by Ann Petry
The crew haircut had interrupted him. “Who’d recognize her by that name? It got past the desk. It got past you. Did you know who Mrs. William R. Sheffield was? So I was supposed to know anyway, huh? That’s what you pay me for, huh? All right. Even if I’d known who she was, I’d of picked the story up. A stranger could have got in that section by accident. The Treadway girl must have gone there deliberately. She’s been commuting between Monmouth and New York for months now. So she wouldn’t be apt to lose her way. If you ask me, that line of hers about attempted attack is absolute rot. It was a lovers’ quarrel.”
“What?” he roared. “Why you—”
“Listen,” the crew haircut said calmly, “I looked the man up. My girl works in the plant and she told me that Mrs. Sheffield was the Treadway girl. So I got curious and looked up his record. He’s a Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth, majored in history, honor graduate of Monmouth High School, football star, basketball star in high school and at Dartmouth. Was in the Navy for four years, censor, Navy installation in Hawaii. There’s nothing in his background to make the charge believable. If you want to know what I think, I think they were in love and—”
“You goddam fool,” he shouted, and his throat constricted, just as though he were choking. When he was able to talk again, his voice no longer contained the surface irascibility of the ulcer victim, it was an outraged furious voice, because the idea, the possibility that the Treadway girl could have had a nigger lover, that any rational white man could contemplate such a thought without—“You’re fired,” he shouted, “I won’t have any irresponsible bastard like you on my payroll—”
The knowitall with the crew haircut said, cheerfully, “It’s okay, pops. I felt the same way about you the first time I saw you.”
He had watched him go toward the door, saw him hesitate, turn back, and thought he was going to say, I need the job, I got a wife and four starving kids, and a dying grandmother; and instead, he offered advice.
“You better get your ulcers taped up, way up out of the muck,” he said, “otherwise you might get ’em mired in this Treadway case.”
At eight o’clock, that night, the phone on his desk rang, and the girl at the switchboard said that Jubine wanted to see him.
“Tell him to go drown himself.”
“He has a picture that—”
“Tell him to drop it in and pull the chain and—”
“He says—”
Jubine interrupted. “Bullock, you better look at this picture. See this picture.”
“No.”
“You’ll be sorry, peon, sorry, sorry—”
“Get the hell out of my building before I call a cop.”
“You’ll be sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Jubine’s soft reproachful voice singsonged the words in his ear again and he banged the receiver down, cutting the sound off, thinking, Yes, eight o’clock at night, that’s all I need is to have that bastard come in here and start yapping that line he talks, unlit cigar in the corner of his mouth, beady eyes roving all around the room, looking, looking, looking, as though he were estimating the cost of everything, putting a price on it, cost of the desk, cost of the dark red carpeting, cost of the mahogany paneling on the walls, price you paid, Ha, ha, ha, you got gypped, look at the price you paid. Restless, inquisitive eyes, moving over and around the editorpublisherowner of the Monmouth Chronicle, examining him, cataloguing him, summing him up by saying, “You’re a type, Bullock. A state of mind. And you’ll never recover from it.”
He kept remembering the sound of Jubine’s voice, Sorry, you’ll be sorry, sorry, a singsong, tuneless, reiterated, like some brat of a child baiting another brat of a child. He stayed in his office until the presses started to roll, and he thought he could hear that singsong under the rumble and roar of the press. Heard it off and on all night, even after he got home, got in bed.
At six o’clock in the morning he woke up, feeling uneasy, wornout, as though his subconscious had been trying to get a message through to him all night, and so he had slept restlessly, aware of something wrong, but too obtuse to recognize the signal, to answer it. Pictures, he thought, what about—
He reached for the telephone by the bed, dialed Rutledge’s number.
“Listen,” he said, when he heard Rutledge’s voice, thick with sleep; though he already knew the answer to the question he was going to ask, he asked it anyway, “Were there any pictures taken of that Treadway girl’s accident? Who? Oh—Christ!”
Lola sat up in bed, not yawning, not sagging with sleep, wide awake, face as fresh as the morning, hair curling over her forehead. “What’s the matter?” She watched him dress, frowning. “Where are you going at this hour? Pete, answer me—”
He was gone before she could ask him again. He backed his car out of the three-car garage, attached garage, station wagon in it, Lola’s brandnew convertible in it, his slave ship, as Jubine called it, also housed in it. Why’d they need two cars and a station wagon? Because he was a sucker, he was a peon, he was a poor peon trying to act like a rich peon because he was in love with an expensive beautiful redheaded female peon, and somewhere in the twentieth century they’d both lost the use of their legs, and their minds, and their will power. So they couldn’t walk any more, they couldn’t—
The loft where Jubine lived, across from the Commerce Street Police Station, was empty. Door wide open. He yelled, “Jubine, hey, Jubine!”
No answer. He went inside. It was just a big, bare, practically unfurnished room, not even a room, a loft, so big that the walls couldn’t define it, give it form, just unfurnished space, with a roof over it. Pictures everywhere, all the litter of photography, everywhere. Not even a bed. Probably sleeps on the floor. No, there was a cot, but no sheets, an army blanket rolled up at the foot took the place of sheets, bedspread, blanket, all in one; could serve as pillow, too, if one put one’s head on it.
An old man’s voice said, “You want something, mister?”
He turned toward the direction of the voice, and saw that there was a chair in the loft, and that a thin old man was sitting in it. Wrinkled face. Something satirical in his eyes, or it may have been the effect of the toobig gray cap he was wearing, peak of the cap threw a shadow over the eyes. He was sucking on a corncob pipe. His face seemed to consist of the peak of the cap, the pipe, and the wrinkles.
“Where’s Jubine?”
“New York.”
“New York? Jubine?” The Chronicle was piled on the newsstands by now, it was being distributed in the post offices of all the little towns all over the state, it was in the big bundles being tossed off trucks in front of drugstores and candy stores, and in another hour it would be on the doorsteps of the houses, boys would be hawking it on Main Street. He used to think of this hour with pleasure, with satisfaction, because his paper was being read over the breakfast tables, on the trains and busses, his personal creation, brandnew, eagerly awaited, every morning. And now—
“That’s right, mister. He’s been gone all night. He said ye’d be here, lookin’ for him. Said ye’d be here last night. It’s morning though, ain’t it. Ye’re later’n he said.” He paused. “He left a message.”
“Well?” How did this old man in his mismatched pants and coat, his toobig cap, know him. Jubine would have left a description of him. Camel-hair coat. Rich peon’s coat. Of course. “Well?” he repeated.
The old man took the pipe out of his mouth, licked his lips. He spoke slowly, deliberately, as though he had been rehearsing this speech for hours, and was now enjoying the opportunity to deliver it before an audience, blinking his eyes, cat fashion, in approval of his own performance.
“He said to tell ye that he was sorry ye was goin’ to get more of them little sore places in ye belly but ye would.”
Curse him, Bullock thought, curse all his ancestors, curse—little sore places in your stomach. You want to be a middle peon, neither ric
h nor poor, and there’s no such thing. That’s why you swear so much, that’s why you wear that rich peon’s coat, that yellow camel-hair coat. All poor peons who try to be middle peons, ache to be middle peons, get those little sore places. Sure I set ’em up. I tell the poor peons you stand here, you go without food so you will look hungry, for three days you go without food. I tell the rich peons, Jubine is here with his camera, stand on your head, ride a horse up the courthouse steps, jump in your swimming pool with your clothes on. Sure, I set ’em up, Bullock.
He sat in his car on Commerce Street, waiting for the newsstand on the corner to open up, watched the slowmoving owner of the stand rip open the big bundles of newspapers, and then heave them into position on the stand.
After the papers were lined up on the stand, he crossed the street, thinking he’d have to buy all the New York papers, and hunt, until he found— But he didn’t have to. The first thing he saw was Jubine’s goddamn picture.
