If He Hollers Let Him Go (27 page)

The guard captain said, ‘You’re lucky you’re in California. In my home state we’d have hung you.’

I didn’t say anything; I expected that out of the guards. Most of them were Southerners anyway. I was just waiting for him to get my time card so I could sign out and go home.

Instead he picked up the phone from the end of the desk and dialled. When he got an answer he said, ‘Send somebody out here to Atlas to pick up that coloured boy on that rape charge.’ He listened a moment, then said, ‘Yeah, you got a warrant for him… . Okay, I’ll expect you.’ He hung up and turned to look at me again. ‘You’ll get thirty years in this state, boy.’

I was slow getting it. My first reaction was surprise. ‘What the hell?’ I lisped. ‘You having me arrested?’ I kind of half thought maybe they were joking.

Everyone in the room gave me a quick, startled look. Then the big guard said, ‘That’s right, boy. The lady swore out a warrant.’

No one else said anything; they just looked at me.

I didn’t get scared right away; I’d been thinking so hard about what was going to happen to her when the people knew the truth. I was even kind of amused to think she was simple enough to think she could get away with that in California. But my mind began going over the evidence. I still wasn’t alarmed.

Then it smacked me, shook me to the core. I don’t know what set it off; it must have been deep inside of me—always inside of me. I knew in one great flash she really could send me to the pen for thirty years. My word against hers, and all the evidence on her side. I knew there was no way in the world I could prove I hadn’t tried to rape her.

Before, up in the room with her, with the mob beating at the door, I’d been instinctively scared of being caught with a white woman screaming, ‘Rape.’ Scared of the mob; scared of the violence; just scared because I was black and she was white; a trapped, cornered, physical fear.

But now I was scared in a different way. Not of the violence. Not of the mob. Not of physical hurt. But of America, of American justice. The jury and the judge. The people themselves. Of the inexorability of one conclusion—that I was guilty. In that one brief flash I could see myself trying to prove my innocence and nobody believing it. A white woman yelling, ‘Rape,’ and a Negro caught locked in the room. The whole structure of American thought was against me; American tradition had convicted me a hundred years before. And standing there in an American courtroom, through all the phoney formality of an American trial, having to take it, knowing that I was innocent and that I didn’t have a chance.

I was scared more than I’ve ever been scared in all my life: a rational, reasonable, irrefutable, cold-headed scare. But I wasn’t panicky. My mind got sharp, cunning; I thought of only one thing—
escape
.

A truck drove up, stopped to be inspected. One of the gatekeepers started out the front door; the other one reached for a form to copy the licence number. I swung a long left hook into the big guard’s belly with everything I had, went out on the shoulders of the gatekeeper, roughing him to the ground. I stumbled over him, beyond, caught on my hands and one knee, felt the gravel bite into my palms, the pain rack me from the knee; heard the guard captain shout, ‘Don’t shoot! Catch him!’ The instinct of self-preservation got me up and moving; I’d lost a boot and shook the other one off; heard the sudden clutter of action behind me, dug steps with a high-kneed, churning motion, trying to get some speed. It took a flat twelve hundred years to get to the back of the truck, around it, on the other side; and another dozen centuries to get across the lighted stretch of driveway before I reached the darkness of the parking lot.

I didn’t think; my mind was following the blind line of action, concentrating on the problem of getting greater motion out of my body, nothing else.

I figured my car was way down to the left, ducked sharp between two cars, skinned my shin against a bumper, stumbled over something in the dark, fell flat, and got up again. I ran past my car and didn’t see it, wheeled and sent a stabbing gaze along the row, rigid, tense, desperate, but not terrified. I spotted it three cars back, heard the guards looking for me two rows over, squatted on my hands and knees and walked back to it bear-fashion, hid below the fenders of the cars.

I thought I never would get the door unlocked; to get the key in the ignition took even longer. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the guards coming toward me. I was parked in a double row with the cars heading in, V-shaped and tight together. A double line of six-by-sixes separated the two rows, served as barriers. There was a vacant space in front of me, at a sixtydegree angle. I cut sharp and headed into it without a thought of whether I could make it; took the double line of six-by-sixes on the starter before the motor caught; heard the back bumper hook into an adjoining fender and the motor roar at the same instant. Noise shattered the night as I yanked the fender off, sideswiped the car in the other line, straightened down the driveway.

