The End of a Primitive (26 page)

“But to kill him!” Harold said, chuckling deprecatingly as if he’d warned that nigger to watch out. “Jesse, you know, old man, I’ve found out there’s one thing drives a white man to murder—”

“Screwing white women.”

“Jesse, ol’ man, let me tell you something I’ve found out; the American white man
wants
you to screw his women—”

“—all you niggers can think about is screwing white women,” Walter said disgustedly, and Kriss, attracted by the unconscious envy in his voice, deserted Lucille in the middle of a sentence and staggered across the room with her white body to console him. She sat on the arm of his chair facing him with her back to the room as if she were going to offer him a fat white breast to chew on, but instead she kissed him, grinning all the time, and mumbled incoherently, “—an’ Jesse hates white people so. You don’t hate white people, do you, baby?”

“—but if he ever suspects that you know how he thinks—” Harold was saying, with Jesse interposing: “—kill you sure as—” and Kriss mumbling sensually, “—tell me you don’t hate white people too, baby—” and Walter stroking her breast as if to get milk but still trying to talk around her shoulder to Harold and Jesse: “It’s time you niggers count your blessings—”

“—know how insecure he is, you give him a problem he can’t solve and he’s panic-stricken, can’t think—”

“—ever tell you the story of—”

“—white race has never solved a single problem in all its history except by extermination. Dead Indians good Indians—”

“—I went up to Connecticut to work as a caretaker for this guy—New York City attorney, senior member in a firm that handled a lot of movie business—”

“—sa bitch, ol’ man, itsa bitch—”

“—had a beautiful farm—used for breeding thoroughbred horses before he got it—beautiful stalls; wooden floors, electric lights in each stall—”

“—tell you, ol’ man—”

“—were there, Becky and I, before the son of a bitch came up for the summer an’ wanted us to do housework—we quit—but that’s beside the story…”

There was a big fine yellow rooster in the pig pen, a little bantam hen that lived in one of the wagon sheds, and seventeen fat white ducks in the wire enclosed chicken yard. This attorney had decided to put in some laying hens, so he came out one weekend and killed the ducks by standing outside the wire fence and shooting them with a shotgun. After which he drove off to order two dozen pullets and pick up a Negro in the city to pluck the ducks, which Jesse had refused to do. The following week Jesse cleaned and whitewashed the henhouse, forked the chicken yard, bought two hundred-pound sacks of chicken mash and scratch, drove over in the Jeep and picked up the pullets and installed them in their new home. But he’d been feeding them from a sack of old mash, which happened to be pig mash, and the eggs were ill-formed and had soft shells. When this attorney came back the following weekend he examined the soft-shelled eggs and stated authoritatively their deformity was due to the rooster fertilizing them. The ignorant Negro who had plucked the ducks stopped by for his pay after dinner, and this attorney called Jesse to the kitchen and the three of them sat around for two hours, drinking Canadian Club whiskey highballs, trying to decide what to do with the rooster. This ignorant Negro suggested that the rooster be denutted but Jesse said he’d never seen any nuts on a rooster carcass, so this attorney went into his library and brought back a book on poultry-raising, but all he discovered about roosters nuts was a section of the rooster referred to as primaries. Being an attorney who was familiar with all manner of terms, he was able to state authoritatively that the primaries were the nuts, but there was no way of separating them from the rooster. Jesse couldn’t understand how this rooster who lived in the pig pen a half mile distant from the chicken coop could have fertilized the eggs, even with such portentous sounding nuts as primaries, or for that matter even had he been as well-equipped as a Man O’ War. But of course he didn’t say so, being as he was drinking this attorney’s good whiskey. Finally the solution burst on this attorney like a brainstorm. He banged dramatically on the table with his open palm and said in the voice of a general giving the order to charge: “
Jesse!
KILL THE ROOSTER!”

“—and let that be a lesson, old man. He’ll do it every time.”

“Damn right. But what gets me—” In the edge of his vision he saw suddenly the face of Lucille as she watched her husband stroke Kriss’s breast, and there was something in her expression of contained despair that reminded him of Becky—and the outside world came tumbling in. Breaking off in the middle of a sentence he lurched to his feet and staggered toward the kitchen, but his mind had become cold sober and flint hard. “That bitch is never happy unless she’s making someone else unhappy,” he thought, and then, “The way of a gringo—good movie title.”

