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

CHAPTER IV

I bumped into Red Williams in the companionway and he said he'd been looking all over for me.
'Will you get me a tacker, Bob?' he said. 'I'm tired of fooling with these people. I've had enough.'
He was a tall, rawboned, merriney-looking Negro with kinky reddish hair and brown freckles.
Me too, I wanted to tell him, but the fellows in my gang looked up to me; whenever they had trouble with the white workers they looked to me to straighten it out. So all I said was I'd see Hank.
Hank was the tacker leaderman, a heavy-set, blond Georgia boy about my age and a graduate of Georgia Tech. White mechanics could go to him and get any tacker they wanted, but he made the coloured mechanics wait until he could find a coloured tacker that was free. Most of the white tackers didn't like to work for coloured mechanics, and Hank wouldn't assign them to. He wasn't offensive about it, he'd just make the coloured mechanics wait, and if they got mad about it he gave them a line of his soft Southern jive. I found him on the quarter-deck talking to a couple of white women tackers in their welders' suits.
'How 'bout a tacker for a half hour or so?' I said.
He hadn't seen me coming toward him and when I spoke he jumped. Then he put on his special smile for coloured. 'Why, if it isn't the shot,' he said. 'Whataya say, big shot, long time no see. What's cooking?'
'All I want's a tacker,' I said. I knew it wasn't the way to go about it but I wasn't in the mood for jive.
'Say, fellow, you're getting fat--a regular capitalist.' He kept on as if he thought he was going to thaw me out. Then he turned to the two women. 'Here's a boy who's come out to California and made good in a big way; he's a leaderman in the sheet-metal department--one of Kelly's boys.'
I saw I couldn't rush him so I decided to dish out some too. 'You're doing fine yourself,' I said. 'The folks back in Georgia wouldn't know you.'
He kept his smile, but he began getting dirty. 'You said it, bo.' Then to the women, 'This boy's really a killer, got all the little brown gals in a dither about him.' To me again, 'How _does_ you do it, bo?'
I got all set to curse him out; then right in the middle of it! realized that I was jumping the gun; he hadn't really said enough to start a rumpus about. I had to laugh. The three of them started to laugh with me. I said, 'Don't sell me _too_ hard, buddy, you just might find a buyer.'
Hank caught it first; the creases stayed in his face but his smile went. The two women dug it from the change in his expression; neither blushed; they just got that sudden brutal look.
'You don't want a tacker, sho 'nuff?' Hank said, trying to get back his advantage.
But he had lost it. 'Sho 'nuff,' I drawled. 'An' ri' now.'
We looked at each other, measuring. His eyes were hard blue, hostile but not quite angry. I don't know how mine looked but I tried to make them as hard as his.
He decided to play it straight, where he always had the advantage. 'To tell you the truth, Bob, all of my tackers are busy, will be busy all day.'
I tried to get it back again. 'How about one of these ladies?' I'd started to say 'Southern' ladies, but decided not to press him that far.
'They're busy too,' he said. Now he got some of his smile back.
I started to turn away, saw a couple of tackers lounging over at the port rail by the generators, gabbing; turned back. 'How about one of them?' I nodded in their direction.
He glanced over at them, looked back at me. Now he had all of his smile back. 'They're busy too,' he said. 'You're just out of luck, Bob. Why don't you try Tommy?' Tommy was another cracker bastard.
I couldn't call him a liar; that's where he had me. I couldn't go down to Kelly and say, 'Hank said he ain't got any tackers'--even if I would have, which I wouldn't. He'd look at me as if I was nuts and say, 'Why, goddamn, why tell me?' I turned away, thinking. The white folks win again, trying to laugh it off. But it stuck in my craw. If I couldn't get the work done I'd have to take Kelly's riding; and in order to get it done I had to eat everybody else's. I had my usual once-a-day urge to tell them to take their leaderman job and shove it.
But half-way down the ladder I thought, What the hell, and turned around and went back to the tackers who were gabbing by the rail. I saw they were Southerners, but I asked anyway.
'Look, can I get one of you fellows to tack a couple of stays for me?'
They looked at each other. For a moment I thought neither one was going to answer, then one said, 'We's waitin' fuh Hank.'
'You're not working on a job, though, are you?'
'No, we's jes waitin'.'
I couldn't tell whether they were making fun of me or just talked like that. I decided to try again. 'If Hank says it's all right, can I get one of you then?'
They looked at each other again. The other one spoke this time. He said, 'Sho.'
All of a sudden I had to laugh. They knew that Hank wasn't going to assign them to me. 'Okay, boys,' I said. 'Get your rest.'
I walked off but I didn't know where I was going. I couldn't go down and tell Red that Hank wouldn't give me a tacker, either; they'd get down on me too. Then I thought of Don. I found him at the forward end supervising the installation of a cowl vent.
'Wanna do me a favour?' I said.
He turned that bright speculative stare on me. 'Shoot Kelly?' He didn't crack a smile, but I laughed once anyway to show him it was funny.
Then I said, 'Let me borrow one of your tackers for about a half-hour.'
He thought for a moment. 'There's a girl down aft--Madge. They're doing these things.' He kicked at the cowl. 'You can have her till dinner-time, anyway.'
'Fine,' I said, hurrying off. I noticed the white mechanics give him a dirty look, but I didn't think anything about it at the time.
She had her back to me and her hood up so it covered her hair, so I didn't recognize her right off. I was about twenty feet away, hurrying toward her, when one of the white mechanics looked up, and that caused her to turn. I saw that she was the big, peroxide blonde I'd run into on the third deck earlier; and I knew the instant I recognized her that she was going to perform then--we both would perform.
As soon as she saw me she went into her frightened act and began shrinking away. I started off giving her a sneer so she'd know I knew it was phoney. She knew it anyway; but she kept putting it on me. I didn't know how far she'd go and I got apprehensive. Before I got too close to her I began talking to her, like you do to a vicious dog to gentle it.
'Look, Madge, Don said you could work with me for a while.'
A wild excited look came into her eyes and her mouth went tight-lipped and brutal; she looked as if she was priming herself to scream. This bitch is crazy, I thought, but I walked on up to her and picked up her line as if nothing was happening. 'It's just a short job,' I said. 'I'll carry your line for you.'
She came out of her phoney act and jerked her line out of my hand, 'I ain't gonna work with no nigger!' she said in a harsh, flat voice.
I didn't even think about it. I just said it right out of my stomach. 'Screw you then, you cracker bitch!'
I stood there for a moment swapping looks with her. She didn't even bat her eyes; she just gave me a long hard brazen look and turned to the two mechanics squatting open-mouthed and said, 'You gonna let a nigger talk tuh me like that?'
One started up tentatively, a bar in his hand. 'Well now, by God--'
I gave them a glance. They were both elderly men, small, scrawny, nothing to worry about. I turned and walked away, went down to the head and told Red that I couldn't find him a tacker, he'd have to take the job over to the sheet-metal shop and get it welded.
'These white folks just refuse to work with us mggers this morning,' I laughed. I felt better now I'd cursed somebody out.
At eleven-thirty MacDougal, the department superintendent, sent for me. I walked across the yard to the sheet-metal shop where he had his office.