The Nigger Factory

by Gil Scott-Heron

  ‘No, brother,’ Earl said sighing and turning serious. ‘I guess I just got hung up in that ol’ axiom about makin’ the best of a bad situation, you know?’

  ‘Yeah. I know. What gives in the mornin’?’

  ‘Yo’ guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘Ummm . . . well, I guess I’ll au revoir.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning. Me and Odds tapped out. Nothin’ more to report.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘G’night.’

  ‘G’night.’ Earl cradled the receiver.

  ‘Bad news?’ Angie asked when he reentered the kitchen.

  ‘No news is bad news at this stage,’ Earl replied.

  He lit a cigarette.

  ‘You smoke too much,’ Angie said softly.

  ‘Thass right,’ Earl admitted.

  ‘There’s goin’ to be trouble, isn’t there?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘You’re going to get in trouble, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know about . . .’

  ‘You’re the one who took Calhoun the papers and you know how he is about those things.’

  ‘There’s always trouble,’ Earl said.

  ‘Not like this . . .’

  ‘Trouble is the same. When you got them they’re all just big problems, and when they’re gone you don’ remember why you had such a hard time.’

  ‘Calhoun is going to be your hard time.’

  ‘Just as long as I have you for my good time,’ Earl laughed gently. ‘I’ll just try to deal with one time at a time.’

  11

  Calhoun’s Assessment

  Gaines Harper was the last administrator to leave the Calhoun home after the president’s impromptu meeting. The fat, red-faced Financial Aid Officer had dawdled, scanning stacks of periodicals in the president’s bookcase until after even Miss Felch had gathered her notes and departed.

  Ogden Calhoun returned to his den from seeing Miss Felch into a cab. His face was drawn and tired. He was irritated by the whole affair.

  ‘What do you think?’ Harper asked the president breathlessly. He was always breathless; grossly overweight, he was a victim of too much beer.

  ‘Please don’t ask me what I think, Harper,’ Calhoun snorted as he stripped off his jacket. ‘You heard everything I heard.’

  ‘I heard it all right. And I didn’t like it too much.’

  ‘It wasn’t for you to like or dislike,’ Calhoun said irritatedly.

  ‘McNeil acted as though he even wanted those things to be,’ Harper continued, as though he hadn’t heard. ‘I wonder what Mr Ostrayer would say about that. He recommended McNeil just like he recommended me.’

  ‘What could he say?’ Calhoun asked.

  ‘He’d have plenty to say,’ Harper assured the president. ‘You know how trustees think. He wouldn’t like McNeil taking the students’ side against you.’

  ‘Is that what you think McNeil is doing?’

  ‘It was plain. He told you he wasn’t even angry when that student came in and disrupted his meeting!’

  ‘Yes. But I think it’s quite another thing to imply that he was in favor of these demands.’

  ‘It’s all the same to me. They’ll be after him next and all of the other white workers here. I wonder what he’ll have to say then.’

  ‘I don’t see where color has anything to do with it,’ Calhoun said coldly.

  ‘Why do you think they want me fired?’ Harper blazed.

  ‘They don’t say.’

  ‘Naturally it’s because I’m white. The ones in charge of that meeting today were militants. They are against everything white . . . Yeah, they’ll be after McNeil soon. Mark my words. He won’t be so quick to agree that the faculty shouldn’t only answer to the administrators then. He wouldn’t want the students looking over his shoulder, checking his books, doing things like that . . . it’s only because he’s on the other side of the fence now that he can afford to be so liberal.’

  Calhoun shot Harper a quizzical look. ‘Is that what it is?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘Yes. That’s it,’ Harper said breathlessly, hurrying on. ‘You can afford to be high and mighty and in favor of student reform when you’ve got tenure and a Ph.D. He wouldn’t be like that if it was his second year on the job like me, just trying to find his way around.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Calhoun said.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Well what?’ Calhoun asked standing up. ‘Your point is that you want to know whether or not I’m going to give in to the students, isn’t that it? I’d rather you have asked. But it’s an indication that you’ve only been here for a year because then you’d know that I never respond to papers like this one. Thomas should know better too.’

