WHERE IS SUZY BUCKLES? VICE RAIDS ROCK HARLEM. HARLEM NEAR RACE RIOT. WHITE GIRL’S FATE STILL UNKNOWN. SUZY BUCKLES’ MOTHER DISAPPEARS. MUGGERS ATTACK WHITE MAN IN PARK. MAYOR ASKS FOR CALM. SOUTHERN CONGRESSMEN DELIVER SCATHING SPEECHES AGAINST POLL TAX ADVOCATES. SOUTHERN LEADERS ARE NOT SURPRISED BY BUCKLES CASE. ‘WE HAVE ALWAYS HAD OUR BUCKLES’ SOUTHERN MINISTER DECLARES.
Clair’s desk was covered with Friday’s headlines. Otherwise, the office was almost back to normal. The crowd of reporters, feature writers and officials had vanished. Downstairs, in front of the building, two policemen, were stationed. Instead of Marian Burrow, there was another secretary. She had just come inside the inner office where Clair and Sam had been discussing developments. The new girl was in her twenties and she spoke to Clair as if aware of his stature as a newspaper personality. “Mr. Clair, there’s a woman outside to see you. She says she read the editorial in The People’s Advocate and she has information.”
Sam had sketched to Clair the results of his visit with Marian Burrow; he intended to call on her again today: He had outlined the gist of the Maddigan-Blaine talk. Clair had reported that a Madison Square Garden meeting of all races, colors, and creeds was in the making. There was also to be a goodwill march of labor and religious groups.
The partition door opened and a Negro woman flounced in. She was about fifty, in a shiny purple dress trimmed with imitation lace, a rhinestone belt around her middle. Her floppy red hat might have suited Clair’s young secretary but not her sagging face. She waved her arms and her cheap rings and bracelets glittered. “Mister Hal Clair? Which of you’s Mister Hal Clair?”
“I am Mr. Clair.”
“You?” She stared at his light skin. “Mister Clair, I want to say to you there’s no justice in this city. I was over that Advocate and they won’t let me see nobody but the office boy — ”
“A newspaper is a big organization,” Clair said.
“No, no!” she shrieked and her face was as composed as an aging nun’s except for the eyes. “I’ve seen plenty cruelty to colored folks and to cats. When you got a neighborhood where it’s cruel to cats you got it cruel for the colored folks.”
“Have you any pertinent information?” Clair interrupted.
This school teacher, Sam thought; he’ll never learn.
“Hear me out!” the woman cried. “I got information about all the enemies of the black people. I’ve seen it. Those who’d spill our blood, they spill it, they spill it. It ain’t the Jew man or the Italian man — they, the tool of the big white. I find they burn cats in ash cans, the colored do it. Yesterday on the roof there was a man putting out the eyes of a cat. It’s the same. All over it’s cruel because they put the cruel wickedness in the heart of the people. The poor animals suffer and the black man, he suffers more than all.”
“I am sorry to hear about the way cats are treated,” Clair said. “I advise that you go to the magistrate and get a summons — ”
“There’s no magistrate in Harlem,” she wailed. “There’s no justice. How many times I go to that Harlem Magistrates’ Court and I show them affidavits from doctors proving cruelty and I ask for a summons. The poor animals. All the magistrates do is say why don’t I get a husband to take care of and forget about cats. Is that justice, Mister Clair? Not a day goes by without they get hurt and crippled and lose their eyes — ”
“My dear woman I have other work to do.”
“I thought you was no true colored man and I know it. You’re a white man, Mister Clair! Oh, you’ll be sorry. The cats, they’re the souls of the colored who die and they suffer. Stop the cruelty to cats and you’ll stop the cruelty in the world.” She walked out backwards, spitting her words. Backwards like a cat she went, her voice the voice of the alleys and basements.
“She’s my fifth caller this morning,” Clair said to Sam.
“Who were the others?”
“There was one grey Negro who told me that the whites would only stop killing Negroes when the Negroes killed back. There was a woman who told me that two nights ago a Negro soldier was beaten up. His scalp was cut and he received a concussion of the brain. He had gotten into an argument, it seems, with some other Negroes. He had said that the United States was a democracy even though it had faults. This woman claimed that the Negroes who had beaten him had once been members of the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World.”
“What’s that?”
“A pro-Japanese society. This woman finally admitted that the soldier was her own son. She said I ought to investigate the Chinese laundries. She said that Japanese were disguised as Chinese laundrymen and that the Japanese had kidnapped Suzy Buckles. Another caller said I could stop the trouble in Harlem if the police arrested the white big-shots in the numbers racket. He claimed that these big-shots had worked up a crime scare in order to drive out the Negro racketeers.”
“Were all your callers Negroes?”
“Yes. I had a half dozen telephone calls, too.”
“Anything definite?”
“No.”
“Did you get any further word about the white man with the burn scars?”
“No.”
“It’s a crazy world,” Sam said. “I’ll see Marian again. If nothing turns up I’ll scratch her off. So long.”
“So long, Sam.”
Downstairs, in the bright light of noon, Sam thought of Clair’s crank visitors, of the cat woman. Downstairs, there was the sunny surface of the world on top, the chain stores, the liquor stores, the five and dime places, the red and green signs of the daylight world. He looked at the passing Negroes and he felt that the cat woman had spoken for them. She had spoken for the world below. “Well,” he muttered to himself. “Suzy’s still missing.” God, he prayed; protect her. All the time, he walked firmly, his body straight. The plate glass windows reflected his outer self. His outer self showed no inner man just as the outer selves of the passing Negroes showed nothing or almost nothing of their inner men. The outer selves walked and went about their business, carrying inside of them the shapes of maniacs, the shapes of the twisted, the tortured and the doomed, and the pathetic child-like selves of the hoping, the believing, the trusting.
