If He Hollers Let Him Go (12 page)

She jerked a look at me as if she thought I was raving crazy; everyone within earshot looked at me. I felt my face burning, my body trembling from the sudden fury.

‘Never mind!’ I said, wheeled outside, walked fast out Hill Street, bumping into people. There was nothing at Paramount that interested me—just a lot of white faces on the marquee billboards—nothing at Warner’s. I turned down Seventh, stopped in front of Bullock’s at the corner of Broadway, watched the people pass. The sidewalk was heavy with pedestrian traffic, mostly white, a sprinkling of Mexicans, here and there a coloured face. Every second man was in uniform; four out of five women were unescorted.

The servicemen were always hostile towards a Jodie, especially a black Jodie in his fine Jodie clothes. Two little Mexican slick chicks passed; I caught them looking at me and they turned up their noses and looked away disdainfully. I wasn’t trying to flirt with them; I wasn’t trying to flirt with anybody.

It beat me. I began to feel conspicuous, ill at ease, out of place. It was the white folks’ world and they resented me just standing in it. I crossed the street and went into Loew’s just to get out of sight. The seat I found was between two couples; on one side the man was next to me, on the other side the woman. The woman said something to the man with her and they got up and changed seats so the man sat next to me. It had never happened to me before. I began burning again but I tried to ignore it. I concentrated on the picture.

I never found out the name of the picture or what it was about. After about five minutes a big fat black Hollywood mammy came on the screen saying: ‘Yassum’ and ‘Noam,’ and grinning at her young white missy; and I got up and walked out.

I was down to a low ebb. I needed some help. I had to know that Negroes weren’t the lowest people on the face of God’s green earth. I had to talk it over with somebody, had to build myself back up. The sons of bitches were grinding me to the nub, to the white meatless bone.

I started hurrying back to the parking lot, got my car, and turned toward the West Side. In a way I still respected Alice; whatever else she might be, she’d still make the grade in the white folks’ world. And I loved her too, I knew. I didn’t know how I expected her to help me; what she could say or do. Maybe I wanted her to lean on me and tell me I was strong and that she belonged to me; or to hold my head against her breast and let me get it all straightened out. Or maybe I wanted to give her a chance to fall on her knees and ask for my forgiveness and tell me it was an accident and would never happen again. I didn’t know.

All I knew was I needed help. Needed it the very worst way. Needed it then. Or I was gonna blow my simple top. And she was the only one I knew who could give it to me.

Dr. Harrison answered my ring. He was dressed in a brown flannel smoking jacket with a black velvet collar. He waved a soggy cigar butt in his left hand, stuck out his right.

‘Hello, Robert, it’s good to see you, boy.’

We shook hands; his felt dry, lifeless, and his mouth looked nasty. I said, ‘It’s good to see you, Doctor.’

He closed the door behind me and steered me into his study.

‘You’re just in time to join me in a nip.’

‘Well, thanks,’ I said. I always felt a sharp sense of embarrassment around him. I didn’t like him, didn’t respect him, didn’t have anything to say to him, didn’t like to listen to him. But he always cornered me off for a conversation and I didn’t know how to get out of it short of blasting him one.

He went over to his bar. ‘What’ll it be, Scotch?’

‘Scotch is fine,’ I said. ‘A little water.’

‘A gentleman’s drink,’ he said, mixing it. ‘Now I prefer rye.’ Then he noticed I was standing and said: ‘Sit down, sit down. As Bertha says, “We’re all coloured folks.” You know Bertha Gowing, head of the South Side Clinic?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said, taking the drink and sitting down.

‘A fine person, charming personality, very capable, very capable,’ he said, returning to his easy chair across from me. He waved at the Pittsburgh
Courier
on the floor. ‘I was just reading about our fighter pilots in Italy; they’re achieving a remarkable record.’

I said, ‘That’s right.’

‘Makes the old man wish he was young again,’ he went on. ‘Think of it, the first time in the history of our nation that Negro boys have served as pilots. We can thank Roosevelt for that.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. My mind was on Alice. I wondered how she was going to react to seeing me.

‘The Nazi pilots say they’d rather engage any two white pilots than one of our Negro boys,’ he said.

‘Yeah, they’re some tough customers,’ I said.

‘I was talking to Blakely the other day, and he said we should send them a cablegram saying, “The eyes of the world are on you.” You know Blakely Moore, the young attorney who fought that restricted covenant case for the Du Barrys?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said.

