Chester Himes - If he hollers let him go

I was lying in bed. Outside the sun was shining bright. I've overslept, I thought suddenly, and jumped out of bed. Pain shot through my head like summer lightning. My mouth was full of quinine and cottony-dry. I frowned, turning my head carefully to look into the mirror.

Then I remembered. I tried to stop it about Alice but it came back anyway. I felt an odd sort of embarrassment for her; a sort of mixture of shame and betrayal and repulsion. I hoped I wouldn't have to see her for some time; not until I could get myself prepared to think about her again.

I sat slowly down on the bed and looked about. The night kept coming back in brown, dirty memories. Parts of my dream were mingled with them. I began feeling remorseful. I despised myself. I wondered if I would ever be able to face people again. I was too ashamed to leave the room.

All of a sudden I thought about my job. I could see it coming and couldn't stop it. Danny Tebbel would be taking my place, bossing my gang around. The fellows in my gang would be sullen, resentful-ashamed too. Just ashamed of being black. They'd know what had happened to me; they'd see it in the white workers' eyes.

When I thought about Madge that cold scare settled over me and I began to tremble. Just scared to think about her, about living in the same world with her. Almost like thinking about the electric chair. I knew if I kept sitting there thinking about her I'd get up and go out to the shipyard and kill her.

But I couldn't move. I couldn't even stand up any more. I'd forgotten about the dice game and the white boy I was going to kill. It was just Madge and me in an empty world, with Alice pulling at me not quite hard enough to get me out.

I'm a goddamned coward, I told myself. I'm afraid to die, that's my trouble. Afraid of getting hurt. Acting a fool. Being made ridiculous. Being offended, ignored, despised. Afraid to make the one final decision in my soul that would settle everything one way or another forever. I knew I was going to do it, but I was afraid to do it then.

I bowed my head in my hands and groaned. I felt like I was going to be sick a long, long time and never get well. I wrapped my robe about me and went in and took a quick shave and bath and put on some clothes.

The phone rang and I went to answer it.

'Bob?' It was Alice. Her voice was tense.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. 'Yes, this is Bob,' I said.

'I feel like a slut,' she said.

I wanted her to stop talking about it; I wanted her to go on as if it'd never happened. 'Look, can't you forget about last night?' I said tightly. 'All it was, it just got me for a chick like you to go for a hype like that. But hell, I've forgotten about it already.'

'But I'd die if anyone knew…' She left it hanging.

So that's it, I thought. 'If you're worrying about me talking- don't,' I grated. 'I don't talk about anybody-'

'It's not that, Bob, darling,' she cut in quickly, but her voice sounded relieved. 'I just want to atone, darling; I just want to prove to you I'm not really that type of person.'

I kept right on as if she hadn't spoken. 'But if you're trying to buy my silence it isn't worth it. I know any number of chicks I can go to bed with, but I always thought of you-' She hung up.

I banged the receiver on the hook and turned toward the kitchen. I thought, Goddamnit, everything I do is wrong. I slipped on my jacket, got my identification and money, and went out without saying anything at all. When I looked in the garage I didn't see my car. My stomach went hollow. Now if I'd banged it up and left it somewhere on the side of the road, that would really do it, I thought, hurrying out to the street. It was parked across the street with the front wheels cut sharply up over the curb as if I'd started to drive into the people's house and had caught myself.

The keys were still in it and the ignition was on, although the lights were off. It must have stalled when the wheels went over the curb. I walked around it, looking for dented fenders and flat tyres, but it didn't have a nick. I climbed in, mashed the starter; the motor kicked on. A better car than I was a man, I thought.

When I started north on Wall Street I had no idea where I was going. Anywhere, just to get away from the people I knew for a while. I just wanted to get away from the so-called respectable people of the world, the decent people. They were playing it too close for me, playing it harder than lightning bumps a stump, taking too many techs.

I turned over to San Pedro and headed downtown toward Little Tokyo, where the spooks and spills had come in and taken over. It was a hot, lazy day and the drain from my hangover left me lightheaded. I pulled up in front of a hotel near First and San Pedro and went into the combination bar and restaurant called the Rust Room. I climbed on a stool and ordered a double brandy straight, then looked in the mirror to see who was there.

In the mirror I saw a chick get up from a table with a couple of sailors in a booth and start over towards me. I turned to face her and began talking before she could open her mouth. 'Now don't start performing, baby, before you know what it's all about-'

'What kind of nigger are you anyway?' she broke in. 'Puleeze elucidate. Just what is your jinglet that you are now about to recite?' She was a long tall yellow chick, named Veda, who worked as a waitress on the day shift. She had a longish narrow face and a thick-lipped nice-made mouth; her thick black curly hair grew low on her forehead like a man's and her heavy black brows met over the bridge of her nose, not a pretty chick but good for a change. I'd broken a date with her a week before.

'I'm tryna tell you, honey,' I grinned. 'My car broke down and I tried to get you on the phone but couldn't anybody find you. Where were you, anyway? Having your sport I suppose.'

'Don't hand me that hockey,' she said, leaning one hand on the bar and looking at me. 'That is the saddest jive; that is pitiful, puleeze bulieve me.'

'Now look, baby, you're getting loud,' I said. 'It doesn't become you.'

'You're sad, too sad, puleeze bulieve me,' she said. 'You're just a chickenshit nigger, too sad, just too sad for words.'

'Now listen, darling, don't lose your pretty ways,' I said, trying to quiet her. 'You're too refined for all this notoriety jive.'

'You're just a sad nigger, goddamn. Why in the hell didn't you call me?'

I turned to the bartender. 'Give this chick a drink.' Then back to her. 'What you drinking, baby?' I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me. 'You're a fine-looking chick out of uniform, strictly exotic.' I was trying to stop her from talking but it didn't work.

'Exotic my fanny,' she said. 'You're just a corn-fed nigger, a mealy Moe.'

'What you drinking, girl?' the bartender asked.

'Singapore sling,' she said, then changed it: 'No, just brandy and water.' Then back to me. 'You're really too, too sad. I laid off to give you something you ain't never had before and what do you do-' She broke off. 'I'm too, too tall, really running and leaping, if I'm lying I'm dying. Puleeze bulieve me.'

'Let me get like you,' I said.

She gave me a look. 'Waste my good earth on you, a sad nigger like you, to have you duck out on me again? You must wanna die, nigger.'

'What you doing now?' I asked.

'I'm going up and go to bed, darling. What do you care?'

'Let me go up with you and put you to bed, honey,' I said. 'You just might not be able to make it.'

'I just might not at that,' she said. 'But you ain't gonna help me. You gotta have a date with me before you fall in my pad, darling. I just don't pick up anybody at the bar.' She went back to the table with the two sailors in the booth and sat down and began eating the dinner she had left.

Suddenly the brandy took hold and I began feeling melancholy. I thought of my second year at State when I subbed at end on the football team-the one game I played and the one touchdown I made and the people cheering. I had never felt so powerful, so strong, almost as if I'd become the hero I used to dream about being when I grew up. Then I thought about a motion picture called A Guy Named Joe; about that cat making that last bomb run, sinking a Nazi flat-top. Going out in a blaze of glory. See you, gates. See you, Jaxon. See you, stud.. In the bright blue forever…