  ‘Maybe he does,’ Harper said thoughtfully.

  Calhoun was struck by the idea. Harper was pulling on his huge raincoat and hat.

  ‘I’ll see you at ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother to see me out.’

  ‘Good night,’ Calhoun said.

  Calhoun remained in the den long enough to turn off the lights and straighten up his desk. He then made his way up the spiral stairs to the bedroom where, much to his surprise, his wife was still sitting up, reading.

  ‘Surprised to find you up,’ he said wearily.

  ‘You’re the one who needs the rest,’ she said. ‘I know how Norfolk tired you out. You were looking forward to coming right home from the theater and going to bed, weren’t you?’

  ‘I really was,’ Calhoun said, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking off his shoes, socks, and pants. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have an early day tomorrow too.’

  ‘The students are being unreasonable again?’ Gloria Calhoun asked. Her husband wondered if he detected a note of sarcasm in his wife’s voice.

  ‘Damn right!’ he said gruffly. ‘Imagine asking me to fire Royce, Beaker, and Harper and wanting to audit all the school books and have me turn everything in the Student Union over to them plus funds so that they can invite the performers and speakers on campus. I imagine we’d have James Brown every night. Not even asking me,’ Calhoun went on. ‘Telling me.’

  ‘What reason do they give?’

  ‘None. Just a piece of paper pointing out how to do my job.’ Calhoun was properly disgusted at the thought. ‘And what difference does it make what reason they give? It’s still an intimidating paper. They’re still telling me how to do my job. I’ve been president here for nine years, Gloria. You know that that’s not the way we get things done here.’

  ‘Maybe the students are just trying to be dramatic,’ Mrs Calhoun suggested.

  ‘Dramatic? This is a threat!’ Calhoun asserted. ‘Thomas must not be any older than twenty-two. I’m damn near three times that. We’re trying to teach the boys and girls at Sutton how to be men and women and cope with their lives outside. You can’t take your boss a note saying do this and that by tomorrow noon or else.’

  ‘But this is different,’ Gloria said. ‘You’re not their b . . .’

  ‘It’s the same principles. Channels have been established!’ Calhoun was raising his voice.

  The last thing Gloria wanted was an argument. ‘You should come to bed, dear,’ she said. ‘It’s almost twelve thirty.’

  ‘I know,’ Calhoun grumbled. ‘As soon as I wash my teeth and try to refresh myself a bit.’ He got up and carried his pajamas with him into the bathroom next to their bedroom.

  Gloria Calhoun listened for a second to the running water that alone disturbed the silence of the house. She was amazed at how easy it had been for her to avoid the argument that would have come and how natural it seemed for her not to challenge her husband. She remembered how, when they were courting, they had stayed up until all hours of the night arguing points about world politics or the movement or even about a movie they had seen.

  The water stopped running in the bathroom and Calhoun returned to the bedroom, turning out the light from the wall swit
ch as he came.

  Thursday

  12

  Preparation

  Ralph Baker sat brooding over an early cup of black coffee at a corner table in the Sutton cafeteria. His roommate and closest friend, Jonesy, had just left to have more copies of MJUMBE’s demands mimeographed, and the big MJUMBE spokesman was alone for the first time in what seemed like days. He didn’t particularly like the feeling.

  Calhoun was on Baker’s mind. Calhoun and Thomas and Sheila and a lot of other things, but Calhoun was a special worry. He couldn’t help feeling that he had made a big mistake by not accompanying Earl Thomas to the Plantation the night before. He wanted to know what was on the university president’s mind. He wondered what the reaction to the demands had been. Not necessarily what had been said, but what had flashed across the old fox’s eyes. Eyes were a good sign of what was going on inside the mind. Discussing the situation earlier with Jonesy, he had spoken confidently about the bind in which MJUMBE had put the Sutton administration. Now, alone, he wasn’t quite as sure. There were too many loose ends; things that he needed to know and had no way of finding out. Signs would have certainly been in Calhoun’s eyes, even if he played it cagey and diplomatically. Baker felt like a blind man, lost without knowing those signs; like a blind man who would stumble, either into the light or out onto the highway with a bus ticket clenched in his huge hand.

