Ann Petry (1908–1997)

When Ann Petry submitted “In Darkness and Confusion” in 1947 to The Crisis, editor James Ivy rejected the manuscript. He believed that the magazine’s middle-class readers would object to the novella’s profanity. The fictionalized account of the 1943 Harlem Riots traded in the stark urban realism that had made Petry’s 1946 novel, The Street, a best-seller. Ivy’s reasons for rejecting “In Darkness and Confusion” indicate the fundamental tension African American social realists experienced at that time. Although committed to literary forms of protest against racial inequities in the United States, Petry and her contemporaries were often caught between the 1930s Popular Front radicalism and the rise of liberal integrationism. The Popular Front demanded militant literature about the African American proletariat, while liberalism highlighted the patriotic resistance of African Americans to European Fascism. Petry’s skill as a writer lay in her ability to publish fiction that, though far more radical (particularly in its feminist symbolism) than initially credited, presents African American urban life in a way that enticed a broad mainstream audience during her long career.

Ann Lane Petry was brought up in a middle-class family in Old Saybrook, a predominantly white town in Connecticut, an upbringing that ultimately shaped her literary ability to appeal to both black and white readers. Her father, Peter Clark Lane, was a pharmacist and her mother, Bertha, a chiropodist and small-business owner. The Lanes were one of the only African American families in town. Although insulated from egregious racism in the North, Petry grew up well aware of racial animosity, such as when her father wrote a letter to The Crisis in 1920 to complain about a white teacher who refused to teach his daughters and his niece.

While still in high school, Petry coined the slogan for a perfume advertisement, and an English teacher encouraged her to become a writer. She wrote short stories privately, even as she pursued an advanced degree from the Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven, graduated in 1931, and began working in her father’s business. After marrying Louisiana native George D. Petry in 1938, she left the genteel de facto segregation of New England for New York City to pursue a career in writing. For the first time, on a daily basis, she was exposed to the life and poverty of Harlem. She became a reporter for The Amsterdam News, and in 1941 she started writing for and editing a page devoted to women’s interests in a paper founded by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr and geared toward leftist African American readers, The People’s Voice. During this time Petry also took creative writing classes at Columbia University.

Petry refused to ally herself with the Communist Party, but her civil rights work put her in regular contact with radical leftists. Ben Davis, who ran for office as a Communist, and Marvel Cooke, a member of the Communist Party USA, were acquaintances. As a part of Powell’s People’s Committee, Petry was not afraid to involve herself with Harlem’s working class and its leaders. She worked with the Harlem Riverside Defense Council, the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, the American Negro Theater, and Negro Women Incorporated. As a part-time social worker, she saw the realities of economic and social marginalization – including alcoholism, domestic violence, and assault – in African American communities.

As Petry found her literary voice, she depicted these realities. In 1943, The Crisis published Petry’s short story “On Saturday the Siren Sounds at Noon,” which describes a war-industry worker’s murder-suicide in the wake of his child’s death in a fire. Not long thereafter, The Crisis published a second story, “Like a Winding Sheet,” later anthologized in Martha Foley’s Best American Short Stories of 1946, and winner of a $2,400 literary fellowship from Houghton-Mifflin. Petry used the fellowship to publish The Street, a million-copy best-seller. Preoccupied with pernicious determinism in an urban environment, Petry demonstrated a feminist focus that counterbalanced the violent perspective of social realism that was being celebrated in other widely known novels of the time, namely Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) or Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945). With proceeds from The Street, Petry and her husband moved back to Connecticut, where she continued to write.

The subsequent novels Petry wrote and set in New England – Country Place (1947) and The Narrows (1953) – did not earn the same critical or commercial acclaim that her first novel received. Still, her versatility was a virtue. Having worked extensively with after-school programs in Harlem in the early 1940s, she sought to engage a younger audience by writing a number of children’s books, including The Drugstore Cat (1949), Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (1955), and Tituba of Salem Village (1964). In 1971 she published a collection of short stories, Miss Muriel and Other Stories, which brought together her various interests in urban, rural, and juvenile topics under one roof. Prior to her death, in 1997, she enjoyed a variety of teaching positions, honorary degrees, and interest in her work.

The Bones of Louella Brown¹

Old Peabody and Young Whiffle, partners in the firm of Whiffle and Peabody, Incorporated, read with mild interest the first article about Bedford Abbey which appeared in the Boston papers. But each day thereafter the papers printed one or two items about this fabulous project. And as they learned more about it, Old Peabody and Young Whiffle became quite excited.

For Bedford Abbey was a private chapel, a chapel which would be used solely for the weddings and funerals of the Bedford family – the most distinguished family in Massachusetts.

What was more important, the Abbey was to become the final resting-place for all the Bedfords who had passed on to greater glory and been buried in the family plot in Yew Tree Cemetery. These long-dead Bedfords were to be exhumed and reburied in the crypt under the marble floor of the chapel. Thus Bedford Abbey would be officially opened with the most costly and the most elaborate funeral service ever held in Boston.

As work on the Abbey progressed, Young Whiffle (who was seventy-five) and Old Peabody (who was seventy-nine) frowned and fumed while they searched the morning papers for some indication of the date of this service.

Whiffle and Peabody were well aware that they owned the oldest and the most exclusive undertaking firm in the city; and having handled the funerals of most of the Bedfords, they felt that, in all logic, this stupendous funeral ceremony should be managed by their firm. But they were uneasy. For Governor Bedford (he was still called Governor though it had been some thirty years since he held office) was unpredictable. And most unfortunately, the choice of undertakers would be left to the Governor, for the Abbey was his brain-child.

A month dragged by, during which Young Whiffle and Old Peabody set an all-time record for nervous tension. They snapped at each other, and nibbled their fingernails, and cleared their throats, with the most appalling regularity.

It was well into June before the Governor’s secretary finally telephoned. He informed Old Peabody, who quivered with delight, that Governor Bedford had named Whiffle and Peabody as the undertakers for the service which would be held at the Abbey on the twenty-first of June.

When the Bedford exhumation order was received, Old Peabody produced an exhumation order for the late Louella Brown. It had occurred to him that this business of exhuming the Bedfords offered an excellent opportunity for exhuming Louella, with very little additional expense. Thus he could rectify a truly terrible error in judgment made by his father, years ago.

“We can pick ’em all up at once,” Old Peabody said, handing the Brown exhumation order to Young Whiffle. “I want to move Louella Brown out of Yew Tree Cemetery. We can put her in one of the less well-known burying places on the outskirts of the city. That’s where she should have been put in the first place. But we will, of course, check up on her as usual.”

“Who was Louella Brown?” asked Young Whiffle.

“Oh, she was once our laundress. Nobody of importance,” Old Peabody said carelessly. Though as he said it he wondered why he remembered Louella with such vividness.

Later in the week, the remains of all the deceased Bedfords, and of the late Louella Brown, arrived at the handsome establishment of Whiffle and Peabody. Though Young Whiffle and Old Peabody were well along in years, their research methods were completely modern. Whenever possible they checked on the condition of their former clients and kept exact records of their findings.

The presence of so many former clients at one time – a large number of Bedfords and Louella Brown – necessitated the calling in of Stuart Reynolds. He was a Harvard medical student who did large-scale research jobs for the firm, did them well, and displayed a most satisfying enthusiasm for his work.

It was near closing time when Reynolds arrived at the imposing brick structure which housed Whiffle and Peabody, Incorporated.

Old Peabody handed Reynolds a sheaf of papers and tried to explain about Louella Brown, as tactfully as possible.

“She used to be our laundress,” he said. “My mother was very fond of Louella, and insisted that she be buried in Yew Tree Cemetery.” His father had consented – grudgingly, yes, but his father should never have agreed to it. It had taken the careful discriminatory practices of generations of Peabodys, undertakers like himself, to make Yew Tree Cemetery what it was today – the final home of Boston’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families. Louella’s grave had been at the very tip edge of the cemetery in 1902, in a very undesirable place. But just last month he had noticed, with dismay, that due to the enlargement of the cemetery, over the years, she now lay in one of the choicest spots – in the exact center.

Before Old Peabody spoke again he was a little disconcerted, for he suddenly saw Louella Brown with an amazing sharpness. It was just as though she had entered the room – a quick- moving little woman, brown of skin and black of hair, and with very erect posture.

He hesitated a moment and then he said, “She was – uh – uh – a colored woman. But in spite of that, we will do the usual research.”

“Colored?” said Young Whiffle sharply. “Did you say ‘colored’? You mean a black woman? And buried in Yew Tree Cemetery?” His voice rose in pitch.

“Yes,” Old Peabody said. He lifted his shaggy eyebrows at Young Whiffle as an indication that he was not to discuss the matter further. “Now, Reynolds, be sure and lock up when you leave.”

Reynolds accepted the papers from Old Peabody and said, “Yes, sir. I’ll lock up.” And in his haste to get at the job he left the room so fast that he stumbled over his own feet and very nearly fell. He hurried because he was making a private study of bone structure in the Caucasian female as against the bone structure in the female of the darker race, and Louella Brown was an unexpected research plum.

Old Peabody winced as the door slammed. “The terrible enthusiasm of the young,” he said to Young Whiffle.

“He comes cheap,” Young Whiffle said gravely. “And he’s polite enough.”

They considered Reynolds in silence for a moment.

“Yes, of course,” Old Peabody said. “You’re quite right. He is an invaluable young man and his wages are adequate for his services.” He hoped Young Whiffle noticed how neatly he had avoided repeating the phrase “he comes cheap.”

“ ‘Adequate,’ ” murmured Young Whiffle. “Yes, yes, ‘adequate.’ Certainly. And invaluable.” He was still murmuring both words as he accompanied Old Peabody out of the building.

Fortunately for their peace of mind, neither Young Whiffle nor Old Peabody knew what went on in their workroom that night. Though they found out the next morning to their very great regret.

It so happened that the nearest approach to royalty in the Bedford family had been the Countess of Castro (nee Elizabeth Bedford). Though neither Old Peabody nor Young Whiffle knew it, the countess and Louella Brown had resembled each other in many ways. They both had thick glossy black hair. Neither woman had any children. They had both died in 1902, when in their early seventies, and been buried in Yew Tree Cemetery within two weeks of each other.

Stuart Reynolds did not know this either, or he would not have worked in so orderly a fashion. As it was, once he entered the big underground workroom of Whiffle and Peabody, he began taking notes on the condition of each Bedford, and then carefully answered the questions on the blanks provided by Old Peabody.

He finished all the lesser Bedfords, then turned his attention to the countess.

When he opened the coffin of the countess, he gave a little murmur of pleasure. “A very neat set of bones,” he said. “A small woman, about seventy. How interesting! All of her own teeth, no repairs.”

Having checked the countess, he set to work on Louella Brown. As he studied Louella’s bones he said, “Why how extremely interesting!” For here was another small-boned woman, about seventy, who had all of her own teeth. As far as he could determine from a hasty examination, there was no way of telling the countess from Louella.

“But the hair! How stupid of me. I can tell them apart by the hair. The colored woman’s will be – ” But it wasn’t. Both women had the same type of hair.

He placed the skeleton of the Countess of Castro on a long table, and right next to it he drew up another long table, and placed on it the skeleton of the late Louella Brown. He measured both of them.

