Blind Man with a Pistol

by Chester Himes

  “We don’t blame the Captain,” Grave Digger said.

  “We’re just envious.”

  “I’ll be taking over soon,” Anderson sought to console them.

  “Damn right,” Coffin Ed said, rejecting the sympathy.

  Anderson reddened and turned away. “Eat happy,” he called over his shoulder, but didn’t get a reply.

  12

  They stood on tiptoe, strained their eyes.

  “Let me look.”

  “Well, look then.”

  “What you see?”

  That was the question. No one saw anything. Then, simultaneously, three distinct groups of marchers came into view.

  One came up 125th Street from the east, on the north side of the street, marching west towards the Block. It was led by a vehicle the likes of which many had never seen, and as muddy as though it had come out of East River. A bare-legged black youth hugged the steering-wheel. They could see plainly that he was bare-legged for the vehicle didn’t have any door. He, in turn, was being hugged by a bare-legged white youth sitting at his side. It was a brotherly hug, but coming from a white youth it looked suggestive. Whereas the black had looked plain bare-legged, the bare-legged white youth looked stark naked. Such is the way those two colors affect the eyes of the citizens of Harlem. In the South it’s just the opposite.

  Behind these brotherly youths sat a very handsome young man of sepia color with the strained expression of a man moving his bowels. With him sat a middle-aged white woman in a teen-age dress who looked similarly engaged, with the exception that she had constipation. They held a large banner upright between them which read:

  BROTHERHOOD! Brotherly Love Is The Greatest!

  Following in the wake of the vehicle were twelve rows of bare-limbed marchers, four in each row, two white and two black, in orderly procession, each row with its own banner identical to the one in the vehicle. Somehow the black youths looked unbelievably black and the white youths unnecessarily white.

  These were followed by a laughing, dancing, hugging, kissing horde of blacks and whites of all ages and sexes, most of whom had been strangers to each other a half-hour previous. They looked like a segregationist nightmare. Strangely enough, the black citizens of Harlem were scandalized.

  “It’s an orgy!” someone cried.

  Not to be outdone, another joker shouted, “Mama don’t ’low that stuff in here.”

  A dignified colored lady sniffed. “White trash.”

  Her equally dignified mate suppressed a grin. “What else, with all them black dustpans?”

  But no one showed any animosity. Nor was anyone surprised. It was a holiday. Everyone was ready for anything.

  But when attention was diverted to the marchers from the south, many eyes seemed to pop out in black faces. The marchers from the south were coming north on the east side of Seventh Avenue, passing in front of the Scheherazade bar restaurant and the interdenominational church with the coming text posted on the notice-board outside:

  SINNERS ARE SUCKERS! DON’T BE A SQUARE!

  What caused the eyes of these dazed citizens to goggle was the sight of the apparition out front. Propped erect on the front bumper of a gold-trimmed lavender-colored Cadillac convertible driven by a fat black man with a harelip, dressed in a metallic-blue suit, was the statue of the Black Jesus, dripping black blood from its outstretched hands, a white rope dangling from its broken neck, its teeth bared in a look of such rage and horror as to curdle even blood mixed with as much alcohol as was theirs. Its crossed black feet were nailed to a banner which read: THEY LYNCHED ME! While two men standing in the back of the convertible held aloft another banner reading: BE NOT AFRAID!

  In its wake was a long disorganized procession of a startling number of thinly-clad black girls of all shapes and sizes, clinging to the ebony arms of more tee-shirted young men than they had ever been seen outside the army. Teeth shone in black faces, eyes flashed whitely. Some carried banners which read: BLACK JESUS BABY. Others read: CHOKE THEM BABY. They were singing: “Be not afraid … of the dead … keep your head, baby, keep your head.” They seemed inordinately happy to be following in the wake of such a hideous Jesus. But bringing up the rear was a shuffling mass of solemn preachers with their own banner reading:

  FEED THEM JESUS! They’ll vomit every time!

