(The late afternoon, in New York, from the Statue of Liberty in the bay, and the busy water traffic, the downtown spires, the midtown spires, then the garage of the New York Hilton Hotel.

The garage is utterly silent, long and ominous.

The door leading to the hotel opens, and a man’s long, lean silhouette crosses the garage swiftly and gets into a car.

There is a long pause before he turns on the ignition and the sound of the motor rolls through the garage.

The moment we hear the sound of the motor, the car’s side-view mirror fills the screen—as blank as the garage. The radio begins to play—“soul” music—and the car’s side-view mirror begins to move, up, into the daylight.

We see the driver’s bespectacled eyes in the rear-view mirror: eyes both haunted and alert.

The music pauses. We hear an announcement that MALCOLM X will be appearing at the Audubon Ballroom in the evening.

The side-view mirror, reflecting darkness, then light, then the traffic in the streets.

A red light; people crossing the street; soul music.

We now see the driver, MALCOLM X, bearded, harried, and yet, at the same time, calm and proud.

As the car begins to move again, the side-view mirror begins to reflect inexplicable images, swift, overlapping, blurred.

A fire fills the screen. Then, hooded men, on horseback, smashing in the windows of a country house; a fair, young mulatto woman, pregnant, flinching as the horsemen ride between her and the house; and between her and the camera.

A voice is heard, shouting, “Brothers, sisters, this is not our home! Our homeland is in Africa! In Africa!”

We hear a trolley-car’s clanging bell, and see, from the point of view of the motorman, a beaten, one-eyed black man, lying across the streetcar tracks, watching his death approach.

MALCOLM’S face.

The car is moving uptown, through the streets of Manhattan, and we watch MALCOLM watching the people and watching the tall, proud buildings. Following MALCOLM’S eye, we begin picking out, isolating, certain details of these buildings:

A cupola, at the topmost height of a New York building, transforms itself, as we pass, into the balcony of the presidential mansion in Dakar: flags flying, throngs of black people cheering. The bearded MALCOLM is smiling and responding to the cheers.

A very young black STUDENT, male, with a bright and eager face, is speaking to him.)

STUDENT  You must return. You must come back to us.

MALCOLM  I have come back. After many centuries. Thank you—thank you!—for welcoming me. You have given me a new name!

(MALCOLM, in a great hall, somewhere in Africa, being draped in an African robe.

The black ruler, who places this robe on him, pronounces this new name at the same time that MALCOLM repeats it to the STUDENT.)

MALCOLM  Omowale.

STUDENT  It means: the son who has returned.

MALCOLM  I have had so many names—

(We see the Book of the Holy Register of True Muslims. A hand inscribes in this book the name: El-Haji Malik El Shabazz.

We see a family Bible and a black hand inscribing: Malcolm Little, May 19, 1925.)

I will come back to you. I promise—(After a moment) God willing.

(The windows of New York buildings, blinding where the sun strikes.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  So many names—

(We hear the raucous sound of a Lindy Hop.

In the side-view mirror: a conked and sweating MALCOLM, dancing, spinning.

A voice yells, “Hey, Red! Go on, Red!”

MALCOLM acknowledges this, without missing a beat. He is dancing with a very young, radiant, black girl, LAURA. They execute a particularly spectacular and punishing pas de deux, the crowd roaring them on, and when MALCOLM has, literally, set LAURA’S feet on solid ground again, he holds her against him a moment. They are very, very young: and they smile at each other that way.)

MALCOLM  You are the cutest thing.

(MALCOLM’S present, weary, bearded face: very much alone. Idly, he watches a very attractive blond girl striding along the avenue.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Sophia—

(The car stops for a light.

The blond girl, who is actually not SOPHIA, enters a jewelry shop. We see her through the glass.

In the side-view mirror, we see:

MALCOLM’S long hands tangled in SOPHIA’S long blond hair. They kiss—a long moment—and then we see that they are in a room, on a bed. SOPHIA is wearing a loose robe. MALCOLM is naked to the waist.)

MALCOLM  And what you going to tell your white boy about your black boy? your fine black stud? your nigger?—You hear me talking to you, Miss Anne?

SOPHIA  I am not going to speak about you at all.

MALCOLM  Suppose somebody else tells him?

SOPHIA  Who could make him believe it?

MALCOLM  (laughs) You keep telling me you know how white men are. (She kisses him.) Don’t nobody care about you people at all?

(He pulls her down on top of him. She buries her head in his chest. Then she looks up at him.)

SOPHIA  I don’t think so—don’t laugh—only you—

(And MALCOLM pulls her head down on his chest.)

(MALCOLM, in prison, in a fist-fight. He and his opponent are separated by the guards.

A voice yells, “Satan!”)

MALCOLM  (shouting) I didn’t do a damn thing! I was minding my own business when this joker come fucking over me! I ain’t no punk!

(The GUARDS subdue him and hurl him into solitary, MALCOLM shouting and cursing every inch of the way. When the door locks behind him, he begins beating on the door, finally slumps.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  So many names.

(A tree, from which flutter old, discolored rags—which once were clothes, which once were bloodstained; great birds circling in a luminous gray sky; and then clothes billowing from the clothesline of the Little home.

A lone female black voice, singing:

“Bye and bye,

Bye and bye,

I’m going to lay down

This heavy, heavy load.”

The very fair, young mulatto woman, pregnant, trudges from the clothesline toward this house. This is LOUISE LITTLE.

The one-eyed EARL LITTLE, preaching.)

EARL  God has sent us a prophet who will take us home. Do you understand that, brothers and sisters? do you understand that? To take us home! Back to Africa! We’re going to leave this accursed people, who been slaughtering us so long! (His listeners all are black: a not overwhelming number. We are in a black church.) But we must raise ourselves so that we need nothing from the white man—nothing!

(Holster of a white man on horseback. The horse is restless.

From within a white house a black hand lifts a white curtain, lets the curtain drop.)

A BLACK VOICE  Lord have mercy.

EARL  We shall establish our own businesses, raise our own food—

(LOUISE, at the stove, cooking: and watching the clock.)

EARL  And when we have established our sufficiency, we will do as Christ told us to do—we will shake the dust of this most accursed of nations from off our feet. And join our brother, Marcus Garvey, and go home!

(The Klan, riding through the night.

LOUISE hears this. She looks quickly at the children, who are silent.

The clothes on the line, billowing over the heads of some of the riders as they enter the Little yard.

LOUISE walks to the door, and faces the riders. LOUISE is nearly as white as they are and this lends her a very particular bitterness and a contemptuous authority.

If they are intimidated by the particular quality of her fury, they are nevertheless together and she is alone.)

LOUISE  What you all want here, this time of night? I got my children’s supper on the stove.

A RIDER  Where’s your husband?

LOUISE  If he was home, would I be standing out here in the yard?

A RIDER  If you want to keep on standing, you better watch your tongue.

LOUISE  You can veil your face, but you can’t hide your voice, Mr. Joel. I know every one of you.

(A RIDER laughs. His horse rears.)

A RIDER  Well, if you know every one of us, you know we mean business. You tell your one-eyed liver-lipped preacher husband—

LOUISE You tell him whatever it is you got to tell him! or ain’t you man enough?

A RIDER  We trying to be patient—

A RIDER  You half-white bitch—

LOUISE  I might be your daughter, for all you know—or your sister—!

A RIDER  Your husband keep on stirring up the bad niggers in this town, we going to have his ass in a sling—you tell him that!

A RIDER  He going to lose his other eye!

(His restless horse rears again, and, in a sudden fury, the RIDER smashes in one of the windows with the butt of his gun. He prods his horse, and all the RIDERS follow him. They ride around the house, smashing in every window with their gun butts, and ride away.

LOUISE’S clenched hands on her swollen belly.)

(Night. The streetcar tracks, from the motorman’s point of view.

EARL rushes to catch this streetcar but misses it. He stands, in an odd and violent frustration, on the tracks, watching the streetcar vanish. He begins walking home.

A car with Nebraska license plates moves slowly along the dark streets, and we see that the two white men in the car are armed.

EARL walks under the billowing clothesline, and the light falls on his face as his wife opens the door. He walks slowly around his violated house; we hear the children whispering and weeping.

He turns to LOUISE, who stands in the doorway, who has not moved.)

LOUISE  Earl, maybe now you’ll listen to me. We can’t stay here. Earl. We got to go.

EARL  I ain’t going to let them drive me away like this.—Oh, no. Oh, no.

LOUISE  Listen to your children in there, crying, scared to death! Man, can’t you hear your children?

EARL  I hear my children. That’s why we ain’t going to run.

(He starts into the house. LOUISE stops him.)

LOUISE  Earl, it don’t matter about me. I ain’t worried about me. I ain’t never asked for you to worry about me. We made our choice, and that’s all right. But my babies, Earl—my babies!

(She is weeping. He holds her to him, a long moment; we watch his face.)

EARL  All right. Tell you what. We’ll go. We’ll go. But we can’t go nowhere tonight. I got to get busy fixing these windows. And tomorrow morning—early tomorrow morning—I’ll start arranging for us to get out of this town.—But it going to be the same thing, no matter where we go. They ain’t never going to treat us right, not here. This white man is too sick. We got to get to Africa.

LOUISE  Earl—where in Africa?

EARL  Wherever Brother Garvey leads us.

LOUISE  I wish I was black—black like you—blacker than you! Goddamn it, how I hate them, hate them—! Every drop of that white rapist’s blood that’s in my veins!

EARL  Hush. (He strokes her belly.) We can’t get far, nohow, before this little one gets here. He in a hurry. I can feel him pushing up against my hand.

LOUISE  He’ll sure be here before we get to Africa.

(They go into the house.

We see a map, and LOUISE’S finger.)

LOUISE’S VOICE OVER  No. You were born here, Malcolm. (Her finger touches: Omaha.) And then we moved—here.

(Her finger touches: Milwaukee.)

(Night. The screen is dark. A match is struck in the darkness. It flickers, seems nearly to go out; then another wisp of flame appears; then another.

EARL turns in bed, beginning to awaken.

LOUISE sits up.)

LOUISE  Earl!

(The flames are devouring the house. They gather up the children, covering them with blankets, with anything, and get them out of the house.)

EARL  We got all the children? Where’s Malcolm?

LOUISE  He’s here. They’re all here.

A CHILD’S VOICE  Here I am.

(We watch EARL’S desperate face, watching the fire.

LOUISE is watching.

The arrival of the fire engines. The firemen are white.

The crowd gathering. The crowd is white.

The fire trucks come to a halt; and the firemen stand and watch the fire.

EARL turns and watches the crowd. He picks up the baby, MALCOLM, and holds him in his arms.

Father and son, the mother and the children watch the crowd watching the fire.

A map.)

LOUISE’S VOICE OVER  And then your father built a house—here. (Her finger stops at: Lansing.) That’s where we stayed.

(A sea gull, turning and turning in the sky. A bright summer day.

The young, bright, gawky, conked MALCOLM, walking, with his shoes and a pair of girl’s shoes tied over his shoulder.)

MALCOLM  I wasn’t really born there. I just grew up there.

LAURA  I never heard of it.

MALCOLM  Well, there’s a big town not too far from it, called Detroit—that’s where they make the cars. You ever hear of Detroit?

(MALCOLM and LAURA are walking along a deserted Cape Cod beach, barefoot, he with his trousers rolled.)

LAURA  Yes. I’ve heard of Detroit. Was—Lansing—a nice town? Did you like it there?

MALCOLM  I didn’t want to live there. No more than I want to live in Boston.

LAURA  What’s wrong with Boston? I live here.

MALCOLM  Well, I think I’m big enough to overlook that. In fact, I’m thinking of kidnapping you. You want to be like all them hill clowns? them people your grandmother like so much?

LAURA  Just because my grandmother likes them doesn’t mean that I have to like them.

MALCOLM  She want you to like them. She want you to be like that. She want you to marry somebody like that. Like that deacon—what’s his name—so black and puffed up he can’t hardly talk—the one who call me Master Little—ha! I ain’t master of nothing. He say he “in banking.” In banking! (An elderly black man, solemnly winding an impressive watch.) He don’t see penny one in that bank. They don’t let him nowhere near the money. All he do is mop their floors. (Which, after the gentleman has elaborately tucked his watch away, we see is all too true.) And old Miss Stella, talking about she with a “old family”—yeah. And what she doing with that old family? She cook their food and scrub their toilets—(A handsome black woman is simultaneously putting on her street clothes and expertly filling a large, respectable-looking handbag.)—and take home their leftovers. If she married to that cat “in banking,” I reckon she better.

LAURA  Don’t talk like that.

MALCOLM  Well, it’s true! And that cat “in utilities.” He in, all right—when he ain’t outside riding a bicycle for the gas company. In utilities!

LAURA  That’s another generation. You haven’t got to be like that.

MALCOLM  (stops walking; looks at her) You’ damn right.

LAURA  Oh—! (Suddenly, she grabs his hand and starts running with him. They start laughing. They run to the water’s edge and fall down, laughing, in the sand.) Oh, look!

MALCOLM  Look at what?

(But he follows her finger and sees what she sees: the sea gull, turning and swooping in the sky.)

LAURA  He wears the sky like an overcoat.

