The End of a Primitive

by Chester Himes

  “—and let that be a lesson, old man. He’ll do it every time.”

  “Damn right. But what gets me—” In the edge of his vision he saw suddenly the face of Lucille as she watched her husband stroke Kriss’s breast, and there was something in her expression of contained despair that reminded him of Becky—and the outside world came tumbling in. Breaking off in the middle of a sentence he lurched to his feet and staggered toward the kitchen, but his mind had become cold sober and flint hard. “That bitch is never happy unless she’s making someone else unhappy,” he thought, and then, “The way of a gringo—good movie title.”

  Stepping into the hall he called, “Kriss! Kriss! Come here a minute, will you baby.” She heard the urgency in his voice and thought the liquor was giving out. He watched her come across the room with the high-shouldered almost masculine swagger she assumed when having made a conquest, and preceded her into the kitchen.

  “Why don’t you grow up,” he said.

  She knew instantly what he referred to and her sense of guilt gave her the face of innocence.“What’s the matter, baby?”

  “You know damn well what’s the matter. You’re making Lucille miserable pawing over Walter like that.”

  “She doesn’t care, baby. It’s just—”

  “The hell she doesn’t. Any woman would care. Besides you got all the advantage; you haven’t got any husband to—”

  “She knows I’m not trying to make Walter, baby.”

  “Then what the hell are you trying to do?”

  “You’re the only one who is worried, baby,” she said, and smiling her secret sensual smile added in a thick anticipatory voice, “I’m just curious to see what makes him tick. You know how I am, baby.”

  “I know how you are all right. You think a man only ticks between sheets.”

  “I’m just curious about what’s in a Negro’s mind, baby.”

  “Just quit fucking with him, goddammit, that’s all!” he said in a sudden scalding rage; and when, smiling at his resentment, she said, “Can hardly call it that, baby; both of us have got on so many clothes,” he turned away from her to keep from knocking her down. Walter’s loud voice came from the sitting-room: “—trouble with you niggers is—” With uncontrollable violence he picked up the kitchen knife and chopped off the head of an empty whiskey bottle. “What’s happening to Jesse?” he heard Harold asking, and Kriss replying bitchily, “He’s just being doggy in the manger.”

  “Bitch wants to die,” he said.

  Harold came into the kitchen and saw the knife in his hand and the headless bottle on the table. Chuckling, he said, “Dead now.”

  Jesse picked it up and shook it. “Dead before.”

  Harold tried the other bottles and found them all empty.

  “All dead.”

  Jesse began opening the last bottle of gin. “Let’s not leave this sonabitch alive.”

  Harold gave his self-deprecating laugh. “As Bert Williams used to say: When the liquor’s flowing freely, and your pocket’s full of dough—I’m with you, man.”

  Jesse took a drink then staggered quickly to the bathroom. He leaned against the wall, but his knees kept buckling and he swayed from side to side, wetting the floor about the John like a lawn sprinkler. “More rain more ass grow,” he thought, half-amused, then as he tried to steady himself and aim straight, he looked down blurrily at the enamelled bowl and muttered, half-laughingly, “Grown since hell since I saw it last.”

  On returning to the sitting-room he found that Kriss and Lucille had gone to the kitchen. Walter had a leg over the arm of his chair and was saying: “—It’s time you niggers count your blessings.” Jesse wondered if he was hearing double. “Bastard’s brain got stuck,’ he thought.

  “You got to join the human race,” Walter held forth.

  “Come apart now,” Jesse thought. “Knew it was going to happen. Overloaded.” Aloud he said in his slow thick voice: “—been an ape too long to change now—feeling mighty uncomfortable as a human being.”

  Harold chuckled. “How’d you manage it, Walt? The man turned me and Jesse down.”

  “—said weren’t no vacancies…” Jesse mumbled. “Knew the sonabitch was lyin’.”

