AS SAM rang the bell outside of Johnny Ellis’ flat on Sunday afternoon, the years in which he hadn’t seen Johnny piled between him and the door like sandbags. Since Tuesday he had spoken to Johnny three times over the telephone; they’d listened to each other’s voices and the years of their separate lives had been between them.
The door swung open and Johnny Ellis stood on the threshold, his hand outstretched. Sam gripped Johnny’s hand. “How’ve you been, Johnny?” he said and smiled at a brown-skinned stranger who was thinner than Sam remembered. Johnny’s cheeks were sunken but the cheekbones still gleamed like copper-plated wedges; all the bone structure clean and well-defined in the long face and head; back in high-school Sam had thought of Johnny as the descendant of some African chieftain; it was a high-school kid’s romanticism but some of this old feeling suddenly swirled through him and Johnny wasn’t a stranger any more. “How’ve you been?” Sam cried.
“Can’t complain,” Johnny said, leading the way into his flat. They passed a dark kitchen with a mimosa yellow curtain on the single window and stepped into a living-room that was narrow as a packing-box. A plushy couch was against one wall. There was an easy chair, a walnut table and a polished silver sun filtered through the window on the shaft. “Sam, have you made up your mind about seeing Clair?”
“No,” Sam said, sitting down in the middle of the couch. “It’s almost too late. The meeting’s coming off in a few hours.”
“Clair told me he’d be at his home up to half-past three.”
Johnny consulted his wrist watch. “You got an hour and a half, Sam. How about some coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s no trouble. The wife left a pot on the stove before she beat it with the kid.”
“You think I ought to talk to Clair?”
“You’re the doctor, Sam.”
“That’s what my girl wants me to do. See Clair. Resign if I have to but what am I? A Boy Scout?” He shrugged despondently. “How old’s your kid?”
“Four and it’s a boy.” Johnny grinned proudly. “A big boy. Sam, I ought to tell you right away that a buddy of mine’s coming here at three o’clock, a guy called Butch Cashman. He’s in Local 65 with me. We’re on a couple committees together in the union. If you don’t want to meet him — ”
“Is this guy going to the meeting with you?”
“Yes. We’re going to make a report for the next union meeting.”
“Holy smoke, it gets bigger all the time. Now your union’s getting in on it. Are there many unions getting in on it?”
“What do you mean by getting in on — ”
“Sticking their noses in!”
“I see,” Johnny said quietly. “Sam, we got white and black in the union. And anything that might end up in a race riot — we got to stick our noses in. Most of our Negro members live right here in Harlem. Sam, why don’t you see Clair? What’s the sense chewing the rag with me?”
“I don’t feel like resigning. That’s all. I’ve gone over it a hundred times. Every time I got through talking to you on the phone, I’d drive myself nuts. God Almighty, I want to square myself with people like you and Clair but if I see Clair, I’d report it to Headquarters myself. I’m playing fair with the Department. They’ve been fair to me. Okay, I resign. Then, what? I say my piece to Clair, to Vincent. And what happens? They’d think what you thought: Miller isn’t as bad a cop as some; but just the same didn’t he play follow-master when O’Riordan started swinging — ”
“Sam, I believe you honestly tried to save Randolph.”
“But I shot him. Don’t forget that.” He stretched his legs. “I ducked out on my girl today. I like her a lot,” he said gloomily. “But she’s one of these tough idealists and I don’t mean maybe. There’s nothing practical about Suzy. She keeps telling me I’ve got to feel right with myself even if I lose my job. You know what she wants me to do, Johnny? She wants me to chase after the people who printed that leaflet knocking me. Boy, is she practical!”
The doorbell rang and Johnny scowled. “Butch is ahead of time. He always is. What do you want me to do about him?”
“Let him in.” He sighed heavily as Johnny hurried to the door. On the wall opposite to where he was sitting, he now noticed the framed Van Gogh, one of the prints distributed as premiums by the N. Y. Evening Post in the late ‘30’s. Sam stared at Van Gogh’s ruddy-faced young man in the yellow jacket, yellow as a burst of sunlight.
Johnny came back with a white man. “Sam. this is Butch Cashman, guy I told you was coming.”
Cashman’s small tawny-colored eyes met Sam’s. He was a slender man of thirty with a shock of dark blond hair. “Pleased to make your acquaintance as the bullet remarked when it got the Nazi general,” he boomed at Sam in a deep voice that seemed several sizes too large for him. It was a voice that Sam associated with hefty six-footers not with this spry man in a double-breasted blue suit. “Sam, what do you do for a living? That’s something I always ask when I meet somebody.”
