If He Hollers Let Him Go (20 page)

‘Hello, baby. Bob,’ I said.

‘Bob, I’ve been trying to get you.’ Her voice sounded as though it was under wraps; it was still low, controlled, but it wasn’t mellow.

‘I stopped and ate on the way home,’ I said.

For a time she didn’t say anything, then she asked, ‘Bob, did you do what I asked you to?’

I knew what she meant but I said anyway, ‘What did you ask me to do?’

‘Let’s don’t play games with each other, Bob,’ she said. ‘You know what I asked you to do.’ There was strain in her voice.

‘I didn’t do it,’ I said.

She waited for me again and when she saw I wasn’t coming, she asked, ‘Are you going to?’

‘No,’ I said.

There was another blank and when her voice came now it was a little desperate. ‘Do you love me, Bob?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I was fighting against her, trying to keep her from touching me. I didn’t want to get all mixed up, mad or remorseful or even sensible; I wanted to go see Madge and to hell with everybody.

‘You have a funny way of showing it,’ she said.

‘I told you, baby,’ I said. My voice was getting heavy.

She was silent again for a time, then she asked, ‘Am I going to see you tonight?’

‘What for, so we can have another argument?’

‘I want you to take me out to Hollywood. Lawson’s going to lecture,’ she said. ‘Afterward we can have a snack and go to a night club if you like.’

Now it was my turn to hesitate. I tried to think of some way to let her down light but couldn’t think of anything she wouldn’t know was a lie. Finally I said, ‘Not tonight, baby.’

‘I want to talk to you, darling,’ she said. I could tell she didn’t want to let me go.

But I wanted her to hang up; it was getting inside of me, touching me. ‘Not tonight, baby,’ I said gruffly. ‘I’ve got something to do tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

I could hear her sighing over the phone. ‘Tomorrow night might be too late, darling.’

I didn’t say anything at all.

Finally she asked, ‘Is this goodbye, Bob?’

‘Look baby,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood to listen to your all this and heaven too.’

She hung up. ‘Goddamnit!’ I said. Now I was beat. I didn’t even feel like going to see Madge any more, but I knew I had to.

I went out, drove down to Forty-ninth Street, and turned over to Broadway. I stopped at a Thrifty’s drugstore and bought a bottle of brandy—‘27 Years Old,’ it said on the label. Then I got on Figueroa and kept straight down to the Hotel Mohave near Third Street.

It was a narrow four-storey building with a dry-cleaning joint on the first floor. The hotel entrance was to one side, a narrow stairway leading to the second floor with a round white dirty globe over the doorway. The neighbourhood was spotted with vacant lots and cheap hotels, a stagnant part of town between the downtown section to the east and the residential district to the west.

I drew up across the street and tried to spot Madge’s room. Don had said it was a second-floor front but I didn’t know which side. There were double windows on each side with drawn venetian blinds and a bare centre hallway window. Both front rooms were dark.

I knew these joints; if I walked in there dressed as I was, everybody who saw me would be hostile and curious; and the chances were somebody would call the police and have me arrested on general principles.

So I drove down the street until I came to a beer joint with a telephone sign outside. It was one of those dingy, dirty joints, but the moment I stepped inside everybody in the joint got on their muscle.

I stifled an impulse to say, ‘Don’t worry, folks, I don’t want to be served,’ said quickly in the direction of the bar, ‘Just wanna use the phone,’ kept on back to the booth. I found the Mohave’s number and dialled.

A dried-up querulous voice said, ‘Hotel Mohave.’

‘I’d like to speak to Madge Perkins in room 202,’ I said.

‘She’s out,’ the voice said impatiently.

I hesitated. ‘Do you know when she’ll be back?’

‘Don’t know,’ the voice said, and hung up.

I went out, turned around, and drove down on the same side as the hotel, parked several doors up the street, and waited. That way I’d see her when she came in. I got a swing programme on the radio and puffed a cigarette. People passed, glanced at me, then turned to stare with hard hostility when they saw I was a Negro. It was a rebbish neighbourhood, poor white; I’d have felt much better parked in Beverly Hills.