Stepping into the hall he called, “Kriss! Kriss! Come here a minute, will you baby.” She heard the urgency in his voice and thought the liquor was giving out. He watched her come across the room with the high-shouldered almost masculine swagger she assumed when having made a conquest, and preceded her into the kitchen.

“Why don’t you grow up,” he said.

She knew instantly what he referred to and her sense of guilt gave her the face of innocence.“What’s the matter, baby?”

“You know damn well what’s the matter. You’re making Lucille miserable pawing over Walter like that.”

“She doesn’t care, baby. It’s just—”

“The hell she doesn’t. Any woman would care. Besides you got all the advantage; you haven’t got any husband to—”

“She knows I’m not trying to make Walter, baby.”

“Then what the hell are you trying to do?”

“You’re the only one who is worried, baby,” she said, and smiling her secret sensual smile added in a thick anticipatory voice, “I’m just curious to see what makes him tick. You know how I am, baby.”

“I know how you are all right. You think a man only ticks between sheets.”

“I’m just curious about what’s in a Negro’s mind, baby.”

“Just quit fucking with him, goddammit, that’s all!” he said in a sudden scalding rage; and when, smiling at his resentment, she said, “Can hardly call it that, baby; both of us have got on so many clothes,” he turned away from her to keep from knocking her down. Walter’s loud voice came from the sitting-room: “—trouble with you niggers is—” With uncontrollable violence he picked up the kitchen knife and chopped off the head of an empty whiskey bottle. “What’s happening to Jesse?” he heard Harold asking, and Kriss replying bitchily, “He’s just being doggy in the manger.”

“Bitch wants to die,” he said.

Harold came into the kitchen and saw the knife in his hand and the headless bottle on the table. Chuckling, he said, “Dead now.”

Jesse picked it up and shook it. “Dead before.”

Harold tried the other bottles and found them all empty.

“All dead.”

Jesse began opening the last bottle of gin. “Let’s not leave this sonabitch alive.”

Harold gave his self-deprecating laugh. “As Bert Williams used to say: When the liquor’s flowing freely, and your pocket’s full of dough—I’m with you, man.”

Jesse took a drink then staggered quickly to the bathroom. He leaned against the wall, but his knees kept buckling and he swayed from side to side, wetting the floor about the John like a lawn sprinkler. “More rain more ass grow,” he thought, half-amused, then as he tried to steady himself and aim straight, he looked down blurrily at the enamelled bowl and muttered, half-laughingly, “Grown since hell since I saw it last.”

On returning to the sitting-room he found that Kriss and Lucille had gone to the kitchen. Walter had a leg over the arm of his chair and was saying: “—It’s time you niggers count your blessings.” Jesse wondered if he was hearing double. “Bastard’s brain got stuck,’ he thought.

“You got to join the human race,” Walter held forth.

“Come apart now,” Jesse thought. “Knew it was going to happen. Overloaded.” Aloud he said in his slow thick voice: “—been an ape too long to change now—feeling mighty uncomfortable as a human being.”

Harold chuckled. “How’d you manage it, Walt? The man turned me and Jesse down.”

“—said weren’t no vacancies…” Jesse mumbled. “Knew the sonabitch was lyin’.”

“You niggers want to clown,” Walter said disgustedly and Harold put in, chuckling, “Fish swim,” and Jesse mumbled: “—what you expect clowns to do—play
Macbeth
?”

“What those girls doing in there?” Walter muttered irritably, flicking up his sleeve with mighty elegance to glance at his watch. If he couldn’t have an attentive and admiring female audience he was ready to leave.

Harold chuckled. “Don’t get worried, Walt, you got the nuts.”

“That sort of thing don’t worry me; I
know
I
can
—” Walter muttered defensively, but Jesse cut him off, mumbling: “That’s what you get for joining the human race.”

Harold laughed. “Nothing’s too strange for human beings, Walt. Now us apes, we got just one way—”

