Chester Himes - The crazy kill

They went through the arched gateway into the huge cemetery and stopped in a long line behind the yellow clay mouth of the open grave.

The mourners encircled the grave while the pallbearers lifted the coffin from the hearse and placed it upon a mechanical derrick that lowered it slowly into the grave.

An organ recording of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot began playing, and the choir sang a moaning accompaniment.

Reverend Short had gotten himself under control and stood at the head of the grave, intoning in his croaking voice:

"… in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return…"

When the coffin touched the bottom of the grave, Mamie Pullen screamed and tried to throw herself after it. While Johnny was holding her, Dulcy suddenly crumpled and swayed toward the edge of the pit. Alamena clutched her about the waist, but Chink Charlie stepped forward from behind and put his arm about Dulcy and laid her upon the grass. Johnny caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of his eye, and he pushed Mamie into the arms of a deacon and wheeled toward Chink, his eyes yellow with rage and the scar on his forehead livid and crawling with a life of its own.

Chink saw him coming, stepped back and tried to pull his knife. Johnny feinted with his left and kicked Chink on the right shin. The sharp bone pain doubled Chink forward from the head down. Before the reflex motion had ceased, Johnny hit Chink back of the ear with a clubbing right; and when Chink fell reeling to his hands and knees, Johnny kicked at his head with his left foot, but missed it and grazed Chink's left shoulder instead. His lightning glance saw a spade in a grave digger's hand, and he snatched it out and swung the edge at the back of Chink's neck. Big Tiny from Fats's restaurant had closed in to stop Johnny and grabbed at his arm as he swung the spade. He didn't get a grip but managed to turn Johnny's arm so the flat of the spade instead of the edge hit Chink in the middle of the back and knocked him head over heels into the grave, on top of the coffin.

Then Tiny and half a dozen other men disarmed Johnny and wrestled him back to the gravel drive behind the plot of graves.

Johnny was circled in by his underworld friends, with Fats wheezing, "God damn it, Johnny, let's don't have no more killings. That wasn't nothing to get that mad about."

Johnny shook off their hands and straightened his disarranged clothes. "I don't want that half-white mother-raper to touch her," he said in his toneless voice.

"Jesus Christ, she'd fainted," Fats wheezed.

"Not even if she's dropping stone-cold dead," Johnny said.

His friends shook their heads.

"You have hurt him enough for one day anyway, chief," Kid Nickels said.

"I ain't going to hurt him no more," Johnny said. "Just bring my womenfolks over to the car. I'm going to take them home."

He went over and got into his car.

A moment later the music ceased. The undertaker's equipment was removed from about the grave. The grave diggers began spading in the earth. The silent mourners slowly returned to the cars.

Mamie came between Dulcy and Alamena and got into the back of Johnny's car with Alamena. Baby Sis followed silently.

"Lord, Lord," Mamie said in a moaning voice. "They ain't nothing but trouble on this earth, but I know my time ain't long."

On leaving the cemetery, the procession disbanded and each car went its own way.

Just before turning into the bridge back to Harlem, Johnny got held up by a traffic jam caused by Yankee Stadium letting out after a ball game.

He and Dulcy, along with other well-heeled Harlem pimps, madams and numbers bankers, lived on the sixth floor of the flashy Roger Morris apartment house. It stood at the corner of 157th Street and Edgecombe Drive, on Coogan's Bluff, overlooking the Polo Grounds, the Harlem River and the inclined streets of the Bronx beyond.

It was seven o'clock when Johnny pulled his fishtail Cadillac before the entrance.

"I've come a long way from an Alabama cotton chopper to lose it all now," he said.

Everybody in the car looked at him, but only Dulcy spoke. "What you talking about?" she said warily.

He didn't answer.

Mamie's joints creaked as she started to alight.

"Come on, Baby Sis, we'll get a taxi," she said.

"You're coming up and eat with us," Johnny said. "Baby Sis and Alamena can fix supper."

She shook her head. "Me and Baby Sis will just go on home. I don't want to start being no trouble to nobody."

"It won't be no trouble," Johnny said.

"I ain't hungry," Mamie said. "I just want to go home and lie down and get some sleep. I'm powerfully tired."

"It ain't good for you to be alone now," Johnny argued. "Now's when you need to be around folks."

"Baby Sis'll be there, Johnny, and I just wanna sleep."

"Okay, I'll drive you home," Johnny said. "You know you ain't gotta ride in a taxi long as I got a car that'll run."

No one moved.

He turned to Dulcy and said, "You and Alamena get the hell out. I didn't say I was taking you."

"I'm getting good and tired of you hollering at me," Dulcy said angrily, getting from the car with a flounce. "I ain't no dog."

Johnny gave her a warning look but didn't answer.

Alamena got out of the back seat, and Mamie got in front with Johnny and put a hand over her closed eyes to shut out the terrible day.

They drove to her apartment without talking. After Baby Sis had left them and gone inside, Mamie said, "Johnny, you're too hard on womenfolks. You expects them to act like men."

"I just expect them to do what they're told and what they're supposed to do."

She gave a long, sad sigh. "Most women does, Johnny, but they just got their own ways of doing it, and that's what you don't understand."

They were silent for a moment, watching the crowds on the sidewalk drift past in the twilight.

It was a street of paradox: unwed young mothers, suckling their infants, living on a prayer; fat black racketeers coasting past in big bright-colored convertibles with their solid gold babes, carrying huge sums of money on their person; hardworking men, holding up the buildings with their shoulders, talking in loud voices up there in Harlem where the white bosses couldn't hear them; teen-age gangsters grouping for a gang fight, smoking marijuana weed to get up their courage; everybody escaping the hotbox rooms they lived in, seeking respite in a street made hotter by the automobile exhaust and the heat released by the concrete walls and walks.

Finally Mamie said, "Don't kill him, Johnny. I'm an old lady and I tell you there ain't any reason."

Johnny kept looking at the stream of cars passing in the street. "Either's he's pressing her or she's asking for it. What do you want me to believe?"

"It ain't drawn that fine, Johnny. I'm an old lady, and I tell you, it ain't drawn that fine. You're splitting snake hairs. He's just a show-off and she just likes attention, that's all."

"He's gonna look good in a shroud," Johnny said.

"Take it from an old lady, Johnny," she said. "You don't give her no attention. You got your own affairs, your gambling club and everything, which takes up all your time, and she ain't got nothing."

"Aunt Mamie, that was the same trouble with my ma," he said. "Pete worked hard for her, but she wasn't satisfied 'less she was messing 'round with other men, and I had to kill him to keep him from killing her. But it was my ma who was wrong, and I always knowed it."

"I know, Johnny, but Dulcy ain't like that," Mamie argued. "She ain't messing around with nobody, but you gotta be patient with her. She's young. You knew how young she was when you married her."