If he hollers let him go

CHAPTER XIX

When one of Kelly's flunkeys came up at about a quarter of twelve and said there was a call for me, all I thought was, Please just let it be Alice. I held my breath all the way down to the tool crib, and when the girl gave me a different number to call I went dead inside. For an instant I started not to call it, then I went ahead on the off-chance.

'Alice?'

When I heard her voice, light and gay, 'Darling, I've changed my mind again. Isn't that just like a woman?' I let my breath out in a long soft sigh and felt the life come back into me.

'My luck is really getting good,' I said. 'This is the very first time a woman's prerogative has ever worked in my favour.'

'There's no such thing as luck,' she teased. 'It's only the correct application of effort, energy, evaluation-'

'And eccentricity,' I supplied, laughing. 'Do you know you've just won the Robert Jones medal for distinguished service?'

'And by what action, General Jones? Certainly not merely because I am exceedingly glamorous, talented, intelligent, wealthy, famous, and unattached?'

I laughed again. She was determined to keep the mood light, and that was fine by me. 'I'll just keep my medal, baby, and give myself instead,' I said, then asked, 'Do you have your car?'

'I'm at the parking lot now. I decided at the last moment that I couldn't live without you.'

'You sound groovy,' I said, then, 'Listen, you know the drive-in out on Avalon just beyond the riding academy? I'll meet you there in half an hour.'

'I'll be there, darling.'

I never knew until that moment just how much she meant to me. It really built me up, made me feel wanted again, important too. A guy just had to feel important to somebody, even if only to himself. A woman's a wonderful thing, I thought-when you love her.

On the way out I passed Kelly and gave him a broad wink, laughed out loud at the startled look that popped on his face.

The noon whistle blew as I was weaving my way through the machine shop and I joined the densely packed, gouging, pushing, fighting crush leaving the ship, stepping on one another's feet, ramming the edges of our hard hats into one another's eyes. But it didn't bother me; I felt at peace with everybody. Anyway, I never minded the scramble nor the hard, hurried push, liked it, in fact.

I went over to Mac's office, told Marguerite I had an appointment with the dentist, and had her write me out a two-hour pass. The gatekeeper asked sourly when did I work; and I told him executives never worked, he should know that. When I opened the door of my car heat rolled out as from a furnace. I had to open all the doors and stand there for a moment until it aired. Then I got in, squirmed down in the soft springy seat, and felt good all over.

Traffic was loose on the harbour road, making driving friendly, but the big Diesel trailers, long as freight cars, hogged the road in passing. The hot dry air was filled with motor smell, pungent, tantalizing; it poured in through the open windows over me, making me want to just squat on the highway and drive a thousand miles.

The vertical sun had a hard California brilliance, powderwhite and eye-searing. When I reached into the glove compartment for my sunglasses I felt the gun I'd put there Monday to kill Johnny Stoddart. I jerked my hand back as if I'd touched death, felt the shock run clear down into my soul. To realize that I'd been so close to murder, now that things had begun to look up, disturbed me more than anything that had ever happened to me in all my life and choked me up again with the old scared feeling. I knew I'd been pushed, but it really jarred me to know that I'd been pushed that far. It gave me a funny feeling of having been drawn outside of myself, of having been goaded beyond my own control. Now I could understand something of Alice's reactions-she must have seen the trouble in me.

But the day wouldn't hold it, cleared it from my mind. It was California on parade, one of those days that relax you like a light massage. If your thoughts will free you, a day like that will make you new. I began feeling excited about seeing Alice-more excited than I'd ever been before. I knew she'd never have called me back if she hadn't really cared. I got something of the same thrill I got the first time I ever dated a girl-a live, tingling expectancy.

What I needed was to marry her, I thought. To settle down before they settled me-in San Quentin or some place. Then I got a strange yearning to have some children-two boys and two girls. I'd never thought seriously about children before, not about having any of my own; and now suddenly I wanted some, wanted the responsibility of raising them, supporting them, educating them; wanted to watch them grow. The girls would certainly have to look like Alice; if they didn't I'd never forgive myself.

Then I had to laugh. It must be the heat, I thought deprecatingly. Or maybe the gas fumes were making me high. Me, a papa. I'd make one hell of a papa, I thought; every time I came home late my children would wonder whether the white folks had killed their papa at last.

