The Angry Ones

by Williams, John A. ;

  I had got hold of a couple of very good marijuana cigarettes. I had one of them on me when I started moving my things—the place was only two blocks away, so I was carrying my stuff. Out of seven million people in New York, at least two million must carry stuff in bags every day, but the cop on the corner had to stop me. Me, with a roach in my pocket. He asked if the stuff was mine and I told him it was. He made me identify myself, which I did. He let me go then, but I was so shaken I flushed the cigarette down the toilet.

  I would have forgotten the whole bit, but the following Saturday I was walking with Bobbie Mason to the store. Lint had stayed home to watch a football game on TV.

  A police car cruised up and stopped beside us. A fat cop leaned out the window and hollered, “Hey!” We turned and the cop motioned to Bobbie. She walked over, tugging at her shorts. The cop gave me a dirty look. To Bobbie he said, “Those shorts aren’t long enough, lady.”

  “What do you mean?” she snapped. “I’ve been wearing these shorts all summer.”

  “I can’t help that. They’re too short. You’d better get off the street.”

  I had walked to the car with Bobbie. I could see that the cop was waiting for me to say something so he could pour me inside and cart me off. I said nothing. I did even better than that—I walked back to the curb and waited for Bobbie.

  “To hell with them,” she said when she joined me. The cop watched us.

  “Better go home,” I said. “I’ll pick up the stuff for you.”

  “To hell with the stuff.” We stood there a moment on the curb. She looked at me. “You think it was the shorts?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Those lousy bastards.”

  I walked her back home thinking how much I disliked cops.

  “C’mon upstairs,” Bobbie said as we stood in front of her place. “I’ll fix a drink for you and Lint and you can watch the game.”

  We started upstairs. She whispered, “Don’t tell Lint.”

  “Why not?”

  “He told me not to wear the shorts.”

  “So? He ought to know what happens when his wife walks around the corner with a friend, oughtn’t he?”

  “Steve, this week things are going all right. I don’t want to give him anything to bellow about. Christ, it’s bad enough just listening to him.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Not many people do.”

  “Planning anything?”

  She had been walking ahead of me. Now she stopped and turned. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  We proceeded upstairs. When we walked in, Lint peered at us from his chair. He looked first at Bobbie, then at me. “Where are the groceries?” he asked. “You’ve been gone a long time.” He rose; his mouth was laughing beneath lowered eyelids. He patted Bobbie on the rump. “You haven’t been to Steve’s place, have you? I remember Steve. Fast worker.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bobbie said. She began to walk out of the room as though it would be beneath her to even answer her husband, but she said, “I didn’t feel well all of a sudden. Steve brought me home.”

  Lint turned from me; he had been staring very hard. He became all at once extremely solicitous about Bobbie. I sat down while he made her go to bed. I looked at the television program, but my mind was on Lint. He was a man who was lost outside the center of the stage. He thrust himself upon anyone, anywhere and at anytime. He did this most with Bobbie, of course, breaking into her stories, recalling in a loud voice the punch lines she’d goofed, and so on. His were not opinions so much as judgments.

  “You know I was only kidding, man,” he said when he came back into the room.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Poor kid,” Lint said, settling himself. “She’s been working too hard, trying out for things. Rough grind.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wondered why he thought Bobbie and I had been together in bed. Was Bobbie shacking up—or was it that he just didn’t trust me? Lint had changed. I felt he was going through a rough time and I could not be angry with him. Besides, I was indebted to him for getting me the job at Rocket. As far as Bobbie was concerned, no one with a sense of touch or sight would have kicked her out of bed, but I had never thought about her that way, with me. I’m sure the thought never came to her either. My good friends, the Masons, had themselves a problem.

  “There’s a party tonight,” Lint said. “Should be a good one.”

  A good party was something we had in common. According to Lint’s definition, a good party was where everyone got crocked and where women outnumbered men four to one.

  The party that night was the first of a series. You became alcohol-stunned and electric. Your laughter became whiskey-sparked and your lusts rose whining in the early morning. You watched Lint and Bobbie, if they were there, as you listened or danced to Dixieland, the Cool, Calypso, Mambo, Cha-Cha-Cha. You listened to Odetta and Bill Broonzy, the songs of the Lincoln Brigade. You talked of Pete Seeger and Leadbelly, and you got way down with the blues Sinatra sometimes wails the hell out of. And then morning came, so soon or was it finally? And those men who hadn’t brought women or those women who hadn’t men to bring them, surveyed the rooms of the party a final time, if they hadn’t picked someone up or been picked up, and then went home to wait for the next party the following week end.

  I was to be glad whenever Monday came, I thought, but when it would come there would be, until Thursday, the fight against the ennui a job you know well brings you. On Thursday, you begin preparing, tapering off for the week end. Late, very late on Sunday, depending on how you felt, you wanted very much to get to work on Monday. If this was not your wish, it could only be that Monday came too quickly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Things began crashing in after that first wild week end. My part-time help didn’t come in and I discovered that Sarah had let them go, with Rollie’s permission. “We just couldn’t afford it, Steve,” Rollie said. He’d come into my office to ask me to do a presentation for a prospective author who wanted to know what Rocket would do to promote his book if he signed a contract.