MALCOLM  (looks at her, amused and moved) Honey, he’s just looking for food. He got a lot of mouths to feed.

LAURA  You’re always so—practical.

MALCOLM  I better be.

(He kisses her, lightly, playfully, like a brother, and sits up. He takes their shoes off his shoulders and rests them on the sand.)

LAURA  It’s peaceful here.

MALCOLM  You think so? I wish it was. I wish I could make it peaceful for you. I guess I’d do anything for you—if I could do anything—

LAURA  But you can, Malcolm, you can! You—you could be a wonderful man.

MALCOLM  You know, when I was a little boy, where we lived—(He pauses, to be reassured by LAURA, who is lying on her side, watching him.) I ain’t never really told you about where we lived, but it was in the country—and we grew our own food—that was my daddy’s idea—(We watch LAURA, watching MALCOLM.)—and so we had our own garden, you know, and so I asked my mama if I could have my own little garden, too. And so she said, Yes, and she let me. I loved it and I took care of it. I used to love to grow peas. I used to be proud when we had them on the table—on our table—

(LOUISE, smiling, humming, shelling peas.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  I used to crawl on my hands and knees, looking for the bugs and the worms and then I’d kill them and bury them. (We see the ground very close, as if from the viewpoint of a crawling child, and remain fascinated before one enormous green shoot.) And sometimes I would lie down on my back between my nice clean rows and gaze up at the blue sky at the clouds moving—

(MALCOLM’S face.)

MALCOLM —and think all kind of things.

LAURA  What kind of things?

MALCOLM  All kinds of things. I used to dream that I would be speaking to great crowds of people—and I would somehow do something which would help my father and my mother. I didn’t want my mother to work so hard. (We watch LAURA watching MALCOLM. He suddenly grabs her hand and looks up at her.) They used to fight because they both worked too hard.

(The blue sky, from the viewpoint of someone lying on his back.)

LOUISE’S VOICE OVER  We ain’t never ate rabbit before in this house, Earl!

(The sky: very still.)

EARL’S VOICE OVER  Well, we going to be eating rabbit today!

(The sky goes out of focus, goes black for a moment, tilts out of sight, and LOUISE comes into focus.)

LOUISE  We only raised rabbits to sell to white folks.

EARL  Did you hear what I just told you?

(A rabbit, EARL’S hands on its neck, being whirled around and thrown to the floor.

LOUISE is horrified, sweating, speechless.)

EARL  Fix it for dinner. I be back soon.

(LOUISE looks at the rabbit at her feet picks it up, puts it on the sink, finds a knife.

EARL leaves the kitchen, and the yard.

LOUISE walks from the darkness of the kitchen into the brightness of the yard.)

LOUISE  Earl!

(EARL turns to face her: in focus, though already quite far away. LOUISE has her back to us.)

LOUISE  Earl—?

(EARL waves his hand, and, after a moment, turns and walks away. We watch him—still from the point of view of LOUISE—vanish from our sight.

MALCOLM is still holding LAURA’S hand.)

MALCOLM  Are you cold?

LAURA  No.

MALCOLM  You were shivering.

LAURA  Every time you touch me, makes my blood run cold.

(They laugh. He kisses her, lightly, playfully, as before. Then, suddenly, they really kiss, pull away, staring at each other with fear and wonder, and kiss again. MALCOLM pulls away.)

MALCOLM  You’re the nicest girl I ever knew.

LAURA  You’re the nicest boy.

MALCOLM  Oh, I’m not nice. I’m not nice at all. Your grandma’s right about me. You should listen to her.

LAURA  I have a mind of my own, Malcolm. I’m not a child.

MALCOLM  Yes, you are. Compared with me, you are. I don’t come from around here. You don’t know anything about me. Maybe everything I ever told you was a lie.

LAURA  I don’t know anything about you? I know you’re smart and distinguished—and—you’re very nice.

MALCOLM  Will you come dance with me at the Roseland—Saturday night? I know your grandma gone have a fit.

LAURA  You name the night. I’ll handle the fit.

MALCOLM  (after a moment) It’s time we was going. (He kisses her on the cheek, very sorrowfully.) Come on.

(We watch them walk away, becoming very small figures, between the sea and the land, the sky.)

(MALCOLM’S garden. Night.

We travel slowly through MALCOLM’S rows.

The sky: dark.

LOUISE, at the stove, and watching the clock.)

EARL’S VOICE OVER  (in the rythmn of the clock) Separate! Separate! Leave this accursed land! Separate!

A BLACK VOICE  Lord, have mercy.

(The town: empty, dark.

Into this silence: the clanging of the streetcar bell.

The badly beaten body of EARL LITTLE lands heavily on the tracks. He tries to move; he cannot.

The clanging bell grows louder.

EARL’S mouth opens in terror.)

(The frosted office door of an insurance company. LOUISE walks through this door.

LOUISE is facing a white man, who sits behind his desk.)

LOUISE  You know as well as me that my husband’s policy was paid up. He worked and suffered and starved to keep up on that policy!

THE MAN  Mrs. Little, we do not deny that. But you must try to understand our problems, too. Our investigators inform us that your husband met his death at his own hand. And, in that case, we cannot pay the policy. And that is the law. I deeply regret it—but my hands are tied.

LOUISE  The law!

THE MAN  But it is the law, Mrs. Little. You may—indeed you do—have all my sympathy. But I am not the law.

LOUISE  You can sit there and fix your mouth to tell me that my husband picked up a hammer and slammed it in the back of his own head and then dragged his body across the streetcar tracks? How a man going to beat in the back of his own skull?

THE MAN  Your husband’s body was found lying across the streetcar tracks. Our verdict is suicide.

LOUISE  Suicide.

(THE MAN rises.)

THE MAN  I’m very sorry, Mrs. Little. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.

LOUISE  You got any children?

THE MAN  I have—three little boys.

LOUISE  And you got life insurance. When one of them cuts your throat to get it, you just remember me.

(Early in the morning, in the well-appointed kitchen of a white woman.)

WHITE WOMAN  Why, I no more thought of you as his wife—excuse me, his widow—of that—I thought you were white—saying nothing is the same thing as lying—that rabble-rousing—I’m sorry, I’m a mother, too. But you’ll have to go.

LOUISE  I hope I live long enough to hear somebody say them words to you. And maybe I will.

(In the very different kitchen of the Little home, LOUISE is facing an earnest, young, white welfare worker, MISS DUNNE.)

MISS DUNNE  Mrs. Little, you remember—sometime ago, when you lost your husband—

LOUISE  When my husband was murdered.

MISS DUNNE  You will remember that we discussed—

LOUISE  You. Not we.

MISS DUNNE —the advisability, perhaps—

LOUISE  Of me sending my children away. And I said then, and I say now, that you’d already robbed these children of their daddy and I wasn’t going to let you rob them of their mother. Now, what you doing here, this morning?

MISS DUNNE  We are only concerned with the welfare of the children—we want to make sure that they are properly cared for—

LOUISE  (laughs) If you could hear yourself—!

MISS DUNNE  Mrs. Little—

LOUISE You want to make sure—make sure—how did you put it, you college-educated, dried-up, cat-faced, white bitch? —what did you say—you want to take care of my children? I’d tear you limb from limb before I’d give my children over to you, or anybody who looks like you. I can take care of my children.

MISS DUNNE  We have reports on all of your children, Mrs. Little, all of them are delinquent—and one of them is a thief—

LOUISE  Is what?

MISS DUNNE  A—thief—Mrs. Little.

LOUISE  Get out of my house.

MISS DUNNE  Mrs. Little—

LOUISE  Out, I say!

MISS DUNNE  You’ll regret this, Mrs. Little.

LOUISE  If you don’t move out this open door, you soon going to be past all regretting.

MISS DUNNE  I think you must be crazy.

LOUISE  I got my kids to feed. I ain’t going to let you drive me crazy.

(In the asylum: a ravaged LOUISE.)

LOUISE  Don’t you let them feed that boy no pig.

(The untidy back of the young, untidy MALCOLM’S head, sitting in a moving car, between two white OFFICIALS.)

1ST OFFICIAL  Now, you just remember, boy, you lucky. This ain’t the reform school. This is just a nice private home. A real nice couple runs it, and you’ll go to school, and all, and nobody’ll bother you just as long as you keep your nose clean—we giving you a chance to make something of yourself, boy.

2ND OFFICIAL  You’re on probation, like they told you in the court. You know what that means? (He looks over to MALCOLM, who does not answer.) Look, kid. Your mother’s just tired. It’s only natural. She’ll be all right. (Silence.) Okay. It’s rough. But keep your nose clean.

(A dining room table, five surly white youths, seated. They come closer and closer, staring up at MALCOLM—at us.)

MRS. SWERLIN’S VOICE OVER  This is Malcolm—Malcolm—Malcolm Little! our new guest. He’s just like all the rest of us and we’re going to treat him just like a brother, now, you hear?

(But the boys, as we can gather from their reaction to this cheerful species of blackmail, are totally unable to do this on command.)

(A furiously grieving, silent MALCOLM, chopping wood.

MALCOLM, washing dishes.

MALCOLM, weaving, dribbling, dancing across the basketball court, rising high in the air, seeming to fly, as he makes the basket, which wins the game.

A sweating, grinning, exhilarated MALCOLM, in the locker room, surrounded by the ecstatic basketball team, of which he is the only black member. They are very proud of him, and very affectionate. Just as this sequence ends:)

VOICE OVER  Where’s Malcolm?

(We are at the school dance, panning through the white boys and girls, dancing or flirting in the darkness outside. MRS. SWERLIN sits on the sidelines.)

PAUL  (a young white student: laughs) He can’t dance.

(Night. The Negro section of Lansing. A black bar, loud music, laughter, men and women.

A very dressed-up MALCOLM, wandering the streets and entering this bar. He walks to the jukebox, drops in a coin, stands there until his record begins to play.

MALCOLM’S face, tentative, eager, smiling, in shadows.)

A WOMAN’S VOICE OVER  Honey, I know you ain’t twenty-two, like you claim. But you sure is big for your age.

(MALCOLM, raking leaves. He does this quietly, stolidly, thoroughly. He puts them in a pile; he sets them aflame. Then he stands very still, looking not at the flames but at the sky.

From within the house, we watch MRS. SWERLIN watching him.)

MRS. SWERLIN  (calls) Malcolm.

(MALCOLM, in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. MRS. SWERLIN is at the oven, baking, checking the progress of whatever is in the oven; then at the sink, etc.; near the end of this scene, she sits down, facing MALCOLM.)

MRS. SWERLIN  Oh, you would have liked my father, Malcolm. He came here from the old country and I guess he must have had clothes on his back because they let him in—but that’s about all he had. But he was a stubborn man, and hard as a flint-stone. Of course, he wasn’t hard with us. We knew how to get around him. I think girl children get on better with their daddy than boy children, don’t you, Malcolm?

MALCOLM  I don’t know, Mrs. Swerlin.

MRS. SWERLIN  But you got on all right with your daddy, didn’t you?

MALCOLM  Oh. Sure. I guess so.

MRS. SWERLIN  You guess so?

MALCOLM  I mean—yes, ma’am. We got on fine.

MRS. SWERLIN  I guess you—people say all kinds of things about your daddy. But I don’t listen. My father taught me better than that. The way my father was, well, if he was your friend, he was your friend. That’s all there was to it. He didn’t listen to what people said. Don’t you think that’s the way to be?

MALCOLM  Yes, ma’am.

MRS. SWERLIN  If there was more people like that, this world would be a better place, I bet you. How you getting along with the other boys?

MALCOLM  Oh, we get along fine.

MRS. SWERLIN  They’re nice boys. Oh, they get out of hand every once in a while, wouldn’t be human if they didn’t—but they right nice lads. I ain’t never been able to have none of my own, you know. It wasn’t the Saviour’s will. So I got me a houseful of other people’s children, because everybody gets in trouble. People forget our Saviour was in trouble. You got any news from your mother?

MALCOLM  No, ma’am.

MRS. SWERLIN  You write to her?

MALCOLM  No, ma’am—I don’t think they let her have no mail.

MRS. SWERLIN  Malcolm—a boy has one mother. I know that. And no one can take her place. And I wouldn’t try. But I feel like a mother to you. And we’re all very proud of you here. Yes, sir. You can bet your life on that. I ain’t seen many boys, white or black, like you. You’ve got a lot on the ball, Malcolm, and I just know you can make something of yourself and you’ll always have firends. You know why?

MALCOLM  No, ma’am. (She lifts his chin. For a moment, they watch each other.) Why?

MRS. SWERLIN  Because you’re a friend. You treat people kind. People like to be around you. Everybody’s noticed that. You must remember—you keep that spirit and you can be anything you want to be.—Tell you what. I know you kind of lonesome here, sometimes. It’s only natural for you to want to see your people. Tell you: Fridays and Saturdays, after your work’s finished, go on and take the bus to Lansing, see your friends. I know you won’t get into no trouble, now, will you, Malcolm?

MALCOLM  No, ma’am.—Thank you, Mrs. Swerlin.

(Night. The Negro section of Lansing. The bar.

MALCOLM and SHORTY, sitting in a booth.