He must have mailed it in, oh, who the hell cared how he got it there. Perfectly evident he’d gone to all the trouble, taken the pains, wasted the time, to deliver it in person, speeding through the night, on that motorcycle of his, speeding, speeding, to get even, straight to New York; and one of those halfbreed mongrel newspapers that had little or no advertising, certainly was not dependent on any from the Treadway Munitions Company, one of those New York tabloids, published it.
It must have been a dull night for crime in New York, because the picture had been blown up and put on the front page. The legend under it was short, clear, concise, easy to understand. It implied, in a few, carefully chosen, easy-to-read words, that the Duchess of Moneyland, young Mrs. Moneybags, of the gun empire, while drunk on a long life of lewdness, drunk on black beluga caviar and pink champagne, drunk on mink coats and Kohinoor diamonds, while driving her golden coach (he thought, Cinderella, pumpkin coach, papers in the pumpkin, Chambers, Hiss), accompanied by eighteen outriders wearing crimson velvet, trimmed with gold braid, had ridden down a child of the poor, in the streets of Monmouth, a city which belonged body and soul (since when do cities have bodies and souls, he thought) to the dowager Duchess of Moneyland. While the child of the poor lay helpless in the street (It would have to be a female child, he thought), the outriders had beaten her with blacksnake whips.
The Duchess of Moneyland, young Mrs. Moneybags, had laughed, her lascivious lips had curled as she pulled her sable coat about her slender shoulders, shouting, “Lay on, Macduff; and damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, Enough!’”
It didn’t actually say that though the implication was there. But the tabloid’s caption writer forgot to coach Mrs. Bunny Sheffield for the role she was to play. True, she was wearing a mink coat, and you could see that on one hand she wore a ring with a diamond in it so fiery that even on the cheap grayish impermanent paper of the tabloid she seemed to be wearing a spotlight on her finger. But her face was white, eyes haunted, mouth slack, one hand lifted, as though to ward off a blow. She was leaning against one of the fenders of the car, and she was looking up, no beauty in the face, nothing human about the face, just emptiness, and the drunkenness showed in the awful slackness of the mouth.
The child of the poor looked the part, might have been dressed by an imaginative stage designer for the part. The clothes were worn handmedowns, the coat sleeves too short, revealing thin wrists and thinner arms, shockingly nakedlooking wrists and arms. The coat and the dress so short that the legs were grotesque, too long, the knees knobby, the leg bones twisted; twisted from lack of food, but one leg twisted at an angle that was painful to look at, even in a photograph, because it had been twisted from contact with that big powerful shiny car, part of which could be seen.
And in the background, surrounding the car, the girl, were people, a great crowd of people, with angry, hostile faces; women with their arms akimbo; men frowning, shaking their fists, mouths drawn back in a snarl; and a policeman taking notes, two more policemen, arms uplifted, threatening the crowd; the child of the poor, dead center in front of the car, eyes closed, face deathlike.
Lest some careless reader miss the details, it said, just above this picture, See story page 3.
“Holy Mother of God!” he muttered. There wasn’t a word about this in the Chronicle, not a word, not a line.
He flipped the page and read the story, quickly. Goddamn Jubine, anyway, he thought, may he burn in hell, he not only took pictures, he also played reporter, slick reporter, able to convince a sonofabitching city editor that one of his pictures was front page news, and that it deserved a story, a story longer than a tabloid normally uses.
It was one of those easy-to-read feature stories, padded with local color about Jubine, the photographer (called the recording angel), about Monmouth (that beautiful, rich, conservative, typically New England city), located in Connecticut (that neat, small, rich, conservative state, unlike any other in the Union), about Cesar the Writing Man, who was poetically referred to as the city’s conscience. Detail about Cesar: how he chalked verses from the Bible on the streets of Monmouth. Samples of same: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” in front of the banks. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets,” in front of the courthouse. “Physician, heal thyself” in front of the professional building. “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together,” in front of real estate offices, insurance companies, churches. “For they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” in front of the armory.
