The Angry Ones

by Williams, John A. ;

  CHAPTER TWO

  I awoke rested. I dashed down to the drugstore and got a cheap, quick breakfast. I walked slowly into the street, on my way to NBC. New York has a way, when you catch it just right, of doing things to you, and I felt then that the city was doing something to me, for I began to admire its people, its buildings, its busyness. It was relatively cool. A haze softened the stark outlines of the midtown buildings and I had a great feeling of, not hope, but confidence.

  By the time I got past the Plaza, I had worked up a good sweat from the walk. I paused before I got on the elevator and wiped my forehead, then I stepped into the car. The personnel office was filled with handsome people, male and female. They sat awaiting their turns with one of the personnel officers or they filled out application forms. They were probably complete strangers to one another, but in their manner and dress they appeared to have been cast from the same actor-starting-at-the-bottom mold. Not quite the bottom, for the days of Gregory Peck at the Music Hall and Gordon McCrae in the Radio City usher corps were all but past. The people in the personnel office would begin as assistants of some sort and work up to NBC television. A few would become stars and later they would be talked about.

  “Yes?” the receptionist asked. She impressed you with her alert manner.

  “My name’s Steve Hill. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Mr. Giddings.”

  She checked her book, then looked up brightly. “Oh, yes, Mr. Hill. From Hollywood, aren’t you?”

  “No, Los Angeles.”

  “But our Hollywood office set up the appointment?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking about the interviews I’d had at Hollywood and Vine, where NBC was. Nearly everyone in the room had turned to look at me when she said, “Hollywood.” How square can you get? Hollywood is an alleyway; it is less than McDougal Street, but its name covered all scratches. Hollywood—you don’t argue about what it’s come to mean in our time.

  “Mr. Hill,” the receptionist said apologetically, “would you mind filling out this application? Mr. Giddings will see you as soon as you’ve completed it.”

  When I finished the application, she directed me into the inner quarters of Mr. Giddings’ assistant. He was young. He gave me a big, wide smile and the great big hand. He went over my application, saying, “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm,” and nodding approvingly. After reading it he picked up his phone. I thought to myself, What a fool you are to worry about a job. See, you’ve got one already! When he hung up, he said to me, “Miss Gail would like to see you. She’s in charge of the correspondent section. Our publicity people come from that department. It’s a steppingstone, you see?” He smiled. “Now,” he continued, “I can’t promise that there’s an opening, but you can get the interview anyway. Right?”

  “Right,” I answered like a damned dummy. Then I went downstairs and talked to Miss Gail. The salary was small. It surprised me, but I would have taken the job had there been one, but there wasn’t. I returned to Mr. Giddings’ assistant. My face must have mirrored what I felt.

  “There should be something breaking in Miss Gail’s department before long,” he said. “Someone’s always getting promoted. You’ll like working for NBC. Our policy is to hire people on their ability—we don’t care what the color of a man’s skin is. And we don’t,” he said breathlessly, “blow our own horn about our nondiscriminatory policy, like CBS.” He smiled.

  I smiled back to let him know I was impressed.

  I wasn’t. I didn’t give a damn who crowed or who didn’t crow over the fact that they hired Negroes indiscriminately as long as I got a job. I left Mr. Giddings’ assistant’s office with these words thundering in my ears: “I think you’d be a tremendous asset to NBC. I look forward to seeing you around here soon.”

  So I got out of there, went downstairs and killed the rest of the morning over coffee. I knew New York was dead after 11:30. The guy you want to see gets in at 9:30, 9:45. He breaks for coffee about 10:15. From then until 11:30 he’s busy, more or less, until noon or one o’clock when he goes for lunch, which could string out for a couple of hours. You don’t get a good interview in the afternoon; it’s got to be morning or you’re dead. I drank coffee.

  I called Linton Mason, a friend from college and the old days, and got invited to dinner that night. The call finished, I had nothing to do. I needed a haircut, though, and I didn’t want to go all the way uptown where all the Negro barbers were. Too hot. I found a small shop near the UN. The barber was white.

  “Say, doc,” I said as I went into the shop, “think you can cut my hair?”

  He looked at it, then at me. “Maybe I not do so good a job, but I give a goddam good try,” he said, and I thought, New York, I love you. While I was in the chair, I kept thinking, Dad, you ought to be here. The haircut was not bad. I went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner at Lint’s.

  Lint and I had been in college together. He married Bobbie there. It was the time of the crush of veterans; of Dixieland’s revival; of the assonance blending with a dissonance in modern jazz with Parker, Stitt, Monk, Garner, Dizzy, Sassy; it was the time when Henry Wallace, borne on the shoulders of youth, scared the hell out of both the Republicans and the Democrats. It was the season of impatience: Where were the better things?

  They were not to come. The Peeksill Riots made us know it. The trials at Nuremberg made us know it. Whatever had been in the air—and there had been something—was gone. We had been a generation like the Jazz Age, and like it, we had been overwhelmed by the dead weight of national inertia. We would be named years later, laughed at, pitied and perhaps studied in a section of freshman surveys of American literature.

