Dark Stain (4 page)

But something I want to ask — ”

“Go ahead and ask, pop.”

“This Johnny’s a nig — I mean a Negro? That’s right, ain’t it?”

“You know he is. What are you getting at?”

“Now, I think he’ll be against you, my son. Blood’s strong, no?”

“Yeh, it’s strong,” Sam said bitterly.

Rose bit on one red painted fingernail and glanced at her brother. “Sam, we’re all with you no matter what some people may say. Don’t forget that. We’re all with you.”

“Did Suzy phone, Sis?” He caught his father and sister exchange a quick look. He guessed what was in their minds; Suzy was the stranger, the outsider, the Gentile to the family. He felt their unity against her. It was a unity as real and as surcharged with traditions as his grandmother’s samovar in the dining room. It was a unity with a long past, a way of life. It included the
mezzuzah
on the door, the high holy days of the New Year and the Day of Atonement, holy days different from those of Christians; it included the separate language of the old folks and always a separateness from the Christian world. “Did Suzy phone?” he repeated. Mentioning her name in this living room was like opening wide windows on something stuffy and closeted.

“No,” Rose answered. “You won’t mind my saying so, Sam. I wouldn’t say it but as it happens I knew Suzy before you met her. Don’t forget I worked in the same office with her before I went to Macy’s — ”

“Shoot,” Sam said.

“I wouldn’t call Suzy Buckles a Red. But she’s pretty radical in her ideas and I think you should take your family’s advice in this awful emergency, Sam. We know you better than Suzy. After all, I have nothing against Suzy. She’s a very charming girl and quite pretty. After all, if you hadn’t gone to my union dance when I was in the U.O.P.W.A. you would never have met Suzy Buckles. But we in your family have your best interests at heart, Sam.”

He smiled at Rose. “Suzy believes in equality for Negroes, as well as for Jews and other minorities. That makes her pretty radical. Practically a representative of Moscow. Hold on, Sis. Let me finish. A lot of people say they believe in democracy. Pa would say he believes in democracy but there’s some difference between saying it and practising it. I’m seeing Suzy tomorrow in her lunch hour. That’s what I think of Suzy. Good night.”

He hurried to his bedroom. His eyes searched inwards. One question was scrawled across his consciousness. How was he going to square himself with the people of Harlem?

At one o’clock the next day Sam inched along in the middle of the lunch-hour crowds on lower Broadway. Clerks, typists, lawyers, bank tellers, stockbrokers packed the narrow sidewalks between the tall grey buildings. A thousand windows burned with the spring sun, the skyscrapers held the sky far above, it seemed a million miles above the people on the pavements. He saw Suzy standing in front of her office building. Familiar and unfamiliar, she appeared to Sam, pretty and not pretty, loved and not loved. He waved at her and dodged through the hustle. His eyes took her in: the tailored brown suit, spotted with red specks that matched the maroon feather in her brown suede hat. She held a brown suede pocketbook under one arm. Trim and small and neat, her neck was white and fragile-looking above the dazzling white of her secretary’s blouse. Her red lips curved in a wide smile, her teeth showing in an even pale white line. For seconds, he was only aware of her smile; this livingness and joy were for him. Gratefully, he stepped over to her. “Where do you Wall Streeters eat around here? How are you, kid? Is your mother sore at me?”

“What’d you do to her?”

“Last night on the phone, she asked me how I was and I didn’t ask her.”

“Since when are you so polite? Where’s your uniform?”

“I’m on sick leave.”

She clattered back on her high heels and squinted like a child at him. Her big grey eyes narrowed. “You don’t look sick to me. Sam, your jaw — ”

Tight-lipped, he nodded. “You don’t play around with psychopaths just like that. Gee, Suzy, it’s been a hell of a time and it isn’t over yet.”

She squeezed his hand and they walked in silence among the chattering lunch-time throngs. On the corner of Cortlandt and Broadway, a flower wagon was hawking the bright flowers of spring. The big black nag stood in its shaft and contemplated everybody with the indifference of a city horse. Sam had an impulse to buy Suzy some violets but he felt so gloomy he did nothing about it. She began to gossip about her office, her boss, and although he appreciated the succession of brittle little stories, his eyes showed no spark. The problem was his, his alone. Almost, he forgot that she loved him. She belonged to this Wall Street world, one of all these spinning faces who revolved around the corporations and the banks. He belonged where? One self walked with Suzy, the other was lost in a ghostly Harlem that floated across his brain even in the splashing sunlight.