Marian Burrow admitted him into her sister’s apartment without even asking who had rung her bell. She looked at him without recognition. She seemed older. The lounging pyjamas she was wearing were wrinkled. She was smoking a cigarette whose fumes made Sam cough. He guessed at the kind of cigarette it was. “Hello, Marian,” he said. “Don’t you know me?”
“I know you. You’re Miller.”
“I want to talk to you.”
The living room was full of acrid smoke. The windows and shades were down, the serape on the couch was disarranged as if she had slept under it last night. An empty whiskey bottle stood alongside the wall. The fumes burned Sam’s nostrils. He coughed. “Do you mind if I open a window?”
“Don’t go near them!” She sat on the very edge of the studio bed, her spine curving in, her breasts jutting. She giggled. “I got four sticks left. You open the window, you kill the smoke.”
“Only a minute, Marian.”
Her lips wrenched back in a snarl. The snarl stayed on her face. He knew she was lit. She was smoking the sticks, the reefers, marihuana. He was worried about getting lit himself, breathing in the smoke. That was how the reefer salesmen got the young kids. Get the kids into an unventilated room full of fumes and they would get lit; after that, they became customers. Sam sat down in a chair opposite her.
“What’d you do? Run out of booze?” he asked.
The snarl mask blew off her face and another mask, a giggle mask curved her lips and rounded her plump cheeks. Her eyes were full of laughing. She looked more Negro than Spanish in that relaxed second. “My sister forgot to bring me the booze.”
“Where is your sister?”
“Working.”
“Why aren’t you working?”
“I need a rest. My sister stay in my place. I stay here. You ever dream?”
“Sometimes.”
“Ever dream about cops?”
“Sometimes.”
“I dream all the time. Cops all standing there, looking at me. They — ” She giggled some more. “Sometimes, they got their pants off. Sometimes not. They got their clubs in their hands. Ever dream that?”
“No. Where’d you get the reefers?”
“He drop by to sell my sister. Dirty crook charge thirty cents a piece. Stick of tea’s not worth more than two bits.”
She held up her reefer for him to see. Then, she stretched out on the bed, drawing her knees up. Her naked brown feet beat out time on the serape to some tune thumping in her consciousness.
He coughed, cleared his throat. “Have you been here since I saw you?”
“When were you here?”
“Last night.”
“Last night?” She struggled to a sitting position, her lips hanging loosely. “You God damn liar. You were here couple weeks ago.”
“I was here last night. Yesterday.”
She laughed as if at a big stupid lie. She slapped her hand down on her thigh. “All those white cops standing around. All wanting to line me up. Ever dream that?”
“No.”
“Where’s your club?”
“I’m on a leave of absence. I don’t carry a club.”
“Why not?”
“I’m trying to find Suzy. Maybe you can help me.”
“Nobody can help a woman. A woman can only help herself.”
“Suzy’s been kidnapped.”
She shrugged. “Long time ago. She isn’t the only one.” She wiggled her forefinger for him to come closer. “Long long time. That was the time of the show on Broadway. They want light colored girls. And he said he’d think it over.” Her head lolled back on her neck. “He thought it over. See,” she confided. “He was a cop. Only he let out he was the producer. But he didn’t fool me. You should have heard that white man. Said it was no difference if a man loved a girl. They all come back. Him and all the other cops. Lord, it’s funny, dreams are. All those men.”
“Suzy was kidnapped Wednesday afternoon.”
“No fooling?”
“She was kidnapped Wednesday afternoon.”
“She’s a long long long.”
He saw that she was deep in the drug. Her sense of time was a marihuana sense of time; every minute was an hour to her and yesterday was a marihuana yesterday. “I’m trying to find Suzy.”
Her eyes gleamed comprehendingly. She took another drag on her reefer. He noticed that she exhaled very little of the smoke through her nostrils. She kept the smoke down. “I’m always trying to find. Lord. But they got in the way. All them cops. Go away!” she said to the marihuana cops. “I’ll come across when I want to. Not before.”
“Marian, I want you to help me.”
“What?”
“I want you to help me find Suzy.”
“Find, find,” she hummed, shaking her shoulders as if rhumbaing to some jazz band.
“Marian — ”
She snapped at him. “Bring me a stick!” His nerves tingled. He didn’t know whether she was talking to the marihuana cops or to himself. “In the box over there.” So, it was to him. “Oh,” she moaned, her eyelids closing. “I don’t like to drink alone. I don’t like to drink alone.”
He glanced at the enameled cigarette container on the table. The smoke was burning in patches inside his nostrils, hot little patches.
Her eyelids opened. “I seen you before, white boy. Years back, you white bastard. Think I forget how you lock the door and give me the corn about what’s the difference a man loves a girl. You, you. You push me on the bed, you bastard. Pull my dress up but you didn’t give me the job. Go on back to Harlem where you belong. That’s what you said. Don’t honey talk me. I remember. That’s where I belong,” she crooned, undulating her shoulders.
He hoped that she would forget about the reefer. His head felt as if in an iron mesh and the mesh was tightening. It was a joke all right. He’d get high on the damn marihuana.