SHORTY is—short; much darker than MALCOLM; and a little older.)

SHORTY  No. I just didn’t think I could take it no more, cousin.

MALCOLM  So what are you going to do now?

SHORTY  Hustle me up another slave, I reckon—this town, man!

MALCOLM  It ain’t so bad—is it?

SHORTY  Oh, shit, I forgot, you been over there with all them ofays so long you wouldn’t even know.

MALCOLM  I ain’t thinking about them ofays.—You know what I’m thinking about.

SHORTY  Homeboy, you are a clown. A natural clown. These broken-down black bitches around here, they glad to give you some pussy, have you working out like a champion, man, hollering about oh, it’s good, it’s good, Daddy, time you ready to drop they just belch and want some more. You clown. You know why? Because you young and you dumb and they really think you white.

MALCOLM  Shorty, you sound like you jealous—or something.

SHORTY  I ain’t jealous.

MALCOLM  Why you jumping salty on me, then?

SHORTY  The bitch puts out for you for free. Where she do it? In the room I pay for. She bring you your eggs in bed. Where she get the eggs? Huh? She say, Baby, have another drink. Where she get the bottle? Then she powder and perfume you and she send you home just before I get home with, maybe, even a little change in your pockets—

MALCOLM  Shorty, I ain’t never had nothing to do with none of your women! What you telling me?

SHORTY  Nothing. But all that shit she give away, it comes off my black ass. I got to stand for somebody to call me nigger, every day, all day, so I can bring home the shit she give away to you for free, because she really thinks you white.

MALCOLM  Well, she might think I’m white—

SHORTY  Oh, you kind of think so, too. I can’t really blame you. They got you kind of turned around, over at that school—and, over here, these black bitches think you cute—(MALCOLM, involuntarily, grins.) Yeah. You wait till you start slaving out here, baby.

MALCOLM  They might make me Class President. I got the best grades, honest, and I’m very popular.

SHORTY  You are?

MALCOLM  Yeah. Everybody says so.

SHORTY  Yeah?

MALCOLM  Well, look, it ain’t just a matter of being black. Nobody can help being black. But—everybody can be somebody—!

SHORTY  Yeah.

MALCOLM  Shorty you think I’m wrong?

SHORTY  I think I’ll move on up to Boston. I ain’t going to be able to get no more jobs in this town.

MALCOLM  What you going to do in Boston?

SHORTY  Be somebody.

(Evening. The study of the SWERLIN home.

MALCOLM enters the SWERLIN study, to face MRS. SWERLIN, and a stranger, JUDGE MERRITT.

MRS. SWERLIN is radiant.)

MRS. SWERLIN  Oh, we’ve got such good news for you, Malcolm—you tell him, Judge. Malcolm, you remember Judge Merritt?

MALCOLM  Yes, ma’am. How do you do, sir?

(MALCOLM smiles, and the JUDGE nods.)

JUDGE MERRITT  Well, son, you know that you’ve been staying with the Swerlins kind of on probation, you might say. After it was judged necessary to send your mother away—because she was unable properly to take care of her children—(MALCOLM is rigid, excessively attentive.)—well you presented something of a problem, too. Looked like you were about to take the wrong path there, for a while. You remember we were thinking of sending you to reform school—you remember, boy?

MALCOLM  Yes, sir. I remember.

MRS. SWERLIN  The Board had a meeting this afternoon, Malcolm—

JUDGE MERRITT  The Board had a meeting and it was decided, in view of the amazing progress you have made with the Swerlins—your fine scholastic record and the phenomenal improvement in your, ah, character—that it will not be necessary to send you to reform school. It is the judgment of the Board that you have reformed yourself.

MRS. SWERLIN  Didn’t I tell you, Malcolm? Didn’t I tell you? Oh, I’m so proud of you—so proud—just like you were my own—!

MALCOLM  Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mrs. Swerlin.

MRS. SWERLIN I didn’t do it, Malcolm. You did it. Oh! your mother would be so proud of you!

JUDGE MERRITT  We’re all proud of you. You keep it up, you hear?

MALCOLM  I surely will, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

(They turn away from him. The moment their backs are to him, MALCOLM, irrepressibly, executes a jubilant dance.

JUDGE MERRITT and MRS. SWERLIN are walking toward the living room.)

JUDGE MERRITT  I was walking through the nigger section of town today. I declare, I don’t know how those people live—sometimes I wonder if they are people—

MRS. SWERLIN  Sometimes I wonder, too—of course, I know that God made everybody—

JUDGE MERRITT —the children are filthy, the shacks just falling down around their heads—they can’t fix the shacks but they got the big, shiny cars out front—

MRS. SWERLIN  I just don’t know how niggers can be so happy and be so poor.

(We watch MALCOLM’S reaction to this, as the living room doors shut off MRS. SWERLIN and JUDGE MERRITT.

MALCOLM walks to a mirror, and stares at himself.

In the side-view mirror:

MALCOLM’S fingers in SOPHIA’S long blond hair.

MALCOLM, cursing and pounding on the cell door, in solitary.)

(Night. School buildings loom in the background. The building in which the dance is taking place is very brightly lighted; we hear the music and the voices.

MALCOLM is standing beneath a tree, with the white student, PAUL. MALCOLM is watching him with curiosity and contempt.)

PAUL —no kidding, she told me that. Well, hell, all the girls around here are crazy about you, Malcolm. You make them hot, man, no kidding. (MALCOLM says nothing. He looks a little frightened.) Now, when I bring her out, man, you just sort of come along with us, okay? and you get in the car with us and I’ll stop somewhere and make out like I have to pee—and I will, too—and I’ll leave you and her in the car—and you can make your own arrangements—ha-ha and no harm done—and she’ll get what she wants. She don’t want it from me, man. (Punches MALCOLM on the shoulder. MALCOLM flinches.) She wants it from you.

MALCOLM  What do you want? You want to watch? Or you want it from me, too?

PAUL  Hey, what’s the matter, man? All I’m doing is letting you know about some fine pussy—just waiting for you—

MALCOLM  How you know it’s fine pussy? You say you ain’t never had it. You just want me to get it ready for you—because you know if she puts out for me, she going to have to put out for you—(MALCOLM laughs.) I got you dead to rights that time, didn’t I, man? (Stops laughing.) You punk.

(Day. MR. OSTROVSKI’S office.

MR. OSTROVSKI is a young teacher, with a fairly intelligent, sensitive face. He is working alone in his office, and he looks up as we—that is, MALCOLM—approach.)

MR. OSTROVSKI  Come in, Malcolm, come in, my boy. I’m always glad to see you. I probably shouldn’t tell you, but you’re one of my favorite students—hell, you know that, anyway. What’s on your mind?

MALCOLM  I overheard some of the other students, sir, asking your advice about their futures—after we graduate from here, sir. And I wanted to get your advice about—about—about me—about my future.

(But, for some reason, watching MR. OSTROVSKI, he begins to be afraid.)

MR. OSTROVSKI  Well, if I can advise the others, I suppose I can advise the Class President. I hope I can, anyway.

MALCOLM  Well, sir, I’ve been looking around me and trying to figure out what I’m best suited to do—and—and—well, I really want to make something of myself, sir, and I—well, everybody seems to feel that I have a logical mind—and they seem to think that I talk well and am kind of presentable—well—the subject which really interests me is—law. You must have noticed how much I like to argue—(MALCOLM tries to laugh, but MR. OSTROVSKI does not laugh.) Well—I think I’d like to try to be a lawyer, sir. And I wanted to ask your advice as to how to go about it—the best schools, and so forth—

(The silence stretches. MALCOLM sits very still. MR. OSTROVSKI rises and paces.)

MR. OSTROVSKI  I think it my duty to tell you something very difficult, Malcolm. I hope you’ll understand me and take it in the spirit in which it’s offered. (MR. OSTROVSKI sits down, facing MALCOLM.) The most important thing about anybody’s life—the key, I think, to any really successful life—is for the person whose life it is to be realistic about it. Hell, when I was little, I wanted to be a fireman. But I’m afraid of fire—you understand me? When I was a young man, I wanted to be a movie star—but my face would break the camera—(Now, OSTROVSKI laughs, but MALCOLM is silent.) What I’m trying to say is that it’s foolish to have ambitions which can never be fulfilled. People who do that just end up with a broken heart. And they become very dangerous, to themselves and to others. Now, Malcolm, do you know of any colored lawyers in this town—do you?

MALCOLM  No.—Sir.

MR. OSTROVSKI  Colored people can’t become lawyers, Malcolm. That’s all there is to it. And we’ve got to be realistic. Believe me, I’m saying this for your good. I don’t want you to be hurt—that’s the important thing—the important thing about a life is to be realistic, Malcolm. Colored people can’t become lawyers. You know that. So, you have to decide to do something a colored person can do. (OSTROVSKI rises and paces.) Why don’t you become a carpenter? You’re very good with your hands—everybody’s noticed that—and the people around here would be happy to give you all kinds of work. (MALCOLM stares at him.) Do you understand me, son? (MALCOLM says nothing.) You’ll thank me for this advice, one day.

MALCOLM  Thank you, sir.—Good-day, sir.

(Day. The Boston Commons.

MALCOLM and SHORTY, walking. It is winter.

They pause before a monument.)

SHORTY  Who is this cat? What did he do?

MALCOLM  He said, One if by land, and two if by sea—

SHORTY  That’s what he said?

MALCOLM  Sure. He said: The British are coming.

SHORTY  That why they put him up there? On a horse?

MALCOLM  He was riding a horse. All over the country-side, man. He was warning the people.

SHORTY  Warning them about what?

MALCOLM  That the British was coming.

SHORTY  Was coming for what?

MALCOLM  Well, the Americans used to belong to England, man. But then they had a revolution—because they wanted to be free. You understand that? Yeah. You understand that. And the English didn’t dig no revolution, so that’s why they was coming. Didn’t you go to school?

SHORTY  Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Where was we?

MALCOLM  Where was who?

SHORTY Us.

MALCOLM  Oh. We was here. We was here, Daddy-o. Believe they got a statue someplace around here of some black motherfucker bared his breast to the English guns, man, and died, for freedom.

SHORTY  His widow get a pension?

MALCOLM  Don’t believe he had no widow. He was a slave. Slaves didn’t have widows.

SHORTY  He was a fool.

MALCOLM  No, Shorty: he was a slave. But he’s here, someplace. We was here. (Laughs.) Man, I bet you that cat was riding through the night, screaming, The niggers is coming! The niggers is coming!

SHORTY  Well, you know, that always wakes up the people.

MALCOLM  Man, we shouldn’t joke about the Fathers of Our Country. It gives me a real bad choked-up feeling—

SHORTY  I know. Like a pain in the ass. (The campus is deserted. They stand before the Harvard Law School Forum.) This is where they turn out all them lawyers—to help keep you and me in jail.

(MALCOLM stares at this building. His face is very bitter. Carved on the facade is a Latin maxim meaning “Equal justice under the law.”

Bells begin ringing. They are dismissal bells, resounding now across the campus, as the students, all of them white, pour out of the building. They scarcely see MALCOLM and SHORTY—they descend on the boys like waves breaking, and pass them with the same indifference—but they leave in their wake a very human resentment and wonder.

MALCOLM watches these students, with hatred in his eyes.

The bells change to: the clanging trolley-car bell.

The side-view mirror: the trolley-car comes closer and closer to the one-eyed man lying on the tracks.

EARL LITTLE’S mouth opens in terror.

MALCOLM’S face.)

MALCOLM  So. What about this job you got fixed up for me?

SHORTY  Grin. (MALCOLM bares his teeth. SHORTY, like an animal trainer, peers into his mouth.) Them teeth is worth more than a college education.

(A Lindy-Hop sound, loud: a white band’s sound.

Night. The men’s room of the Roseland Ball Room.

Attendants: MALCOLM and SHORTY.)

SHORTY  Watch them—

(We watch the dancehall patrons, noisy, white, and well dressed.

MALCOLM is impressed and apprehensive.)

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  And watch me. Just remember: They love a happy darky. Just smile at them, baby, show them all your teeth, and they come in their pants. They so happy to know you love them. (A white CUSTOMER returns from the urinal. SHORTY has a basin of warm water waiting, and a towel dangles from his waist.) Dumbest motherfuckers in the world. (As MALCOLM watches, SHORTY ceremoniously extends the towel, which forces the CUSTOMER to use the water in the basin. The CUSTOMER then reaches for the towel, and, as he dries his hands, SHORTY begins brushing him off. He hums and whistles as he is doing this.) They like music, too. Cheerful music, like you so happy you just can’t keep it in.

(The CUSTOMER fishes for change.

SHORTY gives him a dazzling and yet subtly worried smile.)

SHORTY  I think you better let me hit them shoes a lick.

(The CUSTOMER hesitates.

MALCOLM, emptying one basin and filling another, watches.)

SHORTY  (smiles) It don’t pay to be in too great a hurry.

(SHORTY leads the CUSTOMER to the shoeshine stand and gracefully gives him an arm up.)

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  Now, the only thing to worry about is maybe the motherfucker’s as broke as you.

(SHORTY begins shining the CUSTOMER’S shoes, to a syncopated beat, and whistling.)