“Sam, there’s nothing wrong with you, is there?” he heard her saying. “You’re not listening to me, honey. Don’t be such a wise guy. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Suzy. The jaw’s nothing. I had it X-rayed this morning. The Police Surgeon says it’s okay. Some morning. I haven’t told you. But I’ve had a second hearing this morning, the Assistant D.A. in charge. I was cleared. Did you see the papers last night?”

“No. If I had, I’d’ve taken a cab over to your house. I read the
Times
, coming to work this morning. Sam, I don’t know where to begin. There are just about a million things I want to ask you. If you don’t want me to pester you, just say so honey. I’m still your sweetheart and not your wife.” She smiled. “Sam,” she said, her voice thinning. “It was awful, wasn’t it? Sam, if you don’t want me to pester you — ”

He circled his arms about her and smacked a big kiss on her cheek. He released her and grinned. Blushing, she cast little cat-like side glances at the crowd. “What’s the idea?” she said. “Why didn’t you wait until we got to Times Square?”

“That makes me feel better.”

She laughed a full throaty laugh as hearty as his kiss had been. “Now I know for sure.”

“What do you know for sure?”

“You couldn’t help what happened.”

“Suzy, honest, the official police version is the straight dope.”

“Whew.” Suzy sighed. “I couldn’t take dictation or anything, Sam. Mr. Hunter, that piece of sponge cake, noticed it. He asked me if my boy friend was being drafted. I told him you were deferred since they were grooming you for Police Commissioner.” The corners of her eyelids crinkled and her grey eyes asked him what he thought of her joke.

“Yep, Police Commissioner.”

“I’m not hungry. Or to be truthful, I am hungry but I’d rather — Sam, I’ve read all the papers. I had the twelve o’clock sandwich brigade bring me the afternoon sheets. I’ve seen the
Post
, the
Sun
, the
Telly
. Have you seen them? Have you seen
PM
?”

“No. What do they say?”

“Sam, is it all right with you if we eat later? You haven’t seen
PM
?”

“No, I said. What have you got on your mind, kid? Out with it.”

“Who do you think you are? Charley Chan? I haven’t a thing on my mind.” And quickly, lightly, she added, “Except your welfare.”

“You don’t have to worry about my feelings — ”

“But I do, darling,” she cried passionately, clutching his arm. He felt the rounded edge of her small breast against his elbow and his heart tumbled and her love whirled his head empty of the hearings. They slanted down into Nassau Street, into a hurdy-gurdy of pineapple drink stands, tobacco stores and bargain emporiums; they walked by the stamp marts; hinged on the insides of the plate-glass windows, the stamps of all the nations rainbowed in Sam’s sight.

“Darling,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Sam, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking this morning. I’ve been thinking how close you were to getting — ” she shuddered, pressing her cheek against his sleeve — ”killed. Golly, that’s a funny word when you say it. Killed.”

“They were all against me. They’d lynch me if they could. In all that crowd — What’s the use beefing? But it hurts. Talk of race propaganda. If white prejudice is rotten so is black prejudice.”

“But Sam, you know better than anyone else what a beating the people in Harlem have taken from the bully boys in blue — ”

“Don’t give me that one-sided Red baloney,” he snapped.

“Sam. Oh, Sam. I shouldn’t have pestered you.”

“Forget it.” He wondered where she got her convictions, where did she get the nerve to think that the world could be carried out of the cellar into the light? Who was going to do it? People like her. There were too few of them. Besides, what did she really know of the world? All that she was and had been flickered through his consciousness. She was an only daughter, her father had been dead for eight years. She had been poor and she wasn’t rich now; all that the Buckles had was Suzy’s thirty dollars a week salary. A daughter of churchgoers, this Suzy Buckles; for generations her family had lived near their church, one of those forlorn brownstone Protestant churches to be seen all over the city, surrounded by the roar of the new times with a signboard outside the door addressed to the truckers, errand boys, salesmen, to all the scurrying millions: ALL INVITED TO COME INSIDE AND PRAY.

