Strivers Row (56 page)

“You're going to hurt yourself !”

His father's words, the first he had spoken of any kind in months, wound down to long, openmouthed gasps for air. He seemed so winded that Jonah considered rousing the Spottswoods—but when he started to go, his father locked one of his big, still strong hands around his wrist, holding him close. Jonah stared down at the tracks of that wheel rim, still creasing the top of his father's head. Thinking again how hard his life had been.
All alone at thirteen. His mother killed in front of him, his Daddy gone off to the war. The loss of both his wives, Sophia run off.
Jonah's eyes brimmed with tears at the thought of what a cruel thing he was about to do.

But it will be better if I don't stay. It will be better for everyone.
“You got to—stick,” his father breathed, stunning him. The old man seemingly exhausted from the effort, flinging himself back into his desk chair so he could stare up at Jonah. Letting his wrist go, the immense, ancient head lolling back, but his eyes still holding him.

“No, Daddy. You're their preacher. I never was,” Jonah said, meeting his gaze. “I can't do anything for 'em, Daddy. I can't help anybody.”

“Stick in their craw!”

The words coming a little easier now, as if he were just getting worked up. Jonah still not sure what he was talking about—the church, he assumed. His father's eyes still boring into him, as much like some great, wounded beast's as a man's, he thought.
As much like the bull that had rammed his taxicab by the East River stockyards.
Still furious. Still willing to fight it out, against what anyone had to offer. Fighting the gangsters, and the police, and the white politicians, all through the long exodus up the West Side. Fighting to put up his church. Fighting against even the diffidence of his own children.

“I tried to tell it to you once, but you didn't want to hear any more,” Jonah told him. The words tumbling out unplanned, but he was determined to deflect his father's gaze.

“Sure, you can look at me now! You couldn't look at me then, back when I tried to tell you what I was! You didn't want to see it, then! But take a good look. What do you see now?”

His father's eyes blinked, slow as a lizard's, then looked back up. Jonah advancing on him in his chair, half out of his head, he knew, but determined to get some sort of answer—to at least make him look away.

“Huh? Come on, old man! Tell me! Can you stand to look at me, to know what I am? Tell me—
what do you see?
”

His father blinked again. Jonah hovering right over him now— dimly aware that he had been shouting, aware that the Spottswoods must surely be getting up, but not caring. Needing only to see what his reaction would be—

To his surprise, his father's eyes seemed to soften. His voice croaking out a single word—his throat so rusty that it came out more as a bark than anything else, having to repeat it two or three times more before it became intelligible.

“Ruth,” he said. “Ruth—”

Jonah still not understanding right away. He had so rarely thought of her by her given name—remembering it now only by dint of the affection filling his father's eyes.
The name of that white woman in the ancient picture.
Her face largely lost to the rest of her family, its memory abiding solely in Milton's mind.

Ruth. His mother.

Then Jonah was walking swiftly back down the vestry hall, running down the stairs into the church. The sound of people waking behind him—voices calling, lights being turned on.

“Who there? Who there, now? Rev'rend Minister?”

He ignored the Spottswoods, kept running on through the church, out a side door into an alley. Fervently hoping, even as he did, that that would be the last time he ever had to endure anyone calling him by that appellation.
Reverend Minister.
He was nobody's minister, even less someone to be revered.

He ran out onto West 144th Street, then started to walk west. Swinging his umbrella wildly around him as he walked—wanting something to hack at. The rain had stopped, but the street was still unnaturally quiet, devoid for the moment of its usual wartime revelers, and he could hear his own rapid breathing. He heard a motor behind him, and a ponderous, long-snouted Packard came rumbling down the street, pulling up fast by the corner of Seventh Avenue, throwing a sheet of water up over the curb and making him jump back.

A jowly, middle-aged white man opened the passenger door of the big sedan and stepped out on the sidewalk, waiting. Jonah could see that he looked obviously ill at ease. There was another, colored man who remained where he was behind the wheel—and Jonah understood in that instant that he was not the white man's chauffeur. Sure enough, a third man came around the corner, moving toward the uneasy white man with an easy self-assurance, as if he had been expecting him.

