Corky's Brother

by Jay Neugeboren

  “There’s only one thing to do, then,” I said after a while. “We’ve got to climb the fire escape and get a look around.”

  Everybody admitted that I was right, and since it was my suggestion, I was elected to do the climbing. The next afternoon, after school, I changed into my sneakers and met the other guys in the courtyard behind Joe’s building. Kenny pointed out which window was Joe’s. We stationed guys at the entrance and exit to the cellar, inside the cellar, and on the street in front of Joe’s building, forming a relay team to send a message in case there was any trouble. We didn’t see Joe’s delivery cart around anywhere, and it wasn’t six o’clock yet, when he’d be finished with his deliveries, so we figured it was a safe time.

  The guys who weren’t on the relay squad waited below the fire escape. A few of them sat on the ground reading comic books and sports magazines. Izzie and Kenny played catch with a rubber Spalding and the other guys stood in a line, making believe they were playing Chinese handball against the side of the building, but keeping their eyes on the windows and doors that led to the other buildings.

  “If anybody sees us,” I said, “start making a lot of noise or fighting or something so they don’t look up at me.”

  Then I started up the fire escape. My heart was pounding. “Are you okay?” Izzie asked when I got to the second story. I nodded. At the next level I almost knocked over somebody’s potted plant. When I got to the fourth story, I looked down and had to stop for a few seconds, I was so scared. The guys looked small and funny from where I was. “Go on, go on,” they called, whispering. “Go on—”

  My fingertips were cold and I almost lost my grip as I started up toward Joe’s floor. I was doing it. That was the sentence in my head, and it kept me going. I think even then I knew that for months—maybe years afterwards—the guys would always talk about the time I’d climbed the fire escape to spy on Joe. I looked down, then walked carefully up the ladder to the fifth-floor fire escape. I shot my head up quickly, then lowered it. The shade was up and I could see straight into the window. Keeping my head down and moving on my hands and knees, I managed to get to the side of the window. I rested for a few seconds in a deep knee-bend position. There were a few old bricks and flowerpots on either side of the window and on the ledge, and there was a stack of old magazines. I looked down through the spaces between the iron rails and I saw that the guys were all standing there, watching me. I waved frantically at them, and they got the hint and started playing again. I took a deep breath and crawled in front of the window, slowly raising my head.

  To my relief, Joe’s wife was sitting there, her back to me, watching television. She was eating a banana. She looked very peaceful, I remember, just sitting and eating, not knowing I was spying on her. She seemed to have gotten much fatter, but somehow I felt she was happy, I don’t know why. I watched her for a while, then looked around the room. The furniture was the same as it had been, except for the walls. All of Joe’s drawings were gone and in their place were neatly framed pictures of flowers and landscapes.

  The room looked nice. On the orange couch at the side there was a pile of clothes, and next to it an ironing board had been set up. I don’t know how long I watched Joe’s wife sitting there—though I do remember that after she’d finished the banana she immediately picked up an apple and started eating it. All I know is I was suddenly aware that the guys were trying to get my attention. I looked down, but the crisscross of the rails blocked my view and I couldn’t hear what they were whispering. I motioned to them to wait a minute. Then I got onto my hands and knees and started to crawl toward the staircase. Just before I passed the window, though, I wanted to get one last look—to assure myself again that nothing was wrong. I turned my neck around to look in through the comer of the window—and Joe’s huge head was glaring at me through the glass. I screamed like a madman and grabbed onto the side of the fire escape. I could see myself falling the five flights. The guys in the yard were yelling. Joe’s face got redder and redder, his chest bigger. I heard my heart going, loud, and I didn’t know what to do.

  “Hey, what are you doing up there?” some woman called, I didn’t know from where. “Get down offa that fire escape.” Other windows opened. I looked at Joe. Neither of us could move. We just stared at each other. His eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head. His mouth turned but I didn’t hear anything. There was more silver in his hair. Finally I let go of the side of the fire escape and scrambled across it, skinning my knees, but making it to the ladder before Joe got the window open.

