A Rage in Harlem

by Chester Himes

  He was saved for the moment by a fight.

  Two rough-looking men jumped about the floor, knocking over chairs and tables, cutting at one another with switchblade knives. The customers at the bar screwed their heads about to watch, but held on to their places and kept their hands on their drinks. The whores rolled their eyes and looked bored.

  One joker slashed the other’s arm. A big-lipped wound opened in the tight leather jacket, but nothing came out but old clothes – two sweaters, three shirts, a pair of winter underwear. The second joker slashed back, opened a wound in the front of his foe’s canvas jacket. But all that came out of the wound was dried printer’s ink from the layers of old newspapers the joker had wrapped about him to keep warm. They kept slashing away at one another like two rag dolls battling in buck-dancing fury, spilling old clothes and last week’s newsprint instead of blood.

  The customers laughed.

  “How them studs goin’ to get cut?” someone remarked. “Might as well be fightin’ old ragman’s bag.”

  “They ain’t doin’ nothin’ but cheatin’ the Salvation Army.”

  “They ain’t tryin’ to cut each other, man. Them studs know each other. They just tryin’ to freeze each other to death.”

  One of the bartenders went out with a sawed-off baseball bat and knocked one of the fighters on the head. When that one fell the other one leaned down to cut him again and the bartender knocked him on the head also.

  Two white cops strolled in lazily, as though they had smelled the fight, and took the battlers away.

  Jackson thought it might be safe then to flash his roll. He took out the phony bills, carefully peeled off a ten, threw it onto the bar.

  “Take out for two rye whiskeys,” he said.

  A dead silence fell. Every eye in the joint looked at the roll in his hand, then looked at him, then at the bartender.

  The bartender held the bill up to the light, peered through it, turned it over and snapped it between his hands, then he rang it up in the register and slammed the change onto the bar.

  “What you want to do, get your throat cut?” he said angrily.

  “What you want me to do, walk off without paying?” Jackson argued.

  “I just don’t want no trouble in here,” the bartender said, but it was too late for that.

  Underworld characters closed in on Jackson from all sides. But the whores got there first, pressing their wares so hard against Jackson he couldn’t tell whether they were soliciting or trying to dispose of surplus merchandise. The pickpockets were trying to break through. The muggers waited at the door. Everyone else watched him, curious and attentive.

  “That’s my money,” a big whiskey-headed ex-pug shouted, pushing through the crowd toward Jackson. “That mother–has done picked my pocket.”

  Someone laughed.

  “Don’t let that joker scare you, honey,” one of the whores encouraged.

  Another one said, “That raggedy stud ain’t had two white quarters since Jesus was a child.”

  “I don’t want no trouble in here,” the bartender warned, reaching for his sawed-off bat.

  “I know my money,” the ex-pug shouted. “Can’t nobody tell me I don’t know my own money.”

  “What’s the difference between your money and anybody else’s money?” the bartender said.

  A medium-sized, brown-skinned man, dressed in a camel’s-hair coat, brown beaver hat, hard-finished brown-and-white striped suit, brown suede shoes, brown silk tie decorated with hand-painted yellow horses, wearing a diamong ring on his left ring-finger and a gold signet-ring on his right hand, carrying gloves in his left hand, swinging his right hand free, pushed open the street door and came into the bar fast. He stopped short on seeing the ex-pug grab Jackson by the shoulder. He heard the ex-pug say in a threatening voice, “Leave me see that mother-rapin’ roll.” He noticed the two bartenders close in for action. He saw the whores backing away. He cased the situation instantly. Pushing his way through the jam, he walked up behind the ex-pug, took hold of his arm, spun him about and kicked him solidly in the groin.

  The big ex-pug doubled forward, blowing spit in a loud grunt. The man stepped back and kicked him in the solar plexus. The ex-pug’s face ballooned as he gasped for breath, folding head-downward toward the floor. The man stepped back another pace and kicked him in the face with the curve of his instep, hard enough to close one eye without breaking any bones, and timed so that the ex-pug fell on his chest instead of his face. Then the man daintily inserted the tip of his brown suede shoe underneath the ex-pug’s shoulder and flipped him over onto his back. Slowly he stuck his right hand into the side pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a short-barreled .38 police special revolver.

