The Street (28 page)

‘What would I be afraid of? I been fighting all my life. The Germans ain't got no way of making a man die twice in succession. No way of bringing a man alive and making him die two or three times. Naw, I'm not scared to fight.'

‘Suppose there wasn't a separate army. Suppose it was all one army. Would you feel differently?'

‘Hell, no. Look, Junto'—he remembered how he had leaned toward him across the table talking swiftly and with an energy and passion that sent the words flooding out of his throat. ‘For me to go leaping and running to that draft board a lot of things would have to be different. Them white guys in the army are fighting for something. I ain't got anything to fight for. If I wasn't working for you, I'd be changing sheets on Pullman berths. And learning fresh all over again every day that I didn't belong anywhere. Not even here in this country where I was born. And saying “yes sir,” “no sir,” until my throat was raw with it. Until I felt like I was dirt. I've got a hate for white folks here'—he indicated his chest—‘so bad and so deep that I wouldn't lift a finger to help 'em stop Germans or nobody else.'

‘What makes you think life would be better if the Germans ran this country?'

‘I don't think it would. I ain't never said I thought so.'

‘Then I don't see—'

‘Of course you don't,' he interrupted. ‘You never will because you ain't never known what it's like to live somewhere where you ain't wanted and every white son-of-a-bitch that sees you goes out of his way to let you know you ain't wanted. Christ, there ain't even so much as a cheap stinking diner in this town that I don't think twice before I walk into it to buy a cup of lousy coffee, because any white bastard in there will let me know one way or another that niggers belong in Harlem. Don't talk to me about Germans. They're only doing the same thing in Europe that's been done in this country since the time it started.'

‘But—'

‘Lissen'—he stopped Jim to with a wave of his hand. ‘One of the boys in the band come back in uniform the other night. You know what he's doing?'

Junto shook his head.

‘He's playing loading and unloading ship in some god-damn port company. That boy can make a fiddle talk. Make it say uncle. Make it laugh. Make it cry. So they figured they'd ruin his hands loading ships. He tried to play when he come by the other night.' He had picked the postcard notice up, flicked the edge of it with his thumbnail. ‘Jesus! He broke down and cried like a baby.' It was a long time before he said anything after that.

Then finally he had said slowly: ‘I've done all the crawling a man can do in one lifetime. I don't figure
to do no more. Ever. Not for nobody. I don't figure to go to Europe on my belly with a broom and a shovel in each hand.' He shoved the postcard across the table. ‘What you going to do about this thing?'

Junto had sent him to a doctor who performed a slight, delicate, dangerous operation on his ear.

‘You'll be all right in a month or so,' said the doctor. ‘In the meantime mail this letter to your draft board.' The letter stated that Boots Smith was ill and unable to report for a physical examination. And, of course, when he was finally examined, he was rejected.

Yeah, he thought. That's what it is. He tried to decide just what would happen to him and to Junto and the doctor. And couldn't. He opened the car door, stepped out on the sidewalk. Well, at least he knew what it was that Junto wanted.

When he pushed the Junto's doors open, his face gave no indication of the fact that he was worried. He glanced at the long bar where men and women were standing packed three deep, observing that the hum of their conversation, the sound of their laughter, almost but not quite drowned out the music of the juke-box.

It was getting near closing time. The white-coated bartenders were hastily pouring drinks and making change. Waiters darted about balancing heavy trays filled with the last drinks that would be served before the wide doors closed for the night.

He paused in the doorway for a moment, admiring the way the excited movement around the bar and the movement of the people at the tables and in the booths
was reflected and multiplied in the sparkling mirrors. Then he waved at the bartenders, sought and found Junto sitting at a table near the back, and sat down beside him without saying anything.

‘Want a drink?' Junto asked.

‘Sure.'

Junto beckoned a passing waiter. ‘Bourbon for him. Soda for me.'

The waiter deposited the glasses on the table and moved off to fill the orders from a near-by table of boisterous, clamoring customers who called out to him to hurry before the bar closed.