After a while I became conscious of somebody watching me. I looked around, didn’t see anyone. Then I noticed that I was parked in front of a rooming house. Someone inside, maybe the landlady, had noticed the car, and several faces were peering furtively around the corners of the curtains in the front room. It made me nervous. I knew if I stayed there for any length of time they’d call the police. Any Negro in the neighbourhood after dark was a ‘suspicious person.’ So I pulled up beyond the hotel and watched the entrance through the rear-view mirror.

It seemed as if I’d been there for hours. I glanced at my watch. It was only eight-thirty. I got out, walked across the street, and took another gander at the second-storey front. Both rooms were still dark. For a moment I debated whether to call again, decided against it. I knew there wasn’t any use trying to get by the desk. If I went up there and told the guy who owned the voice I’d talked to over the phone that I wanted to see Madge Perkins in 202, he was liable to shoot me on sight or drop dead of heart failure.

Suddenly I decided to give it up, go over, and take Alice out to Lawson’s lecture, and afterwards take her to the Down Beat. Madge wasn’t worth the effort, I thought. The whole idea of going to bed with her to get even with Kelly and Mac and the other peckerwoods out at the yard seemed silly now. She wasn’t nothing but trouble any way you looked at it, I told myself; and I’d always figured myself too smart to let the white folks catch me out there on their own hunting-grounds.

I mashed the starter and drove out Figueroa, thinking about what a fool I’d been to go down there looking for Madge in the first place. Nobody but a pure and simple chump would skip a date with a chick like Alice for an off-chance shot at a tramp like Madge. I was feeling so good about it I’d forgotten all about the row I’d had with Alice the night before. My mind had jumped back to the good times we’d had together, and I felt relieved and kind of half-way clever, as if I’d gotten out of a trap the white folks had set for me.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled up behind a Pontiac coupé parked in front of the Harrisons’ house and started to get out. Then I saw Alice coming down the walk from her house with Leighton. All thought and emotion just stopped, went blank. I got out slowly and waited for them.

‘Why, it’s Mr. Jones.’ Leighton recognized me, sticking out his hand. He gave me a cordial, friendly smile. ‘How are you tonight?’

I shook his hand. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘Well …’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I’m fine too,’ giving a friendly laugh.

Finally Alice said, ‘Hello, Bob,’ without asking any questions or showing any surprise.

I looked at her then. She was sharp in a hunter’s-green suit and white, lacy-looking blouse. But her skin looked too white, as if she had powdered it with chalk. I got the evil thought that she was trying to make herself look as white as possible so people would think she and Leighton were a white couple.

‘ ‘Lo, baby,’ I said. I waited for a moment, thinking she might give an explanation, and when I saw she wasn’t going to, I said, ‘I know this is impolite and all that, but may I talk to you a moment …’ I hesitated, then added, ‘In private.’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she said, giving me her social worker’s smile. ‘We’re going to the lecture and we’re late now. Tom gave me a ring after you said you couldn’t go.’

‘Well …’ I began, then stepped aside to let them pass. ‘That’s fine.’ After a moment I added, ‘Enjoy yourselves.’

Her expression softened, went tentative. ‘Would you like to go with us?’ she asked.

‘By all means, come along,’ he corroborated quickly. ‘We’d be delighted.’

It was an embarrassing moment. I wasn’t going to have him share my girl with me; but I didn’t want to say anything rude. ‘Well, I really can’t,’ I fumbled. ‘I have an appointment.’

Now he looked embarrassed. ‘Well, I hope to see you again soon, Mr. Jones,’ he said, sticking out his hand. We shook hands again.

‘Well, yes,’ I said, turning to look at Alice.

For a moment I thought she might send Leighton on by himself; there was a slight concerned look in her eyes. Then she braced herself and said, ‘Call me tomorrow, darling,’ and walked on toward the coupé.

I turned back toward my car, stopped with my hand on the handle of the door, and looked back at the coupé. She was already seated and Leighton was going around the front toward the other door.

I climbed in, swung around in a sharp U, making my tyres cry, and headed back toward town. At Western I turned south to Jefferson, east toward the South Side. I felt for the brandy bottle, uncorked it, tipped it to my lips, and drank.

It really galled me to have a white guy take my girl out on a date. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he had been the sharpest, richest, most important coloured guy in the world; I’d have still felt I could compete. But a white guy had his colour—I couldn’t compete with that. It was all up to the chick—if she liked white, I didn’t have a chance; if she didn’t, I didn’t have anything to worry about. But I’d have to know, and I didn’t know about Alice.