  But Calhoun was not the only problem. Just when he hadn’t needed anything else to upset him, his relationship with Sheila had disintegrated. He didn’t know exactly what had gone wrong. As a matter of fact he had never really intended for anything to happen between them.

  He had known Sheila for almost six years. They had met when he was an All-State candidate from their high school in Shelton Township, Virginia. Sheila was a cheerleader with a crush on him, but he had been going steady with another girl and hardly had time for the short, baby-faced freshman who followed him halfway home every day after practice. He had laughed at the thought of her and at one of the victory dances even made a joke of her crush on him. That had seemed to cool things down. During his senior year Sheila was no longer a cheerleader and Baker rarely saw her. Then he had won a scholarship to play football at Sutton.

  The next time he saw Sheila was when she arrived on Sutton’s campus as a freshman. He had been cordial as he would have been to any new student from his home town. But they moved in different social spheres. He was a fraternity man and a football player. She was just one of the many coeds on the predominantly female campus.

  Baker had met Sheila at a party given by a mutual friend. They chatted about school and Greek organizations and football. She expressed an interest in Delta Sigma Theta, the sister organization of Omega Psi Phi, Baker’s fraternity. He found himself not only interested in the conversation, but in Sheila. They began dating off and on. The young woman who had once been so much a part of Baker’s life had gotten married during his freshman year and already had a child.

  Upon their return to school in the fall Baker had been surprised to learn that Sheila was working as Earl Thomas’s secretary. She had told him that she was going to try to get a job, but even when she landed the secretarial post Baker paid it little attention. Football had started again. The fraternity had another line of pledgees to indoctrinate. Plans for MJUMBE were only vague shadows forming in the back of his mind. The organization had been formed by Baker as a safeguard against another year of political apathy. Baker had been willing to admit that Earl Thomas was a fast talker and a man who could think politically while on his feet, but he had never felt that Earl’s administration stood for radical change, which was what he felt that Sutton needed. He felt that between Earl and ‘Lawman’ Dean a few small problems might be alleviated, but it was a question of timing. If the students were allowed to slip into the middle of another non-productive year it would be difficult to shake them up and ignite a fire under them once they settled into a pattern or an attitude of acceptance.

  But Earl had waited too long. Virginia institutions of higher education come up for their accreditation markings during the third week of October. Baker knew that the ideal time to hit the school with a list of demands would be just as the accreditation service began looking into the mechanisms of the school. This move by students would bring about more pressure on the administrators to force a quick halt to the disturbances. With these things in mind Baker moved.

  He found himself seeing more and more of Sheila. Talk about her work and the SGA let Baker know what Thomas was doing and exactly what information was on hand in the SGA office. He wanted very badly to see the information that Earl and his team had gathered, but there was no way he could legitimately go into the office and ask Thomas for permission. He started an Uncle Tom campaign against Earl with Sheila.

  ‘I shoulda known better than to think that nigga was doin’ somethin’,’ he had said in Sheila’s room one night near the end of September.

  ‘Who you mean?’ Sheila asked, looking up from her homework.

  ‘Thomas. He said when he got elected he was gonna have somethin’ goin’ by October an’ tomorrow’s October an’ ain’ nobody heard hide nor hair a’ him.’

  ‘He mus’ be doin’ somethin’,’ Sheila sighed. ‘Wit’ all them different things he has me typin’ all day.’

  ‘I wish they’d open up them records for everybody,’ Baker snorted. ‘I bet I’d get something together.’

  ‘They don’t open everything up for . . .’