  But in the days of college, Lint’s work and mine were termed “searching”; poetry and prose not too good, but “searching.” Now, as I rang the bell to his apartment, the time past was almost like a scene remembered from a movie.

  He hadn’t changed much. A little bigger in the gut, but the same boyish exuberance. Lint was medium-tall, had sandy hair, a pug nose and bright brown eyes which seemed too far apart. He had a certain absent-minded charm about him. Lint seemed always apologetic for being white, Protestant and American. I liked him and I never doubted he liked me. He was rather bookish and could sometimes affect a pedantic manner, but all told, he was quite fine.

  “Well,” he said, as if I’d been late for cocktails, “where the hell you been?”

  “Nowhere, really,” I said. I flopped on the couch and studied him. Balding. A little flabby. Wrinkles here and there.

  Bobbie came out, her hair as coppery as I remembered.

  “Steve!” she shouted. “Lint told me you were in town. How good to see you!” We embraced.

  I chuckled. Bobbie Mason was a real armful of woman. She was thin, but taut. You couldn’t be around her for any length of time without wondering when she would explode. “Honey, how you doin’?”

  “Oh, fine,” she said, kissing me in that quick was she had.

  “Hon,” Lint said, “fix us a drink, will you?”

  Bobbie spun out of my arms. “Why don’t you fix them?”

  They stared at one another.

  “Me,” Lint said. “Why me?”

  “Oh, crap!” Bobbie said. She glared at Lint and went stomping into the kitchen. Lint looked at me and shrugged. We sat down in silence.

  “What do you want, Steve?” Bobbie called.

  “Anything,” I answered. I turned to Lint. “How was Italy?”

  His eyes shone. “Fabulous,” he said intensely, the way you speak of a beautiful girl you remember well. “You should have been there. Steve, I wrote two novels, twenty-three stories and fragments of a hundred poems. I haven’t sold a thing yet, but Italy is beautiful.”

  And I, of course, told him about Honolulu, Los Angeles and Vegas, but it didn’t sound like Italy and Lint waited for me to be through so he could tell me more. I let him tell me.

  At dinner the cloud which had blown up so quickly went away. I watched them. They had always been extreme
ly happy; I envied them. They didn’t have kids because they were busy carving out careers. Lint was an editor at McGraw-Hill and Bobbie was a promising actress. Lint was my age, had about the same training, same desire to write. But he was making it rather easily; I was not. I could not find it in my heart to wish them ill because they were white, but I suppose sometime in the future, if things get bad enough and I have to go to a head-shrinker, he’ll probably tell me I really hated the hell out of them. I don’t think so. Envy, certainly, but not hate. Matter of fact, had I had anything to do with the choices of brothers, I would have had a difficult time choosing between Lint and Dave. For real.

  After dinner we talked about the people who’d been in our gang in college. The thin, Jesus-looking English major who had come out of the army at forty and breezed right through for his degrees. He was teaching in the South. Then there was the beetle-browed editor of the school paper who, married and the father of four children, took off with the richest, prettiest coed on the campus. We talked about the sweetheart of Sigma Chi, who went with a Negro basketball player and who was asked to resign from her sorority. And so the evening ran on. Our short conversation about Bart brought me up short—there was still the problem of a job.

  Lint said, “You remember Bart, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Sure you do. He was at that last big party we had before you took off. He had a beard then. The artist …”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

  “Well,” Lint said chuckling fiendishly, “guess what he’s doing now, him and his goddam art?”

  “What—ad agency?”

  “Yes!”

  I know I looked surprised. Bart had been rather purist about his art—said he would never work in an agency. I felt a little sorry for him. Anyway, talking about Bart brought Lint to asking about my job.

  “None yet,” I said.

  “You can always bunk here until you get straightened out.”

  “Sure,” said Bobbie warmly.

  “Something will turn up.” I laughed to hide my embarrassment. “I’ve only been in town a day. Just keep your eyes open for me, will you?”

  “Sure,” they agreed.

  At the door Lint said, “You got back just in time, Steve. Party season. Good ones coming up.” He slapped me on the shoulder, then I left.

  The subway was steaming. The heat drained my energy and when I got off the car I could barely climb the stairs. I went along the street, plodding, pushing along, head down. I couldn’t think of anything but the heat. Near the library, I thought I saw a familiar figure, but I paid no special attention to it. I was wondering if I shouldn’t take a cab for the balance of the distance to the hotel.

  “Goddam, ol’ Stephen Hill.” The voice was deep, unruffled and familiar. I turned.

  Obediah—Obie Robertson, a classmate Lint and I hadn’t talked about, stood there, a smile on his face. Obie and I had crossed trails frequently around the country, but I hadn’t seen him now in about three years.

  “Obie,” I said.

  “Man, it’s good to see you,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Where you making it to? Living here?”

  “Hotel,” I said. “Just got in. I’ll probably make it here, Say, I just had dinner with Lint Mason.

  “Crazy,” Obie said. “Everything. Flipped when I saw you. I heard you were on the Coast, man.”

  “Yeah, starving to death.”

  “Hell. You can do that here. But all the guys have been sounding me on how great the Coast is.”

  I snorted, then I said, “Walk with me up to the hotel.”

