Ragtime (14 page)

The musician quickly strode back to the corner and headed toward the business district. After ten minutes he found a policeman operating a stop-and-go traffic signal. The policeman listened to his complaint and shook his head and spent some time removing his handkerchief from under his frock coat and blowing his nose. Those boys don’t mean no harm, he finally said. I know them all. Go on back now, they’re probably tired of the sport. Walker may have realized this was probably the maximum support he could expect from a policeman. At the same time he may have wondered if he’d been oversensitive to what was intended as no more than a prank. So he went back to Firehouse Lane.

The fire engine and horses were withdrawn. The road was empty of volunteers and his car stood off the road in the field. He made his way to the car. It was spattered with mud. There was a six-inch tear in the custom pantasote top. And deposited in the back seat was a mound of fresh human excrement.

He went across the street to the firehouse door. Standing there with his arms folded was the Chief in his white military cap and green bohemian tie. The Police Department advises me there is no toll road anywhere in this city, Coalhouse Walker said. That’s right, said the Chief. Anyone is free to come and go on this road anytime he thinks he has to. The sun having set, the electric lights were on inside the firehouse. Through the glass panels in the door the Negro could see the three matching grays in their stalls, the great nickel-plated pumper with its brass fitting backed up to the rear wall. I want my car cleaned and the damage paid for, he said. The Chief began to laugh and a couple of his men came out to join the fun.

At this moment a police van drove up. It carried two officers, one of them the traffic policeman to whom Coalhouse Walker had appealed. He went into the field, looked at the car and came back to the firehouse. Willie, the policeman said to the Fire Chief, did you or your boys do any desecratin? I’ll tell you exactly what happened, the Chief said. The nigger here parked his damn car in the middle of the road right in front of the fire station, ain’t so, boys? The volunteers nodded righteously. The big policeman came to a decision. He took Coalhouse aside. Listen, he said, we’ll push your tin lizzie back on the road and you be on your way. There’s no real damage. Scrape off the shit and forget the whole thing. I was on my way when they stopped me, Coalhouse said. They put filth in my car and tore a hole in the top. I want the car cleaned and the damage paid for. The officer had now begun to appreciate Coalhouse’s style of speech, his dress, and the phenomenon of his owing a car in the first place. He grew angry. If you don’t take your automobile and get along out of here, he said loudly, I’m going to charge you with driving off the road, drunkenness, and making an unsightly nuisance. I do not drink, Coalhouse said. I did not drive my car off the road nor slash the roof nor defecate in it. I want the damage paid for and I want an apology. The policeman looked at the Chief, who was grinning at his discomfiture, so that the issue for him was now his own authority. He said to Coalhouse I’m placing you under arrest. You’ll come with me in the wagon.

Early that evening the telephone rang at Broadview Avenue. The caller was Coalhouse and after quickly explaining that he was at Police Headquarters and why, he asked Father if he would consider putting up bail so that he could get to the city and not miss work that evening. It is to Father’s credit that he responded at once, holding back his questions until there was the leisure to have them answered. He called for a cab and went down to the station house and there wrote a cheque for the amount, which was fifty dollars. But as he reported the incident to Mother he was put off because Coalhouse Walker was barely civil in his gratitude and rushed off to the train station saying only he’d make good the sum.

The next evening the household experienced the oddness of a visit by Coalhouse Walker that was not on Sunday. He sat in the parlor with his arms folded and told the story in detail. There was no aggrieved tone in his voice, he recited calmly and objectively, as if he were describing something that had happened to someone else. Mother said Mr. Walker, I am ashamed that this community is represented in your mind by that bunch of toughs. Father said The company has a bad reputation. They are an exception, the other volunteer engines being in all ways upright and responsible. Younger Brother sat on the piano stool with his legs crossed. He leaned forward, totally engaged by the problem. Where is the car now? he said. And what about those two boys? They are witnesses for you. But the pianist had spent the afternoon tracking down the boys only to find their parents refusing to have them involved in the matter. I’m a stranger to the Negroes her, he said matter-of-factly. They have to live here and they want no trouble. As for the car I have not looked at it again. And I won’t until it is returned to me as it was when I drove away from this home yesterday evening.

