If he hollers let him go

CHAPTER XVIII

That night I dreamed that a white boy and a coloured boy got to fighting on the sidewalk and the coloured boy pulled out a long-bladed knife and ran at the white boy and began slashing at him and the white boy broke and ran across the street digging into his pocket and at a grocery store on the other side the coloured boy caught up with him and it looked as if he was going to cut him all to pieces but the white boy brought his hand out of his pocket and every time the coloured boy slashed at him he hit at the back of the coloured boy's hand. The white boy was crying and hitting at the back of the coloured boy's hand with his fist and the coloured boy was screaming and cursing and jumping in at the white boy to slash at him with the knife; but he couldn't cut the white boy because the white boy kept ducking and dodging and hitting at the back of his hand. Finally the white boy hit the back of the coloured boy's hand that held the knife and made a slight cutting movement and the knife fell from the coloured boy's hand. When I saw the blood start flowing from the back of the coloured boy's hand I knew the white boy had a smallbladed knife gripped in his fist. The coloured boy picked up the knife with his left hand and began slashing again and the white boy kept on ducking and dodging until he hit the back of the coloured boy's left hand and cut the tendons in that one also. Then the white boy began chasing the coloured boy down the street stabbing him all about the head and neck with the tip of the small-bladed knife. Everybody standing around looking at the white boy chasing the coloured boy down the street thought he was beating him with his fist, but I knew he was digging a thousand tiny holes in the coloured boy's head and neck and that it was only a matter of time before the coloured boy fell to the street and bled to death; but the white boy wasn't crying any more and he wasn't in a hurry any more; he was just chasing the coloured boy and stabbing him to death with a quarter-inch blade and laughing like it was funny as hell.

I woke up and I couldn't move, could hardly breathe. The alarm was ringing but I didn't have enough strength to reach out and turn it off. My hangover was already with me and my body trembled all over as if I had the ague.

Somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny insistent voice kept whispering, Bob, there never was a nigger who could beat it. I blinked open my eyes, closed them tight again. But it kept on saying it. And I knew it was a fact. If I hadn't had the hangover I might have gotten it out my mind. But the hangover gave me a strange indifference, a weird sort of honesty, like a man about to die. I could see the whole thing standing there, like a great conglomeration of all the peckerwoods in the world, taunting me, Nigger, you haven't got a chance.

I agreed with it. That was the hell of it. With a strange lucid clarity I knew it was no lie. I knew with the white folks sitting on my brain, controlling my every thought, action, and emotion, making life one crisis after another, day and night, asleep and awake, conscious and unconscious, I couldn't make it. I knew that unless I found my niche and crawled into it, unless I stopped hating white folks and learned to take them as they came, I couldn't live in America, much less expect to accomplish anything in it.

It wasn't anything to know. It was obvious. Negro people had always lived on sufferance, ever since Lincoln gave them their freedom without any bread. I thought of a line I'd read in one of Tolstoy's stories once-'There never had been enough bread and freedom to go around.' When it came to us, we didn't get either one of them. Although Negro people such as Alice and her class had got enough bread-they'd prospered from it. No matter what had happened to them inside, they hadn't allowed it to destroy them outwardly; they had overcome their colour the only way possible in America-as Alice had put it, by adjusting themselves to the limitations of their race. They hadn't stopped trying, I gave them that much; they'd kept on trying, always would; but they had recognized their limit-a nigger limit.

From the viewpoint of my hangover it didn't seem a hard thing to do. You simply had to accept being black as a condition over which you had no control, then go on from there. Glorify your black heritage, revere your black heroes, laud your black leaders, cheat your black brothers, worship your white fathers (be sure and do that), segregate yourself; then make yourself believe that you had made great progress, that you would continue to make great progress, that in time the white folks would appreciate all of this and pat you on the head and say, 'You been a good nigger for a long time. Now we're going to let you in.' Of course you'd have to believe that the white folks were generous, unselfish, and loved you so much they wanted to share their world with you, but if you could believe all the rest, you could believe that too. And it didn't seem like a hard thing for a nigger to believe, because he didn't have any other choice.

But my mind kept rebelling against it. Being black, it was a thing I ought to know, but I'd learned it differently. I'd learned the same jive that the white folks had learned. All that stuff about liberty and justice and equality… All men are created equal… Any person born in the United States is a citizen… Learned it out the same books, in the same schools. Learned the song too: '… o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave…' I thought Patrick Henry was a hero when he jumped up and said, 'Give me liberty or give me death,' just like the white kids who read about it. I was a Charles Lindbergh fan when I was a little boy, and thought George Washington was the father of my country-as long as I thought I had a country.

