Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

  The blond young man’s breathing had become labored. “You should be down to the money,” he said finally.

  The Colonel stopped digging. He put his arm into the hole to measure its depth. He straightened up and looked at the blond young man as though he didn’t see him. For a long moment he seemed lost in thought.

  “Incredible!” he said.

  “What?” the blond young man blurted.

  “There isn’t any money.”

  The blond young man’s mouth flew open. Shock stretched his eyes and he grunted as though someone had hit him in the solar plexus.

  “Impossible,” he gasped.

  Suddenly the Colonel went berserk. He began stabbing the bale of cotton with the hunting knife as though it were human and he was trying to kill it. He slashed it and raked it with the hook. His face had turned bright red and foam collected in the corners of his mouth. His blue eyes looked stone crazy.

  “Gawdammit, I tell you there isn’t any money!” he shouted accusingly, as though it were the young man’s fault.

  Grave Digger pushed open the closet door and stepped into the room, his long-barreled, nickelplated .38 revolver leveled on the Colonel’s heart and glinting deadly in the bright light.

  “That’s just too mother-raping bad,” he said and Coffin Ed followed him.

  The Colonel and the young man froze, suspended in motion. Their eyes mirrored shock. The Colonel was the first to regain his composure. “What does this mean?” he asked in a controlled voice.

  “It means you’re under arrest,” Grave Digger said.

  “Arrest? For preparing a bale of cotton to exhibit during our rally tomorrow?”

  “When you hijacked the Back-to-Africa meeting you hid the money in this bale of cotton during your getaway, then lost it. We wondered what made this bale of cotton so important.”

  “Nonsense,” the Colonel said. “You’re having a pipe dream. If you think I had anything to do with that robbery, you go ahead and arrest me and I’ll sue you and the city for false arrest.”

  “Who said for robbery?” Coffin Ed said. “We’re arresting you for murder.”

  “Murder! What murder?”

  “The murder of a junkyard laborer named Joshua Peavine,” Grave Digger said. “That’s where the cotton fits in. He took you to Goodman’s junkyard looking for this cotton and you had him murdered.”

  “I suppose you’re going to have this Goodman identify this cotton,” the Colonel said sarcastically. “Don’t you know there are seven hundred million acres of cotton just like this?”

  “Cotton is graded,” Grave Digger said. “It can be identified. There were fibers from this bale of cotton left in Goodman’s junkyard where the boy was murdered.”

  “Fibers? What fibers?” the Colonel challenged.

  Grave Digger stepped to the pile of cotton on the floor and picked up a handful and held it out to the Colonel. “These fibers.”

  The Colonel paled. He still held the knife and hook in his hands but his body was controlled with great effort. The blond young man was sweating and trembling all over.

  “Drop the gadgets, Colonel,” Coffin Ed said, motioning with his gun.

  The Colonel tossed the knife and hook into the hole in the bale of cotton.

  “Turn around and walk over and put your hands to the wall,” Coffin Ed went on.

  The Colonel looked at him scornfully. “Don’t be afraid, my boy, we’re unarmed.”

  The tic came into Coffin Ed’s face. “And just don’t be too mother-raping cute,” he warned.

  The white men read the danger in his face and obeyed. Grave Digger frisked them. “They’re clean.”

  “All right, turn around,” Coffin Ed ordered.

  They turned around impassively.

  “Just remember who’re the men here,” Coffin Ed said.

  No one replied.

  “You were seen picking up the laborer, Joshua, by the side of the 125th Street railroad station just before he was murdered,” Grave Digger continued from before.

  “Impossible! There was only a blind man there!” the blond young man blurted involuntarily.

  With a quick violent motion the Colonel turned and slapped him.

  Coffin Ed chuckled. He drew a photograph from his inside pocket and passed it to the Colonel. “The blind man saw you — and took this picture.”

  The Colonel studied it for a long moment, then handed it back. His hand was steady but his nostrils were white along the edges. “Do you believe a jury would convict me on this evidence?” he said.