Junto picked up his glass, sipped the soda slowly. He rolled it around in his mouth before he swallowed it as though it were a taste sensation he was anxious to retain as long as possible. Boots watched him in silence, waiting to learn how he was going to introduce the business about the army.

‘That girl,' Junto said. He didn't look at Boots as he talked; his eyes stayed on the noisy crowd at the bar. ‘That girl—Lutie Johnson—'

‘Yeah?' Boots leaned toward him across the table.

‘You're to keep your hands off her. I've got other plans for her.'

So it wasn't the army. It was Lutie Johnson. Boots started sliding the glass of bourbon back and forth on the table, wondering if he had managed to conceal his amazement. Then, as the full meaning of Junto's words dawned on him, he frowned. He had had all kinds of girls: tall, short, wide-fannied, big-breasted, flat-breasted, straight-haired, kinky-haired, dark, light—all kinds.

But this one—this Lutie Johnson—was the first
one he'd seen in a long time that he really wanted. He had even thought that if he couldn't get her any other way, he'd marry her. He watched Junto roll the soda around on his tongue and was surprised to discover that the thought of Lutie, with her long legs, straight back, smooth brown skin, and smiling eyes, sleeping with Old Man Junto wasn't a pleasant one.

And it wasn't because Junto was white. He didn't feel the same toward him as he did toward most white men. There was never anything in Junto's manner, no intonation in his voice, no expression that crept into his eyes, and never had been during the whole time he had known him, nothing that he had ever said or done that indicated he was aware that Boots was a black man.

He had watched him warily, unbelieving, suspicious. Junto was always the same, and he treated the white men who worked for him exactly the same way he treated the black ones. No, it wasn't because Junto was white that he didn't relish the thought of him sleeping with Lutie Johnson.

It was simply that he didn't like the idea of anyone possessing her, except of course himself. Was he in love with her? He examined his feeling about her with care. No. He just wanted her. He was intrigued by her. There was a challenge in the way she walked with her head up, in the deft way she had avoided his attempts to make love to her. It was more a matter of itching to lay his hands on her than anything else.

‘Suppose I want to lay her myself?' he said.

Junto looked directly at him for the first time. ‘I
made you. If I were you, I wouldn't overlook the fact that whoever makes a man can also break him.'

Boots made no reply. He studied the bubbles that were forming on the side of Junto's glass.

‘Well?' Junto said.

‘I ain't made up my mind yet. I'm thinking.'

He fingered the long scar on his cheek. Junto could break him all right. It would be easy. There weren't many places a colored band could play and Junto could fix it so he couldn't find a spot from here to the coast. He had other bands sewed up, and all he had to do was refuse to send an outfit to places stupid enough to hire Boots' band. Junto could put a squeeze on a place so easy it wasn't funny. And he thought, Pullman porter to Junto's right-hand man. A long jump. A long hard way to get where he was now.

Yeah, he thought, Pullmans. The train roaring into the night. Coaches rocking and swaying. A bell that rang and rang and rang, and refused to stop ringing. A bell that stabbed into your sleep at midnight, at one, at two, at three, at four in the morning. Because slack-faced white women wanted another blanket, because gross white men with skins the red of boiled lobster couldn't sleep because of the snoring of someone across the aisle.

Porter! Porter this and Porter that. Boy. George. Nameless. He got a handful of silver at the end of each run, and a mountain of silver couldn't pay a man to stay nameless like that. No Name, black my shoes. No Name, hold my coat. No Name, brush me off. No Name, take my bags. No Name. No Name.

Niggers steal. Lock your bag. Niggers lie.
Where's my pocketbook? Call the conductor. That porter—Niggers rape. Cover yourself up. Didn't you see that nigger looking at you? God damn it! Where's that porter? Por-ter! Por-ter!

Balance Lutie Johnson. Weigh Lutie Johnson. Long legs and warm mouth. Soft skin and pointed breasts. Straight slim back and small waist. Mouth that curves over white, white teeth. Not enough. She didn't weigh enough when she was balanced against a life of saying ‘yes sir' to every white bastard who had the price of a Pullman ticket. Lutie Johnson at the end of a Pullman run. Not enough. One hundred Lutie Johnsons didn't weigh enough.