SHORTY  I’m going to make ’em shine, Daddy-o!

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  And, man, just remember how they do love rhythm!

(As SHORTY shines the shoes, we concentrate on the shoe rag and the shoe, and this movement becomes more frenetic.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Mister, now you walking in double-barreled mirrors!

CUSTOMER  You on the ball, boy. Where you from?

MALCOLM  I’m from Detroit. People call me Red.

CUSTOMER  Well, you’re one red-haired son of a bitch. (CUSTOMER steps down, fishing for change.) You been working here long?

MALCOLM  Long enough, Daddy-o. All you got to do is name it—(The music ends. The CUSTOMER watches MALCOLM with amusement.)—and Detroit Red will supply it. I mean—(The CUSTOMER is watching him. MALCOLM is watching the CUSTOMER watching.)—should you get a little thirsty—(MALCOLM touches his breast pocket.)—or find that you have run out of an indispensable object—(With a gesture too precise to be lewd, he indicates that he has a rubber stashed in his watch pocket.)—or any other little thing—(Lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, puts it in the ashtray, giving the CUSTOMER a long, level look)—just come to Detroit Red.

CUSTOMER  You all right, boy. Best I’ve seen. (Gives MALCOLM a coin, starts out, turns; in another tone, husky, conspiratorial.) Suppose I wanted to try and change my luck—you know what I mean?

MALCOLM  It’s a great big world, Daddy-o. Ain’t nothing to it.

(The CUSTOMER smiles again, winks, and tosses MALCOLM another coin.)

CUSTOMER  Be seeing you, Red.

(Exit.)

MALCOLM  (dry) I’ll be here.

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  Wait a minute now. Let’s see.

(We are in a men’s store, and SHORTY is considering MALCOLM, who is turning around in his first zoot suit.)

SHORTY  Okay.

(In a shoe store mirror, a rather resounding pair of shoes walk toward us, walk away, turn, stop.)

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  How they feel, Homeboy?

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Well, all reet!

(MALCOLM, staring into a mirror. Very gingerly, he places on his head a wide-brimmed hat—and smiles, pleased as only the very young can be, at his reflection.

His face changes, as he hears, sharply:)

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  Take that off. Goddammit. I forgot the most important thing.

(Day. SHORTY walks into a grocery store and very carefully selects: two eggs and two potatoes.

We follow him from this store into a drugstore. Here he purchases one large jar of Vaseline, one large-tooth comb and one fine-tooth comb and one large bar of soap.

We follow him into a hardware store, where he purchases a rubber hose with a metal spray-head, and a can of Red Devil lye, and one rubber apron and one pair of rubber gloves.

This is all accomplished in silence, in pantomime, and SHORTY is as solemn as an African chief.)

(Day. A barber shop. Five or six blacks, of various ages: one is in the barber’s chair, actually getting a haircut. One man, very young, is reading a newspaper.

The others constitute a kind of hallelujah chorus, or amen corner, to the monologue of the stout, good-natured, middle-aged barber.)

BARBER —and I hit the number. Lord, why did I have to go and do that? You know that woman wasn’t never no more good to me after that? (The MEN laugh.) She thought she was married to Cary Grant. And we wasn’t even married. I always had better sense than that. She wanted me to buy her a yacht. (The MEN laugh again.) I like to slapped that bitch upside the head. I said, Bitch, you don’t hardly never go near no bath tub, now what you want with a yacht? She say, So I can push you off the side, you cheap black motherfucker.—When a black woman call you a black motherfucker, you have been called a black motherfucker.—No. She weren’t no more good to me after that.—And the money didn’t last too long, neither, another bitch got close to me, you know what I mean. I didn’t buy her no yacht, though.—Hey, Shorty!

SHORTY  Where’s Homeboy? Ain’t he got here yet?

BARBER  Red’s in the head, man. He’ll be right out.

(SHORTY solemnly removes his jacket and his hat, and rolls up his sleeves. He places his materials on a table.

The MEN watch him.

The BARBER hands SHORTY a Mason jar. SHORTY peels the potatoes and “thin-slices” them into this jar.)

THE BOY READING THE NEWSPAPER  Going to lay that first conk on your Homeboy, Shorty?

SHORTY  Man, you see what I’m doing.

(Indeed we do. Over the potatoes, he pours a little over half the can of lye, stirring slowly with a wooden spoon.

The MEN have seen all this before, but are fascinated nonetheless.

We see the results of the wedding of the lye and the potatoes.

SHORTY breaks in two eggs, stirring very fast.

We see his sweating, intense face.

SHORTY looks up as the bathroom door slams, and motions to the BARBER.)

SHORTY  Get him ready. (MALCOLM appears, and stands looking apprehensively at SHORTY’S handiwork.) Come here. (MALCOLM obeys.) Touch this jar. (MALCOLM touches the jar, and jumps. SHORTY laughs.) Told you. You make sure and tell me if there’s any stinging when I get through. This stuff can burn a hole in your head.

(MALCOLM looks as though he doesn’t doubt this; he also appears rather to regret that things have progressed so far.

The BARBER places him in the chair and puts the white cloth around him. SHORTY approaches with the congolene, and all the MEN now gather round to witness this species of ritual—which, for the frightened MALCOLM, is much closer to being a kind of execution.

Ceremoniously, SHORTY puts on the rubber apron and the rubber gloves. He first combs up MALCOLM’S bushy hair and then massages a great quantity of Vaseline into his hair; and then he covers MALCOLM’S ears, neck, and forehead with Vaseline.)

SHORTY  Hold tight, now. It’s going to burn like hell.

(SHORTY starts combing in the congolene.

MALCOLM nearly leaps out of the chair, but is held down by the BARBER.

MALCOLM finally manages to catch enough breath to scream.)

MALCOLM  Stop it, stop it, stop it, goddammit, you black motherfucker, stop it!

(MALCOLM begins to weep and finally manages to break out of the chair.

The BARBER and one of the MEN hold him.

An utterly unmoved SHORTY follows MALCOLM with the hose, grabs MALCOLM’S head, lathers it, and begins spraying his head.

SHORTY does this several times as MALCOLM’S sobs and screams subside.

MALCOLM is wet and shaking: and they have made rather a mess of the barber shop.

SHORTY leads the parboiled MALCOLM back to the chair.)

SHORTY  How does it feel? Does it feel like it’s all out?

MALCOLM  Man, don’t ask me how it feels—it feels like I ain’t got no skin on my head, that’s how it feels. How the fuck can I tell if it’s all in or all out?

(SHORTY begins toweling MALCOLM’S hair.

MALCOLM begins shouting and cursing again.

The side-view mirror.)

LOUISE  How I hate them—hate them!—every drop of that white rapist’s blood that’s in my veins!

(MALCOLM screams.)

EARL’S VOICE OVER. Hush.

(SHORTY massages Vaseline into MALCOLM’S hair and combs it. MALCOLM is covered with sweat. He grits his teeth and closes his eyes.)

THE MEN  Yeah—!

(MALCOLM opens his eyes, and is staring into a mirror.

We see a sweating and triumphant SHORTY reflected in the mirror behind him.

MALCOLM’S hair is as wavy as that of any white movie star.

We watch his reaction to this incredible—indeed, very nearly divine—transformation.

Tears are still standing in his eyes.)

MALCOLM Hey—! Hey, thanks, Shorty. Thank you, man.

SHORTY  Now, it was worth it, wasn’t it? and you cursing me like that—

(The MEN laugh.

MALCOLM wonderingly strokes his hair.)

MALCOLM  Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. It was worth it, all right.—I didn’t mean to curse you.

THE BOY  Next time, it won’t hurt so bad, you kind of get used to it.

BARBER  Hell, it’s just like anything else, Red. First time you pop a cherry, you might be a little scared—but pretty soon there ain’t nothing to it, ain’t that so, Red?

(The MEN laugh.

MALCOLM stares into the mirror.)

(The sound of Lionel Hampton’s band.

The Roseland, as before: but, now, the patrons are black.)

SHORTY’S VOICE OVER  On the night the white people dance, we can’t dance. I mean: we can’t dance with them. But they can dance with us.

(A black boy and girl are dancing, dominating the floor, to the great enthusiasm of the spectators.

A very expensively dressed, very attractive blond girl—SOPHIA—moves to the front line of the spectators in order to get a better view of the dancers.

MALCOLM and LAURA are also on the sidelines.)

MALCOLM  Your grandma didn’t have a heart attack? or fall down on her knees and start praying? or call the police?

LAURA  You stop making fun of my grandma. At least she appreciated that I was telling her the truth.

MALCOLM  And how’d you put it to her?

LAURA  I just said that I was coming out with you, to the Roseland, and I thought she’d better hear it from me, tonight, than hear it from her friends tomorrow.

MALCOLM  And then you blew on your trusty six-shooter and saddled Hyo Silver and came riding down to the valley.

LAURA  Shut up.

MALCOLM  I’m mighty glad you did.

LAURA  I am, too. I couldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you.

MALCOLM  Come on, girl. Let’s show them how.

LAURA  Oh, Malcolm. I don’t know if I can dance like that.

MALCOLM  You better get out of them shoes, girl. You got to wear them in church tomorrow.

(LAURA laughs, and goes to a bench and changes into a pair of sneakers.

MALCOLM takes her onto the floor, and because of the competition, they begin at a very high speed.

The audience very quickly becomes aware of them and begins goading them on.

The other dancers move to the side of the floor, marking time, yielding the dance floor to MALCOLM and LAURA: who go into a solo.

We are aware that SOPHIA has singled out MALCOLM.

MALCOLM is only tangentially aware of SOPHIA, but is responding joyously to the response of the audience.

Finally, MALCOLM capers off the dance floor, LAURA hanging limp around his neck, as the audience applauds.)

MALCOLM  Hey, you just about ready for the Cotton Club, ain’t you? How you feel now?

LAURA  Wonderful!—I’ll be right back.

MALCOLM  You are the cutest thing.

(LAURA laughs, and goes.

The music begins again, and SOPHIA approaches MALCOLM, stretching out her arms to indicate that she wants to dance—for openers, anyway.

MALCOLM is very taken aback.

Wordlessly—rather like one hypnotized—he glides into SOPHIA’S arms.

And immediately recognizes, through the eyes of the other men, that he has become the troubling center of attention. He has new status, because of SOPHIA. It gives him a heady feeling, because if this white girl is a whore, she is certainly a high-class one—only her hairdresser knows for sure!

LAURA returns. She can scarcely believe her eyes: is terribly frightened and hurt.)

SOPHIA  You’re one hell of a dancer.

MALCOLM  Thanks. You’re not bad yourself.

SOPHIA  Would you rather be dancing with your girl—the girl you brought?

MALCOLM  It’s all right. She don’t mind.

SOPHIA  She’s a fool if she doesn’t.—What’s your name?

MALCOLM  People call me Red.

SOPHIA  Well, Red, why don’t you take your little girl home—she looks too young—and much too respectable—to be out with you, anyway—and come back here, for me?

MALCOLM  Come back here for you?

SOPHIA  Yes. Come back here—for me.

MALCOLM  And what we fixing to do—when I come back here for you?

SOPHIA  You seem to like music.—And I’ve got a radio in my car.

MALCOLM  What’s your name?

SOPHIA  People call me Sophia.

MALCOLM  (softly, after a moment) Well—all reet then!

(Night. We are on the porch of LAURA’S house.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  I’d better not come in. (LAURA’S face.)

MALCOLM  I mean—it’s late, baby. And I don’t want your grandmother raising cain.

LAURA  It’s good of you to be so worried about my grandmother. (MALCOLM starts to kiss her, stops. LAURA turns away.) I know where you’re going.

MALCOLM  I’m going to bed. I got to work tomorrow. (We see MALCOLM’S head next to SOPHIA’S, on the dance floor: MALCOLM is very excited.) Baby, I’ll call you, okay?

(LAURA walks to her door.)

LAURA  Sure. As soon as you find the time. (LAURA is very distressed, but is fighting it. A window opens upstairs.) It’s just me, grandma. And it’s—early.

MALCOLM  Goodnight, Mrs. Johnson. Goodnight, Laura.

LAURA  Goodnight.

(MALCOLM runs down the porch steps.)

(Night. SOPHIA’S wrap, on the floor of her car, illuminated by the light of the radio, which is playing a tune like “Star Dust.”

MALCOLM and SOPHIA, locked together, seeming to wish to devour each other.

We remain with the radio until the light fades to grey, and this radio becomes the radio on SOPHIA’S night table, next to her bed.

The radio announcer tells us that Pearl Harbor has just been bombed by the Japanese.

In his demi-sleep, MALCOLM turns and clicks the radio off, and moves closer to SOPHIA.

As MALCOLM turns in his sleep, we hear Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home,” and the sound of a speeding train.

We hear the beat of the shoe-shine rag: and we see acres and acres of shoes being polished.

MALCOLM’S face begins to be reflected in these moving shoes.

Over this: miles and miles of speeding, snarling, railroad track.

The train windows: the American landscape kaleidoscoping by.

The train interior: the American people, two-thirds of them in uniform.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Get your good ham and cheese sandwiches! Ham and cheese! Chicken salad! Coffee! Tea! Coca-Cola! (MALCOLM’S face, serving and smiling. MALCOLM is in close-up throughout the following sequence.) And I hope it kills you.

