“I dunno,” she said. “The doctor says I have to report for treatments down at the hospital.”
“You’re not going back to the…” I stopped.
She stood up. “Why not!” she snarled. “Why shouldn’t I go back? That’s where I got it.”
“But you’ll give it to someone.”
“Why should I care?” She paced across the room. “They didn’t care about giving it to me. It’s their tough luck. I ain’t goin’ to see us go hungry just on account of that.”
“You won’t have to think about that,” I said, “My boss wants to see Tom about a job on one of the trucks.”
She looked at me in open disbelief. “Youah jus’ talkin’.”
“No,” I said, “I mean it. He wants to see Tom. He told me.”
She was convinced.
“So you see,” I continued, “you can go to the doctor and get cured. You won’t have to worry about them.”
She looked as if she were going to cry, but she didn’t. Instead she came over toward me and took my hand. “It’s so good, Frankie,” she said, half smiling, half crying, “I just can’t believe it.”
Maw Harris came in. She stood in the doorway a minute looking at us. Elly ran over to her. “Maw, Frankie tol’ me his boss wants to see Tom about a job!”
The old lady’s face broke into a smile. “She right, Frankie?” she asked me.
I nodded. “Yes, Maw, she’s right. He wants to see Tom right away.”
Mrs. Harris turned to me in simple wonder. “The Lawd was a-lookin’ out for all of us when Tom brought you home.”
I looked at them. Elly was smiling happily; her mother too had a quiet, happy air about her. Sam came in. They told him the news. We all felt good. After a few minutes had passed, I asked Sam if he would go down for a pack of cigarettes and a large bottle of soda pop. It was hot and we could stand a cool drink. Tom hadn’t shown up yet. Elly went down with him.
Mrs. Harris sat in her old rocker. The chair squeaked on the bare wooden floor as she rocked it gently to and fro. She waited until the footsteps in the hall died down, and then she spoke. “You been a real friend to us, Frankie. We appreciate deeply whut you done foh us.”
I was a little embarrassed. “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “You did more for me than I ever could do for you.”
A few minutes passed before she spoke again. “Ah never asked you befoh, Frankie—maybe it ain’t none o’ my business—but haven’t you any friends besides us? I mean some white folk that you know?”
I thought of Jerry and Marty and the folks before I spoke. “No,” I said, “and if I did it probably wouldn’t do any good. It’s been so long ago.”
“Didn’t you evunh try to look them up an’ fin’ out?”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t do any good. It was a long time ago. They probably have forgotten about me by now.”
“Real frien’s never forgets,” the old woman said, “no matter how long it is you don’ see them. Besides you should have some white frien’s.” She hesitated a second. “You should know some people you kin go out an’ have some fun with—some young boys an’ girls youh own age.”
“There’s nothing the matter with you folks,” I said. “You’ve been as nice to me as anyone I know of.”
“But,” she said, “you can’t go out with us. You can’t go dancin’ with us. We is colored. That ain’t the way things is done.”
“I don’t care how things are done,” I said, “and I don’t like dancing anyway.”
She smiled at that. “There’s another thing I thought I’d tell you about. It’s Elly. I think she kinda likes you, an’ they is nothin’ but grief in it foh us if’s she gets the idea wuhkin’ ovah in her haid. I don’t want to huht yoh feelin’s none but things ain’t that way eithuh.”
I thought that over. While I was turning that thought over in my mind, the old lady continued to speak. “She kinda waits all week foh you to come up, an’ on Sundays she dresses herself up in her bes’ clothes cause yoah comin’.”
I knew more about Elly than the old lady knew, and yet she never said anything to me about what she felt or thought. I knew I didn’t love her, and I didn’t think for a minute that she might be in love with me. There was a feeling between us, but I thought it was a mixture of a sort of camaraderie and sex—an indefinable solution that had blended so well it defied all attempts at analysis. Finally I spoke. “I see what you’re tryin’ to tell me, Maw. I’ll do what you think best. I don’t want to make any of you unhappy.”
