Blind Man With a Pistol (27 page)

     
He was up to the dice game at Fo-Fo's "Sporting Gentlemen's Club" on the third floor of a walkup at the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. The dice game was in the room that had formerly been the kitchen of the cold-water flat Fo-Fo had converted into a private club for "sporting gentlemen", and the original sink was still there for losers to wash their hands, although the gas stove had been removed to make room for the billiard table where the dice did their dance. It was hot enough in the room to fry brains and the unsmiling soul brothers stood packed about the table, grease running from their heads down into the sweat oozing from their black skin, watching the running of the dice from muddy, bloodshot, but alert eyes. There was nothing to smile about, it was a serious business. They were gambling their bread.

     
The blind man stood at the head of the table where Abie the Jew used to run his field, winning all the money in the game by betting the dice out, until a Black Muslim brother cut his throat because he wouldn't take a nickel bet. He tossed his last bread into the ring and said defiantly, "I'll take four to one that I come out on 'leven." Maybe Abie the Jew might have given it, but soul brothers are superstitious about their gambling and they figure a blind man might throw anything anytime.

     
But the back man covered the sawbuck and let the game go on. The stick man tossed the dice into the blind man's big soft trembling right hand, which closed about them like a shell about an egg.

     
The blind man shook them, saying, "Dice, I beg you," and turned them loose in the big corral. He heard them jump the chain and bounce off the billiard table's lower lip and the stick man cry, "Five-four -- _nine!_ Nine's the point. Take 'em, Mister Shooter, and see what you can do."

     
The blind man caught the dice again when they were tossed to him and looked around at the black sweaty faces he knew were there, pausing to stare a moment at each in turn and then said aggressively, "Bet one to four I jump it like I made it."

     
Abie the Jew might have taken that too, but the blind man knew there, wasn't any chance of getting that bet from his soul brothers, he just felt like being contrary. Mother-rapers just waiting to get the jump on him, he thought, but if they fucked with him he'd cost them.

     
"Turn 'em loose, shooter," the stick man barked. "You done felt 'em long enough, they ain't titties."

     
Scornfully, the blind man turned them loose. They rolled down the table and came up seven.

     
"Seven!" the stick man cried. "Four-trey -- the country way. Seven! The loser!"

     
"The dice don't know me," the blind man said, then on second thought asked to see them. "Here, lemme see them dice."

     
With a "what-can-you-do?" expression, the stick man tossed him the dice. The blind man caught them and felt them. "Got too hot," he pronounced.

     
"I tole you they weren't titties," the stick man said and cried, "Shooter for the game."

     
The next shooter threw down and the stick man looked at the blind man. "Sawbuck in the center," he said. "You want him, back man?"

     
The blind man was the back man but he was a broke man too. "I leave him," he said.

     
"One gone," the stick man chanted. "Saddest words on land or sea, Mister Shooter, pass by me. Next sport with money to lose."

     
The blind man stopped at the sink to wash his hands and went out. On his way down the stairs he bumped into a couple of church sisters coming up the stairs and didn't even move to one side. He just went on without apologizing or uttering one word.

     
"Ain't got no manners at all!" the duck-bottom sister exclaimed indignantly.

     
"Why is our folks like that?" her lean black sister complained. "Ain't a Christian bone in 'em."

     
"He's lost his money in that crap game upstairs," sister duck-bottom said. "I knows."

     
"Somebody oughta tell the police," sister lean-and-black ventured spitefully. "It's a crying shame."

     
"Ain't it the truth? But they might send 'round some of them white mother-rapers -- 'scuse me, Lawd, you's white too."

     
The blind man heard that and muttered to himself as he groped down the stairs, "Damn right, He white; that's why you black bitches mind him."

     
He was feeling so good with the thought he got careless and when he stepped out on to the sidewalk he ran head-on into another soul brother hurrying to a funeral.

     
"Watch where you going, mother-raper!" the brother snarled. "You want all the sidewalk?"

