”
No one hit me that time; no one tried to kick the chair.
“Did you see Miss James later that day?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you have an altercation with Mr. Bouchard?”
I understood him but I said, “Huh?”
“Did you and Dupree Bouchard have words over Miss James?”
“You know,” Mason chimed in. “Pete.”
“That’s what I call him sometimes,” I said.
“Did you,” Miller repeated, “have an altercation with Mr. Bouchard?”
“I didn’t have nuthin’ with Dupree. He was asleep.”
“So where did you go on Thursday?”
“I went home with a hangover. I stayed there all day and night and then I went to work today. Well”—I wanted to keep them talking so that Mason wouldn’t lose his temper with the furniture again—“not to work really because I got fired Monday. But I went to get my job back.”
“Where did you go on Thursday?”
“I went home with a hangover …”
“Nigger!” Mason tore into me with his fists. He knocked me to the floor but I grabbed onto his wrist. I swung around and twisted so that I was straddling his back, sitting on his fat ass. I could have killed him the way I’d killed other white men in uniforms, but I could feel Miller behind me so I stood straight up and moved to the corner.
Miller had a police special in his hand.
Mason made like he was going to come after me again but the belly-flop had winded him. From his knees Mason said, “Lemme have’im alone fer a minute.”
Miller weighed the request. He kept looking back and forth between me and the fat man. Maybe he was afraid that I’d kill his partner or maybe he didn’t want the paperwork; it could have been that Miller was a secret humanitarian who didn’t want bloodshed and ruin on his hands. Finally he whispered, “No.”
“But …,” Mason started.
“I said no. Let’s move.”
Miller hooked his free hand under the fat man’s armpit and helped him to his feet. Then he holstered his pistol and straightened his coat. Mason sneered at me and then followed Miller out of the cell door. He was starting to remind me of a trained mutt. The lock snapped behind them.
I got back on the chair and counted the leaves again. I followed the ants to the dead mouse again. This time, though, I imagined that I was the convict and that mouse was Officer Mason. I crushed him so that his whole suit was soiled and shapeless in the corner; his eyes came out of his head.
There was a light bulb hanging from a wire at the ceiling but there was no way to turn it on. Slowly the little sun that filtered in through the leaves faded and the room became twilight. I sat in the chair pressing my bruises now and then to see if the pain was lessening.
I didn’t think a thing. I didn’t wonder about Coretta or Dupree or how the police knew so much about my Wednesday night. All I did was sit in darkness, trying to become the darkness. I was awake but my thinking was like a dream. I dreamed in my wakefulness that I could become the darkness and slip out between the eroded cracks of that cell. If I was nighttime nobody could find me; no one would even know I was missing.
I saw faces in the darkness; beautiful women and feasts of ham and pie. It’s only now that I realize how lonely and hungry I was then.
IT WAS FULLY BLACK in that cell when the light snapped on. I was still trying to blink away the glare when Miller and Mason came in. Mille
r closed the door.
“You think of anything else to say?” Miller asked me. I just looked at him.
“You can go,” Miller said.
“You heard him, nigger!” Mason shouted while he was fumbling around to check that his fly was zipped up. “Get outta here!”
They led me into the open room and past the desk watch. Everywhere people turned to stare at me. Some laughed, some were shocked.
They took me to the desk sergeant, who handed me my wallet and pocketknife.
“We might be in touch with you later, Mr. Rawlins,” Miller said. “If we have any questions we know where you live.”
“Questions about what?” I asked, trying to sound like an honest man asking an honest question.
“That’s police business.”
“Ain’t it my business if you drag me outta my own yard an’ bring me down here an’ throw me around?”
“You want a complaint form?” Miller’s thin, gray face didn’t change expression. He looked like a man I once knew, Orrin Clay. Orrin had a peptic ulcer and always held his mouth like he was just about to spit.
“I wanna know what’s goin’ on,” I said.
“We’ll be coming ’round if we need you.”
“How am I supposed to get home from way out here? The buses stop after six.”
Miller turned away from me. Mason was already gone.
CHAPTER 11
I LEFT THE STATION at a fast walk but I wanted to run. It was fifteen blocks to John’s speak and I had to keep telling myself to slow down. I knew that a patrol car would arrest any sprinting Negro they encountered.
The streets were especially dark and empty. Central Avenue was like a giant black alley and I felt like a small rat, hugging the corners and looking out for cats.
Every once in a while a car would shoot past. Maybe I’d catch a snatch of music or laughter and then they’d be gone. There wasn’t another soul out walking.
I was three blocks from the station when I heard, “Hey you! Easy Rawlins!”
A black Cadillac had pulled up beside me and matched my pace. It was a long automobile; long enough to be two cars. A white face in a black cap stuck out of the driver’s window. “Come on, Easy, over here,” the face said.
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