  “Well, how about the raise?” I asked Rollie. “The money you were paying the part-time people could go to me. I’ll have to do a lot of extra work to stay caught up.”

  “Steve, Steve, believe me. I want you to get more money. God, you’re the best thing that’s happened to Rocket. You deserve it. But I can’t do it. I swung the part-time people for you, but the folks downtown figured we didn’t need additional help. I told them, ‘Look, Steve says he needs help, he must need it. He wouldn’t say it for nothing. I want Steve to get the help he needs to do that job right.’ Look,” he said, gesturing helplessly, “give me a few weeks more on this. I’ll see what I can do. All right?”

  I nodded. What else was there for me to do?

  “By the way,” Rollie said, “I’ve got a couple of tickets to Three-penny Opera. Would you like to go with me? For tomorrow.”

  His eyes licked across mine quickly.

  “No,” I said. Then, thinking that too curt, I said. “Have to see my girl tomorrow.”

  “All right,” he said, again very affably. But then and there I wondered if I would ever get my raise. What in the hell would I have to do to get it?

  “Now about this presentation,” Rollie said. “It’s got to be good, Steve.”

  “How big is it?”

  “Eight thousand.”

  “Eight thousand?”

  Rollie nodded. “It’s a massive thing. It’ll be by far the largest manuscript Rocket ever handled. It’ll be a feather in your cap and mine if we land it—mostly yours.”

  “Is it any good?” I asked. I was learning.

  “Same old stuff. The author is a farmer from Mississippi. In some of his letters he sounds very prosperous, but who’s kidding who, Steve? Who in Mississippi is prosperous? The state has the lowest income per capita of any state in the union. I guess he c
an get the money, though. I’ll offer him time payments.”

  “What’s it about?”

  Rollie, on his way out, turned and smiled. He held himself in the stiff way women do when they are showing you a new dress. “The usual crud,” he said with his dazzling smile.

  When he was gone, I went over the file he’d left on my desk. When I was finished I had a good idea of what Crispus—Hadrian Crispus—wanted. I did the presentation, which Rollie liked very much.

  “We’ll get this,” he said. “It’s very good, Steve. God, I wish I could get that money for you right now.”

  Rollie was at his best with Crispus. He sent a letter to him every other day with a gentle warning that he might miss the chance of big Christmas sales if he didn’t sign the contract soon. He even called Crispus a couple of times. The conversation, from Rollie’s end, could have been laughable if so much had not been at stake—that is, so much of Crispus’ money. The last phone conversation went like this:

  “Yes, Mr. Crispus. Yes, that’s right. This is Mr. Culver from New York calling again. Yes. Fine, and you? Good. Very good, sir. I hope you’ve come to some decision, sir. We’re holding our presses right now, waiting for you.” Big pause. “Mr. Crispus, you don’t have to worry about it. It’s a good book, a wonderful book, and you’ll be doing the world a great injustice if you don’t let it see the light of day.” Another pause. Sarah hissed at Rollie. “Perhaps,” Rollie said, nodding to Sarah, “we might set up publication under our ten-payment plan. Yes—ha ha ha—it is sort of like buying furniture, but you’re getting the fame you deserve this way, Mr. Crispus.” Pause. Rollie looked at Sarah. “You think you can swing the cash, eh? Yes, yes, I agree. It’s always better to get your obligations out of the way.”

  Rollie smiled at Sarah. She smiled back. “All right,” Rollie said into the phone. “Take a couple of days more to think about it. Next Monday, though, we are preparing our Christmas ads for the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. We have to know by then whether you’ll come with us or not—we’d like to give you a lot of space in both papers.” Pause. “What? Oh, well, look at it this way, Mr. Crispus. No one could predict the sales of The Caine Mutiny, now could they? And look what happened. Incidentally, Mr. Crispus, I was working for the publisher of that book when it came out. I predicted that it would be a best seller—no one else in the office did. No, Mr. Crispus. I have fairly good judgment, but I wouldn’t wish to commit myself. You understand? What? Do I think your book has a chance? Mr. Crispus,” Rollie said, sounding very sincere, “I would not be calling if I didn’t think so. Yes, I do think it’ll be a big success. Yes. All right. By Monday. Good-bye. No, no, allow me to thank you.”

  Rollie hung up and he poised over the phone for a few seconds. He looked at Sarah. His eyes danced. “I think we’ll get it,” he said.

  “Eight thousand dollars,” Sarah said, patting “Rollie’s shoulder and looking at him with admiration. “That’s like selling a Cadillac. Better.”

  For the next couple of days Rollie’s first words when he walked into the office were, “Did we get the signed contract from Crispus?”

  And, of course, one morning we did get it. As soon as we did, Rollie turned without a moment’s hesitation to other prospective authors.

  Time dragged on. Crispus’ book, O, Come Ye Back, went to Harriet for editing of a fashion. I heard from Obie. His magazine was really on the skids. His pay days had been delayed a couple of times. A girl I had met joined us one night on the town. Gloria, Obie’s girl, was with us too. We should have had a good time, but we didn’t. I could see that Obie was spending most of his time thinking about where he would go when the book finally closed.