Jonah gripped the umbrella harder, squeezing it until he nearly broke the spokes. He had seen such men here before.
John-walkers,
he knew they were called—colored men who escorted whites from downtown to the “specialty” prostitutes they preferred. The wheel-man had met the nervous white john at some hotel downtown, and driven him up here, passing him along to the man who had just turned the corner, the john-walker. Jonah had tried to get the trade at least pushed off this corner before, falling back on the influence of the O'Kanes after many appeals to the local precinct. But they always came back—another indication of his failure.
His father, or Adam, would have moved them off once and for all—

Jonah was almost upon them now, staring right at the john and his new guide. The white man turned his face away, but the john-walker hadn't spotted him yet. Jonah studied the colored man closely—his face creased with an easy smile, hand reaching out for the white man's arm. Dressed like any other experienced hustler in a sharp suit and tie, hair combed back in a flamboyant conk under his wide-brimmed hat. His face leering in the dim streetlight, but oddly boyish and innocent at the same time—

Then Jonah recognized him—unable ever to forget that face.
The boy from the train. The one who had rescued them.
It was impossible, but it had to be him, here to walk a white man to a colored whore. The boy—now a man, he supposed, in his sharp new suit and his professional conk—staring back at him. Changed utterly just in the weeks since Jonah had first seen him. His face equally astounded. Breaking into an even wider, incredulous grin at the sight of Jonah, who in turn started to run toward him, umbrella clenched tightly in one hand.

“What
you
doin' here?” the boy asked, still smiling. “What you lookin' for?”

“Damn you!” Jonah cried out, running straight at him. “Damn you for living!”

The boy's sleepy eyes widened when he saw Jonah wasn't going to stop. He turned back around the corner, deserting his confederates. The driver put the Packard into gear immediately and made a long, looping U-turn, squealing off down Seventh Avenue. The middle-aged white man making a futile grab at the rear-door handle, then bolting off himself, into the Harlem night.

Jonah ignored them, chasing the boy around the corner, even when he saw how much faster he was. Already a block away, the soles of his shoes flying from the sidewalk. Glancing back to see if he was still being followed, his face looking more baffled than angry. While Jonah continued to chase after him, long after he knew there was no hope of catching him and he had vanished from sight altogether. Still holding his umbrella up over his head, shouting like a madman even as it began to pour again. The furious rattle of the rain along a deserted street swallowing up his words, which now merely echoed the boy's own:

“What are you doing here? What are you doing here?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MALCOLM

The new slave Archie had for him was transporting the numbers slips from the Bronx across to New Jersey. Every day he would take the Third Avenue el up to the Mott Haven railyards, where a short, dark woman who called herself Mrs. James handed him a large bag full of betting slips. He would take it back down to the George Washington Bridge, where he would catch any bus on the Red & Tan line over to Fort Lee, the first stop on the other side of the river. There he would hand the bag over to a white man who was waiting for him as soon as he got off, then cross the highway overpass and take the next bus back.

He never knew
why
numbers from the Bronx had to go over to New Jersey, or what Archie had to do with it. He only knew
what
they were from looking in the bag one day. Both hoping and dreading to discover it was filled with cash, but finding only the scribbled numbers of the Irish factory hands, and Italian piano makers of Mott Haven.

It was as simple as that. When he described the work to Sammy the Pimp, Sammy told him his full capabilities were being wasted, and sometimes Malcolm thought so himself, but after his tearful confession he couldn't very well protest. The job was a relief, he had to admit, though he still felt ashamed to be reduced to it, hoping above all that Archie hadn't told
her
anything about his failures. But there were no more followers, at least, and it gave him time to read all the paperbacks he had recently discovered in the drugstore, where they sat in the racks next to his comic books—detective stories, and Max Brand westerns, and the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories about Mars. Leafing through a
Life
magazine if he was still too stoned or hungover from the night before—studying every page, the huge photographs, and even the elaborate hand-drawn ads that were whole stories unto themselves.

Some days, when the weather was a little cooler, he liked to go up on the upper deck of the bus station and just stare out at the great gray-and-silver bridge, glinting in the sunlight like a gigantic snake at rest. Letting a bus or two go by, content to watch the cars passing through the gaping mouths of the bridge towers; the great coiled tentacles of cable, reaching all the way across to the flinty gray-brown cliffs of the Palisades. He always sat on the right-hand side of the bus, where he could watch the river bulge out luxuriantly above the bridge, before it disappeared into the mist. Wondering perversely, sometimes, what it would feel like to just open the bag and let all those prayerful scraps of paper go flying right out the window behind them.

When he got to the other side, he would feel obliged to apologize for his bad conscience. The men waiting there varied, but they were always the same—dressed in a sharp, pinstriped suit; leaning against the metal frame of the bus stop, smoking or working a toothpick over in their mouths.

“The el was runnin' slow today,” he tried to tell him. The bagman never evincing the least interest in this or anything else about him, save for the time his connection stomped out his cigarette and snorted as he strode away, without so much as looking at him:

“Like I give a shit, shine.”