“I’m a cop.”
Cashman laughed. “That’s a hot one.”
“I’m not kidding. I’m Sam Miller,” he pronounced distinctly.
Cashman laughed louder. “You’re the cop who shot Randolph and I’m the guy who shot Lincoln.”
“Butch,” Johnny said. “He’s not kidding. He’s not kidding.”
“No?”
“No.”
Cashman shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “You guys friends?”
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” Johnny said.
“How come, Johnny?” Cashman said. “You never mentioned it to me. Boy, you’re a corker. Here we’re going to report on this cop and the meeting and you play clam. How come?”
Johnny shrugged. “Don’t bother me, Butch.”
“Just a great personal friendship,” Cashman said sarcastically. He winked at Sam. “You don’t look like a rough-neck but I guess that’s because you’re not in the old uniform. Cee-rist, but you’re in a jam.” His face was animated by a sarcastic humor. Sam was irritated. This Butch Cashman struck him as one of those wise guy hangers-on to be seen on any theatre district corner. He stood up to go. “Not leaving?” Cashman said. “Miller, don’t get sore. I don’t know you from a hole in the ground but you’re okay with me. You’re okay because I find you here. In this flat with Johnny. Looks like I barged in but me and Johnny got to go to the meeting. We’re on a committee — ”
“I’ve told him, Butch,” Johnny said.
“Miller, do me a favor and squat,” Cashman almost pleaded, screwing up his eyes. “Cee-rist, don’t let ‘em!”
“Don’t let them what?” Sam asked.
“The guys that run the stew pot,” Cashman said earnestly. “I know cops backwards and forwards. I’ve seen young guys like you come on the force, just depression generation kids, good kids lots of ‘em, some of ‘em even sort of progressive. Get what I mean? It’s in the air and even a cop got to breathe what’s all around him. But what happens? The rookie gets assigned to some precinct run by some son-of-a-bitch on wheels with his own ideas but strictly between you and me, they ain’t ideas. They’re prejudices and before you know it the rookie’s another mutt in a uniform — ”
“Where do you get off?” Sam snapped. “You’re not down in Union Square.”
Butch Cashman only smiled. “Ain’t you heard? Union Square’s through for the duration.”
“Butch, lay off,” Johnny begged. “Sam isn’t supposed to talk over what happened with anybody. That’s a po-lice regulation and he isn’t getting in dutch in my house.”
“Yeh, it’s a great personal friendship.” Cashman sat down in a chair under the Van Gogh print and hauled out a tattered pack of cigarettes. “You guys want one? Sam, have you seen The People’s Advocate or The Harlem Independent News?”
“I’ve seen them.”
“Know what I think? I think you ought to come to the meeting with me and Johnny.”
Johnny shook his head at Cashman. “I need a club for you, Butch. Sam’s in a bad enough spot.”
Cashman grinned and said:
“Who ain’t? The whole God damn world’s in a bad enough spot.”
“He’d pep talk a man waiting for his wife to come to bed on a Saturday night,” Johnny explained to Sam. “He’d — ”
“Hell I would. I draw the line somewhere, don’t I, Sam? But no fooling, Miller, people in Harlem have just about reached the limit in what they’re going to take from the lil boys in blue. Ain’t that so, Johnny?”
“Yeh. I’ve heard people saying that what Harlem needs is a riot to show the Mayor. Sam, my wife wouldn’t stay here to meet you. She believes you’re a killer like it says in the Negro press. She thinks I’m wacky to let you come here. That’s how it is all over Harlem. I tried to tell her that a Negro cop, that Detective Wensley, he would have shot Randolph as soon as he smelled the knife, let alone seen it. And she — Aw, what’s the difference?”
“What’d she say?” Cashman said. “Don’t worry about Sam’s feelings. Cee-rist, we’re not living in no bullshit time. What’d she say?”
Sam nodded and Johnny continued. “Said I ought to stop being ‘a good nigger’ because Miller was nice to me in high school.”
Cashman dug his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out several clippings. “This one’s from The People’s Advocate.”
“Butch, I told you Sam’s seen them!” Johnny’s lips squeezed together angrily.
“I want to read it, Johnny.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Let him read it,” Sam said. “He can’t get my goat.”