Down in the lighted section by the central drive somebody ran out in front of me. I headed into him, missed him by a breath as he leaped away, made a screaming left turn toward the harbour road, but not quite tight enough, and dented my fenders fore and aft against the protective posts.

A P.E. train was coming toward the crossing and I didn’t have time to shift. I got across ahead of it so close I heard it ping against my rear bumper as it swivelled the rear end out of line. I had to fight it out of a ditch, felt it lurch crazily beneath me, pulled it right into the harbour road on one thin prayer.

I hadn’t turned on my lights and at the first turn a big, fastmoving Diesel cutting a long bend on the wrong side almost ran me down. I reached down and switched on the bright lights, noticed that fog was settling on the night, turned on my fog lights, and stood my stocking foot on the gas as if I was weighing myself. The snaky road came up over the hood, bent, straightened, and came up again. Behind, motor roar spilled like a P-38. The hood squatted so low it looked as though the crankcase would rub.

I started to brake for a left turn into Figueroa, saw a truck coming, and knew I couldn’t make it, kept on over to Alameda. Outside of Wilmington a siren blew for me, but I didn’t even slow. All I could think of was flight, desperate, cold-headed flight.

I came into the jog beyond the refineries where the P.E. tracks crossed again so fast I couldn’t make the bend, went down the tracks, jumped into the gulley, heard water splash, came out on the road down on the floor, hanging to the wheel for dear life. I thought for a moment I’d wrecked it that time, but when I stepped on the gas it took life again.

Then I caught a stretch of open road, watched the needle climb. The speed cooled me slightly and the Buick drove itself. Thought came back into my mind, made me calculate. I looked at the gas. The needle was on ‘1’; I knew that’d give me three with the two reserve—three gallons. I could get some gas. Then I remembered suddenly that I didn’t have any money. Finally I realized I couldn’t use my car anyway; the cops would be on the lookout for it; they’d get the description and the licence number from the yard.

Scare hung over me like a cold grey shroud, but I knew I was thinking straight. I knew I had to get out of California before daylight, go somewhere and hide until I got healed up. Las Vegas, maybe. All kinds of strange Negroes had gone to Las Vegas; I could hide there in one of those whorehouses for a time without attracting any attention. After that I’d go east, to Harlem, maybe, take another name, and start life over. Because I knew I couldn’t beat that rap that Madge had hung on me.

But first I’d have to get some money. I had about a hundred and ninety-odd dollars in my room. That was as far as I’d let myself think. I’d keep on the dark side streets, do about thirtyfive. I kept down to Fiftieth, turned left back to Untility Fan, came into Long Beach by the cannery, turned left again to Fifty-fourth, right to Central, right on Central to Fifty-first, left over to San Pedro. I was about to turn down Wall when I suddenly realized I’d better call first.

I turned around, drove back Fifty-first to the barbecue joint just before Central, parked half a block up the street, got out, and walked the rest of the way in my stocking feet. Before I went in I took a gander up the street, then peeped inside through the window. The place was filled with a lot of noisy, laughing, half-drunk people, men and women, all coloured. I braced myself and went in, kept on through to the phone booth at the rear. People turned and looked at me. One woman giggled, and another cracked, ‘What run over him?’ but the guy with her said, ‘Tend to yo’ own damn business.’

Ella Mae answered my ring. ‘Look, I’m in trouble—’ I began, but she cut me off.

‘Is that you, Bob?’

‘Yeah, listen—’

‘Don’t come home,’ she said in a whisper. ‘The police are here—’ Her voice broke off. I heard a scuffle. In the background I could still hear her telling me not to come home, but yelling now. Then a man’s voice said, ‘Listen, Jones, the best thing you can do—’

I hung up, hurried out of the joint without looking to right or left. So the L.A. cops were already looking for me; that meant I’d have to keep out of public places. I began feeling pressed, trapped, conspicuous. I turned around, started to go back to the filling station at Fifty-fourth and try to get some gas on credit, then remembered that my ration book was at home. Every time I passed a car I drew up into a knot inside. I felt as though I were driving around a hook-and-ladder truck.

Finally I remembered a woman I knew who lived on Crocker. She worked in private family but was off on Thursday nights and she might be home. She had a couple of roomers, but they’d either be asleep or out and I had to take that chance.

