I did something with my face, trying to make it smile, and I had to reach down my throat and pull out my voice with my hand, but I got it and I said, 'I'll get mine by and by.'
The girl's mouth popped open. 'Well, I never-' she began.
But Kelly knew he had me. He waved me away. 'Go on, go on. Get out of here.'
I turned away and started walking, not fast but not poking. I went past workers, stepped over lines, ducked under staging, squeezed by shapes, through the access hole in the midship bulkhead, up the jack ladder to the third deck, up another ladder to the fourth deck, headed aft. I didn't see anybody, didn't see anything. I knew where I was going. I didn't want to go. My body just carried me and my mind just pushed me along. I didn't feel rash nor reckless, nothing like that, I felt low, dispirited, black as I've ever felt. Really a black boy now.
But I knew I was going to have to say something to Madge if I got shot on the spot. Not to rack her back or to cuss her out. That wasn't going to be enough. Not now. Not after having been tricked into listening to that bastard tell that joke. I was going to have to have her. I was going to have to make her as low as a white whore in a Negro slum-a scrummy two-dollar whore… I was going to have to so I could keep looking the white folks in the face.
And when Monday came I'd come on back and work as a mechanic. And if they put me in the Jim Crow Army I was going to take that too. Ben could talk all he wanted to. He was right. I knew he was right. But I was going to take it if they put it on me. If I had to fight and die for the country I'd fight and die for it. I'd even go so far as to believe it was my country too. But I'd be damned if I was going to be afraid to make this woman because she was white Texas.
So I started over where she was working. She was over to one side by herself, leaning against some staging. There were a lot of other workers around, but I didn't see them; all I could see was her standing there between me and my manhood.
She saw me coming and looked me square in the eyes, hers bright with a sudden excitement. One of the mechanics she was working with spotted me too and walked quickly to her side as if his presence would protect her. But his being there didn't mean a thing to me. I was going to say, 'Look, bitch, let's stop all this jive and get together like we want.'
My heart was in my throat and I felt like jelly. We kept looking at each other and I knew she expected me to say something. I knew she wanted me to. I knew she knew what I'd say. I didn't know what her reaction might be; I didn't even think about it. I won't say I didn't want her. It built up fast and shook me like a chip hammer digging in my navel. I wanted her then more than I wanted all the Alices in the world. I don't know how to case it. She looked like a big overpainted strumpet with eyes as wild as Oklahoma.
But when I got to her I lost my nerve. I couldn't say a word. I just couldn't do it, that was all. She was pure white Texas. And I was black. And a white man was standing there. I never knew before how good a job the white folks had done on me.
I turned and kept on by. I cursed myself for a coward. I called myself a fool. I told myself there was nothing to it. Hell, she was a cheap bitchy tacker. And I was still a leaderman. We were both workers. What could she say? How could she resent my speaking to her? The white guys treated some of those white women like they were bitches in heat. A lot of 'em were prostitutes anyway; they were always firing some of 'em for tricking on the job. And this woman looked like a slut on the make. Anybody in the world could understand how she'd get a proposition. A white guy might ask her outright how much was it worth-or sold for anyway. But I didn't even have the nerve to speak to her. That was what really got it, when I really knew. I had gotten up that morning and gotten myself ready to die. And I could have gone out and done it. I could have kept walking into. 45 slugs until the weight of 'em pulled me down, so help me God. But I just couldn't walk into this woman with so much white inside her.
I knew she knew just what had happened. A white man wouldn't have known it. Some white women might not and she had seen my nerve desert me. I've never felt so cheap, so small and inconsequential, so absolutely subhuman. I couldn't stand myself; couldn't stand thinking about myself. It was physical torture.
I kept going toward the gangway port. Once I stopped I knew she was watching me. I knew her mouth was twisted in a sneer the size of a dill pickle. I wanted to turn around and go on back and talk to her. Even then I could have saved a little pride. I knew she would know I'd funked, then braced myself for another try. I knew she wanted me to make it. But I couldn't, just couldn't, that was all.
