She stepped around in front of me, clutched me by the arms, held me, made me look down into her eyes. 'What is it, darling?' she asked. 'Tell me, please.'
'I don't know,' I muttered. I wanted to tell her; I wanted to get it out of me. 'Every goddamn thing. My nerves are on edge. I keep expecting trouble every minute. Everything's going wrong all at once-it's pressing me too hard. Goddamnit! You! And the job! And just living in the world-'
'Has anything happened on the job?' she asked quickly.
I looked away from her. 'No, just the same old grind,' I lied. 'The white folks trying to see how much we'll take.' I paused, then said, 'But it don't never lighten up. I tell you, I can't take much more of it.'
She let go my arms and turned away from me. 'Bob, if you continue brooding about white people you are going insane,' she said.
'You're not just saying it.'
She sat down again. 'How do you expect me to help you, Bob?' she asked. 'I've talked to you time and time again about your attitude toward white people. I've exhausted every argument, and still you don't listen-'
'I'll listen to anything you've got to say tonight,' I told her.
'No, you won't.' She sighed. 'All you've done tonight is fight against me. You've tried to hurt me in every way you know. You won't even give me a chance to help you, darling. You keep throwing what happened last night back into my face. Nothing I say about it seems to make any difference to you.'
I dug out another cigarette and lit it, drank the melted ice in my highball glass, sank down on the love seat. 'Do you really want to know, Alice?' I asked her.
'How to help you?' She was looking at me steadily. 'Yes, I really do.'
'Well, I'll tell you,' I said, puffing at my cigarette. 'There are three ways-' I spread my hands. 'Maybe you couldn't do any of them anyway, but I'll tell you.' I took another puff. 'You can sit up and drink with me until I go blotto,' I said. 'That'll keep me put as long as I stay blotto. Or you can let me go to bed with you. If I go to sleep afterward that'll hold me until tomorrow morning-I don't know for how long after that.' I got up and found an ash tray, mashed out my cigarette, walked over to the window, and looked down into the soft warm night. A man and a woman were getting out of a car across the street; she looked like a girl I knew slightly named Monica; I watched them go into the house. 'Or you can talk to me, let me talk to you,' I said without looking around. 'You can tell me why you went to Stella's; how it happened you went there the first time.' I paused and when she didn't say anything I went on, 'I'll tell you everything I know about myself, about my waking up scared every morning, about the way I feel toward white people, why I resent them so goddamned much-resent the things they can do when all they got is colour-tell you all about what happens inside of me every time I go out in the street.' I waited for her a moment, then went on. 'Maybe we can find out what's wrong with both of us, even find out how we really feel toward each other. Maybe you can convince me I'm wrong about a lot of things-I've got an open mind tonight, honestly, baby.' I breathed again. 'Or if you can't convince me maybe you can make it worth while for me to try to be different. If I was really sure about you-' I broke off without finishing, turned to look at her.
She had her head turned around toward me, but when I looked she looked away. I went across and sat down facing her again. 'Listen, baby,' I said. 'If I have to keep on like I'm going-not being sure about you-and getting kicked around by every white tramp who comes along, I'm gonna hurt somebody as sure as hell.'
She sat quite still for a long time after I'd stopped speaking, studying me. 'Bob, your greatest difficulty stems from your not knowing what you want to do in life,' she said. I don't think she put on her social worker's attitude intentionally; she just couldn't help it. 'If you concentrated your energies on a single objective and worked very hard toward that end-for instance if you applied yourself to your studies and thought more about re-entering college this fall-these minor incidents and day-to-day irritations would not affect you so greatly.' She paused to let it sink in.
I gave a long deep sigh and looked away from her, wondering if it was too much to ask of her to face it for a minute. Maybe she really couldn't, I thought-maybe none of her class could face it. Maybe that was why it was so insane when it broke out-because she had to keep it buried as much as possible, refuse to look at it, to recognize it, to discuss it; maybe that was her way of keeping on living, to keep her frustrations hidden, covered over with compromises, just like staying on my muscle and trying to fight back and getting kicked in the mouth every minute was mine. Maybe we'd never get together, I thought. But I listened.