“Why, it’s sensational!” he said aloud. And as he talked to himself he grew more and more excited. “It’s a front page story. I bet they never even knew each other and yet they were the same height, had the same bone structure. One white, one black, and they meet here at Whiffle and Peabody after all these years – the laundress and the countess. It’s more than front page news, why, it’s the biggest story of the year – ”

Without a second’s thought Reynolds ran upstairs to Old Peabody’s office and called the Boston Record. He talked to the night city editor. The man sounded bored, but he listened.

Finally he said, “You got the bones of both these ladies out on tables, and you say they’re just alike. Okay, be right over – ”

Thus two photographers and the night city editor of the Boston Record invaded the sacred premises of Whiffle and Peabody, Incorporated. The night city editor was a tall, lank individual, and very hard to please. He no sooner asked Reynolds to pose in one position than he had him moved, in front of the tables, behind them, at the foot, at the head. Then he wanted the tables moved. The photographers cursed audibly as they dragged the tables back and forth, turned them around, sideways, lengthways. And still the night city editor wasn’t satisfied.

Reynolds shifted position so often that he might have been on a merry-go-round. He registered surprise, amazement, pleasure. Each time the night city editor objected.

It was midnight before the newspaperman² said, “Okay, boys, this is it.” The photographers took their pictures quickly and then started picking up their equipment.

The newspaperman watched the photographers for a moment, then he strolled over to Reynolds and said, “Now – uh – sonny, which one of these ladies is the countess?”

Reynolds started to point at one of the tables, stopped, and let out a frightened exclamation. “Why – ” His mouth stayed open. “Why – I don’t know!” His voice was suddenly frantic. “You’ve mixed them up! You’ve moved them around so many times I can’t tell which is which – nobody could tell – ”

The night city editor smiled sweetly and started for the door.

Reynolds followed him, clutched at his coat sleeve. “You’ve got to help me. You can’t go now,” he said. “Who moved the tables first? Which one of you – ” The photographers stared and then started to grin. The night city editor smiled again. His smile was even sweeter than before.

“I wouldn’t know, sonny,” he said. He gently disengaged Reynolds’ hand from his coat sleeve. “I really wouldn’t know – ”

It was, of course, a front page story. But not the kind that Reynolds had anticipated. There were photographs of that marble masterpiece, Bedford Abbey, and the caption under it asked the question that was later to seize the imagination of the whole country: “Who will be buried under the marble floor of Bedford Abbey on the twenty-first of June – the white countess or the black laundress?”

There were photographs of Reynolds, standing near the long tables, pointing at the bones of both ladies. He was quoted as saying: “You’ve moved them around so many times I can’t tell which is which – nobody could tell – ”

When Governor Bedford read the Boston Record, he promptly called Whiffle and Peabody on the telephone and cursed them with such violence that Young Whiffle and Old Peabody grew visibly older and grayer as they listened to him.

Shortly after the Governor’s call, Stuart Reynolds came to offer an explanation to Whiffle and Peabody. Old Peabody turned his back and refused to speak to, or look at, Reynolds. Young Whiffle did the talking. His eyes were so icy cold, his face so frozen, that he seemed to emit a freezing vapor as he spoke.

Toward the end of his speech, Young Whiffle was breathing hard. “The house,” he said, “the honor of this house, years of working, of building a reputation, all destroyed. We’re ruined, ruined – ” he choked on the word. “Ah,” he said, waving his hands, “Get out, get out, get out, before I kill you – ”

The next day the Associated Press picked up the story of this dreadful mix-up and wired it throughout the country. It was a particularly dull period for news, between wars so to speak, and every paper in the United States carried the story on its front page.

In three days’ time Louella Brown and Elizabeth, Countess of Castro, were as famous as movie stars. Crowds gathered outside the mansion in which Governor Bedford lived; still larger and noisier crowds milled in the street in front of the offices of Whiffle and Peabody.

As the twenty-first of June approached, people in New York and London and Paris and Moscow asked each other the same question: Who would be buried in Bedford Abbey, the countess or the laundress?

Meanwhile Young Whiffle and Old Peabody talked, desperately seeking something, anything, to save the reputation of Boston’s oldest and most expensive undertaking establishment. Their talk went around and around in circles.

“Nobody knows which set of bones belongs to Louella and which to the countess. Why do you keep saying that it’s Louella Brown who will be buried in the Abbey?” snapped Old Peabody.

“Because the public likes the idea,” Young Whiffle snapped back. “A hundred years from now they’ll say it’s the black laundress who lies in the crypt at Bedford Abbey. And that we put her there. We’re ruined – ruined – ruined – ” he muttered. A black washerwoman!” he said, wringing his hands. “If only she had been white – ”

“She might have been Irish,” said Old Peabody coldly. He was annoyed to find how very clearly he could see Louella. With each passing day her presence became sharper, more strongly felt. And a Catholic. That would have been equally as bad. No, it would have been worse. Because the Catholics would have insisted on a mass, in Bedford Abbey, of all places! Or she might have been a foreigner – a – a – Russian. Or, God forbid, a Jew!”

“Nonsense,” said Young Whiffle pettishly. “A black washerwoman is infinitely worse than anything you’ve mentioned. People are saying it’s some kind of trick, that we’re proving there’s no difference between the races. Oh, we’re ruined – ruined – ruined – ” Young Whiffle moaned.

As a last resort, Old Peabody and Young Whiffle went to see Stuart Reynolds. They found him in the shabby rooming house where he lived.

“You did this to us,” Old Peabody said to Reynolds. “Now you figure out a way, an acceptable way, to determine which of those women is which or I’ll – ”

“We will wait while you think,” said Young Whiffle, looking out of the window.

“I have thought,” Reynolds said wildly. “I’ve thought until I’m nearly crazy.”

“Think some more,” snapped Old Peabody, glaring.

Peabody and Whiffle seated themselves on opposite sides of the small room. Young Whiffle glared out of the window and Old Peabody glared at Reynolds. And Reynolds couldn’t decide which was worse.

“You knew her, knew Louella, I mean,” said Reynolds. “Can’t you just say, this one’s Louella Brown, pick either one, because, the body, I mean, Whiffle and Peabody, they, she was embalmed there – ”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Young Whiffle, his eyes on the windowsill, glaring at the windowsill, annihilating the windowsill. “Whiffle and Peabody would be ruined by such a statement, more ruined than they are at present.”

“How?” demanded Reynolds. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have argued but being shut up in the room with this pair of bony-fingered old men had turned him desperate. “Why? After all, who could dispute it? You could get the embalmer, Mr. Ludastone, to say he remembered the neck bone, or the position of the foot – ” His voice grew louder. “If you identify the black woman first, nobody’ll question it – ”

“Lower your voice,” said Old Peabody.

Young Whiffle stood up and pounded on the dusty windowsill. “Because black people, bodies, I mean the black dead – ”

He took a deep breath. Old Peabody said, “Now relax, Mr. Whiffle, relax. Remember your blood pressure.”

“There’s such a thing as a color line,” shrieked Young Whiffle. “You braying idiot, you, we’re not supposed to handle colored bodies, the colored dead, I mean the dead colored people, in our establishment. We’d never live down a statement like that. Were fortunate that so far no one has asked how the corpse of Louella Brown, a colored laundress, got on the premises in 1902. Louella was a special case but they’d say that we – ”

“But she’s already there!” Reynolds shouted. “You’ve got a colored body or bones, I mean, there now. She was embalmed there. She was buried in Yew Tree Cemetery. Nobody’s said anything about it.”

Old Peabody held up his hand for silence. “Wait,” he said. “There is a bare chance – ” He thought for a moment. He found that his thinking was quite confused, he felt he ought to object to Reynolds’ suggestion but he didn’t know why. Vivid images of Louella Brown, wearing a dark dress with white collars and cuffs, added to his confusion.

Finally he said, “We’ll do it, Mr. Whiffle. It’s the only way. And we’ll explain it with dignity. Speak of Louella’s long service, true she did laundry for others, too, but we won’t mention that, talk about her cheerfulness and devotion, emphasize the devotion, burying her in Yew Tree Cemetery was a kind of reward for service, payment of a debt of gratitude, remember that phrase, ‘debt of gratitude.’ And call in – ” he swallowed hard, “the press. Especially that animal from the Boston Record, who wrote the story up the first time. We might serve some of the old brandy and cigars. Then Mr. Ludastone can make his statement. About the position of the foot, he remembers it – ” He paused and glared at Reynolds. “And as for you! You needn’t think we’ll ever permit you inside our doors again, dead or alive.”

Gray-haired, gray-skinned Clarence Ludastone, head embalmer for Whiffle and Peabody, dutifully identified one set of bones as being those of the late Louella Brown. Thus the identity of the countess was firmly established. Half the newspapermen in the country were present at the time. They partook generously of Old Peabody’s best brandy and enthusiastically smoked his finest cigars. The last individual to leave was the weary gentleman who represented the Boston Record.

He leaned against the doorway as he spoke to Old Peabody. “Wonderful yarn,” he said. “Never heard a better one. Congratulations – ” And he drifted down the hall.

Because of all the stories about Louella Brown and the Countess of Castro, most of the residents of Boston turned out to watch the funeral cortege³ of the Bedfords on the twenty-first of June. The ceremony that took place at Bedford Abbey was broadcast over a national hook-up, and the news services wired it around the world, complete with pictures.

Young Whiffle and Old Peabody agreed that the publicity accorded the occasion was disgraceful. But their satisfaction over the successful ending of what had been an extremely embarrassing situation was immense. They had great difficulty preserving the solemn mien⁴ required of them during the funeral service.

Young Whiffle and Old Peabody both suffered slight heart attacks when they saw the next morning’s edition of the Boston Record. For there on the front page was a photograph of Mr. Ludastone, and over it in bold, black type were the words “child embalmer.” The article which accompanied the picture, said, in part:

Who is buried in the crypt at Bedford Abbey? The countess, or Louella the laundress? We ask because Mr. Clarence Ludastone, the suave gentleman who is head embalmer for Whiffle and Peabody, could not possibly identify the bones of Louella Brown, despite his look of great age. Mr. Ludastone, according to his birth certificate (which is reproduced on this page) was only two years old at the time of Louella’s death. This reporter has questioned many of Boston’s oldest residents but he has, as yet, been unable to locate anyone who remembers a time when Whiffle and Peabody employed a two-year-old child as embalmer …

Eighty-year-old Governor Bedford very nearly had apoplexy⁵ when he saw the Boston Record. He hastily called a press conference. He said that he would personally, publicly (in front of the press), identify the countess, if it was the countess. He remembered her well, for he had been only thirty-five when she died. He would know instantly if it were she.

Two days later the Governor stalked down the center aisle of that marble gem – Bedford Abbey. He was followed by a veritable hive of newsmen and photographers. Old Peabody and Young Whiffle were waiting for them just inside the crypt.

The Governor peered at the interior of the opened casket and drew back. He forgot the eager-eared newsmen, who surrounded him, pressed against him. When he spoke he reverted to the simple speech of his early ancestors.

“Why they be nothing but bones here!” he said. “Nothing but bones! Nobody could tell who this be.”

He turned his head, unable to take a second look. He, too, someday, not too far off, how did a man buy immortality, he didn’t want to die, bones rattling inside a casket – ah, no! He reached for his pocket handkerchief, and Young Whiffle thrust a freshly laundered one into his hand.

Governor Bedford wiped his face, his forehead. But not me, he thought. I’m alive. I can’t die. It won’t happen to me. And inside his head a voice kept saying over and over, like the ticking of a clock: It will. It can. It will. It can. It will.

