Strivers Row (3 page)

I'm in it now. I'm on my way.

Tom it up!

He was almost at the end of his second run down the train when he came upon the soldiers Pappy had warned him about. They had just stopped in New Bedford, and the
Clipper
was idling on a siding right next to the ocean, waiting while some troop trains rattled slowly by. Malcolm had finally worked his way down to the last day coach, when he wrenched open the door and spotted them immediately.

They were standing in the narrow aisle or sprawled carelessly over the seat backs. Laughing and talking as loudly as they could, ignoring the discomfort of the other passengers around them. Drinking openly from a bottle of rusty liquid with a rose on it. There were five of them altogether, and they looked drunk and mean, and like they were spoiling for a fight.

Moving closer, he caught a glimpse of what it was the soldiers had chosen to amuse themselves with. There, sitting very erect in one of the last aisle seats, was a young white minister—with a black woman. He blinked at the sight, but there was no mistaking it: The white minister, wearing a clerical collar and a palpable air of studious martyrdom. The woman truly black, her skin as dark and smooth as the skin of a plum, the two of them sitting side by side, holding hands as if they were man and wife.

The soldiers were all over them—two in the seat just behind them, two leaning over the seat just in front, a fifth propped up against the seat across the aisle. The soldiers in front were leaning right into the couple's faces, laughing belligerently while the two behind them were doing the sort of irritating, schoolboy things that could be relied upon to drive anyone to murder—pushing the straw Panama the man was wearing forward on his head, flicking his ears with their fingers; picking at the white, plastic curl of flower on the woman's hat.

The woman was staring straight ahead into nothingness, with a blankness that Malcolm recognized at once. The minister was looking slightly upward, as if toward Heaven—though at the same time, ludicrously enough, he was still trying to make small talk with the woman. She only continued to stare straight ahead, into the middle distance, so that they made a kind of perfect triangle—the soldiers baiting the minister, the minister trying to ignore the soldiers, the woman trying to ignore her husband. He might have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all—except that as he came still closer down the aisle he could see how tightly the couple's hands were clenched together, the man's knuckles almost white with the effort.

But he wasn't,
Malcolm realized then. He could see it when he got up close—the man's hair just a little too curly above his clerical collar, and his good, seersucker suit. His irritatingly smooth, plump cheeks just the lightest shade of olive. So light that without the black woman along, Malcolm might never have suspected.

The minister was colored, too.

The soldiers had realized it as well, Malcolm understood now. Abusing him for his propriety, his haughtiness—for being so light-skinned. He felt the palms of his hands itch as he came toward them, a reckless urge washing over him again, just as it had when he was waiting to gauge the train and jump onboard. Unsure of just what it was he wanted more, to smash the soldiers' faces in or to poke at the nearly white preacher with them.

“Howzat again?” brayed the drunken soldier who was poised over the minister's face. “Don' go tellin' me yer
black
!”

His back was turned but Malcolm could tell he was a bruiser all the same, almost as tall as Malcolm was himself and much more solidly built, with a shock of black hair and a sergeant's stripes on his arm. He was obviously in charge—the rest of them laughing when he laughed, and picking right up on whatever he said.

“Don' tell me yer a
minister,
neither! No nigger preacher ever looked like
that.
You just wear that getup to get the
ladies,
don'tcha? Particul'y the
dark
ladies!”

The sergeant was so close to him now that Malcolm could see little flecks of his spittle landing on the preacher's face. But the man sat where he was, somehow not flinching, his chin still turned imploringly toward Heaven. Only his grip on the dark hand of the woman beside him betrayed his fear. His face still impossibly refined and serene, so much so that Malcolm could not help but want to smash it in for him.

