Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  The meat delivery truck turned left on 137th Street. In turning the back door was flung open and a bale of cotton slid slowly from the clutching hands of the two white machine-gunners and fell into the street. The truck dragged to a screaming sidewise stop and began backing up. But at that moment the armored truck came roaring around the corner like destiny coming on. The meat delivery truck reversed directions without a break in motion and took off again as though it had wings.

  From inside the delivery truck came a red burst of machine-gun fire and the bullet-proof windshield of the armored truck was suddenly filled with stars, partly obscuring the driver’s vision. He narrowly missed the bale of cotton, thinking he must have d.t.’s.

  The guard was trying to get the muzzle of his rifle through a gun slot in the windshield when another burst of machine-gun fire came from the delivery truck and its back doors were slammed shut. No one noticed the detective on the running-board of the armored truck suddenly disappear. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

  The colored people on the tenement stoops, seeking relief from the hot night, began running over one another to get indoors. Some dove into the basement entrances beneath the stairs.

  One loudmouthed comic shouted from the safety below the level of the sidewalk, “Harlem Hospital straight ahead.”

  From across the street another loudmouth shouted back, “Morgue comes first.”

  The meat delivery truck was gaining on the armored truck. It must have been powered to keep meat fresh from Texas.

  From far behind came the faint sound of the scream of the siren from the police cruiser, seeming to cry, “Wait for me!”

  Lightning flashed. Before the sound of thunder was heard, rain came down in torrents.

  2

  “Well, kiss my foot if it isn’t Jones,” Lieutenant Anderson exclaimed, rising from behind the captain’s desk to extend his hand to his ace detectives. Slang sounded as phony as a copper’s smile coming from his lips, but the warm smile lighting his thin pale face and the twinkle in his deep-set blue eyes squared it. “Welcome home.”

  Grave Digger Jones squeezed the small white hand in his own big, calloused paw and grinned. “You need to get out in the sun, Lieutenant, ’fore someone takes you for a ghost,” he said as though continuing a conversation from the night before instead of a six months’ interim.

  The lieutenant eased back into his seat and stared at Grave Digger appraisingly. The upward glow from the green-shaded desk lamp gave his face a gangrenous hue.

  “Same old Jones,” he said. “We’ve been missing you, man.”

  “Can’t keep a good man down,” Coffin Ed Johnson said from behind.

  It was Grave Digger’s first night back on duty since he had been shot up by one of Benny Mason’s hired guns in the caper resulting from the loss of a shipment of heroin. He had been in the hospital for three months fighting a running battle with death, and he had spent three months at home convalescing. Other than for the bullet scars hidden beneath his clothes and the finger-size scar obliterating the hairline at the base of his skull where the first bullet had burned off the hair, he looked much the same. Same dark brown lumpy face with the slowly smoldering reddishbrown eyes; same big, rugged, loosely knit frame of a day laborer in a steel mill; same dark, battered felt hat worn summer and winter perched on the back of his head; same rusty black alpaca suit showing the bulge of the long-barreled, nickel-plated, brass-lined .38 revolver on a .44 frame made to his own specifications resting in its left-side shoulder sling. As far back as Lieutenant Anderson could remember, both of them, his two ace detectives with their identical big hard-shooting, head-whipping pistols, had always looked like two hog farmers on a weekend in the Big Town.

  “I just hope it hasn’t left you on the quick side,” Lieutenant Anderson said softly.

  Coffin Ed’s acid-scarred face twitched slightly, the patches of grafted skin changing shape. “I dig you, Lieutenant,” he said gruffly. “You mean on the quick side like me.” His jaw knotted as he paused to swallow. “Better to be quick than dead.”

  The lieutenant turned to stare at him, but Grave Digger looked straight ahead. Four years previous a hoodlum had thrown a glass of acid into Coffin Ed’s face. Afterwards he had earned the reputation of being quick on the trigger.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” Grave Digger said roughly. “You’re not getting paid to get killed.”