'A certain amount of frustration is latent in most people-people of all races,' she went on. 'But in you-'
'It won't help to generalize,' I cut her off. 'I'm willing to talk about myself without any prompting or analysis or-'
Now she cut me off. 'Bob, I've been thinking seriously that perhaps I'm not the type of woman for you. I'm ambitious and demanding. I want to be important in the world. I want a husband who is important and respected and wealthy enough so that I can avoid a major part of the discriminatory practices which I am sensible enough to know I cannot change. I don't want to be pulled down by a person who can't adjust himself to the limitations of his race-a person who feels he has to make a fist fight out of every issue-a person who'd jeopardize his entire future because of some slight or, say, because some ignorant white person should call him a nigger-'
'That lets me out,' I said, standing up. 'I may as well tell you, baby, a white woman called me a nigger at the yard Monday morning and I called her a cracker slut and lost my job.'
'Lost your job?' She recoiled as if I had slapped her. 'So that's what's wrong with you.' She was suddenly indignant. 'So that's why you need my help-'
'Hear my story first,' I said, and told her about my run-in with Madge and my getting downgraded.
She jumped up and took a turn about the room. 'If the white people hated you as much as you hated them-'
'They'd kill me now and have it done with,' I supplied. 'And that'd be fine with me.'
She stopped and looked at me. 'Do you want to be white, Bob?'
'All I want is to be able-' I began, but she cut me off.
'Let me put it another way. Will the fact that you are a Negro deter you from attempting to succeed as white men do?' I started to interrupt, but she stopped me. 'No, Bob, this is important. Your present attitude has no place for me in your life, it has no place for anyone except yourself. When you lost your temper with the girl you were not thinking about me.'
'I suppose I should have just said, "Yes ma'am, I'm a nigger," and let it go at that.'
She went over and sat down again. 'It's not just you any more, Bob,' she said. 'I have to think about myself. If we're going to be married you will have to begin thinking about the future- our future-'
She got me then. 'Look, baby, I'm going to make the grade,' I told her. 'Next fall I'm going back to college like you want, but right now-'
'But it's more than that Bob,' she cut in. 'I've been trying to tell you. I'll have to have confidence in you. I'll have to believe that you will make good, and I just can't see you doing it unless you learn how to get along with the white people with whom you have to work.'
I felt myself getting tight inside; the bands started clamping on my head again and the rocks started growing in my chest.
'Will you go to the girl tomorrow morning and apologize?' she asked. 'I think father knows the president of Atlas Corporation. Will you-'
'No,' I said.
'But it's not just you now, Bob,' she said. She was pleading now. 'It's you and I now, Bob. Don't you understand? In the things you do and the decisions you make you just can't think of yourself alone. You have to consider our future. Is that too much to ask?'
'But you don't understand either,' I began. 'I just can't take it and keep on living with myself. I simply can't-'
'Bob,' she said. 'I'm not going to plead with you any more. If you don't go
to that girl and apologize and try in every way you know to get reinstated-'
'Look, baby-' I cut in again; I was trying to stop her; I didn't want her to say it. 'Look, Alice, will you listen to me? Will you let me tell you what'll happen to me if I do that? That's what I've wanted to talk about all night-'
'No, Bob, I won't listen,' she said. 'It's such a little thing. If you can't do that much, Bob, don't consider me as being with you any more.' She paused, then added, 'We have to walk together-don't you understand?'
'Okay,' I said, turning toward the door. I felt crushed inside, as if a car had run over me and left me lying there. I hadn't wanted her to say it before I'd had a chance to tell her that I didn't have a choice.
