Dark Don't Catch Me

by Packer, Vin

  DARK DON’T

  CATCH ME

  Vin Packer

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Come Destroy Me

  Also Available

  Copyright

  1

  Soft long-looking white hands give him gum. Good legs, sweet voice asks solicitously how are you. And smell the perfume! Like lilacs? Like jasmine? Naw, hell, Russian Leather, man! Arpege! Chanel! Something big! Know your brands! Big men order by brands, like Al saying, “Gimme Vat 69 and soda!” Not just scotch and soda. That’s nowhere. You ever gonna be a big man? Aw, yeah….

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Would you like more gum?”

  “Is this your first flight?”

  Ummm, living! How did you get so big so quick?

  Millard Post grins and wishes to weeping Jesus H. everyone he knows; and all the creeps he used to know (little pukes he could do rings around these days); and sweet money men he was going to know (were going to know him); dames and broads and millionaires, could see him right now. Man, they’d flip!

  “Yes to all three,” says Millard Post.

  And thank you, baby, all dressed in blue….

  He leans back in the deep soft seat after fumbling to fasten the belt. Careful not to brush the arm of the lady seated beside you there, man, but naw, there ain’t going to be no trouble at all! He tries very hard to keep the smile from playing on his lips. Simper like someone gone soft in the head just for this? You screw; this is nothing! If there were only someone to see you though, fellow — someone you know from the Panthers, 121st Street, or North Trades High.

  To say, “That’s not Millard Post, is it?”

  On the ramp coming out to the plane he had not been able to resist turning around as he got to the silver slide-Steps and waving up at the observation platform where there were people gathered.

  — So long, suckers!

  — Bye, bye, Baby-O!

  — Man, I’m cuttin’ out now in a sweet, sweet style! One other time he’d done something big and there was no one to witness it. That was the day Dandruff Laquales, War Counselor for the Diamonds, rival gang to the Panthers (lousy spie! Always beating on Negroes half his height and weight!), cornered him in a vacant lot up on 127th. Even though Laquales was six inches taller; two years older, and twice as tough — with a switch-blade in the deal, Millard had won out over him, using only his fists and his knee. But no one had seen him do it. That soured it some.

  This is different. Bigger! Traveling on a goddam DC-6 like some kind of smart money man in Endsville! So nobody waves good-by … Who needs it? Millard shrugs, a fifteen-year old Negro, lighter than most, and taller than other boys his age. Better build too. Sharp. Knows the score. Speaks the jargon. Walks cool with the cool. He never punked out yet; not on anything; not on anyone; no deal ever made him chicken.

  Before this morning he had never been quite so much on his own. He had some misgivings — Keep your place, Millard, his father had warned, from the moment you leave this house, you’re going south of Harlem. I said, south — but what the hell was going to happen, f’Chrissake.

  He knew he was the only Negro on the plane. The few Negroes he had seen at the terminal, and later inside the airlines building, were hauling baggage. (All right; so what?) Still, nothing was any different than it is up in Harlem; except it’s better. Really better.

  At the ticket counter the man had called him “sir.” Coming aboard the plane, the same hostess who had given him the gum and smiled at him, had greeted him warmly (could melt asphalt with that voice!) “Good morning. How are you today?”

  Millard settles comfortably. This is a trip he’s going on; not a goddam war he’s going to.

  He reaches into the pocket of his blue serge suit for the letter.

  His hands shake some; gotta admit he’s scared to fly — a little.

  Unfolding the letter he reads Bryan Post’s scrawled words with the same remote twinge of disgust which he felt the first time he ever read it. A feeling striped with some vague shame at the fact Bryan Post and he are blood relations.

  His father handed him the letter two days ago.

  “It’s from your uncle,” he said. “I can’t go. I can’t see how I can go.”