‘Bright young man,’ he said. ‘Has a wonderful future. I attended his birth.’ He took a sip of rye. ‘Well, how is your work progressing, Robert? I understand you have been made a supervisor.’

I stole a look at him, looked away. ‘Well, not exactly a supervisor. I’m what they call a leaderman.’

‘A leaderman, eh? I’m always intrigued by the titles applied to industrial workers. Now what is a leaderman?’

‘I just have charge of a small crew of workers,’ I said.

‘But you’re in authority?’ he insisted.

‘Well …’ To hell with trying to explain it, I thought, and said, ‘Yes.’

‘That’s what I like to see,’ he said. ‘Our Negro boys in authority. It proves that we can do it if we are given the Opportunity.’

A little bit of that went a long way. ‘How’s everything with you, Doctor?’ I asked, changing the conversation. My vocal cords were getting tight.

‘I keep pretty busy,’ he chuckled. ‘Walter and I were just talking the other day about the tremendous change that’s taken place in Los Angeles—’

‘Yes, it has,’ I cut in rapidly. ‘The city’s really growing up.’ If he asked me if I knew Walter Somebody-or-other I was subject to tell him to go to hell. ‘Is Alice in?’ I asked before he could get it out.

‘I’ll see,’ he said, getting up. ‘You know, this house is so arranged we can go for days without running into each other.’ He went into the hallway and called, ‘Alice!’

After a moment she replied from upstairs, ‘Yes?’

‘Robert is here.’

‘Oh!’ A pause. Then, ‘Tell him to come right up.’

He turned to me. ‘You can go right up, Robert.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

He stopped me to shake hands again. ‘It was nice seeing you, Robert.’ He always made it a point to let me know he didn’t have anything against me, even if I didn’t belong to his class.

‘It was nice seeing you too, Doctor,’ I said.

Alice was waiting for me at the head of the spiral stairway. ‘How are you, dear?’ she greeted. Her cool contralto voice was under wraps and her eyes were controlled. She wore a scarlet velvet housecoat and her cheeks were slightly rouged. I couldn’t help but think she was a regal-looking chick.

“Lo, baby,’ I said, kissing at her.

She dodged. ‘Don’t!’

‘All right, if that’s the way—’ I broke it off, looking beyond her into the sitting room. ‘Goddamn, you’ve got company,’ I accused. I was ready to turn and go.

But she said quickly, ‘Oh, you’ll like them,’ took me by the hand and led me into her sitting-room.

It was a large pleasant room with a love seat and three armchairs done in flowered chintz. There were white scatter rugs on the polished oak floor and white organdie curtains at the double windows facing the street. Her bedroom was to the rear.

‘You know Polly Johnson,’ she said, and I said, ‘Hello, Polly,’ to a sharp-faced, bright yellow woman with a mannish haircut, dressed in a green slack suit.

‘Hi, Bob, how’s tricks?’ she said around her cigarette.

‘And Arline,’ Alice went on. ‘Arline Wilson.’

‘Hello, Arline,’ I said. She was a big sloppy dame in a wrinkled print dress with her black hair pulled tight in a knot at the back of her head, giving her a surprised, sweaty look. I imagine she thought it made her look childish. She was a schoolteacher.

‘Here’s that man again,’ she said. I gave her a quick, startled look; she was too old for that, I thought.

‘And this is Cleotine Dobbs,’ Alice said of the third dame. ‘Miss Dobbs, Mr. Jones.’

I shook hands with her. ‘How do you do, Miss Dobbs.’

She was a long, angular, dark woman dressed in an Eastern suit. She was strictly out of place in that light bright clique.

‘Cleo has just come to our city to direct the Downtown Settlement House,’ Alice said sweetly. ‘She’s a Chicago gal.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said, figuring on how to escape. Then to Alice: ‘I really can’t stay. I just dropped by to say hello.’

‘Oh hush, Bob, and sit down,’ she said. ‘You know you haven’t got a thing to do.’

I gave her a lidded look. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said.

She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me down on the other half of the love seat with Cleo, the dark dame.

‘That’s right, girl, don’t let a man get away from us,’ Arline said. I sneaked another look at her.

‘Maybe Bob’s afraid of all us women,’ Polly said. ‘We must look like dames on the make.’ She had a blunt, sharp-tongued manner that could soon irritate me.

‘Although God knows I haven’t started picking them up off the street,’ Arline said, and she and Polly crossed glances.

‘I’m overwhelmed,’ I choked, then got my voice under better control.