“You were saying, Governor,” prompted the tall thin newsman from the Boston Record.

“I don’t know!” Governor Bedford shouted angrily. “I don’t know! Nobody could tell which be the black laundress and which the white countess from looking at their bones.”

“Governor, Governor,” protested Old Peabody. “Governor, ah – calm yourself, great strain – ” And leaning forward, he hissed in the Governor’s reddening ear, “Remember the press, don’t say that, don’t make a statement, don’t commit yourself – ”

“Stop spitting in my ear!” roared the Governor. “Get away! And take your blasted handkerchief with you.” He thrust Young Whiffle’s handkerchief inside Old Peabody’s coat, up near the shoulder. “It stinks, it stinks of death.” Then he strode out of Bedford Abbey, muttering under his breath as he went.

The Governor’s statement went around the world, in direct quotes. So did the photographs of him, peering inside the casket, his mouth open, his eyes staring. There were still other photographs that showed him charging down the center aisle of Bedford Abbey, head down, shoulders thrust forward, even the back of his neck somehow indicative of his fury. Cartoonists showed him, in retreat, words issuing from his shoulder blades, “Nobody could tell who this be – the black laundress or the white countess – ”

Sermons were preached about the Governor’s statement, editorials were written about it, and Congressmen made long-winded speeches over the radio. The Mississippi legislature threatened to declare war on the sovereign State of Massachusetts because Governor Bedford’s remarks were an unforgiveable insult to believers in white supremacy.

Many radio listeners became completely confused and, believing that both ladies were still alive, sent presents to them, sometimes addressed in care of Governor Bedford, and sometimes addressed in care of Whiffle and Peabody.

Whiffle and Peabody kept the shades drawn in their establishment. They scuttled through the streets each morning, hats pulled low over their eyes, en route to their offices. They would have preferred to stay at home (with the shades drawn) but they agreed it was better to act as though nothing had happened. So they spent ten hours a day on the premises as was their custom, though there was absolutely no business.

Young Whiffle paced the floor, hours at a time, wringing his hands, and muttering, “A black washerwoman! We’re ruined – ruined – ruined – !”

Old Peabody found himself wishing that Young Whiffle would not speak of Louella with such contempt. In spite of himself he kept dreaming about her. In the dream, she came quite close to him, a small, brown woman with merry eyes. And after one quick look at him, she put her hands on her hips, threw her head back and laughed and laughed.

He was quite unaccustomed to being laughed at, even in a dream; and the memory of Louella’s laughter lingered with him for hours after he woke up. He could not forget the smallest detail of her appearance: how her shoulders shook as she laughed, and that her teeth were very white and evenly spaced.

He thought to avoid this recurrent visitation by sitting up all night, by drinking hot milk, by taking lukewarm baths. Then he tried the exact opposite – he went to bed early, drank cold milk, took scalding hot baths. To no avail. Louella Brown still visited him, each and every night.

Thus it came about that one morning when Young Whiffle began his ritual muttering: “A black washerwoman – we’re ruined – ruined – ruined – ” Old Peabody shouted: “Will you stop that caterwauling?⁶ One would think the Loch Ness monster lay in the crypt at Bedford Abbey.” He could see Louella Brown standing in front of him, laughing, laughing. And he said, “Louella Brown was a neatly built little woman, a fine woman, full of laughter. I remember her well. She was a gentlewoman. Her bones will do no injury to the Governor’s damned funeral chapel.”

It was a week before Young Whiffle actually heard what Old Peabody was saying, though Peabody made this same outrageous statement, over and over again.

When Young Whiffle finally heard it, there was a quarrel, a violent quarrel, caused by the bones of Louella Brown – that quick-moving, merry little woman.

By the end of the day, the partnership was dissolved, and the ancient and exclusive firm of Whiffle and Peabody, Incorporated, went out of business.

Old Peabody retired; after all, there was no firm he could consider associating with. Young Whiffle retired, too, but he moved all the way to California, and changed his name to Smith, in the hope that no man would ever discover he had once been a member of that blackguardly firm of Whiffle and Peabody, Incorporated.

Despite his retirement, Old Peabody found that Louella Brown still haunted his dreams. What was worse, she took to appearing before him during his waking moments. After a month of this, he went to see Governor Bedford. He had to wait an hour before the Governor came downstairs, walking slowly, leaning on a cane.

Old Peabody wasted no time being courteous. He went straight to the reason for his visit. “I have come,” he said stiffly, “to suggest to you that you put the names of both those women on the marble slab in Bedford Abbey.”

“Never,” said the Governor. “Never, never, never!”

He is afraid to die, Old Peabody thought, eying the Governor. You can always tell by the look on their faces. He shrugged his shoulders. “Every man dies alone, Governor,” he said brutally. “And so it is always best to be at peace with this world and any other world that follows it, when one dies.”

Old Peabody waited a moment. The Governor’s hands were shaking. Fear or palsy, he wondered. Fear, he decided. Fear beyond the question of a doubt.

“Louella Brown visits me every night and frequently during the day,” Peabody said softly. “I am certain that unless you follow my suggestion, she will also visit you.” A muscle in the Governors face started to twitch. Peabody said, “When your bones finally lie in the crypt in your marble chapel, I doubt that you want to hear the sound of Louella’s laughter ringing in your ears – till doomsday.”

“Get out!” said the Governor, shuddering. “You’re crazy as a loon.”

“No,” Old Peabody said firmly. “Between us, all of us, we have managed to summon Louella’s spirit.” And he proceeded to tell the Governor how every night, in his dreams, and sometimes during the day when he was awake, Louella came to stand beside him, and look up at him and laugh. He told it very well, so well in fact that for a moment he thought he saw Louella standing in the room, right near Governor Bedford’s left shoulder.

The Governor turned, looked over his shoulder. And then he said, slowly and reluctantly, and with the uneasy feeling that he could already hear Louella’s laughter, “All right.” He paused, took a deep unsteady breath. “What do you suggest I put on the marble slab in the crypt?”

After much discussion, and much writing, and much tearing up of what had been written, they achieved a satisfactory epitaph. If you ever go to Boston and visit Bedford Abbey you will see for yourself how Old Peabody propitiated the bones of the late Louella Brown. For after these words were carved on the marble slab, Louella ceased to haunt Old Peabody:

HERE LIES
ELIZABETH, COUNTESS OF CASTRO

LOUELLA BROWN, GENTLEWOMAN

1830–1902

REBURIED IN BEDFORD ABBEY JUNE 21, 1947

“They both wore the breastplate of faith and love;
And for a helmet, the hope of salvation.”⁷

1947

In Darkness and Confusion¹

William Jones took a sip of coffee and then put his cup down on the kitchen table. It didn’t taste right and he was annoyed because he always looked forward to eating breakfast. He usually got out of bed as soon as he woke up and hurried into the kitchen. Then he would take a long time heating the corn bread left over from dinner the night before, letting the coffee brew until it was strong and clear, frying bacon, and scrambling eggs. He would eat very slowly – savoring the early-morning quiet and the just-rightness of the food he’d fixed.

There was no question about early morning being the best part of the day, he thought. But this Saturday morning in July it was too hot in the apartment. There were too many nagging worries that kept drifting through his mind. In the heat he couldn’t think clearly – so that all of them pressed in against him, weighed him down.

He pushed his plate away from him. The eggs had cooked too long; much as he liked corn bread, it tasted like sand this morning – grainy and coarse inside his throat. He couldn’t help wondering if it scratched the inside of his stomach in the same way.

Pink was moving around in the bedroom. He cocked his head on one side, listening to her. He could tell exactly what she was doing, as though he were in there with her. The soft heavy sound of her stockinged feet as she walked over to the dresser. The dresser drawer being pulled out. That meant she was getting a clean slip. Then the thud of her two hundred pounds landing in the rocker by the window. She was sitting down to comb her hair. Untwisting the small braids she’d made the night before. She would unwind them one by one, putting the hairpins in her mouth as she went along. Now she was brushing it, for he could hear the creak of the rocker; she was rocking back and forth, humming under her breath as she brushed.

He decided that as soon as she came into the kitchen he would go back to the bedroom, get dressed, and go to work. For his mind was already on the mailbox. He didn’t feel like talking to Pink. There simply had to be a letter from Sam today. There had to be.

He was thinking about it so hard that he didn’t hear Pink walk toward the kitchen.

When he looked up she was standing in the doorway. She was a short, enormously fat woman. The only garment she had on was a bright pink slip that magnified the size of her body. The skin on her arms and shoulders and chest was startlingly black against the pink material. In spite of the brisk brushing she had given her hair, it stood up stiffly all over her head in short wiry lengths, as though she wore a turban of some rough dark gray material.

He got up from the table quickly when he saw her. “Hot, ain’t it?” he said, and patted her arm as he went past her toward the bedroom.

She looked at the food on his plate. “You didn’t want no breakfast?” she asked.

“Too hot,” he said over his shoulder.

He closed the bedroom door behind him gently. If she saw the door was shut, she’d know that he was kind of low in his mind this morning and that he didn’t feel like talking. At first he moved about with energy – getting a clean work shirt, giving his shoes a hasty brushing, hunting for a pair of clean socks. Then he stood still in the middle of the room, holding his dark work pants in his hand while he listened to the rush and roar of water running in the bathtub.

Annie May was up and taking a bath. And he wondered if that meant she was going to work. Days when she went to work she used a hot comb on her hair² before she ate her breakfast, so that before he left the house in the morning it was filled with the smell of hot irons sizzling against hair grease.

He frowned. Something had to be done about Annie May. Here she was only eighteen years old and staying out practically all night long. He hadn’t said anything to Pink about it, but Annie May crept into the house at three and four and five in the morning. He would hear her key go in the latch and then the telltale click as the lock drew back. She would shut the door very softly and turn the bolt. She’d stand there awhile, waiting to see if they woke up. Then she’d take her shoes off and pad down the hall in her stockinged feet.

When she turned the light on in the bathroom, he could see the clock on the dresser. This morning it had been four-thirty when she came in. Pink, lying beside him, went on peacefully snoring. He was glad that she didn’t wake up easy. It would only worry her to know that Annie May was carrying on like that.

Annie May put her hands on her hips and threw her head back and laughed whenever he tried to tell her she had to come home earlier. The smoky smell of the hot irons started seeping into the bedroom and he finished dressing quickly.

He stopped in the kitchen on his way out. “Got to get to the store early today,” he explained. He was sure Pink knew he was hurrying downstairs to look in the mailbox. But she nodded and held her face up for his kiss. When he brushed his lips against her forehead he saw that her face was wet with perspiration. He thought, With all that weight she must feel the heat something awful.

Annie May nodded at him without speaking. She was hastily swallowing a cup of coffee. Her dark thin hands made a pattern against the thick white cup she was holding. She had pulled her hair out so straight with the hot combs that, he thought, it was like a shiny skullcap fitted tight to her head. He was surprised to see that her lips were heavily coated with lipstick. When she was going to work she didn’t use any, and he wondered why she was up so early if she wasn’t working. He could see the red outline of her mouth on the cup.

He hadn’t intended to say anything. It was the sight of the lipstick on the cup that forced the words out. “You ain’t workin’ today?”

“No,” she said lazily. “Think I’ll go shopping.” She winked at Pink and it infuriated him.

“How do you expect to keep a job when you don’t show up half the time?” he asked.