  I thought maybe I could work him into a spot in the office, but I didn’t tell him. The chances were I wouldn’t be able to make out, what with the cutback in help. Still, there wouldn’t be any harm in asking. I would wait for the right time, then ask Rollie.

  As it was, being a one-man department, I came, for the very first time, in contact with everything. With the letters from old authors whose books hadn’t sold more than five or ten copies; with the newspapers that asked that we stop sending publicity material to them because they wouldn’t give space to a book or author published by a vanity house.

  Our files, containing tons of letters, gave testimony that Rocket was printing books, little more. The pattern seemed to be that the initial contact with the prospective authors was the sales pitch, and very sincere though it was, it didn’t really promise anything. Once a contract was signed, no one bothered about the author. Perhaps the author’s letters were answered, perhaps not. The authors—all of them, to a man or woman—wanted to know how well their books were going. They were not content with the autograph parties, radio and television interviews on a local scale. They wanted national acclaim.

  Hadn’t the report said the reading market was the entire nation and abroad? Hadn’t reports named the sources where a book could be nationally advertised? And hadn’t they in every way implied fame and fortune?

  They had.

  We mailed to prospective authors an attractive booklet about how to get a book published. In it were pictures of our old authors signing books at autograph parties, being interviewed on radio or television. There were also quotes from people we had published, praising the company before they received their first financial statements, and paste-ups of reviews were included from papers either kind enough or dumb enough to handle and read our books. Copies of past Times and Tribune ads were also shown with the dates whited out, because the ads were anywhere from three to five years old. Toward the back of the booklet were montages of royalty checks, all of them quite large, because the figures nine times out of ten had been doctored.

  The booklet listed many departments: art, production, etc. Actually, we had only editing and production and promotion. Most of the production was done in the printing plant. Promotion and publicity, of course, were always geared to the local market, the author’s home town, and it sometimes happened that more than one person from the same town published through Rocket. Then promotion became a farce.

  Once I became aware of the total organization and its methods, I began to ride Rollie just a little. I wanted that raise, but I also wanted to set him up to ask about Obie. Rollie kept evading me.

  Then one afternoon, returning from lunch, it came to me. No wonder I had so little trouble getting the job with Rocket. I was up for grabs. It wasn’t my skill and experience that counted at all. It was my economic position. I was cheap labor and had no bargaining position. From then on I was angry most of the time.

  I had two reasons for being angry. The first was that Rollie and Sarah had taken advantage of the times. They could pay me less because I wouldn’t be able to get a similar job with a reputable firm without a great deal of luck. They weren’t really afraid I’d leave—they knew that for Negroes, white-collar jobs, especially in my profession, didn’t come easily.

  The second was the businesslike way Rollie went about fleecing people—old, young or in-between, it didn’t matter to him. Once a contract was signed, the legal department could follow through if the author decided to pull out. That part of the contract was airtight in Rocket’s favor. It made me angry that Rollie could be ruthless with people’s dreams. Being a dreamer, I knew how important, sometimes even more than life itself, dreams can be.

  Almost every day after this revelation, I was in conflict with Rollie. I wanted him to do just a little bit more for the authors, like using good stock for publicity blurbs instead of the cheap, tiny cards we used. I wanted signs printed for use in the author’s home town instead of the ragged, unattractive posters made of strips of colored paper we sent out.

  But Rollie always said no.

  Once a week he asked if I would see a show with him.

  I always said no.

  So there was still another reason for being angry. I could have got my raise, sure. All I had to do was be nice to Rollie. Mostly, however, I was
angry and sorry for the little people who had taken all their savings in order to publish a volume of their lousy poetry or memoirs. People like Rollie and Sarah look down their noses at cannibals who, at least, have something in their cultures which made them that way. It was a little frightening to think that there was something infinitely worse festering in our culture to have allowed specimens like Rollie and Sarah not only to survive but to thrive on their brand of cannibalism.

  And one day after a sleepless night, I complained to Rollie about his wanting me to fabricate reports to old authors—to list things we had done for them, but in reality had not—and to frame the reports in such a manner that they could not be checked.

  Rollie, I think, had had almost enough of me. He wasn’t smiling when he said, “What’s the matter with you? Just pad the reports like I asked you. Be careful what you say. It’s a job; what the hell.”

  Sarah, standing there, nodding in agreement, said, “It’s a job, so you’ll not worry about it.”

  I could feel myself getting sick from holding in the anger, not showing it in a healthy way. But when you know that the next day you may be out of work, stuck at home puttering around while people all over the city are rushing to and from jobs, your answers come slowly, if at all. Your anger, sealed by expediency, returns to the depths inside and begins to burn away. Then the fear comes and you suspect every lowered voice, every glance in your direction, and you become almost functionless thinking, they will fire me before I can find something else.

  I knew I’d better spend some time looking around for a new job. I was thinking that as I left Rollie and Sarah and returned slowly to my own desk. Leah gave me some of her coffee. Harriet looked inquiringly toward me, but said nothing. I stared out over Bryant Park, not really seeing anything.