  I don’t know how I did it—I don’t remember going down at all—but the next thing I knew, I was at the first landing. “Jump!” somebody yelled, and I jumped the last eight or ten feet, not bothering with the hanging ladder. The guys were all standing in the archway that led to the cellar and the street. Something crashed near me. Some of the guys ran. I looked up and saw that Joe was out on the fire escape now.

  I stood up and walked into the middle of the courtyard to get a full view of him.

  “Are you crazy!?” one of the guys yelled. “Get under cover! He’s out of his mind—!”

  Joe stood at the rail now, hanging over, bellowing out words that I couldn’t understand and hurling down bricks and flowerpots and fruit—whatever he could get his hands on. None of them came close to hitting me. Windows were open all over—the women were yelling across the courtyard that Joe was going crazy, the guys were yelling at me to make a run for it, but I just stood there, transfixed. Finally I cupped my hands over my mouth and yelled, “I’m sorry, Joe—I’m sorry!” as loud as I could. I don’t think he understood me. He just kept shouting and throwing things. He never even tried to follow me down the fire escape. The things he shouted were blurred and thick, and I couldn’t make them out. It even seemed to me that he was crying. I felt so bad and wanted so much to be able to do something, but I knew there was nothing to do, and after a few minutes I shouted again that I was sorry and then I ran through the cellar and out into the street, looking for my friends.

  The Application

  IT HAD STARTED RAINING again, a thin mist-like drizzle through which the workers passed as they filed slowly into the Indiana Auto Works, droning conversation to each other. In the few minutes when most of the men on the first shift were washing up and the second shift had not yet started, the usual fierce noises had subsided to a dull rumble.

  Josh walked to his locker and changed from his neatly pressed black double-breasted suit to his factory clothes. When he arrived at his three-cornered stool, next to his welding press, the paper was already there:

  APPLICATION FOR THE NAACP

  Name (to best of your knowledge): ....................

  Mother’s name: ....................................

  Father’s name (list first three possibilities): 1.............

  2...................... 3......................

  Place of birth (check one):

  1. County Hospital....... 4. Cotton patch.........

  2. Belgian Congo........ 5. Bathroom............

  3. Swamp.............. 6. Brothel..............

  Number of children (approximate): ......

  Number of gold teeth: ......

  Number of wives (including those legally married): ......

  Age (to nearest 5-year figure): ........

  Species (check one): Big Black Buck........

  Boogie Brown........Sambo Tan........

  How often do you have your hair straightened?..........

  List three most prominent identifying scars: 1...........

  2...................... 3......................

  Make of car (check one): Buick.......Cadillac.......

  Number of Payments made: One.... Two .... Three....

  Cost of accessories (don’t count first $200): .............

  Number of suits owned: .... Number of lucky charms: ....

  Number of TV sets: .......Color of favorite hat: .......

  Do
you prefer a razor or switchblade?.................

  Length of blade: ................

  Court convictions (list number of times): 1. Burglary.....

  2. Rape........3. Car theft........4. Other........

  How many hours a day are you usually sober? None......

  One or two...... More than two......

  How many loan and finance companies are you indebted to?

  (roughly): ........................................

  What was the last job you held for more than six months?

  (pimping doesn’t count) ............................

  If you were given passage and $5 would you go back to Africa?..........................

  How do you prefer to be addressed? (check one):

  Daddy-o.....Like man.....Blackie.....Shine.....

  Nigger-boy.....Coon.....Hey Jig.....