I wouldn't even try to make Sad Sammy believe it, and he'll believe anything. Because I didn't even believe it myself, even while it was happening. I didn't know whether it was all the things that had happened to me put together-that was what I wanted to believe-or whether it was just the pure and simple colours of America.
I had known white girls in both California and Ohio. I had gone with a little Italian girl in Cleveland for almost a year. Then there had been a tall brown-haired girl who worked as a stenographer in a downtown office who used to let me take her out now and then. She'd lived over on 100th Street near Euclid and used to walk up and meet me at the Chauffeurs Club. Both of them were good girls, as good morally as most.
And when Val had his joint in the alley off Cedar and Eightysixth Street a lot of gine white women in the money used to come out there to hear Art Tatum and Lonnie Johnson. Many of them would get drunk and cut out with any coloured guy available. And out at the Cedar Gardens the Avenue slicks laid about to catch them on the rebound. It wasn't any secret. The white men knew all about it. If the black boys played too rough the white men would put the cops on them and get them sapped up.
So it wasn't that Madge was white; it was the way she used it. She had a sign up in front of her as big as Civic Centre-KEEP AWAY, NIGGERS, I'M WHITE! And without having to say one word she could keep all the white men in the world feeling they had to protect her from black rapists. That made her doubly dangerous because she thought about Negro men. I could tell that the first time I saw her. She wanted them to run after her. She expected it, demanded it as her due. I could imagine her teasing them with her body, showing her bare thighs and breasts. Then having them lynched for looking.
And that was what scared me. Luring me with her body and daring me with her colour. It ate into me, made me want her for her colour, not her body. In order to have her I'd have to challenge her colour; I couldn't take the dare. Just twenty steps and thirteen words-but I couldn't make it.
So I went outboard and down the wooden gangway, roughing people out of the way. I felt castrated, snake-bellied, and cur-doggish, I felt like a nigger being horse-whipped in Georgia. Cheap, dirty, low. I wanted to grab some bastard and roll down the stairs. My face felt tight. The taste of white folks was in my mouth and I couldn't get it out.
What I ought to do is rape her, I thought. That's what she wanted.
I went down to the dock, searched in the scrap-iron pile until I found a two-foot dog, heavy on one end with weld burrs. One blow with that would crush a chump's skull. Gripping it tightly in my right hand, I went along the dock. The sun was hot, unbearable. My skin felt scorched; my mouth was dry. My eyes felt half open, dead, ringed in steel. I walked with a steady hard motion, planting each step like driving piles. I shouldered into guys, split between couples, walked in a straight line. At the end of the dock I passed the guard in his little shanty, kept on toward the copper shop. It wasn't until then that I knew where I was going. I was looking for my white boy again. He'd been elected.
I was going to walk up and beat out his brains. Then I was going to find Madge, wherever she was, make my bid and make it stick. After that I could go up and sit in the gas chamber at San Quentin and laugh. Because it was the funniest goddamned thing that had ever happened. A black son of a bitch destroying himself because of a no-good white slut from Texas. It was so funny because it didn't make sense. It was just the notion. If you could just get over the notion you could laugh yoursel
f silly.
I entered the copper shop from the front, kept on back toward the punch press the white boy operated. He wasn't there. I asked an old fellow working on the bench where the boy who ran the machine was.
'Johnny Stoddart?' he asked. Then he looked at me. He saw the dog in my hand. He saw my face. His eyes bucked. 'What do you want with him?' he asked.
'None of your goddamned business,' I answered evenly.
He opened his mouth as if to say something else, thought better of it. But he wouldn't turn his back to me; instead he backed away a distance, turned quickly, and started down toward the office. I stood there for a moment looking about. I felt weighted, baulked, baffled. It was as if this boy, Johnny Stoddart, had let me down by not being there so I could beat out his brains, had betrayed me.
I went out the back doorway, turned to the right. I whistled a sharp, high-breaking scale, levelled off on 'Don't Cry, Baby.' My lips felt stiff, inflexible. As I turned the corner of the corrugated building I threw the dog against the tin wall out of sheer frustration.
