If He Hollers Let Him Go (28 page)

‘If I thought it was for your own good I wouldn’t hesitate,’ she said. ‘But I know it isn’t. You’re excited and frightened and aren’t thinking straight. This is the state of California—I was born here. Why can’t you be sensible for once—give yourself up and I will bring Blake down with me the first thing—’

‘Will you do it or won’t you?’ I cut in.

‘No, I won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything else—within reason. But I won’t help you escape. If you’re innocent you have nothing to fear. I’ll fight it through the courts with you until—’

I hung up, sat there for a moment, debating whether to call Hazel again and get what money she had. Finally I decided against it. It might get her into trouble.

All of a sudden my body began shaking; I began going hot and cold all over as if I had chilblains. I peered around in the darkness to see if she had anything to drink out there, found a pint bottle half full of some kind of whisky. I tilted it to my mouth, drank, swallowed, choked, then drank again. Then I remembered my pills. I shook some of them loose in my palm, I don’t know how many, got a half glass of water at the sink, washed them down.

I heard motor sounds outside, thought it might be the police, ran out the back door across the yard to the fence separating the properties, ready to jump over and run through to the other street. The car passed. I went around, got into my car, backed into the street.

Instinct carried me over toward Central, into the heart of the ghetto. I parked in a dark spot in the middle of the block back of the Dunbar Hotel. I hadn’t felt any pain before I’d telephoned Alice, but now I ached in every joint.

The bandages had fallen from my knees, had worked off my elbows. I pulled up my coverall legs, fingered the lacerated kneecaps. I must have landed on my knees when I fell off the jack ladder. Then I groped around underneath the seat on the floor until I found my first-aid kit, felt for the bottle of mercurochrome, slowly and painstakingly painted the lacerated spots. When my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness I wrapped fresh bandages about my knees, taped them, tried to bandage my elbows again but couldn’t make it.

As long as I’d kept moving my mind had remained concentrated on the action. But now a dull hopelessness settled over it, an untempered futility. I felt pressed, cornered, black, as small and weak and helpless as any Negro share-cropper facing a white mob in Georgia. I felt without soul, without mind, at the very end. Everything was useless, fight was useless, nothing I could do would make any difference now. I switched on the ignition, looked at the gas. It was on ‘Empty’—I didn’t know how long it had been there. I didn’t want to get into some white neighbourhood and run out of gas. If I had to be caught I’d rather be caught right there in the heart of the Negro district. Chances were they’d catch me before daybreak anyway.

I went back over everything that had happened, detail by detail. I could think about it now: it didn’t make any difference at all. I felt very calm and reasonable. They were going to catch me and give me thirty years in prison. For raping a white woman I hadn’t even tried to rape.

Then it burst wide open in my mind. I wasn’t excited. I looked at it objectively, as if it concerned somebody else. I’d kill Johnny Stoddart and let them hang me for it. All they could ever do to me then would be to get even. I was going but I’d take him with me.

I opened the glove compartment, got out my pistol I’d put there Monday afternoon, snapped on the overhead light, looked to see if it was loaded. Satisfied, I put it back, snapped off the light, mashed the starter, turned on the headlights, I felt for a cigarette, didn’t have any. I noticed that my hands were trembling, but I didn’t feel nervous.

I went ahead to Central, turned south to Slauson, doing a slow twenty-five, observing all the traffic rules, stopping at the boulevard stops, putting out my hand when I turned. At Slauson I turned toward Soto, stopped at Soto for the red light.

A police cruiser pulled up beside me. The cop on the outside gave me a casual glance, saw that I was a Negro, and came to attention. He leaned out the window and said, ‘Pull over to the curb, boy.’

For just an instant I debated whether to try to make a break, but I knew I didn’t have enough gas to get away and there was no need of getting another whipping for nothing. I pulled over to the curb, cut the motor. The cops pulled up ahead of me, got out, and came back.

‘Let’s see your operator’s licence,’ one said.

I fished out my billfold, handed it to him.

He looked at it, turned the leaf and looked at my draft classification, then caught sight of Alice’s picture. He showed it to the other cop. They grinned.

One turned his flashlight on me. ‘Whew!’ he whistled, then said, ‘Get out!’