  With considerable difficulty, Millard had made out the writing:

  Dere Henry Post I want tell you Hus sic an going pass befor you kno it an would be teribul if you dont come here befor she pass soon as can so come quick lov yur bruthur Bryan Post

  “Goddam!” Millard had said. “He can hardly write English!”

  “You hang around your Cousin Al and learn words like that. And you’ll get a swat for saying them!” “I’m hip Al writes better than this, man!” “Dad’s what you call me!”

  “Dad, then. But I never saw writing like this before.” “There’s a whole lot you never saw, boy.” “Is his lid flipped?”

  “Thank your stars, Millard, you’re getting an education. That’s all!”

  “No punctuation even — not a lousy comma even!” “Millard, listen to me … I want you to go.” “Me go!”

  “It’s your grandmother dying, boy.” “Man, I don’t even know her, Dad!”

  “It’s my mother going to pass away and one of us is going!” “I got school … Education, you know?” “I can’t take off from my job, boy — your sister can’t take off from hers. But you can get excused from school.” “Naw, naw.”

  “You’ll fly down so as not to waste time. You can come back by Greyhound Bus. We’ll use the money I’ve been saving for the Hide-a-Bed. Couch is good enough to sleep on another year”

  “What about the backache you say it gives you?”

  “Backache’s better than a soul-ache, Millard. Hussie Post was a good mother to me, good as your own mother to you before she passed”

  “Naw, Dad, I don’t want to”

  “It’s out of the realm of what you want now, boy. You’re going!”

  Then slowly the reluctance Millard had transformed itself into a heady kind of enthusiasm. He had never been farther from Harlem than Rockaway Beach. Most of the members of the Panthers hadn’t either, and when he announced his news of the journey to the gang, it was met with a certain awe on their part.

  “You going to fly all the way down, Mil?”

  “Man, Mil, you’re going to travel!”

  “You’re cuttin’ classes, huh, Mil? Crazy!”

  His sister Pearl had actually ironed his handkerchiefs, instead of just folding them over once they came out of the Laundromat; and she’d bought shoe polish and done his loafers. See his face in the shine!

  “What you taking your Panther jacket for, huh?” she had said, watching him pack; hanging around while he was packing as though he were going to China. “Don’t you know it’ll be too hot for a leather jacket in Georgia?”

  “I’m taking what I’m taking” he had said importantly.

  “Millard? On your way down when you get stopovers in all these cities? You going to drop us a card from them?”
>
  “If I get the time, Pearl-O. I’ll see about it”

  • • •

  Even the lecture he had received from his father had not completely destroyed his enthusiam. His father was a great lecturer anyway; about nothing. What he told Millard about the Southern white people’s feelings toward Negroes, had startled Millard some — but more because of the fact his father really believed that crap about practically every Southern white man having a sheet with holes cut in it, hanging in his closet for that happy day a colored person got out of line.

  “Man, a lot’s changed, since you were down there,” Millard had said. “We learned all about it in school … Besides, I hold my own with the spics, don’t I? Spics push us around plenty and I can hold my own. I’m hip, Dad!”

  Pearl had said. “That’s right, Pa. It’s not so bad any more. It’s not good, but it’s not so bad.”

  Henry Post had straightened himself to his full five feet and bellowed: “You forget school when you go down there! You forget what you learned, and carry on the way I say you should! You ‘sir’ everyone! Everyone! And don’t be looking white folks in the eye, Millard! Them white folks aren’t like spics one whit! You crawl to them if you got to! Hear?”

  “Sure,” Millard had said. “Sure, Dad.”

  He had winked at Pearl across the room; they’d grinned together.

  Sure, sure … All right it is going to be different down there. Millard jams the letter back in his suit pocket. His father is given to exaggeration a good deal of the time, he decides. Like when Millard joined the Panthers. His father raised hell because he said all gang boys used dope. Millard grins to himself recalling it. Not a hop-head in the bunch; that’s how bad the Panthers are hooked.