I agreed with the Hearst papers when they lauded the peoples of the conquered European countries for continuing their underground fight against 'Nazi oppression'; I always bought the Los Angeles Sunday Times too, and the Daily News; read the Saturday Evening Post and Reader's Digest sometimes out at Alice's house while I was waiting for her to dress; I even got taken in by Pegler plenty times. Like the guys said out at the yard, 'Ah believe it.'

That was the hell of it: the white folks had drummed more into me than they'd been able to scare out.

I knew the average overpatriotic American would have said a leaderman was justified in cursing out a white woman worker for refusing to do a job of work in a war industry in time of war-so long as the leaderman was white. Might have even called her a traitor and wanted her tried for sabotage.

It was just that they didn't think I ought to have these feelings. They kept thinking about me in connection with Africa. But I wasn't born in Africa. I didn't know anyone who was. I learned in history that my ancestors were slaves brought over from Africa. But I'd forgotten that, just like the aristocratic blue bloods of America have forgotten what they learned in history-that most of their ancestors were the riffraff of Europe-thieves, jailbirds, beggars, and outcasts.

So even though the solid logic of my hangover told me that Alice's way was my only out, I didn't have anything for it but the same contempt a white person has for a collaborator's out in France. I just couldn't help it. That much of the white folks' teaching was still inside of me.

I knew I could marry Alice-the chick loved me. Could marry her, go back to college and get a degree in law, go on to become a big and important Negro. I knew that most people would consider me a lucky black boy.

I knew I would be lucky too. Lying there with the hangover beating in my head like John Henry driving steel, I could see it from every angle-I couldn't keep from seeing it. I didn't have the strength to keep it from my mind.

In the first place my old man had been a steel-mill worker at National Malleable in Cleveland, Ohio, when I was born, and my mother had died when I was three. I had two brothers older than I, and we'd been poor boys. My old man had married again and had three other children by our stepmother and I lived in a cole attic room for twelve long years. Shep, my oldest brother, went East when he finished Central High and the last I heard of him he was in the rackets in Washington, D.C. Dick wanted to be an artist and fooled around with the group at Karamu; he's still in Cleveland, some sort of politician. I was the ambitious one, I'd wanted to be a doctor. I'd gotten my two years at Ohio State by washing dishes in the white fraternity houses about the campus. But when my old man took sick in '38 I had to stay home and dig in with the rest; and I never got back. I puttered about with pottery at Karamu and worked with the theatre group for a time-met some fine chicks, too, but none like Alice.

All I had when I came to the Coast was my height and weight and the fact I believed that being born in America gave everybody a certain importance. I'd never had two suits of clothes at one time in my life until I got in this war boom.

In the three years in L.A. I'd worked up to a good job in a shipyard, bought a new Buick car, and cornered off the finest coloured chick west of Chicago-to my way of thinking. All I had to do was marry her and my future was in the bag. If a black boy couldn't be satisfied with that he couldn't be satisfied with anything.

But what I knew about myself was that my desire for such a life was conditional. It only caught up with me on the crest of being black-when I could accept being black, when I could see no other out, such a life looked great.

But I knew I'd wake up someday and say to hell with it, I didn't want to be the biggest Negro who ever lived, neither Toussaint L'Ouverture nor Walter White. Because deep inside of me, where the white folks couldn't see, it didn't mean a thing. If you couldn't swing down Hollywood Boulevard and know that you belonged; if you couldn't make a polite pass at Lana Turner at Ciro's without having the gendarmes beat the black off you for getting out of your place; if you couldn't eat a thirtydollar dinner at an hotel without choking on the insults, being a great big 'Mister' nigger didn't mean a thing.

Anyone who wanted to could be nigger-rich, nigger-important, have their Jim Crow religion, and go to nigger heaven.

I'd settle for a leaderman job at Atlas Shipyard-if I could be a man, defined by Webster as a male human being. That's all I'd ever wanted-just to be accepted as a man-without ambition, without distinction, either of race, creed, or colour; just a simple Joe walking down an American street, going my simple way, without any other identifying characteristics but weight, height, and gender.

