Invisible Man (12 page)

“I should know my own grandfather! He’s Thomas Jefferson and I’m his grandson—on the ‘field-nigger’ side,” the tall man said.

“Sylvester, I do believe that you’re right. I certainly do,” he said, staring at Mr. Norton. “Look at those features. Exactly like yours—from the identical mold. Are you sure he didn’t spit you upon the earth, fully clothed?”

“No, no, that was my father,” the man said earnestly.

And he began to curse his father violently as we moved for the door. Halley was there waiting. Somehow he’d gotten the crowd to quieten down and a space was cleared in the center of the room. The men came close to look at Mr. Norton.

“Somebody bring a chair.”

“Yeah, let Mister Eddy sit down.”

“That ain’t no Mister Eddy, man, that’s John D. Rockefeller,” someone said.

“Here’s a chair for the Messiah.”

“Stand back y’all,” Halley ordered. “Give him some room.”

Burnside, who had been a doctor, rushed forward and felt for Mr. Norton’s pulse.

“It’s solid! This man has a
solid
pulse! Instead of beating, it
vibrates.
That’s very unusual. Very.”

Someone pulled him away. Halley reappeared with a bottle and a glass. “Here, some of y’all tilt his head back.”

And before I could move, a short, pock-marked man appeared and took Mr. Norton’s head between his hands, tilting it at arm’s length and then, pinching the chin gently like a barber about to apply a razor, gave a sharp, swift movement.

“Pow!”

Mr. Norton’s head jerked like a jabbed punching bag. Five pale red lines bloomed on the white cheek, glowing like fire beneath translucent stone. I could not believe my eyes. I wanted to run. A woman tittered. I saw several men rush for the door.

“Cut it out, you damn fool!”

“A case of hysteria,” the pock-marked man said quietly.

“Git the hell out of the way,” Halley said. “Somebody git that stool-pigeon attendant from upstairs. Git him down here, quick!”

“A mere mild case of hysteria,” the pock-marked man said as they pushed him away.

“Hurry with the drink, Halley!”

“Heah, school-boy, you hold the glass. This here’s brandy I been saving for myself.”

Someone whispered tonelessly into my ear, “You see, I told you that it would occur at 5:30. Already the Creator has come.” It was the stolid-faced man.

I saw Halley tilt the bottle and the oily amber of brandy sloshing into the glass. Then tilting Mr. Norton’s head back, I put the glass to his lips and poured. A fine brown stream ran from the corner of his mouth, down his delicate chin. The room was suddenly quiet. I felt a slight movement against my hand, like a child’s breast when it whimpers at the end of a spell of crying. The fine-veined eyelids flickered. He coughed. I saw a slow red flush creep, then spurt, up his neck, spreading over his face.

“Hold it under his nose, school-boy. Let ’im smell it.”

I waved the glass beneath Mr. Norton’s nose. He opened his pale blue eyes. They seemed watery now in the red flush that bathed his face. He tried to sit up, his right hand fluttering to his chin. His eyes widened, moved quickly from face to face. Then coming to mine, the moist eyes focused with recognition.

“You were unconscious, sir,” I said.

“Where am I, young man?” he asked wearily.

“This is the Golden Day, sir.”

“What?”

“The Golden Day. It’s a kind of sporting-and-gambling house,” I added reluctantly.

“Now give him another drinka brandy,” Halley said.

I poured a drink and handed it to him. He sniffed it, closed his eyes as in puzzlement, then drank; his cheeks filled out like small bellows; he was rinsing his mouth.

“Thank you,” he said, a little stronger now. “What is this place?”

“The Golden Day,” said several patients in unison.

He looked slowly around him, up to the balcony, with its scrolled and carved wood. A large flag hung lank above the floor. He frowned.

“What was this building used for in the past?” he said.

“It was a church, then a bank, then it was a restaurant and a fancy gambling house, and now
we
got it,” Halley explained. “I think somebody said it used to be a jailhouse too.”

“They let us come here once a week to raise a little hell,” someone said.

“I couldn’t buy a drink to take out, sir, so I had to bring you inside,” I explained in dread.

He looked about him. I followed his eyes and was amazed to see the varied expressions on the patients’ faces as they silently returned his gaze. Some were hostile, some cringing, some horrified; some, who when among themselves were most violent, now appeared as submissive as children. And some seemed strangely amused.