“Where’s the stick?” she cried. “Get me the stick.” She pointed one stiff arm at him like a movie actress commanding a host of worshipping males and her face took on a “glamour” look so that she resembled the faces of the Hollywood stars on the walls; but her lips hung loosely and she was subtly hideous like some asylum inmate imitating a famous person. “All come here. All the time. I give the orders.”
“Who are you when you give the orders.” He saw her sleek and brown and fire was all around her; she was trimmed with bands of orange fire; the fire bands were the orange of her lounging pyjamas. But he didn’t see her in pyjamas. He saw her in fire, sitting on a studio bed that was a long bright boat and the boat was rocking gently on a fire sea. He forced himself to remember why he had come but it wasn’t so important any more.
“I’m bigger than all,” she giggled. “You know who?” She danced to her feet and ran to the photographs on the walls, placing her forefinger on a picture of Rosalind Russell. “I’m Garbo. That’s who.” She flung over to a photograph of Cary Grant and singsonged. “Gary Cooper’s my ideal. He stands there with the club.” She ran to the enameled box, took out a reefer and brought it over to him. “Light it.”
He glanced at the plugged cotton filter and then he stared at her. She was in a blaze of orange; her face was like the brown center of some giant flower. She grabbed the cigarette from his hand and pushed it between his lips. She lit a match and held it towards him. The match flamed like a torch. Orange burst in his eyes. He inhaled and his nostrils were seared. The smoke was sweet tasting. “I never smoked one of these before,” he said apathetically.
“More in the factory ‘round the corner. More in the factory.” She tumbled back to the bed, smiling a wide, elusive but happy smile. It was a smile of forgetting, and he wondered why he shouldn’t forget. Let the world go by, forget, forget, forget … His head floated off his neck up to the ceiling. Orange clouds flowed across the ceiling. He thought his head was an orange balloon. It made him laugh. “Sam,” a voice called. He looked away from the orange clouds and there was Suzy in the room, across the way. But it wasn’t Suzy. But it was Suzy in pyjamas. And it wasn’t, and it was, and Suzy was smiling, and he thought that under the pyjamas Suzy’s breasts were orange and if he touched them they’d be fire and they’d make him forget, but what was there to forget … A funnel was inside his brain and down the funnel, a thousand thoughts, images, fantasies poured. And he knew there was a funnel. He wondered if he could get underneath the funnel, at the tip, and catch what he wanted as it came through. He wondered if he ought to tell Suzy he was glad she’d come back. “Sam, you bastard! Sam! Hey, you white boy, you dreaming?”
He looked at Marian Burrow. He didn’t know that she was Marian but he knew she wasn’t Suzy. He remembered. He was smoking marihuana. He held the reefer far away from him. Suzy? Who was Suzy?
“All standing there. I was in the middle of the floor,” Marian was saying. “They wanted to. They wanted to kick me. But I took my clothes off and they change their mind.” And he heard laughter and heard the voice saying. “I give the orders.” The iron mesh was tightening around his head and he was trying to remember. He was peering into a smiling face above him, close to him.
He felt something smash on his cheek. Slowly, he realized the smile had slapped him. The smile ran away from him through whirling orange into another room, another place that was like an office with desks and newspapers and a woman was dancing with a cat whose eyes had been gouged out. He thought: This is happening to me. He reached out his hand and he didn’t know why and he thought he was reaching for his own hand. He had lost his own hand and he would never find it. But there it was at the end of his arm, his own arm. He found his hand and smashed the fist his hand became against his own jaw. And sobered to recognize Marian laughing on the studio bed.
“I slap you and you — ” she gurgled. “What we care. You and me’ll smoke all the reefers in the world and have us a time. You and me. I’m coming for you.” She got to her feet.
Across the blackness and the dizziness and the flaming, a pen of fire was writing a name. The pen was inside his brain. He said, “Suzy.” He blinked at Marian and she wasn’t Suzy. He felt Marian’s fingers through his hair and heard her say. “We give the orders, you and me.”
“Where is Suzy?”
“Serve her right for spoil the orders. In the dream she come. They don’t look at her. They look at me.” Her fingers were burning rods in his hair, like cables through which fire was leaping from her body into his body and he remembered that he didn’t know where Suzy was and he’d never find Suzy and he said:
“Where is Suzy?”
“Ask Aden. Ask Clair. Don’t ask me,” she said petulantly. “Oh, I’m so sleepy.”
He staggered up from the chair. She gripped him and laughed. “You ever dream? Where’s your billy club?”
He broke from her, walked to the window, fumbled for the shade loop, rolled the shade up. The light of day appeared miraculously like a frozen sheet of ice in front of him. He yanked the window open and stuck his head out into the light, sucking in air through his mouth.
She pulled him away from the window, rammed it shut, tugged the shade down. He gazed at her with lungs full of fresh air. He saw a young doped girl in the room. Two buttons were open in her pyjama top. In the office of the Harlem Equality League she had always looked trim, but now there was a dissolute untidiness about her like the baggy stockings of an old street corner bum. To him, remembering what she had looked like, she was now lost and afraid and locked forever in the marihuana. She seemed to sense, too, that he had escaped the marihuana and escaped her. She screamed. “I’ll swear you bring me the stuff. I swear you screw me, you bastard cop!” Her hands flapped like two cloths on the ends of sticks. She rushed to the enameled box, seized another reefer. She smoked. “All reefer talk,” she said plaintively like a beaten child. She turned her back on him. “You over there. All you, come here. I give the orders, I give the orders!”
There was something he had to remember but his head ached too much. Even before he reached the street, the room and Marian were fading in his brain like a dream.