I liked my job as leaderman more than I had ever admitted to myself before. More than any other job I could think of; more than being the first Negro congressman from California. But it was just the same as all the rest: if I couldn't have everything that went along with it, if I couldn't be in authority over white men and women just the same as any other leaderman, to hell with it too.

I knew that that was at the bottom of it all. If I couldn't live in America as an equal in the minds, hearts, and souls of all white people, if I couldn't know that I had a chance to do anything any other American could, to go as high as an American citizenship would carry anybody, there'd never be anything in this country for me anyway.

And I knew I was a fool. That was the hell of it. All it did was give me a grinding headache to go along with the rest of my hangover, and a blinding sense of confusion. I didn't know whether I was going or coming. If it hadn't been for my riders I wouldn't even have made the effort to get out of bed. I took a couple of anacins and some coffee and that helped some.

When I went outside some of the confusion left me. It was a clear morning; the sun was coming up and the air smelled good. It was one of those mornings that ought to have made me feel good to be alive. But as soon as I got behind the wheel I began remembering all the crazy things I had done the night before. Fighting with Madge until I'd already gotten her down, then jumping up running at the sound of the word 'rape,' letting her go untouched. I'd set out to grind her down but in the end I was the one who was defeated. Maybe I would have been anyway. Maybe there just wasn't any way of winning. Like the man said, 'I can't win for losing.'

No wonder I dreamed such crazy dreams and woke up full of philosophy. I felt chagrined, as foolish as a chump in a prostitute's room without the price of a lay.

But I made up my mind not to let it ride me. I had done it and that was that. All I could do now was try not to think about it, try to get through the day. I never wanted to see her again as long as I lived.

And then as soon as I got inside the yard I found myself looking at the white women, long-faced and urgent, thinking of Madge again. I wanted to see her, to meet her eyes-even if it wasn't any more than just walking past her. It was so strong I had to stop dead still and fight it out in my mind before I took another step.

I turned around and went back to Mac's office to quit. I wanted to clear my tools and get out of the yard as fast as possible. But Mac kept me waiting while he talked to six white guys who came in after me. He just didn't want to talk to me. I didn't get sore. I felt too low. I just left because I got sick standing there in the stuffy, smoky office and my stomach started peeling in my mouth.

When I got on the job I found Tebbel cursing out the Jews. I didn't want to listen, didn't want to argue. But I knew if I left I'd start looking for Madge. That woman spelled trouble, and trouble was on my mind.

Tebbel said the Jews controlled all the money in the world; that the Jews had started the war to make money; and that all Jews were Communists.

'That I gotta see,' I said.

But no one paid any attention to me. I supposed they were so happy to find somebody cursing out somebody else besides the 'niggers' they didn't want it interrupted.

He said that F.D.R. was a Jew, that his real name was Rosenveld; that almost all movie actors were Jews; that Eddie Cantor's real name was Izzy Iskowitz; Jack Benny's was Jack Kubelsky; Charles Chaplin's was Tonstein; Douglas Fairbanks' was Ullman; that Nelson Eddy's old man was a rabbi.

'You left out Jesus Christ,' I said. 'What was his real name?' But nobody paid any attention to that either.

He looked about him furtively to see if any Jews were within earshot, then produced several faded coloured circulars from an old envelope he had in his pocket. 'Here's where you get the facts,' he said.

We gathered about to look. They were circulars distributed by Pelley Publishers, Box 2630, Asheville, North Carolina, advertising anti-Semitic booklets. ' Hidden Empire-The Complete Story Of Jewish World Control,' one read, '6 for $1.00… 100 copies, $12.50.' Then another: ' "Dupes of Judah"-How Jews Launched the World War.' A third read: ' Stop Being Fooled by Jewish Wailings! Open Door to Knowing. The Christian-Gentile people of the United Stales have the right to know what the nation's Jews are doing and planning, to destroy Constitutionalism and substitute an Asiatic Sovietism…

I stopped looking after that. I wanted to laugh but my head was splitting with a hundred-degree headache and I was scared of jarring loose my brains.

Ben gave him a contemptuous look. 'Now show us what you got hidden in that other pocket about Negroes,' he said.

Tebbel reddened slightly. 'You just want to argue,' he grated. 'I like coloured people. I was raised with them.'

I heard Peaches whisper, 'Now if he says he had an old black mammy, I'll-I'll-' She choked.

'Who the hell gives a damn whether you like coloured people or not?' I said.

Conway gave me a half smile and Bessie said, 'You tell 'im!'