Standing in the hallway just out of sight during this interview was Sarah. She held her baby on her hip and she listened. She perceived as no one in the family could the enormity of the misfortune. She heard Father say to Coalhouse that if he intended to pursue his claim he should engage a lawyer. There was such a thing as the power of subpoena for witnesses. Are there any colored lawyers here? Coalhouse asked. I don’t know of one, Father said. But any lawyer who loves justice will do. I should think. He paused. I will underwrite the expense, he said in a gruff voice. Coalhouse stood. I thank you but that won’t be necessary. He put an envelope on the side table. In it was fifty dollars in cash. This, Mother learned afterward, had come out of the money he was saving toward the wedding.

The next day Mother’s Younger Brother took it upon himself to go to the site of the incident and see the car. After work he rode his bicycle to Firehouse Lane. The Model T had been thoroughly vandalized, whether by the volunteers or others it was impossible to determine. It sat with its front end in the tall weeds at the edge of the pond. The wheels were sunk in the mud. The headlamps and the windshield were shattered. The rear tires were flattened, the tufted upholstery had been gutted and the custom pantosote top was slashed to ribbons.

24

Younger Brother stood at the pond. Since his evening with Emma Goldman he had been in considerable difficulty. People at work were surprised by his animation. He fixed his attention on anything that could sustain it. He produced small talk that verged on hysteria. He sat at his drawing table and turned out designs in endless modifications for rifles and grenades. He measured the small squares and made his computations and watched the point of his pencil as it impressed the paper. When there was no other recourse he would begin to sing, just to hear the sound. Thus with continuous concentration and the expenditure of enormous amounts of energy he tried to keep himself from slipping into the vast distances of his unhappiness. It was all around him. It was a darkness as impudently close as his brow. It choked him by its closeness. And what was most terrifying was its treachery. He would wake up in the morning and see the sun coming in the window, and sit up in his bed and think it was gone, and then find it there after all, behind his ears or in his heart.

He decided he was on the verge of a nervous collapse. He prescribed for himself a regimen of cold baths and physical exertion. He bought a Columbia bicycle and rode it to work. At night, before bed, he would do calisthenics until he was exhausted.

On the floor below, Mother and Father felt the house shake. They realized he was jumping up and down. They were used to his eccentricities. He had never confided in them or shared his hopes or feelings and so they saw no marked change in his behavior. Mother did ask him to join them in the parlor after dinner when he had no plans for the evening. He tried this. He heard them address him, heard himself answer. He saw them in their suffocating parlor with its chaise and its mounted heads and fringed lampshades and he felt he couldn’t breathe. He despised them. He thought they were complacent, ordinary and inconsiderate. One evening Father read to everyone the editorial in the local newspaper. Father liked to read aloud when he found something particularly instructive or well-written. The title of the editorial was THE SPRING PEEPER. So that diminutive visitor to our ponds and fields has come to call once again, Father read. In truth he is no less ugly than his older brothers Frog and Toad. But we welcome the gallant little fellow and laud his beauty. For he is not in advance of Robin and even hardy Crocus is his proclamation of the Spring? The young man rushed from the room convinced he was strangling to death.

There is no question then that Younger Brother was fortunate to conceive a loyalty to the colored man. Standing at the pond he heard the lapping of the water against the front fenders of the Model T. He noted that the hood was unlatched, and lifting and folding it back, saw that the wires had been torn from the engine. The sun was now setting and it threw a reflection of blue sky on the dark water of the pond. There ran through him a small current of rage, perhaps one one-hundredth, he knew, of what Coalhouse must have felt, and it was salutary.

Here, given subsequent events, it is important to mention what little is known about Coalhouse Walker Jr. Apparently he was a native of St. Louis, Missouri. As a young man he had known and admired Scott Joplin and other St. Louis musicians and had paid for his piano studies with money he earned as a stevedore. There is no information about his parentage. At one point a woman in St. Louis claimed to be his divorced wife but that was never proved. There were never located any of his school records in St. Louis and it still is not known how he acquired his vocabulary and his manner of speaking. Perhaps by an act of will.