Then they separated, into the echoing, shadowed, concrete-and-metal world around the highway bus stop—two bodies with nothing to do with each other, save for the transaction they had just concluded. The mob bagman disappearing instantly. Malcolm making his way across the overpass, above the constant traffic that whooshed and surged below him like the ocean. Trying not to think about the name the man had tossed at him, lost forever in the whoosh of the concrete underpass, though he couldn't help but feel hurt anyway.

With the new job he could no longer pretend he was his own man, either. He had to be certain places at certain hours, and he had lost the sense of the secret, superhero preeminence he had felt over everyone he passed on the street. His money was less, too, with no tips, and almost no chance to sell his sticks anymore, which was the worst thing. He could no longer bet much of anything on the numbers, and without that dream he couldn't see how he would ever be able to afford a club, or a Cadillac, and wrest
her
away from Archie.

He had seen Miranda only a couple of times since their return from Asbury Park, when he had gone to report to West Indian Archie, once at the Fat Man's Bar, the other time at Jimmy's Chicken Shack. Both times she had given him the high sign when he'd stolen a glance in her direction. At first he couldn't understand her attitude, but then he was sure she was simply afraid. Looking more beautiful than ever, he thought—a little darker, from their time at the shore, even more slender and elegant, her face pensive when she thought there was nobody watching her. He was sure that she missed him, but with his new job he had few chances to get down to her apartment at a time when he knew that Archie wouldn't be there, and she would. He had even thought of writing her, but he was ashamed of his spelling and his grammar, afraid they would only make her laugh, and think of him all the more as a boy.

The answer to everything, he was sure, was more money. Ever since his visit to the ghosty men's house, an idea had been slowly percolating in his brain as to how to get it. He had taken it first to Jakey Mendelssohn, thinking that he would be necessary to any scheme—that as a white man, and a Jew, he would know what all the junk they had in there would be worth, and how to turn it over. But ever since their last bootlegging trip to the Island, Jakey had seemed gloomy and preoccupied when he went to see him, and refused to show him any new hustles.

“You want to be like me?
Look
it what a
schlemiel
I am—a bum!” was all he said when Malcolm came around.

“Better you shouldn't learn these things. Lookit me. Boys I went to school with, they had no more money or brains than I did. Now they're lawyers. They're doctors, and scholars. They're fighting for their country against the Nazi
chaiserim
. I gotta bum hip, from a bullet some gangster put there,” he said.

“It's my play all the way 'round,” Malcolm prodded him, uncomfortable with all the other distractions he talked. “All
you
gotta do is lemme know what's solid an' what ain't.”

But Jakey only shook his head—looking over at the nephew of his who always gave Malcolm the willies. His big cow eyes even now gazing fearfully, stupidly at them above his broom.

“I'm a businessman,” he said, his voice grimmer than Malcolm had ever heard it before, all the usual bluster gone. “I do what I gotta do to make a living. That's why I know all these cheap,
goyishe
hustles. But I can't help anybody.”

He patted Malcolm's face affectionately, his voice softening.

“Leave the crazy old gentiles alone,” he told him. “Don' always try so hard to be a businessman.”

Edging close to him then, as if to confide in him. Tapping a finger into the palm of his hand.

“We got to find some way. Some way to
do
something!”

“What?” Malcolm asked—but Jakey was already walking back into his department store, waving him away.

Sammy the Pimp had a solution to his problems. He had listened to his troubles with his usual attentiveness when Malcolm had broken down and laid his spiel on him. He walked him through his neighborhood around West 144th Street, pointing out different establishments of one kind or another that he had cased, and telling Malcolm how easy they would be to knock over.

“You just go in there an' show 'em your gat, an' they hand it right over,” Sammy told him when they got back to the apartment he shared with Hortense. “Most of 'em just owned by some ofays anyway.”

He laid another of his pistols, a .32-20, out on the table before him, and pushed it toward Malcolm.

“ 'Course, you be needin' a bigger piece for all that. Not like that .25 peashooter you got now—”

Malcolm had stared at it, tempted. The .32-20 not as intimidating as Sammy's favorite army .45, but much bigger and more formidable than the little silver pistol that was still all he had for himself. For a moment he thought he might take Sammy up on it. But then he remembered the sawed-off shotgun Jakey Mendelssohn kept at his store—just under the counter, within easy reach, the safety off—and he thought better of trying to pull off any stickups with Sammy the Pimp.

Instead, Malcolm had convinced Sammy to give him another job in his racket: steering the johns up to the women he kept in a crib up on West 144th Street. It was nearly as good a hustle as running numbers and sticks—the product guaranteed, the tips good. Best of all, it allowed him to dress up in the nice suits that Sammy fronted him, and go down to the best midtown hotels. There he would stand on the pavement just outside, knowing the house dick or the cops would run him if he set foot in the lobby. A fresh white carnation in the lapel of his suit jacket or his raincoat, waiting for the car full of nervous white faces to pull up beside him.