She smiled again at me. “I knew you’d say that, Frankie. Youah a good boy. We’ll think about it an’ decide later what to do.”
Sam came in with the soda. We opened the bottle and each drank a glass. Then Sam asked me if I wanted to go up to the park near City College and watch a ballgame with him.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to wait around for Tom so I could tell him about the job, but Mrs. Harris urged us to go. She said she was tired and wanted to lie down and take a nap, and that she wouldn’t tell Tom till I came back. I put on my jacket and went out with Sam. On the way down the stairs he told me that Elly had gone over to see a friend of hers but she’d be back later. We went up to the park.
44
It was hot up there in the park. The sun beat down on us unmercifully. There was a good game going on up there though, and we had a good time watching it. We bought some hot dogs and lemonade from one of the pushcart vendors and ate them while we watched.
When we got back to the house it was nearly six o’clock and Tom hadn’t come back home yet. Elly was there and tried to urge me to stay for supper, but I begged off and went over to 125th Street and ate. Then I went to see a picture and came out a few minutes after ten. I decided to go over to the Harrises’ and see if Tom had come back. I turned up St. Nicholas Avenue and walked over to their house.
As I turned their corner a fire engine whizzed past me, its bell clanging and men pulling on their coats over their shoulders. I looked after them. There was a fire down the block. Smoke was pouring from a building. I stood on the corner staring at it foolishly a few minutes before I realized it was Tom’s house. Then I broke into a run down the block.
There was a crowd of people gathered already and being pushed back by the cops. The firemen were running up a long ladder to the sixth floor, and powerful streams of water were gushing into the blazing building. I pushed through the crowds of people to the front and looked around for one of the Harrises. It was dark and I couldn’t see very well. There was a great deal of excitement. A hand grabbed me by the shoulder.
I spun around. It was Tom. “Frankie!” he shouted, “where are they?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted back at him. “I just came from the show. Weren’t you home?”
“I just got back.”
Just then Sam and Elly came running up. They had been running and were out of breath. “Where’s Maw?” they shouted at Tom.
“I jus’ got home,” he shouted. “Ain’t she with you?”
“No,” Sam answered. “She was feelin’ kind of tired an’ she went to bed early.”
We moved over to one of the policeman. He was a big colored man.
“Did they git my mother out?” Tom asked him.
“What she look like?” the cop shouted back.
“An old woman—Mrs. Harris—about sixty-two—gray hair.” Sam told him.
He shook his head. “I didn’t see nobody of that description come out,” he said. “You’d better go ask the fire chief over there.”
We ran over to the fire chief and repeated the question. He shook his head. “No one like that came out,” he said. “But don’t worry, if she’s in there we’ll get her out.”
Tom turned to the house. “Maw’s still in there,” he shouted. “I’m a goin’ to git her.” He started toward the house. A couple of cops grabbed him.
“You can’t go in there,” one of them said. “The firemen’ll get her out.”
“My
maw’s in there,” he shouted, struggling to get himself loose, “in the third floor back. I gotta git her!”
“You can’t go, goddammit!” hollered one of the cops.
Tom shook one hand free. He aimed a punch at the other cop holding him. The cop sidestepped it and hit Tom in the jaw with his fist. Tom went out on his feet. The cops lowered him gently to the ground. “We can’t let him in,” the cop said apologetically to some of the crowd that had gathered around. “He’ll get himself killed in there. The building’s going up like a matchbox.”
Someone in the crowd yelled. I looked up at the building. Elly had broken from the lines and was running toward the open door of the house. I looked over my shoulder. Sam was kneeling on the ground near his brother, his face streaked with tears. I turned and sprinted after Elly.
“Come back! Come back!” I yelled after her.