It sounded like a cannon shot and just missed hitting my boy in the face. He was coming down the other side and I hadn't even seen him. We both jumped back from pure reflex. Then recognition came into his eyes and his face turned greenish white. It froze him, nailed him to the spot. For a moment I was stunned. I'd never seen a white man scared before, not craven, not until you couldn't see the white for the scare.
Murder touched me then. Not the notion but the actual; the physical; the impelling vicarious urge to take my iron dog and beat him to a pulp. Then all at once I felt sorry for him. Sorry for anybody who had to be that scared and keep on living.
Suddenly I was laughing, doubling over, laughing all down in my belly. I was thinking, without knowing why, about the other night when I took the garbage out for Ella Mae. Something had moved in the dark and made a funny noise that scared the hell out of me. I had dropped the garbage and damn near killed myself stumbling over the steps trying to get out of the way. Whatever it was lit out the other way. I ran into the house, got my pistol and flashlight, came back to investigate with the cocked pistol in my hand, and found the tiniest little kitten you ever want to see trying to hide in the irises. I was thinking about that and laughing like hell; and thinking about how all my life I'd been scared of white folks because they were white and it was funny as hell to find out white folks were scared of me, too, because I was black.
The white boy came out of it and colour came back into his face and it got beet-red. White came back into his soul; I could see it coming back, rage at seeing a nigger threatening him. Now he was ready to die for his race like a patriot, a true believer. I could see in his mind he wanted to kill me because I had seen him lose it. He hunched his shoulders, bowed his head, and started into me. And then he lost his nerve. He shook himself steady, straightened up, looked around for a weapon. He didn't see any, so he said, 'I'll fight you.'
I smiled at him. 'I don't want to fight you,' I told him. 'I want to kill you. But right now I'm saving you up.'
I could see the fear coming back and see him fighting against it.
'If I catch you around my house again I'm gonna shoot you like a dog,' he threatened, and wheeled away.
I turned and watched him for a moment, feeling good, feeling fine, loose, free. I had gotten over the notion; I had spit the white folks out my mouth. There wasn't anything they could do to me now, I told myself; nothing they could say to me that would hurt. I was ready now, solid ready, to walk right up to Texas.
I kicked my tin hat back at a signifying angle, pushed back toward the dock. Before I got there the whistle blew for lunch.
CHAPTER XV
I went over to the canteen, got some hot stew, a piece of pie, and coffee. Looking around for a place to eat, I saw Madge sitting on the ground with her back propped against a stack of pipes in the shade of a shed beside the pipe shop. An older woman stopped and put her lunch down beside her, then got into the line at the canteen.
I hesitated a moment to see if anyone else would join her, then started toward her, my heart pumping like a rivet gun and my legs wobbly weak. Something drew her gaze and she looked up into my eyes. We held gazes until I stopped just in front of her. Her eyes were bright, liquid, and her face was slightly flushed. She had peeled off the leather jacket and was clad in a white waist, open at the throat. Her breasts were loose and ripe as cantaloupes.
I opened my mouth, couldn't make it, swallowed, and tried again. 'Just where do you get that stuff?' I said. 'Just who do you think you are?' My voice came out of the top of my mouth, light and weightless and stilted.
I had expected her to do anything but what she did. She fluttered her mascaraed lashes at me like an 1890 slick chick and gave me a look of pure blue innocence. 'I don't think you know me,' she said in her flat Southern drawl. Then she let recognition leak into her look. 'Oh, you're the boy I had the fight with the other day.' Now she gave me a ravishing smile-at least that's what it was supposed to be-and her manner became easy, friendly, without tension of any sort. 'Yo' name is Bob, isn't it? Rest the weight, Bob, you must get tired of toting it around all day.'
All I could do was stare at her. After all that tremendous anxiety I had gone through; after all that murderous build-up, that hard hollow scare; after all the crazy, wild-eyed, frightened acts she had put on, the white armour plate she'd wrapped herself up in, the insurmountable barriers she'd raised between us, here she was breaking it down, wiping it all out, with a smile; treating me as casually as an old acquaintance. It was too much, just simply too much, for one person to be able to do. I must have looked very funny at that moment, for she burst out laughing.
