Invisible Man (59 page)

“Thanks, son, but he’ll pay off all right. I can see you ain’t Rinehart now though. I’m sorry for stopping you.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“If I’d looked at your shoes I woulda known—”

“Why?”

“ ‘Cause Rine the runner is known for them knobtoed kind.”

I watched her limp away, rocking like the Old Ship of Zion. No wonder everyone knows him, I thought, in that racket you have to get around. I was aware of my black-and-white shoes for the first time since the day of Clifton’s shooting.

When the squad car veered close to the curb and rolled along slowly beside me I knew what was coming before the cop opened his mouth.

“That you, Rinehart, my man?” the cop who was not driving said. He was white. I could see the shield gleaming on his cap but the number was vague.

“Not this time, officer,” I said.

“The hell you say; what’re you trying to pull? Is this a holdout?”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said. “I’m not Rinehart.”

The car stopped, a flashlight beamed in my green-lensed eyes. He spat into the street. “Well, you better be by morning,” he said, “and you better have our cut in the regular place. Who the hell you think you are?” he called as the car speeded up and away.

And before I could turn a crowd of men ran up from the corner pool hall. One of them carried an automatic in his hand.

“What were those sonsabitches trying to do to you, daddy?” he said.

“It was nothing, they thought I was someone else.”

“Who’d they take you for?”

I looked at them—were they criminals or simply men who were worked up over the shooting?

“Some guy named Rinehart,” I said.

“Rinehart—
Hey, y’all hear that?” snorted the fellow with the gun. “Rinehart! Them paddies must be going stone blind. Anybody can see you ain’t Rinehart.”

“But he do look like Rine,” another man said, staring at me with his hands in his trousers pockets.

“Like hell he does.”

“Hell, man, Rinehart would be driving that Cadillac this time of night. What the hell you talking about?”

“Listen, Jack,” the fellow with the gun said, “don’t let nobody make you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless heart and be ready to do anything. But if them paddies bother you agin, just let us know. We aim to stop some of this head-whupping they been doing.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Rinehart,” he said again. “Ain’t
that
a bitch?”

They turned and went arguing back to the pool hall and I hurried out of the neighborhood. Having forgotten Hambro for the moment I walked east instead of west. I wanted to remove the glasses but decided against it. Ras’s men might still be on the prowl.

It was quieter now. No one paid me any special attention, although the street was alive with pedestrians, all moiling along in the mysterious tint of green. Perhaps I’m out of his territory at last, I thought and began trying to place Rinehart in the scheme of things. He’s been around all the while, but I have been looking in another direction. He was around and others like him, but I had looked past him until Clifton’s death (or was it Ras?) had made me aware. What on earth was hiding behind the face of things? If dark glasses and a white hat could blot out my identity so quickly, who actually was who?

The perfume was exotic and seemed to roll up the walk behind me as I became aware of a woman strolling casually behind me.

“I’ve been waiting for you to recognize me, daddy,” a voice said. “I’ve been waiting for you a long time.”

It was a pleasant voice with a slightly husky edge and plenty of sleep in it.

“Don’t you hear me, daddy?” she said. And I started to look around, hearing, “No, daddy, don’t look back; my old man might be cold trailing me. Just walk along beside me while I tell you where to meet me. I swear I thought you’d never come. Will you be able to see me tonight?”

She had moved close to me now and suddenly I felt a hand fumbling at my jacket pocket.

“All right, daddy, you don’t have to jump evil on me, here it is; now will you see me?”

I stopped dead, grabbing her hand and looking at her, an exotic girl even through the green glasses, looking at me with a smile that suddenly broke. “Rinehart,
daddy
, what’s the matter?”

So here it goes again, I thought, holding her tightly.

“I’m not Rinehart, Miss,” I said. “And for the first time tonight I’m truly sorry.”

“But Bliss, daddy—Rinehart! You’re not trying to put your baby down—Daddy, what did I do?”

She seized my arm and we were poised face to face in the middle of the walk. And suddenly she screamed, “Oooooooh! You really aren’t! And me trying to give you his money. Get away from me, you dumb John. Get away from me!”

I backed off. Her face was distorted as she stamped her high heels and screamed. Behind me I heard someone say, “Hey, what was that?” followed by the sound of running feet as I shot off and around the corner away from her screams. That lovely girl, I thought, that lovely girl.

Several blocks away I stopped, out of breath. And both pleased and angry. How stupid could people be? Was everyone suddenly nuts? I looked about me. It was a bright street, the walks full of people. I stood at the curb trying to breathe. Up the street a sign with a cross glowed above the walk:

The letters glowed dark green and I wondered if it were from the lenses or the actual color of the neon tubes. A couple of drunks stumbled past. I headed for Hambro’s, passing a man sitting on the curb with his head bent over his knees. Cars passed. I went on. Two solemn-faced children came passing out handbills which first I refused, then went back and took. After all, I had to know what was going on in the community. I took the bill and stepped close to the street light, reading.

I dropped the leaflet into the gutter and moved on. I walked slowly, my breath still coming hard.
Could it be?
Soon I reached the sign. It hung above a store that had been converted into a church, and I stepped into the shallow lobby and wiped my face with a handkerchief. Behind me I heard the rise and fall of an old-fashioned prayer such as I hadn’t heard since leaving the campus; and then only when visiting country preachers were asked to pray. The voice rose and fell in a rhythmical, dreamlike recital—part enumeration of earthly trials undergone by the congregation, part rapt display of vocal virtuosity, part appeal to God. I was still wiping my face and squinting at crude Biblical scenes painted on the windows when two old ladies came up to me.

“Even’, Rever’n Rinehart,” one of them said. “How’s our dear pastor this warm evening?”