  A devout Christian drunk coming out of the Scheherazade looked up and saw the black apparition being propelled by what looked to him like a burning chariot being driven by the devil in a fireproof suit, and gave a violent start. “I dreamed it,” he cried. “That they’d do it again.”

  But most of the holiday-makers were startled into silence. Caught between a spasm of nausea by the sight of the apparition of the Black Jesus and the contagious happiness of the sea of black youths, their faces twisted in grotesque grimaces for all the world like good Harlem citizens trying out a new French dance.

  They were saved from proceeding any further with this new kick by the sound of thunder coming from that section of Seventh Avenue north of the intersection. The marchers from the north were led by two big rugged black men clad in belted leather coats, looking for all the world like Nazi SS troopers in blackface. Behind them marched the two silent clerics who had been seen cooking in Doctor Moore’s unfurnished apartment. Behind them came the sweating tallow man who had last been seen atop a barrel at the intersection of 135th Street and Seventh Avenue, raving hysterically about Black Power. Following at a safe distance, two powerful-looking men bared to the waist were pushing a contraption on two wheels greatly resembling the boiler of a locomotive, which rumbled and boomed with the sound of thunder while light flashed from within, lighting up the white crescents of the black men’s eyes, the ivory shields of their teeth, and the gleaming black muscles of their naked torsos, like kaleidoscopes of hell. A large white banner, held aloft by two men on their flanks, was also hit by the flashing light, and trembled in the sound of thunder, reading:

  BLACK THUNDER! BLACK POWER!

  In their wake followed a packed mass of men and women, dressed in black, who, upon closer inspection, looked of extraordinary size. Their banners read simply: BLACK POWER. In the dim light they looked serious. Their faces looked grave. If Black Power came from physical strength, they looked as though they had it.

  The weedheads in front of the pool hall north of 126th Street were the first to comment.

  “Baby, them cats is full of pot,” one said. “Make me high just to look at ’em.”

  “Baby, you is already high.”

  “Higher. But they so quiet. How come that?”

  “How I know? Ask ’em.”

  “Hey, babies!” yelled the first weedhead. “Say something.”

  “You babies got any left?” yelled the second weedhead.

  “Ignore those fools,” the tallow man said.

  “Come on, babies. Talk some black power language,” the first weedhead cajoled.

  A husky parader stepped out to reply. “I tells y’alls something, disgraceful dopefiends. I whip y’all’s ass.”

  “Black Power!” a woman laughed.

  “Thass right. I show ’em. I power their behinds.”

  “Be calm!” the tallow man admonished. “It’s whitey what’s the enemy.”

  “Stingy mothers!” the weedhead yelled. “Keep your old pot. It gonna cause your furnace to explode.”

  The people within earshot laughed, they were good-humored. It was all just a big joke. Three different kinds of protest parades.

  “Like my Aunt Loo saying three bands play march music at my Uncle Boo’s funeral,” a soul sister said laughingly.

  It was all really funny, in a grotesque way. The lynched Black Jesus who looked like a runaway slave. The slick-looking young man with his foreign white woman, riding in a car built for war service, preaching brotherhood. And last, but not least, these big Black Power people, looking strong and dangerous as religious fanatics, making black thunder and preaching Black Power.

  Best show they’d had i
n a month of Sundays. Course the serious people frowned on these monkeyshines, but most citizens, out celebrating the day, were just amused.

  Two big black men who looked as though they should have been with the Black Power marchers, instead sat watching them in the front seat of a small battered sedan parked at the curb in front of the African Memorial Bookstore. The small dirty black car looked out of place among all the shiny bright-colored cars out that night. And any two people doing nothing but sit on the sidelines and look, when there was so much to do that night, looked downright suspicious. What was more they wore dark suits and black slouch hats pulled so low they could barely be seen in the dim light filtering through the windshield, much less recognized unless one knew them. To the average incurious citizen they looked like two thugs waiting to stick up the jewelry store.