'Don't take it so hard,' she said. 'Lotta folks fight. I think it's 'cause they like making up so much.'
I sat down beside her, put my stew, pie, and coffee between my legs. But I couldn't eat it; if I had taken a bite I would have thrown up. I was sick as a dog. I didn't look at her. I took a long deep breath, looked at the ground. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
'I suppose you know you got me demoted,' I said finally, realizing instantly it was the worst possible thing I could have said. It acknowledged her power over me, and that was wrong.
Now she could play it any way she wanted, magnanimous or condescending. Instead she played it true to form. 'You oughtn'ta called me no slut,' she slurred. 'You don't know me that well.'
I jerked around and looked at her. She wore a maddening, teasing smile and her eyes were laughing at me. I went so blind mad I was petrified. Not mad at her; at myself for being pushed around by a notion. If you could just get over the notion, women were the same, black or white.
I knew that getting mad was bad, it gave her the lead. So I dug myself out, got a smile to match her own, and said, 'You'll make a man slap you one of these days, do you know that?'
'Now you know, I don't hardly understand you,' she said, taking a bite of pork-chop sandwich and fluttering her mascaraed lashes. 'You talk so funny.' She giggled. 'Is this the first time you ever talked to a white lady?'
'Look, baby, let Texas rest. You know the score, probably better than me. Let's stop clowning and get together-' I broke off. 'Look, what you doing tonight? How 'bout running with me? I know some fine spots where it'll be okay.' I could see her drawing in a little and I rushed on. 'You won't be the only white girl there.' Then I said, 'Look, baby, you really get me.'
At that she turned and said, 'You talks so fast, first you wanna jump on me and now you wanna date me.' Then she killed me with her smile.
'Look-' I began again, broke off as the other woman came up with a piece of pie and two cups of coffee.
'I brung you some coffee, Madge. I declare, how you eat those dry poke-chop sandwiches is-' She was rattling off in a Southern dialect broader than Madge's when suddenly she caught sight of me. She had seen me without seeing me. She had thought I was just sitting there eating my lunch, as close to a white girl as I could get, and she'd been prepared to endur
e it since the joint wasn't Jim Crowed. But when she realized that I was among those present she stopped abruptly, her voice suspended in mid-air and her mouth hanging open. Her eyes went quickly to Madge's, seeking an explanation.
Madge took the coffee and placed it on the ground beside her. 'I'd rather choke than stand in that durn line,' she said casually, and then as if it was the most commonplace thing in the world, she introduced me. 'Elsie, this is Bob. He's a leaderman with the sheet-metal gang. Me and him had a fight but we done made up. Elsie is my sister-in-law,' she said to me.
'Hello, Elsie,' I said.
Elsie gave me a sharp quick glance, then looked away. She set her coffee carefully on the ground, then carefully sat herself down. Her actions were slightly dazed, as if she was trying to acquaint a slow mentality to the situation. Finally, when she got it all straightened out, she gave me a perfunctory smile.
'Howdedo,' she said, fanning herself with a piece of newspaper. 'Sho is hot.' She laid the paper down and opened her lunch. 'Lotta coloured boys working in 'dustry nowadays, right 'long with white people,' she observed, taking out a ham sandwich and nibbling at it daintily. 'You frum the South?'
I could feel Madge's gaze on me, and although I didn't look I knew she still wore that teasing smile. 'No, I'm from Ohio,' I said.
Elsie brushed it aside. 'I always says it ain't no more'n right. Coloured folks got much right to earn these good wages as white while we fighting this war. It's partly their country too, I always says. I was telling Lem-your uncle,' she said to Madge, 'just the other day that coloured folks got just as much right to earn these wages as we has. We believe in democracy over here and as I says to Lem, if we can just keep these Reds frum getting hold of the country we can keep our American way of living so everybody'll be happy.'
'Elsie is a democrat,' Madge put in. I couldn't tell whether to lessen the tension or prepare myself for the worst.
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