VOICE OVER  Boy! Two ham and cheese!

MALCOLM  Yes, sir. A little mustard, sir?

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Because you look like a real shit-eater to me.

VOICE OVER  Boy! Can I have a Coke?

MALCOLM  Yes, sir. Would you like a glass or a straw, sir?

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Or do you just want to tear it open with your teeth?

VOICE OVER  Boy! This coffee’s cold!

MALCOLM  I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. I’ll fix that right away, ma’am.

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  I’ll piss in it this time.

(From the point of view of the motorman, the train surfaces out of the tunnel at Park Avenue and 99th Street.

The train stops at 125th Street, and MALCOLM, now dressed in street clothes, slowly descends into the streets of Harlem.)

(Late afternoon. Small’s Paradise.

It is a winter afternoon—a winter sun; and Small’s is very quiet, with the quietness emanating from people who know exactly why they are where they are.

The people are much older than MALCOLM, a few women, but mostly men, quietly and expensively dressed, a few at the bar but mostly at the tables.

MALCOLM’S arrival in his zoot suit causes something of a sensation among the people at the bar, who see him first.

WEST INDIAN ARCHIE and a few of his friends are sitting at a table quietly talking and drinking.)

MALCOLM  A bourbon and water, sir.

(The BARTENDER hesitates—MALCOLM does not realize that he is thinking of asking him for his draft card—and then decides.)

BARTENDER  What kind of bourbon would you like, sir?

MALCOLM  What, sir?

BARTENDER  What brand of bourbon?

(The bar is amused.)

MALCOLM  Oh! I’m sure you know more about it than I do, sir.

(The bar silently cracks up.

The BARTENDER can think of no reply to this—dimly wonders, in fact, if MALCOLM isn’t putting him on—and serves him.

MALCOLM sips his drink and looks about him with a wonder so honest that, while it is funny, it is also moving.

Now, he discovers the jukebox and moves toward it: which means that he passes WEST INDIAN ARCHIE’S table: and these seasoned hustlers see him.

WEST INDIAN ARCHIE looks once, rubs his eyes, looks again. The table roars with laughter.

MALCOLM is oblivious. He has dropped in his coin and is digging Dinah Washington.

As the table watches him, their faces subtly change. All of them, in one way or another, have been MALCOLM once.)

ARCHIE  That boy thinks he’s in heaven.

CADILLAC  He sure is flapping them wings—and things.

SAM  Remind me of you, when you come to the city.

CADILLAC  You know damn well where you was, when I come to the city.

ARCHIE  We all been there, Cadillac, ain’t like it was something hard to do. (MALCOLM leaves the jukebox, and, passing the table, narrowly misses stumbling over ARCHIE’S feet.) Them’s forty-dollar Florsheims, boy.

MALCOLM  Sir, I’m very sorry. I’m sorry.

ARCHIE  (after a moment) It’s all right. I got them at a discount.

(The table laughs. MALCOLM goes back to the bar.)

CADILLAC  He ain’t been there, yet.

ARCHIE  No. He ain’t been there. Yet. (Goes to the bar. To the BARTENDER:) Give Country-boy, there, a drink on me.

BARTENDER  Reet.

(ARCHIE returns to the table.)

CADILLAC  Now, what you got in mind, Archie?

ARCHIE  Got a son somewhere, just about his age. Ain’t never seen him, but it figures.

SAM  Archie, if you going to start buying strangers drinks on that basis—

CADILLAC  Leave him alone. He got more daughters than he got sons.

(The BARTENDER serves MALCOLM.)

MALCOLM  But I didn’t order another drink.

BARTENDER  It’s on the gentleman over there.—The one you kicked.

MALCOLM  The one I—?

(The split-second before he understands:)

ARCHIE  (yells) It’s on me, Country-boy! Come on over here!

MALCOLM  Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. (Goes to the table.) How did you know I was from the country?

(Night. ARCHIE and MALCOLM, on the Harlem streets.)

ARCHIE  It seems to me that you don’t feel exactly enthusiastic about being a railroad man.

MALCOLM  Well, sir, I don’t think I can spend the rest of my life serving them people sandwiches. I don’t think I was cut out for that. But I don’t know what I was cut out for, neither.

ARCHIE  Well—a boy like you—he’s kind of cut out for—well, for whatever he can find. Whatever he can make work for him. Because, you know, you got—this—(This is a habit of ARCHIE’S: he touches the back of his hand, to indicate the color of his skin.) And, when you got—this—ain’t nothing made easy for you. I reckon you’ve found that out, though.

MALCOLM  Yeah. Yes, sir. I have.

ARCHIE  Well, then, you got to grow up real quick; don’t, you won’t grow up at all. You know what I mean?

MALCOLM  Yes, sir. But I don’t know how to start!

ARCHIE  Well, maybe I can give you a few pointers. I been out here for a while.

(We see the Harlem streets from ARCHIE’S point of view: and these streets change as he speaks.)

ARCHIE’S VOICE OVER  I wasn’t but a little crumb-snatcher when we come here from the islands. That’s how I can dig what your father was thinking.

(The Harlem of about 1912. The Harlem of that time was almost entirely white. The buildings, which have since become so dilapidated and despised, were, then, proud, private homes.) We come here, looking for

milk and honey—looking to live. But so many of us come—

(A sign, reading “No Colored Need Apply,” fades into a sign, reading “Colored Occupancy.” A sign, reading “For Rent,” fades into a sign reading “For Sale.”)

—that the white folks packed up their milk and honey and run to another heaven—leaving this one to us. Or so it seemed. But heaven is always owned by white folks.

(The Cotton Club of the twenties: black entertainers, white audience.

Clip of Louis Armstrong and his horn.

Fats Waller and his piano.

A poetry reading: a few lines from Langston Hughes’ “Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair.”

Ethel Waters.

Bill Robinson.

The Tree of Hope, in the middle of Seventh Avenue.

A jam session at Minton’s.

Pig-Feet Mary’s.)

We kind of had it to ourselves for a while. We thought we did. But, if you don’t own your heaven—it ain’t heaven long.

(The playbill of the Lafayette Theater, fading into nothingness.

The boarded-up front of this theater.)

The profits from hell is also for white folks. But people got to live.

(Various Harlem citizens:

A weary matron, climbing the stairs, with a heavy shopping bag.

A janitor, setting out the garbage cans.

Adolescents, fighting on the street corner.

A lone whore, walking her beat.

A child, her hair being braided.

Superimposed, slowly, on these faces: an American dollar bill.

Filling the screen: In God We Trust.

Superimposed on this: the serial number of the bill.

The Stock Exchange Board, at the end of the day.

The last three figures on the Board.

A black church, the PREACHER in the pulpit.)

PREACHER  Dearly beloved, we take our text tonight from the Book of Job, Chapter 18, verses 17 and 18: His remembrance shall perish from the Earth—

WOMAN’S VOICE OVER  That’s one-eight-one and seven-one-eight.

(A hand, writing combinations of these numbers on a scrap of paper.

A cash register, ringing up: $3.27.)

VOICE OVER  Three-two-seven.

(A hand, writing this number on a scrap of paper.)

VOICE OVER  Yeah. What time your plane leave for Florida? Three forty-five? Yeah. Hey, what’s the number on that flight—What?—no. Your flight number. Damn, girl, I know your height.—What—103? Well, all root, have fun, bye!—345—103—Let’s see—

WOMAN’S VOICE OVER  Hattie, last night I was dreaming about the oyster boats we used to work on down home—what number do the dream book give for oysters?

A GIRL’S VOICE OVER  Oh, I didn’t hit for much, honey. But I got us a nice ham and some yams and a bottle of gin—because I know how much you love ham.—It taste all right, sugar?

(During all of the foregoing, the screen is gradually filled with hands writing numbers on scraps of paper.)

(Night. MALCOLM and ARCHIE, in the back room of an after-hours joint. This joint is located in a private basement apartment.

The back room is divided from the drinking section by a locked door, which comes in and out of focus during the following scene: we hear, faintly, music and voices.

This room is dominated by a closet full of stolen goods, and ARCHIE is casually outfitting MALCOLM.)

ARCHIE  And I never wrote down a number in my life. I keep it all in my head.—Get out of them pants, ain’t nobody going take you seriously if you walk around looking like that. You see the way I dress, don’t you? Try these, look like your size.—You see, Red, if you ain’t got nothing on you, they can’t take you in.—They look all right. Turn around.

MALCOLM  You mean—you keep all the combinations, everything, in your head, and you always remember who give you what number?—These look all right, sir?

ARCHIE  Ain’t never made a mistake yet.—They feel all right in the waist?

MALCOLM  Yes, sir.—You must be some kind of mathematical genius. You ought to advertise.

ARCHIE  When a black man find a way of keeping alive, he better not do no advertising.—I believe that’s all right. Try the jacket.

MALCOLM  It feels just right, sir. How do it look?

ARCHIE  Okay. Let’s look over the shirts.—Another thing. Don’t never fuck with the poor. The poor is dangerous. They ain’t got nothing; they can’t lose nothing. Don’t care how low things might get for you, personally—these look like your size, try one—when a number hits, you pay it. You pay every number that hits. That way, the poor will protect you.—That’s good. Now, where he hiding his ties and socks? Might be over here, I reckon.—Because, baby, you going to find out—you ain’t got no other protection out here.—I was right. Here they are.—That man is on every black ass, baby, colder than white on rice.

MALCOLM  You sure got it figured.

ARCHIE  The first time I was ever called a nigger, I made haste to get it figured.—He out of hats. We’ll get you that tomorrow.—I think you almost ready now. How you feel?

MALCOLM  Ready, sir.

ARCHIE  Believe I’ll buy you a drink. Come on.

(And ARCHIE unlocks the door.)

(Night. MALCOLM, walking up Seventh Avenue, in the driving rain. He is walking very quickly, and turns into a corner bar. This is a very ordinary bar, quite unlike Small’s, fairly crowded, both sexes, the young and the not so young.)

BARTENDER  Hey, Red. How you doing, baby?

MALCOLM  Feel like I just drowned. How you doing?

BARTENDER  Oh, I got a good holt on it. What you want?

MALCOLM  Double bourbon, straight, no chaser.

BARTENDER  My man!

(MALCOLM continues to the back tables, where ADA, an ageing, good-natured whore, is sitting.)

ADA  I just knew my prayers was going to be answered. Because, I got a hole in my shoe, you know? and I just did not feel like tempting them nasty elements. Ain’t them elements nasty?—And here you come, with your big handsome self, just like you knew how tired and thirsty your Ada was.—Sit down, sugar, and buy me a little sustenance.

MALCOLM  You better take your hands out of my waves, you fool.

ADA  Why, honey, I’ll be glad to put the waves back in, whenever you so desire.

MALCOLM  Whenever I show desire—is that what you said?

ADA  Now, Red, you better talk respectful to me. I’m mighty sensitive. And I carry a ice pick and a razor.

MALCOLM  I see why you make out so well.

(The WAITRESS arrives to deliver MALCOLM’S bourbon.)

ADA  Honey, bring one of those for me.

WAITRESS  You ain’t been drinking bourbon.

ADA  The gentleman will pay.

WAITRESS  The gentleman ain’t said a word to me.

ADA  Impertinent peasant, I shall have you flogged.

MALCOLM  With her ice pick.—Go on, give Mama what she wants.

WAITRESS  Sugar, I don’t know how you do it.

ADA  And I ain’t about to tell you, neither. Then I’d be slinging and you’d be drinking.

WAITRESS  Oh, there’s a little more to me than meets the eye.

ADA  Honey, I reckon that must be true. (The WAITRESS, however, is now out of earshot.) So, what’s going down, sugar? How’s Archie?

MALCOLM  Everything’s pretty cool. Archie’s okay.

ADA  I ain’t seen him for several days.

MALCOLM  Well, you know Archie, baby.

ADA  Yeah, I reckon I do know the fool. Though I don’t know why I call him a fool. I’m the fool.

MALCOLM  I don’t know. I think things just happen to people. I don’t think they even know themselves why what happens—happens.

ADA  I know. Nigger turned me around and I ain’t been the same since. (The WAITRESS arrives, with her bourbon.) Thank you, sugar. (To MALCOLM) Bless you, Red. I got to go out in them elements in a minute. I just wanted to put it off.

A GIRL’S VOICE OVER  Hello, sugar. I’m sorry I’m late. But this rain—! nothing’s moving!

(MALCOLM’S face changes, and he looks toward this voice.)

ADA  You know her?

MALCOLM  How long she been coming around here?

ADA  Not long. A few weeks. Why?

MALCOLM  What’s she doing?

ADA  She don’t know yet. But she going to find out.

DANIEL’S VOICE OVER —we got off the job early. So, I run home to change and I come straight here—

GIRL’S VOICE OVER  They didn’t say nothing about this morning?

DANIEL’S VOICE OVER  What about this morning?

(Close-up.)

LAURA  Why, you were late—

DANIEL  Oh! Man needs me to keep his merchandise rolling, honey, he can’t afford to give me but so much static. What you drinking?

MALCOLM  What does he do?