Goddamn high-yaller Episcopal bastard. Like all the others out strolling around the Hill on Sunday, thinking they were whiter than God—

At that moment, though, he caught the woman's eye. She was plain-looking, except for her skin, which was flawless and almost blue-black. She wasn't even dressed like a preacher's wife, wearing only that hat with its plastic flowers and an ordinary print dress with more flowers on it, faded from purple to deep lavender. Malcolm wondered for a moment if she wasn't really his wife at all, but she looked too ordinary to be something on the side. The only exceptional things about her were her fine black skin, and her eyes, which were large and brown and fierce.

They appealed to him now. Breaking that stare into the middle distance that she had been holding, that he had seen so many times before on the faces of colored people. Here on the train—on his mother, near the end, in the presence of the social workers or the neighborhood ladies when they came by to try to reason with her. She broke it off and stared right at him, her eyes still hard but entreating. Begging him to do something to help them, to help her husband with the soldiers.

He realized only then what he usually saw the moment he walked into any coach. They were the only colored people in the car. The trains weren't segregated, at least not north of Maryland, but the colored passengers would usually sit together if they could. Some would even ask, very quietly, where the
black
car was today. Malcolm always knew it, too. He would never put on much of a show when there were others in the car. His performance on such occasions as stilted as a deacon's taking around the offering plate, even though he knew they were the only ones who were copped to it, who could hear the sarcasm and the barely veiled insults, just beneath the bowing and the scraping.

But how much of an insult is it, when
they
don't even get it?

Now he realized they were all alone—himself, and the minister and his wife. The white faces all carefully averted. The men, especially, staring out the windows as if fascinated by the sprawling summer marshes of the South Shore.

All right then, it's on me,
Malcolm thought, the recklessness growing inside him as he hovered just behind the soldiers.

“C'mon, what's your secret?” the one across the aisle was saying, picking up his sergeant's cue. “We wanna get to know some colored ladies, too!”

“C'mon, be a
sport
! We wanna get some hot-blooded gals!”

For a long moment the minister's eyes stayed fixed on God, somewhere in the suitcase rack above his head. Then, without any warning, he lowered his gaze and spoke directly to the sergeant.

“I am a Negro,” he said, in a dull, flat voice.

There it was, out in the open. Spoken so suddenly and strangely that it amazed Malcolm, and even the soldiers were flabbergasted into silence for a moment.
I am a Negro—
the words seeming to burn in the close air around them, so strange and utterly ridiculous.

The sergeant laughed unpleasantly.

“Yer a Negro? Then what the hell're you doin' takin' up a seat when ther're white men fighting for their country on this train?”

The preacher said nothing, but the sergeant pressed in still more closely on him, moving his face to within a couple of inches of his. The soldiers closed in around him on cue, smirking at him and at each other—all save for the sergeant, who Malcolm could see was truly angry.

“Huh? Whattaya got to say to that? You black bastard. I been up since five this morning. Where the hell'd
you
come from? Huh?”

How long would they let it go on?
Malcolm wondered, looking at all the white faces still peering out their windows.
Until they cut the preacher, or beat him? Or well after that?

“I think it's time you stood for your betters!”

The sergeant grabbed hold of the minister then, the rest of the soldiers right behind him. Before the man could even get his hands up, they had pulled him up and out of his seat like a bag of potatoes. Standing him up in the aisle, deliberately crumpling up his seersucker in their hands—

“Here, pal-ly, have a drink, show there's no hard feelin's,” one of the soldiers said, trying to thrust what was left of the whiskey bottle in his face. But the sergeant already had his hand back out, reaching for the minister's wife. She bristled at him, and shrank back in her seat, her eyes like two blades. The preacher moved to help her—accidentally slapping the whiskey bottle away. It fell out of the soldier's hand and broke on the car floor. They all stood there for a moment, the minister looking pained, the soldiers grinning gleefully—looking to their sergeant, who cursed again and cocked a fist.

“Hey, you black son of a bitch!”