  “This ain’t Alabama,” Coffin Ed said. “This is New York, and this colored man has been murdered by a white man in Harlem. We have the evidence. We’ll give it to the Negro press and all the Negro political groups. When we get through, no jury would dare acquit you; and no governor would dare pardon you. Get the picture, Colonel?”

  The Colonel had turned white as a sheet and his face looked pinched. Finally he said, “Every man’s got his price, what’s yours?”

  “You’re lucky to have any teeth left by now, or even dentures,” Grave Digger said. “But you asked me a straight question, and I’ll give you a straight answer. Eighty-seven thousand dollars.”

  The blond young man’s mouth popped wide open again and he flushed bright red. But the Colonel only stared at Grave Digger to see if he was joking. Then disbelief came to his face, and finally astonishment.

  “Incredible! You’re going to give them back their money?”

  “That’s right, the families.”

  “Incredible! Is it because they are nigras and you’re nigras too?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Incredible!” The Colonel looked as though he had got the shock of his life. “If that’s true, you win,” he conceded. “What will it buy me?”

  “Twenty-four hours,” Grave Digger said.

  The Colonel kept staring at him as though he were a four-headed baby. “And will you really keep your bargain?”

  “That’s right. A gentleman’s agreement.”

  A flicker of a smile showed at the corners of the Colonel’s mouth.

  “A gentleman’s agreement,” he echoed. “I’ll give you a cheque drawn on the committee.”

  “We’re going to wait right here behind drawn shades until the banks open in the morning and you send and get the cash,” Grave Digger said.

  “I’ll have to send my assistant here,” the Colonel said. “Will you trust him?”

  “That ain’t the question,” Grave Digger said. “Will you trust him? It’s your mother-raping life.”

  22

  Tuesday passed. Colonel Calhoun and his nephew had disappeared. So had Grave Digger and Coffin Ed. The entire police force was searching for them. The panel truck had been found abandoned beside the cemetery at 155th Street and Broadway, but no trace of their whereabouts. Their wives were frantic. Lieutenant Anderson had personally joined in the search.

  But they had simply ditched the panel truck and limped over to the Lincoln Hotel on St Nicholas Avenue, operated by their old friend, took adjoining rooms and went to bed. They had slept around the clock.

  Now it was Wednesday morning, and they had come down to the precinct station in a taxi, wearing bedroom slippers on bandaged feet, to turn in their report.

  At sight of them the captain turned purple. He looked on the verge of an apoplectic stroke. He wouldn’t speak to them, wouldn’t look at them again. He gave orders for them to wait in the detectives’ room and telephoned the commissioner. The other detectives looked at them and grinned sympathetically, but no one spoke; no one dared speak, they were hotter than a pussy with the pox.

  The commissioner arrived and they were called into the captain’s office. The commissioner was distinctly cool, but he had himself well under control, like a man just keeping from biting his nails. He let them stand while he read their report. He leafed through the eighty-seven thousand dollars in cash they had turned in.

  “Now, men, I just want the facts,
” he said, looking about as though searching for the facts he wanted. “How was it possible that Colonel Calhoun escaped while you were guarding him?” he asked finally.

  “You haven’t read our report correctly, sir,” Grave Digger said with great control. “We said we were waiting for him to come back so we could catch him red-handed taking the money from the bale of cotton. But when he started to unlock the door his nephew said something and they rushed back to their limousine and took off. That was the last we saw of them. We tried to chase them but their car was too fast. They must have had some gadget on the lock to tell them if it had been tampered with.”

  “What kind of gadget?”

  “We don’t know, sir.”

  The commissioner frowned. “Why didn’t you report his escape and let the force catch him? Obviously, we have departments better equipped for it — or don’t you think so?” he added sarcastically.

  “That’s right, sir,” Grave Digger said. “But they didn’t catch the two gunmen of Deke’s and they had two full days before these same gunmen show up here, in the precinct station, and kill two officers and spring Deke.”

  “We figured we’d have a better chance of getting him by ourselves. We figured he’d come back for the money sooner or later, so we just hid there waiting for him,” Coffin Ed added with a straight face.

