"Himes, Chester - If He Hollers Let Him Go" - читать интересную книгу автора (Himes Chester)

'_A Jug of Wine.. . and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!_'

Stella gave me a quick darting look and stood up. 'I've got a pint of Sunnybrook stashed if you want some,' she said, looking at Alice.
'Fine,' I said, starting to get up. She stepped past me and put her arm about Alice's waist and they went into the kitchen. I looked at Dimples and said, 'Wanna dance?' The box was blaring Erskine Hawkins' 'Don't Cry, Baby.'
'Not with you,' she said in a harsh, sullen voice, looking sidewise into the darkened kitchen.
Things began getting a little blurred. It was hot and sticky in the room and my eyes began to burn. Stella and Alice returned from the kitchen.
'It's hot in here,' Stella said. 'Why don't you take off your coat, Bob?'
I slipped out of my coat. Alice and Stella were sitting side by side on the davenport, whispering. Dimples sat on the arm of the davenport watching them, her face a mask of sullen envy.
I got slowly to my feet. The room began spinning and my stomach peeled into my mouth. I caught it a couple of times, my mouth ballooning, then Chuck jumped up and helped me into the kitchen and I let it go into the sink. I stood there and retched for what seemed like an hour.
I knew what was going on and I wasn't having any of it. I felt shocked, sickened. I went back into the room and said to Alice, 'You can't do this to me.'
She gave me a look of raw hatred. I'd slapped her before I knew it. She half fell, caught herself, and went over and lay on the davenport, burrowing her face in her hands, and began crying as if her heart would break.
My mind went into a stupor when I tried to figure out why she should be mad at me. When I came out of it I noticed that she was crying. I felt like a dog. I lurched toward the davenport and stood over her. '1 didn't mean to make you cry,' I began.
She raised her head and looked at me and all the frustration in the world was bottled up in her eyes. 'Don't think you made me cry,' she said in a cold, level voice, spacing the words apart. 'You can't make me cry. You never could make me cry. Every time I cry, I cry for many reasons.'
I stood there swaying drunkenly for a moment, trying to figure out what she meant, I gave it up.
Chuck stood up then and said, 'Take it easy, Jack.'
I looked at him a moment. I knew I had to hit something, so I drew back and hit him. He fell back against the wall, slumped to the floor.
Stella said, 'What'd you have to hit Chuck for?'
I picked up my coat, put it on without replying. I lifted my my hand and waved foolishly, then I went to the door and went out and got into my car. I remember turning around; I banged the curb hard with my front tyres and cursed.