  A slight dignified man standing beside them on the sidewalk volunteered, “These ain’t all; there are two more.”

  “More what?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “Parades.”

  Coffin Ed got out onto the sidewalk, and stood beside the little man, dwarfing him. Grave Digger got out from behind the wheel on the street side. They could see the parade coming up Seventh Avenue.

  “Hell, that’s a float,” Grave Digger said.

  At that moment Coffin Ed saw the old command car pass the corner of the jewelry store. “That ain’t no float.”

  Grave Digger saw it and chuckled. “That’s the general and his lady.”

  “Coffin Ed spoke to the little man beside him. “What’s this carnival all about, Lomax?”

  “It ain’t no carnival.”

  “Well, what the hell is it then?” Grave Digger asked loudly from across the car. “It’s your neighborhood. You’re in with everything.”

  “I don’t know these groups,” Lomax said. “They ain’t from around here. But they look serious to me.”

  “Serious? These clowns? You see more than I see.”

  “It ain’t what I see. It’s what I feel. I can feel they’re serious. They ain’t playing.”

  Coffin Ed grunted. Wordlessly Grave Digger clambered up the left fender and stood on the hood in order to see the parades more distinctly. He looked from the image of the lynched Black Jesus tied to the front of the Cadillac convertible to the face of the young man in the back of the old command car. He saw the first lines of the black and white marchers under the banner of Brotherhood. He saw the harelipped driver of the Cadillac and the laughing faces of the young black couples following beneath their banners of BLACK JESUS BABY. He looked at the leather-coated troopers across the street leading the Black Power procession. He heard Lomax exclaim excitedly, “They’re gonna run head-on into each other.”

  Coffin Ed was climbing up the front fender on the other side. Fearing that the hood wouldn’t hold them both, Grave Digger climbed on top of the body.

  “What the hell’s got into these people all of a sudden?” he heard Coffin Ed asking.

  “It ain’t been sudden,” Lomax said. “They been feeling a long time. Like all the rest of us. Now they making their statement.”

  “Statement? Statement saying what?”

  “Each of them got a different statement.”

  Grave Digger heard one of the leather-coated troopers shout, “Let’s beat the shit out them sissies,” and called down to Coffin Ed: “What they say is there’s going to be some trouble if they start any shit. You better call the Lieutenant.”

  Ordinarily he would have shot into the air and waved his big pistol at the Black Power troopers, but they had strict orders not to draw their pistols in any circumstances except in the prevention of violent crime, the same as had been given to all the white cops.

  Coffin Ed jumped down and climbed back inside. He couldn’t get through to the precinct right away. In the meantime the two leather-coated troopers, followed by a group of hefty black men, had jumped over the concrete barrier around the park down the center of Seventh Avenue, and were racing toward the line of black and white youths approaching down 125th Street. Grave Digger jumped to the ground and ran to head them off, throwing up his hands and yelling, “Get back! Straighten up!”

  From the sidelines some comedian trumpeted, “Fly right!”

  At the moment Coffin Ed got through to the Harlem precinct. “Lieutenant? It’s me, Ed!”

  Simultaneously the police cars began to move. Engines revved, sirens screamed. Seeing the police cars in action the people on the sidewalks began to scream and move into the street.

  The metallic voice of Lieutenant Anderson rose into a scream. “I can’t hear you. What’s happening?”

  “Call off the cops! The people are panicking!”

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you. What’s going on?”

  Coffin Ed heard pandemonium breaking loose all around him, topped by the screaming of the police sirens.

  “Call off the dogs!” he shouted.

  “What’s that? Everybody’s calling.…”

  “Call off the cops.…”

  “What’s that? What’s all that noise? …”

  “The white cops.…”

  “Work with the cops … keep calm.…”

  “… use our pistols … emergency.…”

  “… right … no pistols … keep order.…”

  “ARE YOU DEAF?”