From the double bed, Bill was moodily watching Isabelle inspecting herself in the mirror. There were two Isabelles, both of them tall in green evening gowns drawn tight around the waist by draw strings. The two Isabelles untied the draw strings; two red mouths opened and said. “Bill, dear, I wish you would tell me when it’s right. Is it too loose?”
“All you women!” he exclaimed. “We’re going to a party and that’s all a woman can think of. Like a damn fool, I break my oath — Christ, I must’ve been crazy.”
She turned around. “I’m your wife. I had a right to know.”
“So you know.”
“Let them dare!” Her black eyes flashed protectively towards the door. He stared at her. He had told her of the organization’s personalities, the organization’s power and she acted as if there wasn’t too much to worry about. To her, the organization was like a bogey man that would vanish at a cry. She was walking towards him. Out of the mirror she came, made of mirror shine and brilliance. Her green gown glinted. She was like a Fifth Avenue window model animated into life. He felt her cool hand stroke his cheek.
He gasped out a short laugh. “The string’s just right. Just right. A fatty can wear it loose. A skinny one like you can wear it tight.”
“Every woman likes to feel snug around the middle.”
“You’ll be the best looking woman at the reception.” His words jittered to a pause. He pulled on his hair. “You’ll be careful. They’re smart, Isa. Hayden, Heney. Smarter than I can ever say. Heney spotted how upset I was. I don’t look upset easy. Not with my pokerface. But Heney — ”
“You know my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“You’re worrying too much — ”
“Too much? Christ! That oath’s no joke.”
“A man can only swear his oath to God and to his country. To no one else.”
“That’s just dandy. Sweet. Lovely.”
“But to whom did you swear your oath, Bill?”
“To the organization.”
“To men like Heney. To that cheap imitator of Huey Long.”
“He’s smarter’n Huey ever was. You’ll be careful? Promise.”
“I promised you last night, darling.”
“Promise again.”
“I promise,” she smiled. “Now, suppose you finish dressing.”
“The party? It begins at eleven, the big party. Life begins at eleven.” He looked down the blackness of his tuxedo trousers to the blackness of his socks. “Isa, I love you. I trust you. My life’s in your hands. I’m not joking. It’s no joke. A woman like you, you have no idea — ”
“I knew you loved me last night.” She stooped over him, kissed him on the forehead.
“All because I broke my oath, because I got scared — ”
She kissed him again. “You trusted me. That’s what matters.” She returned to the mirror and the problem of the draw strings. In a lighter party voice, she added. “I wouldn’t be so blue, darling. I know more than you imagine about secret organizations. My grandfather Michael — You never met him.
He passed away eight years ago. Grandfather was in the Klan years ago. He used to talk of the new type of Klansmen — ”
“How could he be in the Klan? Wasn’t he a Catholic?”
“No.” She flushed. “Grandfather broke from the Church. But, anyway, grandfather became disgusted with what he saw.” She was chattering now as if speaking of soap. He marveled at how cool she was. It must be her breeding, he thought; her knowledge of her family’s history, her family’s ability to survive crisis. He breathed in the scent of her perfume and let the perfume build an elusive night-time universe which would last forever. She finished with the grandfather who had joined the Klan and tightened the draw strings. “Bill, how are they now?”
“Perfect.” He got up out of the bed, walked to the closet for his evening jacket. He put it on. She moved to him, smiling. Her hands rested on his shoulders.
“Bill?”
“I’ve been thinking all day that last night was a new beginning for us.”
He kissed her ear. “You’ll be careful,” he said. “You’ll meet Hayden. You’ve met Heney before but it’ll be different tonight. Heney’s worried. Don’t let them pump you!”
“Bill, I didn’t ask you last night?”
“Ask me what?”
“You said the organization had welcomed the disturbances in Harlem?”
“Yes?”
“What about the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The one kidnapped.”
“The organization didn’t welcome that nigger job.”
“I’m glad, Bill.”
“Really? What’s that Red to you?”
“She’s a woman, Bill, a white woman. My grandfather Michael — Bill — Years ago, white men, cheap white trash would black their faces and then go out and commit foul things; violate Negro girls and white girls, too, pretending all the time they were Negroes. My grandfather said that there had to be a dignified relation between white folks and the blacks. The blacks had to know their place. If necessary, they had to be taught their place with violence. But Grandfather Michael detested all underhanded practices.”
The reception for ex-Governor Heney had reached the point of a cocktail glass in almost every hand when they arrived at the Hotel Maurice. The great reception room was humming with the voices of hundreds, men in evening dress, in military uniforms, women in evening gowns. The cocktail glasses reflected the light of the electric crystals overhead. Out of the glasses, the cocktail conversation seemed to pour. Bill guided his wife through the crowd to the buffet bar. Six bartenders, wearing full evening clothes, were busy executing the incessant orders for Manhattans, fizzes, Tom Collins. Bottles gleamed in rows. Outstretched fingers clutched the stems of new drinks. “What’ll it be?” Bill asked Isabelle. “How about champagne cocktails?” She touched his hand with her fingers and her excited eyes sent him her love in a short telegraphic glance. Near them, a white-haired gentleman and a young woman in a blue evening gown were talking. “Thank God for the waiters,” the man said to the young woman. “They stand like watchmen in the night.” “Watchmen?” the young woman questioned. The old man nodded. “Martha, dear girl,” he said. “Haven’t you noticed how the War has changed the atmosphere all over town. Everywhere, the familiar faces are gone. New faces everywhere. That’s why I say thank God for the waiters. That tall one’s Carl. I have seen him around town for years.”