It wasn’t until then I remembered about my pistol but it was too late to worry about that now. For an instant I hesitated, debated whether to try; then I thought What the hell’s the use? got out, and stood beside the running board.

‘Who you been fighting, boy?’ one asked.

It startled me. I knew then that they didn’t know I was wanted; they’d just stopped me because I was a black boy in a big car in a white neighbourhood.

‘I was in an accident at the plant where I work,’ I lisped.

‘Where’s your shop identification?’

‘I left it at home.’

‘What you doing out in this neighbourhood?’

‘I was on my way home.’

He turned to the other cop. ‘Let him go?’ he asked.

The other cop shrugged.

The first cop flashed the light into the car, looked about the seats, pulled open the glove compartment, and brought out the pistol.

‘Aha!’ he said.

The other cop took me by the arm while the one with the flashlight locked the car ignition, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors. Then they got on each side of me, walked me back to the cruiser. One sat in the back with me; the other one drove.

They held me at the desk. Finally a lieutenant came out and looked at me. ‘Aren’t you the boy they want in Pedro for that rape at Atlas?’ he asked.

I didn’t reply. He slapped me.

‘Answer when I speak to you,’ he said.

I still didn’t answer. He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to get rough with me or not, then turned impatiently to the cops who picked me up. ‘What we got on him here?’ he asked.

‘Gun in his car,’ the copper said.

The lieutenant turned to the desk sergeant, ‘Lock him up and call Pedro. We’ll let them have him first.’ Then he stood there, looking important for a moment, and went out through a door.

The desk sergeant motioned the jailer to take me away. He took me back and locked me in a cell with a guy with a cut head. He lay on his bunk, moaning slightly. I imagined he was more scared than hurt. I stood there, leaning against the bars, not thinking about anything at all. Some time later, I don’t know how long, the jailer came and took me out again, and two other policemen took me out past the sergeant’s desk again and put me in a car and drove me down to San Pedro.

They put me in a cell by myself this time. It was a dirty grimy cell, stinking of urine, sweat, and filth. The cotton mattress was bare, stained in several spots, looked as though it might be crawling with lice. I didn’t give a goddamn; I stretched out on it. I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again.

I dreamed that when I came to Johnny Stoddart’s house it was dark and I walked up to the door and pushed the bell then I rapped on the door panel and shouted, ‘Western Union,’ and a light came on inside and the door was unlocked and I put my left hand on the knob, pulled my gun with my right, and rode it in.

Johnny Stoddart’s eyes popped and his face drained colour and he stood in rigid amazement all dressed up to go to work and over his shoulder I saw his wife coming from the lighted kitchen to see what it was all about. I put the gun to his heart and pulled the trigger three times, the sounds exploding in the house and echoing in the street, and the slugs knocking him back a little. He kept clinging to the knob of the door as he started going down, crumbling slowly to the floor as if he was squatting down and it was painful and finally his hand let loose the door-knob and his chest hit his knees and he pitched doubled-up at my feet.

I looked down at him and knew he was dead and felt a crazy exultation, as if I had conquered the world and gotten past, gotten through, wrapped up in the glory of immortality, as free, goddamnit, as Thomas Jefferson, aw, goddamnit, you had me, but I’m out now—
out
—I’m broken out, and now all you white sons of bitches can go to hell. It was all I could do to keep from emptying the gun into his body.

Then I saw the woman’s face and it was stretched in vertical lines with the mouth opening and closing soundlessly as she stood in the kitchen doorway with her hands held rigidly in an odd pose in front of her and I turned and walked slowly back to the street and all inside of me felt swollen and bursting with joy as if I’d just hit a hundred-thousand-dollar jackpot. I wanted to run and leap and shout and roll in the goddamned street.

I walked past houses and felt good, fine, wonderful, and felt something heavy in my hand and looked down and saw the gun and without being aware of what I was doing sat down on the curb and took out my handkerchief and began wiping it carefully for fingerprints then thought of the white boy falling dead at my feet and all of a sudden just burst out laughing like hell.

The woman ran out into the street and began yelling, ‘Murder! Murder! Murder!’ in a high hysterical shriek and I jumped up and dropped the gun and started to run and the woman kept screaming, ‘Police! Catch him! There he goes! Murderer!’ and the voice pushed me on.