     
The blind man stopped and turned his face. "You want to make something of it, mother-raper?"

     
The brother took one look at the blind man's menacing eyes and hurried on. No need of him being no stand-in, he was only a guest, he thought.

     
When the blind man started walking again, a little burr-headed rebel clad in fewer rags than a bushman's child ran up to him and said breathlessly, "Can I help you, suh?" He had bet his little buddies a Pepsi-Cola top he wasn't scared to speak to the blind man, and they were watching from the back door of the Liberian First Baptist Church, a safe distance away.

     
The blind man puffed up like a puff adder. "Help me what?"

     
"Help you across the street, suh?" the little rebel piped bravely, standing his ground.

     
"You better get lost, you little black bastard, 'fore I whale the daylights out of you!" the blind man shouted. "I can get across the street as good as anybody."

     
To substantiate his contention the blind man cut across Lenox Avenue against the light, blind eyes staring straight ahead, his tall flabby frame moving nonchalantly like a turned-on zombie. Rubber burnt asphalt as brakes squealed. Metal crashed as cars telescoped. Drivers cursed. Soul people watching him could have bitten off nail-heads with their assholes. But hearing the commotion the blind man just thought the street was full of bad drivers.

     
He followed the railing about the kiosk down into the subway station and located the ticket booth by the sound of coins clinking. Pushing in that direction, he stepped on the pet corn of a dignified, elegant, gray-haired, light-complexioned soul sister and she let out a bellow. "Oh! Oh! Oh! Mother-raping cocksucking turdeating bastard, are you blind?" Tears of rage and pain flooded from her eyes. The blind man moved on unconcernedly; he knew she wasn't talking to him, he hadn't done anything.

     
He shoved his quarter into the ticket window, took his token and nickel change and went through the turnstile out onto the platform following the sound of footsteps. But instead of getting someone to help him at that point he kept on walking straight ahead until he was teetering on the edge of the tracks. A matronly white woman, standing nearby, gasped and clutched him by the arm to pull him back to safety.

     
But he shook off her hand and flew into a rage. "Take your hands off me, you mother-raping dip!" he shouted. "I'm on to that pickpocket shit!"

     
Blood flooded the woman's face. She snatched back her hand and instinctively turned to flee. But after taking a few steps outrage overcame her and she stopped and spat, "Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!"

     
Some mother-raping white whore got herself straightened, he interpreted, listening to the train arrive. He went in with the others and groped about surreptitiously until he found an empty seat and quickly sat next to the aisle, holding his back ramrod straight and assuming a forbidding expression to keep anyone from sitting beside him. Exploring with his feet he ascertained that two people sat on the wall seat between him and the door, but they hadn't made a sound.

     
The first sound above the general movement of passengers which he was able to distinguish came from a soul brother sitting somewhere in front of him talking to himself in a loud, uninhibited tone of voice: "Mop the floor, Sam. Cut the grass, Sam. Kiss my ass, Sam. Manure the roses, Sam. Do all the dirty work, Sam. _Shit!_"

     
The voice came from beyond the door and the blind man figured that the loudmouthed soul brother was sitting in the first cross seat facing toward the rear. He could hear the angry resentment in the soul brother's voice but he couldn't see the vindictiveness in his little red eyes or see the white passengers wince.

     
As though he'd made his eyes red on purpose, the soul brother said jubilantly, "That nigger's dangerous, he's got red eyes. Hey-hey! Red-eyed nigger!" He searched the white faces to see if any were looking at him. None were.

     
"What was that you said, Sam?" he asked himself in a sticky falsetto, mimicking someone, probably his white mistress.

     
"Mam?"

     
"You said a naughty word, Sam."

     
"_Nigger?_ Y'all says it all the time."

     
"I don't mean that."

     
"Weren't none other."

     
"Don't you sass me, Sam. I heard you."

     
"_Shit?_ All I said was mo' shit mo' roses."

     
"I _knew_ I heard you say a naughty word."

