All Shot Up

by Chester Himes

  “You ain’t just saying it,” he admitted, growing more and more angry as he watched her domestic activity.

  The fire began roaring up the chimney, and she half-closed the damper. Then she turned and looked at him; her sloe eyes glittered like brilliants.

  “Take off those Mother Hubbard clothes so I can kiss you,” she said, shaking the kinks out of her muscles.

  “This place sure is making you kissified,” he complained.

  “What’s wrong with that?” she said. “You can’t expect a cow to chew her cud when she got a field full of grass.”

  He glared at her. “If you make eyes at this man, there’s going to be asses whipped,” he said threateningly.

  She moved into him and snatched off the turban with the third eye.

  “That thing is galling your brains,” she said.

  “It ain’t my brains,” he denied.

  “Don’t I know it,” she said, groping at him.

  “Let me get off these womanish things,” he said, and began pulling the robe up over his head. “I feels like a rooster trying to lay an egg.”

  “You is sure got chickens on your mind,” she said, tickling him in the stomach while the robe covered his face.

  He jumped back, laughing like a big tickled goon, hit his calves against the edge of the bed and fell sprawling across it on his back.

  She jumped on top of him and tried to smother him with the folds of colored cloth. He tore open a hole for his head to come through, and she jumped backward to her feet and bent double laughing.

  He got his feet on the floor and his legs underneath him, and pushed from the bed like a young bull starting a charge. His lips were stretched, his tongue lolled from one corner; he looked as though he might be panting, but his breath was held. The frown still knotted his forehead, but his gray eyes were lit, the right one focused on her and the left one ranging off in the direction of the stove. His head peered from the folds of colored cloth hanging across his leather jacket and down his back.

  He lunged for her.

  She let his hands touch her, then twisted out of his grip, spinning on her toes, and went half across the room.

  He put his big shoulders low, long arms outstretched like a grappling wrestler, and charged toward her. She got the table in between them. She was panting with laughter.

  “Butterfingers,” she taunted, kicking off her shoes.

  “I’ll get you,” he panted.

  He knocked over a chair trying to circle the table, but she kept just beyond his reach. Then, with a quick unexpected motion, he gripped the table by the edge, lifted it inches from the floor and threw it to one side.

  Now nothing stood between them.

  She shrieked and turned, but he got hold of her waist from behind and rode her face down across the bed. She was lithe, quick and strong, and she twisted from beneath him, coming face up at the foot of the bed. He jumped like a big cat and straddled her, gripping her upper arms with both hands.

  She went limp for a moment and looked up at him from burning black challenging eyes. An effluvium of hot-bodied woman and dime-store perfume came up from her in a blast. It filled his mouth with tongue floating in a hot spring of saliva. Her lips were swollen, and her throat was corded. He could feel the hardness of her nipples through his leather jacket and woolen shirt.

  “Take it and you can have it,” she said.

  Abruptly his mind began to work. His body went lax, his grip relaxed and his frown deepened.

  “All this trouble I’m in and that’s all you can think of,” he said.

  “If this won’t cure your troubles nothing will,” she murmured.

  “We ain’t got much time,” he complained.

  “If you’re scared, go home!” she hissed, and balled herself up to jump from the bed.

  He went taut again before she got away and flattened her shoulders back.

  “I’m going to cool you off,” he said.

  She put her knees against his chest and pushed. He let go her arms and grabbed her stockinged legs just above the knees and began to open them. Her legs were strong enough to break a young man’s back, and she put all of her strength into keeping them closed. But he hunched his overgrown muscles and began bearing down. They locked in a test of strength. Their breath came in gasps.

  Slowly her legs began to open. They stared into one another’s eyes. The stove had begun to smoke, and their eyes smarted.

  Suddenly she gave way. Her legs went wide so quickly he fell on top of her. He clutched at flimsy cloth, and there was a tearing sound. He flung something from his hand. Buttons sailed in all directions, like corn popping.

  “Now!” she screamed.

  Chapter 11.