‘We were just discussing the problems that confront the social worker in Little Tokyo,’ Cleo said, coming to my rescue, I supposed. ‘I was saying that first of all there must be some organization within the community through which a programme of integration may be instituted into the broader pattern of the community. There must be adequate provisions for health care, adequate educational resources and opportunities for recreation,’ she enumerated. She sounded as if she’d just gotten her Doctor’s.

‘What they need down there more than anything else is public housing,’ Polly said bluntly. ‘Have you seen some of those places that those people live in? Twelve people in a single room and not even any running water.’ I remembered then that she worked with the housing authority. ‘That place is a rat hole. Without adequate housing you can’t even start any programme of integration.’

I sat there with my hands clasped in my lap, looking from one speaker to another with a forced interested smile, wondering what the hell had brought all of this on and getting tighter every second.

‘Housing takes time,’ Arline put in. She had the soft manner of the appeaser. ‘And you know how they’ll do even if they build a development down there; they’ll allocate about one-fourth to Negroes and the rest to whites and Mexicans.’

‘Mexicans are white in California,’ Polly said.

‘I know,’ Arline said. ‘That’s what I mean. What they should really do is to stop all these Southern Negroes from coming into the city.’

By now I was tense, on edge; what they were saying didn’t have any meaning for me—just some cut-rate jive in social workers’ phraseology that proved a certain intellectualism, I supposed. But I didn’t have to listen to it; I was going to get the hell out.

‘But these people are already here,’ Cleo pointed out. ‘The ghetto’s already formed. The problem now is how best to integrate the people of this ghetto into the life of the community.’ She turned to me; I’d been silent long enough, ‘What do you think, Mr. Jones?’

‘About what?’ I asked.

She threw a look at me. ‘I mean what is your opinion as to the problem arising from conditions in Little Tokyo?’

Well, sister, you’re asking for it, I thought. Aloud I said: ‘Well, now, I think we ought to kill the coloured residents and eat them. In that way we’ll not only solve the race problem but alleviate the meat shortage as well.’

There was a shocked silence for an instant, then Polly broke into a raucous laugh. Alice said softly, ‘Bob!’

All I wanted was for them to get the hell out of there so I could be alone with Alice, but I lightened up a little out of common courtesy. ‘All kidding aside,’ I said, ‘if I knew any solution for the race problem I’d use it for myself first of all.’

‘But this isn’t just a problem of race,’ Cleo insisted. ‘It’s a ghetto problem involving a class of people with different cultures and traditions at a different level of education.’

‘Different from what?’ I said.

‘The mayor’s organizing a committee to investigate conditions down there,’ Arline said. ‘Blakely Moore is on it.’

‘Would you gals like a drink?’ Alice asked, and at their quick nods, turned to me, ‘Bob dear …’

I went down to the kitchen with her for the rum-and-coke setups, glad to get a breather. ‘Can’t you get rid of ‘em?’ I asked. ‘I want to talk to you, baby.’

She put her arms about me and kissed me. ‘Be nice, darling,’ she said. ‘Tom’s coming by and they want to meet him.’

‘Tom who?’ I asked, but she just smiled.

‘You’ll like him,’ she said. ‘He’s something like you.’

The drinks got them gossipy.

‘Herbie Washington has married a white girl.’

‘No!’

‘I don’t believe it!’

‘Who is she?’ Alice asked.

‘She’s white,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Ain’t that enough?’ They didn’t even hear me.

‘Nobody knows,’ Arline said. ‘Some girl he met at one of Melba’s parties.’

That started Cleo off. ‘I can’t understand these Negro men marrying these white tramps,’ she said. You wouldn’t, I thought, black as you are. ‘Chicago’s full of it. Just as soon as some Negro man starts to getting a little success he runs and marries a white woman. No decent self-respecting Negro man would marry one of those white tramps these Negroes marry.’

‘I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ Polly injected. ‘I know of Negro men married to decent white women—as decent as you and I.’ She was taking up for herself—her father was a Negro married to a white woman.

But Cleo didn’t know that. ‘Nothing but tramps!’ she stormed, getting excited about it. The veneer came off and she looked and talked just like any other Southern girl who’d never been farther than grammar school. ‘Nobody but a white tramp would marry a nigger!’ she shouted, almost hitting me in the mouth with her gesticulations. ‘And nobody but a nigger tramp would have ‘em. I was at a party in Chicago and saw one of our supposed-to-be leading Negro actors sitting up there making love to some white tramp’s eyebrows.’