At first the brandy made me hate her with a blue violence. I wanted to knock her down and kick her. I told myself if I ever saw her again she’d have to come crawling to me on her knees. When I came into Central I was so blind with anger and chagrin I almost ran into a bus broadside. Then suddenly I was ravenous.

I went out to the new barbecue place at Forty-second Street and ordered Virginia ham. But half-way through it I got the sudden picture of Alice sitting in Leighton’s coupé, smiling with appreciation at something he’d said. She’d be interested and attentive, I thought, because Leighton was white and she couldn’t help but want to impress him with her culture and intelligence.

I pushed the stuff away from me, got up and went over to the cashier’s, paid for it, and went out. I turned my car around, started downtown. I could imagine Leighton taking her someplace after the lecture that the ‘known’ Negroes, like me, couldn’t go. Perhaps to one of the swanky joints out on the strip—the Troc, maybe. She’d be gay and unrestrained with him, I thought; not tight and frustrated like she’d been with me the other night. She’d know that everybody would think she was white. Then she’d be able to tell me what a nice time she’d had with Tom.

At Fifth I turned west, found a parking space, went into the Blue Room. The joint was crowded. There were a couple of white sailors at one end of the bar and a white girl with her coloured girl friend down near the middle. The rest were coloured, mostly railroad men. I leaned over a guy’s shoulder and ordered a double brandy, took it down to the juke box at the front, and put a nickel on King Cole’s ‘I’m Lost.’

All of a sudden I knew that I was getting ready to go back and see Madge. Getting charged. Getting my gauge up to be a damned fool about a white woman, to blow my simple top, maybe get into serious trouble—about a slut any white bum could have at will. Just to get even with Alice—with Kelly too, and Mac, and all the rest. It was crazy; I knew it was crazy, like a sign I once saw that said, 
‘Read and run, nigger; if you can’t read, run anyhow.’

‘Simple son of a bitch!’ I said aloud.

A little black gal at the end of the bar turned around and gave me.a qualitative smile. ‘Whatttt?’ She had a soft, caressing voice.

‘I was talking to myself,’ I said self-consciously.

The girl next to her looked around then. The black gal said, ‘Well, how ‘bout you?’

I leaned over her shoulder, put my empty glass on the bar, patted her hair as I drew away. ‘I’d like to see you sometime,’ I said, and her eyes got to telling me about it. ‘But not tonight,’ I said, and it went out of her eyes.

I went out, got in my car, and turned back toward Figueroa. When I pulled up in front of the hotel I glanced at my watch. It was nine after eleven; I had no idea it was that late. I cut the motor, took another long swig, then got out and started up the front stairs with the bottle in my hand. I didn’t give a damn if the clerk was still on duty and had the whole police force with him. I was rocking and scared of nobody in the world, on a live-wire edge and ready to pop.

The hall light still burned but the desk was deserted. I’d primed myself to give the clerk an argument, to tell him this was America and he could go to hell; and when I found him gone I felt a slight letdown. I turned, went down to the front, knocked at 202. No one answered. I tried the knob; the door was locked. I knocked harder. Finally a sleepy Texas voice asked, ‘Who’s there?’

‘Bob,’ I said. ‘Let me in.’

There was a silence for a moment then she asked, ‘Who?’ as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

‘Bob—from the shipyard,’ I told her. ‘I told you I was coming to see you.’ My tongue was thick and I had trouble with my words.

‘You better get away from here,’ she threatened.

‘Open up the door,’ I said. ‘Don’t be so simple all the time.’

‘If you don’t get away from there I’ll call the police and have you put underneath the jail,’ she said in a fierce whisper as if standing close to the door.

‘Call the police then,’ I growled, rattling the knob.

‘I’ll scream,’ she threatened.

‘Scream then,’ I said.

She didn’t reply and I started hammering on the door.

‘Well, wait a minute, can’t you?’ she whispered, unlocking the door. She opened it a crack. ‘You wanna wake up everybody and let ‘em see what’s happening?’

I pushed inside, said, ‘I don’t give a damn.’

She quickly closed and locked the door, then wheeled toward me. ‘You can’t stay here, you’ll get us both in trouble.’

‘To hell with the trouble,’ I muttered, turning to face her. ‘Have a drink?’