A Rage in Harlem

by Chester Himes

  “Who’s there?” Coffin Ed challenged.

  His voice sounded so loud and harsh Jackson gave a start and lost his voice.

  “Speak up, God damn it, or I’ll blow you in two,” Coffin Ed threatened.

  “It’s just me, Jackson, Mr. Johnson,” Jackson managed to say.

  “Jackson! Where the hell is everybody, Jackson?”

  “They all done got away ’cept me.”

  “Where’s my buddy? Where’s Digger Jones?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I ain’t seen him.”

  “Maybe he’s gone after them. But you stay right where you are, Jackson. Don’t you move a goddam step.”

  “No, sir. Is there any kind of way I can help you, sir?”

  “No, God damn it, just don’t move. You’re under arrest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I might have known it, Jackson was thinking. The real criminals had gotten away again and he was the only one caught.

  He began inching silently toward the doorway.

  “Is that you I hear moving, Jackson?”

  “No, sir. It ain’t me.” Jackson moved a little closer. “I swear ’fore God.” He inched a little closer. “Must be rats underneath the floor.”

  “Rats, all right, God damn it,” Coffin Ed grated. “And they’re going to be underneath the God damn ground before it’s done with.”

  Through the open doorway Jackson could see alongside the abandoned Heaven of Father Divine the lights of the patrol cars moving back and forth, searching the street. He listened to the motors whining, the sirens screaming. He felt the presence of Coffin Ed behind him waving the cocked .38 in the pitch darkness of his blind eyes. The shrill, insistent blast of Coffin Ed’s police whistle scraped layer after layer from Jackson’s nerves. It sounded as if all hell had broken loose everywhere, top and bottom, on this side and that, and he was standing there between the devil and the deep blue sea.

  Better to get shot running than standing, he decided. He crouched.

  Coffin Ed sensed his movement.

  “Are you still there, Jackson?” he barked.

  Jackson sprang through the open doorway, landed on his hands and knees, and came up running.

  “Jackson, you bastard!” he heard Coffin Ed screaming. “Holy jumping Moses, I can’t take this much longer. Can’t the sons of bitches hear? Jackson!” he yelled at the top of his voice.

  Three shots blasted the night, the long red flame bursting the black darkness from the barrel of Coffin Ed’s pistol. Jackson heard the bullets crashing through the wooden walls.

  Jackson churned his knees in a froth of panic, trying to get greater speed from his short black legs. It pumped sweat from his pores, steam cooked him in his own juice, squandered his strength, upset his gait, but didn’t increase his speed. In Harlem they say a lean man can’t sit and a fat man can’t run. He was trying to get to the other side of the old brick warehouse that had been converted into Heaven but it seemed as far off as the resurrection of the dead.

  Behind him three more shots blasted the enclosing din, inspiring him like a burning rag on a dog’s tail. He couldn’t think of anything but an old folk song he’d learned in his youth:

  Run, nigger, run; de patter-roller catch you;

  Run, nigger, run; and try to get away …

  His foot slipped on a muddy spot and he sailed head-on into the old wooden loading-dock at the back of the reconverted Heaven, invisible in the dark. His fat-cushioned mouth smacked into the edge of a heavy floorboard with the sound of meat slapping on a chopping block. Tears of pain flew from his eyes.

  As he jumped back, licking his bruised lips, he heard the clatter of policemen’s feet coming around the other side of the Heaven.

  He crawled up over the edge of the dock like a clumsy crab escaping a snapping turtle. A ladder was within reach to his right, but he didn’t see it.

  Overhead the 155th Street Bridge hung across the dark night, strung with lighted cars slowing to a stop as passengers craned their necks to see the cause of the commotion.

  A lone tugboat towing two empty garbage-scows chugged down the Harlem River to pick up garbage bound for the sea. Its green and red riding lights were reflected in shimmering double-takers on the black river.

  Jackson felt hemmed in on both sides; if the cops didn’t get him the river would. He jumped to his feet and started to run again. His footsteps boomed like thunder in his ears on the rotten floorboards. A loose board gave beneath his foot and he plunged face forward on his belly.

  A policeman rounding the other side of the Heaven, coming in from the street, flashed his light in a wide searching arc. It passed over Jackson’s prone figure, black against the black boards, and moved along the water’s edge.

  Jackson jumped up and began to run again. The old folk song kept beating in his head:

  Dis nigger run, he run his best,

  Stuck his head in a hornet’s nest.

  The tricky echo of the river and the buildings made his footsteps sound to the cops as coming from the opposite direction. Their lights flashed downriver as they converged in front of the wooden shack.

  “God damn it, in here,” Jackson heard Coffin Ed’s roar.

  “Coming,” he heard the quick reply.

  “Somebody’s getting away,” Jackson heard another voice shout. He put his feet down and picked them up as fast as he could, but it took him so long to get to the end of the dock he felt as if he’d turned stark white from old age and had withered half away.

  From the corners of his white-walled eyes he saw the policemen’s lights swinging back up the river, slowly closing in. And he didn’t have anywhere to hide.

  Suddenly he went off the edge of the dock without seeing it. He was running on wooden boards and the next thing he knew he was running on the cool night air. The next moment he was skidding into a puddle of muck. His feet went out from underneath him so fast he turned a complete somersault.

  The lights passed along the platform overhead and swung back along the river’s edge. He was shielded by the dock, safe for the moment in the shadows.

  A passageway loomed to his left, a narrow opening between the brick walls of the Heaven and the corrugated zinc walls of an adjoining warehouse. Far down, another lifetime away, was a narrow rectangle of light where it came out into the street. He made for it, slipped in the muck, caught himself on his hands, and ran the first ten yards bear-fashion.

  He straightened up when he felt the ground harden under his feet. He was in a narrow passageway; he had entered it so fast he was stuck before he knew it. He thrashed and wriggled in a blind panic, like a black Don Quixote fighting two big warehouses singlehanded; he got himself turned sideways, and ran crab-like toward the street.

  The alley was clogged with tin cans, beer bottles, water-soaked cardboard cartons, pieces of wooden crates, and all other manner of trash. Jackson’s shins took a beating; his overcoat was scraped by both walls as he propelled his fat body through the narrow opening, running in a strange sidewise motion, right foot leaping ahead, left foot dragging up behind.

  He couldn’t get that damn’ song out of his mind. It was like a ghost haunting him:

  Dat nigger run, dat nigger flew

  Dat nigger tore his shirt in two.

  13

  When Slim and Imabelle came out on the sidewalk, the first of the police cars was screaming up Eighth Avenue at ninety miles an hour, its red light blinking in the black night like a demon escaped from hell.

  Slim’s car was parked too far away to reach. He tried Gus’s Cadillac and found it locked. Luckily there was a taxi parked at the curb, ahead of the Cadillac.

  Slim looked at the Sister of Mercy sitting on the back seat and recognized her as the black nun who had been pointed out to him in front of Blumstein’s Department Store as a stool pigeon. He jerked open the door, jumped inside first and pulled Imabelle in afterwards.

  “This is an emergency,” he shouted at the driver. “Knickerbocker Hospital, and goose it.” />
  He turned to the nun and explained, “My wife drank some poison. Got to get her to the hospital.”

  The burns on Slim’s cheek and neck were on the far side, but Goldy had already noticed the acid burns on the shoulder of his khaki duster and knew there had been acid throwing too. He had heard the shooting, and he figured with so much shooting by those crack shots Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, somebody had to be dead. He just hoped it wasn’t Jackson, or he was going to have to figure out some way of getting the trunk by himself. And that was going to be tough, because Imabelle didn’t know he was Jackson’s brother.

  The main thing at the moment was not to arouse their suspicions.

  “Put your faith in the Lord,” he whispered huskily, trying to give the impression of being simple-minded. “Let not your heart be troubled.”

  Slim shot him a suspicious look, and for an instant Goldy was afraid he’d overplayed it. But Slim only muttered, “Gonna be troubled if we don’t get going.”

  Imabelle had run out without her coat and she shivered suddenly from cold.

  Before the taxi had gotten into second gear, a patrol car cut in front of it. Slim cursed. Imabelle put her arm about Slim’s shoulder and leaned her head against his cheek to hide the acid burns. Two cops leaped out, stalked back to the taxi and flashed their lights over the occupants. On seeing the Sister of Mercy, they saluted respectfully.

  “Did you see anyone run past here, Sister?” one of them asked.

  “No one has run past us,” Goldy replied truthfully, and turned to his companions. “Did you see anybody pass us?”

  “I ain’t seen nobody,” Slim corroborated quickly, shooting Goldy another calculating look. “Not a soul.”

  Two more patrol cars pulled to a stop in the middle of the street, behind and ahead of them. Four cops hit the pavement running, but the cops questioning the occupants of the taxi waved them off. They turned, undecided, ran back to their patrol cars, roared off toward the dark parking lot beside the Polo Grounds.

  “Where are you folks going?” the cop asked Goldy.

  Goldy crossed his index fingers over the gold cross at his bosom and said piously, “To heaven, bless the Lord, have mercy on our souls.”

  The cops thought he was performing some cabalistic ritual and hesitated. But Goldy had seen the young colored driver look half around, then turn back and look rigidly ahead. He could feel Slim trembling in the seat beside him. He was trying desperately to stall the cops and at the same time prevent Slim from repeating the lie about taking Imabelle to the hospital, because even one look at Imabelle was enough to tell she was healthy as a breeding mare.

  “Maybe they went that way,” he added before the cops could repeat the question, and made two circles with the gold cross.

  The cops stared in fascination. They’d seen many strange religious sects in Harlem, and they respected the colored folks’ religion on orders from the Commissioner. But this nun looked as though she might be worshipping the devil.

  Finally one of the cops replied seriously, “What way?”

  “The way of the transgressor is hard,” Goldy said.

  The cops exchanged glances.

  “Let’s get on,” the first cop said.

  The second cop gave Slim and Imabelle another scrutinizing look. “Are these folks disciples of yours, Sister?” he asked.

  Suddenly Goldy put the gold cross into his mouth, then spat it out.

  “ ‘And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up,’ ” he quoted enigmatically. He knew the best way to confuse a white cop in Harlem was to quote foolishly from the Bible.

  The cops’ eyes stretched. Their cheeks puffed and their faces reddened as they tried to control their laughter. They touched their caps respectfully and turned quickly away. They were confused, but not suspicious.

  “You think she’s drunk?” one asked, loud enough for them to hear.

  The other shrugged. “Either that or hopped.”

  They went back to their patrol car, made a screaming U-turn, and roared off toward the jungle of piers beneath the bridge.

  Already people were collecting, emerging from the darkness like half-dressed phantoms.

  The taxi started up again. The driver eased it cautiously past the patrol cars.

  “Mother-raper, step on it!” Slim snarled.

  The driver didn’t relax the rigid set of his head but the taxi picked up speed and went fast down Eighth Avenue. Even the back of the driver’s head looked scared.

  “God damn it, get off me,” Slim cursed, pushing Imabelle aside. “I’m burning up.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” she said, fumbling in her pocketbook.

  “If you draw a knife on me—” Slim began, but she cut him off. “Shut up.” She handed him a jar of face cream. “Here, put some of this on your burn.”

  He unscrewed the cap and smeared the white cream thickly over his acid burns.

  “Hank shouldn’t have done that,” Imabelle said.

  “Shut up yourself!” Slim grated. “Don’t you know this old nun’s a stool pigeon?”

  Goldy felt Imabelle looking at him curiously, and bowed his head over the gold cross as though absorbed in devout meditation.

  “You suspect everybody,” Imabelle said to Slim. “How is she going to know what we talking about?”

  “If you keep on talking you gonna make me have to cut her throat.”

  “All of you is knife-happy.”