“I can always get another one.” She lifted the coffee cup to her mouth with both hands and her eyes laughed at him over the rim of the cup.

“What time did you come home last night?” he asked abruptly.

She stared out of the window at the blank brick wall that faced the kitchen. “I dunno,” she said finally. “It wasn’t late.”

He didn’t know what to say. Probably she was out dancing somewhere. Or maybe she wasn’t. He was fairly certain that she wasn’t. Yet he couldn’t let Pink know what he was thinking. He shifted his feet uneasily and watched Annie May swallow the coffee. She was drinking it fast.

“You know you ain’t too big to get your butt whipped,” he said finally.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. And he saw a deep smoldering sullenness in her face that startled him. He was conscious that Pink was watching both of them with a growing apprehension.

Then Annie May giggled. “You and who else?” she said lightly. Pink roared with laughter. And Annie May laughed with her.

He banged the kitchen door hard as he went out. Striding down the outside hall, he could still hear them laughing. And even though he knew Pink’s laughter was due to relief because nothing unpleasant had happened, he was angry. Lately every time Annie May looked at him there was open, jeering laughter in her eyes, as though she dared him to say anything to her. Almost as though she thought he was a fool for working so hard.

She had been a nice little girl when she first came to live with them six years ago. He groped in his mind for words to describe what he thought Annie May had become. A Jezebel,³ he decided grimly. That was it.

And he didn’t want Pink to know what Annie May was really like. Because Annie May’s mother, Lottie, had been Pink’s sister. And when Lottie died, Pink took Annie May. Right away she started finding excuses for anything she did that was wrong. If he scolded Annie May he had to listen to a sharp lecture from Pink. It always started off the same way: “Don’t care what she done, William. You ain’t goin’ to lay a finger on her. She ain’t got no father and mother except us …”

The quick spurt of anger and irritation at Annie May had sent him hurrying down the first flight of stairs. But he slowed his pace on the next flight because the hallways were so dark that he knew if he wasn’t careful he’d walk over a step. As he trudged down the long flights of stairs he began to think about Pink. And the hot irritation in him disappeared as it usually did when he thought about her. She was so fat she couldn’t keep on climbing all these steep stairs. They would have to find another place to live – on a first floor where it would be easier for her. They’d lived on this top floor for years, and all the time Pink kept getting heavier and heavier. Every time she went to the clinic the doctor said the stairs were bad for her. So they’d start looking for another apartment and then because the top floors cost less, why, they stayed where they were. And –

Then he stopped thinking about Pink because he had reached the first floor. He walked over to the mailboxes and took a deep breath. Today there’d be a letter. He knew it. There had to be. It had been too long a time since they had had a letter from Sam. The last ones that came he’d said the same thing. Over and over. Like a refrain. “Ma, I can’t stand this much longer.” And then the letters just stopped.

As he stood there, looking at the mailbox, half-afraid to open it for fear there would be no letter, he thought back to the night Sam graduated from high school. It was a warm June night. He and Pink got all dressed up in their best clothes. And he kept thinking, Me and Pink have got as far as we can go. But Sam – he made up his mind Sam wasn’t going to earn his living with a mop and a broom. He was going to earn it wearing a starched white collar and a shine on his shoes and a crease in his pants.

After he finished high school Sam got a job redcapping⁴ at Grand Central. He started saving his money because he was going to go to Lincoln – a college in Pennsylvania. It seemed like it was no time at all before he was twenty-one. And in the army. Pink cried when he left. Her huge body shook with her sobbing. He remembered that he had only felt queer and lost. There was this war⁵ and all the young men were being drafted. But why Sam – why did he have to go?

It was always in the back of his mind. Next thing Sam was in a camp in Georgia. He and Pink never talked about his being in Georgia. The closest they ever came to it was one night when she said, “I hope he gets used to it quick down there. Bein’ born right here in New York there’s lots he won’t understand.”

Then Sam’s letters stopped coming. He’d come home from work and say to Pink casually, “Sam write today?” She’d shake her head without saying anything.

The days crawled past. And finally she burst out. “What you keep askin’ for? You think I wouldn’t tell you?” And she started crying.

He put his arm around her and patted her shoulder. She leaned hard against him. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “He’s my baby. What they done to him?”

Her crying like that tore him in little pieces. His mind kept going around in circles. Around and around. He couldn’t think what to do. Finally one night after work he sat down at the kitchen table and wrote Sam a letter. He had written very few letters in his life because Pink had always done it for him. And now standing in front of the mailbox he could even remember the feel of the pencil in his hand; how the paper looked – blank and challenging – lying there in front of him; that the kitchen clock was ticking and it kept getting louder and louder. It was hot that night, too, and he held the pencil so tight that the inside of his hand was covered with sweat.

He had sat and thought a long time. Then he wrote: “Is you all right? Your Pa.” It was the best he could do. He licked the envelope and addressed it with the feeling that Sam would understand.

He fumbled for his key ring, found the mailbox key and opened the box quickly. It was empty. Even though he could see it was empty he felt around inside it. Then he closed the box and walked toward the street door.

The brilliant sunlight outside made him blink after the darkness of the hall. Even now, so early in the morning, it was hot in the street. And he thought it was going to be a hard day to get through, what with the heat and its being Saturday and all. Lately he couldn’t seem to think about anything but Sam. Even at the drugstore where he worked as a porter, he would catch himself leaning on the broom or pausing in his mopping to wonder what had happened to him.

The man who owned the store would say to him sharply, “Boy, what the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t you keep your mind on what you’re doing?” And he would go on washing windows, or mopping the floor or sweeping the sidewalk. But his thoughts, somehow, no matter what he was doing, drifted back to Sam.

As he walked toward the drugstore he looked at the houses on both sides of the street. He knew this street as he knew the creases in the old felt hat he wore the year round. No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t a good street to live on. It was a long cross-town street. Almost half of it on one side consisted of the backs of the three theaters on 125th Street – a long blank wall of gray brick. There were few trees on the street. Even these were a source of danger, for at night shadowy, vague shapes emerged from the street’s darkness, lurking near the trees, dodging behind them. He had never been accosted by any of those disembodied figures, but the very stealth of their movements revealed a dishonest intent that frightened him. So when he came home at night he walked an extra block or more in order to go through 125th Street and enter the street from Eighth Avenue.

Early in the morning like this, the street slept. Window shades were drawn down tight against the morning sun. The few people he passed were walking briskly on their way to work. But in those houses where the people still slept, the window shades would go up about noon, and radios would blast music all up and down the street. The bold-eyed women⁶ who lived in these houses would lounge in the open windows and call to each other back and forth across the street.

Sometimes when he was on his way home to lunch they would call out to him as he went past, “Come on in, Poppa!” And he would stare straight ahead and start walking faster.

When Sam turned sixteen it seemed to him the street was unbearable. After lunch he and Sam went through this block together – Sam to school and he on his way back to the drugstore. He’d seen Sam stare at the lounging women in the windows. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were curious.

“I catch you goin’ near one of them women and I’ll beat you up and down the block,” he’d said grimly.

Sam didn’t answer him. Instead he looked down at him with a strangely adult look, for even at sixteen Sam had been a good five inches taller than he. After that when they passed through the block, Sam looked straight ahead. And William got the uncomfortable feeling that he had already explored the possibilities that the block offered. Yet he couldn’t be sure. And he couldn’t bring himself to ask him. Instead he walked along beside him, thinking desperately, We gotta move. I’ll talk to Pink. We gotta move this time for sure.

That Sunday after Pink came home from church they looked for a new place. They went in and out of apartment houses along Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue, 135th Street, 145th Street. Most of the apartments they didn’t even look at. They just asked the super how much the rents were.

It was late when they headed for home. He had irritably agreed with Pink that they’d better stay where they were. Thirty-two dollars a month was all they could afford.

“It ain’t a fit place to live, though,” he said. They were walking down Seventh Avenue. The street looked wide to him, and he thought with distaste of their apartment. The rooms weren’t big enough for a man to move around in without bumping into something. Sometimes he thought that was why Annie May spent so much time away from home. Even at thirteen she couldn’t stand being cooped up like that in such a small amount of space.

And Pink said, “You want to live on Park Avenue? With a doorman bowin’ you in and out? ‘Good mornin’, Mr. William Jones. Does the weather suit you this mornin’?’” Her voice was sharp, like the crack of a whip.

That was five years ago. And now again they ought to move on account of Pink not being able to stand the stairs anymore. He decided that Monday night after work he’d start looking for a place.

It was even hotter in the drugstore than it was in the street. He forced himself to go inside and put on a limp work coat. Then broom in hand he went to stand in the doorway. He waved to the superintendent of the building on the corner. And watched him as he lugged garbage cans out of the areaway and rolled them to the curb. Now, that’s the kind of work he didn’t want Sam to have to do. He tried to decide why that was. It wasn’t just because Sam was his boy and it was hard work. He searched his mind for the reason. It didn’t pay enough for a man to live on decently. That was it. He wanted Sam to have a job where he could make enough to have good clothes and a nice home.

Sam’s being in the army wasn’t so bad, he thought. It was his being in Georgia that was bad. They didn’t treat black people right down there. Everybody knew that. If he could figure out some way to get him farther north, Pink wouldn’t have to worry about him so much.

The very sound of the word Georgia did something to him inside. His mother had been born there. She had talked about it a lot and painted such vivid pictures of it that he felt he knew the place – the heat, the smell of the earth, how cotton looked. And something more. The way her mouth had folded together whenever she had said, “They hate niggers down there. Don’t you never none of you children go down there.”

That was years ago; yet even now, standing here on Fifth Avenue, remembering the way she said it turned his skin clammy cold in spite of the heat. And of all the places in the world, Sam had to go to Georgia. Sam, who was born right here in New York, who had finished high school here – they had to put him in the army and send him to Georgia.

He tightened his grip on the broom and started sweeping the sidewalk in long, even strokes. Gradually the rhythm of the motion stilled the agitation in him. The regular back-and-forth motion was so pleasant that he kept on sweeping long after the sidewalk was clean. When Mr. Yudkin, who owned the store, arrived at eight-thirty he was still outside with the broom. Even now he didn’t feel much like talking, so he only nodded in response to the druggist’s brisk “Good morning! Hot today!”

William followed him into the store and began polishing the big mirror in back of the soda fountain. He watched the man out of the corner of his eye as he washed his hands in the back room and exchanged his suit coat for a crisp white laboratory coat. And he thought maybe when the war was over Sam ought to study to be a druggist instead of a doctor or a lawyer.

As the morning wore along, customers came in in a steady stream. They got Bromo-Seltzers,⁷ cigarettes, aspirin, cough medicine, baby bottles. He delivered two prescriptions that cost five dollars. And the cash register rang so often it almost played a tune. Listening to it he said to himself, Yes, Sam ought to be a druggist. It’s clean work and it pays good.

A little after eleven o’clock three young girls came in. “Cokes,” they said, and climbed up on the stools in front of the fountain. William was placing new stock on the shelves and he studied them from the top of the stepladder. As far as he could see, they looked exactly alike. All three of them. And like Annie May. Too thin. Too much lipstick. Their dresses were too short and too tight. Their hair was piled on top of their heads in slicked set curls.

“Aw, I quit that job,” one of them said. “I wouldn’t get up that early in the morning for nothing in the world.”

That was like Annie May, too. She was always changing jobs. Because she could never get to work on time. If she was due at a place at nine, she got there at ten. If at ten, then she arrived about eleven. He knew, too, that she didn’t earn enough money to pay for all the cheap, bright-colored dresses she was forever buying.