“You’re the cop in this particular jam,” she was saying. “The shoe’s on your foot but that doesn’t change the situation. The colored people have been taking an awful beating — ”

“Don’t lecture me. That union of yours certainly fills you up with righteousness or maybe it’s that abolitionist granddad you’ve told me about — ”

“You’re foolish, my little boy,” she said in a sarcastic voice that still managed an overtone of affection. “I’ve heard you on the subject of my union. Just because it’s a white collar union, you have a tendency to sneer at it. That’s a typical he-man’s attitude. You’ve got some romantic picture of steel workers, big brawny lugs in a big brawny union. Sammy, when a little kid with red fingernails and a typist’s fanny gets together with other kids like herself that’s as important as those steel workers. Sammy, forgive me. I am lecturing you but every time I hear you echo your family I get so mad — ”

“Like my sister, Rose, for instance.”

“Rose would be all right if she — ” Suzy turned away from him. “Sam, let’s cut the bickering out. They’re distributing leaflets about you all over Harlem. PM reprinted one of them. There are two leaflets.”

He stared.

“Honey, I hated to be the one to break it to you — ”

“
PM
?”

“Yes.”

He legged to the corner, to the broadside of screaming war headlines. He returned to her with the newspaper, flipping the pages. Frozen, he stood still, reading: “ ‘Five hours after the shooting of Fred Randolph of 179 West 131 Street by Officer Samuel Miller, thousands of leaflets were …’ ” The reproduction of the leaflet leaped at Sam, black, ugly, shocking:

She took the newspaper from Sam’s fingers. “We might as well get married,” she said, “now that I’m an old hand at breaking bad news to you.” She sighed and rolled the
PM
up into a paper baton. “Sammy, there’s no sense weeping.”

Silently, he reached for the newspaper.

“You’ve seen it. What’s the sense letting it grind at you.”

He muttered, “Harlem Gestapo Cop. Councilman Vincent. I used to respect him — ”

“There’s a crowd watching us, Sammy. Let’s go.”

He frowned at the staring, smirking faces and his insides quivered. Yesterday’s crowd like a mob of extras filed out of his brain. Yesterday’s faces hemmed him in. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. Let’s scram out of here. You’re right. Did I hear you say there was a second leaflet?”

“Before I show it to you — Sam, Johnny Ellis tried to phone you last night”

“Don’t go so fast. Johnny Ellis?”

“Sam, forgive me. I’m giving you both barrels at once. Oh, Sammy. Ellis phoned twice. Each time he spoke to your father. He told your father to tell you he phoned. He left the number where he works.”

“Pop never told me. I’m beginning to see. So that’s why — ”

She tugged at his elbow. “What, Sammy?”

“That foolish old man of mine. I got home late last night and they told me a lot of people, friends and so on, had called. Everybody but Johnny. That’s my Pop. That’s why he gave me a line about oil and water not mixing. He went great guns, cursing Harlem and Negroes. But what I don’t understand — Rose wouldn’t keep a call from me. Not Rose. And how do you know about Johnny phoning?”

“Rose. Don’t be sore at her. She heard your father brush off Johnny Ellis. She wanted to tell you about it but the family were so upset. She was afraid of making things worse. She phoned me this morning — ”

“She ought to get out of that house.”

“Your dad’s something. Remember in the beginning when he found out I wasn’t Jewish — Remember how he censored my calls to you. Even now when he’s on the wire, you ought to hear him. His voice’s like a meat grinder.”

“You’ve got Johnny’s number?”

“Yes. He’ll be in now. He had told Rose his lunch hour was from twelve to one. It’s after one now.”

“We’ll give him a little more time. This other leaflet?”

She rubbed her fingers across her mouth. “Gee.”

“You’re ruining your lipstick. Don’t worry about my feelings.”

“I guess you better see it.” She opened her pocketbook and took out a green folded leaflet. He unfolded it, winked defiantly at her, and read: