If he hollers let him go

CHAPTER II

I went out to the garage, threw up the door, backed halfway out to the street on the starter, telling myself at the time I oughtn' to do it. I had a '42 Buick Roadmaster I'd bought four months ago, right after I'd gotten to be a leaderman, and every time I got behind the wheel and looked down over the broad, flat, mile-long hood I thought about how the rich white folks out in Beverly couldn't even buy a new car now and got a certain satisfaction. I straightened out and dug off with a jerk, turned the corner at forty, pushed it on up in the stretch on Fifty-fourth between San Pedro and Avalon, with my nerves tightening, telling me to take it slow before I got into a battle royal with some cracker motor-cycle cop, and my mind telling me to hell with them, I was a key man in a shipyard, as important as anybody now.

Homer and Conway were waiting in front of the drug-store at the corner of Fifty-fourth and Central.

'You're kinda tardy, playboy,' Homer said, climbing in beside Conway.

I turned the corner into Central and started digging. 'She wouldn't let me go,' I said.

'You mean you had that last dollar left,' Conway said.

I squeezed between a truck and an oncoming streetcar, almost brushing, and Homer said, 'See that. Now he's tryna kill us. He don't mind dying hisself, but why he got to kill you and me too?'

'Just like that safety man said, gambling thirty seconds against thirty years,' Conway said.

I pulled up in front of the hotel at Fifty-seventh and my other three riders, Smitty, Johnson and Pigmeat climbed in the back.

Before I started I turned to Pigmeat and said, 'I own some parts of you, don't I, buddy?'

'Get over, goddamnit!' Johnson snarled at Smitty in the back seat and pushed him. 'You want all the seat?'

'Don't call me no "buddy," man,' Pigmeat said to me. 'When I escaped from Mississippi I swore I'd lynch the first sonabitch that called me a "buddy".'

'There these niggers is fighting already,' Homer said, shaking his head.. 'Whenever niggers gets together that's the first thing they gonna do.'

Smitty squirmed over to give Johnson more room. 'By God, here's a man wakes up evil every morning. Ain't just some mornings; this man wakes up evil every morning.' He looked around at Johnson. 'What's the matter with you, man, do your old lady beat you?'

Homer thought they were going to fight. He decided to be peacemaker. 'Now you know how Johnson is,' he said to Smitty. 'That's just his way. You know he don't mean no harm.'

As soon as Smitty found out somebody was ready to argue he began getting bad sure enough. 'How do I know how he is?' he shouted. 'Does he know how I is? Hell, everybody evil on Monday morning. I'm evil too. He ain't no eviler'n me.'

'Shut up!' Conway yelled. 'Bob's tryna say something.' Then he turned to me. 'Don't you know what a "buddy" is, Bob? A "buddy" drinks bilge water, eats crap, and runs rabbits. That's what a peckerwood means when he calls you "buddy".'

'I ain't kidding, fellow,' I told Pigmeat.

He started scratching for his wallet. 'Now that's a Senegalese for you,' he complained. 'Gonna put me out his car 'bout three lousy bucks. Whatcha gonna do with a fellow like that?' He passed me three ones.

'This is for last week,' I said, taking them. 'What about this week?'

'Aw, man, I'll give it to you Friday,' he grumbled. 'You raise more hell 'bout three lousy bucks-'

I mashed the starter and dug off without hearing the rest of it. Johnson had started beefing about the job, and now they all had it.

'How come it is we always got to get the hardest jobs?' Smitty asked. 'If somebody'd take a crap on deck Kelly'd come and get our gang to clean it up.'

'I been working in this yard two years-Bob'll tell you-and all I done yet is the jobs don't nobody else wanta do,' Conway said. 'I'm gonna quit this yard just as sure as I live and nothing don't happen and get me a job at Cal Ship.'

'They don't want you over there neither,' Pigmeat said.

'They don't even want a coloured man to go to the school here any more,' Homer put in. 'Bessie ask Kelly the other day 'bout going to school-she been here three months now-and he told her they still filled up. And a peck come right after-I was standing right there-and he signed him up right away.'

'You know they don't want no more nig-no more of us getting no mechanic's pay,' Pigmeat said. 'You know that in front. What she gotta do is keep on after him.'

'If I ever make up my mind to quit,' Johnson said, 'he the first sonabitch I'm gonna whup. I'm gonna whup his ass till it ropes like okra.'

Conway said, 'I ain't gonna let you. He mine. I been saving that red-faced peckerwood too long to give 'im up now. I'm gonna whip 'im till he puke; then I'm gonna let 'im get through puking; then I'm gonna light in on him and whip 'im till he poot…' He kept on as if it was getting good to him. 'Then I'm gonna let 'im get through pooting; then I'm gonna light in on 'im and whip 'im till he-' They were all laughing now.

'You can't whip him until you get him,' I called over my shoulder.

'You tell 'em, Bob,' Smitty said. 'We gonna see Kelly in a half-hour, then we gonna see what Conway do.'

'I ain't said I was gonna whip the man this morning,' Conway backtracked. 'I said when I quit-that's what I said.'

The red light caught me at Manchester; and that made me warm. It never failed; every time I got in a hurry I got caught by every light. I pulled up in the outside lane, abreast a V-8 and an Olds, shifted back to first, and got set to take the lead. When the light turned green it caught a white couple in the middle of the street. The V-8 full of white guys dug off and they started to run for it; and the two white guys in the Olds blasted at them with the horn, making them jump like grasshoppers. But when they looked up and saw we were coloured they just took their time, giving us a look of cold hatred.

I let out the clutch and stepped on the gas. Goddamn 'em, I'll grind 'em into the street, I thought. But just before I hit them something held me. I tamped the brake.

'What the hell!' Johnson snarled, picking himself up off the floor.

I sat there looking at the white couple until they had crossed the sidewalk, giving them stare for stare, hate for hate. Horns blasted me from behind, guys in the middle lanes looked at me as they passed; but all I could see was two pecks who didn't hate me no more than I hated them. Finally I went ahead, just missed sideswiping a new Packard Clipper. My arms were rubbery and my fingers numb; I was weak as if I'd been heaving sacks of cement all day in the sun.

After that everything got under my skin. I was coming up fast in the middle lane and some white guy in a Nash coupe cut out in front of me without signalling. I had to burn rubber to keep from taking off his fender; and the car behind me tapped my bumper. I didn't know whether he had looked in the rearview mirror before he pulled out or not, but I knew if he had, he could have seen we were a carful of coloured-and that's the way I took it. I kept on his tail until I could pull up beside him, then I leaned out the window and shouted, 'This ain't Alabama, you peckerwood son of a bitch. When you want to pull out of line, stick out your hand.'

He gave me a quick glance, then looked straight ahead. After that he ignored me. That made me madder than if he'd talked back. I stuck with him clear out to Compton. A dozen times I had a chance to bump him into an oncoming truck. Then I began feeling virtuous and let him go.

But at the entrance to the Shell Refinery the white cop directing traffic caught sight of us and stopped me on a dime. The white workers crossing the street looked at the big new car full of black faces and gave off cold hostility. I gave them look for look.

'What's the matter with these pecks this morning?' Homer said. 'Is everybody evil?'

By now it was a quarter of eight. It was twelve miles to the yard. I gritted my teeth and started digging again; I swore the next person who tried to stop me I'd run him down. But traffic on all harbour roads was heavy the whole day through, and during the change of shifts at the numerous refineries and shipyards it was mad, fast, and furious.

It was a bright June morning. The sun was already high. If I'd been a white boy I might have enjoyed the scramble in the early morning sun, the tight competition for a twenty-foot lead on a thirty-mile highway. But to me it was racial. The huge industrial plants flanking the ribbon of road-shipyards, refineries, oil wells, steel mills, construction companies-the thousands of rushing workers, the low-hanging barrage balloons, the close hard roar of Diesel trucks and the distant drone of patrolling planes, the sharp, pungent smell of exhaust that used to send me driving clear across Ohio on a sunny summer morning, and the snow-capped mountains in the background, like picture post-cards, didn't mean a thing to me. I didn't even see them; all I wanted in the world was to push my Buick Roadmaster over some peckerwood's face.

Time and again I cut in front of some fast-moving car, making rubber burn and brakes scream and drivers curse, hoping a paddy would bump my fender so I'd have an excuse to get out and clip him with my tyre iron. My eyes felt red and sticky and my mouth tasted brown. I turned into the tightly patrolled harbour road, doing a defiant fifty.

Conway said at large, 'Oh, Bob's got plenny money, got just too much money. He don't mind paying a fine.'

Nobody answered him. By now we were all too evil to do much talking. We came into the stretch of shipyards-Consolidated, Bethlehem, Western Pipe and Steel-caught an open mile, and I went up to sixty. White guys looked at us queerly as we went by. We didn't get stopped but we didn't make it. It was five after eight when we pulled into the parking lot at Atlas Ship. I found a spot and parked and we scrambled out, nervous because we were late, and belligerent because we didn't want anybody to say anything about it.

The parking-lot attendant waited until I had finished locking the car, then came over and told me I had to move, I'd parked in the place reserved for company officials. I looked at him with a cold, dead fury, too spent even to hit him. I let my breath out slowly, got back into the car, and moved it. The other fellows had gone into the yard. I had to stop at Gate No. 2 to get a late card.

The gatekeeper said, 'Jesus Christ, all you coloured boys are late this morning.'

A guard standing near by leered at me. 'What'd y'all do las' night, boy? I bet y'all had a ball down on Central Avenue.'

I started to tell him I was up all night with his mother, but I didn't feel up to the trouble. I punched my card without giving a sign that I had heard. Then I cut across the yard to the outfitting dock. We were working on a repair ship-it was called a floating dry dock-for the Navy. My gang was installing the ventilation in the shower compartment and the heads, as the toilets were called.

At the entrance to the dock the guard said, 'Put out that cigarette, boy. What's the matter you coloured boys can't never obey no rules?'

I tossed it over on the wooden craneway, still burning. He muttered something as he went over to step on it.

The white folks had sure brought their white to work with them that morning.