Bill handed Isabelle her cocktail, lifted his glass in a toast. “To you,” he said.
She slid her arm through his. “You should have said, to us.”
They left the bar but he saw no one he knew. He heard snatches of talk, diamond-hard as the jewels the women were wearing. He wondered where Hayden had found all these people? They were all in the money, he thought. They were sitting pretty. They were safe, secure. Not like himself. “How about another drink, Isa?”
“Weren’t you drunk enough the other day?”
“That day’s gone.” At the bar, he ran into Hayden. In his evening clothes, Hayden was slimmer, blonder than Bill remembered. Hayden had been conversing with an elderly couple; the man was small with an intelligent terrier-like face; the woman should have been fat but her body had been haggardly streamlined; her dough-colored arms shiny with bracelets. Hayden immediately excused himself and stepped over to Bill and Isabelle. Bill introduced them.
“Now I understand why Bill has been keeping you in hiding,” Hayden said as if reading the remark off a slip of paper. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Johnson.”
Isabelle was smiling, correct and formal. It was a smile, Bill appreciated, that was as enameled as the smiles in the society pages. He smiled, too. He felt an almost convulsive relief. He could depend on her.
“Our guest of honor has not arrived as yet,” Hayden went on.
“What do you do if the guest of honor fails to arrive?” Isabelle asked.
“I might think of stealing you for a few minutes.” Hayden laughed. “Bill, would you mind if I took Isabelle away for a few minutes?”
Isabelle took Bill’s arm. “And leave my husband all alone?”
“I won’t mind,” Bill said. “Be good, Isa.”
“I will.”
Bill stared after them, Isabelle in her gown pulled in at the middle, as tall as Hayden. He thought; the bastard’s not wasting any time. He walked to the bar. “Champagne cocktail,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
He drained the second cocktail in four swallows. Near him, a crowd of women and their escorts were calling for fizzes. Bill ordered a third cocktail, killed it, and wandered across the floor. Where was Isabelle and the bastard, he wondered. To hell with Hayden. He could depend on Isabelle, he could, he could … Somebody at his elbow was saying. “So many foreigners in town at the clubs. Any one speaking English feels out of place.” Somebody else: “Why if it isn’t Harry? How are things in Detroit?” Somebody else: “My dear, diamonds are emphatically not an investment.”
He stood among strangers and was fearful of meeting anyone he knew. The oath he had broken ripped across his brain. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to think of Big Boy Bose pointing the finger at him. A great black finger pointed at him, right at him … His brain had become a machine manufacturing one product: You shouldn’t have told her, you shouldn’t have told her … He compelled himself to listen to the strangers. Anything not to think, not to remember. He stood as if in a trance, half-listening. He sensed or imagined he sensed a wariness in the voices. They spoke guardedly of the war, of the President, of the allies of the United States, of labor, of the food shortage. He listened and all the time his brain produced: You shouldn’t have told her. The great black finger was pointing and Big Boy Bose’s black moon face was shouting: You South … And he listened to the people who had turned out to honor the ex-Governor. He sensed, at this reception in one of the city’s best hotels, no rock, no ground of permanence. Why was that? Why should that be? Was it the presence of the men in uniform, those perpetual reminders of the global war, of secret comings and goings to Iceland, to Australia, to the European continent, to China? YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HER! YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HER … YOU SOUTH! YOU SOUTH … YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU …
A snout-nosed blond man was talking to three other men about futures. Somebody told an anti-Administration joke. “Now I’m for the Federal Government but I want to tell of my experience with that New Dealer Brodkin. Brodkin’s a clever Jew, a wizard in contracts, but I taught him a few things.” They had all shown up to honor the ex-Governor. And Heney would lead them, Bill thought; into a world of guaranteed receptions and guaranteed contracts. What hadn’t Heney said? What hadn’t Heney promised? Bill recalled speeches of Heney’s he had heard over the years, Klan-like speeches upholding the white races of the world against all comers, liberal-like speeches in which Heney insisted the white nations had to admit the world’s colored peoples into the world theatre, but only after they had prepared themselves for government. And he saw Hayden and Isabelle, with a woman as blond as Hayden, who almost looked like his sister but whom Hayden introduced as his wife.
“Glad to know you,” Bill said. His face was flushed. His burn scars gleamed paler than his skin.
Isabelle smiled at Bill. Mrs. Hayden resumed what she had been saying. “I believe that my daughter has been a greater source of satisfaction than my son. Don’t you think so, Norris?”
Christ, Bill thought. He had a mad idea that Hayden’s two children must also look like Hayden; that if Hayden had a dozen children they would all look like him; that all the ops in the organization would look like Hayden after awhile; that in time the city, the country would be full of people like Hayden. Bill wanted to laugh. Imagine the streets jammed with blond youngish-faced people, their chins receding a little, their eyes blue between long blond eyelashes. He squeezed Isabelle’s fingers and he wanted another drink badly. It was as if his insides had changed into a multitude of dry lips. And Hayden was saying to the two women, “I want both of my children to be activists. Now I am a statistics expert, not an activist. But I realize that eventually this nation will be saved or lost by our men of action.” He was enjoying himself, Bill guessed. And why shouldn’t Hayden enjoy himself and mouth nice phrases? Hayden took no chances. “The Paul Reveres have always come to the fore in times of disaster,” Hayden was saying. “Bill, how about you and I hunting up some of our acquaintances?”