  “All right.”

  Obie was a big, good-looking guy—the big personality without being the big pain in the ass. He’d finished college with honors, but the journalism school couldn’t place him because he was a Negro. He’d worked for most of the Negro weeklies and was now editor of World of the Black, a big picture book patterned after Ebony.

  “Job?” he asked as we walked.

  “Man,” I said with some heat, “I just got here.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said.

  We walked in silence a few paces, then he said, “Look, you need some money, let me know. I can spare some.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I felt good because of his offer. As we entered the hotel I said, “I don’t suppose you have any openings.”

  “No. Sure could use some help though. The book looks like it’s getting ready to fold.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded.

  I had never been in his office, of course, but that didn’t stop me from imagining the way it probably was—unmatched furniture, poorly lighted, dull floors, ten-year-old typewriters and a living doll for a receptionist who did nothing but talk pretty into the phone, smile and wave her fine legs at visitors.

  “How’s Lint?” Obie asked suddenly.

  “All right. He’s making it.”

  “Sure is,” Obie said with a rueful smile. He looked at me and I returned the smile. We understood, but neither of us would speak what we knew so well.

  We stopped in the lounge for a drink and exchanged news of Negro reporters around the country. “Tompkins just moved up at Jet—assistant managing editor.”

  “I ran into Collins in L.A.,” I said. “He was moving to Vegas to start a paper there.”

  “Davis took a job as PR man at Provident,” Obie said.

  “Sewell went to Ghana, I hear. No?”

  “Yeah, he cut out. Said he’d had it.”

  We were silent a while and I knew that Obie, like me, was thinking of all the time spent in journalism schools and how little of it could be used when you worked on a Negro newspaper, and how rough it was—how damned nearly impossible—to get something on a daily paper.

  “You married, man?” Obie asked.

  “On what?” I scoffed.

  Obie laughed. “All broads want that security—they don’t care what you think you can do, if no one’s going to let you do it. They want you to fit in, anywhere, as long’s there’s a pay day.” Obie chuckled, more to himself than to me. “I haven’t made it either, Steve.”

  “We’re getting damned old, too,” I sighed. “This chasing broads doesn’t seem to get it the way it used to.”

  “I know,” Obie said with a smile.

  I thought about it as I sipped my drink. I said, “You know, Obie, I was ten years old when my old man was thirty.” I thought about it again. “I should have a couple of kids right now.”

  Obie nodded soberly. “I was twelve when my old man was thirty. He must think my dick got shot off in the war. He looks at me awfully funny sometimes.”

  I damned near spilled my drink laughing. Obie. Obie Robertson—how good for him to be around. He saw how he broke me up and he smiled, pleased. He took out a pencil and some paper.

  “This is my stuff. Give me a call tomorrow. I’ll see if I can’t pry something loose. Don’t count on it though.” He gave me the paper and stood up. “Look, man. Don’t be an ass, you need bread, let me know. There’s no theater between you and me.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, act like it.” He pounded me on the shoulder. “Glad you’re in town, man.”

  He went out then. I sat. I guessed I must have smiled, for I was thinking, Bread, the staff of life. As Obie and I used it, it was the staff of life all right, only it was money.

  I went to the lobby and got a Times and rummaged through the employment section up in my room. I marked some jobs, then hauled out the typewriter to do up some letters. I inserted resumés with the letters into envelopes and dropped them into the chute in the hall.

  Back in the room again, I toyed with the idea of calling Grace. I decided against it, but having had the thought, I couldn’t get rid of it, so just before I went to bed I called.

  It was good to hear her after I worked past her kids who were still up. I wanted to tell her what room I was in and in what hotel, but I was so inten
t on catching any shadings in her voice I forgot to. She sounded very good. She wanted to know when I was coming to see them. As soon as I got settled, I told her. The night was better when I hung up than it had been the night before.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I went “home” the next morning, home to Harlem, and made the rounds of the papers, the same papers I’d applied to weeks before my graduation from college. I hadn’t received a single answer then. But I was back. A sympathetic editor offered a deal on a space rate basis. I turned it down. I’d done space rate copy before, and starved. It probably wasn’t the editor’s fault, but his paper was known among writers for paying slowly. I was in no position to write reams of copy for pennies and wait six months to collect them.

  We chatted a while on the continuing problems of the Negro press, still a weapon rather than a medium. We talked about the lack of newspapermen on the papers. Advertising personnel, at least for the present, were a shade more practical because they brought in the money to pay for the paper, the writers, the printers and distributors.

  I couldn’t sell Cadillacs if they went for a dime each, I told him. He agreed I didn’t have it—the quick, the dash, the glib required of the sales representative to sell the Negro market through his newspaper.

  He had heard that Obie’s magazine was on the verge of folding. He’d been trying to talk his publisher into putting up money for Obie’s salary, but the publisher wasn’t having any. The editor and I went out and he bought a beer for me. We stood talking then, on the street, with the black, brown and beige crowds surging around us. He told me as I left, “In heart, don’t ever get too far away from Harlem. The stuff of history is right here.”

  I thought he would laugh when he said it, but he didn’t.