  Millard thinks: besides — believe all the old man’s bed-tales about Georgia, being on this plane would make me a living creep.

  Besides — not worrying about the white people. Worrying more about the colored. Bryan Post — Uncle Bryan — and Aunt Bissy. And Cousin Marilyn; Cousin Claude. And Cousin Major … Major — what kind of name is that for somebody?

  If the bunch of them can’t write a letter between them better than the one sent off — weeping Jesus!

  “It’s probably just true of the older folks.” Pearl had discussed the matter with him. “Because back in the days when they were going to school things were all different. Maybe they didn’t even go to school at all, our aunt and uncle … But you know, Mil, now every kid goes. You wait, I bet our cousin will be just as sharp as you are.” She’d laughed and poked her finger in his ribs. “Least as sharp as you think you are.”

  • • •

  Behind Millard the door of the DC-6 swings shut; engines start their roaring. Big deal! Living! Millard grips the sides of his seat. Goddam, it is no picnic at that!”

  “Your first time?”

  She’s a soft-spoken, middle-aged woman sitting beside him. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Calmly she knits a pair of argyle socks. “Once we get up you’ll feel better.”

  “What I’m worried about right now, ma’am, is if we get up.” She laughs; she’s nice. “Oh, don’t worry, son. We’ll get up.” “You traveled a lot, huh?”

  “I make this run about once a week. Just to Washington.”

  Then they are taxiing out far into the field, and over the loudspeaker the hostess with the soft white long-looking hands is using her candy tones to tell everyone not to smoke, to fasten belts, to expect luncheon in flight.

  The plane takes the air. Millard feels like he’s flying it himself. Leaning forward, he watches the land recede under him.

  — So long, suckers!

  Gee-ha, lookit it get smaller! Look like sticks down there. “Man!” slips out.

  The lady looks at him; nodding. “There now, like it?”

  “Yes, ma’am! Yes, sir. We just — took off. Crazy!”

  “Maybe you’d like to sit here by the window so you can see better.” She stops knitting. Smiles at him. “I’ll be happy to change seats with you. I make this run all the time.”

  Millard doesn’t look her in the eyes, but he asks, “You sure?”

  “Sure” she says, getting her belt loose.

  2

  THIS is Paradise.

  “Listen to them niggers laughin’!”

  White faces across the street watch black faces.

  “Yeah, niggers always got a joke.”

  “What you s’pose make them laugh all the time?”

  It’s in the state of Georgia, right in the middle, where much of the land surrounding it is skeleton-poor, worn out and abandoned to gullies, broomstraw and scrub oaks. Black faces laugh up a storm:

  “… so after Saint Peter say, ‘Look here, nigger, you can’t get into heaven if you’re walkin’. A body wants to get into heaven’s got to ride into heaven!’ — well, after that, this nigger strolls around heaven on the outside figuring how he gonna get in. Then he see a white man walkin’ toward heaven, an he tell the white man, ‘can’t nobody get into heaven walkin’, boss.’ An he say to the white man, ‘Mister, whyn’t you ride me in, huh? That way we both get in … So the white man ride the nigger up to them pearly gates. An Saint Peter say, ‘White man, you walkin’ or riding?’ White man say, ‘Ridin’!’ … An Saint Peter say, ‘Good! Park your horse outside and come on in!’ “

  It’s a country seat in the gut of the red hill region, a little town where 906 people live; the warm and wary kind of little town where 896 of them know the other ten are going to a barbecue tonight out on Linoleum Hill, where Thad Hooper’s place is.

  “What’s the matter with you, nigger! You heard every joke there is twice?”

  “Don’t say nigger to me. The name is Major.”

  “That make me a nigger and you a Major, huh?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Jack? How you ever going to expect white folks to stop calling us niggers if we call ourselves that?”

  “Boy, you expect to get white folks out of the habit, then you can stand worms on their tails.” “Still, Jack, don’t call me nigger.”

