Chester Himes - If he hollers let him go

I wasn't ready for that one; wasn't even looking for it. I didn't even have time to dodge it. He'd tricked me into listening by having me wait, and now without giving me time to get mad he said, 'How's Danny Tebbel getting along Bob? Do you think he's going to be able to handle your gang?'

The other two guys looked at me curiously to see how I was taking it, and the tool-crib girl came over and said, 'Those boys in your crew are breaking too many of those 9/32 bits; they'll just have to stop it or they can't have any more.'

They couldn't have done it any better if they'd rehearsed it. I couldn't take offence because Kelly didn't tell the joke to me and he could always say if I hadn't wanted to hear it I didn't have to listen. And even if I still wanted to take offence, the girl had stepped into the picture and whatever I might say to Kelly was sure to offend her. I never wanted to get out of a place so bad in all my life; I wanted to just take my tail between my legs and slink on out. It was a gut punch and my stomach was hollow as a drum; it took all I had to keep standing up straight, to keep on looking at him.

I did something with my face, trying to make it smile, and I had to reach down my throat and pull out my voice with my hand, but I got it and I said, 'I'll get mine by and by.'

The girl's mouth popped open. 'Well, I never-' she began.

But Kelly knew he had me. He waved me away. 'Go on, go on. Get out of here.'

I turned away and started walking, not fast but not poking. I went past workers, stepped over lines, ducked under staging, squeezed by shapes, through the access hole in the midship bulkhead, up the jack ladder to the third deck, up another ladder to the fourth deck, headed aft. I didn't see anybody, didn't see anything. I knew where I was going. I didn't want to go. My body just carried me and my mind just pushed me along. I didn't feel rash nor reckless, nothing like that, I felt low, dispirited, black as I've ever felt. Really a black boy now.

But I knew I was going to have to say something to Madge if I got shot on the spot. Not to rack her back or to cuss her out. That wasn't going to be enough. Not now. Not after having been tricked into listening to that bastard tell that joke. I was going to have to have her. I was going to have to make her as low as a white whore in a Negro slum-a scrummy two-dollar whore… I was going to have to so I could keep looking the white folks in the face.

And when Monday came I'd come on back and work as a mechanic. And if they put me in the Jim Crow Army I was going to take that too. Ben could talk all he wanted to. He was right. I knew he was right. But I was going to take it if they put it on me. If I had to fight and die for the country I'd fight and die for it. I'd even go so far as to believe it was my country too. But I'd be damned if I was going to be afraid to make this woman because she was white Texas.

So I started over where she was working. She was over to one side by herself, leaning against some staging. There were a lot of other workers around, but I didn't see them; all I could see was her standing there between me and my manhood.

She saw me coming and looked me square in the eyes, hers bright with a sudden excitement. One of the mechanics she was working with spotted me too and walked quickly to her side as if his presence would protect her. But his being there didn't mean a thing to me. I was going to say, 'Look, bitch, let's stop all this jive and get together like we want.'

My heart was in my throat and I felt like jelly. We kept looking at each other and I knew she expected me to say something. I knew she wanted me to. I knew she knew what I'd say. I didn't know what her reaction might be; I didn't even think about it. I won't say I didn't want her. It built up fast and shook me like a chip hammer digging in my navel. I wanted her then more than I wanted all the Alices in the world. I don't know how to case it. She looked like a big overpainted strumpet with eyes as wild as Oklahoma.

But when I got to her I lost my nerve. I couldn't say a word. I just couldn't do it, that was all. She was pure white Texas. And I was black. And a white man was standing there. I never knew before how good a job the white folks had done on me.

I turned and kept on by. I cursed myself for a coward. I called myself a fool. I told myself there was nothing to it. Hell, she was a cheap bitchy tacker. And I was still a leaderman. We were both workers. What could she say? How could she resent my speaking to her? The white guys treated some of those white women like they were bitches in heat. A lot of 'em were prostitutes anyway; they were always firing some of 'em for tricking on the job. And this woman looked like a slut on the make. Anybody in the world could understand how she'd get a proposition. A white guy might ask her outright how much was it worth-or sold for anyway. But I didn't even have the nerve to speak to her. That was what really got it, when I really knew. I had gotten up that morning and gotten myself ready to die. And I could have gone out and done it. I could have kept walking into. 45 slugs until the weight of 'em pulled me down, so help me God. But I just couldn't walk into this woman with so much white inside her.

I knew she knew just what had happened. A white man wouldn't have known it. Some white women might not and she had seen my nerve desert me. I've never felt so cheap, so small and inconsequential, so absolutely subhuman. I couldn't stand myself; couldn't stand thinking about myself. It was physical torture.

I kept going toward the gangway port. Once I stopped I knew she was watching me. I knew her mouth was twisted in a sneer the size of a dill pickle. I wanted to turn around and go on back and talk to her. Even then I could have saved a little pride. I knew she would know I'd funked, then braced myself for another try. I knew she wanted me to make it. But I couldn't, just couldn't, that was all.

I wouldn't even try to make Sad Sammy believe it, and he'll believe anything. Because I didn't even believe it myself, even while it was happening. I didn't know whether it was all the things that had happened to me put together-that was what I wanted to believe-or whether it was just the pure and simple colours of America.

I had known white girls in both California and Ohio. I had gone with a little Italian girl in Cleveland for almost a year. Then there had been a tall brown-haired girl who worked as a stenographer in a downtown office who used to let me take her out now and then. She'd lived over on 100th Street near Euclid and used to walk up and meet me at the Chauffeurs Club. Both of them were good girls, as good morally as most.

And when Val had his joint in the alley off Cedar and Eightysixth Street a lot of gine white women in the money used to come out there to hear Art Tatum and Lonnie Johnson. Many of them would get drunk and cut out with any coloured guy available. And out at the Cedar Gardens the Avenue slicks laid about to catch them on the rebound. It wasn't any secret. The white men knew all about it. If the black boys played too rough the white men would put the cops on them and get them sapped up.

So it wasn't that Madge was white; it was the way she used it. She had a sign up in front of her as big as Civic Centre-KEEP AWAY, NIGGERS, I'M WHITE! And without having to say one word she could keep all the white men in the world feeling they had to protect her from black rapists. That made her doubly dangerous because she thought about Negro men. I could tell that the first time I saw her. She wanted them to run after her. She expected it, demanded it as her due. I could imagine her teasing them with her body, showing her bare thighs and breasts. Then having them lynched for looking.

And that was what scared me. Luring me with her body and daring me with her colour. It ate into me, made me want her for her colour, not her body. In order to have her I'd have to challenge her colour; I couldn't take the dare. Just twenty steps and thirteen words-but I couldn't make it.