ADA  I don’t believe he main-lining. Yet.

(MALCOLM finishes his bourbon, puts money on the table.)

MALCOLM  Well. I got to go out in them elements, too. Dig you later.

ADA  See you, Red. Remember what I said about me taking care of them waves.

MALCOLM  You ain’t going to have me explaining to Archie how come you started running a barber shop!

(ADA laughs.

MALCOLM walks slowly to the front of the bar. He stands there a moment.

LAURA is talking, very animatedly, to a young, good-looking, light-skinned boy—DANIEL. This is not quite the LAURA we saw earlier. She is still very, very young, but more sure of herself, freer—one may say, much happier.)

LAURA  And then he made me type the letter over. And I had to smile at that no-good cracker real sweet, because, you know, they just found out that colored girls can type—that some colored girls can type—and I thought, oh, my Lord, don’t this man know I got my baby uptown, wondering where his supper is, and I’m down here, making Metropolitan Life rich. Ain’t a black man walking they ain’t robbed blind. And I thought, Ain’t that some shit!

DANIEL  I’m all right. I grabbed a sandwich.

LAURA  Oh, I’m going to take you home and feed you. You always been too skinny and you ain’t really over that cold you caught last week.

MALCOLM  Excuse me, miss. Excuse me, sir. But ain’t you Laura Blake, from Boston?

(LAURA turns. She is holding a cigarette when she turns, and this cigarette somehow emphasizes her youth and the beautiful, total vulnerability of her face.)

LAURA  Malcolm. Malcolm Little. My God. I heard you were in New York, but I never thought I’d see you here. It’s so big.

MALCOLM  It ain’t so big. It just likes to act big. How you been?

LAURA  I’ve been just fine. Though I don’t think that question could have cost you many sleepless nights. How are you? You a lawyer yet?

MALCOLM  No. Not yet.

LAURA  Daniel, I want you to meet an old friend of mine, from Boston. We used to go dancing together. At the Roseland. Remember?—Daniel, this is Malcolm, Malcolm, this is Daniel.

(The two dislike each other at once.)

DANIEL  How do you do?

MALCOLM  Just fine. How are you?

DANIEL  I can’t complain. Laura—

MALCOLM  You got time to have a quick drink with me? for old times’ sake.

LAURA  Old times—Daniel—?

DANIEL  If your friend’s buying—

MALCOLM  I’m buying—

DANIEL —but, then, we have to run. I don’t want to be late again tomorrow.

MALCOLM  I can understand that. What’s your racket, friend?

DANIEL  Oh, I’m in charge of the shipping department of a clothing manufacturer downtown—

LAURA  It’s a very responsible job.

MALCOLM  Well, we’ll make it quick, then. Laura, what you learned to drink since I last saw you? (To DANIEL) When I knew her, she didn’t drink nothing stronger than root beer.

DANIEL  She still don’t drink. She gets two rum cokes in her, and she don’t really know where she is.

LAURA  Well. I know where you are. And that’s what matters.

(The BARTENDER sets them up.)

BARTENDER  Double this time, Red, or single?

MALCOLM  Better make it short, my friends is got to run.

LAURA  I got to fix supper. Daniel’s hungry.

MALCOLM  How’s your grandma?

LAURA  I haven’t seen her, Malcolm, oh, for ages. I finally just had to get away from there, you know, it was driving me crazy. Just after you left—

(DANIEL has swallowed his drink.)

DANIEL  Laura—

LAURA  Yes, sugar?

DANIEL  You finish your drink with your friend. I’m going to go on to the house.

LAURA  But I’ll come with you.

DANIEL  You ain’t got to hurry. I’ll just lie down. I don’t feel too well.

MALCOLM  Don’t let me keep you, Laura.

DANIEL  It’s nothing. I’ll be there.—Nice meeting you, man. Thanks.

MALCOLM  Nice meeting you.

LAURA  I’ll be right home, Daniel.

DANIEL  Don’t worry.—Bye!

(He goes.)

LAURA  He’s restless, my man. Like you used to be.

MALCOLM  I’m still restless. I don’t know if I’ve really changed much. But you’ve changed.

LAURA  How have I changed?

MALCOLM  I guess—you’ve kind of grown up—

LAURA  I had to try. I was such a stupid thing when you knew me. I’ve thought about it since—no wonder you ran!

MALCOLM  I didn’t run from you. Not from you.

LAURA  Oh, it doesn’t matter now. We were both kids then. And I guess we both had to find out things by ourselves. You were right about the hill. I could never have stayed there. But I didn’t know I’d have to walk off of it—alone.

MALCOLM  Was it—very hard?

LAURA  It was a rather long walk.—I’d better go. Daniel worries when I’m late.

MALCOLM  You know him long?

LAURA  A few months. I met him—in the subway! Isn’t that funny? I mean—for a girl like me?

MALCOLM  No. I don’t think it’s funny. Especially for a girl like you.

LAURA  What do you mean: especially?

MALCOLM  You always had a lot of life to you, somehow. You always wanted to live.

LAURA  If I don’t get home and get supper on that table, my life may be in danger.—Do you come here often?

MALCOLM  Sometimes.—Do you?

LAURA  Sometimes.

MALCOLM  I’ve got to go, too. I’ll walk out with you.

(MALCOLM pays. LAURA adjusts her raincape.)

BARTENDER  Thanks, Red. Goodnight.

MALCOLM  Goodnight.

LAURA  Goodnight! (MALCOLM and LAURA walk into the rainy streets.) Well—I go this way. It was nice seeing you, Malcolm.

MALCOLM  It was nice seeing you. Goodnight.

LAURA  Goodnight.

(She starts away.)

MALCOLM  Take care of yourself!

LAURA  I will, don’t worry! Goodnight!

(She runs up the avenue, like a little girl.

As she disappears, one of the syrupy, soupy ballads of the era begins to be heard—very much white folks’ music.)

(In a darkened room, a radio is playing, very softly.

We slowly become aware of other sounds, the sounds of lovemaking, in fact.

SOPHIA’S blond hair gleams on a pillow.

MALCOLM covers her.

We are aware, intermittently, throughout the following, of relentlessly cheerful American love songs, interspersed with commercials.

MALCOLM sits up and lights a cigarette. His face is angry and baffled.

SOPHIA kisses his arm, and he looks down at her.)

MALCOLM  You do this often?

SOPHIA  What do you mean?

MALCOLM  I mean, if you come to New York and you can’t find me, do you just go out and pick up some other black stud? I mean, do you go around picking up black studs all the time?

SOPHIA  Don’t spoil it, Red.—Anyway, you aren’t very black.

MALCOLM  Don’t tell me how black I am—I just asked a question. And I always distrust a person who’s afraid to answer a question.

SOPHIA  Red, what’s the matter? You called me—you asked me to come.—I’d do anything for you. You know that.

MALCOLM  We going to see about that. But what’s your husband going to say?

SOPHIA  I’m not married.

MALCOLM  But you about to be married. That’s what you told me, little while ago. Reckon you better—a fine, rich Boston chick like you. What he going to say? that half-assed white boy you jerking off in the back of a car because he don’t want to defile your body before the wedding.

SOPHIA  Shut up. It’s not like that at all.

MALCOLM  Is it like it is with me?—One thing. Don’t ever tell me to shut up. You liable to find yourself picking up teeth. You understand that? (SOPHIA is silent.) You understand that? (He slaps her.) Now, do you understand?

SOPHIA  (begins to weep) Take your hands off me. I’m going to get out of here.

MALCOLM  You don’t want to go nowhere. You ain’t really got no place to go. And if you go, you going to come right back. We both know that.

(LAURA and MALCOLM, running along the sand, falling down, laughing, at the water’s edge.)

Come on. Tell me about you and your white boy. You love him?

SOPHIA  Of course I love him.

MALCOLM  As much as you love me?

SOPHIA  It’s different. It’s not the same. A person can love different people— differently.

MALCOLM  It’s different, all right. You going to be married to him and putting out for me. Ain’t that right? Answer me, bitch.

SOPHIA  Red. Don’t do this to me. Please.

MALCOLM  What am I doing? All I’m doing is asking you to tell me the truth. Ain’t nobody never asked you to tell the truth before?

SOPHIA  Look. We’ve had wonderful times with each other. And we still can. Nothing will change. We both know the score. I can’t marry you. You don’t want to marry me.

MALCOLM That’s the truest thing you ever said.

SOPHIA  It’s not our fault the world is so fucked up. Maybe you think I’m an awful person—but, at least, I’ve never lied to you. If I have to live a certain kind of life in Boston, well, maybe that helps to protect us—look: the world sees a girl like me in a certain way. And if you give the world what it wants to see, then it stops looking. It doesn’t look any further. And then—you’re—free.

MALCOLM  And so, instead of getting your little sister to cover for you, you can come to New York to go shopping—

SOPHIA  I can come to New York to go shopping, to see friends, to go to the theater, to open charity balls, to do anything I want!

MALCOLM  As a married woman.

SOPHIA  Yes.

MALCOLM  You something. What about him?

SOPHIA  He’ll never know. I’ll keep him perfectly happy.

MALCOLM  And me, too?

SOPHIA  Yes.—If the world wasn’t so fucked up—I wouldn’t need him, for anything.

(MALCOLM grabs her roughly and kisses her—a long, brutal kiss. Then he pulls back and looks at her—proud, boyish, baffled, and evil.)

MALCOLM  So you still my woman?

SOPHIA  Yes. Always.

MALCOLM  (laughs) Believe I’ll put you on the block. (SOPHIA begins kissing his neck, his chest. His hands tighten in her hair.) Go on. Wish your white boy could see you now.

(Day. ARCHIE and MALCOLM, in MALCOLM’S room. They are sitting at a table; there is an envelope between them.)

ARCHIE  Well. These greetings going to carry you away from here for a while.

MALCOLM  They ain’t going to carry me away. Not unless I join the Japanese army.

ARCHIE  Don’t say that in public. They got spies, you know.

MALCOLM  Spies? for the Japanese?

ARCHIE  No. For us.

MALCOLM  For us—? (Thinking:) They got spies watching—and listening—to us?

(Day. MALCOLM before the Army psychiatrist: a studious young white man.)

MALCOLM  How did you hear that I wanted to join the Japanese Army?—No. Wait a minute.

(Puts his fingers to his lips, tiptoes to the door, and listens.

He then opens every closet door, ending with the door to the toilet—and disappears into the toilet for a moment, leaving the door open.

Then he returns to the PSYCHIATRIST, who is definitely intrigued.)

Listen. That Japanese talk didn’t MEAN NOTHING. You from the North, man, ain’t you?—like me. I’m sure you from the North, because I can smell a redneck. I mean, I can smell them! Now, you know what we going to do when I get in this man’s uniform and go South? We going to start organizing, you dig me? Organizing, man, organize every nigger in this man’s army and blow them crackers’ heads off, like we should of done a long time ago, and you know it as well as me. That’s what I’m talking about! Just let me get a gun in my hands, man, and the North don’t have to worry about the South no more!

(ARCHIE is laughing so hard that he is crying. He, and SOPHIA, and MALCOLM are seated at a table at Small’s.)

PSYCHIATRIST  Well, thank you for being so candid, Mr. Little. I’ll make out my report, and—uh—you should be hearing from us soon.

MALCOLM  All reet, Daddy-o! I knew you’d dig it.—You try to hurry it up a little bit for me, okay?

(MALCOLM shows ARCHIE his draft classification.)

ARCHIE  Four-F. That’s a good one, boy.

SOPHIA  You don’t think they’ll bother you again?

MALCOLM  You think they want to start the Civil War again?

SOPHIA  When Johnny comes marching home again—

ARCHIE and MALCOLM  Hurrah! Hurrah!

SOPHIA  We’ll give him a hearty welcome then—

ARCHIE and MALCOLM  Hurrah! Hurrah!

(This theme continues, musically, as we enter the dark streets of Harlem.

We pause at every mailbox.

Some of the Harlem citizens we have seen before, reading their mail: in a profound, silent, bitter melancholy.)

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Shit! You think I was about to fight in this man’s army? This man who’s killing me in his uniform, in my country, where I was born? We don’t get killed facing the enemy—we get killed facing him!

(At night: a group of young black soldiers, on 125th Street, some with girls, some finding girls, loud, good-natured, laughing—desperately, and briefly, free.

The rather nervous police—some on horseback.

We follow a black soldier and his girl. They are both a little drunk. They are both laughing.

The girl and the soldier disappear into a hotel.

The street down which we have followed them is quite dark and nearly deserted. We hear music from the neighboring bars, and voices, laughing and calling.

We remain in front of the hotel.

We hear a pistol shot.

The music continues, but the voices cease.)

WOMAN’S VOICE OVER  Now, why’d you have to shoot him?

(Her tone is exasperated: her question reasonable.

People at the windows.

People on the fire escapes.

Children at the windows.

People on the stoops.

Children in the streets.

The voices of women, calling their children.

Swiftly: the faces of many children.

Children being hurried indoors, being hurried up the steps, and thrown into bed; windows being slammed, locked from the inside.

Doors being locked from the inside.

A policeman’s horse, rearing.

Three golden balls outside a pawnbroker’s shop.

