Blind Man With a Pistol (2 page)

     
At the time of their arrival the children were having their lunch, which consisted of the stewed pigsfeet and chitterlings which Bubber, the cretin, had been cooking in the washing pot. It had been divided equally and poured into three rows of troughs in the middle room on the first floor. The naked children were lined up, side by side, on hands and knees, swilling it like pigs.

     
The detectives counted fifty children, all under the age of ten, and all seemingly healthy. They looked fat enough, with their naked bellies poking out, but several of their burred heads were spotted with tetter, and most of the boys had elongated penises for children so young.

     
The nuns were gathered about a large bare table in the front room, all busily counting their cheap wooden rosaries, and chanting verses in musical voices which produced a singularly enchanting harmony, but with such indistinct pronunciation that no one could make out the words.

     
The cretin lay flat on his back on the splintery kitchen floor, his head wrapped in a dirty white bandage stained with mercurochrome, sleeping soundly to the accompaniment of snores that sounded like loud desperate shouts coming from under water. Numerous flies and gnats of all descriptions were feeding on the flow of spittle that drooled from the corners of his harelipped mouth, in preference, seemingly, to the remains of stew in the pot.

     
In a small room across the hall from where the nuns were sitting, which Reverend Sam called his study, he was being questioned sharply by all twelve cops. Reverend Sam answered their questions politely, looking unperturbed. Yes, he was an ordained minister. Ordained by who? Ordained by God, who else. Yes, the nuns were all his wives. How did he account for that, nuns had made sacred vows to lives of chastity? Yes, there were white nuns and black nuns. What difference did that make? The church provided shelter and food for the white nuns, his black nuns had to hustle for themselves. But religious vows forbid nuns to marry or to participate in any form of carnality. Yes, yes, rightfully speaking, his nuns were virgins. But how could that be when they were his wives and had given birth to, er, fifty children by him? Yes, but being as they were police officers in a sinful world they might not understand; every morning when his wives arose they were virgin nuns, it was only at night, in the dark, that they performed the functions for which God had made their bodies. You mean they were virgins in the morning, nuns during the day, and wives at night? Yes, if you wish to state it in such manner, but you must not overlook the fact that every living person has two beings, the physical and the spiritual, and neither has ascendancy over the other; they could, at best, and with rigid discipline, be carefully separated -- which was what he had succeeded doing with his wives. All right, all right, but why didn't his children wear clothes? Why, it was more comfortable without them, and clothes cost money. And eat at tables, like human beings, with knives and forks? Knives and forks cost money, and troughs were more expedient; surely, as white gentlemen and officers of the law, they should understand just what he meant.

     
The twelve cops reddened to a man. The sergeant, doing most of the questioning, took another tack. What did you want another wife for? Reverend Sam looked up in amazement from beneath his old drooping lids. What a curious question, sir. Shall I answer it? Again the sergeant reddened. Listen, uncle, we're not playing. Neither am I, I assure you, sir. Well, then, what happened to the last one? What last one, sir? The one who died. She died, sir. How, Goddammit? Dead, sir. For what reason? The Lord willed it, sir. Now, listen here, uncle, you're just making it hard on yourself; what was her disease, er, ailment, er, the cause of her death? Childbirth. How old did you say you were? About a hundred, as far as I can determine. All right, you're a hundred; now what did you do with her? We buried her. Where? In the ground. Now listen here, uncle, there are laws about burials; did you have a permit? There are laws for white folks and laws for black folks, sir. All right, all right, but these laws come from God. Which God? There's a white God and there's a black God.

     
By then, the sergeant had lost his patience. The police continued their investigation without Reverend Sam's assistance. In due course they learned that the household was supported by the wives walking the streets of Harlem, dressed as nuns, begging alms. They also discovered three suspicious-looking mounds in the dirt cellar, which, upon being opened, revealed the remains of three female bodies.

2

     
It was 2 a.m. in Harlem and it was hot. Even if you couldn't feel it, you could tell it by the movement of the people. Everybody was limbered up, glands lubricated, brains ticking over like a Singer sewing-machine. Everybody was ahead of the play. There wasn't but one square in sight. He was a white man.

     
He stood well back in the recessed doorway of the United Tobacco store at the northwest corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, watching the sissies frolic about the lunch counter in the Theresa building on the opposite corner. The glass doors had been folded back and the counter was open to the sidewalk.

     
The white man was excited by the sissies. They were colored and mostly young. They all had straightened hair, conked like silk, waving like the sea; long false eyelashes fringing eyes ringed in mascara; and big cushiony lips painted tan. Their eyes looked naked, brazen, debased, unashamed; they had the greedy look of a sick gourmet. They wore tight-bottomed pastel pants and short-sleeved sport shirts revealing naked brown arms. Some sat to the counter on the high stools, others leaned on their shoulders. Their voices trilled, their bodies moved, their eyes rolled, they twisted their hips suggestively. Their white teeth flashed in brown sweaty faces, their naked eyes steamed in black cups of mascara. They touched one another lightly with their fingertips, compulsively, exclaiming in breathless falsetto, "Girl. . . ." Their motions were wanton, indecent, suggestive of an orgy taking place in their minds. The hot Harlem night had brought down their love.

     
The white man watched them enviously. His body twitched as though he were standing in a hill of ants. His muscles jerked in the strangest places, one side of his face twitched, he had cramps in the right foot, his pants cut his crotch, he bit his tongue, one eye popped out from its socket. One could tell his blood was stirring, but one couldn't tell which way. He couldn't control himself. He stepped out from his hiding place.