It was widely reported when he was achieving his notoriety that Coalhouse Walker had never exhausted the peaceful and legal means of redress before taking the law into his own hands. This is not entirely true. He went to see three different attorneys recommended by Father. In all cases they refused to represent him. He was advised to recover his automobile before it was totally wrecked and to forget the matter. To all three he insisted that he didn’t want to forget the matter but to bring suit against the Fire Chief and men of the Emerald isle Engine.

Father himself telephoned one of these attorneys, a man who had represented his firm in several business matters. Is there not a case there, he asked. When he goes for his hearing, the lawyer said to Father, you can go with him. You don’t need me for this. When a property owner in this city walks into court with a Negro, a charge like this is usually dismissed. But he is not interested in the charge, Father said. He wants to sue. At that point Father realized the attorney was involved in a conversation with someone in his office. Glad to be of help, the attorney said, and rang off.

It is known also that Coalhouse Walker consulted a black attorney in Harlem. He had learned that the Emerald Isle Chief, whose name was Will Conklin, was a stepbrother of the Judge of the City Court and a nephew of a County Alderman in White Plains. The Harlem attorney advised him there were ways to divert the case to other jurisdictions but these were expensive and time-consuming. And the outcome was not at all predictable. You have the money for that? the lawyer said. I am soon to be married, Coalhouse Walker said. That is an expensive proposition, the lawyer said. Surely your responsibilities to your intended are more important than the need to redress a slight on the part of white folks. The Walker apparently made a remark not entirely courteous to the black lawyer. The counselor stood up behind his desk and told him to leave. I have charity cases you know nothing of, he shouted. I want justice for our people so bad I can taste it. But if you think I would go to Westchester County to plead on a colored man’s behalf that someone deposited a bucket of slops in his car, you are very much mistaken.

It is known too that Coalhouse made a preliminary attempt to see the matter through as his own counsel. He had filed a complaint but did not know how to go about getting a place on the court calendar or what steps had to be taken to assure that it was correct in form in order to be heard. He appeared at City Hall for an interview with the Office of the County Clerk. It was suggested that he return another day when there was less pressing business in the office. But he persisted and was then told that his complaint was not on file and that several weeks would be required to trace it. Come back then, the clerk told him. Instead he went to the police station where he had originally filed and wrote out a second complaint. The policeman on duty regarded him with amazement. An older officer took him aside and confided to him that he was probably filing in vain since the volunteer fire companies were not municipal employees and therefore did not come under the jurisdiction of the city. The contemptuousness of this logic did not escape Coalhouse but he chose not to argue with it. He signed his complaint and left and heard laughter behind him as he walked out the door.

All of this happened over a period of two to three weeks. Later, when the name Coalhouse Walker came to symbolize murder and arson, these earlier attempts to find redress no longer mattered. Even at this date we can’t condone the mayhem done in his cause but it is important to know the truth insofar as that is possible. Conversation at the family’s dinner table was now obsessive on the subject of this strange proud black man’s attempts to have his property restored. It seemed like such a foolish thing to have happened. It seemed to be his fault, somehow, because he was Negro and it was the kind of problem that would only adhere to a Negro. His monumental negritude sat in front of them like a centerpiece on the table. While Sarah served, Father told her that her fiancé would have done better after all to drive away his car when he could and forget the matter. Younger Brother bristled. You speak like a man who has never been tested in his principles, he said. Father was so outraged by this remark that he could find no words. Mother said, gently, that no one would be helped by the voicing of intemperate feelings. A peculiar kind of unseasonably warn breeze blew the window curtain in the Egyptian dining room. It had that breath of menace which makes the beginning of the spring so unsettling. Sarah dropped a serving tray of filet of sole. She retreated to the kitchen and held her baby. Sobbing she told Younger Brother, who followed her there, that the preceding Sunday Coalhouse had said he could not marry until he had been satisfied by the return of the Model T in exactly the same condition as when the firehorses had been driven across his path.