A tenement window, with rags, or paper, stuffed in the jagged, broken glass.

A plate-glass window.

The tenement window.

The objects in the plate-glass window.

The tenement window.

The plate-glass window.

The plate-glass window is smashed.

Then, another. Then, another.

The hooves of rearing horses.

Garbage cans, rocks, bricks, indescribable debris, fill the screen.

The heads of horses, moving in.

The faces of people, grabbing, through the plate-glass windows, whatever can be carried.

The Chinese restaurant, with the sign, “Me Colored Too.”

Clubs, rising and falling.

The people, surging, shouting.

Badges. Holsters. Sirens. Lights.

A sound truck, moving, voices appealing to the people to go home.

A black boy, running with more than he can carry.

He drops an overcoat.

An old woman, in a window, sees this.

She tells the young boy in the window next to her that the coat is just his size.

The boy runs down the stairs and into the streets, and swoops up the coat.

We follow him—or the coat—back up the narrow stairs.

Clubs against flesh; and

The boy trying on the coat before the old lady; and

A pistol being fired into the air; and

Someone going under beneath a club, or a hoof; and

The proud boy, turning in the overcoat.

Dawn. Silence. Devastation.)

(MALCOLM, in his room, rolling reefers. When he has about fifty sticks, he puts them in a Red Cross bandage box. He puts this box on a table.

From a drawer, he takes out a .25 automatic. He puts this under his belt, in the center of his back.

He sniffs some cocaine. Then he puts on his jacket, or his coat, placing the box of reefers under his armpit.

With his arm close to his side, he goes down into the street, to sell his wares.

We move along these streets at MALCOLM’S pace, and see them from MALCOLM’S point of view—perhaps slightly distorted, because MALCOLM is high.

Children, playing in the streets.

“Do-rag” brothers, quarreling and gambling on the stoops.

A young junkie, nodding.

Men and women, in front of a barber shop, or a bar.

An occasional, “Hey, Red!”

MALCOLM realizes that he is being shadowed.

He quickens his pace, and turns a corner, quickly.

He lets the Red Cross box fall into the gutter, and keeps walking.

He turns into a bar. This bar is not empty; not crowded.)

MALCOLM  Bourbon and water, please.

(The BARTENDER has the bottle poised over MALCOLM’S glass, when two white PLAINCLOTHES MEN enter the bar.

The BARTENDER looks at the PLAINCLOTHES MEN, looks at MALCOLM. As they approach MALCOLM, he deliberately serves MALCOLM’S drink, puts the bottle on the bar, and waits.

One of the PLAINCLOTHES MEN flashes his badge.)

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  You want to give it up, or you want us to take it? Because we know you got it.

MALCOLM  (loud) You know I got what?

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  Come on. Why don’t you make it easy on yourself?

MALCOLM  (loud) What the fuck you talking about, man?

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  We’ll ask the questions. That’s what we get paid for.

MALCOLM  Ain’t you chumps got nothing better to do than follow black people around?—Here! I’m clean. I ain’t got nothing on me. Nothing! (To the bar, and especially to the BARTENDER.) You all watch close, and make sure he don’t plant nothing on me. You all know these dirty, white, low-life motherfuckers—they’d sell their own children for a stick of chewing gum!

(The bar, and especially the BARTENDER, although silently, agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. They watch the PLAINCLOTHES MEN with a silent, concentrated hatred, which is not without its effect on the hands of the one who is searching MALCOLM.)

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  Turn out your pockets. (Some of the people at the bar move a little closer to MALCOLM.) Stand back, can’t you? We’re not doing this for our health, you know.

AN OLDER WOMAN  I’m glad you know that much, you low-down, dirty dogs. And I wish I was your doctor. I’d take care of your health.

(The BARTENDER, impassively, unobtrusively, moves in the direction of this lady, and serves her a drink.)

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  Okay. You got us this time.

MALCOLM  I got you this time? What the fuck you talking about? You the ones been chasing me—and I always been clean, and you know it!

PLAINCLOTHES MAN  You may not be so lucky next time.

MALCOLM You may not be so lucky next time.

OLDER WOMAN  Let the church say A men!

(The PLAINCLOTHES MEN exit.)

BARTENDER  Let us ask the questions. That’s what we get paid for. Shit. I know what them cocksuckers get paid for, and they ain’t as good at it as their mamas is. (Holding the bottle: to MALCOLM.) Drink up, man. This here’s on me.

(Night. MALCOLM, carefully, enters his room: which has been searched.

MALCOLM realizes this at once.

Without seeming to reflect, he sniffs some cocaine.

Without seeming to reflect, he packs, and leaves.

In a swift montage, we see this happening two or three times.

Close-up: ARCHIE.)

ARCHIE  Red, I warned you, just as soon as that riot hit, this town would close up tighter than a virgin’s asshole. And, boy, you ain’t got that much Vaseline—! ain’t nobody got it!

(Close-up.)

MALCOLM  Yeah. I dig what you mean. It’s tight, all right.

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Don’t be telling me how much Vaseline I got, old man. I know I got more than you.

(Close-up.)

ARCHIE  Lie low, let it blow over. All they doing is pruning the tree. That way, more apples going to fall into fewer hands.

MALCOLM  I dig.

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  You damn right, they going to fall into fewer hands.

(Close-up.)

ARCHIE  Well. Guess I be getting on in. Ada be cooking supper, wondering where I am.

(Close-up.)

MALCOLM  Yeah. I got a little run to make my own self. Say hello to old Ada for me.

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  Old Ada is right. Two broken-down hustlers. Shit.

(Blows his nose, wipes his eyes; sniffs some more cocaine.)

(Night. Sirens screaming.

We are someplace like New Jersey, or upper New York State.

A patrol car, speeding.

MALCOLM, running, through back streets and alleys.

He slows to a walk, calculating the approach to an intersection.

We are in a white neighborhood.

MALCOLM steps off the curb, into the street, to halt a speeding patrol car.

He walks toward the car. We see him from the point of view of the patrolmen, as they rush toward him and grind the car to a halt.)

PATROLMAN  Yeah, boy, what is it?

MALCOLM  Excuse me, policemens, I know you busy but I’m new in town and I wonder if you could kindly direct me to—

PATROLMAN  Get the fuck out of here, you stupid nigger!

(And the car roars off.

MALCOLM watches the car disappear, with a remarkable, a dreadful expression on his face: pain, contempt, and pride. Then he laughs. Touches his pockets. Walks.)

(Night. A white carnation: in MALCOLM’S lapel.

He is standing outside the Astor Hotel, at 45th and Broadway, watching the traffic.

A car, driven by a pale, obviously wealthy white man, about sixty, slows at the curb, and MALCOLM gets in.

The WHITE MAN moves over, and MALCOLM takes the wheel.

They drive in silence. The white man is obviously under great pressure. When they arrive in Harlem, this pressure—some strange delight—seems to become almost unbearable.

MALCOLM gives the white man a wry, amused glance.

They stop in front of a Harlem building. The WHITE MAN furtively slips into the building.

MALCOLM follows him. They climb the stairs.

They knock on a door which opens to reveal a very beautiful, hard, black girl—very black. She is obviously naked under her robe.

She winks at MALCOLM, then fixes the WHITE MAN with a hard, cruel look.

The WHITE MAN, beginning to tremble, places some money in MALCOLM’S hands.)

WHITE MAN  I’ll give you double—if you stay, and watch.

THE GIRL  Come on in. (She closes the door behind them. Close-up: MALCOLM’S unbelieving and horrified face.)

GIRL’S VOICE OVER  Now, what you come back here for, you low-down, dirty, white scum-bag? Didn’t I tell you what I’d do to you if I ever caught you round here again? I guess you didn’t believe me, did you? Well, do you believe this? (The sound of a blow.) Take off them clothes, you faggot! Take them off! I ain’t going to tell you twice—(The sound of several blows in succession; a sound of whimpering.) Oh. You going to get it tonight.

WHITE MAN’S VOICE OVER  Oh. Please. Please. I know I deserve it. Oh. Please. Please. (The WHITE MAN’S shirt, tie, trousers, shoes, are scattered violently about the room.) Is he watching? Oh, watch. Watch. Please.

GIRL’S VOICE OVER  He’s watching. (The whip whistles through the air.) We going give him a show.

WHITE MAN’S VOICE OVER  Oh, watch, watch. Please. Harder. Harder. Blacker.

(MALCOLM, at the wheel of another car, conducting a party of half a dozen people, white, male and female, up to Harlem.

The door is answered by a handsome, elegantly dressed, brown-skinned matron.

As the party files in, we move ahead of them and discover, sitting on a great bed, a naked black man and a naked white woman.

We watch the white faces watching them.

The brown-skinned matron’s cruelly contemptuous face.

She looks at MALCOLM and they each, nearly imperceptibly, shrug.)

(Night. MALCOLM, tossing and dreaming.

The figures in his dream are superimposed on his tormented, wet face. The elegant brown-skinned matron seems to have become his mother. She raises the whip, smiling. She brings the whip down on the shoulders of a naked black man. But this black man has his father’s face. MALCOLM hears snatches of his father’s song. Then the whip is in a white girl’s hands, and it is SOPHIA who rakes the whip across MALCOLM’S face. MALCOLM screams, and grabs the whip. He wraps his fingers in SOPHIA’S blond hair and raises the butt of the whip to strike her. Her face turns into LAURA’S face.

MALCOLM wakes up.

He reaches for the cocaine on the night table, sniffs, turns back into sleep.

Morning. MALCOLM, mechanically, sniffs cocaine, gets out of bed, begins to get dressed.)

(Night. A Billie Holiday type singer, in a 52nd Street joint, singing the blues.

A high, exuberant MALCOLM, digging this: with SOPHIA and ARCHIE.

The song ends. They applaud. MALCOLM leans over and kisses SOPHIA lightly.)

SOPHIA  (to ARCHIE) He ought to hit the number every day.

ARCHIE  For three hundred bucks? Shit, I’d soon be out of business.

MALCOLM  Daddy-o, you got to take the rough with the smooth, the bitter with the sweet, you told me that yourself, Papa! Now, you just sit up and let Brother Malcolm pour you another little taste of this here—(Reaches for the bottle on the table, pours. The music begins again. Lowering his voice.)—because I remember everything you ever told me, baby. And I’m mighty grateful to you.

ARCHIE  (to SOPHIE: dry) Maybe you right.

(And they listen to the music.)

(Morning. MALCOLM and SOPHIA, in bed, sleeping.

There is a knocking at the door.

MALCOLM, automatically — half asleep — slides what’s left of his cocaine, which is on a round, two-sided shaving mirror, under the bed.)

MALCOLM  Who is it?

ARCHIE’S VOICE  It’s me, Red. Archie.

(MALCOLM looks at the clock. It’s early—looks at SOPHIA, who has come awake; and gets out of bed.)

MALCOLM  I’m coming. (He stumbles to the door and opens it. ARCHIE stands there, with a gun leveled at MALCOLM.) Man—!

ARCHIE  I keep my figures in my head, Red. But, every once in a while, I write some numbers down when I get home, just to double-check myself. And, Red, you lied. About that number. That weren’t no hit.

(MALCOLM, in his comatose state, is having great trouble digesting all of this.)

MALCOLM  Come on in the house, man. Put that thing away.

ARCHIE  I ain’t coming in this house. Your chick in there with you, ain’t she? I don’t want no witnesses.

MALCOLM  Archie, she was there when you paid me, when I told you the number, and you paid me!

ARCHIE  Yeah. I know she’ll swear to it.

MALCOLM  Archie—I swear to God, man!

(We realize that MALCOLM’S voice is beginning to wake up other people.)

ARCHIE  (lightly touches him with the gun) You got until noon tomorrow to give me back the three hundred dollars you stole. And I’m giving you a break. Because I know what you thinking. You think I’m old and I ain’t worth shit and I ain’t got it no more. You think you got it. Well, you ain’t got it yet, baby. You still got to get it from me. (Puts away his gun, walks away.) Till noon tomorrow, baby!

MALCOLM  Where, sir?

ARCHIE  Where the fuck you think! In the middle of Times Square! I’ll be wearing dark glasses and holding a cup!

(This increases the storm of neighborly protest.

MALCOLM slowly closes the door.)

SOPHIA  Red—

MALCOLM  Hold it, honey. Just hold it a minute.

(He sits down on the bed.)

SOPHIA  I was there when you played the number. I was there when he paid you—Archie’s never made a mistake like this before!

MALCOLM  That may be true. But, right now, I swear I don’t remember what number I played.

SOPHIA  You combinated 598. I remember.

MALCOLM  I’m sure you right. But—that don’t make no difference, neither. (Smiles.) I swear, this must be one of the few times in history that a white woman’s word don’t mean shit.

SOPHIA  Well. Then, let’s just pay him his three hundred dollars.

(MALCOLM turns to her, exasperated; then, he smiles.)

MALCOLM  Honey, I know you mean well. But I can’t do that—you don’t see that, do you?

SOPHIA  No. I don’t.

MALCOLM  I didn’t think you would, somehow—

SOPHIA  I don’t care about the money, and you can always pay me back!

MALCOLM  But I can’t pay Archie back, little girl. You think he come here, with that gun, to talk about money?