Her girl friends looked just like her and just like these girls. He’d seen her coming out of the movie houses on 125th Street with two or three of them. They were all chewing gum and they nudged each other and talked too loud and laughed too loud. They stared hard at every man who went past them.

Mr. Yudkin looked up at him sharply, and he shifted his glance away from the girls and began putting big bottles of Father John’s medicine neatly on the shelf in front of him. As he stacked the bottles up he wondered if Annie May would have been different if she’d stayed in high school. She had stopped going when she was sixteen. He had spoken to Pink about it. “She oughtn’t to stop school. She’s too young,” he’d said.

But because Annie May was Pink’s sister’s child, all Pink had done had been to shake her head comfortably. “She’s tired of going to school. Poor little thing. Leave her alone.”

So he hadn’t said anything more. Pink always took up for her. And he and Pink didn’t fuss at each other like some folks do. He didn’t say anything to Pink about it, but he took the afternoon off from work to go to see the principal of the school. He had to wait two hours to see her. And he studied the pictures on the walls in the outer office, and looked down at his shoes while he tried to put into words what he’d say – and how he wanted to say it.

The principal was a large-bosomed white woman. She listened to him long enough to learn that he was Annie May’s uncle. “Ah, yes, Mr. Jones,” she said. “Now in my opinion – ”

And he was buried under a flow of words, a mountain of words, that went on and on. Her voice was high-pitched and loud, and she kept talking until he lost all sense of what she was saying. There was one phrase she kept using that sort of jumped at him out of the mass of words – “a slow learner.”

He left her office feeling confused and embarrassed. If he could only have found the words he could have explained that Annie May was bright as a dollar. She wasn’t any “slow learner.” Before he knew it he was out in the street, conscious only that he’d lost a whole afternoon’s pay and he never had got to say what he’d come for. And he was boiling mad with himself. All he’d wanted was to ask the principal to help him persuade Annie May to finish school. But he’d never got the words together.

When he hung up his soiled work coat in the broom closet at eight o’clock that night he felt as though he’d been sweeping floors, dusting fixtures, cleaning fountains and running errands since the beginning of time itself. He looked at himself in the cracked mirror that hung on the door of the closet. There was no question about it; he’d grown older-looking since Sam had gone into the army. His hair was turning a frizzled gray at the temples. His jawbones showed up sharper. There was a stoop in his shoulders.

“Guess I’ll get a haircut,” he said softly. He didn’t really need one. But on a Saturday night the barbershop would be crowded. He’d have to wait a long time before Al got around to him. It would be good to listen to the talk that went on – the arguments that would get started and never really end. For a little while all the nagging worry about Sam would be pushed so far back in his mind, he wouldn’t be aware of it.

The instant he entered the barbershop he could feel himself begin to relax inside. All the chairs were full. There were a lot of customers waiting. He waved a greeting to the barbers. “Hot, ain’t it?” he said, and mopped his forehead.

He stood there a minute, listening to the hum of conversation, before he picked out a place to sit. Some of the talk, he knew, would be violent, and he always avoided those discussions because he didn’t like violence – even when it was only talk. Scraps of talk drifted past him.

“White folks got us by the balls – ”

“Well, I dunno. It ain’t just white folks. There’s poor white folks gettin’ their guts squeezed out, too – ”

“Sure. But they’re white. They can stand it better.”

“Sadie had two dollars on 546 yesterday and it came out and – ”

“You’re wrong, man. Ain’t no two ways about it. This country’s set up so that – ”

“Only thing to do, if you ask me, is shoot all them crackers and start out new – ”

He finally settled himself in one of the chairs in the corner – not too far from the window and right in the middle of a group of regular customers who were arguing hotly about the war. It was a good seat. By looking in the long mirror in front of the barbers he could see the length of the shop.

Almost immediately he joined in the conversation. “Them Japs ain’t got a chance – ” he started. And he was feeling good. He’d come in at just the right time. He took a deep breath before he went on. Most every time he started talking about the Japs the others listened with deep respect. Because he knew more about them than the other customers. Pink worked for some navy people and she told him what they said.

He looked along the line of waiting customers, watching their reaction to his words. Pretty soon they’d all be listening to him. And then he stopped talking abruptly. A soldier was sitting in the far corner of the shop, staring down at his shoes. Why, that’s Scummy, he thought. He’s at the same camp where Sam is. He forgot what he was about to say. He got up and walked over to Scummy. He swallowed all the questions about Sam that trembled on his lips.

“Hiya, son,” he said. “Sure is good to see you.”

As he shook hands with the boy he looked him over carefully. He’s changed, he thought. He was older. There was something about his eyes that was different than before. He didn’t seem to want to talk. After that first quick look at William he kept his eyes down, staring at his shoes.

Finally William couldn’t hold the question back any longer. It came out fast. “How’s Sam?”

Scummy picked up a newspaper from the chair beside him. “He’s all right,” he mumbled. There was a long silence. Then he raised his head and looked directly at William. “Was the las’ time I seen him.” He put a curious emphasis on the word “las’.”

William was conscious of a trembling that started in his stomach. It went all through his body. He was aware that conversation in the barbershop had stopped. It was like being inside a cone of silence in which he could hear the scraping noise of the razors – a harsh sound, loud in the silence. Al was putting thick oil on a customer’s hair and he turned and looked with the hair-oil bottle still in his hand, tilted up over the customer’s head. The men sitting in the tilted-back barber’s chairs twisted their necks around – awkwardly, slowly – so they could look at Scummy.

“What you mean – the las’ time?” William asked sharply. The words beat against his ears. He wished the men in the barbershop would start talking again, for he kept hearing his own words. “What you mean – the las’ time?” Just as though he were saying them over and over again. Something had gone wrong with his breathing, too. He couldn’t seem to get enough air in through his nose.

Scummy got up. There was something about him that William couldn’t give a name to. It made the trembling in his stomach worse.

“The las’ time I seen him he was O.K.” Scummy’s voice made a snarling noise in the barbershop.

One part of William’s mind said, Yes, that’s it. Its hate that makes him look different. It’s hate in his eyes. You can see it. It’s in his voice, and you can hear it. He’s filled with it.

“Since I seen him las’,” he went on slowly, “he got shot by a white MP.⁸ Because he wouldn’t go to the nigger end of a bus. He had a bullet put through his guts. He took the MP’s gun away from him and shot the bastard in the shoulder.” He put the newspaper down and started toward the door; when he reached it he turned around. “They court-martialed him,” he said softly. “He got twenty years at hard labor. The notice was posted in the camp the day I left.” Then he walked out of the shop. He didn’t look back.

There was no sound in the barbershop as William watched him go down the street. Even the razors had stopped. Al was still holding the hair-oil bottle over the head of his customer. The heavy oil was falling on the face of the man sitting in the chair. It was coming down slowly – one drop at a time.

The men in the shop looked at William and then looked away. He thought, I mustn’t tell Pink. She mustn’t ever get to know. I can go down to the mailbox early in the morning and I can get somebody else to look in it in the afternoon, so if a notice comes I can tear it up.

The barbers started cutting hair again. There was the murmur of conversation in the shop. Customers got up out of the tilted-back chairs. Someone said to him, “You can take my place.”

He nodded and walked over to the empty chair. His legs were weak and shaky. He couldn’t seem to think at all. His mind kept dodging away from the thought of Sam in prison. Instead the familiar detail of Sam’s growing up kept creeping into his thoughts. All the time the boy was in grammar school he made good marks. Time went so fast it seemed like it was just overnight and he was in long pants. And then in high school.

He made the basketball team in high school. The whole school was proud of him, for his picture had been in one of the white papers. They got two papers that day. Pink cut the pictures out and stuck one in the mirror of the dresser in their bedroom. She gave him one to carry in his wallet.

While Al cut his hair he stared at himself in the mirror until he felt as though his eyes were crossed. First he thought, Maybe it isn’t true. Maybe Scummy was joking. But a man who was joking didn’t look like Scummy looked. He wondered if Scummy was AWOL. That would be bad. He told himself sternly that he mustn’t think about Sam here in the barbershop – wait until he got home.

He was suddenly angry with Annie May. She was just plain no good. Why couldn’t something have happened to her? Why did it have to be Sam? Then he was ashamed. He tried to find an excuse for having wanted harm to come to her. It looked like all his life he’d wanted a little something for himself and Pink and then when Sam came along he forgot about those things. He wanted Sam to have all the things that he and Pink couldn’t get. It got to be too late for them to have them. But Sam – again he told himself not to think about him. To wait until he got home and in bed.

Al took the cloth from around his neck and he got up out of the chair. Then he was out on the street heading toward home. The heat that came from the pavement seeped through the soles of his shoes. He had forgotten how hot it was. He forced himself to wonder what it would be like to live in the country. Sometimes on hot nights like this, after he got home from work, he went to sit in the park. It was always cooler there. It would probably be cool in the country. But then it might be cold in winter – even colder than the city.

The instant he got in the house he took off his shoes and his shirt. The heat in the apartment was like a blanket – it made his skin itch and crawl in a thousand places. He went into the living room, where he leaned out of the window, trying to cool off. Not yet, he told himself. He mustn’t think about it yet.

He leaned farther out of the window, to get away from the innumerable odors that came from the boxlike rooms in back of him. They cut off his breath, and he focused his mind on them. There was the greasy smell of cabbage and collard greens, smell of old wood and soapsuds and disinfectant, a lingering smell of gas from the kitchen stove, and over it all Annie May’s perfume.

Then he turned his attention to the street. Up and down as far as he could see, folks were sitting on the stoops. Not talking. Just sitting. Somewhere up the street a baby wailed. A woman’s voice rose sharply as she told it to shut up.

Pink wouldn’t be home until late. The white folks she worked for were having a dinner party tonight. And no matter how late she got home on Saturday night, she always stopped on Eighth Avenue to shop for her Sunday dinner. She never trusted him to do it. It’s a good thing, he thought. If she ever took a look at me tonight she’d know there was something wrong.

A key clicked in the lock and he drew back from the window. He was sitting on the couch when Annie May came in the room.

“You’re home early, ain’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m going out again,” she said.

“You shouldn’t stay out so late like you did last night,” he said mildly. He hadn’t really meant to say it. But what with Sam –

“What you think I’m going to do? Sit here every night and make small talk with you?” Her voice was defiant. Loud.

“No,” he said, and then added, “but nice girls ain’t runnin’ around the streets at four o’clock in the mornin’.” Now that he’d started he couldn’t seem to stop. “Oh, I know what time you come home. And it ain’t right. If you don’t stop it, you can get some other place to stay.”

“It’s O.K. with me,” she said lightly. She chewed the gum in her mouth so it made a cracking noise. “I don’t know what Auntie Pink married a little runt like you for, anyhow. It wouldn’t bother me a bit if I never saw you again.” She walked toward the hall. “I’m going away for the weekend,” she added over her shoulder, “and I’ll move out on Monday.”

“What you mean for the weekend?” he asked sharply. “Where you goin’?”

“None of your damn business,” she said, and slammed the bathroom door hard.