     
"Yass, mam, if y'all weren't lissenin' y'all wouldn't a' heerd."

     
"We have to listen to know what you people are thinking."

     
"Haw-haw-haw! Now ain't that some sure enough shit?" Sam asked himself in his natural voice. "Lissenin', spyin', sniffin' around. Say they caint stand niggers and lean on yo' back to watch you work. Rubbin' up against you. Gettin' in yo' face. Jes so long as you workin' like a nigger. Ain't that somep'n?"

     
He stared furiously at the two middle-aged white passengers on the wall seat on his side of the door, trying to catch them peeking. But they were looking steadily down into their laps. His red eyes contracted then expanded, theatrically.

     
This red-eyed soul brother was fat and black and had red lips, too, that looked freshly skinned, against a background of blue gums and a round puffy face dripping with sweat. His bulging-bellied torso was squeezed into a red print sport shirt, open at the collar and wet in the armpits, exposing huge muscular biceps wrapped in glistening black skin. But his legs were so skinny they made him look deformed. They were encased in black pants, as tight as sausage skins, which cut into his crotch, chafing him mercilessly and smothering what looked like a pig in a sack between his legs. To add to his discomfort, the jolting of the coach gave him an excruciating nut-ache.

     
He looked as uncomfortable as a man can be who can't decide whether to be mad at the mother-raping heat, his mother-raping pants, his cheating old lady or his mother-raping picky white folks.

     
A huge, lumpy-faced white man across the aisle, who looked as though he might have driven a twenty-ton truck since he was born, turned and looked at the fat brother with a sneer of disgust. Fat Sam caught the look and drew back as if the man had slapped him. Looking quickly about for another brother to appease the white man's rage, he noticed the blind man in the first seat facing him beyond the door. The blind man was sitting there tending to his own business, staring at Fat Sam without seeing him, and frowning as hard as going up a hill at his bad luck. But Fat Sam bitterly resented being stared at, like all soul brothers, and this mother-raper was staring at him in a way that made his blood boil.

     
"What you staring at, mother-raper?" he shouted belligerently.

     
The blind man had no way of knowing Fat Sam was talking to him, all he knew was the loudmouthed mother-raper who'd come in talking to his mother-raping self was now trying to pick a fight with some other mother-raper who was just looking at him. But he could understand why the mother-raper was so mad, he'd caught some mother-raping whitey with his old lady. The motherraper ought to be more careful, he thought unsympathetically, if she were that kind of whore he ought to watch her more; leastways he ought to keep his business to himself. Involuntarily, he made a downward motion, like a cat buzzing to the object Jeff, "Don't rank it,man, don't rank it!"

     
The gesture hit Fat Sam like a bolt of white lightning and a ray of white heat, and he jumped on it with his two black feet, as they say in that part of the world. Mother-raper wavin' him down like he was a mother-rapin' dog, he thought. Here in front of all these sneakin' white mother-rapers. He was more incensed by the white passengers' furtive smiles than by the blind man's gesture, although he hadn't discovered yet the old man was blind. White mother-rapers kickin' him in the ass from every which-a-side anyhow, he thought furiously, and here his own mother-rapin' soul brother just as much to say, keep yo' ass still, boy, so these white folks can kick it better.

     
"You doan like how I talk, you ol' mother-raper, you can kiss my black ass!" he shouted at the blind man. "I know you shit-colored Uncle Tom mother-rapers like you! You think I'm a disgrace to the race."

     
The first the blind man knew the soul brother was talking to him was when he heard some soul sister say protestingly, "That ain't no way to talk to that old man. You oughta be 'shamed of yo'self, he weren't bothering you."

     
He didn't resent what the soul brother had said as much as the meddling-ass sister calling him an "old man", otherwise he wouldn't have replied.

     
"I don't give a mother-rape whether you're a disgrace to the race or not!" he shouted, and because he couldn't think of anything else to say, added: "All I want is my bread."