  “… COMMISSIONER … INSPECTOR … BE THERE.…”

  “Hell’s bells!” Coffin Ed muttered to himself, switched off the radio and leaped into the street. Down in the middle of the intersection he saw men rolling in the street like a free-for-all scramble. Two of them wore leather coats. One looked like Grave Digger. He broke in their direction.

  Men from the Black Power parade were fistfighting in knots with the bare-limbed white and black youths from the Brotherhood. Several of them had surrounded the command car and dragged the two youths from the front seat. Others were trying to drag the white woman and colored man from the back seat. The young man was standing up kicking at their heads. The woman was lashing about with a wooden pole.

  “Leave them biddies be,” a fat woman was screaming.

  “Whip they asses.”

  The white and black youths were fighting back side by side. Their opponents had the weight but they had the skill. The Black Power brothers were bulling ahead, but reaping black eyes and bloody noses on the way.

  The mob of celebrants had overflowed into the street and stopped all the traffic. The police cars were stuck in a sea of sweating humanity. These people weren’t taking sides in the main fight, they just wanted to chase the white cops. The cops were reluctant to leave their cars without the use of pistols.

  Assisted by a group of laughing black girls, the harelipped man was endeavoring to drag the statue of the Black Jesus in the path of the police cars. But the cars couldn’t move anyway and Jesus was slowly being dismembered in the crush of bodies. Shortly the crush had become so great, the police couldn’t open the doors of their cars if they had wanted to. One rolled down his window and stuck his head out and was immediately swatted in the face by a woman’s pocketbook.

  The only fighting which showed any purpose was between the Black Power and the members of the Brotherhood. And when the Black Power fighters penetrated the defenses of the Brotherhood and came upon the interracial mob of followers, the result was a rout. They looked for sissies and prostitutes to beat. And they beat them with such abandon it looked indecent.

  But the serious fighting was being done by Grave Digger and Coffin Ed against the leather-coated troopers, the silent clerics, and a number of other Black Power sluggers. The detectives had been down at first, but had taken advantage of their opponents, kicking to get their feet tangled up. They had got to their own feet, their clothes torn, noses bleeding, knots springing out from their heads and faces, and had begun fistfighting their opponents, back to back. Their long bolstered pistols were exposed, but they had orders not to draw them. They couldn’t have drawn them anyway, in the rain of fists showering over them. But they ha
d one advantage. Every time a brother hit one of the pistols, his fist broke. They were hammering all right. But no one was falling down.

  “One …” Grave Digger panted.

  After an interval Coffin Ed echoed, “Two.…”

  Instead of saying “three,” they covered their heads with their hands and broke for the sidewalk, ploughing through a hail of fists. But once through, having gained the sidewalk in front of the jewelry store, no one tried to follow. Their opponents seemed satisfied with them out of the way, and turned their attention to the youths of the Brotherhood trying to protect the command car.

  Lomax still stood beside their parked car. While watching the fight with interest he had been joined by a group of Black Muslims from the bookstore. They watched the detectives approach their car, noticing every detail of their appearance: swelling eyes, knotty heads, bruised faces, bloody noses, torn clothes, hard breathing and holstered pistols. Their eyes were fixed, their faces grave.

  “Why the hell didn’t you shoot?” Lomax said as they came abreast.

  “You can’t shoot people petitioning,” Grave Digger said harshly, fishing a handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Praise Allah,” a Black Muslim said.

  “Petitioning my ass,” Lomax said. “All of them people are phoney.”

  “Funny,” a Black Muslim said.

  “That’s a point of view,” Grave Digger argued.

  “Come on, let’s beat it,” Coffin Ed said. “Time’s wasting.”

  But Lomax wanted to argue. “What point of view?”

  “They want justice like everybody else,” Grave Digger contended.

  Lomax laughed derisively. “Long as you been in Harlem, you believe that shit. Do those clowns look like they’re looking for justice?”