CHAPTER IX

I dreamed I was lying in the middle of Main Street downtown in front of the Federal Building and two poor peckerwoods in overalls were standing over me beating me with lengths of rubber hose. I was sore and numb from the beating and felt like vomiting; I was sick in the stomach and the taste was in my mouth. I was trying to get up on my hands and knees but they were beating me across the back of my head at the base of the skull and every now and then one would hit me across the small of my back and I could feel it in my kidneys. Every time I got one knee up and tried to get the other one up I couldn't make it and would fall down again and I knew I couldn't last much longer. But when the peckerwoods started to stop, a hard cultured voice said peremptorily, 'Continue! I will tell you when to stop.' I turned my head and looked up to see who was talking and it was the president of the shipyard corporation dressed in the uniform of an Army general and he had a cigar in one side of his mouth and his eyes were calm and undisturbed. One of the peckerwoods said: 'The nigger can't take much more.' The president of the shipyard said, 'Niggers can take it as long as you give it to them.' Somebody laughed and I looked around and saw two policemen standing by a squad car to one side nudging each other and laughing. There was no one else on the street. The other peckerwood said, 'It ain't right to beat this nigger like that. What we beating this nigger for anyway?' The cops stopped laughing and looked at him and the president of the shipyard got hard and said, 'Continue! It's an order!' So they started beating me again and I was hoping I would become unconscious but I couldn't.
Then I felt myself rolling over in bed, struggling with the covers, but I couldn't wake up, and the dream kept right on with the two peckerwoods beating me not quite to death. Then two old coloured couples in working clothes on their way to work came up and the peckerwoods stopped beating me and the cops came up and stood over me with their hands on their guns and their chins stuck out as if they were scared I might get up and hurt somebody. The coloured people looked at the peckerwoods with dull hatred and then the president of the shipyard smiled at them and said, 'There should be something done about this,' and they looked at him gratefully and said: 'Yassuh, it's a shame to go beating a man like that,' and the president of the shipyard said, 'All of us responsible white people are trying to keep these things from taking place, but you boys must help us.' I tried to tell the coloured people what he had been doing before they came but my voice wouldn't come out and they just looked at him as if he was a good kind god and said, 'Yassuh, some of these heah boys do git out of their place, but usses don't cause no trouble at all. We working in defence and we don't cause nobody no trouble.' The president of the shipyard said, 'I knew the minute I saw you that you were good coloured folks,' and they went away feeling good toward him and hating the peckerwoods. The cops picked me up and threw me into the squad car and when I asked them where they were taking me they said they were taking me to jail. When the squad car started with a jerk, I woke up.
I was lying in bed. Outside the sun was shining bright. I've overslept, I thought suddenly, and jumped out of bed. Pain shot through my head like summer lightning. My mouth was full of quinine and cottony-dry. I frowned, turning my head carefully to look into the mirror.
Then I remembered. I tried to stop it about Alice but it came back anyway. I felt an odd sort of embarrassment for her; a sort of mixture of shame and betrayal and repulsion. I hoped I wouldn't have to see her for some time; not until I could get myself prepared to think about her again.
I sat slowly down on the bed and looked about. The night kept coming back in brown, dirty memories. Parts of my dream were mingled with them. I began feeling remorseful. I despised myself. I wondered if I would ever be able to face people again. I was too ashamed to leave the room.
All of a sudden I thought about my job. I could see it coming and couldn't stop it. Danny Tebbel would be taking my place, bossing my gang around. The fellows in my gang would be sullen, resentful--ashamed too. Just ashamed of being black. They'd know what had happened to me; they'd see it in the white workers' eyes.
When I thought about Madge that cold scare settled over me and I began to tremble. Just scared to think about her, about living in the same world with her. Almost like thinking about the electric chair. I knew if I kept sitting there thinking about her I'd get up and go out to the shipyard and kill her.
But I couldn't move. I couldn't even stand up any more. I'd forgotten about the dice game and the white boy I was going to kill. It was just Madge and me in an empty world, with Alice pulling at me not quite hard enough to get me out.
I'm a goddamned coward, I told myself. I'm afraid to die, that's my trouble. Afraid of getting hurt. Acting a fool. Being made ridiculous. Being offended, ignored, despised. Afraid to make the one final decision in my soul that would settle everything one way or another forever. I knew I was going to do it, but I was afraid to do it then.
I bowed my head in my hands and groaned. I felt like I was going to be sick a long, long time and never get well. I wrapped my robe about me and went in and took a quick shave and bath and put on some clothes.
The phone rang and I went to answer it.
'Bob?' It was Alice. Her voice was tense.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. 'Yes, this is Bob,' I said.
'I feel like a slut,' she said.
I wanted her to stop talking about it; I wanted her to go on as if it'd never happened. 'Look, can't you forget about last night?' I said tightly. 'All it was, it just got me for a chick like you to go for a hype like that. But hell, I've forgotten about it already.'
'But I'd die if anyone knew. . .' She left it hanging.
So that's it, I thought. 'If you're worrying about me talking-- don't,' I grated. 'I don't talk about anybody--'
'It's not that, Bob, darling,' she cut in quickly, but her voice sounded relieved. 'I just want to atone, darling; I just want to prove to you I'm not really that type of person.'
I kept right on as if she hadn't spoken. 'But if you're trying to buy my silence it isn't worth it. I know any number of chicks I can go to bed with, but I always thought of you--' She hung up.
I banged the receiver on the hook and turned toward the kitchen. I thought, Goddamnit, everything I do is wrong. I slipped on my jacket, got my identification and money, and went out without saying anything at all. When I looked in the garage I didn't see my car. My stomach went hollow. Now if I'd banged it up and left it somewhere on the side of the road, that would really do it, I thought, hurrying out to the street. It was parked across the street with the front wheels cut sharply up over the curb as if I'd started to drive into the people's house and had caught myself.
The keys were still in it and the ignition was on, although the lights were off. It must have stalled when the wheels went over the curb. I walked around it, looking for dented fenders and flat tyres, but it didn't have a nick. I climbed in, mashed the starter; the motor kicked on. A better car than I was a man, I thought.
When I started north on Wall Street I had no idea where I was going. Anywhere, just to get away from the people I knew for a while. I just wanted to get away from the so-called respectable people of the world, the decent people. They were playing it too close for me, playing it harder than lightning bumps a stump, taking too many techs.
I turned over to San Pedro and headed downtown toward Little Tokyo, where the spooks and spills had come in and taken over. It was a hot, lazy day and the drain from my hangover left me lightheaded. I pulled up in front of a hotel near First and San Pedro and went into the combination bar and restaurant called the Rust Room. I climbed on a stool and ordered a double brandy straight, then looked in the mirror to see who was there.
In the mirror I saw a chick get up from a table with a couple of sailors in a booth and start over towards me. I turned to face her and began talking before she could open her mouth. 'Now don't start performing, baby, before you know what it's all about--'
'What kind of nigger are you anyway?' she broke in. 'Puleeze elucidate. Just what is your jinglet that you are now about to recite?' She was a long tall yellow chick, named Veda, who worked as a waitress on the day shift. She had a longish narrow face and a thick-lipped nice-made mouth; her thick black curly hair grew low on her forehead like a man's and her heavy black brows met over the bridge of her nose, not a pretty chick but good for a change. I'd broken a date with her a week before.
'I'm tryna tell you, honey,' I grinned. 'My car broke down and I tried to get you on the phone but couldn't anybody find you. Where were you, anyway? Having your sport I suppose.'