'These damn fascists come over here and the first thing they start campaigning against is the Jews,' Ben began, but Tebbel cut him off.

'I'm Irish,' he stated hotly. 'Nobody in the world is any more anti-fascist than the Irish.'

'All you foreigners-' Ben started again, but Tebbel cut him off again:

'Who's a foreigner? I'm a hundred per cent American. My grandfather fought in the Civil War.'

'On which side?' Zula Mae asked.

I cut out. I'd listened all I could.

It was pulling at me, eating into me, to go find Madge. The weight of chagrin was still in my mind; the thought of having been a fool gnawed at me. Read and run, nigger… I knew it was time to run. I glanced at my watch, saw that it was a little after nine, went down on the yard, and found a phone booth and called Alice. I didn't know what I was going to say to her-I couldn't think about her straight-but I had to hear her voice. Had to know that she was there; had to lean on her for a moment until I got myself steadied.

Some smooth-voiced chick answered the phone and said that Miss Harrison had a conference the first thing that morning; would I leave my number and have her call me back when she was free.

I said, 'I'll call again.'

I felt let down and a little scared. A truck rumbled by, almost hit me. I jumped back out of the way, stumbled over a six-inch pipe bend, sat down on a greasy spot of concrete. Killing myself already, I thought wryly; got up and started over to Mac's office. I'd quit, get cleared, and get the hell away. But I stopped with my hand on the door, turned around, and went back. I just couldn't leave it like that; I just couldn't do it.

I looked around for Don and saw him ducking through the access hole so I started after him. I knew I didn't want to see him but in the back of my mind I figured if I walked along with him he might accidentally lead me to Madge, and I wouldn't be seeking her deliberately.

He'd stopped outside in the companionway to bull with a guy and when I came up he looked around at me and they both stopped talking. The other guy went back to work and Don and I walked off a piece.

'You look as if you made a night of it,' he said.

'Killed myself,' I managed to say. 'I started off tryna kill my grief but I went along too.' I knew it sounded corny but it was the best I could do.

'Your girl friend looks as if she had a night of it too,' he said casually.

'You seen her?' I asked quickly. The words popped out of my mouth so fast I couldn't stop them.

Don blinked. 'Haven't you?' he countered.

I realized that he'd tricked me, but I tried to laugh it off anyway. 'We musta been drinking the same stuff-hula.'

He gave that slight smile. 'How'd you make out?'

I tried to look innocent. 'Are you kidding?'

Then she walked straight into us. Her hood was kicked back on her head, making her taller than either of us, and her shoulders were held high and square. Her face seemed slightly swollen on the left side and there were deep dark circles underneath her eyes which the heavy coating of powder couldn't hide. There was a hard savage glint in her eyes and her mouth was spread, squarish at the corners in a hard brutal set. She didn't look whorish now; she looked plain mean.

She stared at me, stared right through me as if I wasn't there, didn't give a flicker of recognition. Then she turned toward Don and came into him like a prize fighter.

'Damn you, Don, can't you get me some good sticks?' she said in a flat grating voice. 'They got a new nigger in the tool crib now and she don't know her ass from a hole in the ground.'

Don blinked. Neither of them looked at me. All three of us knew she didn't care about the rods; she just wanted to call me a nigger and took that way to do it.

'What are you doing down here?' Don asked her.

'I'm looking for you,' she grated.

'Are you sure?' he asked in a soft baiting voice.

Red came up in her face like a sunrise. 'What in the hell do you mean, am I sure?'

'I mean I'm not your leaderman,' he said evenly. 'I don't have anything to do with the kind of rods they give out. Why don't you see your own leaderman?'

'Well, it's your job that's gotta be done,' she snarled. 'And if these tacks don't hold, just blame that nigger in the tool crib.'

I started to call her on it then. But I knew she was raking me through Don and if I said anything to her she'd have jumped red raving.

But Don did it his way. 'How'd you make out last night?' he asked.

She had started away, now she wheeled back, but her gaze sought me first, slashed at me, then pinned on him. 'Now what the hell do you mean?'

'You told me you were going out with a new boy friend,' he said. 'Remember? I was just wondering what kind of a guy he turned out to be.'

'I didn't tell you any such a goddamned thing,' she stormed.

He blinked again, his eyes giving off sparks behind his rimless spectacles, then spread his hands. 'All right, it wasn't you. It must have been somebody else. I just drove by your place early this morning and thought I saw you getting out of a car.'