  The customers scattered, getting out of range.

  “You’re the son of a bitch who robbed me last night,” the man said to the half-conscious ex-pug on the floor. “I’ve got a good notion to blow out your guts.”

  He had a good voice and spoke in a soft, slow manner that made him sound like an educated man, to the customers in that joint.

  “Don’t shoot him in here, Mister,” one of the bartenders said.

  At sight of the gun the ex-pug’s eyeballs rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. He kept swallowing his tongue as he tried to talk.

  “Twarn’t me, Boss,” he finally managed to blubber. “I swear ’fore the cross it warn’t me. I ain’t never tried to rob you, Boss.”

  “The hell it wasn’t you. I’d know you anywhere. You jumped me on 129th Street right after midnight last night.”

  “I swear it warn’t me, Boss. I been right here in this bar all last night. Joe the bartender’ll tell you. I been right here all last night. Didn’t leave no time.”

  “That’s right,” the bartender said. “He was here all last night. I seen him.”

  The ex-pug wallowed about the floor, feeling his eye and groaning as though half dead, trying to win sympathy.

  The man put away his gun and said evenly, “Well, you son of a bitch, I might be mistaken this time. But you’ve sure as hell robbed somebody in your lifetime, so you just got what was due you.”

  The ex-pug got to his feet and backed away a distance.

  “I wouldn’t rob you, Boss, no suh, not with what you got.”

  No one thought it was funny but they all laughed.

  “Not you, Boss, not a man of your position,” the ex-pug kept clowning for laughs. “Anybody here will tell you I ain’t had no real money in my pockets for weeks.” Suddenly he recalled that he’d just accused Jackson of picking his pocket, and added, “Maybe it was that man at the bar what robbed you, boss. he’s sportin’ a big roll he got from somewheres.”

  The man looked at Jackson for the first time.

  “Listen, don’t get me into that,” Jackson said. “I hit the numbers for my money. I can prove it.”

  The man went over and stood beside Jackson at the bar and ordered a drink.

  “Don’t worry, friend, I know it wasn’t you,” he said in a friendly voice. “It was some big ragged mugger like that bastard there. But I’ll find him.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Seven hundred dollars,” the man said, turning the shot glass between his fingers. “If that had happened to me a week ago, I’d have tracked the bastard to hell. But now it don’t make too much difference. I’ve lucked up on a good thing since then, something that’s solid gold. Eight or nine months from now I’ll be able to give a bastard that much money just to keep from having to kill him.”

  At the word gold, Jackson looked up quickly at the reflection of the man in the mirror behind the bar. He ordered another drink, pulled out his roll and peeled off a bill to pay for it.

  The man eyed Jackson’s roll.

  “Friend, if I was you I wouldn’t flash my money in this joint. That’s just asking for trouble.”

  “I don’t usually come in here,” Jackson said. “But my woman’s not at home right now.”

  The
man gave Jackson a poker-faced look. He’d gotten a tip from one of the cheap hustlers he employed as lookouts that a square loaded with a big roll was in the joint. But Jackson looked too much like a square to be a real square. The man wondered if Jackson was trying to rook him with a confidence game of his own. He decided to go slow.

  “I figured that,” he said noncommittally.

  The whores began closing in on Jackson again and the man beckoned to the bartender.

  “Give these whores what they’re drinking and get them off my back.”

  The bartender took a bottle of gin and a tray of shot glasses to one of the booths. The whores melted away from the bar, looking hostile but as though they couldn’t be so much bothered as to be offended.

  “You shouldn’t talk that way to women,” Jackson protested.

  The man looked at Jackson queerly. “What can you call a two-bit whore but a whore, friend?”

  “They were good enough for Jesus to save,” Jackson said.

  The man grinned with relief. Jackson was his boy.

  “You’re right, friend. I’m upset a little, don’t usually talk like that. My name’s Gus Parsons.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m in the real-estate business.”

