Chester Himes - For love of Imabelle

A girl sat on the floor between his outstretched legs. She wore a lemon-yellow blouse over budding breasts, and Paisley slacks. She had an olive-skinned, heart-shaped face, long black lashes concealing dark-brown eyes, and a mouth too small for the thickness of the lips. Her head rested on Jodie’s knee.

Jodie was staring over her head, lost in the blue music. He ran his left hand slowly back and forth over her crisp brown curls as though he liked the sensation. His right arm rested on his thigh and in his right hand he held the bone-handled switch-blade knife, snapping it open and shut.

“Don’t you have another record?” Hank asked, as if from a great distance.

“I like this record.”

“Doesn’t it have another side?”

“I like this side.”

Jodie started the record again. Hank looked dreamily at the ceiling.

“When are we going?” Jodie asked.

“As soon as it gets daylight.”

Jodie stared at the dial of his wrist watch.

“It ought to be daylight now.”

“Give it some time. Ain’t no hurry.”

“I want to be on the road. I’m getting nervous sitting around here.”

“Wait a while. Give it some time. Let some traffic get on the road. We don’t want to be the only car leaving town with California plates.”

“How the hell you know there’s going to be any others?”

“Ohio plates, then. Illinois plates. Give it some time.”

“I’m giving it some mother— time.”

The record came to a stop. Jodie started it over again, bent his ear to the speaker, and clicked the knife open and shut.

“Stop clicking that knife,” Hank said indifferently.

“I didn’t know I was clicking it.”

A hesitant knock sounded above the low-playing blues.

Hank stared dreamily at the locked door. Jodie stared tensely. The girls didn’t look up.

“See who’s there, Carol,” Hank said to the girl beside him. She started to get up. “Just ask.”

“Who is it?” she asked in a harsh, startling voice.

“Me. Imabelle.”

Hank and Jodie kept staring at the locked door. The girls turned and stared at it also. No one answered.

“It’s me, Imabelle. Let me in.”

Hank reached down along his side and wrapped his fingers about the butt of the automatic. Jodie’s knife clicked open.

“Who’s with you?” Hank asked in a lazy voice.

“Nobody.”

“Where’s Billie?”

“She’s here.”

“Call her.”

“Billie, Hank wants to talk to you.”

“Hank?” Hank said. “Who’s Hank?”

“Don’t use that name,” Billie said, then to Hank, “I’m here. What do you want?”

“Who’s with Imabelle?”

“Nobody.”

“Open the door a crack,” Hank said to Carol.

She got up and crossed the room in a hip-swinging walk, unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Hank had his automatic aimed at the crack.

Imabelle put her face in view.

“It’s Imabelle,” Carol said.

Billie pushed the door open wider and looked past Imabelle at Hank. “Do you want to see her?”

“Sure, let her come in,” Hank said, putting the gun out of sight beside him.

Carol opened the door wide and Imabelle stepped into the room. She was so scared she was biting down vomit.

Hank and Jodie stared at her tear-streaked face and swollen, purple-tinted cheek.

“Close the door,” Hank said dreamily.

Imabelle stepped to one side, and Grave Digger came out of the dark hall like an apparition coming up from the sea. He had a nickel-plated pistol in each hand.

“Straighten up,” he said thickly.

“It’s a mother— plant,” Jodie grated.

Jodie had his left hand resting on Jeanie’s curly head, his right hand extended, the knife open. With a sudden tight grip his left hand closed and he lifted the girl up from the floor by her hair, holding her in front of him as a shield, and put the sharp naked blade tight against her throat as he came violently to his feet.

The girl didn’t cry out, didn’t utter a sound, didn’t faint. Her body went flaccid beneath Jodie’s grip. Her face was stretched into distortion, a drop of blood trickled slowly down her taut neck. Her eyes were huge black pools of animal terror, slanting upwards at the edges, overwhelming her small distorted face. She didn’t breathe.

Grave Digger caught a look at her face from the corner of his eye, and didn’t move for fear of starting that knife across her throat.

Hank stared at Grave Digger dreamily without moving, his fingers still curled about the butt of the hidden .38. Grave Digger stared back. They were watching the flicker of each other’s eyes, paying no attention to Jodie and the paralyzed girl. Nobody spoke. Carol stood frozen with one hand on the door knob. Imabelle stood trembling, out of range on the other side. Everything was in pantomime.

Jodie backed toward the door that opened into the kitchen. The girl backed with him, followed his every motion with a corresponding motion, as if performing some macabre dance. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead in pools of undripping tears.

Jodie brought up against the door. “Reach around me and open it,” he ordered the girl.

The girl reached her left hand carefully around his body, felt for the key, turned it, and opened the door.

Jodie backed into the kitchen, still holding the girl in front of him.

Billie stood silently beside the white enamel electric range with a double-bladed wood-chopper’s axe held poised over her right shoulder, waiting for Jodie to come into reach. He took another step backward, his eyes on Grave Digger’s guns. Billie chopped his upper forearm in a forward-moving strike to knock the knife blade forward from the girl’s throat. Jodie wheeled in violent reflex his knife-arm flopping like an empty sleeve, as the knife clattered on the tiled floor, struck out backwards with the edge of his left hand. Billie took the blow across the mouth as she chopped him in the center of the back between the shoulder blades, like splitting a log, knocking him forward to his knees.

His head flew about to look at her as he cried, “Mother-raping—”

She put her whole weight in a down-chopping blow and sank the sharp blade of the axe into the side of his neck with such force it hewed through the spinal column and left his head dangling over his left shoulder on a thin strip of flesh, the epithet still on his lips.

Blood geysered from red stump of neck over the fainting girl as Billie dropped the axe, picked her bodily in her arms, and showered her with kisses.

As if it were a signal Hank was waiting for, he swung up the black snout of his .38 automatic, knowing that he didn’t have a chance.

Before it had cleared his hip, Grave Digger shot him through the right eye with his own pistol held in his right hand. While Hank’s body was jerking from the bullet in the brain, Grave Digger said, “For you, Ed,” took dead aim with Coffin Ed’s pistol held in his left hand, and shot the dying killer through the staring left eye.

Pandemonium broke loose in the house. Imabelle slipped beneath Grave Digger’s arm and bolted toward the door. Guests poured from the rooms into the narrow hall in a panic-stricken stampede.

But Grave Digger had already wheeled into the hall after Imabelle, pushed her into the corner, and blocked the door. He flicked on the bright overhead lights with the barrel of one gun and stood with his back against the door with a gun in each hand.

“Straighten up,” he shouted in a big loud voice. And then, as if echoing his own voice, he mimicked Coffin Ed, “Count off.”

“And now, Little Sister,” he said to the cowering woman in the corner. “Where’s Slim?”

Her teeth were chattering so she could scarcely speak.