  “For one whole day?” the commissioner asked.

  “Yes, sir. Time didn’t matter,” Grave Digger said.

  The captain cleared his throat angrily but said nothing.

  But the commissioner reddened with anger. “There is no place on this Force for grandstanding,” he said hotly.

  Coffin Ed blew up. “We found Deke and his two killers, didn’t we? We gave back Iris, didn’t we? We found the money, didn’t we? We’ve got the evidence against the Colonel, haven’t we? That’s what we’re paid for, isn’t it? You call that grandstanding?”

  “And how did you do it?” the commissioner flared.

  Grave Digger spoke quickly, heading Coffin Ed off. “We did what we thought best, sir,” Grave Digger said amenably. “You said you’d give us a free hand.”

  “Umph,” the commissioner growled, scanning the report in front of him. “How did this girl, this dancer, Billie Belle, get hold of the cotton?”

  “We don’t know, sir, we haven’t asked her,” Grave Digger said. “We thought they’d get it out of Iris, they had her all yesterday.”

  The captain reddened. “Iris wouldn’t talk,” he said defensively. “And we didn’t know about Billie Belle.”

  “Where does she live?” the commissioner asked.

  “On 115th Street, not far,” Grave Digger said.

  “Get her in here now,” the commissioner ordered.

  The captain sent two white detectives for her, glad to get off so easily.

  Billie didn’t have time for her elaborate onstage make-up and she looked young and demure, almost innocent, without it, like all lesbian sexpots. Her full soft lips were a natural rose color, and without mascara her eyes looked brighter, smaller and rounder. She wore black linen slacks and a white cotton blouse and she looked like anything but a sophisticated belly dancer. She was relaxed and slightly on the flip side.

  “It was just a whim,” she said. “I saw Uncle Bud sleeping in his empty cart when I was driving down beneath the bridge to see about my yawt, and somehow his nappy white head made me think of cotton. I stopped and asked him if he could get me a bale of cotton for my cotton dance; I don’t know why, just ’cause if he cut his hair it’d make a bale, I suppose, and he said, ‘Gimme fifty dollars and I’ll git you a bale of cotton, Miss Billie,’ and I gave him the fifty right then and there, knowing I’d get it back from the club. And sure enough, that same night, he delivered it.”

  “Where?” the commissioner asked.

  “At the club,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “What could I do with a bale of cotton in my home?”

  “When?” Grave Digger asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, becoming impatient with these senseless questions. “Before I came at ten. He had left it in the stage entrance where it was in the way and I had it moved to my dressing-room until I wanted it on the stage.”

  “When did you see Uncle Bud again?” Grave Digger asked.

  “I had already paid him,” she said. “There wasn’t any need of seeing him again.”

  “Have you ever seen him again?” Grave Digger persisted.

  “Why ever should I see him again?” she snapped.

  “Think,” Grave Digger said. “It’s important.”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “No, that was the last time I saw him.”

  “Did the bale of cotton look as though it had been tampered with?” Coffin Ed asked.

  “How the hell would she know?” Grave Digger said.

  “I’d never seen a bale of cotton before in my life,” she confessed.

  “How did Iris find out about it?” the commissioner asked.

  “I don’t really know,” she said musingly. “She must have heard me telephoning. I saw a want ad in the Sentinel for a bale of cotton and called the number. Some man with a southern accent answered and said he was Colonel Calhoun of the Back-to-the-Southland movement and he needed a bale of cotton for a rally he was planning to have. I thought he was some smart alec making a joke and I asked him where this rally was taking place. When he said on Seventh Avenue, I was sure he was joking then. I said I was having a cotton rally on Seventh Avenue myself, at the Cotton Club, and he could come to see it, and he said he would. Anyway, I know I was joking when I asked him for a thousand dollars for my bale of cotton.”

  “Where was Iris when you were talking on the telephone?” the commissioner persisted.