  “Woe is past,” Goldy said prayerfully.

  “It’s a good thing she’s hopped,” Slim muttered.

  An ambulance came screaming up the street.

  No one spoke again until they reached Knickerbocker Hospital. Slim stopped the taxi in front of the main entrance instead of having it circle the ramp to the emergency entrance. He followed Imabelle out and took her by the arm and hurried her up the stairs without stopping to pay the fare.

  Goldy ordered the driver to circle the block. When they came back Slim and Imabelle were getting into a taxi ahead.

  Goldy ordered his driver to follow them. The driver grumbled.

  “I hope us ain’t getting in no trouble, ma’am.”

  “ ‘There were four and twenty elders,’ ” Goldy quoted, giving the driver a prediction for the day’s number.

  He knew that most folks in Harlem believed that holy people could look straight up into heaven and find the number coming out that day any time they wished.

  The driver got the idea. He twisted his head and gave the nun a toothy grin. “Yas’m, four and twenty olders. Which one of them olders going to get here first, you reckon?”

  “Four of the elders will lead the twenty,” Goldy said.

  “Yas’m.”

  The driver resolved to put five bucks on four twenty in each of Harlem’s four big books before noon that day as sure as his name was Beau Diddley.

  They followed the taxi of Slim and Imabelle until it stopped before a dark cold-water tenement on Upper Park Avenue. But they’d stuck so close they had to go on past when the taxi stopped. Goldy crouched out of sight in the back seat. He knew they hadn’t got hep to his trailing them because they hadn’t tried to lose him, but he wasn’t sure whether they had recognized the taxi when it passed or not. It was a chance he had to take.

  By the time they’d circled the block again, the other taxi was gone. Goldy watched the front of the tenement building, wondering whether he’d have to go inside and search for the flat.

  But after a moment a light showed briefly in a front window on the third floor before the curtain was pulled. He was satisfied with that. He had the driver take him to the tobacco store on 121st Street.

  Jackson was nowhere in sight. Goldy began to worry. He let himself into the store, went back to his room, lit the kerosene stove and cooked a C and M speedball over his alcohol lamp.

  He had told Jackson to return there in case there was a rumble. But he had no way of knowing whether Jackson was dead or alive. And it was too early to ask a
t the precinct station. If anything had happened to either Grave Digger or Coffin Ed, the white cops might get suspicious and dig him too.

  When the dope started working on his imagination, he could see everybody dead. He banged himself again to calm his fears.

  14

  When Jackson emerged from the narrow passageway, a crowd had already collected in the street. He looked like something the Harlem River had spewed up. His overcoat was torn, the buttons missing, the sleeve slashed, he was covered with black muck, dripping dirty slime; his mouth was swollen, his eyes were red, and he looked half dead.

  But the other people didn’t look much better. The sound of pistol shooting and the screaming of the patrol car sirens had brought them rushing from their beds to see the cause of the excitement. It sounded like a battle royal taking place, and shootings and cuttings and folks dead and dying were a big show in Harlem.

  Men, women and children had piled into the street, wrapped in blankets, two and three overcoats, pyjama legs showing over the tops of rubber overshoes, towels tied about their heads, draped with dusty rugs snatched hastily from the floor. Alongside some of the apparitions, Jackson looked like a man of elegance.

  Most of them were milling about the police cordon that blocked the entrance to the alleyway on the other side of the Heaven, leading back to the shack where the shooting had taken place. Necks were craned, people stood on tiptoe, some sat astride others’ backs trying to see what was happening.

  Only one man wrapped up in a dirty yellow blanket like a black cocoon saw Jackson slip from the hole. Two cops were approaching, so all he did was wink.

  The cops were looking at Jackson suspiciously and preparing to question him when a fist fight broke out among the crowd on the other side. They hurried to join the group of harness cops converging on the fighters.

  Jackson followed quickly, squeezed into the crowd.

  “Let them niggers fight,” he heard somebody say.

  “Start one fight and everybody wanna fight,” someone else said.