  Three minutes after the Buick had squeezed into the Alley, a small black sedan skidded about the corner into 112th Street from Lexington Avenue.

  Grave Digger was driving with the lights dimmed, and Coffin Ed was keeping a sharp lookout among the parked cars for the Buick.

  The heater had suddenly begun to work, and the ice was melting on the windshield. The wind had shifted to the east, and the sleet had stopped. The tires sang softly in the shifting sleet on the asphalt street as the car straightened out; but the next moment it began going off to the right, so Grave Digger had to steer slightly left to keep it on a straight course.

  “I got a feeling this is a wild-goose chase,” Coffin Ed said. “It’s hard to figure anybody being that stupid these days.”

  “Who knows?” Grave Digger said. “This boy ain’t won no prizes so far.”

  They were halfway down the block of dilapidated old houses and jerry-built tenements when they spied a motorcycle with a sidecar turn into the other end from Third Avenue.

  They became suddenly alert. They didn’t recognize the vehicle; they knew nothing of its history, its use or its owner. But they knew that anyone out on a night like that in an open vehicle bore investigation.

  The rider of the motorcycle saw them at the instant they saw him. He saw a small black sedan coming crab-wise down the otherwise deserted street. As much trouble as he had gone to over the years to keep out of its way, he knew it like the plague.

  He wore dark-brown coveralls, a woolen-lined army fatigue jacket, and a fur-lined, dark-plaid hunter’s cap.

  The seat had been removed from the sidecar, and in its place were two fully-tired automobile wheels covered with black tarpaulin.

  When Coffin Ed spied the tarpaulin-covered objects, he said, “Do you see what I see?”

  “I dig you,” Grave Digger said, and stepped on the gas.

  If the tires had been smaller, the rider would have swallowed them the way peddlers swallowed marijuana cigarettes when the cops closed in. Instead he gunned his motorcycle straight ahead, switching on the bright light to blind the two detectives, and leaning far over to the right side out of line of fire. Motor roar filed the night like jet planes taking off.

  Simultaneously Grave Digger switched on his bright lights. Coffin Ed had his pistol out and was fumbling with the handle to the window, trying to get it down. But he didn’t have time.

  The two vehicles roared straight toward one another on the half-slippery street.

  Grave Digger tried to outguess him. He saw the joker leaning to his right, overtop the sidecar. He knew the joker had them figured to figure he’d be leaning to the left, balancing the sidecar for any quick maneuver. He cased the joker to make a sharp last-minute turn to the right, braking slightly to make a triangle skid, and try to pass the car on the left, on the driver’s side, opposite the free-swinging gun of Coffin Ed.

  So he jerked the little sedan sharply to the left, tamped the brakes and went into an oblique skid, blocking off the left side of the street.

  But the joker outguessed Grave Digger. He made a rollover in his seat like a Hollywood Indian on a pinto pony, and broke a ninety degree turn to his own left and gunned it to the limit for a flying skid.

  His intention was to get past the sedan on the right side, a
nd to hell with getting shot at.

  Both drivers miscalculated the traction of the street. The hard, sleety coating was tricky; the tires bit in and gripped. The motorcycle sidecar hit the right-rear fender of the sedan at a tangent, and went into a full-gunned spin. The sedan wobbled on its rear wheels and threw Grave Digger off balance. The motorcycle went over the curb behind a parked car, bouncing like a rubber ball, bruised the rider’s leg against a rusty iron stairpost and headed back in the direction it had come from.

  Coffin Ed was stuck in the half-opened window, his gun arm pinioned and useless, shouting at the top of his voice: “Halt or I’ll shoot!”

  The rider heard him over the roar of the motor as he was fighting to keep the vehicle on the sidewalk and avoid sidescraping the row of stairposts on one side and the parked cars on the other.

  The sedan was across the street, pointed at an angle toward the opposite curb, but headed in the general right direction.

  “I’ll get him,” Grave Digger said, shifting back to first and tramping on the throttle.