The sharp sound of the door closing hurt his ears so that he winced, wondering why be had grown so sensitive to sounds in the last few hours. What’d she have to say that for, anyway, he asked himself. Five feet five wasn’t so short for a man. He was taller than Pink, anyhow. Yet compared to Sam, he supposed he was a runt, for Sam had just kept on growing until he was six feet tall. At the thought he got up from the chair quickly, undressed, and got in bed. He lay there trying to still the trembling in his stomach; trying even now not to think about Sam, because it would be best to wait until Pink was in bed and sound asleep so that no expression on his face, no least little motion, would betray his agitation.

When he heard Pink come up the stairs just before midnight he closed his eyes. All of him was listening to her. He could hear her panting outside on the landing. There was a long pause before she put her key in the door. It took her all that time to get her breath back. She’s getting old, he thought. I mustn’t ever let her know about Sam.

She came into the bedroom and he pretended to be asleep. He made himself breathe slowly. Evenly. Thinking I can get through tomorrow all right. I won’t get up much before she goes to church. She’ll be so busy getting dressed she won’t notice me.

She went out of the room and he heard the soft murmur of her voice talking to Annie May. “Don’t you pay no attention, honey. He don’t mean a word of it. I know menfolks. They’s always tired and out of sorts by the time Saturdays come around.”

“But I’m not going to stay here anymore.”

“Yes, you is. You think I’m goin’ to let my sister’s child be turned out? You goin’ to be right here.”

They lowered their voices. There was laughter. Pink’s deep and rich and slow. Annie Mays high-pitched and nervous. Pink said, “You looks lovely, honey. Now, have a good time.”

The front door closed. This time Annie May didn’t slam it. He turned over on his back, making the springs creak. Instantly Pink came into the bedroom to look at him. He lay still, with his eyes closed, holding his breath for fear she would want to talk to him about what he’d said to Annie May and would wake him up. After she moved away from the door he opened his eyes.

There must be some meaning in back of what had happened to Sam. Maybe it was some kind of judgment from the Lord, he thought. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stopped going to church. His only concession to Sunday was to put on his best suit. He wore it just that one day and Pink pressed the pants late on Saturday night. But in the last few years it got so that every time he went to church he wanted to stand up and yell, “You goddamn fools! How much more you goin’ to take?”

He’d get to thinking about the street they lived on, and the sight of the minister with his clean white collar turned hind side to and sound of his buttery voice were too much. One Sunday he’d actually gotten on his feet, for the minister was talking about the streets of gold up in heaven; the words were right on the tip of his tongue when Pink reached out and pinched his behind sharply. He yelped and sat down. Someone in back of him giggled. In spite of himself a slow smile had spread over his face. He stayed quiet through the rest of the service but after that, he didn’t go to church at all.

This street where he and Pink lived was like the one where his mother had lived. It looked like he and Pink ought to have gotten further than his mother had. She had scrubbed floors, washed and ironed in the white folks’ kitchens. They were doing practically the same thing. That was another reason he stopped going to church. He couldn’t figure out why these things had to stay the same, and if the Lord didn’t intend it like that, why didn’t He change it?

He began thinking about Sam again, so he shifted his attention to the sounds Pink was making in the kitchen. She was getting the rolls ready for tomorrow. Scrubbing the sweet potatoes. Washing the greens. Cutting up the chicken. Then the thump of the iron. Hot as it was, she was pressing his pants. He resisted the impulse to get up and tell her not to do it.

A little later, when she turned the light on in the bathroom, he knew she was getting ready for bed. And he held his eyes tightly shut, made his body rigidly still. As long as he could make her think he was sound asleep she wouldn’t take a real good look at him. One real good look and she’d know there was something wrong. The bed sagged under her weight as she knelt down to say her prayers. Then she was lying down beside him. She sighed under her breath as her head hit the pillow.

He must have slept part of the time, but in the morning it seemed to him that he had looked up at the ceiling most of the night. He couldn’t remember actually going to sleep.

When he finally got up, Pink was dressed and ready for church. He sat down in a chair in the living room away from the window, so the light wouldn’t shine on his face. As he looked at her he wished that he could find relief from the confusion of his thoughts by taking part in the singing and shouting that would go on in church. But he couldn’t. And Pink never said anything about his not going to church. Only sometimes like today, when she was ready to go, she looked at him a little wistfully.

She had on her Sunday dress. It was made of a printed material – big red and black poppies splashed on a cream-colored background. He wouldn’t let himself look right into her eyes, and in order that she wouldn’t notice the evasiveness of his glance, he stared at the dress. It fit snugly over her best corset, and the corset in turn constricted her thighs and tightly encased the rolls of flesh around her waist. She didn’t move away, and he couldn’t keep on inspecting the dress, so he shifted his gaze up to the wide cream-colored straw hat she was wearing far back on her head. Next he noticed that she was easing her feet by standing on the outer edges of the high-heeled patent leather pumps she wore.

He reached out and patted her arm. “You look nice,” he said, picking up the comic section of the paper.

She stood there looking at him while she pulled a pair of white cotton gloves over her roughened hands. “Is you all right, honey?” she asked.

“Course,” he said, holding the paper up in front of his face.

“You shouldn’t talk so mean to Annie May,” she said gently.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and hoped she understood that he was apologizing. He didn’t dare lower the paper while she was standing there looking at him so intently. Why doesn’t she go, he thought.

“There’s grits and eggs for breakfast.”

“O.K.” He tried to make his voice sound as though he were so absorbed⁹ in what he was reading that he couldn’t give her all of his attention. She walked toward the door, and he lowered the paper to watch her, thinking that her legs looked too small for her body under the vastness of the printed dress, that womenfolks were sure funny – she’s got that great big pocketbook swinging on her arm and hardly anything in it. Sam used to love to tease her about the size of the handbags she carried.

When she closed the outside door and started down the stairs, the heat in the little room struck him in the face. He almost called her back so that he wouldn’t be there by himself ––left alone to brood over Sam. He decided that when she came home from church he would make love to her. Even in the heat the softness of her body, the smoothness of her skin, would comfort him.

He pulled his chair up close to the open window. Now he could let himself go. He could begin to figure out something to do about Sam. There’s gotta be something, he thought. But his mind wouldn’t stay put. It kept going back to the time Sam graduated from high school. Nineteen seventy-five his dark blue suit had cost. He and Pink had figured and figured and finally they’d managed it. Sam had looked good in the suit; he was so tall and his shoulders were so broad it looked like a tailor-made suit on him. When he got his diploma everybody went wild – he’d played center on the basketball team, and a lot of folks recognized him.

The trembling in his stomach got worse as he thought about Sam. He was aware that it had never stopped since Scummy had said those words “the las’ time.” It had gone on all last night until now there was a tautness and a tension in him that left him feeling as though his eardrums were strained wide open, listening for sounds. They must be a foot wide open, he thought. Open and pulsing with the strain of being open. Even his nostrils were stretched open like that. He could feel them. And a weight behind his eyes.

He went to sleep sitting there in the chair. When he woke up his whole body was wet with sweat. It musta got hotter while I slept, he thought. He was conscious of an ache in his jawbones. It’s from holding ’em shut so tight. Even his tongue – he’d been holding it so still in his mouth it felt like it was glued there.

Attracted by the sound of voices, he looked out of the window. Across the way a man and a woman were arguing. Their voices rose and fell on the hot, still air. He could look directly into the room where they were standing, and he saw that they were half-undressed.

The woman slapped the man across the face. The sound was like a pistol shot, and for an instant William felt his jaw relax. It seemed to him that the whole block grew quiet and waited. He waited with it. The man grabbed his belt and lashed out at the woman. He watched the belt rise and fall against her brown skin. The woman screamed with the regularity of clockwork. The street came alive again. There was the sound of voices, the rattle of dishes. A baby whined. The woman’s voice became a murmur of pain in the background.

“I gotta get me some beer,” he said aloud. It would cool him off. It would help him to think. He dressed quickly, telling himself that Pink wouldn’t be home for hours yet and by that time the beer smell would be gone from his breath.

The street outside was full of kids playing tag. They were all dressed up in their Sunday clothes. Red socks, blue socks, danced in front of him all the way to the comer. The sight of them piled up the quivering in his stomach. Sam used to play in this block on Sunday afternoons. As he walked along, women thrust their heads out of the opened windows, calling to the children. It seemed to him that all the voices were Pink’s voice saying, “You, Sammie, stop that runnin’ in your good clo’es!”

He was so glad to get away from the sight of the children that he ignored the heat inside the barroom of the hotel on the corner and determinedly edged his way past girls in sheer summer dresses and men in loud plaid jackets and tight-legged cream-colored pants until he finally reached the long bar.

There was such a sense of hot excitement in the place that he turned to look around him. Men with slicked, straightened hair were staring through half-closed eyes at the girls lined up at the bar. One man sitting at a table close by kept running his hand up and down the bare arm of the girl leaning against him. Up and down. Down and up. William winced and looked away. The jukebox was going full blast, filling the room with high, raw music that beat about his ears in a queer mixture of violence and love and hate and terror. He stared at the brilliantly colored moving lights on the front of the jukebox as he listened to it, wishing that he had stayed at home, for the music made the room hotter.

“Make it a beer,” he said to the bartender.

The beer glass was cold. He held it in his hand, savoring the chill of it, before he raised it to his lips. He drank it down fast. Immediately he felt the air grow cooler. The smell of beer and whiskey that hung in the room lifted.

“Fill it up again,” he said. He still had that awful trembling in his stomach, but he felt as though he were really beginning to think. Really think. He found he was arguing with himself.

“Sam mighta been like this. Spendin’ Sunday afternoons whorin’.”

“But he was part of me and part of Pink. He had a chance – ”

“Yeah. A chance to live in one of them hell-hole flats. A chance to get himself a woman to beat.”

“He woulda finished college and got a good job. Mebbe been a druggist or a doctor or a lawyer – ”

“Yeah. Or mebbe got himself a stable of women to rent out on the block – ”

He licked the suds from his lips. The man at the table nearby had stopped stroking the girl’s arm. He was kissing her – forcing her closer and closer to him.

“Yeah,” William jeered at himself. “That coulda been Sam on a hot Sunday afternoon – ”

As he stood there arguing with himself he thought it was getting warmer in the bar. The lights were dimmer. I better go home, he thought. I gotta live with this thing some time. Drinking beer in this place ain’t going to help any. He looked out toward the lobby of the hotel, attracted by the sound of voices. A white cop was arguing with a frowzy-looking girl who had obviously had too much to drink.

“I got a right in here. I’m mindin’ my own business,” she said with one eye on the bar.

“Aw, go chase yourself.” The cop gave her a push toward the door. She stumbled against a chair.

William watched her in amusement. “Better than a movie,” he told himself.

She straightened up and tugged at her girdle. “You white son of a bitch,” she said.

The cop’s face turned a furious red. He walked toward the woman, waving his nightstick. It was then that William saw the soldier. Tall. Straight. Creases in his khaki pants. An overseas cap cocked over one eye. Looks like Sam looked that one time he was home on furlough, he thought.

The soldier grabbed the cop’s arm and twisted the nightstick out of his hand. He threw it half the length of the small lobby. It rattled along the floor and came to a dead stop under a chair.

“Now what’d he want to do that for?” William said softly. He knew that night after night the cop had to come back to this hotel. He’s the law, he thought, and he can’t let – Then he stopped thinking about him, for the cop raised his arm. The soldier aimed a blow at the cop’s chin. The cop ducked and reached for his gun. The soldier turned to run.

It’s happening too fast, William thought. It’s like one of those horse race reels they run over fast at the movies. Then he froze inside. The quivering in his stomach got worse. The soldier was heading toward the door. Running. His foot was on the threshold when the cop fired. The soldier dropped. He folded up as neatly as the brown-paper bags Pink brought home from the store, emptied, and then carefully put in the kitchen cupboard.

The noise of the shot stayed in his eardrums. He couldn’t get it out. “Jesus Christ!” he said. Then again, “Jesus Christ!” The beer glass was warm. He put it down on the bar with such violence some of the beer slopped over on his shirt. He stared at the wet place, thinking Pink would be mad as hell. Him out drinking in a bar on Sunday. There was a stillness in which he was conscious of the stink of the beer, the heat in the room, and he could still hear the sound of the shot. Somebody dropped a glass, and the tinkle of it hurt his ears.

Then everybody was moving toward the lobby.¹⁰ The doors between the bar and the lobby slammed shut. High, excited talk broke out.

The tall thin black man standing next to him said, “That ties it. It ain’t even safe here where we live. Not no more. I’m goin’ to get me a white bastard of a cop and nail his hide to a street sign.”

“Is the soldier dead?” someone asked.

“He wasn’t movin’ none,” came the answer.

They pushed hard against the doors leading to the lobby. The doors stayed shut.

He stood still, watching them. The anger that went through him was so great that he had to hold on to the bar to keep from falling. He felt as though he were going to burst wide open. It was like having seen Sam killed before his eyes. Then he heard the whine of an ambulance siren. His eardrums seemed to have been waiting to pick it up.

“Come on, what you waitin’ for?” He snarled the words at the people milling around the lobby doors. “Come on!” he repeated, running toward the street.

The crowd followed him to the 126th Street entrance of the hotel. He got there in time to see a stretcher bearing a limp khaki-clad figure disappear inside the ambulance in front of the door. The ambulance pulled away fast, and he stared after it stupidly.

He hadn’t known what he was going to do, but he felt cheated. Let down. He noticed that it was beginning to get dark. More and more people were coming into the street. He wondered where they’d come from and how they’d heard about the shooting so quickly. Every time he looked around there were more of them. Curious, eager voices kept asking, “What happened? What happened?” The answer was always the same. Hard, angry. “A white cop shot a soldier.”

Someone said, “Come on to the hospital. Find out what happened to him.”

In front of the hotel he had been in the front of the crowd. Now there were so many people in back of him and in front of him that when they started toward the hospital, he moved along with them. He hadn’t decided to go – the forward movement picked him up and moved him along without any intention on his part. He got the feeling that he had lost his identity as a person with a free will of his own. It frightened him at first. Then he began to feel powerful. He was surrounded by hundreds of people like himself. They were all together. They could do anything.

As the crowd moved slowly down Eighth Avenue, he saw that there were cops lined up on both sides of the street. Mounted cops kept coming out of the side streets, shouting, “Break it up! Keep moving. Keep moving.”

The cops were scared of them. He could tell. Their faces were dead white in the semidarkness. He started saying the words over separately to himself. Dead. White. He laughed again. Dead. White. The words were funny said separately like that. He stopped laughing suddenly because a part of his mind repeated, Twenty years, twenty years.

He licked his lips. It was hot as all hell tonight. He imagined what it would be like to be drinking swallow after swallow of ice-cold beer. His throat worked and he swallowed audibly.

The big black man walking beside him turned and looked down at him. “You all right, brother?” he asked curiously.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “It’s them sons of bitches of cops. They’re scared of us.” He shuddered. The heat was terrible. The tide of hate quivering in his stomach made him hotter. “Wish I had some beer,” he said.

The man seemed to understand not only what he had said but all the things he had left unsaid. For he nodded and smiled. And William thought this was an extraordinary night. It was as though, standing so close together, so many of them like this – as though they knew each other’s thoughts. It was a wonderful thing.

The crowd carried him along. Smoothly. Easily. He wasn’t really walking. Just gliding. He was aware that the shuffling feet of the crowd made a muffled rhythm on the concrete sidewalk. It was slow, inevitable. An ominous sound, like a funeral march. With the regularity of a drumbeat. No. It’s more like a pulse beat, he thought. It isn’t a loud noise. It just keeps repeating over and over. But not that regular, because it builds up to something. It keeps building up.

The mounted cops rode their horses into the crowd. Trying to break it up into smaller groups. Then the rhythm was broken. Seconds later it started again. Each time the tempo was a little faster. He found he was breathing the same way. Faster and faster. As though he were running. There were more and more cops. All of them white. They had moved the colored cops out.

“They done that before,” he muttered.

“What?” said the man next to him.

“They moved the black cops out,” he said.

He heard the man repeat it to someone standing beside him. It became part of the slow shuffling rhythm on the sidewalk. “They moved the black cops.” He heard it go back and back through the crowd until it was only a whisper of hate on the still hot air. “They moved the black cops.”

As the crowd shuffled back and forth in front of the hospital, he caught snatches of conversation. “The soldier was dead when they put him in the ambulance.” “Always tryin’ to fool us.” “Christ! Just let me get my hands on one of them cops.”

He was thinking about the hospital and he didn’t take part in any of the conversations. Even now across the long span of years he could remember the helpless, awful rage that had sent him hurrying home from this same hospital. Not saying anything. Getting home by some kind of instinct.

Pink had come to this hospital when she had had her last child. He could hear again the cold contempt in the voice of the nurse as she listened to Pink’s loud grieving. “You people have too many children anyway,” she said.

It left him speechless. He had his hat in his hand and he remembered how he wished afterward that he’d put it on in front of her to show her what he thought of her. As it was, all the bitter answers that finally surged into his throat seemed to choke him. No words would come out. So he stared at her lean, spare body. He let his eyes stay a long time on her flat breasts. White uniform. White shoes. White stockings. White skin.

Then he mumbled, “It’s too bad your eyes ain’t white, too.” And turned on his heel and walked out.

It wasn’t any kind of answer. She probably didn’t even know what he was talking about. The baby dead, and all he could think of was to tell her eyes ought to be white. White shoes, white stockings, white uniform, white skin, and blue eyes.

Staring at the hospital, he saw with satisfaction that frightened faces were appearing at the windows. Some of the lights went out. He began to feel that this night was the first time he’d ever really been alive. Tonight everything was going to be changed. There was a growing, swelling sense of power in him. He felt the same thing in the people around him.

The cops were aware of it, too, he thought. They were out in full force. Mounties, patrolmen, emergency squads. Radio cars that looked like oversize bugs crawled through the side streets. Waited near the curbs. Their white tops stood out in the darkness. “White folks riding in white cars.” He wasn’t aware that he had said it aloud until he heard the words go through the crowd. “White folks in white cars.” The laughter that followed the words had a rough, raw rhythm. It repeated the pattern of the shuffling feet.

Someone said, “They got him at the station house. He ain’t here. And the crowd started moving toward 123rd Street.

Great God in the morning, William thought, everybody’s out here. There were girls in thin summer dresses, boys in long coats and tight-legged pants, old women dragging kids along by the hand. A man on crutches jerked himself past to the rhythm of the shuffling feet. A blind man tapped his way through the center of the crowd, and it divided into two separate streams as it swept by him. At every street comer William noticed someone stopped to help the blind man up over the curb.

The street in front of the police station was so packed with people that he couldn’t get near it. As far as he could see they weren’t doing anything. They were simply standing there. Waiting for something to happen. He recognized a few of them: the woman with the loose, rolling eyes who sold shopping bags on 125th Street; the lucky-number peddler – the man with the white parrot on his shoulder; three sisters of the Heavenly Rest for All movement – barefooted women in loose white robes.

Then, for no reason that he could discover, everybody moved toward 125th Street. The motion of the crowd was slower now because it kept increasing in size as people coming from late church services were drawn into it. It was easy to identify them, he thought. The women wore white gloves. The kids were all slicked up. Despite the more gradual movement he was still being carried along effortlessly, easily. When someone in front of him barred his way, he pushed against the person irritably, frowning in annoyance because the smooth forward flow of his progress had been stopped.

It was Pink who stood in front of him. He stopped frowning when he recognized her. She had a brown-paper bag tucked under her arm and he knew she had stopped at the corner store to get the big bottle of cream soda she always brought home on Sundays. The sight of it made him envious, for it meant that this Sunday had been going along in an orderly, normal fashion for her while he – She was staring at him so hard he was suddenly horribly conscious of the smell of the beer that had spilled on his shirt. He knew she had smelled it, too, by the tighter grip she took on her pocketbook.

“What you doing out here in this mob? A Sunday evening and you drinking beer,” she said grimly.

For a moment he couldn’t answer her. All he could think of was Sam. He almost said, “I saw Sam shot this afternoon,” and he swallowed hard.

“This afternoon I saw a white cop kill a black soldier,” he said. “In the bar where I was drinking beer. I saw it. That’s why I’m here. The glass of beer I was drinking went on my clothes. The cop shot him in the back. That’s why I’m here.”

He paused for a moment, took a deep breath. This was how it ought to be, he decided. She had to know sometime and this was the right place to tell her. In this semidarkness, in this confusion of noises, with the low, harsh rhythm of the footsteps sounding against the noise of the horses’ hoofs.

His voice thickened. “I saw Scummy yesterday,” he went on. “He told me Sam’s doing time at hard labor. That’s why we ain’t heard from him. A white MP shot him when he wouldn’t go to the nigger end of a bus. Sam shot the MP. They gave him twenty years at hard labor.”

He knew he hadn’t made it clear how to him the soldier in the bar was Sam; that it was like seeing his own son shot before his very eyes. I don’t even know whether the soldier was dead, he thought. What made me tell her about Sam out here in the street like this, anyway? He realized with a sense of shock that he really didn’t care that he had told her. He felt strong, powerful, aloof. All the time he’d been talking he wouldn’t look right at her. Now, suddenly, he was looking at her as though she were a total stranger. He was coldly wondering what she’d do. He was prepared for anything.

But he wasn’t prepared for the wail that came from her throat. The sound hung in the hot air. It made the awful quivering in his stomach worse. It echoed and reechoed the length of the street. Somewhere in the distance a horse whinnied. A woman standing way back in the crowd groaned as though the sorrow and the anguish in that cry were more than she could bear.

Pink stood there for a moment. Silent. Brooding. Then she lifted the big bottle of soda high in the air. She threw it with all her might. It made a wide arc and landed in the exact center of the plate-glass window of a furniture store. The glass crashed in with a sound like a gunshot.

A sigh went up from the crowd. They surged toward the broken window. Pink followed close behind. When she reached the window, all the glass had been broken in. Reaching far inside, she grabbed a small footstool and then turned to hurl it through the window of the dress shop next door. He kept close behind her, watching her as she seized a new missile from each store window that she broke.

Plate-glass windows were being smashed all up and down 125th Street – on both sides of the street. The violent, explosive sound fed the sense of power in him. Pink had started this. He was proud of her, for she had shown herself to be a fit mate for a man of his type. He stayed as close to her as he could. So in spite of the crashing, splintering sounds and the swarming, violent activity around him, he knew the exact moment when she lost her big straw hat; when she took off the high-heeled patent leather shoes and flung them away, striding swiftly along in her stockinged feet. That her dress was hanging crooked on her.

He was right in back of her when she stopped in front of a hat store. She carefully appraised all the hats inside the broken window. Finally she reached out, selected a small hat covered with purple violets, and fastened it securely on her head.

“Woman’s got good sense,” a man said.