  Jackson shook hands, also relieved.

  “Glad to meet you, Gus. They call me Jackson.”

  “What business are you in, Jackson?”

  “I’m in the undertaking business.”

  Gus laughed. “Business must be good, considering that roll you’re carrying around. How much are you carrying there, anyway?”

  “It didn’t come from my business. I just work for an undertaker. I hit the numbers.”

  “That’s right. You did say you’d had a hit.”

  “Had twenty dollars on four eleven. I drew down ten thousand dollars.”

  Gus whistled softly and looked suddenly serious.

  “You take my advice, Jackson, keep that roll in your pocket and go straight home. The streets of Harlem are not safe for a man with that kind of money. You’d better let me go along with you until you see a policeman.”

  He turned and called to the bartender. “How much do I owe?”

  “Let me buy you a drink before we leave,” Jackson said.

  “You can buy me a drink somewhere else if you want, Jackson,” Gus said, paying for his drink and the bottle of gin. “Some place that’s clean and where a man can feel safe. Let’s get away from these hoodlums and thieves. I tell you, let’s walk down to the Palm Café.”

  “That’s fine,” Jackson said.

  11

  They turned on 125th Street and walked toward Seventh Avenue. Neon lights from the bars and stores threw multicolored rays on the multicolored people trudging down the sloppy walk, turning their complexions into strange metallic shades. Colored men passed, bundled against the cold, some in new checked overcoats, others in GI rubber slickers, gabardines, coats that looked as though they’d been made from blankets. Colored women switched by, sporting coats of such unlikely fur as horse, bear, buffalo, cow, dog, cat and even bat. Other colored people were dressed in cashmere, melton, mink and muskrat. They drove past in big new cars, looking prosperous.

  A Sister of Mercy emerged from the shadows.

  “Give to the Lawd. Give to the poor.”

  Jackson reached for his roll, but Gus stopped him.

  “Keep you money hidden, Jackson. I have some change.”

  He dropped a half-dollar into the box.

  “ ‘Ye have found the Spirit,’ ” the Sister of Mercy misquoted. “ ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit sayeth.’ ”

  “Amen,” Jackson said.

  Near the intersection of Seventh Avenue they turned into the Palm Café. The bartenders wore starched white jackets, and the high-yellow waitresses plying between the tables and booths were dressed in green-and-yellow uniforms. A three-piece combo beat out hot rhythms on the raised bandstand.

  The customers were the hepped-cats who lived by their wits – smooth Harlem hustlers with shiny straightened hair, dressed in lurid elegance, along with their tightly draped queens, chorus girls and models – which meant anything – sparkling with iridescent glass jewelry, rolling dark mascaraed eyes, flashing crimson fingernails, smiling with pearl-white teeth encircled by purple-red lips, exhibiting the hot excitement that money could buy.

  Gus pushed to the bar and drew Jackson in beside him.

  “This is the kind of place I like,” he said. “I like culture. Good food. Fine wine. Prosperous men. Beautiful women. Cosmopolitan atmosphere. Only trouble is, it takes money, Jackson, money.”

  “Well, I got the money,” Jackson said, beckoning to the bartender. “What are you drinking?”

  Both ordered Scotch.

  Then Gus said, “Not your kind of money, Jackson. You haven’t got enough money to keep up this kind of life. I mean real money. You take your little money. If you’re not careful it’ll be gone inside of six months. What I mean is money that don’t have any end.”

  “I know what you mean,” Jackson said. “As soon as my woman buys herself a fur coat and I get myself some new clothes and we get ourselves a car, a Buick or something like that, we’ll be stone broke. But where’s a man going to get money that don’t have any end?”

  “Jackson, you impress me as being an honest man.”

  “I try to be, but honesty don’t always pay.”

  “Yes, it does, Jackson. You’ve just got to know how to make it pay.”

  “I sure wish I knew.”

  “Jackson, I’ve a good mind to let you in on something good. A deal that will make you some real money. The kind of money I’m talking about. The only thing is, I’ve got to be sure I can trust you to keep quiet about it.”

  “Oh, I can keep quiet. If there’s any way I can make some real money I can keep so quiet they’ll call me oyster-mouth.”

  “Come on, Jackson, let’s go back here where we can talk privately,” Gus said suddenly, taking Jackson by the arm and steering him to a table in the rear. “I’m going to buy you a dinner and as soon as this girl takes our order I’m going to show you something.”

  The waitress came over and stood beside their table, looking off in another direction.

  “Are you waiting on us or just waiting on us to get up and leave?” Gus asked.

  She gave him a scornful look. “Just state your order and we’ll fill it.”

  Gus looked her over, beginning at her feet. “Bring us some steaks, girlie, and be sure they’re not as tough as you are, and take the lip away.”

  “Two steak dinners,” she said angrily, switching away.

  “Lean this way,” Gus said to Jackson, and drew a sheaf of stock certificates decorated with gold seals and Latin scripts from his inside coat pocket. He spread them out beneath the edge of the table for Jackson to get a better view.

  “You see these, Jackson? They’re shares in a Mexican gold mine. They’re going to make me rich.”

  Jackson stretched his eyes as wide as possible. “A gold mine, you say?”

  “A real eighteen-carat gold mine, Jackson. And the richest mine in this half of the world. A colored man discovered it, and a colored man has formed a corporation to operate it, and they’re selling stock just to us colored people like you and me. It’s a closed corporation. You can’t beat that.”

  The waitress brought the steak dinners, but Jackson couldn’t eat very much. He had eaten not long before, but Gus thought it was due to excitement.

  “Don’t get so excited you can’t eat, Jackson. You can’t enjoy your money if you’re dead.”

  “I know that’s true, but I was just thinking. I sure would like to invest my money in some of those shares, Mr. Parsons.”

  “Just call me Gus, Jackson,” Gus said. “You don’t have to shine up to me. I can’t sell you any shares. You have to see Mr. Morgan, the financier who’s organizing the corporation. He’s the man who sells the stock. All I can do is recommend you. If they don’t think you’re worthy to own
stock in the corporation, he won’t sell you any. You can bet on that. He only wants respectable people to own shares in his corporation.”

  “Will you recommend me, Gus? If you have any doubts about me, I can get a letter from my minister.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Jackson. I can tell that you are an honest upright citizen. I pride myself on being a good judge of character. A man in my business – the real-estate business – has got to be a good judge of character or he won’t be in business long. How much do you want to invest, Jackson?”

  “All of it,” Jackson said. “The whole ten thousand.”

  “In that case I’ll take you to see Mr. Morgan right now. They’ll be working all night tonight, clearing up business here so tomorrow they can go on to Philadelphia and let a few good citizens there buy shares too. They want to give worthy colored people from all over the country a chance to share in the profits that will come from this mine.”

  “I can understand that,” Jackson said.

  When they left the Palm Café the same Sister of Mercy who had accosted them before was shuffling past, and turned to give them a saintly smile.

  “Give to the Lawd. Give to the poor. Pave your way to heaven with charitable coins. Think of the unfortunate.”

  Gus fished out another half-dollar. “I got it, Jackson.”

  “Sister Gabriel blesses you, brother. ‘And the Lord of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass. And behold, we come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the word of the prophecy.’ ”

  Gus turned away impatiently.

  Goldy winked at Jackson and formed words with his lips. “You dig me, Bruzz?”

  “Amen,” Jackson said.

  “I’m suspicious about those nuns,” Gus said as he led Jackson toward his car. “Has it ever occurred to you that they might be working a racket?”

  “How can you think that about Sisters of Mercy?” Jackson protested quickly. He didn’t want Gus to start suspecting Goldy before the trap was sprung. “They’re the most holy people in Harlem.”

  Gus laughed apologetically. “In my business – the real-estate business – so many people try crooked dealings a man gets to be suspicious. Then I’m naturally a skeptic to begin with. I don’t believe in anything until I know it’s for sure. That’s the way I felt about this gold mine. I had to be sure about it before I invested my money. But I can see that you’re a church man, Jackson.”