  “You niggers want to clown,” Walter said disgustedly and Harold put in, chuckling, “Fish swim,” and Jesse mumbled: “—what you expect clowns to do—play Macbeth?”

  “What those girls doing in there?” Walter muttered irritably, flicking up his sleeve with mighty elegance to glance at his watch. If he couldn’t have an attentive and admiring female audience he was ready to leave.

  Harold chuckled. “Don’t get worried, Walt, you got the nuts.”

  “That sort of thing don’t worry me; I know I can—” Walter muttered defensively, but Jesse cut him off, mumbling: “That’s what you get for joining the human race.”

  Harold laughed. “Nothing’s too strange for human beings, Walt. Now us apes, we got just one way—”

  Laughing, Jesse lurched to his feet and staggered to the kitchen. Lucille greeted him with an accusing look. “You shouldn’t have told Kriss that, Jesse, I didn’t—” she began, and Kriss cut in: “—she knows I didn’t mean anything—” but Lucille continued: “—think anything about it at all. Kriss always—” Kriss gave Jesse a sweetly malicious vindictive smile: “—she knows it’s just my way…” Jesse trembled with a sudden squall of rage that left him momentarily sober. “Don’t be so motherfucking cute, bitch!” he said to Kriss and seeing the first glint of outrage in her blue-glazed red-rimmed eyes he slapped her with such savage violence it spun her into the stove. He was going to hit her with his fist when Lucille intervened, saying indignantly, “You shouldn’t have done that, Jesse! You’re crazy! I’m not unhappy!” He looked at the anguish in her face and the rage drained out of him. “Now this hurt bitch had got to defend this other bitch who hurt her to prove to the bitch she wasn’t hurt when the bitch knows damn well she was hurt and she knows damn well the bitch knows it,” he thought disgustedly, and then, “Perfectly natural, though,” and after an instant, “Maud’s got the right idea; only defence a nigger bitch got against a white bitch is to screw her.”

  Kriss wheeled towards him with her face aflame. “You son of a bitch! I’m going to—”

  He turned away as if unaware of her existence and went back to the living-room and sat defiantly in her favourite three-legged chair.

  She came out and, standing behind him in the hall said, in an icy voice, “Jesse! I want you to go home,” and he replied just as icily, “Kriss. Fuck yourself!”

  Harold chuckled innocently and began reciting: “When the fellows get to fighting, and the law is at de door—”

  Walter cut him off. “When niggers learn how to behave themselves—”

  “Got it all figured out, haven’t you, boy?” Jesse felt a cold sober malevolence toward everyone. “Got your big fat brain stuffed with solutions, eh, boy?”

  Behind him Kriss was repeating: “Jesse! I want you to—” but Jesse’s last remark had pricked Walter in a tender spot and he shouted angrily: “You goddamned smartalecky niggers always mess up everything—”

  “Why don’t you turn that record over, boy? You been talking about the same thing—”

  “I’ll talk about whatever I please. I was invited here—”

  “Well, go home then!”

  “Go home your goddamned self! Kriss has asked you three times!”

  “You take care of Lucy and let me take care of Kriss, son,” and Kriss’s blood-flushed jowls swelled like a puffing adder’s at this last outrage to white womanhood: “You son of a bitch—”

  But Walter suffered a blind fit of nigger-rage at being relegated to the sole defence of Negro womanhood—a great man like himself. “Don’t call me son, nigger!” he shouted.

  “Listen, son—” Jesse began in a patronizing tone, and before he’d finished Walter leaped to his feet and snapped open a switchblade knife. “I’ll cut your motherfuckin’ throat!” he threatened
, advancing dangerously.

  Kriss shuddered with a sadistic thrill, at once excited and repulsed by the prospect of seeing Jesse writhing on the floor with blood spurting from his cut throat because her skin was white.

  Lucille sprang forward and threw her arms about Walter, restraining him, while Harold scrambled hastily to his feet to get out of the way. “Motherfucker, I’ll show you—” Walter was mouthing, trying to free himself from his wife’s arms.