CHAPTER XII
I went home and went to bed and dreamed Alice and I were in a drugstore and when I got ready to leave I started toward the door with two packages in my hand and then I couldn't find Alice. I went around holding the two packages looking for Alice and finally found her in a hall off from the prescription room talking to the proprietor's wife who had her two hands on Alice's shoulder. I thought something funny was going on and got mad and said, 'I was looking for you.' She looked at me as if she was surprised and said, 'I thought we had a date with these people,' and I said, 'Naw, we ain't got no date,' and yanked her by the arm and pulled her out into the store and then I thought about the packages in my hand and looked down and saw that I had a half a dozen or so grapefruit wrapped in a grey vest and a. 45-calibre short-barrelled revolver. I went back into the hall and put the grapefruit on a table and then I stood there and tried to put the gun in a holster I had strapped around my chest, but when I got the gun in the holster the butt end of the holster stuck out so it showed under my overcoat and I had to open my trousers and stick the end of the holster down in my trousers but still it showed when I buttoned my coat so I held my coat with my left elbow pressed against the holster to keep it from showing and went to look for Alice but she had gone outside again. I went outside and saw her up on the other side of the street about half a block ahead. Off to her right was a weedy park that slanted down to a river and when I crossed the street I saw Alice turn into the park and I hurried to catch up with her. But before I got in sight of her she began screaming for help and I fumbled with the holster until I got the gun out in my hand and ran down the sidewalk, looking into the park for her, but the park was hilly and rocky and covered with a dense growth of scrub and I couldn't see Alice. I ran ahead to a break in the brush and turned right up a hill and saw millions of swine with bony sharp spines and long yellow tusks running about in the brush and I shot at one right in front of me and I could see the hole pop in his side where the bullet went through. Then I heard Alice screaming again, horribly as if she was being torn apart, and I ran up the hill toward the sound of her voice as fast as I could, my overcoat holding me back, and my heart beating with fear. When I came to the top I saw a dry sandy wash and I started looking about in the wash for her. A woman leaning on a fence at the top of the wash said, 'There,' and I looked in a clump of bushes and saw what at first looked like a little rag doll, but when I turned it over I saw it was Alice. Her head and shoulders were the same but her eyes were closed and her body had shrunk until it was no more than a foot long and she was dead. I felt shocked and scared and all torn up inside and then I looked up for the woman who was leaning on the fence but instead of one woman there were millions of white women leaning there, looking at me, giving me the most sympathetic smiles I ever saw.
I woke up overcome with a feeling of absolute impotence; I laid there remembering the dream in every detail. Memory of my fight with Alice came back, and then I saw Madge's kidneyshaped mouth, brutal at the edges, spitting out the word 'Nigger'; and something took a heavy hammer and nailed me to the bed.
I was scared to think about my gang; I started drawing in my emotions, tying them, whittling them off, nailing them down. I was so tight inside, I was like wood. My breath wouldn't go any deeper than my throat and I didn't know whether I could talk at all. I had to get ready to die before I could get out of the house.
When I picked up Homer and Conway they didn't say anything; they just looked at me out of the sides of their eyes. Then I stopped for Pigmeat, Smitty, and Johnson, and they had their usual morning squabble.
Finally Smitty asked, 'Where was you yesditty, Bob?'
I had to think about it before I answered. 'I was off,' I said.
Pigmeat turned to Smitty and said, 'Now that's that man's own business. S'pose he tell you he was with you mama.'
'I don't play no dozens, boy,' Smitty growled. 'You young punks don't know how far to go with a man.'
I went out Central trying my brakes, timing my stops so thin and my turns so tight that if any chump in front of me had dug to a sudden stop I'd have climbed up on him.
Conway leaned across Homer and said, 'What's the matter, chief? You look down in the mouth this morning. You old lady quit you?'
I felt fragile as overheated glass; one rough touch and I'd burst into a thousand pieces. 'Could happen,' I said in a thin shallow voice out of the top of my mouth.