  “I thought she was still in the bathroom, soaking, but she must have come into the dining-rrom in her bare feet. I was in the sitting-room lying on the divan with my back to the dining-room door and I didn’t hear her. She could have just stood there and eavesdropped and I wouldn’t have known it.” She had her little secret smile on again. “That would be just like Iris. Anyway, I would have told her all about it if she had asked, but she would rather eavesdrop.”

  “Didn’t you know she had escaped from prison?” the commissioner asked softly.

  There was silence for a moment and Billie’s eyes stretched. “She told me that detectives Jones and Johnson had let her out to look for Deke. I didn’t approve of it but it wasn’t my business.”

  Dead silence reigned. The commissioner looked hard at the captain, but the captain wouldn’t meet his gaze. Coffin Ed grunted, but Grave Digger kept a straight and solemn face.

  Billie noticed the strange looks on everyone and asked innocently, “What was so important about the bale of cotton?”

  Coffin Ed said jubilantly, “It had the eighty-seven thousand dollars hijacked from Deke’s Back-to-Africa pitch hidden inside of it.”

  “Ohhhh,” Billie gasped. Her eyes rolled back. Grave Digger caught her as she fell.

  Now a week had passed. Harlem had lived notoriously on the front pages of the tabloids. Saucy brown chicks and insane killers were integrated with southern colonels and two mad Harlem detectives for the entertainment of the public. Lurid accounts of robberies and killings pictured Harlem as a criminal inferno. Deke O’Hara and Iris were dished up with the breakfast cereal; both had been indicted for conspiracy to defraud and second-degree murder. Iris screamed in bold black print that she had been double-crossed by the police. The Back-to-Africa movement vied with the Back-to-the-Southland movment for space and sympathy.

  Everyone considered the dead gunmen as good gunmen and Grave Digger and Coffin Ed were congratulated for being alive.

  Colonel Calhoun and his nephew, Ronald Compton, had been indicted for the murder of Joshua Peavine, a Harlem Negro laborer. But the State of Alabama refused to exradite them on the grounds that killing a Negro did not constitute murder under Alabama law.

  The families of the Back-to-Africa group of O’M
alley’s who had gotten their money back staged an outdoor testimonial for Grave Digger and Coffin Ed in the same lot where they had lost it. Six hogs were barbecued whole and the detectives were presented with souvenir maps of Africa. Grave Digger was called upon to speak. He stood up and looked at his map and said, “Brothers, this map is older than me. If you go back to this Africa you got to go by way of the grave.” No one understood what he meant, but they applauded anyway.

  The next day Harlem’s ace detectives were cited by the commissioner for bravery beyond the call of duty, but no raise came forth.

  Undertaker H. Exodus Clay was kept busy all week burying the dead, which turned out to be so profitable he gave his chauffeur and handyman, Jackson, a bonus which enabled Jackson to marry his fiancée, Imabelle, with whom he had been living off and on for six years.

  It was a quiet Wednesday midnight a week later and Grave Digger, Coffin Ed and Lieutenant Anderson were gathered in the captain’s office, drinking beer and shooting the breeze.

  “I don’t dig Colonel Calhoun,” Anderson said. “Was his object to break up the Back-to-Africa movement or just to rob them? Was he a man with a cause or just a thief?”

  “He’s a dedicated man,” Grave Digger said. “Dedicated to the idea of keeping the black man picking cotton in the South.”

  “Yeah, the Colonel thought the Back-to-Africa movement was as sinful and un-American as bolshevism and should be stamped out at any cost,” Coffin Ed added.

  “I suppose he thought it was the American thing to do to rob those colored people out of their money,” Anderson said sarcastically.

  “Well, ain’t it?” Coffin Ed said.

  Anderson reddened.

  “Hell, you don’t know the Colonel,” Grave Digger said pacifyingly. “He intended to give them back the money if they went south and picked cotton for a year or so. He’s a benevolent man.”

  Anderson nodded knowingly. “It figures,” he said. “That’s why he hid the money in a bale of cotton. It was a symbol.”

  Grave Digger stared at Anderson and then looked over at Coffin Ed. Coffin Ed didn’t get it either.