Cotton Comes to Harlem (10 page)

Outside, on the sidewalk and in the street, black people were expressing righteous indignation.

“Ain’t it a scandal, Lord, right up here in Harlem?”

“God ought to strike ’em daid, that’s whut.”

“These peckerwoods don’t know what they want. One day they’s sending us north to get rid of us, and the next they’s up here tryna con us into going back.”

“Man, trust white folks and go from Cadillacs to cotton sacks.”

“Ain’t it the truth! I’d sooner trust a white-mouthed moccasin sucking at my tiddy.”

“Man, I ought to go in there and say to that ol’ colonel, ‘You wants me to go back south, eh?’ and he says, ‘That’s right, boy,’ and I says, ‘You gonna let me vote?’ and he says, ‘That’s right, boy, vote all you want, just so long you don’t cast no ballots,’ and I says, ‘You gonna let me marry yo’ daughter–’ ”

His audience fell out laughing. But one joker didn’t think it was funny; he said, “There he is, what’s stopping you?”

Everyone stopped laughing.

The comedian said shamefacedly, “Hell, man, I don’t do everything I oughta do, you knows that.”

A big matronly woman said, “Just you wait ’til Reverend O’Malley hears ’bout all this, and then you’ll see some action.”

Reverend O’Malley had already heard. Barry Waterfield, the phoney detective in his employ, had telephoned him and given him the lowdown. Reverend O’Malley had sent him to see the Colonel with implicit instructions.

Barry was a big, clean-shaven man with hair cropped short and a nose flattened in the ring. His dark brown face bore other lumps it had taken during his career as bodyguard, bouncer, mugger and finally killer. He had small brown eyes partly obscured by scar
tissue, and two gold teeth in front. He was easily identifiable, which limited his usefulness, but Deke didn’t have any other choice.

Barry shaved, carefully brushed his hair, dressed in a dark business suit, but couldn’t resist the hand-painted tie depicting an orange sunset on a green background.

When he pushed through the crowd and entered the office of the Back-to-the-Southland movement, talk stopped momentarily and people stared at him. No one knew him, but no one would forget him.

He walked straight to the colonel’s desk and said, “Colonel Calhoun, I’m Mr Waterfield from the Back-to-Africa movement.”

Colonel Calhoun looked up through cold blue eyes and appraised him from head to foot. Colonel Calhoun dug him instantly. The Colonel removed the cheroot from his white moustache and his dentures gleamed whitely.

“What can I do for you … er … what did you say your name was?”

“Barry Waterfield.”

“Barry. What can I do for you, boy?”

“Well, you see, we have a group of good people we’re going to send back to Africa.”

“Back to Africa!” the Colonel exclaimed in horror. “My boy, you must be raving mad. Uprooting these people from their native land. Don’t do it, boy, don’t do it.”

“Well, sir, you see, it’s going to cost a lot —” He remained standing, as the Colonel had not invited him to be seated.

“A fortune, my boy, a veritable fortune,” the Colonel agreed, rearing back in his chair. “And who’s going to pay for this costly nonsense?”

“Well, sir, you see, that’s the trouble. You see, last night we were having a big rally to sign up the families who were going to leave first, and then some bandits robbed us of their money. Eighty-seven thousand dollars.”

The Colonel whistled softly.

“You must have heard about it, sir.”

“No, I can’t say that I have, my boy; but I’ve been pretty busy with this philanthropy of ours. But I’m sorry for those misguided people, even though their misfortune might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I’m ashamed of you, my boy, an honest-looking American nigra like you, leading your people astray. If you knew what we know, you wouldn’t dream of sending your poor people to Africa. Only pestilence and starvation await them
there, in those foreign lands. The South is the place for them, the good old reliable Southland. We love and take care of our darkies.”

“Well, you see, sir, that’s what I want to talk to you about. These poor people have got ready to go somewhere, and now since they can’t go back to Africa it might be best they go back south.”

“Right you are, my boy. You just send them to me and we’ll do right by them. The Happy Southland is the only home of your people.”

The two young colored clerks who had been eavesdropping on the conversation were downright shocked to hear Barry say, “Well, sir, I’m inclined to agree with you, sir.”

The blond young man was standing at the front window, peering out at the milling black mob which he now began to see in a different light. They didn’t look dangerous any longer; now they appeared innocent and gullible and he could barely suppress a smile as he thought of how easy it was going to be. Then he frowned at a sudden memory and turned back to stare at Barry with searching suspicion. This nigger sounded too good to be true, he thought.

But the Colonel didn’t seem to entertain a doubt. “You just trust me, my boy,” he went on, “and we’ll take care of your people.”

“Well, you see, sir, I trust you,” Barry said. “I know you’ll do the right thing by us. But our leader, Reverend O’Malley, won’t like it, my giving you my confidence. You see, sir, he’s a dangerous man.”

A line of white dentures peeped from beneath the Colonel’s white moustache, and Barry had a fleeting thought that this mother-raping white man looked too mother-raping white. But the Colonel continued unsuspectingly, “Don’t worry about that nigra, my boy, we’re going to take care of him and put an end to his un-American activities.”

Barry leaned a little forward and lowered his voice. “You see, sir, the point is we have the eighty-seven families of able-bodied people all packed and ready to go; and I’ve got to tell them if you’re ready to pay them their bonuses.”

“My boy, their bonuses is as good as in the bank. You tell them that,” the Colonel said and rolled the cheroot between his lips only to find it had gone out.

He tossed it carelessly on the floor and carefully selected another from a silver case in his breast pocket. Then he clipped the end with a cigar cutter from his vest pocket, stuck the clipped
cheroot between his lips and rolled it over and over until the outer leaves of the lip-end were agreeably wet. Both Barry and the blond young man snapped their lighters to offer a light, but the Colonel preferred Barry’s flame.

Barry said, “Well, that is fine of you, sir, that’s all I want to know. We got more than a thousand families recruited and I’ll sell you the whole list.”

For an instant both the Colonel and the blond young man became immobile. Then the Colonel’s dentures showed. “If I heard you correctly, my boy,” he said smoothly, “you said
sell
.”

“Well, sir, you see, sir, it’s like this,” Barry began, his voice pitched low and grown husky. “Naturally I would want a little something for myself, taking all this risk. You see, sir, the list is highly confidential and it has taken us months to select and recruit all these able-bodied people. And if they knew I was turning this list over to you, they might make trouble, sir — even though it is for their own good. And I’d want to be able to get away for a while, sir. You understand, sir.”

“My boy, nothing could be plainer,” the Colonel said and puffed his cheroot. “Plain talk suits me fine. Now how much do you want for your list?”

“Well, sir. I was thinking fifty dollars a family would be about fair, sir.”

“You’re a boy after my own heart, even though you do belong to the nigra race,” the Colonel said. The blond young man frowned and opened his mouth as though to speak, but the Colonel ignored him. “Now, my boy, I understand your predicament and I don’t want to jeopardize your position and usefulness by permitting you to come back here and be seen and suspected by all your people. So I’m going to tell you what I want you to do. You bring the list to me at midnight. I’ll be waiting down by the Harlem River underneath the subway extension to the Polo Grounds in my cah, and I’ll pay you right then and there. It will be dark and deserted at that time of night and nobody’ll see you.”

Barry hesitated, looking torn between fear and greed. “Well, frankly, sir, that’s a good sound idea, but I’m scared of the dark, sir,” he confessed.

The Colonel chuckled. “There’s nothing about the dark to fear, my boy. That’s just nigra superstition. The dark never hurt anyone. You’ll be as safe as in the arms of Jesus. I give you my word.”

Barry looked relieved at this. “Well, sir, if you give me your word I know can’t nothing happen to me. I’ll be there at midnight sharp.”

Without further ado, the Colonel waved a hand, dismissing
him.

“Are you going to trust that —” the blond young man began.

For the first time the Colonel showed displeasure in a frown. The blond young man shut up.

As he was leaving, Barry noticed the small sign in the window through the corners of his eyes:
Wanted, a bale of cotton.
What for? he wondered.

No one knew where Uncle Bud slept. He could be found any night somewhere on the streets of Harlem, pushing his cart, his eyes searching the darkness for anything valuable enough to sell. He had an exceptional divination of anything of value, because in Harlem no one ever threw anything away valuable enough to sell, if they knew it. But he managed to collect enough saleable junk to exist, and when day broke he was to be seen at one of those run-down junkyards where scrawny-necked, beady-eyed white men paid a few cents for the rags, paper, glass and iron he had collected. Actually he slept in his cart during the summer. He would wheel it to some shady spot on some slum street where no one thought it strange to find a junk man sleeping in his cart, and curl up on the burlap rags covering his load and sleep, undisturbed by the sounds of motor-cars and trucks, children screaming, men cursing and fighting, women gossiping, police sirens wailing, or even by the dead awakening. Nothing troubled his sleep.

On this night, because his cart was filled with the bale of cotton, he wheeled it towards a street beneath the 125th Street approach to the Triborough Bridge, where he would be near Mr Goodman’s junkyard when he woke up.

A police cruiser containing two white cops pulled up beside him. “What you got there, boy?” the one on the inside asked.

Uncle Bud stopped and scratched his head and ruminated. “Wal, boss, I’se got some cahdbo’d and papuh an’ I’se got some bedsprings an’ some bottles an’ some rags an’–”

“You ain’t got no money, have you?” the cop cracked. “You ain’t got no eighty-seven thousand dollars?”

“Nawsuh, wish I did.”

“What would you do with eighty-seven grand?”

Uncle Bud scratched his head again. “Wal, suh, I’d buy me a brand new waggin. An’ then I reckon I’d go to Africa,” he said,
adding underneath his breath: “Where wouldn’t any white mother-rapers like you be fucking with me all the time.”

Naturally the cops didn’t hear the last, but they laughed at the first and drove on.

Uncle Bud found a spot beside an abandoned truck down by the river and went to sleep. When he awakened the sun was high. At about the same time Barry Waterfield was approaching Colonel Calhoun on Seventh Avenue, he was approaching the junkyard alongside the river south of the bridge.

It was a fenced-in enclosure about piles of scrap iron and dilapidated wooden sheds housing other kinds of junk. Uncle Bud stopped before a small gate at one side of the main office building, a one-storey wooden box fronting on the street. A big black hairless dog the size of a Great Dane came silently to the gate and stared at him through yellow eyes.

“Nice doggie,” Uncle Bud said through the wire gate.

The dog didn’t blink.

A shabbily dressed, unshaven white man came from the office and led the dog away and chained it up. Then he returned and said, “All right, Uncle Bud, what you got there?”

Uncle Bud looked at the white man through the corners of his eyes. “A bale of cotton, Mr Goodman.”

Mr Goodman was startled. “A bale of cotton?”

“Yassuh,” Uncle Bud said proudly as he uncovered the bale. “Genuwine Mississippi cotton.”

Mr Goodman unlocked the gate and came outside to look at it. Most of the cotton was obscured by the burlap covering. But he pulled out a few shreds from the seams and smelled it. “How do you know it’s
Mississippi
cotton?”

“I’d know Mississippi cotton anywhere I seed it,” Uncle Bud stated flatly. “Much as I has picked.”

“Ain’t much of this to be seen,” Mr Goodman observed.

“I can smell it,” Uncle Bud said. “It smell like nigger-sweat.”

Mr Goodman sniffed at the cotton again. “Anything special about that?”

“Yassuh, makes it stronger.”

Two colored workmen in overalls came up. “Cotton!” one exclaimed. “Lord, lord.”

“Makes you homesick, don’t it?” the other one said.

“Homesick for your mama,” the first one said, looking at him sidewise.

“Watch out, man, I don’t play the dozzens,” the second one said.

Mr Goodman knew they were just kidding. “All right, get it on
the scales,” he ordered.

The bale weighed four hundred and eighty-seven pounds.

“I’ll give you five dollars for it,” Mr Goodman said.

“Five bones!” Uncle Bud exclaimed indignantly. “Why, dis cotton is worth thirty-nine cents a pound.”

“You’re thinking about the First World War,” Mr Goodman said. “Nowadays they’re giving cotton away.”

The two workmen exchanged glances silently.

“I ain’t giving dis away,” Uncle Bud said.

“Where can I sell a bale of cotton?” Mr Goodman said. “Who wants unprocessed cotton? Not even good for bullets no more. Nowadays they shoot atoms. It ain’t like as if it was drugstore cotton.”

Uncle Bud was silent.

“All right, ten dollars then,” Mr Goodman said.

“Fifty dollars,” Uncle Bud countered.

“
Mein Gott
, he wants fifty dollars yet!” Mr Goodman appealed to his colored workmen. “That’s more than I’d pay for brass.”

The colored workmen stood with their hands in their pockets, blank-faced and silent. Uncle Bud kept a stubborn silence. All three colored men were against Mr Goodman. He felt trapped and guilty, as though he’d been caught taking advantage of Uncle Bud.