I drove over to Crocker, pulled up far enough in the driveway beside the house so the car couldn’t be spotted from down the street, got out, and knocked at her window. There was no answer at first and I knocked again. A female voice said, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Bob, Hazel,’ I lisped. ‘I’m in a little trouble and I want to use your phone.’

‘You don’t sound like Bob,’ she said sceptically. ‘What’s the matter with your voice?’

‘I got some teeth knocked out,’ I lisped.

‘Oh!’ Then she said, ‘What kinda trouble? You ain’t stole nothing, have you?’

‘No, I hit a peck with my tyre iron,’ I lied. ‘The police are looking for me.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘All right, come around to the back door.’

I went around the yard, felt the cool damp grass on my stocking feet. She opened the door into the kitchen without turning on the lights. In the darkness she was just a big vague shape.

‘I oughtn’ta be doing this,’ she grumbled. ‘No telling what kinda trouble you might be getting me into.’

‘I won’t be long,’ I promised.

‘You know where the phone is.’ Then after a moment she asked, ‘You ain’t killed nobody?’

‘No, he’s not bad hurt.’

She paused for a moment to look at me in the darkness, then asked, ‘What you doing with all them bandages on your head? Somebody beat you up?’

‘The police.’ I lied.

‘Oh!’ She started away, stopped. ‘Don’t bother ‘bout the door when you go out.’

The phone was in the kitchen, I dialled Alice in the dark. She answered the phone herself; she had an extension in her room and always answered calls after midnight.

‘It’s Bob,’ I lisped. ‘I’m—’

She cut me off immediately. ‘If you’re drunk, Bob, I don’t want to talk to you. We waited dinner for an hour—’

‘I’m not drunk,’ I cut her off. ‘I got some teeth knocked out. I’m in trouble. And I’m in a hurry—’

‘What sort of trouble?’ Her voice was sharp, anxious.

‘I got in a jam at the yard,’ I lisped, talking low so Hazel wouldn’t hear.

‘Talk louder,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘I got in some trouble at the yard,’ I said, talking louder. ‘I got messed up with that white woman I had the argument with and she’s charging me with rape—’

‘Rape!’ Her voice was shocked, incredulous.

‘Look, I can’t explain now. I’m in an awful hurry,’ I said. ‘The police are looking for me. I didn’t do it—you know that—but I’ll have to explain when I see you.’

‘Oh, Bob, you would have to get into something like that,’ she said. Her voice sounded tearful.

‘I tell you I haven’t done anything,’ I said impatiently. ‘But nobody will believe it. Right now I’ve got to get away. What I want is to get whatever money you have on hand—and your car. I can’t use mine and I can’t go home to get any money—the police are there. I’ll drive over to Western and—’

‘But if you haven’t done anything, why do you have to run away—’

‘I told you, they’re charging me—’

‘But this sounds foolish. No one can just be charged— What can they do?’

‘They can put me in the pen for thirty years,’ I said. ‘Look, let me explain when I see you—’

‘But if you’re innocent the worst thing you can do is run away.’

‘Listen,’ I began. ‘You don’t understand. I didn’t do anything, but I can’t prove it. I was in the room with the woman when she started screaming—’

‘Screaming!’ She got shocked all over again. ‘Did you assault her—physically, I mean?’

‘I can’t explain now,’ I said again. ‘It just happened I got caught with her and she started hollering, “Rape.” I’ll tell you about it—’

‘But I won’t help you run away,’ she cut in, getting her Americanism to working. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. I’ll engage Blakely Moore to defend you. If you’re innocent, Bob, you’ll be acquitted. You forget there are laws. A person just can’t charge you with a crime you haven’t committed.’

‘Look, Alice, this is serious,’ I said. ‘This isn’t just talk any more. I don’t expect you to keep our engagement. That’s off, of course. But I need some help. I know what I’m doing. You’re still talking in the air. But I know if I go before trial I’ll be convicted. I know I haven’t got a chance. I’m telling you—’

‘But you can’t know that if you are innocent,’ she argued.

‘Okay, I don’t know it, but that isn’t the point right now.’ My mouth felt sore and ragged and I was at the end of my patience. ‘The point is will you let me have some money and your car? I’ve got to get away. After I’m gone you can have Moore investigate—’