If it was a private car, Malcolm would get in the driver's side and take the wheel himself. If it was a cab, he would politely direct the driver,
“The Apollo Theatre in Harlem, please,”
like any other tourist, just in case the cabbie was a plainclothesman. Once they got up to the theater, Malcolm would have them switch cabs, getting a colored hack to take them the rest of the way.

He liked the whole spy feeling to the job. He liked to watch the faces of the johns as they drove up, trying to figure out just who they were, and what they did. They were mostly older men, whether because of the war or what Sammy charged, he wasn't sure, but what they wanted usually was expensive. A few of them he recognized as singers or actors from the movies, no matter how much they had tried to change their hair or pull their hats down. Some of the johns were politicians, also trying hard not to be recognized, or men with the belligerent, edgy haste of gangsters.

Usually they were businessmen, salesmen in town for the day or the week to make a deal. Chattering nervously most of the way up, trying hard to make some small talk. But with all of them, Malcolm noticed how they began to relax the more they got into Harlem. He laughed at their jokes, doing his best to make them feel at ease—but once they crossed 110th Street, it really wasn't necessary. Their faces seemed to physically loosen the farther they got uptown. Mouths slackening into sickly, guilty smiles, backs slumping comfortably into the mold of the worn backseat. He would have guessed they would get more nervous the more uptown they went, but it was just the opposite. They stopped talking so much, paid him less mind—looking about themselves as freely as if they were planning to buy the place.

That was when he understood it:
This is a white man's heaven.
This was their paradise, their reward, where they knew they could do anything. Relaxing into their slumped, smaller selves even as he watched. Knowing that here they could
indulge
.

Sometimes Malcolm would be the one to meet the steer up at the corner of West 144th Street. Walking the john the rest of the way into the apartment, where he was supposed to stay out in an anteroom and keep watch. But it was the customers he watched, curious to see what they could need so much. They didn't seem to care, didn't seem even to remember his presence by then, exposed completely as they were. Their soft, pale guts drooping down over their groins, pubic and chest hair whiter than the hair on their head. Some of them even keeping on their socks, and the thin black sock garters that held them up.

They liked different things, but all of them liked the women to be as dark as possible. Some of them liked to have their flaccid, old men's cocks sucked. Holding the waiting brown face close to their loins to dribble the thin remnants of their spunk over it, seeming to delight in the contrast. Some of them liked to be powdered all over with talcum, and diapered like a baby. Some of them liked to be spanked, taken over the knee or tucked up on all fours in the corner, like a dog. One of Sammy's most popular girls was a strapping, coal-black amazon, taller than Malcolm was by a head, and bigger in the shoulders, with the rippling arm muscles of a steel riveter. She dressed in leather, and greased over her whole body and her face to look even shinier and blacker. Lashing her customers fiercely but expertly with a cat-o'-nine-tails, drawing just the finest, diamond-shaped nicks of blood up and down their withered, quivering buttocks.

The one thing he never saw was a white woman with a white man. Sammy had some white girls on his string, he knew. One of them was Baby, that mad, cavewoman, dope fiend he had known back in his first apartment house, working for Sammy now, along with her lover, Bea. They did a number with a tall black man, who had the longest dick Malcolm had ever seen. Some of the white men just liked to watch—sitting up in an armchair, where Malcolm watched them watching. The tall Negro taking Baby, usually from behind, often over a kitchen chair with one leg up, so they could see as much of the man's cock go in as possible. Bea leading her to him by the hand, Baby looking almost as if she were in a trance. Bea helping to put it in, holding her Baby's hand and wiping her forehead. Whispering words of comfort to her as she twisted and groaned, and cried, stuck there, until even Malcolm felt sorry for her—trying not to look at the white man ecstatically jerking off in the chair before him.

Sometimes Malcolm would even bring a white woman up. Always accompanied by her husband, or her lover. Usually late at night, both of them dressed for a formal party, or the theater. The woman always stayed nervous—her mouth dry, shifting about constantly in the car. The man trying to calm her, patting her thigh or holding her hand, smiling at her in the false, reassuring manner of a parent taking a child to the dentist. Most times she wouldn't look at Malcolm, and he tried to address everything to the man. Helping pretend that she wasn't really there, while he watched her, through the rearview mirror, bite her lip or try to smoke a cigarette, her hand trembling. Once they were up in the room, they would usually stay standing, the man's arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. Watching the Negro with the great big dick plow into Baby, or maybe Baby and Bea having sex together as well. The white man whispering to his woman the whole time,
“See, honey? That's not so bad. See how it's done? It's natural, baby. See how natural it is—”