Invisible Man (58 page)

“Rinehart, baby, is that you?” she said.

Rinehart, I thought. So it works. She had her hand on my arm and faster than I thought I heard myself answer, “Is that you, baby?” and waited with tense breath.

“Well, for once you’re on time,” she said. “But what you doing bareheaded, where’s your new hat I bought you?”

I wanted to laugh. The scent of Christmas Night was enfolding me now and I saw her face draw closer, her eyes widening.

“Say, you ain’t Rinehart, man. What you trying to do? You don’t even talk like Rine. What’s your story?”

I laughed, backing away. “I guess we were both mistaken,” I said.

She stepped backward clutching her bag, watching me, confused.

“I really meant no harm,” I said. “I’m sorry. Who was it you mistook me for?”

“Rinehart, and you’d better not let him catch you pretending to be him.”

“No,” I said. “But you seemed so pleased to see him that I couldn’t resist it. He’s really a lucky man.”

“And I could have sworn you was—Man, you git away from here before you get me in trouble,” she said, moving aside, and I left.

It was very strange. But that about the hat was a good idea, I thought, hurrying along now and looking out for Ras’s men. I was wasting time. At the first hat shop I went in and bought the widest hat in stock and put it on. With this, I thought, I should be seen even in a snowstorm—only they’d think I was someone else.

Then I was back in the street and moving toward the subway. My eyes adjusted quickly; the world took on a dark-green intensity, the lights of cars glowed like stars, faces were a mysterious blur; the garish signs of movie houses muted down to a soft sinister glowing. I headed back for Ras’s meeting with a bold swagger. This was the real test, if it worked I would go on to Hambro’s without further trouble. In the angry period to come I would be able to move about.

A couple of men approached, eating up the walk with long jaunty strides that caused their heavy silk sports shirts to flounce rhythmically upon their bodies. They too wore dark glasses, their hats were set high upon their heads, the brims turned down. A couple of hipsters, I thought, just as they spoke.

“What you sayin’, daddy-o,” they said.

“Rinehart, poppa, tell us what you putting down,” they said.

Oh, hell, they’re probably his friends, I thought, waving and moving on.

“We know what you’re doing, Rinehart,” one of them called. “Play it cool, ole man, play it cool!”

I waved again as though in on the joke. They laughed behind me. I was nearing the end of the block now, wet with sweat. Who was this Rinehart and what
was
he putting down? I’d have to learn more about him to avoid further misidentifications …

A car passed with its radio blaring. Ahead I could hear the Exhorter barking harshly to the crowd. Then I was moving close, and coming to a stop conspicuously in the space left for pedestrians to pass through the crowd. To the rear they were lined up two deep before the store windows. Before me the listeners merged in a green-tinted gloom. The Exhorter gestured violently, blasting the Brotherhood.

“The time for ahction is here. We mahst chase them out of Harlem,” he cried. And for a second I thought he had caught me in the sweep of his eyes, and tensed.

“Ras said chase them! It is time Ras the Exhorter become Ras the
DESTROYER
!”

Shouts of agreement arose and I looked behind me, seeing the men who had followed me and thinking, What did he mean,
destroyer?

“I repeat, black ladies and gentlemahn, the time has come for ahction! I, Ras the Destroyer, repeat, the
time has come!
”

I trembled with excitement; they hadn’t recognized me. It works, I thought. They see the hat, not me. There is a magic in it. It hides me right in front of their eyes … But suddenly I wasn’t sure. With Ras calling for the destruction of everything white in Harlem, who could notice me? I needed a better test. If I was to carry out my plan … What plan? Hell, I don’t know, come on …

I weaved out of the crowd and left, heading for Hambro’s.

A group of zoot-suiters greeted me in passing. “Hey now, daddy-o,” they called. “Hey now!”

“Hey now!” I said.

It was as though by dressing and walking in a certain way I had enlisted in a fraternity in which I was recognized at a glance—not by features, but by clothes, by uniform, by gait. But this gave rise to another uncertainty. I was not a zoot-suiter, but a kind of politician. Or was I? What would happen in a real test? What about the fellows who’d been so insulting at the Jolly Dollar? I was halfway across Eighth Avenue at the thought and retraced my steps, running for an uptown bus.