But it wasn't such a crazy dream. It was just that I'd never felt any stability, had never really felt confident that the white folks would let me have the next day coming up. And since I'd begun earning enough money to live my own life I hadn't felt that my life belonged to me. Any moment the white folks might ask me to check it in.

A guy couldn't live like that, I knew. I couldn't, anyway. There wasn't enough of me; there wasn't enough of any man, just by himself. And as long as I was black I'd never be anything but half a man at best. I knew I had to get an anchor and hang on or I'd really be gone with the wind, as the good Southern lady said. I knew I'd have to give in, to both Alice and the white folks; but I didn't mind that now. Because now I knew I had to duck or get my goddamn brains knocked out. That much I'd learned since Monday morning. Death had been right on top of me and I hadn't even realized it.

I spotted Alice's maroon Olds two-door sedan as I drove up, spic and span and freshly Simonized, in the circle of cars about the place, so I parked in the lot to one side and walked over. It was a typical southern California drive-in, a circular glassenclosed building shining with chrome trimmings with a counter inside and cars parked spokewise outside. Pretty girls in very brief red and gold costumes like those of ballet dancers, showing a lot of leg and thigh in the hopes they might be 'discovered' by some Hollywood talent scout, scampered in and out, waiting on the customers.

Alice had been watching through the rear-view mirror, and when she saw me coming around the back of the car she turned and smiled. She had on a beige gabardine dress, open at the throat, and tortoiseshell sunglasses; and her hair was loose and windblown, falling all over her shoulders. She looked fresh and feminine, a chick you'd be proud of anywhere, and her smile was wide and warm.

'Hi, darling,' she greeted, leaning over to open the door. 'You look like a worker in a CIO win-the-war poster.' Her voice was low and mellow, but there was an intimacy in it that made me the one and only.

I climbed in beside her, laughing; pulled shut the door. 'I'm the twelve million black faces,' I said.

She took off her sunglasses and set up her mouth. 'Let me kiss one of your faces.'

'I didn't bring but this one.' I tossed my hard hat on the back seat, leaned over, and kissed her lightly. 'You taste good.'

She gave a girlish giggle. 'I bet I'd be delicious with cold beer.'

'Unh-unh, you're more the sparkling burgundy type,' I contradicted.

She curled up in her corner of the seat and drew her legs beneath her. 'I have such a rotten disposition I doubt if I'd be palatable,' she said with mock ruefulness.

I had to laugh out loud. I'd never seen her in just that mood before, gay and whimsical, so completely cut loose from her social worker's attitude. But I liked it.

'We ought to do this more often,' I said.

'What, speculate on our savouriness?' she asked, raising her brows. 'Do you by any chance think that you are more palatable than I?'

The little blonde waitress came up just in time to hear the last of it and she gave a spontaneous giggle. Alice blushed and looked disconcerted, but the waitress gave her a friendly smile and attached the tray to the car door. I ordered a couple of chicken sandwiches and milk, and Alice ordered a sandwich of tuna-fish salad and iced tea.

When the waitress left I said to Alice, 'See, you got caught.'

She laughed. 'Wouldn't it be funny if she thought we were cannibals?' Then after a moment she said wistfully, 'I'd love to go to the beach today and just laze in the sun.'

'Let's do.'

'Oh, I can't. I have another conference at three.' She sighed. 'Life is just one damned thing after another.'

'You're not just saying it,' I echoed.

We were silent for a moment and I looked around at the people in adjoining cars. With the exception of us, they were all white. I noticed several of them glancing furtively at us and I figured they were trying to make out what nationality Alice was. Now I felt self-conscious, slightly ill at ease. I wondered if I'd ever feel perfectly at ease around white people.

Alice hadn't noticed; she was looking over toward the riding academy where three white girls were cantering their mounts around the oval.

'Take me riding Sunday morning, darling,' she said impulsively.

I felt myself frowning. 'I don't know of any place in the city we can go now. The place in Watts is closed for the duration and you know how most of these other places are-they don't even want us to park and watch.'

She didn't answer right away and I wondered for a moment if she'd been riding at the white places. Then I thought about her going out with Leighton the night before, and while it didn't exactly bother me, I had to say something about it.

'Did you have a-nice time last night?' I asked politely, and the next instant I could have bitten off my tongue.

She gave me a curious sidewise look and her face went sober. 'Yes,' she said. 'Did you?'

I winced and all of a sudden the pressure was back on me. 'Baby, let's don't do this to each other,' I said, but I knew that wasn't enough. I had to tell her why we shouldn't. After a moment I said simply, 'I love you.'

She turned slowly to face me and her eyes were like misty stars. 'That's the first time you've ever said that without any qualifying remarks,' she said with a look on her face that made her really beautiful.

'I've never meant to qualify it,' I said. 'You know us cullud folks just talk that way.'

After a moment she murmured, 'But yours comes from a lack of self-restraint, really.'

I watched the fluid motion of her long slender fingers as she absently fiddled with the steering wheel and thought wonderingly that I'd never noticed before how beautiful they were. Then I thought of what they said about being able to tell a Negro by the half-moons in their finger-nails, and reflected half laughingly on what they'd have to do if the nails were painted.

Finally I said seriously, 'I know. I wonder what's the matter with me, myself. Everything I do or say seems wrong. But I don't do it deliberately, it just turns out that way.'

'Your only trouble is maladjustment, darling,' she said. 'Please don't think I'm trying to rub it in, but there're simply no other words to express it. You don't try to adjust your way of thinking to the actual conditions of life.'

The waitress brought our orders and we were silent while she served them. But now both of us had lost our appetites.

'When I do try to get pushed around,' I said, beginning to tighten up inside again. 'Sometimes I get to feeling that I don't have anything at all to say about what's happening to me. I'm just like some sort of machine being run by white people pushing buttons. Every white person who comes along pushes some button or other on me and I react accordingly.' I turned to look at her. 'Do you ever get that feeling?'

She was looking at me too, not critically as I'd expected, but with a strange deep sympathy. She didn't answer, but there was something in her look that just drew me right on out.

'Take for instance doing something as simple as going downtown to a moving picture show. Every white person I come into contact with, every one I have to speak to, even those I pass on the street-every goddamn one of them has got the power of some kind of control over my own behaviour. Not only that but they use it-use it in every way. Say if I ride the streetcar, the conductor can make me stand there waiting for my change or he can make me ask two or three times for a transfer. Then when I get off and walk down the street the pedestrians can make me step aside to let them pass. The cashier at the theatre can sell me loge seats when she knows there aren't any, and the doorman can send me on up to the balcony, knowing that there aren't any loge seats, then the usher will find the worst possible seat for me. And there's the picture-it's almost certain to offend me in some kind of way. If there're Negro actors in it the roles they play will be offensive; and if it's a play with no part at all for Negroes, if you get to thinking about it, you resent the fact of seeing the kind of life shown you'll never be able to live. The hell of it is, it's not just one little thing-say if I bought the wrong ticket I could take it back and have it exchanged, but it's selling me the ticket and making me go through all the rigmarole. But it's not only that, it's the pressure they put on you of being able to do these things to you…'

My throat began feeling dry and I paused to take a swallow of milk. 'I don't mind some of it,' I went on. 'I know that most people don't have too much to say about the way they live. But I don't have anything at all to say about the way I live-nothing. Take my job-I've never been anything but a flunkey for Kelly, a go-between for him and the coloured workers. Many a time I've been standing down in the tool crib with the other leadermen discussing a new job with Kelly, but whenever I made any kind of suggestion or said anything at all, no matter how sound it was, Kelly just brushed it aside as if I hadn't spoken. I never did have any real authority. Sometimes Kelly'd even have other leadermen give me my assignments. And then the very first time I tried to use a little authority I got slapped down.'

'I understand, darling,' she said. 'But you shouldn't feel too badly about it. That is typical of most Negroes working in a supervisory capacity where white and coloured are employed. Many Negroes whom we think are in top positions are actually no more than figureheads and are much more frustrated than you. I can't give direct orders on my job either, although I am classified as a supervisor. Only suggestions. It almost drives me mad to see cases handled incorrectly and have no power to correct them. Oft-times I have the feeling that I haven't earned two cents since I've been on my job-that I'm just there, keeping someone else out of a job.' She sighed. 'But that is simply one of the conditions of life.'

'I know,' I said. 'But it rankles just the same. I don't like to be pushed around all the time. A guy wants to feel he can control at least some of his life. All this morning-' I caught myself about to tell her how my resentment toward Madge had built up to the place where all that morning it had been controlling me like a puppet on a string. Instead I said, 'I don't want to always be thinking about my race either. I get awful goddamn tired of it. But the white people make me think about it in every way. I never get a chance to think like an ordinary guy.'

'I must tell you again, Bob darling,' she said. 'You need some definite aim, a goal that you can attain within the segregated pattern in which we live.' When I started to interrupt she stopped me. 'I know that sounds like compromise. But it isn't, darling. We are Negroes and we can't change that. But as Negroes, we can accomplish many things, achieve success, live our own lives, own our own homes, and have happiness. There is no reason a Negro cannot control his destiny within this pattern. Really, darling, it is not cowardly. It is simply a form of self-preservation.'

'Listen, baby, it's not that I want to argue. I don't want to ever argue with you any more. And I've already made up my mind to conform-so it isn't that. But please don't tell me I can control my destiny, because I know I can't. In any incident that might come up a white person can use his colour on me and turn it into a catastrophe and I won't have any protection, any out, nothing I can do about it but die. And if that's controlling my destiny-'

'That isn't true, Bob,' she said patiently. 'I will admit that we are restricted and controlled in our economic security, that we have to conform to the pattern of segregation in order to achieve any manner of financial success. And I will grant you that we are subject to racial control in securing education, in almost all public facilities, welfare, health, hospitalization, transportation, in the location of our dwellings, in all the component parts of our existence that stem directly or indirectly from economy.

'But, darling, all of life is not commercial. The best parts of it are not commercial. Love and marriage, children and homes. Those we control. Our physical beings, our personal integrity, our private property-we have as much protection for these as anyone. As long as we conform to the pattern of segregation we do not have to fear the seizure of our property or attack upon our persons.

'And there are many other values that you are not taking into consideration-spiritual values, intrinsic values, which are also fundamental components of our lives. Honesty, decency, respectability. Courage-it takes courage to live as a Negro must. Virtue is our own, to nurture or destroy.

'After all, darling, these are the important things in life. These things that are within us that make us what we are. And we can control them. Every person, no matter of what race, creed, or colour, is the captain of his soul. This is much more important, really, than being permitted to eat in exclusive restaurants, dwell in exclusive neighbourhoods, or even to compete economically with people of other races. It depends, darling, on our own sense of values.'

For a long time after she'd stopped talking I didn't say anything at all because I was just getting it. If somebody had told me this a long time ago, made me see it in just this way, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. Because I was seeing it then for the first time. No matter what the white folks did to me, or made me do just in order to live, Alice and I could have a life of our own, inside of all the pressure, away from it, separate from it, that no white person could ever touch. I saw that then, and I turned to her, tense and serious.

'Will you marry me, Alice?'

I never saw her mouth go so tender as when she said, 'Yes, Bob. Didn't you know that I would?'

I went all buttery inside. 'When?'

'Whenever you want.'

'Next month?'

She nodded. I leaned forward and kissed her again with long and steady pressure. Her eyes closed, her lashes lowering like two tiny fans on her cheeks, and her body flowed forward as her lips came out to meet mine, soft and resilient and budding and full of hope, like the beginning of a new life. That was when I knew it, when I lost all doubt. I could take anything the white folks wanted to put on me, as long as I had this. Because this was it; I knew this was it; this was the number that John saw.

When we broke apart she sat there for a time, relaxed, with her eyes closed; and when she opened them they held a little laugh. 'Will you apologize to the girl you had the fight with?' she asked.

I began laughing too, deep inside. 'You never give up, do you, baby?' I said, adding, 'You know I will.'

Suddenly she said, 'I don't want you to.'

We both laughed together, so wonderfully happy. 'You only win,' I said.

After a moment she started to tell me how she came to know Stella. I tried to stop her, but she had to tell me, she said, she had to get it out from between us. A girl friend of hers had suggested they go there one night after they'd attended a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. She'd gone back once with the same girl. While she'd been hep to the play, it had only been curiosity on her part; she'd never been up with it, never even gone as far as she had the night I was with her. But what was great about it was that I believed her.

After that we had a togetherness we felt nothing could destroy. We felt we'd gotten over the river Jordan into the promised land. Did you ever just know you were right? No matter whether you were gambling or working or operating on a guy, you just had that feeling and you knew it. That was the way it was with us.

'I'm part you now and you're part me,' she said.

'I'm all you.'

'No, I'm all you, if anything.'

'Unh-unh, we're both it.'

Then we were laughing again.

We'd be married sometime the middle of July, we planned.

'People will think funny things because no one ever marries in July,' she said.

'What do we care what people think?' Then I said, 'I'll sell my car and buy us a house. A fellow offered me two grand for it just a couple of weeks ago.'

'I saw the cutest little place for sale. On a little hill beside Monterey Road.'

'Way out there? It'll take me a year to get to work.'

'I'll drive you to work every morning, but you'll have to arrange to ride back with someone else. Although I could meet you downtown every evening-perhaps at the P.E. station.'

'Unh-unh, a bar's the place,' I said.

Then we became serious and talked about means.

'You can keep your job until the first baby comes,' I consented, feeling very male and important. 'But after that it'll be home, sweet home for you, baby.'

'It might be some time before we're able to afford a baby,' she pointed out. 'You're going to be a schoolboy for about three years-don't forget that, Papa.'

'Oh, we'll have the baby whether we can afford it or not,' I said.

She gave me a sly, sidewise glance and began giggling. 'How do you know?'

I was startled for a moment, then I began laughing.

She wouldn't help me to decide about my job. Whether to quit and go to another yard or stay on at Atlas as a mechanic. That was entirely up to me, she said. But she did point out that I might be better off if I stayed on at Atlas and tried to get my job back so I could keep my deferment.

'One thing,' I said. 'Wherever I go, I'll keep out of trouble. I'll get along and make good on the job. You won't have to worry about that.'

She leaned over and kissed me. 'Don't behave too well, darling. I might not love you so much.'

'Anyway, when I enter U.C.L.A. this fall I'll have to go on the graveyard shift, and there might be a better bunch of workers.'

It was exciting, planning for the future. It gave everything a new meaning, an importance it had never had before.

Suddenly I noticed something strange and looked around. All of the cars that had been there when we came were gone. I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to two.

'I'll have to run,' I said.

'You'll have dinner with us. We'll tell Dad and Mother.'

'I know they'll jump for joy.'

She laughed. 'Oh, they like you, really, darling. And they've already guessed how I feel.'

I paid the check and turned to kiss her. I didn't want to ever let her out of my arms, but finally I had to. Then I jumped out, hurried over to my car. I turned one way, she turned the other; we waved to each other. I'll never forget her smile just before she pulled away.

Driving back, I noticed the fields of young corn beside the road and resolved right then to get some place where we could have a victory garden. It'd be fun growing things.

For the first time in my life I felt satisfied. I didn't think of marrying Alice as a way out. I felt that it was what I wanted, what I'd always wanted. I could see myself at forty, dignified, grey at the temples, pleading the defence of a Negro youth. 'Gentlemen of the jury, let me tell you about frustration, a social disease, a disease imposed on peoples of minority groups over and above their control. It is this frustration that drives these youngsters to crime; it is as if society picks them up bodily and hurls them into it. Gentlemen of the jury, I say to you, it is as unjust to condemn this youth for a disease that society has imposed on him…'

Goddamn, I sounded like Clarence Darrow himself, I thought, laughing out loud. Then I sobered. Maybe by that time people would have gotten over the notion, I thought. Maybe they wouldn't be so prone to believe that every Negro man was the same, maybe they would have realized how crazy the whole business was. I sure hoped they'd have some goddamn sense by the time my son was grown.

But my mind wouldn't hold it. My thoughts were full of Alice. I just shook my head. It was one of those miracles. I was a different guy; didn't think the same; didn't feel the same. That was what it did for me. Set me up. Big tough world, but I got you beat now, I thought exultantly. Peace, Father, it is truly wonderful.