“All right. Be back soon, Isa.”
“All right, darling.”
He walked off with Hayden. He felt how much taller and stronger he was than Hayden.
“The Governor still hasn’t come,” Hayden said. “Everybody is waiting for him.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at that Brooklyn establishment he is so fond of.”
“What establishment?”
“No woman permitted,” Hayden said curtly. “I want you to go there. You will remind the Governor of his reception. The password is: Madam Fox of Buffalo, New York. That will secure your admission. You will then ask for Madam Mobile.” He grinned at Bill. “Amazed, aren’t you? Understand, please. The Governor’s a statue. Do you understand? A statue. Very few of us are permitted a glimpse of his foibles. I wasn’t going to send you for the Governor. But Darton hasn’t come. Darton knows of the Governor’s foibles and I would have sent him after the Governor — ”
“I understand.”
When he turned away, he was smiling like a mad man. He was thinking that he would arrive at the establishment. He would not find the Heney he had known, the red-faced bullish man, but a slight man with a blondish face and a receding chin.
The address was a brownstone house in a street of brownstones and lofts where Chinese and Filipino sailors met in dingy upstairs clubrooms. Bill climbed the stoop of his address, rang the bell. This house was like Big Boy’s in Harlem but the man he had come for wasn’t Big Boy. No, he pondered. Not Big Boy.
The door opened a foot, a hidden voice called, “Who’s there?”
“Madame Fox of Buffalo, New York.”
As the door sheered wide, Bill stepped into the foyer. He saw a man in a blue sweater and corduroy trousers. The man had watery eyes, a chin that was clefted and thin silvery hair. He wasn’t old. He was in his forties. Behind him, a walnut staircase ascended to the floors above; walnut doors locked in the rooms on Bill’s left. In the street, no light had yellowed from the windows but inside the house, from behind the doors, Bill heard laughing voices and a radio playing sweet music.
“Welcome.” The watery eyes twinkled and glanced at the doors. “We have two brunettes in there. Josie and Cleo. One blond, Sonny. Upstairs, we have another blond, Goldie. Goldie is engaged.”
Blonds! Bill thought. “I don’t give a damn,” he said.
“What shall we call you? Where are you from?”
“You’ve got me wrong, sister or brother or whoever the hell you are. I’ve come for Madame Mobile, pal. Hop to it. It’s important.”
The man nodded. “So you are a regular guy. Very well. Do you want to wait, please?”
“Step on it, pal.”
“Who shall I say — ”
“A blond,” Bill said nervously, smiling. “Just a. blond.”
The man left. Bill raised his hands. He stared at his wrists. How would it feel to be handcuffed? He laughed stupidly and peered at the walnut doors. Hayden’s blond slightly effeminate face was knocking in his head like a fist on a door.
Ex-Governor Heney, after being introduced by a gentleman, who had first humorously introduced himself as a Georgian pioneer in the wilds of New York City, stepped forward on the platform at the head of the hall. “My dear friends,” the ex-Governor began. “I have a clippin’ I’d like to read to you. Here it is. It’s a clippin’ from ‘The People’s Advocate.’ ‘The People’s Advocate’ is not one of those small town newspapers our fathers used to read. It is a high-powered Negro enterprise published in the wilds of this city by your Councilman, Louis Vincent. Let me read this clippin’. It is goin’ to serve as my text. Quote. ‘This is modern history’s most chaotic hour. Whether willingly or unwillingly, every nation, every race, every individual must make the choice immediately and travel towards their rendezvous with destiny.’ Unquote. My dear friends, truer words than these have not been written or said anywheres in these broad states. Why have we gathered here at this reception? Ostensibly, I am the guest of honor. But, although I have served in public office as a representative of the majority America we all love, I am only a symbol of our true guest of honor. Which is — Our own dearly beloved American traditions. Yes, my friends, we are indeed living in: Quote. ‘History’s most chaotic hour.’ Unquote. I hope that we will have the energy, the foresight, the true love for our children and our women folk to face this: Quote. ‘Most chaotic hour.’ Unquote: with clear brains.
“I am a Democrat in my politics, a Southerner by birth but in this ‘chaotic hour’ I am neither South nor North, neither Democrat nor Republican, neither mule nor elephant. I am simply an American without any narrow allegiances.”
Hundreds of hands applauded.
“Let us all make our choices. Let us all ask ourselves what destiny do we want for ourselves and for our children? Do we not all hope that the next generation will be sound, Christian and patriotic? Do we not desire that the next generation be inculcated in the Christian white traditions of the founding fathers? If this is the case, let us have the courage to say so. In Washington, in New York, nay, in every city of the land, I have listened to many people denouncing that scarecrow the left has given us: The Reactionaries. Who are these Reactionaries? Sometimes, I have heard them described as Southerners, reactionary Bourbons, reactionary Poll-Taxers, reactionary Cotton-land Demagogues. In the North, the scarecrow has been denounced as the Economic Royalists, the Tories, and so on. My dear friends, there are Reactionaries, genuine Reactionaries in the South and in the North but they must not be confused with those traditional Americans who desire only to continue, to expand and to magnify the traditions of their ancestors.”
Applause. A young man cheered.