'Bob's got his own troubles, nigger, why don't you worry 'bout yours?' Pigmeat said.
Conway turned around and gave him a dirty look. 'You getting too big for yo' britches,' he said.
A big air-brake Diesel gripped the ground in front and I almost went inside of it. I braked so short I scrambled my riders.
Homer rubbed his head where he'd butted into the windshield and said, 'Bob sho ain't got his mind on driving this morning.'
'What Bob got his mind on this morning would get yo' black ass hung where you come from,' Johnson said.
'Where who come from?'
'You, nigger, I s'pose you from Alaska.'
'Now Bob ain't said a word,' Smitty said. 'If he was to cuss you somoleons out and put you out his car you'd say he was a bad fellow.'
Conway got it out in the open. 'Say, chief, what's that grey boy doing in yo' job? He say he taking your place. You ain't gonna quit us, chief?'
That silenced them; they knew the story, but they all waited to hear what I had to say.
'I had to get a cracker chick told yesterday-or rather, day before yesterday-and Mac demoted me,' I said.
'What to, a helper?' Pigmeat wanted to know.
'No, a mechanic,' I said.
'You know they can't 'mote the man to no helper,' Homer said. 'What the union gonna say?'
'What the union gonna say? What you think they gonna say? They white too, ain't they?'
'Did she go to the man herself?' Conway asked.
I found suddenly I'd been holding my breath. I let it out and said, 'I suppose so.'
'That's what I tell this lil old boy,' Conway said, talking about Pigmeat. 'Always messing with those white women. All they good for is trouble.'
'Was she that big Gawga pink work as a tacker?' Pigmeat asked. 'She in Hank's gang, ain't she?'
I didn't say anything; I didn't want to talk about it.
'She always signifying with you,' he went on. I didn't know he had noticed; I wondered who else had noticed.
I'd gone away from them; I was playing a game. Whenever I saw some white people crossing the street in front of me I stepped on the gas and blew. If they jumped they could make it; if they didn't I'd run 'em down. All of 'em jumped. I felt a dead absolute quiet inside; I didn't give a damn whether they jumped or not.
'That's all you niggers think of,' Smitty was saying. 'I think it's damn shame they can Bob for something like that…' You're probably laughing like hell, you Uncle Tom bastard, I thought to myself. 'Those grey boys cuss them white women out going and coming,' he went on.
'Bob ain't no grey boy,' Johnson said.
'What make Bob so mad is he ain't got to get none of it yet,' Pigmeat said.
'What Bob shoulda did is to gone to the man,' Smitty said sanctimoniously.
'Man, where this nigger come from?' Pigmeat said. 'Man, where is yo' grey kinks and yo' rusty
frock? Uncle Tom from way back.'
'What make me so mad,' Johnson said, 'is the white folks got it on you at the start, so why do they have to give you any crap on top of it? That's what make me so mad.'
I turned on the radio. One of Erskine Hawkins' old platters, 'I'm in a Lowdown Groove,' was playing. Alice and I had discovered it together shortly after we'd met at the Memo on the Avenue. I welled up inside, turned it off. But the words kept on in my mind. I got a hard, grinding nonchalance. To hell with everybody, I thought. To hell with the world; if there were any more little worlds, to hell with them too.
Conway was saying, 'We oughta get together and go to the man,' when I wheeled into the parking lot at Atlas. 'Reason niggers ain't got nothing now, they don't stick together.'
I found Tebbel already down in the stuffy compartment when I got there. He was Johnny on the spot, but when he started collecting the time cards I said, 'I'll take 'em.'
He jumped. 'Oh, I didn't see you,' he said. 'How you making out?'
'Fine,' I said without looking at him.
He stood there for a moment. Then he said, 'What're the boys doing today?'
I turned and looked at him then. He had a nice friendly smile on his face and was trying to co-operate. But I wasn't for it. 'They're doing what I tell 'em to as long as I'm in charge,' I said in a hard level voice, looking through him.
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