She disappeared through the door. I ran up the steps to the door after her. Just as I reached the door, a stream of water hit me in the back. One of the firemen had turned the hose on me. I tumbled through the doorway into the building. It was dark in the hallway filled with smoke. The water was spraying around over my head; I crawled under it to the staircase and ran up the steps.
“Elly!” I hollered. “Elly! Come back!”
There was no answer. I ran up to the third floor. Elly had just gone into the kitchen. I jumped through the doorway and grabbed her. I tried to pull her back. The flames were blazing all through the back of the flat. The smoke was so thick we could hardly see each other. She was coughing. “You gotta come back,” I said hoarsely, pulling her with me.
Her coughing had stopped. She struggled to keep me from pulling her with me. “Maw’s in there!” she screamed. “Maw, Maw, d’ya hear me? I’m comin’ tuh git yuh.” She raised her hands and scratched at my face. I tried to hit her but missed. Then she kicked me and broke loose and ran into the bedroom.
The flames sprang up behind her. Their hot, livid fingers burned at my face. I started to follow her. I could hear her screaming somewhere there in the dark: “Maw! Where are you, Maw?”
Then I heard a crash and a long scream that stopped in the middle. For a minute the fire in front of me died down, and I saw the wall between the rooms had fallen with part of the ceiling blocking off the entrance. Then the flames sprang up again, and I turned to the hall, the scream still ringing in my ears. The hallway was blazing. I headed for the stairs and tripped on the top step and rolled down to the first floor. Bits of flaming wood were falling around me. I turned and ran down the last landing. The entrance was blazing in front of me but there wasn’t any other way to get out. A stream of water came splashing into the hallway. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled out into the street under it. In the street I got to my feet and ran toward the fire lines.
One of the firemen grabbed me. “You all right?” he asked harshly.
“Yes,” I said, coughing.
He held on to me as I walked back to the lines. The crowd was being pushed back. “Back up!” the cops were shouting. “She’s going to cave in. Back up!”
I was near Tom and Sam. Tom was still stretched out on the ground but he was beginning to come to; he was shaking his head from side to side. He started to sit up. Just then the building came down with a roar.
We looked at it. A cloud of dust hung in the air over it, occasional tongues of flame licking up into the black night sky. Tom got to his feet. He didn’t know that Elly had run into the building too. He stepped toward the building and roared, his head thrown back shouting to the night sky: “They’ll pay for this, Maw. D’ya hear me? They’ll pay for this, every goddamn one of them! The lousy bastards in the banks, the goddamn people who won’t let us live in better places! I’ll make them pay for this, Maw. It’s a promise. D’ya hear, Maw? It’s a promise.”
A cop ran up to him and tried to pull him back. Tom turned on the policeman. He grabbed him by the neck and began to choke him. The cop’s face was pasty white in the light of the fire. “You’re the first!” Tom screamed, a wild look in his eyes. “You’re the first but you won’t be last! Evvy goddamn one of you’ll pay!”
The colored policeman we had first spoken to ran up to them. He tried to pull Tom off the other cop but couldn’t. Finally he stepped back and picked up his club and brought it down on the side of Tom’s head. Tom went down like a felled ox. The other cop stood up gasping for breath.
Two white-dressed men came up, rolled Tom on to a stretcher, and took him over to an ambulance. They put him in the back. Sam and I ran over to the drive. “He’s my brother,” Sam said, “Kin I go with you?”
The driver nodded. “Hop in the back.”
We got into the back of the ambulance. The intern sitting there looked at me curiously as we got in. “You look pretty well messed up,” he said.
I looked down at my new suit. It was dirty and torn and soaking wet. I would never be able to wear it again, but it didn’t register. I looked back at him dully.
“You the guy that ran in after the girl?” the intern asked.
I nodded.
“You’d better let me have a look at you.” He reached behind him and picked up a stethoscope. “Take off your jacket.”