Fine. And then he cursed again, felt a spasm of pain that twisted his stomach. “Thirty pieces of silver.” Chalked in front of the building that housed the Chronicle, Monmouth’s one big newspaper. Jubine made that one up. Nobody had ever written that there. Son of a bitch, he thought, skunk, bastard.
The pain in his lower abdomen was no longer a spasm, it was a twisting, turning, spreading horror that reached into his throat. He had to sit down or he’d vomit.
He sat in his car and waited until the pain eased off into a burning sensation, hateful but bearable. Then he went on reading what he now knew was Jubine’s story. Jubine said that Cesar had prophetic powers, that if one of his quotes appeared in an unusual place, he, Jubine, knew that a crime would be committed on that spot. It had happened that way many times.
So, earlier on the afternoon of the accident, Jubine had seen Cesar chalk a verse at an intersection, on Dock Street: “Like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously. II Kings 9:20.”
Jubine had hung around, waiting. He was there when Camilo came roaring past the red light, slammed on the brakes, too late. The street was filled with factory workers going home—Poles, Italians, Negroes formed a mob around the car. The vagueness of her manner, her halting speech, the mink coat, the delicate shoes, the manicured hands, the big diamond were like a personal insult to these people.
Camilo murmured, “I lost—I can’t find—I lost—”
Jubine said, “Camilo, ah, Camilo, what have you done?”
She looked up, eyes wide, horrified, and Jubine got his picture.
Even the quotes there in the tabloid. And then the story of Camilo’s charge of attempted attack against Link Williams, Negro.
Photograph of Link Williams on the same page. Bullock studied the face. You couldn’t trust Jubine’s pictures. He waited and waited until a building, a church or a bank or a school, or a human being, a man, woman, or child, assumed the aspect, momentary, fleeting, that he wanted, and then clicked his shutter. The result was not truth but a distortion of it achieved by tricks of light, by special circumstance, surprise or shock.
So here was this Negro standing on the dock, lordlylooking bastard, leaning against the railing, head slightly turned, profile like Barrymore’s, sunlight concentrated on his left side, so that the head, the shoulders, the whole length of him had the solidity
of sculpture, the picture damn near had the three-dimensional quality of fine sculpture. There was an easy carelessness about the leaning position of his body, controlled carelessness, and the striped T-shirt, the slacks, the moccasins on the feet suited his posture.
Every woman who saw this nigger’s picture would cut it out, clip it out, tear it out, drool over it. Every white man who saw it would do a slow burn.
He crumpled the mongrel tabloid newspaper between his hands, tossed it out of the car window. Jubine had tried the case, handed in a verdict, with his goddamn pictures. He’d made the Treadway girl look like a whore and made the nigger look like Apollo.
It was planned, deliberate. Jubine waited three hours before he brought that picture around, waited that long so I wouldn’t connect it with the accident. Even if I’d had it, he thought, I wouldn’t have used it.
Not a word, not a line, in the Chronicle.
Those same words were thrown at him, spat at him, later in the morning. He was sitting at his desk, not thinking, not doing anything, just sitting there, when the door was flung open.
“What the hell kind of newspaper you think you’re runnin’ here?”
He didn’t answer. He stared at the man who had invaded his office, a big angry, unshaven man, thinking, Well, well, well, I always wondered what Public Opinion would look like in the flesh, and here he is: hatless, drunken, odoriferous, brandishing a New York tabloid about his head as though it were a weapon.
“No fear, no favor, huh? That goddamn woman don’t own this town yet, see? There ain’t a word, not a line, in the Chronicle about it. Anybody’d think it never happened. Things is in one hell of a shape when you got to read a New York paper to find out what’s goin’ on in your own home town.”
Bullock opened his desk drawer.
Public Opinion shouted, “I don’t hold for niggers rapin’ white women but I don’t hold for no drunk rich women runnin’ down poor folks’ children in the street, either, see?”