He tried to regret the fact that she didn't weigh enough, even tried to work up a feeling of contempt for himself. You'd sell your old grandmother if you had one, he told himself. Yes. I'd sell anything I've got without stopping to think about it twice, because I don't intend to learn how to crawl again. Not for anybody.

Because before the Pullmans there was Harlem during the depression. And he was an out-of-work piano-player shivering on street corners in a thin overcoat. The hunger hole in his stomach had gaped as wide as the entrance to the subways. Cold nights he used to stand in doorways out of the wind, and sooner or later a white cop would come up and snarl, ‘Move on, you!'

He had known the shuddering, shocking pain of a nightstick landing on the soles of his feet when he slept on park benches. ‘Get the hell outta here, yah bum!'

Yeah. He was a piano-player out of work, living
on hunger and hate and getting occasional jobs in stinking, smoky, lousy joints where they thought he was coked up all the time. And he was. But it was hunger and hate that was the matter with him, not coke.

He would get a meal for playing in the joint and the hard-faced white man who owned it would toss a couple of dollars at him when he left, saying, ‘Here, you!' He wanted to throw it back, but he had to live, and so he took it, but he couldn't always keep the hate out of his eyes.

He had played in dives and honkey-tonks and whorehouses, at rent parties and reefer parties. The smell of cigarette smoke and rotgut liquor and greasy food stayed in his nose.

He got so he hated the sight of the drunks and dopesters who frequented the places where he played. They never heard the music that came from the piano, for they were past caring about anything or listening to anything. But he had to cat, so he went on playing.

More frequently than he cared to remember some drunken white couple would sway toward the piano, mumbling, ‘Get the nigger to sing,' or, ‘Get the nigger to dance.' And he would despise himself for not lunging at them, but the fact that the paltry pay he would get at the end of the night's work was his only means of assuaging his constant hunger held him rigid on the piano bench.

White cops raided the joints at regular intervals, smashing up furniture, breaking windows with vicious efficiency. When they found white women lolling about inside, they would start swinging their nightsticks with carefree abandon.

He learned to watch the doors with a wary eye, and the instant he entered a place he located a handy exit before he settled down to play.

When he got the job on the Pullman, he vowed that never again, so help him God, would he touch a piano. And in place of the stinking, rotten joints there were miles of ‘Here boy,' ‘You boy,' ‘Go boy,' ‘Run boy,' ‘Stop boy,' ‘Come boy.' Train rocking and roaring through the night. No longer hunger. Just hate. ‘Come boy,' ‘Go boy.' ‘Yes, sir.' ‘No, sir.' ‘Of course, sir.'

Naw, Lutie Johnson didn't weigh that much. Even if she did, he had no way of knowing that he wouldn't come home some night to find a room full of arrested motion. Even now he never saw the wind moving a curtain back and forth in front of a window without remembering that curious, sick sensation he had when he walked into his own apartment and found the one room alive with motion that had stopped just the moment before he entered it.

Everything in the room still except for the sheer, thin curtains blowing in the breeze. Everything frozen, motionless; even Jubilee, stiff still in the big chair, her house coat slipping around her body. Only the curtains in motion, but the rest of the room full of the ghost of motion, and he couldn't move his eyes from the curtains.

It was a warm night in the spring—a soft, warm night that lay along the train like a woman's arms as it roared toward New York. It was a bland, enticing kind of night, and he kept thinking about Jubilee waiting for him at the end of the run. He couldn't wait to get to her. Going uptown on the
subway, he thought the train kept slowing down; sitting motionless on the track, waiting at stations, doing every damn thing it could to keep him from getting to her in a hurry.

The street had that same soft, clinging warmth. It seemed to be everywhere around him. He tore up the stairs and put his key in the door. It stuck in the lock and he cursed it for delaying him. The instant he got the door open, he knew there was something wrong. The room was full of hurried, not quite quickly enough arrested movement. He stood in the doorway looking at the room, seeking whatever it was that was wrong.

Jubilee was sitting in the big upholstered chair. She had a funny kind of smile on her face. He could have sworn that she had got into the chair when she heard his key click in the lock.