I jerked around to look at him. She gave me another quick killing look, then levelled a furious challenging stare on his benign face. 'You better mind your own goddamn business, thass what! You just better!' she whispered savagely, turned, and stalked off.

My eyes grew narrow and feverish. It crowded back into me-to go get her, to have it out.

Don said, 'She's touchy today, isn't she?' looking at me. I was embarrassed under his scrutiny, didn't understand his game. Right then I didn't care. I just wanted to get away from him.

'See you, Papa,' I said as lightly as I could and walked off before he could stop me.

I went back to the booth and called Alice again. This time I got her. 'It's Bob, baby,' I said, swallowing. 'Look, if I pick you up in about an hour, can I take you to lunch?'

'Where are you now?' she asked.

'Oh, I'm on the job,' I said. 'But I'm going to check out in a few minutes. I want to talk to you.'

There was a long pause and when she spoke again her voice sounded distant. 'What can we possibly talk about, Bob, that we haven't talked about before? You reject everything I say to you. All we do is quarrel.'

The receiver got so heavy I could hardly hold it. 'Okay, baby,' I said. 'I'll see you.'

I hung up, went back out on the yard, stood for a long time in the hot sunshine. Beyond was the road leading down to the outfitting dock, flanked by the various shops, dropping off in the blue-grey stretch of the harbour. Off to the left was a row of hulls in various stages of erection, spaced apart by the craneways. Cranes were silhouetted against the sky like long-legged, one-armed spiders, swinging shapes and plates aboard. Over there the workers walked with care. Everywhere was the hustle and bustle of moving busy workers, trucks, plate lifts, yard cranes, electric mules, the blue flashes of arc welders, brighter than the noonday sun. And the noise, always loud, unabating, ear-splitting. I loved it like my first love.

But now I was cutting out, I told myself. Atlas wasn't for me any more. I was getting the hell out of L.A. Away from Alice too. Going to 'Frisco, maybe. Las Vegas. Somewhere. I shook my head. Goddamnit, maybe she just don't know how much I need her, I thought. Maybe she thought it was easy for me to do the things she wanted. Maybe it was easy to some folks, I thought. But not to me. I'd already read and I was running. Read and run, nigger.

But when I started moving again I knew I was looking for Madge. I went up to the fourth deck first, found the team she'd been working with, but she was nowhere in sight. I searched the ship from fore to aft, from the superstructure down to the flat keel, but I didn't find her. I went out on the dock, walked down to the water, looked out across the harbour. But I couldn't stand still; I felt as if a thousand things were tearing at me, pulling at me. My feet felt weighted, my mouth sour. My coveralls chafed. My jacket was hot. I peeled it off, unbuttoned the top buttons of my coveralls, kicked my hat back from my eyes, dug a cigarette from a squashed pack and lit it.

Then I started looking for her again, with seven devils beating in my head. I just couldn't help it. I had to talk to her. Had to get it out my system and all of Texas wasn't going to stop me.

I had to do something to bring her down, to hurt her in some kind of way, humiliate her, make a fool out of her like I'd made out of myself, or I just wouldn't be able to keep out of trouble, I knew. I wouldn't be able to think straight about Alice either, after she'd gone out with Leighton last night.

So I climbed back to the weather deck and started off again. My head felt swollen; heat was growing in my brain. Somebody slapped me on the back. I jumped a good six feet, whirled with my dukes up.

Herbie Frieberger said in his loud jubilant voice, 'Jesus Christ, you're jumpy. What the hell's the matter with you?'

'Man, goddamnit, are you fighting or playing?' I said. 'How many bowls of Wheaties did you eat this morning?'

He looked aggrieved. 'I've been looking for you all morning to get that grievance, fellow. Jesus Christ, is this all the thanks I get?'

'I haven't got any grievance,' I grated.

He looked blank. 'What about what we were talking about?' He frowned. 'Don't you remember? I told you to write out the grievance and give it to me and I'd present it before the executive board.'

I tried to quiet my nerves and be pleasant. But it was no go. 'Look, Herbie,' I said. 'I'm not gonna make any grievance. I'm gonna let it go.' My voice was raw and shaky; all of a sudden I felt sick.

'But I thought you wanted-' he began.

I cut him off. 'All I want is peace,' I said. I was tired, tired, tired. 'Just peace, Herbie. Is that too hard for you to understand?'

Herbie looked at me for a long moment. 'You're lucky you're not a Jew,' he said.