Chester Himes - For love of Imabelle

Jackson stared at him. “Here in the house?”

“In a dream, Brother Jackson, in a dream,” the minister explained, unbending enough to smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry I woke you up, but it’s an emergency.”

“That’s all right, Brother Jackson, sit down.” He sat down himself and poured a glass of liqueur from a cut-glass decanter on his mahogany desk. “Just a little elderberry cordial to awaken my spirit. Will you have a glass?”

“No sir, thank you,” Jackson declined as he sat down facing Reverend Gaines across the desk. “My spirit is already wide awake as it is.”

“You’re in trouble again? Or is it the same trouble? Woman trouble, wasn’t it?”

“No sir, it was about money the last time. I was trying to keep it from looking as if I had stolen some money. But this time it’s worse. It’s about my woman too. I’m in deep trouble this time.”

“Has your woman left you? At last? Because you didn’t steal the money? Or because you did?”

“No sir, it’s nothing like that. She’s gone but she hasn’t left me.”

Reverend Gaines took another sip of cordial. He enjoyed solving domestic mysteries.

“Let us kneel and pray for her safe return.”

Jackson was on his knees before the minister was.

“Yes sir, but I want to confess first.”

“Confess!” Reverend Gaines had started to kneel but he straightened up suddenly like a Jack-in-the-box. “You haven’t killed the woman, Brother Jackson?”

“No sir, it’s nothing like that.”

Reverend Gaines gave a sigh of relief and relaxed.

“But I’ve lost her trunk full of gold ore.”

“What?” Reverend Gaines’s eyebrows shot upward. “Her trunk full of gold ore? Do you mean to say she had a trunk full of gold ore and never told me, her minister? Brother Jackson, you had better make a full confession.”

“Yes sir, that’s what I want to do.”

At first, as Jackson unfolded the story of being swindled on The Blow and stealing five hundred dollars from Mr. Clay’s to bribe the bogus marshal and trying to get even by gambling, Reverend Gaines was filled with compassion.

“The Lord is merciful, Brother Jackson,” he said consolingly. “And if Mr. Clay is half as merciful, you will be able to work off that account. I will telephone to him about the matter. But what about this trunk full of gold ore?”

But when Jackson described the trunk and related how the gang had kidnapped his woman to get possession of it, Reverend Gaines’s eyes began to widen with curiosity.

“You mean to say that that big green steamer trunk in that little room where you and she lived was filled with gold ore?”

“Yes sir. Pure eighteen-carat gold ore. But it didn’t belong to her. It belonged to her husband and she had to give it back. So I had to get my brother, Goldy, to help me find them.”

Revulsion replaced the curiosity in Reverend Gaines’s eyes as Jackson described Goldy.

“You mean to say that Sister Gabriel was a man? Your twin brother? And he swindled our poor gullible people with tickets to heaven?”

“Yes sir, lots of people believed in them. But the only reason I went to him was because he was a crook and I needed him to help me.”

As Jackson related the events of the night, Reverend Gaines’s eyes got wider and wider, and horror began replacing the expression of revulsion. By the time Jackson got to his escape from the police at the 125th Street Station, Reverend Gaines was sitting forward on the edge of his seat with his mouth hanging open and his eyes bulging. But Jackson had related the story as he had seen it happen, and Reverend Gaines did not understand why he had fled from the police.

“Was it because of your brother?” he asked. “Did they discover he was impersonating a nun?”

“No sir, it wasn’t that. It was because he was dead.”

“Dead!” Reverend Gaines jumped as though a wasp had stung him in the rear. “Great God above!”

“Hank and Jodie had cut his throat when I went upstairs to look for Imabelle.”

“Good God, man, why didn’t you call for help? Didn’t you hear his cries?”

“No sir. I had sat down to rest for a minute and I had fell asleep.”

“Merciful heavens, man! You fell asleep while you were looking for your woman who was in grave danger. While her fortune was sitting unprotected in that street — that street too, the most dangerous street in Harlem — protected only by your brother, a foul sinner who was scarcely better than a murderer himself.” Reverend Gaines’s rich black skin was turning gray at the very thought of what had happened. “And they cut his throat? And put his body in the hearse?”

Jackson mopped the sweat from his eyes and face.

“Yes sir. But I didn’t mean to go to sleep.”

“And what did you do with the hearse? Drive it off into the Harlem River?”

“No sir, it’s parked out front.”

“Out front! In front of my house?”

Forgetting his ecclesiastical dignity, Reverend Gaines jumped to his feet and shambled hastily across the room to peer through the front window at the battered hearse parked at the curb in the gray dawn. When he turned back to face Jackson he looked as if he had aged twenty years. His implacable self-confidence was shaken to the core. As he shuffled slowly back to his seat, his silk brocade robe flopped open and the pants of his purple silk pyjamas began slipping down. But he paid no attention.

“Do you mean to sit there, Brother Jackson, and tell me that your brother’s body with its throat cut and your woman’s trunk full of gold ore are in that hearse out there, parked in front of my house?” he asked in horror.

“No sir. I lost them. They fell out somewhere, I don’t know where.”

“They fell out of the hearse? Into the street?”

“It must have been in the street. I didn’t drive anywhere else.”

“Just why did you come here, Brother Jackson? Why did you come to me?”

“I just wanted to kneel here beside you, Reverend Gaines, and give myself up to the Lord.”

“What!” Reverend Gaines started as though Jackson had uttered blasphemy. “Give yourself up to the Lord? Jesus Christ, man, what do you take the Lord for? You have to go and give yourself up to the police. The Lord won’t get you out of that kind of mess.”

The rays of the rising sun over the Harlem River shone blood-red on the top floor of the building where Billie ran her after-hours joint.

“Can’t I just wait in the car?” Imabelle asked. She was having trouble with her breathing.

“Get out,” Grave Digger said flatly.

“What do you need me for? They’re up there, I tell you. You know I can’t run anywhere with these handcuffs on.”

He saw that she was scared. She was trembling all over.

“Well, Little Sister, if it’s your grave, just remember that you dug it,” he said without mercy. “If Ed was here to see you I’d let you stay.”

She got out, stumbling as her legs buckled. Grave Digger came around from the other side, took her by the arm, steered her up a flight of concrete stairs, through the glass double-doors, into a small immaculate foyer furnished with a long table, polished chairs and parchment-shaded lights flanking wall mirrors.

Not a sound could be heard.

“These slick hustlers live high on the hog,” he muttered. “But at least they’re quiet.”

They rode in a push-button elevator to the sixth floor, and turned toward the jade-green door at the left of a square hall.

“I beg you,” Imabelle pleaded, trembling.

“Go ahead and buzz her,” Grave Digger ordered, flattening himself against the wall beside the door and drawing his long-barreled nickel-plated pistol.