“Are all of you patients?” Mr. Norton asked.

“Me, I just runs the joint,” Halley said. “These here other fellows …”

“We’re patients sent here as therapy,” a short, fat, very intelligent-looking man said. “But,” he smiled, “they send along an attendant, a kind of censor, to see that the therapy fails.”

“You’re nuts. I’m a dynamo of energy. I come to charge my batteries,” one of the vets insisted.

“I’m a student of history, sir,” another interrupted with dramatic gestures. “The world moves in a circle like a roulette wheel. In the beginning, black is on top, in the middle epochs, white holds the odds, but soon Ethiopia shall stretch forth her noble wings! Then place your money on the black!” His voice throbbed with emotion. “Until then, the sun holds no heat, there’s ice in the heart of the earth. Two years from now and I’ll be old enough to give my mulatto mother a bath, the half-white bitch!” he added, beginning to leap up and down in an explosion of glassy-eyed fury.

Mr. Norton blinked his eyes and straightened up.

“I’m a physician, may I take your pulse?” Burnside said, seizing Mr. Norton’s wrist.

“Don’t pay him no mind, mister. He ain’t been no doctor in ten years. They caught him trying to change some blood into money.”

“I did too!” the man screamed. “I discovered it and John D. Rockefeller stole the formula from me.”

“Mr. Rockefeller did you say?” Mr. Norton said. “I’m sure you must be mistaken.”

“WHAT’S GOING ON DOWN THERE?” a voice shouted from the balcony. Everyone turned. I saw a huge black giant of a man, dressed only in white shorts, swaying on the stairs. It was Supercargo, the attendant. I hardly recognized him without his hard-starched white uniform. Usually he walked around threatening the men with a strait jacket which he always carried over his arm, and usually they were quiet and submissive in his presence. But now they seemed not to recognize him and began shouting curses.

“How you gon keep order in the place if you gon git drunk?” Halley shouted. “Charlene! Charlene!”

“Yeah?” a woman’s voice, startling in its carrying power, answered sulkily from a room off the balcony.

“I want you to git that stool-pigeoning, joy-killing, nut-crushing bum back in there with you and sober him up. Then git him in his white suit and down here to keep order. We got white folks in the house.”

A woman appeared on the balcony, drawing a woolly pink robe about her. “Now you lissen here, Halley,” she drawled, “I’m a woman. If you want him dressed, you can do it yourself. I don’t put on but one man’s clothes and he’s in N’Orleans.”

“Never mind all that. Git that stool pigeon sober!”

“I want order down there,” Supercargo boomed, “and if there’s white folks down there, I wan’s
double
order.”

Suddenly there was an angry roar from the men back near the bar and I saw them rush the stairs.

“Get him!”

“Let’s give him some order!”

“Out of my way.”

Five men charged the stairs. I saw the giant bend and clutch the posts at the top of the stairs with both hands, bracing himself, his body gleaming bare in his white shorts. The little man who had slapped Mr. Norton was in front, and, as he sprang up the long flight, I saw the attendant set himself and kick, catching the little man just as he reached the top, hard in the chest, sending him backwards in a curving dive into the midst of the men behind him. Supercargo got set to swing his leg again. It was a narrow stair and only one man could get up at a time. As fast as they rushed up, the giant kicked them back. He swung his leg, kicking them down like a fungo-hitter batting out flies. Watching him, I forgot Mr. Norton. The Golden Day was in an uproar. Half-dressed women appeared from the rooms off the balcony. Men hooted and yelled as at a football game.

“I WANT ORDER!” the giant shouted as he sent a man flying down the flight of stairs.

“THEY THROWING BOTTLES OF LIQUOR!” a woman screamed. “REAL LIQUOR!”

“That’s a order he don’t want,” someone said.

A shower of bottles and glasses splashing whiskey crashed against the balcony. I saw Supercargo snap suddenly erect and grab his forehead, his face bathed in whiskey. “Eeeee!” he cried, “Eeeee!” Then I saw him wave, rigid from his ankles upward. For a moment the men on the stairs were motionless, watching him. Then they sprang forward.

Supercargo grabbed wildly at the balustrade as they snatched his feet from beneath him and started down. His head bounced against the steps making a sound like a series of gunshots as they ran dragging him by his ankles, like volunteer firemen running with a hose. The crowd surged forward. Halley yelled near my ear. I saw the man being dragged toward the center of the room.

