Chester Himes - For love of Imabelle

From there, going down the steep descent of 155th Street to the bridge, it was less than a five-minute walk to that dark, dismal section along the Harlem River where the shooting fracas had taken place.

When Jackson took off in the big old Cadillac hearse down Park Avenue, he didn’t know where he was going. He was just running. He clung to the wheel with both hands. His bulging eyes were set in a fixed stare on the narrow strip of wet brick pavement as it curled over the hood like an apple-peeling from a knife blade, as though he were driving underneath it. On one side the iron stanchions of the trestle flew past like close-set fence pickets, on the other the store-fronted sidewalk made one long rushing somber kaleidoscope in the gray light before dawn.

The deep, steady thunder of the supercharger spilled out behind. The open back-doors swung crazily on the bumpy road, battering the head of the corpse as it jolted up and down beneath the bouncing trunk.

He headed into the red traffic-light at 116th Street doing eighty-five miles an hour. He didn’t see it. A sleepy taxi driver saw something black go past in front of him and thought he was seeing automobile ghosts.

The stalls of the Harlem Market underneath the railroad trestle begin at 115th Street and extend down to 101st Street. Delivery trucks filled with meat, vegetables, fruit, fish, canned goods, dried beans, cotton goods, clothing, were jockeying back and forth in the narrow lane between the stanchions and the sidewalk. Laborers, stall-keepers, truck jumpers and drivers were milling about, unloading the provisions, setting up the stalls, getting prepared for the Saturday rush.

Jackson bore down on the congested scene without slackening speed. Behind him were yowling sirens and the red eyes of pursuing patrol cars.

“Look out!” a big colored man yelled.

Panicked people jumped for cover. A truck did the shimmy as the driver frantically steered one way and then the other trying to dodge the hearse.

When Jackson first noticed the congested market area, it was too late to stop. All he could do was try to put the hearse through whatever opening he saw. It was like trying to thread a fine needle with a heavy piece of string.

He bent to the right to avoid the truck, hit a stack of egg crates, saw a molten stream of yellow yolks filled with splinters splash past his far window.

The right wheels of the hearse had gone up over the curb and plowed through crates of vegetables, showering the fleeing men and the store fronts with smashed cabbages, flakes of spinach, squashed potatoes and bananas. Onions peppered the air like cannon shot.

“Runaway hearse! Runaway hearse!” voices screamed.

The hearse ran into crates of iced fish spread out on the sidewalk, skidded with a heavy lurch, and veered against the side of the refrigerator truck. The back doors were flung wide and the throat-cut corpse came one-third out. The gory head hung down from the cut throat to stare at the scene of devastation from its unblinking white-walled eyes.

Exclamations in seven languages were heard.

Caroming from the refrigerator truck, the hearse wobbled wildly to the other side of the street, climbed over a side of beef a delivery man had dropped to the street to run, and tore, staggering, down the street.

He was through the market area so fast a colored laborer exclaimed in a happy voice, “God damn, that was sudden!”

“But did you see what I seen?”

“You reckon he stole it?”

“Must have, man. What else the cops chasing him for?”

“What’s he gonna do with it?”

“Sell it, man, sell it. You can sell anything in Harlem.”

When the hearse came into the open at 100th Street, it was splattered with eggs, stained with vegetables, spotted with blood. Chunks of raw meat, fish scales, fruit skins clung to the dented fenders. The back doors swung open and shut.

It had gained on the patrol cars, which had had to slow down in the market area. Jackson had the feeling of sitting in the middle of a nightmare. He was sealed in panic and he couldn’t get out. He couldn’t think. He didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know what he was doing. Just driving, that’s all. He had forgotten why he was running. Just running. He felt like just sitting there behind the wheel and driving that hearse off the edge of the world.

He went through Puerto Rican Harlem at ninety miles an hour. An old Puerto Rican woman watched the hearse pass, saw the back doors swing open, and fainted dead away.

A patrol car screaming north on Park Avenue spotted the hearse coming south as it approached the intersection of 95th Street. The patrol car made a crying left turn. Jackson saw it and bent the big hearse in a long right turn. The back doors flew open and the corpse slid out slowly, like a body being lowered into the sea, thumped gently onto the pavement and rolled onto its side.

The patrol car swerved, trying to keep from running over it, went out of control and spun like a top on the wet street, bounced over the curb, knocked over a mailbox, and shattered the plate-glass window of a beauty shop.

Jackson went along 95th Street to Fifth Avenue. When he saw the stone wall surrounding Central Park he realized he was out of Harlem. He was down in the white world with no place to go, no place to hide his woman’s gold ore, no place to hide himself. He was going at seventy miles an hour and there was a stone wall ahead.

His mind began to think. Thought rolled back on the lines of a spiritual:

Nothing left now but to pray.

He was going so fast that when he turned sharply north on Fifth Avenue, heading back toward Harlem, the trunk slid back, went off the end of the coffin rack, bounced on the floor of the hearse, somersaulted into the street, landed on the bottom edge and burst wide open.

Jackson was so deep in prayer he didn’t notice it.

He drove straight up Fifth Avenue to 110th Street, turned over to Seventh Avenue, kept north to 139th Street, and drew up in front of his minister’s house.

He passed three patrol cars on the way. The cops gave the battered, dirty, meat-smeared, egg-stained hearse a cursory look and let it pass. No steamer trunks and dead bodies in that wreck. Jackson didn’t even notice the patrol cars.

He parked in front of his minister’s house, got out and went around to the back to lock the doors. When he found the hearse empty, that was the bitter end. Nothing even left to pray for. His girl was gone. Her gold ore was gone. His brother was dead, and gone too. He just wanted to throw himself on the mercy of the Lord. It was all he could do to keep from weeping.

Reverend Gaines was in the middle of a big religious dream when his housekeeper awakened him.

“Brother Jackson is downstairs in the study and says he wants to see you on something very important.”

“Jackson?” Reverend Gaines exclaimed in extreme irritation, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You mean our brother Jackson?”

“Yes, sir,” that patient colored woman said. “Your Jackson.”

“Lord save us from squares,” Reverend Gaines muttered to himself as he got up to slip his black silk brocaded robe over his purple silk pyjamas, and descend to the study.

“Brother Jackson, what brings you to the house of the shepherd of the Lord at this ungodly hour, when all the other Lord’s sheep are sleeping peacefully in the meadows?” he asked pointedly.

“I’ve sinned, Reverend Gaines.”

Reverend Gaines stiffened as though someone had uttered blasphemy in his presence.

“Sinned! Good Lord, Brother Jackson, is that sufficient reason to awaken me at this hour of night? Who hasn’t sinned? I was just standing on the banks of the River Jordan, dressed in a flowing white robe, converting sinners by the thousands.”