“Yes, we can learn from this Negro newspaper. We can learn from ‘The People’s Advocate’ how to approach our destiny. Let me read again. Quote. ‘Every nation, every race, every individual must make the choice immediately.’ Unquote. Yes, I say: Immediately! Immediately, we must begin to solve our national and racial problems. Do you think that the race problem is a problem that Hitler has given us? Do you think that the Negro problem, for example, is a sectional problem confined to the South? The only difference has been in the treatment of this problem as events happening right this minute in this city amply demonstrate. The Anglo-Saxon white man of the South has always opposed draggin’ the white man down to the Negro’s level. The white man of the North, this mixed German-Italian-Polish-Greek-Jewish-Spanish white man of the North has, on the other hand, espoused a yes-and-no treatment for the Negro problem. Who is right? Who is wrong? I do not know because I do not know how to solve the Negro problem.
“But I do know and I do affirm that if there is room in this great Republic for a Negro N.A.A.C.P., for a Negro H.E.L., for a Negro ‘People’s Advocate’, for a Negro Councilman like Mr. Vincent and a Negro Vice-Presidential candidate on the Communist ticket; if there is room for all the myriad Negro societies, organizations, groups and parties; if there is room for all the white Negrophiles and their societies, organizations, groups and parties, then in God’s name, there is room for our societies, organizations, groups and parties. There is no such thing as freedom if we aren’t free as the Negro or the Jew or the left-wing unionist or the communist or any other element in America is free, to propagandize our viewpoint.”
The applause mounted, deafening.
“I say! I say! Please let me continue, my friends! I say that we have a right, for example, to examine the recent events in this great city and to learn from them. I refer to the events in Harlem. What is Harlem? It is a city of three hundred thousand Negroes to begin with. It is a city with the highest infant death rate, the highest T.B. rate. It is the crime capital of the nation. It has fifteen thousand prostitutes who are daily contaminating our soldiers. It has four thousand panders. It has muggers and gangsters without number. As is well known, the State of New York and the City of New York permits equality with Negroes in vice and in crime. What is the result of this subtler treatment? Periodically, violence looms in Harlem. Right now a race riot on a scale unheard of in the benighted South is in the making. You know the facts. A white girl reared in the subtler North, imbued with leftist ideas, has been kidnapped by Negroes; these same Negroes bein’ imbued with the North’s subtler attitude towards white women. I say, my dear friends, that this is a dangerous and diabolic equality.
“We, in the South, do not want to lynch innocent Negroes. We, in the South, would be happy if there were no Negro sex maniacs in our midst. But when a Negro sex maniac rapes and murders one of our women, we must in honor to ourselves exact swift merciless justice. And the subtler North cries out with horror. What is the South thinkin’ of this Harlem situation today? The South is not cryin’ out with intellectual horror. The South is merely hoping that the North will realize some day that the Negro problem and every other problem is a national problem to be solved by the majority. In conclusion, let me say that some of our Southern leaders still regard the Republican party as the Negro party. That is an example of regional and not national thinking. We can again learn from ‘The People’s Advocate.’ In this ‘chaotic hour’ we must realize that there are no more regions. There are only nations, continents, a colored world of Indias, Africas, Chinas. A vast Russia and a vast South America that are mixed. The Mongol and the Tartar have mixed with the Russian. The Indian and the Negro have mixed with the Latin American. We are living in a colored world of war, unrest, rebellion and riot. I say that we white Americans must unite with our brothers be they Northerners or Southerners. We must join our hands and meet our destiny together.”
Every morning Sam left his fear outside the subway entrance. It was as if he had struck a bargain with fear. But when he returned at night, he had to fulfill his end of the bargain. Reaching the street level, Friday night, all that he had done during the daytime hours was junked in his mind. Suzy was still missing. What good had it done Suzy to consult with Hal Clair, to see Marian Burrow, to smoke marihuana? He had seen Detective Maddigan again. He had seen Vine again. He had met two labor lawyers, Willy Speeder and Tom Cohlan; they had listened to the story he had told them; Speeder had a big baldish dome with a blond sweeping forelock; Cohlan had a tight face built around the pipe he hardly ever removed except to refill with Revelation tobacco. God, what good did it do Suzy? Suzy believed in the people, he thought. Suzy said to get the people into the fight. But the people didn’t know how to fight their enemies. Clumsy and gigantic and many-bodied, the people pulled in all directions. Against the machine-gun events of the last few weeks, the people presented a sprawling lumbering target: The people: The H.E.L. The A.H.N.C. The other Negro organizations.
The churches. The unions. The union leaders, labor lawyers, the Speeders, the Vines, the Clairs. Resolutions. Editorials. Union protest meetings. What good did it do Suzy?
He looked out on the darkened streets and the day had ended, another day during which seven million people in the city had eaten and worked and gone to the movies and made love and read the newspapers; another vast day like a vast forest in which they had hidden from all the seeking eyes, hidden in a thousand hours. All that could be seen of them were their bloody tracks recorded in newsprint.
Sam curved into his street, into the lobby of his apartment house. He pressed the button of the automatic elevator. The signal glass glowed red. It was very still in the lobby. Sam stared at the red eye. The elevator ascended from the basement, stopped. He pulled the door open. There was a passenger in the elevator, a Negro of medium height with a smooth-shaven face. The Negro’s right hand was in his pocket. “Hello, Miller,” the Negro said, his right hand coming out. “Stick your hands up! This is a stickup!” There was a gun in the fist. Sam raised his arms. The elevator was descending into the basement. Nobody had pushed the button lettered B. Nobody? Somebody in the basement! Sam thought: SOMEBODY.
The elevator stopped. The inside door slid open automatically. The outside door swung open. There was a second Negro standing in the doorway. His face was square and the grey felt he wore was yanked down so low on his forehead, the brim was resting on his ears.
“Get out!” the Negro with the gun said.
Sam stepped forward. The man in the grey felt grabbed Sam’s right arm and frisked him. “No gat,” he said.
“Keep still, Miller!” the man with the gun warned Sam. “Yell and we’ll plug you.” Sam felt a hard point in the small of his back. He swallowed the saliva in his mouth. He swallowed again.
“Move!” This was the gun’s voice. The point was prodding him to go deeper into the basement. The Negro holding his arm flashed a ray of light on whitewashed walls, concrete floor. Sam heard his footsteps and their footsteps scrape on the concrete.
If I yell for help, he thought; if I yell for help, if I yell, will they shoot? They were no muggers, he knew; they had phoned him in the early morning and threatened his life; they had kidnapped Suzy. The flashlight crisscrossed on a wooden door. The man with the light paused. The man with the gun pushed the door open. The light flicked into a windowless room. There were trunks in one corner. The man with the gun said. “Squat!” and he shut the door half-way. Sam sat down on the corner of a big trunk. The Negro who had grabbed his arm, released his hold, marched to the door. His flashlight hurled into Sam’s eyes. Sam blinked, his eyes stabbed with light. The light pierced through his eyeballs into his brain and he felt as if he were back again in the marihuana. Out of the light, the Negroes had spilled. But it wasn’t a marihuana world. It was the real world. It had always been real, always more horrible than the unreal.
“Where’s my girl?” Sam asked.
“Shut up!” said the gun.
“Damn!” said the second voice, the grabber’s voice.
Bright green light danced on Sam’s eyelids. He groaned. Again, he had been too late. Why hadn’t he tackled the gun in the elevator? Always too late, too late.
“Miller,” the gun said. “You got a chance to live if you answer straight. We been after you for days. We followed you everywhere you went. To the coppers. To your home. Everywhere.”
Sam tried to see the face of the man speaking but the light burned out all the features. At last it had come. The trial! He was on trial for his life, the trial begun on the day of Randolph’s death, the trial begun on the naked streets, the jurors, the shouting crowd. Now, the streets were in the basement. The trial had shifted into the station house, to the Silver Trumpet Ballroom, to the Y.M.C.A. and they were all in the basement and they were the same streets.
“Miller,” the gun said. “What you and Clair cooking?”
“Ask Clair,” Sam cried out.
“Don’t lip us, copper!” the gun said slowly. “You went to Clair because you’re a stool pigeon.”
“No.”
“No use lying.”
Sam was silent.
“What’d you go to Clair for?”
Sam was silent.
“Answer me, you bastard!”
“Nothing to answer.”
“What’d you go to Clair for?”
He felt that he had explained his motives to countless men and now there was nothing to explain any more.
“You bastard!” the gun said. “Answer.”
“Let me alone.”
“Why’d you go to Clair for?”
“To sell him out to the cops! I hate Negroes! I hated them from the day I was born. All I want is hate. Clair hates you, too. He’s a white man! You’re all white men! All of you! You’re white men! You’re all white men!”
“He’s nuts,” the grabber said conversationally.
“Ask Rosenberg! He’ll back you up.”
“Who’s Rosenberg?” the gun said.
“I wanted him to find out. That’s me. I want to find out. God, if only I hadn’t listened to her. God, God!”
“Listen to who?”
“You kidnapped Suzy.”
The flashlight lowered. Sam could see them now, two men, two Negroes blacker than coal, like the darkest Negroes in the world. “Listen,” he cried. “Listen. Don’t kill her. Listen, she’s a friend of yours. She volunteered to work for Clair because she wanted to be near me — ”
A third voice spoke. Sam started. The voice came from outside the room, from behind the half-opened door. Sam’s eyes widened and he gasped. The judge was behind the door. “Suzy Buckles? That’s your girl?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“You didn’t just meet her at Clair’s?”
“She went to Clair to be near me.”
“Why’d you go to Clair?” the third voice boomed.
“To square myself for Randolph.”
“What you mean?”
“I’m no killer.”
“You killed Randolph?”
“Yes, that’s the way it was.”
“Why’d you go to Clair?”
“To run down the crowd calling themselves the United Negro Committee.”
“Jew bastard!” the third voice said.
“My girl doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t hate you. Listen. Listen.”
The voice behind the door didn’t answer. The gun said. “All Harlem saw you kill Randolph. The Inspector sent you to Clair.” The flashlight lifted into Sam’s eyes. “You Jew liar!”
“Listen! Listen! My girl doesn’t hate you.”
“Never mind that,” the gun said. “You killed Randolph. Randolph was a nigger to you.”
“No.”
“Why’d you kill him?” the gun said.
How many times had he testified on this point? And always the judges had hidden behind their doors. “I don’t know. I don’t know any more.”
“Maybe Randolph could’ve been saved?” This was the third voice.
“Maybe,” Sam conceded.
“You killed him. He was a nigger!” the third voice pronounced. “You hate niggers, you Jew bastard!”
“No, no, no, no.” His brain rocked. He screamed. “Negroes, Negroes, Negroes.” Frantically, he rubbed the light out of his eyes, imaged two spectral shapes edged in green in front of him, marihuana men who were real men in a marihuana world that was a real world. They moved out of the room. The door closed and a voice, whose voice he couldn’t guess, he was too excited, pronounced for the last time. “Stay here until we’re gone!”
“My girl?”
“We don’t know where she is.”
“My girl!” he called to the darkness. The marihuana-like glare stayed in his eyes and he remembered what Marian had said. Aden, she had said.