     
At first no one noticed him. He was an ordinary-looking light-haired white man dressed in light gray trousers and a white sport shirt. One could find white men on that corner on any hot night. There was a bright street lamp on each of the four corners of the intersection and cops were always in calling distance. White men were as safe at that intersection as in Times Square. Furthermore they were more welcome.

     
But the white man couldn't help acting guilty and frightened. He slithered across the street like a moth to the flame. He walked in a one-sided crablike motion, as though submitting only the edge of his body to his inflamed passion. He was watching the frolicsome sissies with such intentness a fast-moving taxi coming east almost ran him down. There was a sudden shriek of brakes, and the loud angry shout of the black driver, "Mother-raper! Ain't you never seen sissies?"

     
He leapt for the curb, his face burning. All the naked mascaraed eyes about the lunch counter turned on him.

     
"Ooooo!" a falsetto voice cried delightedly. "A lollipop!"

     
He drew back to the edge of the sidewalk, face flaming as though he were about to run or cry.

     
"Don't run, mother," someone said.

     
White teeth gleamed between thick tan lips. The white man lowered his eyes and followed the edge of the sidewalk around the corner from 125th Street down Seventh Avenue.

     
"Look, she's blushing," another voice said, setting off a giggle.

     
The white man looked straight ahead as though ignoring them but when he came to the end of the counter and would have continued past, a heavyset serious man who had been sitting between two empty seats at the end got up to leave, and taking advantage of the distraction the white man slipped into the seat he had vacated.

     
"Coffee," he ordered in a loud constricted voice. He wanted it to be known that coffee was all he wanted.

     
The waiter gave him a knowing look. "I know what you want."

     
The white man forced himself to meet the waiter's naked eyes. "Coffee is all."

     
The waiter's lips twisted in a derisive grin. The white man noticed they were painted too. He stole a look at the other beauties at the counter. Their huge tan glistening lips looked extraordinarily seductive.

     
To get his attention the waiter had to speak again."Chops!" he whispered in a hoarse suggestive voice.

     
The white man started like a horse shying. "I don't want anything to eat."

     
"I know."

     
"Coffee."

     
"Chops."

     
"Black."

     
"Black chops. All you white mothers are just alike."

     
The white man decided to play ignorant. He acted as though he didn't know what the waiter was talking about. "Are you discriminating against me?"

     
"Lord, no. Black chops -- coffee, I mean -- coming right up."

     
A sissie moved into the seat beside the white man, and put his hand on his leg. "Come with me, mother."

     
The white man pushed the hand away and looked at him haughtily. "Do I know you?"

     
The sissie sneered. "Hard to get, eh?"

     
The waiter looked around from the coffee urn. "Don't bother my customers," he said.

     
The sissie reacted as though they had a secret understanding. "Oh, like that?"

     
"Jesus Christ, what's going on?" the white man blurted.

     
The waiter served him his black coffee. "As if you didn't know," he whispered.

     
"What's this fad?"

     
"Ain't they beautiful?"

     
"What?"

     
"All them hot tan chops."

     
The white man's face flamed again. He lifted his cup of coffee. His hand shook so it slopped over on the counter.

     
"Don't be nervous," the waiter said. "You got it made. Put down your money and take your choice."

     
Another man slipped on to the end stool next to the white man. He was a thin black man with a long smooth face. He wore black pants, a black long-sleeved shirt with black buttons and a bright red fez. There was a wide black band around the fez with the large white-lettered words, BLACK POWER. He might have been a Black Muslim but for the fact Black Muslims avoided the vicinity of perverts and were hardly ever seen at that lunch counter. And the bookstore diagonally across Seventh Avenue where Black Muslims sometimes assembled and held mass meetings had been closed since early the previous evening, and the Black Muslim temple was nine blocks south on 116th Street. But he was dressed like one and he was black enough. He leaned toward the white man and whispered in his other ear, "I know what you want."

     
The waiter gave him a look. "Chops," he said.

     
As he leaned away from the black man, the white man thought they were all talking in a secret language. All he wanted was to get with the sissies, the tan-lipped brownbodied girl-boys, strip off his clothes, let himself be ravished. The thought made him weak as water, dissolved his bones, dizzied his head. He refused to think more than that. And the waiter and this other ugly black man were destroying that, cooling his ardor, wetting him down. He became angry. "Let me alone, I know what I want," he said.

     
"Bran," the black man said.

     
"Chops," the waiter said.

     
"It's breakfast time," the black man said. "The man wants breakfast food. Without bones."

     
Angrily the white man reached back and drew his wallet from his hip pocket. He pulled out a ten-dollar bill from a thick sheaf of notes and threw it on to the counter.

     
Everyone all up and around the counter stared from the bill to the white man's red angry face.

     
The waiter had become absolutely still. He let the bill lie. "Ain't you got nothing smaller than that, boss?"

     
The white man fished in his side pockets. The waiter and the black man in the red fez exchanged glances from the corners of their eyes. The white man brought out his hands empty.

     
"I haven't any change," he said.

     
The waiter picked up the ten-dollar bill and snapped it, held it up to the light and scrutinized it. Satisfied, he put it in the till and made change. He slapped the change down on to the counter in front of the white man, leaning foward. He whispered, "You can go with him, he's safe."

     
The white man glanced briefly at the black man beside him. The black man grinned obsequiously. The white man picked up his change. It was five dollars short. Holding it in his hand, he looked up into the waiter's eyes. The waiter returned his look, challengingly, shrugged and licked his lips. The white man smiled to himself, all his confidence restored.

     
"Chops," he admitted.