  Jesse sat silent and unmoving, watching the performance with a complete but detached curiosity; with no reaction to the danger whatsoever, scarcely realizing his own participation. It was as if he were watching with impersonal interest some vaguely valid but not very novel exhibition of idiocy, like a Hollywood treatment of a Negro theme. “Now the bitch has got us niggers killing off each other,” he thought with vague chagrin but no surprise, and then, half-amused, “Now I really do believe the sonofabitch has joined the human race,” and directly following, “Nigger’s right too…right attitude…good nigger…footsteps of tradition…no wonder they let the nigger join…” Then his conscious awareness went off and came on at intervals, like billboard lights, leaving a series of jumbled and unrelated impressions: Walter was seated as before, grinning at him derisively: “I know what’s eatin’ you…” and himself still sitting in the same position, thinking, “The nigger’s earned his, anyway…” Then everyone was standing, milling about, and he was patting Walter on the shoulder, saying with great benevolence, “I like you, man, hell, I’m only too glad you found the combination…” Then the Martins were gone and Kriss was standing in front of the television set, putting on a coat, and stating to Harold who stood to one side, with an attitude of deprecation: “I’m going home with you—” Harold shaking his head and replying: “—make himself a great hero…” and both talking at once. “You gotta take me home with you, baby…” “But somebody else…” “I’m not going to stay here with this son of a bitch…” “Not me…”

  “You’re not going any goddam where!” Jesse said in a clear dangerous voice.

  “You son of a bitch!” Kriss flared, flashing him a look of supreme indignation, then taking Harold by the arm: “Come on, baby, take me home with you.” She giggled. “Let Jesse screw himself.” Then cursed viciously: “Son of a bitch!”

  “Fix this bitch right now,” Jesse thought and staggered to the kitchen to get the big kitchen knife.

  “Don’t cut her, man, don’t cut her!” Harold said in alarm when Jesse returned, brandishing the knife. “Hit her with your fist but don’t cut her.”

  “Don’t tell that son of a bitch to hit me, you son of a bitch!” Kriss screamed in a rage now directed toward her erstwhile protector.

  “Man’s right,” Jesse thought. “Bitch just needs a little blacking for the coming cakewalk.” Aloud he said, “Right-O!” and, placing the knife carefully atop the storage cabinet so as not to scar the finish, hit her on the jaw as hard as he could. In amazement he watched her bang against the television set and crumple to the floor. “White bitches fall on their ass just like all other bitches when they’re smacked on the jaw,” he thought.

  “Don’t kick her, man,” Harold said quickly.

  “Got you, coach,” Jesse said. “Don’t bruise the stuff.”

  Harold chuckled. “Consider the depreciation.”

  “Trouble with us niggers now—”

  Neither of them moved to help Kriss as she struggled to her feet. With clinical curiosity Jesse watched her first straighten the television set on its stand, then pull down her skirt which had flown up about her waist, thinking, “Property first, virtue second—” and when at last she gave him the full malevolence of her look, added, “—hatred third. Good thing to know.” She kept silent for fear he might hit her again, but said to herself, “Jesse! You son of a bitch! I’ll never let you sleep with me again as long as I live!” dictating his ultimate punishment in much the same attitude as Puritans sentencing a witch to burning, or white southerners a Negro to lynching. Then, silently, she took off all of her clothes and threw them on the floor, staggered to the kitchen and mixed a gin drink, came back into the hall and posed naked long enough for him to see what he was missing; then she giggled and went into the bedroom and slammed the door with a bang that sounded like a shot.

  “Ought to be hot now,” Harold said, chuckling.

  “Just exploded,” Jesse said.

  By accord they went to the kitchen to get a drink and finding the gin gone opened the bottle of sherry. “I’m getting good and goddamned tired of these hurt white bitches taking it out on me,” Jesse muttered, finding himself slowly burning with what was the beginning of accumulated rage.