  In the green light Lieutenant Anderson’s face turned slightly purple. “Well, hell,” he said defensively. “I’m on your side. I know what you’re up against here in Harlem. I know your beat. It’s my beat too. But the commissioner feels you’ve killed too many people in this area —” He held up his hand to ward off an interruption. “Hoodlums, I know — dangerous hoodlums — and you killed in self-defence. But you’ve been on the carpet a number of times and a short time ago you had three months’ suspensions. Newspapers have been yapping about police brutality in Harlem and now various civic bodies have taken up the cry.”

  “It’s the white men on the force who commit the pointless brutality,” Coffin Ed grated. “Digger and me ain’t trying to play tough.”

  “We are tough,” Grave Digger said.

  Lieutenant Anderson shifted the papers on the desk and looked down at his hands. “Yes, I know, but they’re going to drop it on you two — if they can. You know that as well as I do. All I’m asking is to play it safe, from the police side. Don’t take any chances, don’t make any arrests until you have the evidence, don’t use force unless in self-defence, and above all don’t shoot anyone unless it’s the last resort.”

  “And let the criminals go,” Coffin Ed said.

  “The commissioner feels there must be some other way to curtail crime besides brute force,” the lieutenant said, his blush deepening.

  “Well, tell him to come up here and show us,” Coffin Ed said.

  The arteries stood out in Grave Digger’s swollen neck and his voice came out cotton dry. “We got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Harlem. And there ain’t but three things to do about it: Make the criminals pay for it — you don’t want to do that; pay the people enough to live decently — you ain’t going to do that; so all that’s left is let ’em eat one another up.”

  A sudden blast of noise poured in from the booking room — shouts, curses, voices lifted in anger, women screaming, whines of protest, the scuffling of many feet — as a wagon emptied its haul from a raid on a whore-house where drugs were peddled.

  The intercome on the desk spoke suddenly: “Lieutenant, you’re wanted out here on the desk; they’ve knocked over Big Liz’s circus house.”

  The lieutenant flicked the switch. “In a few minutes, and for Christ’s sake keep them quiet.”

  He then looked from one detective to the other. “What the hell’s going on today? It’s only ten o’clock in the evening and judging from the reports it’s been going on like this since morning.” He leafed through the reports, reading charges: “Man kills his wife with an axe for burning his breakfast pork chop … man shoots another man demonstrating a recent shooting he had witnessed … man stabs another man for spilling beer on his new suit … man kills self in a bar playing Russian roulette with a .32 revolver … woman stabs man in stomach fourteen times, no reason given … woman scalds neighboring woman with pot of boiling water for speaking to her husband … man arrested for threatening to blow up subway train because he entered wrong station and couldn’t get his token back —”

  “All colored citizens,” Coffin Ed interrupted.

  Anderson ignored it. “Man sees stranger wearing his own new suit, slashes him with a razor.” he read on. “Man dressed as Cherokee Indian splits white bartender’s skull with homemade tomahawk … man arrested on Seventh Avenue for hunting cats with hound dog and shotgun … twenty-five men arrested for trying to chase all the white people out of Harlem—”

  “It’s Independence Day,” Grave Digger interrupted.

  “Independence
Day!” Lieutenant Anderson echoed, taking a long, deep breath. He pushed away the reports and pulled a memo from the corner clip of the blotter. “Well, here’s your assignment — from the captain.”

  Grave Digger perched a ham on the edge of the desk and cocked his head; but Coffin Ed backed against the wall into the shadow to hide his face, as was his habit when he expected the unexpected.

  “You’re to cover Deke O’Hara,” Anderson read.

  The two colored detectives stared at him, alert but unquestioning, waiting for him to go on and give the handle to the joke.

  “He was released ten months ago from the federal prison in Atlanta.”

  “As who in Harlem doesn’t know,” Grave Digger said drily.

  “Many people don’t know that ex-con Deke O’Hara is Reverend Deke O’Malley, leader of the new Back-to-Africa movement.”