Automatically I took it off. I was watching Sam as he sat down near his brother. His face was frozen. The full realization of what had happened as yet had not permeated his mind. He didn’t cry, just sat there looking down at Tom. I think he didn’t even know we were in the ambulance with him.
I was soaking wet through to the skin. My face felt dry and burned, the hair on the back of my hands was singed and my hands felt hot. The doctor gave me something to drink after he had taken my pulse. I drank it.
“You’re damn lucky!” the intern said. “You haven’t got a serious burn on you.” The ambulance started off.
Two hours later in the hospital I was sitting outside with Sam, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell us about Tom. Tom had had quite a wallop over the head, and for a while they didn’t think he would pull through. As it was, it would have been better if he didn’t.
When we were ushered into the room, Tom was sitting up in bed crying. Long tears began to roll down his cheeks. Sam, who until that moment had scarcely spoken, ran over to him crying: “Tom, Tom,” and put his arms around his older brother.
Tom looked at him, no recognition in his dim eyes. He just kept on crying, mumbling undistinguishable, incoherent sounds to himself. He pushed Sam away. “Go away,” he mumbled. “I want my mammy. Wheah is she?”
I turned to the doctor, a question on my lips.
The doctor answered before I could speak. He shook his head. “I’m afraid he’ll never be the same. He’s had too many shocks. It did something to him. What he needs now more than anything else is rest and quiet.”
Sam had been standing just behind me when the doctor spoke. He had his back to us looking at Tom, but he heard every word the doctor said. That did it. He turned to me, tears in his eyes, his mouth twitching with controlled sobs. It took me back a long way, that look on his face—to another Sam who had turned to me in his time of need.
“Let ’er go, kid,” I said gently. “There’s times even men cry.”
He sat down in a chair and put his head in his hands, and his body shook with sobs. I couldn’t say anything to him, so I went over to him and stood there awkwardly with my hand on his shoulder. After a while he stopped and we went out into the hall. We sat down out there, not quite knowing what to do next.
About half an hour passed before he spoke. “Frank,” he said, his voice suddenly older, more mature, “kin you get me that job that you were goin’ to get Tom?”
I looked at him before I answered. “What about school?”
“I’ll get working papers. I’m old enough and I’ll have to do something,” he answered. “Can you get it for me?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“It’s strange,” he said, almost as if he were talking to himself, “just a few hours ago I
had a home—and a family, and a place to go. And now I don’t know where to go or where to stay.”
“How about coming down with me until we can straighten things out?” I suggested.
He looked at me gratefully. Just then a tall colored man came into the corridor excitedly. He came over to Sam. I recognized him as the preacher I had once met in the little church in the store.
Sam stood up as he came over to him. “Hello, Reverend,” he said quietly.
“Sam,” the Reverend said, and put his arm around the boy. “I heard about it and came over right away. You’re going to come over to my house and stay there. You’re not alone. You’ve always got the Lawd.”
“You know my friend,” Sam said, motioning toward me.
The preacher looked at me and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “we’ve met.” He held out his hand and we shook. “You did a very brave thing,” he told me.
I didn’t answer.
Together we walked down the hall. At the doorway we parted. The preacher took Sam into a taxi. He asked me if I wanted to be dropped anywhere. I thanked him and assured him I could get home all right. I watched the cab speed off into the night. I started for the hotel.
Elly and Maw Harris were buried two days later on a rainy Tuesday morning. The services were held in the little church, and then we rode out to the cemetery. As the earth began to fall on the coffins, the preacher closed his book and spoke. Sam and I stood near each other and I watched him. He was standing alone at the edge of the graves, the rain falling on his bared head. Tom was still in the hospital, and would be for a long time.
Thump—a wet clump of earth fell on the coffins.
The preacher stood there too, his head bared, looking up at the dark-gray sky while the rain beating on his face mingled with the tears in his voice. He looked like a big black ebony statue against the sky.
“O Lord!” he cried. “Look down on us, thy people, who turn to thee for strength and understanding and hope….”
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 24