  But he hadn’t straightened out the wheels from his sharp left turn, and, instead of the car curving back into the street, it bounded to the left and went broadside into a parked Chevy. The Chevy door caved in, and the left-front fender of the little sedan crumpled like tin foil. Glass flew from the smashed headlamp, and the rending sound of metal on metal woke up the neighborhood.

  The thing to have done was to back up, straighten out and start over.

  Grave Digger was so blind mad by this turn of events he kept tramping on the throttle and scraped past the Chevy by sheer horsepower. His own crumpled left-front fender caught in the Chevy’s left-rear fender, and both broke loose from their respective cars.

  He left them bouncing in the street and took off after the motorcycle that had bounced back into the street and was making a two-wheeled turn north up Third Avenue.

  It was pushing four-thirty in the morning, and the big transport trucks were on the streets, coming from the west, through the tunnels underneath the Hudson River, and heading north through Manhattan Island toward upstate New York—Troy, Albany, Schenectady or the Boston road.

  A trailer track was going north on Third Avenue when Grave Digger made the turn, and for a moment it looked as though he might go underneath it. Coffin Ed was leaning out the window with his pistol in his hand. He ducked back, but his gun was still in sight when they passed the driver’s cabin.

  The truck driver’s eyes popped.

  “Did you see that cannon?” he asked his helper.

  “This is Harlem,” his helper said. “It’s crazy, man.”

  The white driver and the colored helper grinned at one another.

  The motorcycle was taming west into 114th Street when Grave Digger got the sedan steadied from its shimmy. The melting ice on the windscreen was blurring his vision, and he turned on the wipers. For a moment he couldn’t see at all. But he turned anyway, hoping he was right.

  He bent too sharp and bumped over the near-side corner curb. Coffin Ed’s head hit the ceiling.

  “Goddam, Digger, you’re beating me to death,” he complained.

  “All I can say is I’ve had better nights,” Grave Digger muttered through clenched teeth.

  They kept the motorcycle in sight until it turned north on Seventh Avenue, but didn’t gain on it. For a time it was out of sight. When they came into Seventh Avenue, they didn’t see it.

  Three tracks were lined up on the outside lane, and a fourth was passing the one ahead.

  “We don’t want to lose that son,” Grave Digger said.

  “He’s passing on the sidewalk,” Coffin Ed said, leaning out his right-side window.

  “Cut one over his head.”

  Coffin Ed crossed his left arm to overtop the window ledge, rested the long nickel-plated barrel atop his left wrist and blasted at the night. Flame lanced into the dark, and three blocks ahead a streetlamp went out.

  The motorcycle curved from the sidewalk back into the street in front of the line of trucks. Grave Digger came up behind the truck on the inside lane and opened his siren.

  At 116th Street Coffin Ed said, “He’s keeping straight ahead. Trying to make the county line.”

  Grave Digger swerved to the left of the park that ran down between the traffic lanes and went up the left-hand side. The windshield wipers had cleared half-moons in the dirty glass, and he could see an open road. He pushed the throttle to the floor, gaining on the motorcycle across the dividing park.

  “Slow him down, Ed,” he said.

  The park, circled by a small wire fence, was higher than the level of the street, and it shielded the motorcycle’s tires. It was going too fast to risk shooting at the lamp. He threw three shots in back of it, but the rider didn’t slow.

  They passed two more northbound trucks, and for a time both lanes were clear. The sedan came up level with the motorcycle.

  Coffin Ed said, “Watch him close, Digger, he’s going to try some trick.”

  “He’s as scared of these corners as we are,” Grave Digger said. “He’s going to try to crash us into a truck.”

  “He’s got two up ahead.”

  “I’d better get behind him now.”

  At 121st Street Grave Digger swerved back to the right-side lanes.

  One block ahead, a refrigerator truck was flashing its yellow passing lights as it pulled to the inner lane to pass an open truck carrying sheet metal.

  The motorcycle rider had time to pass on the inside, but he hung back, riding the rear of the refrigerator truck until it had pulled clear over to the left, blocking both sides of the street.

  “Get a tire now,” Grave Digger said.