  “All right, omit the squares.”

  “He’s on the spot; the syndicate has voted to kill him,” Anderson said as if imparting information.

  “Bullshit,” Grave Digger said bluntly. “If the syndicate had wanted to kill him, he’d be decomposed by now.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What maybe? You could find a dozen punks in Harlem who’d kill him for a C-note.”

  “O’Malley’s not that easy to kill.”

  “Anybody’s easy to kill,” Coffin Ed stated. “That’s why we police wear pistols.”

  “I don’t dig this,” Grave Digger said, slapping his right thigh absentmindedly. “Here’s a rat who stooled on his former policy racketeer bosses, got thirteen indicted by the federal grand jury — even one of us, Lieutenant Brandon over in Brooklyn—”

  “There’s always one black bean,” Lieutenant Anderson said unwittingly.

  Grave Digger stared at him. “Damn right,” he said flatly.

  Anderson blushed. “I didn’t mean it the way you’re thinking.”

  “I know how you meant it, but you don’t know how I’m thinking.”

  “Well, how are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking do you know why he did it?”

  “For the reward,” Anderson said.

  “Yeah, that’s why. This world is full of people who will do anything for enough money. He thought he was going to get a half million bucks as the ten per cent reward for exposing tax cheats. He told how they’d swindled the government out of over five million in taxes. Seven out of thirteen went to prison; even the rat himself. He was doing so much squealing he confessed he hadn’t paid any taxes either. So he got sent down too. He did thirty-one months and now he’s out. I don’t know how much Judas money he got.”

  “About fifty grand,” Lieutenant Anderson said. “He’s put it all in his setup.”

  “Digger and me could use fifty G’s, but we’re cops. If we squeal it all goes on the old pay cheque,” Coffin Ed said from the shadows.

  “Let’s not worry about that,” Lieutenant Anderson said impatiently. “The point is to keep him alive.”

  “Yeah, the syndicate’s out to kill him, poor little rat,” Grave Digger said. “I heard all about it. They were saying, ‘O’Malley may run but he can’t hide.’ O’Malley didn’t run and all the hiding he’s been doing is behind the Bible. But he isn’t dead. So what I would like to know is how all of a sudden he got important enough for a police cover when the syndicate had ten months to make the hit if they had wanted to.”

  “Well, for one thing, the people here in Harlem, responsible people, the pastors and race leaders and politicians and such, believe he’s doing a lot of good for the community. He paid off the mortgage on an old church and started this new Back-to-Africa movement —”

  “The original Back-to-Africa movment denies him,” Coffin Ed interrupted.

  “— and people have been pestering the commissioner to give him police protection because of his following. They’ve convinced the commissioner that there’ll be a race riot if any white gunmen from downtown come up here and kill him.”

  “Do you believe that, Lieutenant? Do you believe they’ve convinced the commissioner of that crap? That the syndicate’s out to kill him after ten months?”

  “Maybe it took these citizens that long to find out how useful he is to the community,” Anderson said.

  “That’s one thing,” Grave Digger conceded. “What are some other things?”

  “The commissioner didn’t say. He doesn’t always take me and the captain into his confidence,” the lieutenant said with slight sarcasm.

  “Only when he’s having nightmares about Digger and me shooting down all these innocent people,” Coffin Ed said.

  “ ‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die,’ ” Anderson quoted.

  “Those days are gone forever,” Grave Digger said. “Wait until the next war and tell somebody that.”

  “Well, let’s get down to business,” Lieutenant Anderson said. “O’Malley is co-operating with us.”

  “Why shouldn’t he? It’s not costing him anything and it might save his life. O’Malley’s a rat, but he’s not a fool.”

  “I’m going to feel downright ashamed nursemaiding that excon,” Coffin Ed said.

  “Orders are orders,” Anderson said. “And maybe it’s not going to be like you think.”

  “I just don’t want anybody to tell me that crime doesn’t pay,” Grave Digger said and stood up.

  “You know the story about the prodigal son,” Anderson said.