“I’m not out to get your goat,” Cashman said, lowering his head and reading: “ ‘Just another “N…. r” killed. Well we don’t think so. Randolph was a human being, an American citizen. Today he is dead, the victim of a Hitler Gestapo cop. We the citizens demand immediate suspension of Officer Samuel Miller and all the other officers who were accessories to this horrible crime. We demand an immediate trial. We will accept no less. We won’t take it any longer. We refuse to be law abiding citizens if there are to be special laws for the Negro people. This is the final warning — if the officials of New York don’t make the laws work the same for all people, black or white, they must accept the full blame for any consequences.’ ”
Between the two union men and himself, Sam felt space, the vast giddy space of the long block down which he’d followed Randolph. Again he was gaping into the maw of that block, hearing the crowd behind him, his nerves again hardening until he knew that in another minute they would burst. What was the meaning of it all, he wondered. Who was really guilty of killing Randolph? Who had really fired the two fatal bullets? Was he guilty of killing Randolph or had he also been a trigger, pulled as the crowd had been pulled by a finger that was blindingly both black and white. “I’ve got those clippings,” he said hollowly.
“Throw ‘em away,” Cashman advised in a softer voice. “Johnny and me need ‘em but Cee-rist what do you want with a bunch of obits? Throw the damn things away and do something.”
“Do something!” Sam cried. “Is your union going to pay my salary if I have to resign?”
“What’re you so down on unions for?” Cashman answered. “Even cops’ve been in unions. They had a union in Boston until Cal Coolidge broke ‘em. No union’s going to pay your salary but a man’s got to do the right thing. How many working stiffs’ve stood to lose their jobs if they did the right thing? But they done it. Come along with us to the meeting.”
“No,” Johnny said. “Sam’s got to figure out what’s best for him.”
“What’s best for him is what’s best for all of us,” Cashman disagreed. “His knocking off Randolph is going to be short-waved all over India and Africa. The butcher Mikado, that good ole pal of the colored man’ll see to it. And that ain’t the half of it. What about the scummy rag knocking Sam as a Jew? Ain’t that a blow-off from some of our fascist buddies? Cee-rist, Miller, you can’t let all those buzzards take a slug at you and not slug back. It’s bigger than your job. There’s a war on. We’re not going to win it until every last stiff goes all-out for democracy, for Negroes, for Jews, for every damn kind of a human mug the Lord ever made. You’re a Jew and a Jew’s got to stand up and let ‘em have it right on the kisser. And that goes for the Negroes and every other minority. If you do that, you’ll encourage the guys like me — ”
“You don’t need any encouragement,” Johnny said dryly.
“Never mind, you. Sock ‘em back’s what I say and encourage the rest of us. You see, Sam, a guy like me don’t get it like a guy like you, or a guy like Johnny. I’m a Protestant. I never go to church but there I am, a Protestant. It’s not circumcized and it ain’t black so I’m on the outside when they start pitchin’ at you guys.”
“Outside,” Johnny smiled. “Don’t they pitch at you for being a union man?”
“Yeh, you,” Cashman conceded. “But you get what I mean. There’s nothing like a scrapper to get a hand. Ain’t that right? Let’s go this meeting. Back at the union hall, we call it education.” And he laughed uproariously, swaying on his feet, his face crinkling like the face of a youngish but wise jockey.
They left the flat and went down four flights to the street and then over to Eighth Avenue. The plateglass fronts were blind with Sunday. On the corners, the tieless idlers looked the town over. Off the corners, in the side street shadow, the Sunday crap games were in session.
Cashman walked in the middle between Sam and Johnny, his voice as booming out in the open as it’d been in the flat. “What a time we’re living in. It can make you puke or cheer depending on your natural constitution. The Mayor and all the big-shots are running this I Am A Free Man shindig over in Central Park and they’ll round up a hundred thousand guys and their girls. I’m not knocking the idea but what I want to know is when are these big babies going to carry their ideas over into the Police Department for example, or into the Army? I got a wife and two kids and the union tells me I’m important on the home front instead of totin’ a gun, but I’d brush ‘em all off if it was a mixed Army. There’s talk of a Crispus Attucks Brigade in some circles, to be both black and white. If it ever happens, me for it. That’d be something as big as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought in Spain.”
Two small boys darted up to Cashman from the curb. “Penny, mister? Gotta penny?” Their black faces were shiny with Sunday. One of them was wearing cheap almost new shoes, the second kid had on his weekday sneakers.
“Who you think I am?” Cashman said to them. “What do I do for a living?”
The boy in the sneakers said. “You a lawyer, mister.”
Johnny laughed, Sam smiled and Cashman said hurriedly, “A labor lawyer, son. No degree or diploma but you guessed it.” He gave each of the boys a penny.
They took the pennies and begged. “Gotta penny, mister?”
“I just gave you some.”
“Gotta penny, mister?” they chorused.
“Scram,” Cashman said. “This piecemeal charity stinks!”