  “I’ll call you Major Post who don’t know his pee smells, nigger!”

  Two of the Negroes laugh; not Major Post, though.

  Tink Twiddy says, “How come you don’t like the joke Jack told, Major? By goose eggs your big mouth going to break if it smile?”

  “Tell the joke to the white crackers standing across the street and they’ll think it’s funny.”

  “Well, it is funny. I liked to die laughing when Jack told it!”

  “You crow-bellies going to die that way anyhow!”

  “Trouble with you Major Post is since you quit Linoleum Hill and went to work at that she-yankee’s you got hot pants for white quail!”

  There goes Major Post; walks right away from them.

  Linoleum Hill got its name from some of the colored in Paradise who couldn’t say Magnolia Hill. An hour or so ago out in front of the county courthouse, loafing around on the well-whittled bench, Doc Sell, the county coroner; Colonel Pirkle, the editor of the Paradise Herald, and some other sitters there ribbed Thad Hooper about it when he passed by.

  “Hey, Thad?” Doc Sell said. “You know I’da never thought it of you?”

  “Yeah? Thought what wouldn’t you have?” Hooper paused on his way to his car.

  “That you was a goddam coon-coddler?”

  “Aw, get!” Hooper guffawed. “You’re drunk as a skunk at a moonshine still!”

  “Well, boy, didn’t black apes name your hill, huh?”

  Hooper himself had led the laughter, his huge square hands hanging on to his large and solid hips; his long firm legs giving a little at the knees, as his wide and strong shoulders shook, and he tossed back his head, a broad grin cracking his wide and handsome countenance.

  “Gee-on, y’old coot!” he’d called back, continuing to his car; then, waving, “See you all tonight, hey!”

  • • •

  In Paradise they say the reason Thad Hooper is so good-na
tured the whole time is because of her. And that’s the same reason he’s richer-acting than the real rich from the cities like Atlanta and Savannah and Macon — because of her; and why he’s more informed than most in Paradise (outside of Hollis Jordan, who nobody can understand anyway) and why he’s big-looking without being fat; and why he’s so well-liked by everyone from the Reverend Joh Greene, in whose church he serves as elder, to old black Hussie Post, who doesn’t like anyone, and whose family sharecrops on Hooper land. In a sentence, it’s why he’s Thad Hooper — because of her … In Paradise they say it’s a psychological fact that a man with a wife like her has got luck’s kiss to fire him on to doing anything he takes a notion to do, better than anyone else can.

  “Yeah, and Thad knows it too,” one of the bench-sitters said after Hooper had left and they were all discussing him and her. “He knows it, cause even now after two kids he’s still always got his hands on her somewhere — on some part of her only he’s got the right to touch!”

  “So what?” Storey Bailey, Thad Hooper’s best friend, put in. “What’s that prove?”

  “Proves,” the sitter said, “he’s sort of letting everybody know she’s his property. It’s like another man having an Indian-head nickel he’s got to touch for luck.”

  Storey said, “Hell, you kidding? Hell!”

  A second sitter spoke up, “I noticed that about Thad too. Oh, he don’t do it obvious, mind, but I seen him do it. Out at the Friday dances, I seen him holding her so that his right arm kind of dangles down her back around her fanny — or even down here on Main Street when she’s standing talking to someone with him. I seen him with his arm around her waist and one of his fingers sorta snaking up around her boobies. I seen him do it too.”

  Storey Bailey’s face got red. “Aw, hell!” He acted disgusted.

  “Well, what’s the difference anyhow.” Doc Sell shrugged. “Man’s got a right to feel up his own wife!”

  “But I’m telling you if Thad does do it, he don’t even know he’s doing it!” Bailey said.

  The sitter sighed; spat. “She sure is beautiful, Vivian Hooper.”

  “All I’d have to do to tell a corpse,” Sell said, “would be to stand Vivie over it. If it didn’t move then, that’d be a dead man, all right.”