“Man, oh, man! Let me get in there,” said a raw-boned woman who thrust her way forward through the jam of people to seize two hats from the window.

A roar of approval went up from the crowd. From then on when a window was smashed it was bare of merchandise when the people streamed past it. White folks owned these stores. They’d lose and lose and lose, he thought with satisfaction. The words “twenty years” reechoed in his mind. I’ll be an old man, he thought. Then: I may be dead before Sam gets out of prison.

The feeling of great power and strength left him. He was so confused by its loss that he decided this thing happening in the street wasn’t real. It was so dark, there were so many people shouting and running about, that he almost convinced himself he was having a nightmare. He was aware that his hearing had now grown so acute he could pick up the tiniest sounds: the quickened breathing and the soft, gloating laughter of the crowd; even the sound of his own heart beating. He could hear these things under the noise of the breaking glass, under the shouts that were coming from both sides of the street. They forced him to face the fact that this was no dream but a reality from which he couldn’t escape. The quivering in his stomach kept increasing as he walked along.

Pink was striding through the crowd just ahead of him. He studied her to see if she, too, were feeling as he did. But the outrage that ran through her had made her younger. She was tireless. Most of the time she was leading the crowd. It was all he could do to keep up with her, and finally he gave up the attempt – it made him too tired.

He stopped to watch a girl who was standing in a store window, clutching a clothes model tightly around the waist. “What’s she want that for?” he said aloud. For the model had been stripped of clothing by the passing crowd, and he thought its pinkish torso was faintly obscene in its resemblance to a female figure.

The girl was young and thin. Her back was turned toward him, and there was something so ferocious about the way her dark hands gripped the naked model that he resisted the onward movement of the crowd to stare in fascination. The girl turned around. Her nervous hands were tight around the dummy’s waist. It was Annie May.

“Ah, no!” he said, and let his breath come out with a sigh.

Her hands crept around the throat of the model and she sent it hurtling through the air above the heads of the crowd. It landed short of a window across the street. The legs shattered. The head rolled toward the curb. The waist snapped neatly in two. Only the torso remained whole and in one piece.

Annie May stood in the empty window and laughed with the crowd when someone kicked the torso into the street. He stood there, staring at her. He felt that now for the first time he understood her. She had never had anything but badly paying jobs – working for young white women who probably despised her. She was like Sam on that bus in Georgia. She didn’t want just the nigger end of things, and here in Harlem there wasn’t anything else for her. All along she’d been trying the only way she knew how to squeeze out of life a little something for herself.

He tried to get closer to the window where she was standing. He had to tell her that he understood. And the crowd, tired of the obstruction that he had made by standing still, swept him up and carried him past. He stopped thinking and let himself be carried along on a vast wave of feeling. There was so much plate glass on the sidewalk that it made a grinding noise under the feet of the hurrying crowd. It was a dull, harsh sound that set his teeth on edge and quickened the trembling of his stomach.

Now all the store windows that he passed were broken. The people hurrying by him carried tables, lamps, shoeboxes, clothing. A woman next to him held a wedding cake in her hands – it went up in tiers of white frosting with a small bride and groom mounted at the top. Her hands were bleeding, and he began to look closely at the people nearest him. Most of them, too, had cuts on their hands and legs. Then he saw there was blood on the sidewalk in front of the windows, blood dripping down the jagged edges of the broken windows. And he wanted desperately to go home.

He was conscious that the rhythm of the crowd had changed. It was faster, and it had taken on an ugly note. The cops were using their nightsticks. Police wagons drew up to the curbs. When they pulled away, they were full of men and women who carried loot from the stores in their hands.

The police cars slipping through the streets were joined by other cars with loudspeakers on top. The voices coming through the loudspeakers were harsh. They added to the noise and confusion. He tried to listen to what the voices were saying. But the words had no meaning for him. He caught one phrase over and over: “Good people of Harlem.” It made him feel sick.

He repeated the words “of Harlem.” We don’t belong anywhere, he thought. There ain’t no room for us anywhere. There wasn’t no room for Sam in a bus in Georgia. There ain’t no room for us here in New York. There ain’t no place but top floors. The top-floor black people. And he laughed and the sound stuck in his throat.

After that he snatched a suit from the window of a men’s clothing store. It was a summer suit. The material felt crisp and cool. He walked away with it under his arm. He’d never owned a suit like that. He simply sweated out the summer in the same dark pants he wore in winter. Even while he stroked the material, a part of his mind sneered – you got summer pants; Sam’s got twenty years.

He was surprised to find that he was almost at Lenox Avenue, for he hadn’t remembered crossing Seventh. At the corner the cops were shoving a group of young boys and girls into a police wagon. He paused to watch. Annie May was in the middle of the group. She had a yellow fox jacket dangling from one hand.

“Annie May!” he shouted. “Annie May!” The crowd pushed him along faster and faster. She hadn’t seen him. He let himself be carried forward by the movement of the crowd. He had to find Pink and tell her that the cops had taken Annie May.

He peered into the dimness of the street ahead of him, looking for her; then he elbowed his way toward the curb so that he could see the other side of the street. He forgot about finding Pink, for directly opposite him was the music store that he passed every night coming home from work. Young boys and girls were always lounging on the sidewalk in front of it. They danced a few steps while they listened to the records being played inside the shop. All the records sounded the same – a terribly magnified woman’s voice bleating out a blues song in a voice that sounded to him like that of an animal in heat – an old animal, tired and beaten, but with an insinuating know-how left in her. The white men who went past the store smiled as their eyes lingered on the young girls swaying to the music.

“White folks got us comin’ and goin’. Backwards and forwards,” he muttered. He fought his way out of the crowd and walked toward a no-parking sign that stood in front of the store. He rolled it up over the curb. It was heavy and the effort made him pant. It took all his strength to send it crashing through the glass on the door.

Almost immediately an old woman and a young man slipped inside the narrow shop. He followed them. He watched them smash the records that lined the shelves. He hadn’t thought of actually breaking the records but once he started, he found the crisp, snapping noise pleasant. The feeling of power began to return. He didn’t like these records, so they had to be destroyed.

When they left the music store there wasn’t a whole record left. The old woman came out of the store last. As he hurried off up the street he could have sworn he smelled the sharp, acrid smell of smoke. He turned and looked back. He was right. A thin wisp of smoke was coming through the store door. The old woman had long since disappeared in the crowd.

Farther up the street he looked back again. The fire in the record shop was burning merrily. It was making a glow that lit up that part of the street. There was a new rhythm now. It was faster and faster. Even the voices coming from the loudspeakers had taken on the urgency of speed.

Fire trucks roared up the street. He threw his head back and laughed when he saw them. That’s right, he thought. Burn the whole damn place down. It was wonderful. Then he frowned. “Twenty years at hard labor.” The words came back to him. He was a fool. Fire wouldn’t wipe that out. There wasn’t anything that would wipe it out.

He remembered then that he had to find Pink. To tell her about Annie May. He overtook her in the next block. She’s got more stuff, he thought. She had a table lamp in one hand, a large enamel kettle in the other. The lightweight summer coat draped across her shoulders was so small it barely covered her enormous arms. She was watching a group of boys assault the steel gates in front of a liquor store. She frowned at them so ferociously he wondered what she was going to do. Hating liquor the way she did, he half expected her to cuff the boys and send them on their way up the street.

She turned and looked at the crowd in back of her. When she saw him she beckoned to him. “Hold these, she said. He took the lamp, the kettle and the coat she held out to him, and he saw that her face was wet with perspiration. The print dress was darkly stained with it.

She fastened the hat with the purple flowers securely on her head. Then she walked over to the gate. “Git out the way,” she said to the boys. Bracing herself in front of the gate, she started tugging at it. The gate resisted. She pulled at it with a sudden access of such furious strength that he was frightened. Watching her, he got the feeling that the resistance of the gate had transformed it in her mind. It was no longer a gate – it had become the world that had taken her son, and she was wreaking vengeance on it.

The gate began to bend and sway under her assault. Then it was down. She stood there for a moment, staring at her hands – big drops of blood oozed slowly over the palms. Then she turned to the crowd that had stopped to watch.

“Come on, you niggers,” she said. Her eyes were little and evil and triumphant. “Come on and drink up the white man’s liquor.” As she strode off up the street, the beflowered hat dangled precariously from the back of her head.

When he caught up with her she was moaning, talking to herself in husky whispers. She stopped when she saw him and put her hand on his arm.

“It’s hot, ain’t it?” she said, panting.

In the midst of all this violence, the sheer commonplaceness of her question startled him. He looked at her closely. The rage that had been in her was gone, leaving her completely exhausted. She was breathing too fast in uneven gasps that shook her body. Rivulets of sweat streamed down her face. It was as though her triumph over the metal gate had finished her. The gate won anyway, he thought.

“Let’s go home, Pink,” he said. He had to shout to make his voice carry over the roar of the crowd, the sound of breaking glass.

He realized she didn’t have the strength to speak, for she only nodded in reply to his suggestion. Once we get home she’ll be all right, he thought. It was suddenly urgent that they get home, where it was quiet, where he could think, where he could take something to still the tremors in his stomach. He tried to get her to walk a little faster, but she kept slowing down until, when they entered their own street, it seemed to him they were barely moving.

In the middle of the block she stood still. “I can’t make it,” she said. “I’m too tired.”

Even as he put his arm around her she started going down. He tried to hold her up, but her great weight was too much for him. She went down slowly, inevitably, like a great ship capsizing. Until all of her huge body was crumpled on the sidewalk.

“Pink,” he said. “Pink. You gotta get up,” he said over and over again.

She didn’t answer. He leaned over and touched her gently. Almost immediately afterward he straightened up. All his life, moments of despair and frustration had left him speechless – strangled by the words that rose in his throat. This time the words poured out.

He sent his voice raging into the darkness and the awful confusion of noises. “The sons of bitches,” he shouted. “The sons of bitches.”

1947

Ann Petry, “The Bones of Louella Brown,” “In Darkness and Confusion,” from Miss Muriel and Other Stories. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., Mariner Book, 1999. Copyright © 1971 by Ann Petry. Renewed 1999 by Elizabeth Petry. Used by permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for the author.

Notes

THE BONES OF LOUELLA BROWN

¹ First published in Opportunity (Fall 1947).

² Original reads: newspapermen [ed.].

³ cortege procession.

⁴ mien manner.

⁵ apoplexy a stroke.

⁶ caterwauling wailing.

⁷ “the breastplate … the hope of salvation” 1 Thessalonians 5:8.

IN DARKNESS AND CONFUSION

¹ First published in Cross Section (1947), edited by Edwin Seaver.

² she used a hot comb on her hair she used hot irons to straighten or relax her hair.

³ Jezebel an immoral woman (named after the wicked queen in 1 Kings).

⁴ redcapping working as a porter.

⁵ this war World War II.

⁶ bold-eyed women prostitutes.

⁷ Bromo-seltzer an antacid.

⁸ MP military policeman.

⁹ Original reads: he were absorbed [ed.].

¹⁰ Then everybody was moving toward the lobby based on the events of the Harlem Riot on August 1, 1943, starting at the Braddock Hotel and moving onto the streets of Harlem. The riot culminated in six deaths, 400 injured, 500 arrested, and over $5 million in property damage.

Ann Petry (1908–1997)

Further reading

The Bones of Louella Brown1

In Darkness and Confusion1

Notes

The Bones of Louella Brown¹

In Darkness and Confusion¹