  “Yeah, I know it. But do you know the story about the fatted calf?”

  “What about the fatted calf?”

  “When the prodigal son returned, they couldn’t find the fatted calf. They looked high and low and finally had to give up. So they went to the prodigal son to apologize, but when they saw how fat he’d gotten to be, they killed him and ate him in the place of the fatted calf.”

  “Yes, but just don’t let that happen to our prodigal son,” Anderson warned them unsmilingly.

  At that instant the telephone rang. Lieutenant Anderson picked up the receiver.

  A big happy voice said, “Captain?”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Well, who ever you is, I just want to tell you that the earth has busted open and all hell’s got loose over here,” and he gave the address where the Back-to-Africa rally had taken place.

  3

  “And then Jesus say, ‘John, the only thing worse than a two-timing woman is a two-timing man.’ ”

  “Jesus say that? Ain’t it the truth?”

  They were standing in the dim light directly in front of the huge brick front of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. The man was telling the woman about a dream he’d had the night before. In this dream he’d had a long conversation with Jesus Christ.

  He was a nondescript-looking man with black and white striped suspenders draped over a blue sport shirt and buttoned to old-fashioned wide-legged dark brown pants. He looked like the born victim of a cheating wife.

  But one could tell she was strictly a church sister by the prissy way she kept pursing up her mouth. One could tell right off that her soul was really saved. She was wearing a big black skirt and a lavender blouse and her lips pursed and her face shone with righteous indignation when he said:

  “So I just out and asked Jesus who was the biggest sinner; my wife going with this man, or this man going with my wife, and Jesus say: ‘How come you ask me that, John? You ain’t thinking ’bout doing nothing to them, is you?’ I say, ‘No, Jesus, I ain’t gonna bother ’em, but this man, he’s married just like my wife, and I ain’t going to be responsible for what might break out between him and his wife,’ and Jesus say, ‘Don’t you worry, John, there’s always going to be some left.’ ”

  Suddenly they were lit by a flash of lightning, which showed up a second man on his knees directly in back of the fascinated church sister. He held a safety razor blade between his right thumb and forefinger and he was cutting away the back of her skirt with such care and silence she didn’t suspect a thing. First, holding the skirt firmly b
y the hem with his left hand, he split it in a straight line up to the point where it began to tighten over her buttocks. Then he split her slip in the same manner. After which, holding the right halves of both skirt and slip firmly but gently between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he cut out a wide half-circle down through the hem and carefully removed the cutout section and threw it carelessly against the wall of the church behind him. The operation revealed one black buttock encased in rose-colored rayon pants and the bare back of one thick black thigh showing above the rolled top of a beige rayon stocking. She hadn’t felt a thing.

  “ ‘Anyone who commits adultery, makes no difference whether it be man or woman, breaks one of my Father’s commandments,’ Jesus say: ‘Makes no difference how good it is,’ ” John said.

  “Amen!” the church sister said. Her buttocks began to tremble as she contemplated this enormous sin.

  Behind her, the kneeling man had begun to cut away the left side of her skirt, but the trembling of her buttocks forced him to exercise greater caution.

  “I say to Jesus, ‘That’s the trouble with Christianity, the good things is always sinful,’ ” John said.

  “Lawd, ain’t it the truth,” the church sister said, leaning forward to slap John on the shoulder in a spontaneous gesture of rising joy. The cutout left side section of the skirt and slip came off in the kneeling man’s hand.

  Now revealed was all the lower part of the big wide rose-encased buttocks and the backs of two thick black thighs above beige stockings. The black thighs bulged in all directions so that just below the crotch, where the torso began, there was a sort of pocket in which one could visualize the buttocks of some man gripped as in a vice. But now, in that pocket, hung a waterproof purse suspended from elastic bands passing up through the pants and encircling the waist.

  With breathless delicacy but a sure touch and steady hand, as though performing a major operation on the brain, the kneeling man reached into the pocket and began cutting the elastic band which held the purse.