  Coffin Ed leaned out of his window, took careful aim over his left wrist and let go his last two bullets. He missed the motorcycle tire with both shots, but the fifth and last one in his revolver was always a tracer bullet, since one night he had been caught shooting in the dark. They followed its white phosphorescent trajectory as it went past the rear tire, hit a manhole cover in the street, ricocheted in a slight upward angle and buried Itself in the outside tire of the open truck carrying sheet metal. The tire exploded with a bank. The driver felt the truck lurch and hit the brakes.

  This threw the motorcycle rider off his timing. He had planned to cut quickly between the two trucks and shoot ahead before the inside truck drew level with the truck it was passing. When he got them behind him the two tracks would block off the street, and he would make his getaway.

  He was pulling up fast behind the car carrying sheet metal when the tire burst and the driver tamped his brakes. He wheeled sharply to the left, but not quickly enough.

  The three thin sheets of stainless steel, six feet in width, with red flags flying from both corners, formed a blade less than a quarter of an inch thick. This blade caught the rider above his woolen-lined jacket, on the exposed part of his neck, which was stretched and taut from his physical exertion, as the motorcycle went underneath. He was hitting more than fifty-five miles an hour, and the blade severed his head from his body as though he had been guillotined.

  His head rolled halfway up the sheets of metal while his body kept astride the seat and his hands gripped the handlebars. A stream of blood spurted from his severed jugular, but his body completed the maneuver which his head had ordered and went past the truck as planned.

  The truck driver glanced from his window to watch the passing truck as he kept braking to a stop. But instead he saw a man without a head passing on a motorcycle with a sidecar and a stream of steaming red blood lowing back in the wind.

  He gasped and passed out.

  His lax feet released the pressure from the brake and clutch, and the truck kept on ahead.

  The motorcycle, ridden by a man without a head, surged forward at a rapid clip.

  The driver of the refrigerator truck that was passing the open truck didn’t believe what he saw. He switched on his bright lights, caught the headless motorcycle rider in their beam and
quickly switched them off. He blinked his eyelids. It was the first time he had ever gone to sleep while driving, he thought; and my God, what a nightmare! He switched the lights back on, and there it still was. Man or hallucination, he was getting the hell away from there. He began flashing his blinkers as though he had gone crazy; he mashed the horn and stood on the throttle and looked to the other side.

  The truck carrying the sheet metal turned gradually to the right from faulty steering mechanism. It climbed over the shallow curb and started up the wide stone step of a big fashionable Negro church.

  In the lighted box out in front of the church was the announcement of the sermon for the day.

  Beware! Death is closer than you think!

  The head rolled off the slow-moving truck, dropped to the sidewalk and rolled out into the street. Grave Digger, closing up fast, saw something that looked like a football with a cap on it bouncing on the black asphalt. It was caught in his one bright light, but the top was turned to him when he saw it, and he didn’t recognize what it was. “What did he throw out?” he asked Coffin Ed. Coffin Ed was staring as though petrified. He gulped. “His head,” he said.

  Grave Digger’s muscles jerked spasmodically. He hit the brake automatically.

  A truck had closed in from behind unnoticed, and it couldn’t stop in time. It smacked the little sedan gently, but that was enough. Grave Digger sailed forward; the bottom rim of the steering wheel caught him in the solar plexus and snapped his head down; his mouth hit the top rim of the steering wheel, and he mashed his lips and chipped two front teeth.

  Coffin Ed went headfirst into the safety-glass windshield and battered out a hole. But his hard head saved him from serious injury.

  “Goddam,” Grave Digger lisped, straightening up and spitting out chipped enamel. “I’d have been better off with the Asiatic flu.”

  “God knows, Digger, I would have, too,” Coffin Ed said.

  Gradually the taut headless body on the motorcycle spewed out its blood and the muscles went limp. The motorcycle began to waver; it went to one side and then the other, crossed 125th Street, just missing a taxi, neatly circled around the big clock atop a post at the corner and crashed into the iron-barred door of the credit jewelry store, knocking down a sign that read: