Chester Himes - If he hollers let him go

So I went outboard and down the wooden gangway, roughing people out of the way. I felt castrated, snake-bellied, and cur-doggish, I felt like a nigger being horse-whipped in Georgia. Cheap, dirty, low. I wanted to grab some bastard and roll down the stairs. My face felt tight. The taste of white folks was in my mouth and I couldn't get it out.

What I ought to do is rape her, I thought. That's what she wanted.

I went down to the dock, searched in the scrap-iron pile until I found a two-foot dog, heavy on one end with weld burrs. One blow with that would crush a chump's skull. Gripping it tightly in my right hand, I went along the dock. The sun was hot, unbearable. My skin felt scorched; my mouth was dry. My eyes felt half open, dead, ringed in steel. I walked with a steady hard motion, planting each step like driving piles. I shouldered into guys, split between couples, walked in a straight line. At the end of the dock I passed the guard in his little shanty, kept on toward the copper shop. It wasn't until then that I knew where I was going. I was looking for my white boy again. He'd been elected.

I was going to walk up and beat out his brains. Then I was going to find Madge, wherever she was, make my bid and make it stick. After that I could go up and sit in the gas chamber at San Quentin and laugh. Because it was the funniest goddamned thing that had ever happened. A black son of a bitch destroying himself because of a no-good white slut from Texas. It was so funny because it didn't make sense. It was just the notion. If you could just get over the notion you could laugh yourself silly.

I entered the copper shop from the front, kept on back toward the punch press the white boy operated. He wasn't there. I asked an old fellow working on the bench where the boy who ran the machine was.

'Johnny Stoddart?' he asked. Then he looked at me. He saw the dog in my hand. He saw my face. His eyes bucked. 'What do you want with him?' he asked.

'None of your goddamned business,' I answered evenly.

He opened his mouth as if to say something else, thought better of it. But he wouldn't turn his back to me; instead he backed away a distance, turned quickly, and started down toward the office. I stood there for a moment looking about. I felt weighted, baulked, baffled. It was as if this boy, Johnny Stoddart, had let me down by not being there so I could beat out his brains, had betrayed me.

I went out the back doorway, turned to the right. I whistled a sharp, high-breaking scale, levelled off on 'Don't Cry, Baby.' My lips felt stiff, inflexible. As I turned the corner of the corrugated building I threw the dog against the tin wall out of sheer frustration.

It sounded like a cannon shot and just missed hitting my boy in the face. He was coming down the other side and I hadn't even seen him. We both jumped back from pure reflex. Then recognition came into his eyes and his face turned greenish white. It froze him, nailed him to the spot. For a moment I was stunned. I'd never seen a white man scared before, not craven, not until you couldn't see the white for the scare.

Murder touched me then. Not the notion but the actual; the physical; the impelling vicarious urge to take my iron dog and beat him to a pulp. Then all at once I felt sorry for him. Sorry for anybody who had to be that scared and keep on living.

Suddenly I was laughing, doubling over, laughing all down in my belly. I was thinking, without knowing why, about the other night when I took the garbage out for Ella Mae. Something had moved in the dark and made a funny noise that scared the hell out of me. I had dropped the garbage and damn near killed myself stumbling over the steps trying to get out of the way. Whatever it was lit out the other way. I ran into the house, got my pistol and flashlight, came back to investigate with the cocked pistol in my hand, and found the tiniest little kitten you ever want to see trying to hide in the irises. I was thinking about that and laughing like hell; and thinking about how all my life I'd been scared of white folks because they were white and it was funny as hell to find out white folks were scared of me, too, because I was black.

The white boy came out of it and colour came back into his face and it got beet-red. White came back into his soul; I could see it coming back, rage at seeing a nigger threatening him. Now he was ready to die for his race like a patriot, a true believer. I could see in his mind he wanted to kill me because I had seen him lose it. He hunched his shoulders, bowed his head, and started into me. And then he lost his nerve. He shook himself steady, straightened up, looked around for a weapon. He didn't see any, so he said, 'I'll fight you.'

I smiled at him. 'I don't want to fight you,' I told him. 'I want to kill you. But right now I'm saving you up.'

I could see the fear coming back and see him fighting against it.

'If I catch you around my house again I'm gonna shoot you like a dog,' he threatened, and wheeled away.

I turned and watched him for a moment, feeling good, feeling fine, loose, free. I had gotten over the notion; I had spit the white folks out my mouth. There wasn't anything they could do to me now, I told myself; nothing they could say to me that would hurt. I was ready now, solid ready, to walk right up to Texas.

I kicked my tin hat back at a signifying angle, pushed back toward the dock. Before I got there the whistle blew for lunch.

I went over to the canteen, got some hot stew, a piece of pie, and coffee. Looking around for a place to eat, I saw Madge sitting on the ground with her back propped against a stack of pipes in the shade of a shed beside the pipe shop. An older woman stopped and put her lunch down beside her, then got into the line at the canteen.

I hesitated a moment to see if anyone else would join her, then started toward her, my heart pumping like a rivet gun and my legs wobbly weak. Something drew her gaze and she looked up into my eyes. We held gazes until I stopped just in front of her. Her eyes were bright, liquid, and her face was slightly flushed. She had peeled off the leather jacket and was clad in a white waist, open at the throat. Her breasts were loose and ripe as cantaloupes.

I opened my mouth, couldn't make it, swallowed, and tried again. 'Just where do you get that stuff?' I said. 'Just who do you think you are?' My voice came out of the top of my mouth, light and weightless and stilted.

I had expected her to do anything but what she did. She fluttered her mascaraed lashes at me like an 1890 slick chick and gave me a look of pure blue innocence. 'I don't think you know me,' she said in her flat Southern drawl. Then she let recognition leak into her look. 'Oh, you're the boy I had the fight with the other day.' Now she gave me a ravishing smile-at least that's what it was supposed to be-and her manner became easy, friendly, without tension of any sort. 'Yo' name is Bob, isn't it? Rest the weight, Bob, you must get tired of toting it around all day.'

All I could do was stare at her. After all that tremendous anxiety I had gone through; after all that murderous build-up, that hard hollow scare; after all the crazy, wild-eyed, frightened acts she had put on, the white armour plate she'd wrapped herself up in, the insurmountable barriers she'd raised between us, here she was breaking it down, wiping it all out, with a smile; treating me as casually as an old acquaintance. It was too much, just simply too much, for one person to be able to do. I must have looked very funny at that moment, for she burst out laughing.

'Don't take it so hard,' she said. 'Lotta folks fight. I think it's 'cause they like making up so much.'

I sat down beside her, put my stew, pie, and coffee between my legs. But I couldn't eat it; if I had taken a bite I would have thrown up. I was sick as a dog. I didn't look at her. I took a long deep breath, looked at the ground. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.