“Give the bastard some order!”

“Here I’m forty-five and he’s been acting like he’s my old man!”

“So you like to kick, huh?” a tall man said, aiming a shoe at the attendant’s head. The flesh above his right eye jumped out as though it had been inflated.

Then I heard Mr. Norton beside me shouting, “No, no! Not when he’s down!”

“Lissen at the white folks,” someone said.

“He’s the white folks’ man!”

Men were jumping upon Supercargo with both feet now and I felt such an excitement that I wanted to join them. Even the girls were yelling, “Give it to him good!” “He never pays me!” “Kill him!”

“Please, y’all, not in here! Not in my place!”

“You can’t speak your mind when he’s on duty!”

“Hell, no!”

Somehow I got pushed away from Mr. Norton and found myself beside the man called Sylvester.

“Watch this, school-boy,” he said. “See there, where his ribs are bleeding?”

I nodded my head.

“Now don’t move your eyes.”

I watched the spot as though compelled, just beneath the lower rib and above the hip-bone, as Sylvester measured carefully with his toe and kicked as though he were punting a football. Supercargo let out a groan like an injured horse.

“Try it, school-boy, it feels so good. It gives you relief,” Sylvester said. “Sometimes I get so afraid of him I feel that he’s inside my head. There!” he said, giving Supercargo another kick.

As I watched, a man sprang on Supercargo’s chest with both feet and he lost consciousness. They began throwing cold beer on him, reviving him, only to kick him unconscious again. Soon he was drenched in blood and beer.

“The bastard’s out cold.”

“Throw him out.”

“Naw, wait a minute. Give me a hand somebody.”

They threw him upon the bar, stretching him out with his arms folded across his chest like a corpse.

“Now, let’s have a drink!”

Halley was slow in getting behind the bar and they cursed him.

“Get back there and serve us, you big sack of fat!”

“Gimme a rye!”

“Up here, funk-buster!”

“Shake them sloppy hips!”

“Okay, okay, take it easy,” Halley said, rushing to pour them drinks. “Just put y’all’s money where your mouth is.”

With Supercargo lying helpless upon the bar, the men whirled about like maniacs. The excitement seemed to have tilted some of the more delicately balanced ones too far. Some made hostile speeches at the top of their voices against the hospital, the state and the universe. The one who called himself a composer was banging away the one wild piece he seemed to know on the out-of-tune piano, striking the keyboard with fists and elbows and filling in other effects in a bass voice that moaned like a bear in agony. One of the most educated ones touched my arm. He was a former chemist who was never seen without his shining Phi Beta Kappa key.

“The men have lost control,” he said through the uproar. “I think you’d better leave.”

“I’m trying to,” I said, “as soon as I can get over to Mr. Norton.”

Mr. Norton was gone from where I had left him. I rushed here and there through the noisy men, calling his name.

When I found him he was under the stairs. Somehow he had been pushed there by the scuffling, reeling men and he lay sprawled in the chair like an aged doll. In the dim light his features were sharp and white and his closed eyes well-defined lines in a well-tooled face. I shouted his name above the roar of the men, and got no answer. He was out again. I shook him, gently, then roughly, but still no flicker of his wrinkled lids. Then some of the milling men pushed me up against him and suddenly a mass of whiteness was looming two inches from my eyes; it was only his face but I felt a shudder of nameless horror. I had never been so close to a white person before. In a panic I struggled to get away. With his eyes closed he seemed more threatening than with them open. He was like a formless white death, suddenly appeared before me, a death which had been there all the time and which had now revealed itself in the madness of the Golden Day.

“Stop screaming!” a voice commanded, and I felt myself pulled away. It was the short fat man.

I clamped my mouth shut, aware for the first time that the shrill sound was coming from my own throat. I saw the man’s face relax as he gave me a wry smile.

“That’s better,” he shouted into my ear. “He’s only a man. Remember that. He’s only a man!”

I wanted to tell him that Mr. Norton was much more than that, that he was a rich white man and in my charge; but the very idea that I was responsible for him was too much for me to put into words.

“Let us take him to the balcony,” the man said, pushing me toward Mr. Norton’s feet. I moved automatically, grasping the thin ankles as he raised the white man by the armpits and backed from beneath the stairs. Mr. Norton’s head lolled upon his chest as though he were drunk or dead.