Sam was thinking that those two kids belonged to what had happened on Monday, to the whole series of events that had begun in an ambulance and ended on a sidewalk in a pool of blood. There’d been no understanding between those colored kids and Cashman just as there had been no understanding between Randolph and himself. He hadn’t been a man to Randolph or to the crowd; he’d been a gorilla, a big white gorilla. They were nearing the Silver Trumpet Ballroom and the sidewalks were full of Negroes going in their direction. A gorilla, Sam thought; even the eyewitnesses wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him walking with Johnny and Cashman; he was only man-size now.
At four o’clock, the Silver Trumpet Ballroom was packed with over five thousand people. The pull-up chairs on the waxed boards showed empties only over on the extreme right and extreme left of the band platform. Sam, Johnny and Cashman found seats in a row that filled up even as they were getting settled. Sam stared about him, feeling as if he were in some chair like a barber-shop chair, rotating in the middle of a vast Negro arena. He saw their hundreds of faces and he was acutely conscious of his own white skin.
“They’re pinning the flag up front,” Johnny said. “Sam, did you notice all the cops outside?”
Sam nodded, listening to the swelling voice of the thousands, their whisperings, the scraping of their shoes, the rustling of their newspapers all fusing into the voice of judgment itself.
“Think any of the cops recognized you?” Johnny asked cautiously, speaking close to Sam’s ear.
“No. They wouldn’t expect me here.”
“What’re you guys stewin’ about?” Cashman said. He was on Sam’s right; Johnny was on Sam’s left. “You can’t leave me out of it.” Cheers rocked the ballroom as ten or twelve Negroes, men and women, walked out from the wings, sitting down in the row of red leather chrome-finished chairs on the platform. “Is that big guy the Councilman?”
“Yes,” Johnny said.
A Negro minister in black cloth and white collar stepped in front of the gleaming dancehall chairs. The minister looked small and out of place on this platform, surrounded by the ballroom murals of giant-sized waltzers and tangoists. All the dancers were white. In the audience, thousands of heads lowered from habit, meekly, piously, indifferently. The minister prayed the Sunday words. “My brethren, on this day we have gathered so that justice will be done….” When he finished the Councilman strode forward, waving a big white envelope. “These are the affidavits of the eyewitnesses,” the Councilman said. “But for fear that someone would get them from me I have had two photostatic copies made. This was necessary, my friends. Did you know that the Mayor attempted to have this meeting called off?” The crowd murmured. “The Mayor said this meeting was an incitement to riot.” The crowd’s murmur mounted. “It is not an incitement to riot but we Negro people do demand a full investigation of this Randolph killing. We are not going to have the eyewitnesses address you for we do not want to inflame Harlem more than it is already inflamed. On this I Am A Free Man Day, we Negroes demand the right to be treated as free men in this community. The people of this community, and its leaders present on this platform, the All-Negro Harlem Committee, are united on this problem. We must be united. For the atrociousness of this deed is more inflammatory than any words and we need unity in order to be calm and wise. Now let me introduce to you the first of our speakers, Mr. Charles Godkin, Harlem’s Democratic Assemblyman.”
All this time Sam had been staring at the face of Mrs. Randolph. She was sitting on the platform in silence but her silence challenged him: You White Murderer. He was crushed by her silence as another speaker followed the Democratic Assemblyman. And another. Cashman nudged him with his elbow. “Hey, who’s the white guy just come in?”
“Who?” Sam mumbled.
“Up there on the platform.”
A paunchy white man with scanty hair brushed carefully was being introduced by Councilman Vincent. “Our friend, Congressman Toole has come to us from Washington, D. C.” Toole waited for the Councilman to wind up, his face absent-minded as if he were thinking of his train back. “Congressman Toole,” the Councilman concluded.
Briskly, the Congressman began. “It is right and fitting that on this day, Sunday, consecrated by Christians to the service of God, on this day dedicated in the name of Jesus Christ, there will be no riot coming out of this meeting.”
“Do you want to go, Sam?” Johnny whispered.
“No,” Sam said. Johnny’s tone had warmed him, making him feel that he wasn’t alone, surrounded by thousands of Negroes who hated him and might attack him if they found out he was in their midst. Johnny was his friend. Johnny believed in his integrity. Sam glanced gratefully at the brown profile on his left. Up on the platform Congressman Toole concluded his oration; he shook hands with Councilman Vincent and Mr. Charles Godkin and departed. Again, there were only Negroes in the dance hall chairs.