  So that the fight between Emmett and Josh that everybody had been anticipating for three years finally came. It had been brewing slowly, simmering, aging, until the moment came when both were ready to make their immense stores of inner hatred visible, tangible, explosive to themselves and to each other. It was only waiting for an excuse befitting the amount of hatred in each. Just any excuse wouldn’t do. Over the years the workers had often speculated about the fight—how it would come, when it would come, who would win, what implements of battle would be used. Around the toilets, in the cafeteria, the Union Hall, in local taverns, at the Coke and coffee machines, and even in the foremen’s offices and toilets and dining room, the speculation went on, coming up every now and then as a topic of conversation, a natural remark passed as a part of the day’s work—another item to relieve the monotony of the work, to vary tried, tested, and tired conversation pieces as the half-assembled trucks moved down the lines.

  Emmett had been open about his hatred. “He makes my blood boil,” he would say. “Some day I’m gonna break his ass. The way he never says nothin’ but looks at ya like he’d spit on ya and now wanted ya to beg his pardon fer bein’ in the way o’ his spit—black bastard. I’d give a month’s pay for a chance to bloody that skin o’his…”

  Josh never said anything. But in his mind, behind his blood-veined eyes, simmering beneath his haughty, dignified, proud demeanor, he hated Emmett every bit as much as Emmett hated him.

  Not even the few friends he had knew the depths of his hatred. But day after day, sitting on his three-cornered stool, pressing the buttons that made the top half of the press meet the bottom and weld the two door sections together, he had his eye on Emmett. And he vowed to himself that if he ever killed a white man it would be Emmett Rumple. Because in Em-mett’s eyes he saw that look of savage disgust he remembered from his childhood, from the white men of Bullett and Troy (Alabama) when a nigger “forgot his place,” that supercilious hateful glare, mixed with, arising from, fear of niggers like Josh who wouldn’t stay in their place but assumed the walk and talk and attitude of any man.

  He wondered now. Exactly when was it that he had made his vow? When he was already on the bus heading north? When he was working in the garage? When he’d left school? When he was twelve years old and his father had strapped him for talking back to a white man? He didn’t remember and it didn’t matter. It might have been at fourteen and it might have been at forty. Or it might have been none of those times. That was more likely. It was more likely that the vow had never been made but had simply been there; the vow that some day he would pick out a single white man, would select him. Many nights, walking the streets of the Indiana city, he’d seen men who almost qualified. He’d hated them all, and had almost hated those who’d smiled at him or nodded to him more than those who ignored him.

  Long nights alone in his apartment, the thought had kept him alive. In fact, he knew that if the thought hadn’t been there during those nights, hadn’t sustained itself through wonderful dreams of revenge and blood, he’d have been in many fights long before this. Fortunately, though, he’d noticed the way Emmett had looked at him one day. Not indifference in that look. It was the look, the face, that could fill the dreams; and daytime, thinking of Emmett, of spreading his white man’s blood on the coal-black floor of the factory, Josh had developed the twitching habit of touching his side pocket to feel the knife, of laughing. Aloud. He knew many of the men mocked the habit and the laugh, but he didn’t care. He’d have the last laugh.

  Now, as he began reading the piece of paper, he laughed again. When he looked up, most of the men on his assembly line were already in their places.

  “Get me my relief man,” Josh said to his foreman, not waiting to get an O.K. from the foreman but already walking in Emmett’s direction, the paper now folded in one hand, the other hand loose at his side, itching for the pocket.

  “Whaddaya mean? Hey, Russell! Where you going? Come back here. We gotta get the line started up. Goddamn you—I said come back or I’ll slap a reprimand on you.…”

  Emmett heard him approaching (he was leaning over his toolbox, getting out his electrician’s holster), but he didn’t look up.

  “I’m thinking you left somethin’ over by my chair, mister,” Josh said, his voice low, cracking just a bit with nervousness.

  “What?” Emmett said, looking up and seeing Josh’s eyes gleaming at him as if there were little flashlight bulbs behind the lenses. For the first time he seemed to notice Josh’s size, his hulking broad body. But he’ll be slow, Emmett thought, and if I have a little room I’ll be too quick for him. And too smart. This nigger can’t be as smart as he tries to put on. “You ad-dressin’ me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Well, as far as I can figger, I ain’t fergot nothin’. You better be gettin’ to work.”