That was when Malcolm stepped forward, pushing the big sandwich box ahead of him. He rammed it into the sergeant's kidney, sending him falling forward with a small
Oomph!
Banging into his men, all of them going down like ninepins, one of them falling into the glass from the whiskey bottle.

“Jesus Christ!”

The soldier held up his bleeding hand. The rest of them staring up drunkenly, not quite comprehending how they had arrived on the floor.

“Sorry, gennelmens, sorry!” Malcolm sang out. “Aw, was that your whiskey I knocked over? I do got some ice creams here, though, some candy fo' your sweet tooth, ain't that the reet truth. Cake for the snake, smokes for the yolk—”

“What the hell!”

The sergeant was scrambling to pull himself up, glaring murderously. Everyone in the car was looking at him now, Malcolm knew. The minister staring at him in bewilderment, his wife's face suffused with gratitude. The other white passengers in the car stealing glances away from the windows and their
Life
magazines now.

Tom it up!

“Oh, sorry, sorry, gennelmens,” he said, leaning forward and picking the last, dripping ice cream bar in its wax paper out of the sandwich box.

“Here, let me make it up to you. On me.”

He shot out his hand and pressed the rapidly melting ice cream hard against the sergeant's short, green, Eisenhower jacket before the man could stop him. He looked down, incredulous, at the white and chocolate-specked stain spreading rapidly across his front.

“You li'l coon bastard—”

The sergeant started for him, but Malcolm was already dancing backward up the aisle, keeping the box between them. As he did he saw that the soldier still had the penumbra of a shiner on his rugged red face; a big broken nose.
A fighter all right,
he thought excitedly, almost giddy with anticipation.

He kept retreating up the aisle—waiting until the sergeant started to pull off his jacket with the ice cream still oozing slowly down the front. When he did Malcolm leaped forward, tugging the jacket down around the sergeant's arms to immobilize them, then sucker-punched him in the jaw and the gut. The sergeant wobbled, struggling desperately with his uniform, and Malcolm hit him with the sandwich box, driving it up under his chin with enough force to knock him to the floor again.

“Son of a bitch!”

The other white people in the car were all watching now, distracted at last from the pretty New England scenery. The soldiers were helping their sergeant to his feet—two of them taking off their belts, wrapping them around their fists with the buckles facing out. Malcolm stood his ground, the adrenaline surging crazily through him now, waving them on.

“Oh, you got it comin' now, pal-ly. You
earned
it!”

They had the sergeant back on his feet, a little wobbly still but with his jacket finally off, a grim eagerness in his eyes. Malcolm backed up again, grinning at him, still taunting him, but without any good idea what he was going to do. Not knowing how he could get away from the rest of the soldiers even if he somehow managed to fight off their sergeant, but not caring—

“That'll be enough a that! That's enough a that on my train!”

Malcolm felt a hand on his elbow, knew who it was before he turned around.
Good old Pappy, come to look for him.
The little Yankee moved fearlessly between Malcolm and the sergeant, certain in the authority of his steward's uniform.

“You stop this right now! I got the MPs comin'—”

The sergeant swatted Pappy away with the back of his hand— the steward sputtering to the floor, his arms and legs waving wildly—

“You little pissah—”

Malcolm had already laid the sandwich box down, going toward the sergeant. He hit him with a left and a right to the head before he could get his hands up, then with three more combinations, cutting open his lips and his eyes. The sergeant was hitting back by then but Malcolm kept moving forward, oblivious to how often he was hit, or the blood oozing from his own face. He grabbed up the sandwich box and knocked him over with it again. When he had him on the floor, he hit him with the coffee thermos, then he kicked him in the kidneys until he rolled over, and then he jumped on top of him and hit him in the face again.

He was still on top of the man by the time Willard and Sandy came running down the car, Lionel hopping after them as he pulled the straight razor out of his shoe. Pappy, his face beet red, back on his feet now, and waving in the MPs.

“Whoa, there, Cholly Hoss!”

“Get this mothah
fuckah
off my train!”