  ‘No. SGA’s a special thing. Thass why I was runnin’. You get a chance to look in everybody’s closet. There’s no tellin’ jus’ what Thomas knows, but we’ll never find out. Lucky for Head Nigger Calhoun that some Tom always gets elected.’

  ‘This whole political thing is very important to you, huh?’

  ‘Damn right! Look at alla the things you have to put up with when you’re here. The damn dorms are crumbling. The food tastes like warmed over garbage. The teachers don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground. Somethin’ oughta be done.’

  ‘You think the records Earl has tell about how to fix these things?’ Sheila wondered.

  ‘That’s what he was s’pose to be workin’ on,’ Baker pointed out.

  ‘Why would he work on them if he wasn’ gonna do anything?’

  ‘Because he prob’bly knows that people like me are gonna ask him what the hell he been doin’. Then he can haul out this big pile a papers an’ show us how bizzy he’s been even though nuthin’ came outta it.’

  ‘But what could anybody do who’s not in an office? Even if they had the papers?’

  ‘Sheila,’ Baker said seriously, ‘all studen’s want ‘roun’ here is for somebody to have guts enough to stand up to Calhoun. They don’t really care who it is. It could be Thomas or me or Mickey Mouse.’

  Sheila had been thoughtful and quiet for a moment. Then she got up from her desk and reached into her purse. When her hand emerged from the bag there was a short, round key in her grasp dangling from a rabbit’s foot key chain.

  ‘Take this key,’ she told Baker handing him the chain. ‘This is the key to the SGA office. The papers are in the filing cabinet in the back, listed under G. Everything that has been done this year is there.’

  The rest had been easy. Baker had been back to the office on two other occasions to tighten up information and copy things that he thought would be needed. Aside from Sheila nobody, not even Jonesy, knew anything about Baker’s access to the office. He had taken the notes and worked on them by himself, forming the list of demands from the papers he had seen and from information that he had collected before his campaign.

  The entire plan had gone exceptionally smoothly. He had been very pleased with himself until the night before, when he and Sheila had argued and he had left her in tears.

  He had gone into her room tense and angry. The confrontation with Thomas had been upsetting. Thomas had looked as if he wouldn’t give a damn if MJUMBE took over the United States Government. He had listened to Bak
er and the others in the MJUMBE group talk briefly about their actions and then he had taken the list of demands and departed. That was the last that any member of MJUMBE had seen of Thomas, and no one had seen Calhoun. Baker felt as if he were somehow being manipulated instead of himself manipulating what was happening. When he got to Sheila’s room in Garney Plaza, she had noticed that something was bothering him.

  ‘You were good today,’ she had remarked quietly when he sat at the desk instead of coming to sit on the edge of the bed with her as he usually did. ‘I mean, your speech was good. Everybody said so.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m okay. It’s raining.’

  ‘I was listening to it. It put me to sleep.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I got me some work to do, you know. I got a lotta things I got to tighten up befo’ tuhmaruh.’

  ‘Can I make you some coffee or something?’ Sheila asked getting up. She slipped into her robe and lifted the arm of the record player that sat next to her bed. She lifted the stack of records that had played through and started them over again.

  ‘Where’s Bucky Beaver?’ Baker asked, referring to Sheila’s two-hundred-pound roommate who was a dead ringer for the animated character of the Ipana commercials in the fifties.

  ‘She moved,’ Sheila said absently.

  ‘She moved?’

  ‘Monday. She took her things an’ changed her room down the hall.’ The Temptations came on doing ‘Psychedelic Shack,’ and Sheila turned the record player down. She pulled a hot plate from under her bed and then went out into the hall. When she came back she had a coffee pot full of water in her hands. She filled up the top with coffee from a two-pound canister and lit the hot plate, putting the pot over one of the burners. Baker sat hunched over a pile of papers with his back to her. She started to speak and then stopped, busying herself with coffee cups and saucers from her dresser.

  ‘She couldn’ dig me, huh?’ Baker asked disconnectedly.

  ‘Huh? . . . oh, I guess not. She and I didn’ really get along. She’s got problems.’