  “You hear me!” His voice thickening with growing passion. “TIREDDDDDDDD!” And with that he took a huge swallow of sherry to cool his blazing brain. But whatever comment Harold made on this revealing outburst, he never knew, for with the warm pungent fiery wine exploding in his stomach, his conscious awareness blanked out again and did not return until he began to dream shortly before awakening.

  Chapter 12

  He dreamed he was writing a soft sweet lyrical and gently humorous account of his experiences as a cook on a big country estate somewhere, and as he completed each chapter it was being printed on pale green pages of stiff Irish linen, each page with an individual hand-painted border of various ancient Egyptian designs; the book itself with both the printed pages and those yet to be filled bound in dark green morocco leather with gold leaf comers and with the title Hog Will Eat Hog, branded on the leather, and his name in heavy silver letters beneath:

  I discovered I didn’t have to kill the hogs because they’d give six or seven inches of sausage each day, neatly stuffed in their intestines, and I’d simply have to go down to the pig sty and cut it off. There’d always be plenty for everyone and some left over, and by the next morning they would have grown an equal amount. The lady I worked for—I won’t mention her name because she is very famous and might be embarrassed—didn’t want to eat the sausage at first because she thought it was being cruel to the hogs to cut if off like that. But when I showed her that the hogs did not feel any pain whatsoever, and how happy they were to be giving a little sausage each day instead of being slaughtered all at once and butchered for hams, she consented to eat the sausage and liked it very much. The way I discovered she liked the sausage came about like this: She was sitting on the terrace with Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past open in her lap, but instead of reading she was looking across her sunny acres with a dreamy expression.

  “If I may be so bold as to ask, what are you thinking, madame?” I asked.

  “About sausage.”

  “What about sausage, madame?”

  “About how good it is.”

  It made me happy to see her happy, and the hogs were happy to see us both happy.

  But one day one of the hogs refused to give his bit of sausage. I knew he was not going dry because he was eating as much swill as any of the other hogs and he was also just as fat. So after breakfast that morning I took him down to the slaughterhouse to have a good talk with him.

  “Why do you refuse to give your bit of sausage, like the other hogs do?” I asked.

  “I have run out of sausage,” he said.

  But I knew by his hang-hog expression and the guilty manner in which he avoided my eyes that the sausage manufacturers had bribed him.

  “Why do you lie to me?” I asked. “I can tell by looking at you that you have gone over to the other side.”

  “But it is true,” he contended. “Besides which I have no more guts.”

  “Would you rather be slaughtered and butchered by the sausage manufacturers, or give us, your friends, a little bit of sausage each day?” I asked bluntly.

  “I don’t know why I hate you so when you’ve been so good to me,” he squealed pathetically, lard drops streaming from his little hog eyes.

  On hearing this, the other hogs who had followed down to the slaughterhouse expecting
to see him slaughtered, thought that I might forgive him and began shouting, “Slaughter the traitor! Slaughter the traitor!”

  But when I saw their cruel sadistic expressions, I recalled the words of our Saviour, and I said to them, “He that is without pork chops among you, let him first cut his brother’s throat.” Then I turned to the recalcitrant hog and said, “Let this be a lesson to you: hog will eat hog the same as dog will eat dog…”

  At the moment of awakening he remembered the dream entirely and thought, half-amused, “Damn right!” Then, as he became oriented, he realized he was sleeping on the sofa in the living room. “Good thing you’re not a hog, son,” he thought as he reached behind him and switched on the table light. “You’d have to eat your own sausage.”

  The room looked a worse wreck than it had the morning before. “I had Kilroy wrong,” he thought, eyeing the signs of havoc. “McCarthy’s been investigating here.” Kriss’s clothes were piled as she had left them on stripping, but there was no evidence of his own. He got up and found them hanging neatly in the hall closet. “Now I know I was tight,” he said aloud.