After a moment I heard footsteps behind me and looked over my shoulder and saw the biggest man I ever saw in the uniform of a Marine sergeant with rows of stripes and decorations on his chest and I turned and dove for his legs but he leaped over me and turned on the balls of his feet and I staggered to my feet and dodged him and ran around the corner and a dog came out of the shadows and started barking and in the distance I could still hear the woman screaming.

The Marine was trotting along behind me chuckling to himself and after we’d run about a block I stopped and wheeled around and swung at him and he caught my arm, twisted it behind my back and put a half-nelson about my throat and marched me down the street. I didn’t struggle. I knew it wasn’t any use. We came to an alley and he pushed me down it and stopped and turned me around to face him releasing his hold and I couldn’t see his face but his breath smelled like a gin barrel.

‘Whatcha do, boy, kill somebody?’ he asked in a husky chesty whisper and I knew he was reeling drunk. ‘Yeah, I killed the son of a bitch, what you gonna do about it?’ He asked, ‘Was he a Jew?’ and I said, ‘Naw, he was a goddamned peckerwood like you,’ and for an instant he didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t hear him breathing and I looked for him to hit me, probably beat me to death, and I didn’t give a goddamn. Then he began chuckling and I could smell his breath on me again and he asked, ‘Whatja kill him for?’ and I said, ‘He called me a nigger.’ He laughed louder and louder until his big booming laugh woke up the neighbourhood and he said, ‘That’s right, you kill ‘em every time.’ He laughed some more then he said, ‘I always wondered ‘bout you folks whether you ever wanted to kill us like we wanna kill you.’ He stopped and panted and wiped the tears out of his eyes and said, ‘I’m from Florida and ev’ybody I knew said they’d killed a nigger or two—at least one nigger—and I used to b’lieve ‘em and I got to packing ‘round my rifle looking for a nigger to kill till my old man found out what I was doing and said I couldn’t kill no niggers until I got to be twenty-one and by that time I’d joined the Marines so I ain’t never got to kill a nigger.’ He sounded regretful looking at me and I got to wondering if he was thinking about killing me so I told him, ‘I raped a white woman too,’ and that tickled him all over again and he laughed loud and long and said, ‘Hell, I’ve raped all kinda women, white women, black women, yellow women, red women, and the only reason I ain’t raped no green women is ‘cause I couldn’t find none.’ Then he stopped and laughed again and said, ‘I done killed all kinda sonabitches, raped all kinda women’—pointing to the decorations on his chest—‘see these, the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, the Presidential Memorial Citation, even a Good Conduct Medal. I got these for killing a lot of sonabitches I ain’t even seen until after they was dead.

‘Hell, boy, so you killed a man because he called you a nigger,’ he said and laughed, ‘and raped a white woman all in one night. Was she the man’s woman you killed?’ ‘Naw,’ I said, ‘she don’t even live nowhere near here,’ and that started him off again. ‘Goddamn you’re some boy,’ he said, ‘rape a white woman in one part of town then run clear across town and kill a white man ‘cause he called you a nigger.’ He stopped and wiped the tears out of his eyes, and said regretfully looking at me, ‘I ain’t killed a nigger yet.’ Then he drew slowly back and let it go and I saw it coming big as a house but there wasn’t anything I could do but wait for it …

I woke up on the floor. Somebody was banging on the bars, saying, ‘Damn if you didn’t fall right off your bunk. They musta been after you.’

I must have thought he was the Marine because the first thing I felt was I didn’t give a damn whether he killed me or not; I had made it. Then I saw he was the jailer and the day came back. When I tried to stand up nothing worked; I tried three times, finally made it by pieces. I was sore, stiff, ached in every joint. My head throbbed and the wound beat with my heart. My mouth felt useless, swollen shut; my tongue felt too big; I was thirsty, lousy, and really beat—low in the mind as a man can get. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes with my knuckles, stood blinking at him.

He unlocked the door. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky. Judge Morgan wants to see you in his chambers.’

I stepped into the bull pen, followed him dumbly. We went through some gates, down some corridors, came into an office with a big ornate desk and some big maroon leather chairs. There was a deep green carpet on the floor and two windows with clean white venetian blinds. In the distance was the harbour in the high bright sun.