SOPHIA  That’s all I heard him talk about.

MALCOLM  But it ain’t all I heard him talk about. Shit, if Archie thought I needed money, he’d hustle up three hundred, six thousand dollars—! I can’t pay him because I swear I didn’t cheat him, so if I pay him, I’m a pussy. You know the life expectancy for pussy out here? And if Archie don’t make me pay him, you can just sweep him away and forget it—he’d be worse than a pussy, because he’s getting old now and young cats like me is on his ass because he been out here too long. Ain’t no retirement age out here. You don’t get no pension. No social security benefits, baby—sad, ain’t it?

SOPHIA  Red. What are you going to do?

MALCOLM  Well, the first thing I’m going to do is get your ass up off that bed and into the first thing smoking, back to Boston.

SOPHIA  Why?

MALCOLM  Because you’re going to be in the way here, that’s why. Now, don’t give me no shit, get up and get dressed and get out of here.

SOPHIA  Red—

MALCOLM  I don’t want you to get hurt, baby. Now, move your ass.

(Day. SOPHIA, dressed, and at the door. She gives him nearly all the money in her purse.)

SOPHIA  Here. I just need taxi fare when I get to Boston.

MALCOLM  Okay. See you.

SOPHIA  You want me to send Shorty down?

MALCOLM  I don’t want you to do nothing but get out of here! Go on, now—I’ll call you.

SOPHIA  Okay, Red.

(She kisses him, lightly, goes.

When the door closes behind SOPHIA, MALCOLM carefully locks it, goes to the window, looks out into the streets.

We see SOPHIA, with her traveling bag, slowly leave the building and slowly cross the street. A cab comes along, she hails it, gets in, and is carried away.

Then, the streets seem empty and ominous.

MALCOLM recovers his cocaine, gets himself high. He finishes dressing, puts his gun under his belt—in front, against his ribs, this time—and goes out into the streets.

He enters the bar in which we watched the encounter with the TWO PLAINCLOTHES MEN.

The BARTENDER pours him a drink the moment he sees him.)

BARTENDER  If you ever been cool, be cool today.

MALCOLM  Dad?

BARTENDER  Every chump, and his mama—plus the heat.

MALCOLM  Who’s selling tickets?

BARTENDER  I got the hot dog concession, myself.

MALCOLM  Some shit—!

(Turns to go.)

BARTENDER  If you need me—

MALCOLM  I’m cool. (He steps into the street. The moment he does, a young BOY steps up to him, whispers something in his ear, steps back, laughing. MALCOLM stares at the BOY, speechless.) Say that again, son?

BOY  I said, I hear you take it—

(MALCOLM strikes the BOY with a kind of accumulation of rage, strikes him before he thinks.

The BOY has been ready for this, and wades in.

MALCOLM is a very able street-fighter, but the BOY is, too; and the BOY is younger, and MALCOLM is high.

People gather to watch, some would like to separate them.

The battle does not last long. MALCOLM goes down.

The BOY laughs, walks slowly away.

The BARTENDER comes out, and leads MALCOLM into the bar.)

BARTENDER  If you got anything, give it to me—quick!

(MALCOLM gives him his gun, slumps down on the barstool.

The BARTENDER stashes the gun behind the bar.

He has scarcely done this when a white COP enters, his hand on his gun butt.)

COP  Red. Stand up. Take that hand out of your pocket. Real carefully.

(MALCOLM does this. The COP leads him out into the street, to his partner, next to the patrol car; which is doubleparked, with its radio going.

People gather to watch, as MALCOLM is frisked; and this is even more humiliating for him than the battle with the BOY.)

COP  We had a reliable report, Red, that you would be sure to be carrying a gun today.

MALCOLM  I had one. But I threw it in the river.

(They watch each other. On the COP’S face is a certain, wry pity.)

COP  Well, try not to join it. (Gets into his car. Looks out.) I think it’s about time you left town, Red.

(The patrol car drives away.

MALCOLM stands watching it, then becomes aware of the people watching him; he reenters the bar.

He takes his gun back from the BARTENDER, and sits down.)

BARTENDER  What are you going to do?

MALCOLM  I don’t know.

(He puts his head in his hands.)

OSTROVSKI’S VOICE OVER  (loud) —something a colored person can do—(MALCOLM looks around the bar, slowly: we see the people from his point of view, and as he sees them: aimless, lost, without hope.) Something a colored person can do!

LAURA’S VOICE OVER  Why—you—you could be great! You could be a wonderful man, Malcolm!

LAURA’S VOICE OVER  You a lawyer yet?

MALCOLM’S VOICE OVER  No. Not yet.

OSTROVSKI’S VOICE OVER  Something a colored person can do!

(Night. MALCOLM appears not to have moved.

He signals for a drink.

MALCOLM’S back is now to the camera.

The BARTENDER serves the drink, looks straight ahead, over MALCOLM’S shoulder, and stiffens.

MALCOLM slowly turns: to face ARCHIE, and ARCHIE’S gun.

ARCHIE is very high.)

ARCHIE  I told you I meant business, Red.

(The bar is frozen, watching them.

MALCOLM says nothing. He does not dare take his eyes off ARCHIE.)

ARCHIE  I know what you thinking. But nobody makes a chump out of West Indian Archie—nobody! I been out here too long. I taught you everything you know. How come you to think that you could fuck with me, boy? Was it because I trusted you?

MALCOLM  Archie—

ARCHIE  I know what you thinking. You thinking, I’m a old man now, and you sitting there, just waiting to get the jump on me. But it ain’t going to happen. I’ll tell you why it ain’t going to happen. It ain’t going to happen, because the moment you move, you dead. I don’t care. I done already been to Sing Sing. I done already served some time, so I don’t care. But, if you plug me, which, like I say, it ain’t too fucking likely, you going serve some time. And then—you be just like me.

(We see that MALCOLM knows that this is true.

The BARTENDER comes from behind the bar.)

BARTENDER  Archie, give the kid a break. Red was like a son to you. You don’t want to hurt him. I know you don’t want to hurt him.—Won’t nobody think it’s because you’re scared.—Archie?

A WOMAN  He right, Archie. We can’t start killing our own children.

A MAN  Let the white folks do that, Archie.

BARTENDER  Come in the back and sit down. Come on.

(They, slowly, lead ARCHIE away.

MALCOLM sits perfectly still. There is a great space around him. No one comes near him.

Finally, he drops a bill on the bar, and rises, and walks out into the street. He stands outside the bar for a long time, waiting.

Then, he turns and walks slowly away.

We see SHORTY, driving slowly through Harlem.

We see the streets from SHORTY’S point of view. It is that hour when the bars are just beginning to empty.

From quite far away, we see MALCOLM, walking.

SHORTY begins honking his horn, speeds up.

MALCOLM’S weary, high face.

The honking of the horn slowly begins to penetrate his consciousness.

SHORTY speeds up, and honks more insistently.

MALCOLM’S eyes grow wide with the fear of death.

He draws his gun, and turns.)

SHORTY  (shouts) Homeboy!

(He stops the car, and jumps out.

MALCOLM falls into his arms.)

(Morning. Boston. MALCOLM, asleep. SOPHIA watching him. Day. MALCOLM, walking, alone, through Boston—the route which we have previously traversed with SHORTY.

Day. SHORTY’S apartment.

SHORTY, SOPHIA, a young mulatto of Italian extraction, RUDY, and MALCOLM.

MALCOLM is seated on the bed. The group is gathered around him.

A meeting is just ending.)

MALCOLM  Okay. The first heist, tomorrow night, up at Rudy’s faggot’s house. That’ll be real short and sweet. Sophia’s already cased us a couple of other joints, and she’s going to be visiting more. Okay. We all know what we got to do. But there’s one more thing. (He looks around at all their faces.) We all responsible for each other now, is that right? (They nod.) But I’m your chief, so I’m responsible for all of you. Right? (They nod again.) Let me show you something.

(He takes out his revolver, and drops one bullet into it.

They watch him.

He looks up, smiles, puts the revolver to his head, and pulls the trigger.

SOPHIA screams.

SHORTY reaches out, but MALCOLM points the revolver at him. SHORTY moves back.)

SHORTY  What are you doing, man!

(MALCOLM again puts the revolver to his head, and pulls the trigger.

SOPHIA begins to cry.)

SHORTY  Please, man!

(MALCOLM puts the revolver to his head, and pulls the trigger once more. Then he looks up into their desperate faces.)

MALCOLM  Now. Remember: I did that to let you know I’m not afraid to die. I know all of you have better sense than to mess with a man who’s not afraid to die.—Now, get out of here, all of you, and let me get myself straight.

(Shaken and speechless, they slowly leave.

When they have left, we see that MALCOLM had palmed the bullet: the revolver had been empty.

MALCOLM loads the revolver, and laughs.)

SOPHIA’S VOICE OVER  There’s nothing in the basement, so forget that—(SOPHIA’S hand, drawing a map of a house. The others are watching intently.)—the safe is in the library, just behind the bookshelf—in fact, just behind Charles Dickens—the easiest way to get at it—

(We see a swift montage of SOPHIA, sipping tea at some very elegant house, RUDY, catering at some very posh party, and, over this, simultaneously, SOPHIA’S hand, or RUDY’S hand, drawing maps of houses.

The entire gang, at a nightclub, dressed to kill: having a high old time, seen through the paper on which the hand inexorably draws maps of houses.

MALCOLM, smoking reefers; sniffing cocaine; stoned out of his head.

Night. Rain. RUDY, sitting in the get-away car, outside a Boston mansion.

A finger-beam searchlight, inside the house.

SHORTY and MALCOLM, operating with a silent efficiency.

They get the loot into the car. The back seat looks like a pawnshop.

MALCOLM gets in last, he, SHORTY, and RUDY, in the front seat, and they drive off.

From RUDY’S point of view, we see a police car turn the corner, driving toward them.)

MALCOLM  Be cool. (They continue driving. The police car passes them. MALCOLM, watching the rear-view mirror. The rear-view mirror: in which we see the police car stop and make a U-turn, driving back toward them.) Stop the car.

RUDY  Are you crazy?

MALCOLM  Stop the car. (MALCOLM takes a piece of paper out of his pocket, and gets out of the car. He hails the police car—which has just begun to flash its lights—and stops it.) Excuse me, policemens, I know you busy. But we just got here, sir, and I wonder if you could direct me to this address. (Hands the piece of paper to the POLICEMEN, looking very worried.)

POLICEMAN  Yeah. Go straight ahead. Take your first left till you get to the second stoplight. You turn right—and you’ll be close to home.

MALCOLM  (takes the paper back) Thank you, sir. (He returns to the get-away car.) Okay. Let’s go. (The police car makes a U-turn, and drives away.)

SHORTY  What did you do, man?

MALCOLM  I gave them my address. And then I asked them if they could tell me how to get there.—And they told me. And I thanked them.

(He laughs. SHORTY begins to laugh.

In a moment, they are all rocking with laughter.

A wristwatch, on MALCOLM’S arm, filling the screen with ticking.

MALCOLM, in SHORTY’S apartment, stoned out of his head, looks at the watch, turns over on his side again.

The watch: which stops ticking.

The watch: being handed back to MALCOLM, over the counter of a repair shop.

The watch: on MALCOLM’S arm as he walks, ticking.

We walk behind MALCOLM as though we were following him and do not want to be seen.

We travel upstairs to the apartment.

MALCOLM lays the watch on the dresser.

He takes off his shirt.

He looks into the mirror.

He sniffs a little cocaine.

He brushes his hair, preparing to conk it.

He massages the congolene into his hair.

We look both ways, up and down the wintry, deserted street.

We approach the house, very slowly.

We come slowly up the stairs.

MALCOLM’S hand, turning the faucet.

The pipes make a choked, protesting sound, but there is no water.

We turn a landing and come up the stairs, toward MALCOLM’S door.

The dry faucet. MALCOLM turns the other faucet: which is also dry.

He tries again: both faucets.

MALCOLM’S sweating face, as the congolene begins to burn.

He rushes to the toilet bowl and pulls the chain and puts his head in the bowl.

The water splashes over his head.

Loud knocking at the door.

MALCOLM pulls the chain again. He has not heard the knocking: which has been drowned out for him by the roar of the water.

The knocking: louder.)

VOICE OVER  Police! Open up! Open up in there!

(MALCOLM, gasping. His hands reach for a towel.

Now, MALCOLM hears the knocking, and freezes.

The knocking is louder and louder and louder.

Close-up: MALCOLM, dripping, walking to the door.

The knocking of a judge’s gavel.

Close-up: SOPHIA.)

JUDGE’S VOICE OVER —to the Framingham Reformatory for Women for a period of not less than one and not more than five years—

(Close-up: SHORTY.)

JUDGE’S VOICE OVER  Count one, eight to ten years—count two, eight to ten years—(SHORTY begins to tremble. Close-up: MALCOLM.)—count three, eight to ten years—(We hear SHORTY begin to moan.)—the sentences to run concurrently—

(We hear SHORTY scream.

But we remain on MALCOLM’S proud, bitter, unutterably ruined and unutterably juvenile face: staring at the JUDGE, with murder in his eyes.)