  Emmett strapped on his holster and turned, walking out into the aisle toward the intersection, where there would be more room. He passed Jim Bryant, his buddy, and winked. Already the men in the vicinity had stopped whatever they were doing and were waiting, their eyes eager for the violence they anticipated. Within a minute, by the time Emmett had reached the intersection of the aisles, men were closing around, and groups of Negroes sauntered slowly over, already hearing the whispers that the fight between Em and Josh had come.

  Josh followed Emmett, not hurrying, knowing that Emmett wanted to fight, to get it over with also.

  “Hold it there, mister,” Josh said. “I was talkin’ to you. I haven’t finished.”

  “What else ya got to say?” Emmett said, turning on Josh, a slight smile at the comer of his mouth, his hand resting on the hammer that hung in his holster.

  “You recognize this?” Josh said, showing him the application.

  “Oh, this—?” Emmett said, and laughed for the benefit of the men circled round them. A mule driver honked to get through but stopped as soon as he saw the two men facing each other. “I didn’t forget it. I figgered I was doin’ ya a favor. Figgered ya might be interested in fillin’ it out.”

  One of the men started to laugh but stopped quickly, noticing a group of Negro workers to his right.

  “Ya mean ya got it filled out already? You’re pretty smart fer a—f er a—”

  “Nobody treats me like dirt, mister,” Josh said, moving slowly forward. The circle around them was wide now, fifteen feet in diameter.

  “I put five bucks on ole Josh,” one man whispered.

  “I’ll cover that.”

  “Any o’ you boys wanna bet?” Jim Bryant said to a group of Negro workers. “I got fifteen bucks I’d like to double.”

  “We’ll cover it, man. Be like pickin’ cherries.”

  “Nobody pushes me around, mister,” Josh said. He thrust his arm forward, the application clenched in his fist. Emmett started back, whipping the hammer out of his holster. Betting stopped. “You better say you’re sorry and bend down and pick up this thing and tear it up or I’ll cut you from your belly button to the tip of your ugly head.”

  Josh tossed the piece of paper in front of him. Emmett rubbed his palms with his finger
tips. Wet. But nobody’d make him cower before a nigger. Not in front of all the men.

  “Sure,” Emmett said, moving a step forward. “I’ll pick it up.”

  He held the hammer in his hand as he began to bend over in front of Josh. But then, his body bent over, his hand darted up suddenly in whiplash and the hammer glanced off Josh’s cheek, red blood showing immediately on the black perforated face. With his other arm he grabbed Josh’s leg behind the knee and tripped him, falling upon him and raising the hammer to his full arm’s length and starting it in its downward arc, but never landing another blow because even while Josh was falling backward he had slipped it out of his pocket and as Emmett fell on top of him you could hear the intake of breath as every last man saw the light flash, glint from the switchblade.

  Emmett rolled off Josh, clutching at his stomach, and Josh stood up and bent his shoulders down, the knife now visible to all, its silver blade tipped with a dripping of blood, crimson and liquid. Emmett backed away, breathing in deeply, cursing under his breath, gasping.

  “Gimme yer bottle o’ whiskey, Jim. Damn it. Where are ya? Gimme yer bottle.”

  Bryant reached into his side pocket. He took the bottle out of its paper bag and handed it to Emmett. Emmett took a quick swallow and moved backwards along the rim of the circle, watching, waiting, while Josh just glared and followed him with his eyes, not saying a word; but even Emmett could read the expression in his eyes now. Emmett looked to the side and lifted the bottle, bringing it down with a gurgling crash against a post.

  “We’re even now, big man,” he said, dropping the hammer to the floor and holding the jagged edges of the bottle forward. “Yer yeller’ll show now.”