There were many of the regular customers draped around the bar. The room was crowded and Barrelhouse was on duty. I could feel the frame of the glasses cutting into the ridge of my nose as I tilted my hat and squeezed up to the bar. Barrelhouse looked at me roughly, his lips pushed out.

“What brand you drinking tonight, Poppa-stopper?” he said.

“Make it Ballantine’s,” I said in my natural voice.

I watched his eyes as he set the beer before me and slapped the bar with his enormous hand for his money. Then, my heart beating faster, I made my old gesture of payment, spinning the coin upon the bar and waited. The coin disappeared into his fist.

“Thanks, pops,” he said, moving on and leaving me puzzled. For there had been recognition of a kind in his voice but not for me. He never called me “pops” or “poppa-stopper.” It’s working, I thought, perhaps it’s working very well.

Certainly something was working on me, and profoundly. Still I was relieved. It was hot. Perhaps that was it. I drank the cold beer, looking back to the rear of the room to the booths. A crowd of men and women moiled like nightmare figures in the smoke-green haze. The juke box was dinning and it was like looking into the depths of a murky cave. And now someone moved aside and looking down along the curve of the bar past the bobbing heads and shoulders I saw the juke box, lit up like a bad dream of the Fiery Furnace, shouting:

And yet, I thought, watching a numbers runner paying off a bet, this is one place that the Brotherhood definitely penetrated. Let Hambro explain that, too, along with all the rest he’d have to explain.

I drained the glass and turned to leave, when there across at the lunch counter I saw Brother Maceo. I moved impulsively, forgetting my disguise until almost upon him, then checked myself and put my disguise once more to a test. Reaching roughly across his shoulder I picked up a greasy menu that rested between the sugar shaker and the hot-sauce bottle and pretended to read it through my dark lenses.

“How’re the ribs, pops?” I said.

“Fine, least these here I’m eatin’ is.”

“Yeah? How much you know about ribs?”

He raised his head slowly, looking across at the spitted chickens revolving before the low blue rotisserie flames. “I reckon I know as much about ’em as you,” he said, “and probably more, since I probably been eatin’ ’em a few years longer than you, and in a few more places. What makes you think you kin come in here messing with me anyhow?”

He turned, looking straight into my face now, challenging me. He was very game and I wanted to laugh.

“Oh, take it easy,” I growled. “A man can ask a question, can’t he?”

“You got your answer,” he said, turning completely around on the stool. “So now I guess you ready to pull your knife.”

“Knife?” I said, wanting to laugh. “Who said anything about a knife?”

“That’s what you thinking about. Somebody say something you don’t like and you kinda fellows pull your switch blades. So all right, go ahead and pull it. I’m as ready to die as I’m gon’ ever be. Let’s see you, go ahead!”

He reached for the sugar shaker now, and I stood there feeling suddenly that the old man before me was not Brother Maceo at all, but someone else disguised to confuse me. The glasses were working too well. He’s a game old brother, I thought, but this’ll never do.

I pointed toward his plate. “I asked you about the ribs,” I said, “not your ribs. Who said anything about a knife?”

“Never mind that, just go on and pull it,” he said. “Let’s see you. Or is you waiting for me to turn my back. All right, here it is, here’s my back,” he said, turning swiftly on the stool and around again, his arm set to throw the shaker.

Customers were turning to look, were moving clear.

“What’s the matter, Maceo?” someone said.

“Nothing I caint handle; this confidencing sonofabitch come in here bluffing—”

“You take it easy, old man,” I said. “Don’t let your mouth get your head in trouble,” thinking, Why am I talking like this?

“You don’t have to worry about that, sonofabitch, pull your switch blade!”

“Give it to him, Maceo, coolcrack the motherfouler!”

I marked the position of the voice by ear now, turning so that I could see Maceo, the agitator, and the customers blocking the door. Even the juke box had stopped and I could feel the danger mounting so swiftly that I moved without thinking, bounding over quickly and sweeping up a beer bottle, my body trembling.

“All right,” I said, “if that’s the way you want it, all right! The next one who talks out of turn gets this!”

Maceo moved and I feinted with the bottle, seeing him dodge, his arm set to throw and held only because I was crowding him; a dark old man in overalls and a gray long-billed cloth cap, who looked dreamlike through the green glasses.