Laughing, Jesse lurched to his feet and staggered to the kitchen. Lucille greeted him with an accusing look. “You shouldn’t have told Kriss that, Jesse, I didn’t—” she began, and Kriss cut in: “—she knows I didn’t mean anything—” but Lucille continued: “—think anything about it at all. Kriss always—” Kriss gave Jesse a sweetly malicious vindictive smile: “—she knows it’s just my way…” Jesse trembled with a sudden squall of rage that left him momentarily sober. “Don’t be so motherfucking cute, bitch!” he said to Kriss and seeing the first glint of outrage in her blue-glazed red-rimmed eyes he slapped her with such savage violence it spun her into the stove. He was going to hit her with his fist when Lucille intervened, saying indignantly, “You shouldn’t have done that, Jesse! You’re crazy! I’m not unhappy!” He looked at the anguish in her face and the rage drained out of him. “Now this hurt bitch had got to defend this other bitch who hurt her to prove to the bitch she wasn’t hurt when the bitch knows damn well she was hurt and she knows damn well the bitch knows it,” he thought disgustedly, and then, “Perfectly natural, though,” and after an instant, “Maud’s got the right idea; only defence a nigger bitch got against a white bitch is to screw her.”

Kriss wheeled towards him with her face aflame. “You son of a bitch! I’m going to—”

He turned away as if unaware of her existence and went back to the living-room and sat defiantly in her favourite three-legged chair.

She came out and, standing behind him in the hall said, in an icy voice, “Jesse! I want you to go home,” and he replied just as icily, “Kriss. Fuck yourself!”

Harold chuckled innocently and began reciting: “When the fellows get to fighting, and the law is at de door—”

Walter cut him off. “When niggers learn how to behave themselves—”

“Got it all figured out, haven’t you, boy?” Jesse felt a cold sober malevolence toward everyone. “Got your big fat brain stuffed with solutions, eh, boy?”

Behind him Kriss was repeating: “Jesse! I want you to—” but Jesse’s last remark had pricked Walter in a tender spot and he shouted angrily: “You goddamned smartalecky niggers always mess up everything—”

“Why don’t you turn that record over, boy? You been talking about the same thing—”

“I’ll talk about whatever I please. I was invited here—”

“Well, go home then!”

“Go home your goddamned self! Kriss has asked you three times!”

“You take care of Lucy and let me take care of Kriss, son,” and Kriss’s blood-flushed jowls swelled like a puffing adder’s at this last outrage to white womanhood: “You son of a bitch—”

But Walter suffered a blind fit of nigger-rage at being relegated to the sole defence of Negro womanhood—a great man like himself. “Don’t call me son, nigger!” he shouted.

“Listen, son—” Jesse began in a patronizing tone, and before he’d finished Walter leaped to his feet and snapped open a switchblade knife. “I’ll cut your motherfuckin’ throat!” he threatened, advancing dangerously.

Kriss shuddered with a sadistic thrill, at once excited and repulsed by the prospect of seeing Jesse writhing on the floor with blood spurting from his cut throat because her skin was white.

Lucille sprang forward and threw her arms about Walter, restraining him, while Harold scrambled hastily to his feet to get out of the way. “Motherfucker, I’ll show you—” Walter was mouthing, trying to free himself from his wife’s arms.

Jesse sat silent and unmoving, watching the performance with a complete but detached curiosity; with no reaction to the danger whatsoever, scarcely realizing his own participation. It was as if he were watching with impersonal interest some vaguely valid but not very novel exhibition of idiocy, like a Hollywood treatment of a Negro theme. “Now the bitch has got us niggers killing off each other,” he thought with vague chagrin but no surprise, and then, half-amused, “Now I really do believe the sonofabitch has joined the human race,” and directly following, “Nigger’s right too…right attitude…good nigger…footsteps of tradition…no wonder they let the nigger join…” Then his conscious awareness went off and came on at intervals, like billboard lights, leaving a series of jumbled and unrelated impressions: Walter was seated as before, grinning at him derisively: “I know what’s eatin’ you…” and himself still sitting in the same position, thinking, “The nigger’s earned his, anyway…” Then everyone was standing, milling about, and he was patting Walter on the shoulder, saying with great benevolence, “I like you, man, hell, I’m only too glad you found the combination…” Then the Martins were gone and Kriss was standing in front of the television set, putting on a coat, and stating to Harold who stood to one side, with an attitude of deprecation: “I’m going home with you—” Harold shaking his head and replying: “—
make himself a great hero
…” and both talking at once. “You gotta take me home with you, baby…” “
But somebody else
…” “I’m not going to stay here with this son of a bitch…” “
Not me
…”

“You’re not going any goddam where!” Jesse said in a clear dangerous voice.

“You son of a bitch!” Kriss flared, flashing him a look of supreme indignation, then taking Harold by the arm: “Come on, baby, take me home with you.” She giggled. “Let Jesse screw himself.” Then cursed viciously: “Son of a bitch!”