The next speaker was the Republican leader, Chauncey Barnow, a fat grizzled Negro with an Elk’s tooth on a gold chain. “If a southern Senator from Alabama or Texas or dear old Virginia were on the platform to see this meeting,” the Republican leader declared, “they’d carry back to their dear old southland the news that people in Harlem are civilized. We are most of us civilized. But every community has its screwball elements. And we of the All-Negro Harlem Committee wish to state our opposition to this unsigned leaflet put out by the screwball elements, this piece of gutter filth that misguided Negroes, unknown to us, have circulated throughout Harlem. You have seen it. I won’t soil my lips or your ears with its language. It was put out to stir trouble and dissension among us. Because of its venomous language against the religion of Officer Miller, because of its attacks on Italian and Irish citizens, the police out there are thicker than flies at milking time. This piece of gutter filth is the excuse the police have that we honest law-abiding Negroes intend to start a riot against the white people of this city. We won’t give those policemen the satisfaction of rioting.”
“Yes, sir,” the audience boomed a fervent response.
“None of us would give those policemen any satisfaction,” the Republican leader continued. “We are law-abiding but are they? I follow police blotters carefully and ninety-nine out of one hundred white people hurt in Harlem are joy seeking. The police know that. But does that stop them from attacking and molesting and persecuting the law-abiding citizens? No. There is a reason for all this police violence. For who are the police in Harlem? Isn’t it a fact that police who misbehave in other districts of this city are sent here for punishment? I don’t know whether Officer Miller is one of these exiles from Brooklyn or the Bronx. I don’t know whether he is stupid and brutal. But the evidence points to that assumption. We have twenty-two affidavits of eyewitnesses. We are not going to give their names or addresses to the police. We don’t want them intimidated. We won’t divulge any names until the D.A. is ready to try Officer Miller.”
Sam barely heard the Republican leader. Johnny on one side of him, and Cashman on the other weren’t real any more. They were like dummies, voiceless even when they spoke, silenced by something that was walking through this ballroom; a giant was walking, a giant taller than the dancers in the murals, a giant that borrowed the voice of one speaker after another for its own and discarded all the voices in turn as it breathed up the air in the lungs of the listeners, and out of the five thousands fashioned its own pealing voice.
Councilman Vincent had now stepped forward. “I haven’t much more to add. You have heard the speakers whom I have introduced to you. Now whether Officer Miller had to use his gun to save his own life and the life of Officer O’Riordan or not, he was stupid and a menace. We who live in Harlem, in the North, can speak up against those who menace us. Whether that menace is a policeman, or the menace of high rents, or the menace of job discrimination, or the menace of a Jim Crow army, we can speak up. We have democracy in the north although some say it is only a democracy that permits a Negro to ride in the subway with the whites. Both of these definitions are right. Ours is a limited democracy. We Negroes demand genuine democracy. We demand the right to happiness, the right to opportunity, to all those rights that were denied Randolph. He’s passed and gone but what about the thousands of other Randolphs? They say Randolph was demented. He was. But it is the terrible conditions under which the Negro people live that cause the Randolphs to be demented. I say to you that the United Nations cannot win this war without the help of the Randolphs. They cannot win without the help of the colored peoples of the world….”
Men were handing out leaflets when Sam, Johnny and Cashman inched out of the ballroom. Johnny accepted a leaflet from a little Negro man with a warty chin. The leaflet was printed on green paper. Homewards, the crowd walked, reading as they went. Cashman and Sam lowered their heads to the green paper in Johnny’s hand.
STICK TOGETHER HARLEM
NEGROES HAVE BEEN DIVIDED LONG ENOUGH
THE JEWS STICK TOGETHER!
THE WOPS STICK TOGETHER!
THE REDS STICK TOGETHER!
ALL THE LYNCHERS STICK TOGETHER!
STICK TOGETHER HARLEM!!
WE DON’T WANT ANY K.K.K.
(KIKE KILLER KOPS)
IN HARLEM!
United Negro Comm.
“This rag’s signed,” Cashman said.
“United Negro Committee?” Johnny frowned. “Never heard of ‘em.”
On all sides, the crowds buffeted and bypassed the two white men and the black man. Slowly, they started walking again. “Union’s got to stir its hump,” Cashman said. “Who’s behind the rag?”
“I’m going to find out,” Sam said slowly. “Johnny, I’ve been thinking. You can help me — ”
“Say the word,” Johnny said.
“Follow one of these people handing out leaflets. See where he comes from.”
Johnny circled Sam’s shoulders with his arm. “Good guy, Sam.” Bright and flashing, his smile spread from his lips into his dark-brown eyes. “I’m with you all the way.”
People were staring and Cashman growled. “Cut this demonstration. Come on, you two guys.”