“Throw it,” I said. “Go on,” overcome with the madness of the thing. Here I’d set out to test a disguise on a friend and now I was ready to beat him to his knees—not because I wanted to but because of place and circumstance. Okay, okay, it was absurd and yet real and dangerous and if he moved, I’d let him have it as brutally as possible. To protect myself I’d have to, or the drunks would gang me. Maceo was set, looking at me coldly, and suddenly I heard a voice boom out, “Ain’t going to be no fighting in my joint!” It was Barrelhouse, “Put them things down y’all, they cost money.”

“Hell, Barrelhouse, let ’em fight!”

“They can fight in the streets, not in here— Hey, y’all,” he called, “look over here …”

I saw him now, leaning forward with a pistol in his huge fist, resting it steady upon the bar.

“Now put ’em down y’all,” he said mournfully. “I done ask you to put my property
down.”

Brother Maceo looked from me to Barrelhouse.

“Put it down, old man,” I said, thinking, Why am I acting from pride when this is not really me?

“You put yourn down,” he said.

“Both
of y’all put ’em down; and you, Rinehart,” Barrelhouse said, gesturing at me with the pistol, “you get out of my joint and stay out. We don’t need your money in here.”

I started to protest, but he held up his palm.

“Now you all right with me, Rinehart, don’t get me wrong. But I just can’t stand trouble,” Barrelhouse said.

Brother Maceo had replaced the shaker now and I put my bottle down and backed to the door.

“And Rine,” Barrelhouse said, “don’t go try to pull no pistol neither, ‘cause this here one is loaded and I got a permit.”

I backed to the door, my scalp prickling, watching them both.

“Next time don’t ask no questions you don’t want answered,” Maceo called. “An’ if you ever want to finish this argument I be right here.”

I felt the outside air explode around me and I stood just beyond the door laughing with the sudden relief of the joke restored, looking back at the defiant old man in his long-billed cap and the confounded eyes of the crowd. Rinehart, Rinehart, I thought, what kind of man is Rinehart?

I was still chuckling when, in the next block, I waited for the traffic lights near a group of men who stood on the corner passing a bottle of cheap wine between them as they discussed Clifton’s murder.

“What we need is some guns,” one of them said. “An eye for an eye.”

“Hell yes, machine guns. Pass me the sneakypete, Muckleroy.”

“Wasn’t for that Sullivan Law this here New York wouldn’t be nothing but a shooting gallery,” another man said.

“Here’s the sneakypete, and don’t try to find no home in that bottle.”

“It’s the only home I got, Muckleroy. You want to take that away from me?”

“Man, drink up and pass the damn bottle.”

I started around them, hearing one of them say, “What you saying, Mr. Rinehart, how’s your hammer hanging?”

Even up here, I thought, beginning to hurry. “Heavy, man,” I said, knowing the answer to that one, “very heavy.”

They laughed.

“Well, it’ll be lighter by morning.”

“Say, look ahere, Mr. Rinehart, how about giving me a job?” one of them said, approaching me, and I waved and crossed the street, walking rapidly down Eighth toward the next bus stop.

The shops and groceries were dark now, and children were running and yelling along the walks, dodging in and out among the adults. I walked, struck by the merging fluidity of forms seen through the lenses. Could this be the way the world appeared to Rinehart? All the dark-glass boys? “For now we see as through a glass darkly but then—but then—” I couldn’t remember the rest.

She was carrying a shopping bag and moved gingerly on her feet. Until she touched my arm I thought that she was talking to herself.

“I say, pardon me, son, look like you trying to pass on by me tonight. What’s the final figger?”

“Figure? What figure?”

“Now you know what I mean,” she said, her voice rising as she put her hands on her hips and looked forward. “I mean today’s last number. Ain’t you Rine the runner?”

“Rine the runner?”

“Yas, Rinehart the number man. Who you trying to fool?”

“But that’s not my name, madame,” I said, speaking as precisely as I could and stepping away from her. “You’ve made a mistake.”

Her mouth fell wide. “You ain’t? Well, why you look so much like him?” she said with hot doubt in her voice. “Now, ain’t this here something. Let me get on home; if my dream come out, I’m-a have to go look that rascal up. And here I needs that money too.”

“I hope you won,” I said, straining to see her clearly, “and I hope he pays off.”