Oh, no, I thought, but perhaps agreeing will cause less trouble than denying, and I said, “Good evening, sisters,” muffling my voice with my handkerchief and catching the odor of the girl’s perfume from my hand.

“This here’s Sister Harris, Rever’n. She come to join our little band.”

“God bless you, Sister Harris,” I said, taking her extended hand.

“You know, Rever’n, I once heard you preach years ago. You was just a lil’ ole twelve-year-ole boy, back in Virginia. And here I come North and find you, praise God, still preaching the gospel, doing the Lord’s work. Still preaching the ole time religion here in this wicked city—”

“Er, Sister Harris,” the other sister said, “we better get on in and find our seats. Besides, the pastor’s kind of got things to do. Though you are here a little early, aren’t you, Rever’n?”

“Yes,” I said, dabbing my mouth with my handkerchief. They were motherly old women of the southern type and I suddenly felt a nameless despair. I wanted to tell them that Rinehart was a fraud, but now there came a shout from inside the church and I heard a burst of music.

“Just lissen to it, Sister Harris. That’s the new kind of guitar music I told you Rever’n Rinehart got for us. Ain’t it heavenly?”

“Praise God,” Sister Harris said. “Praise God!”

“Excuse us, Rever’n, I have to see Sister Judkins about the money she collected for the building fund. And, Rever’n, last night I sold ten recordings of your inspiring sermon. Even sold one to the white lady I work for.”

“Bless you,” I found myself saying in a voice heavy with despair, “bless you, bless you.”

Then the door opened and I looked past their heads into a small crowded room of men and women sitting in folding chairs, to the front where a slender woman in a rusty black robe played passionate boogie-woogie on an upright piano along with a young man wearing a skull cap who struck righteous riffs from an electric guitar which was connected to an amplifier that hung from the ceiling above a gleaming white and gold pulpit. A man in an elegant red cardinal’s robe and a high lace collar stood resting against an enormous Bible and now began to lead a hard-driving hymn which the congregation shouted in the unknown tongue. And back and high on the wall above him there arched the words in letters of gold:

The whole scene quivered vague and mysterious in the green light, then the door closed and the sound muted down.

It was too much for me. I removed my glasses and tucked the white hat carefully beneath my arm and walked away. Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? And I knew that it was. I had heard of it before but I’d never come so close. Still, could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he himself be both rind and heart? What is real anyway? But how could I doubt it? He was a broad man, a man of parts who got around. Rinehart the rounder. It was true as I was true. His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool. I must have been crazy and blind. The world in which we lived was without boundaries. A vast seething, hot world of fluidity, and Rine the rascal was at home. Perhaps
only
Rine the rascal was at home in it. It was unbelievable, but perhaps only the unbelievable could be believed. Perhaps the truth was always a lie.

Perhaps, I thought, the whole thing should roll off me like drops of water rolling off Jack’s glass eye. I should search out the proper political classification, label Rinehart and his situation and quickly forget it. I hurried away from the church so swiftly that I found myself back at the office before I remembered that I was going to Hambro’s.

I was both depressed and fascinated. I wanted to know Rinehart and yet, I thought, I’m upset because I know I don’t have to know him, that simply becoming aware of his existence, being mistaken for him, is enough to convince me that Rinehart is real. It couldn’t be, but it is. And it can be, is, simply because it’s unknown. Jack wouldn’t dream of such a possibility, nor Tobitt, who thinks he’s so close. Too little was known, too much was in the dark. I thought of Clifton and of Jack himself; how much was really known about either of them? How much was known about me? Who from my old life had challenged me? And after all this time I had just discovered Jack’s missing eye.

My entire body started to itch, as though I had just been removed from a plaster cast and was unused to the new freedom of movement. In the South everyone knew you, but coming North was a jump into the unknown. How many days could you walk the streets of the big city without encountering anyone who knew you, and how many nights? You could actually make yourself anew. The notion was frightening, for now the world seemed to flow before my eyes. All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility. And sitting there trembling I caught a brief glimpse of the possibilities posed by Rinehart’s multiple personalities and turned away. It was too vast and confusing to contemplate. Then I looked at the polished lenses of the glasses and laughed. I had been trying simply to turn them into a disguise but they had become a political instrument instead; for if Rinehart could use them in his work, no doubt I could use them in mine. It was too simple, and yet they had already opened up a new section of reality for me. What would the committee say about that? What did their theory tell them of such a world? I recalled a report of a shoe-shine boy who had encountered the best treatment in the South simply by wearing a white turban instead of his usual Dobbs or Stetson, and I fell into a fit of laughing. Jack would be outraged at the very suggestion of such a state of things. And yet there was truth in it; this was the real chaos which he thought he was describing—so long ago it seemed now … Outside the Brotherhood we were outside history; but inside of it they didn’t see us. It was a hell of a state of affairs, we were nowhere. I wanted to back away from it, but still I wanted to discuss it, to consult someone who’d tell me it was only a brief, emotional illusion. I wanted the props put back beneath the world. So now I had a real need to see Hambro.

Getting up to go, I looked at the wall map and laughed at Columbus. What an India he’d found! I was almost across the hall when I remembered and came back and put on the hat and glasses. I’d need them to carry me through the streets.

I took a cab. Hambro lived in the West Eighties, and once in the vestibule I tucked the hat under my arm and put the glasses in my pocket along with Brother Tarp’s leg chain and Clifton’s doll. My pocket was getting overloaded.

I was shown into a small, book-lined study by Hambro himself. From another part of the apartment came a child’s voice singing
Humpty Dumpty
, awakening humiliating memories of my first Easter program during which I had stood before the church audience and forgotten the words …