The Angry Ones

by Williams, John A. ;

The words walloped across my stomach. All of us have fear; we spend the better part of our lives secreting it away. When someone says he has fear he’s plugging into his listener. But mine wasn’t as big as Obie’s. As precarious as my position was, I preferred it immensely to his. He reminded me of a combat GI on the verge of becoming battle-hardened or nose-diving into a Section Eight.

  “I can’t believe,” he said, “that this thing is so massive without form, and so rigid without apparent strength.” He chopped his hands in the air, forming an imaginary square. “There’s got to be a flaw in me.” He thrust himself in the chest with a stiff forefinger. “It can’t be the thing, it’s got to be me.”

  It might have been me talking, I thought, as Obie’s tired voice droned on. If he’d been with me a year ago in L.A., I would have said the same things to him. Instead, I told them to my brother. But now it wasn’t me, it was Obie. I felt, watching him, the hopelessness my brother Dave must have sometimes felt watching me.

  “What if your flaw isn’t big enough to warrant all this?”

  I might have hit him across the back with a bat, the way he winced.

  “Then it’s got to be the other thing, the discrimination, Steve. But I”—I couldn’t stand the way his eyes pleaded, not Obie Robertson’s eyes—“can’t believe discrimination can be this horrible.” He shook his head. “No, I can’t believe it. I’ve got a flaw and I’ve got to work it out. I’ve been trying to, but—”

  What would America be without people like Obie who say I am to blame, not you? I felt wild and reckless and I moved quickly and foolishly because my eyes had begun to smart. I broke into loud, stupid song:

  You got a flaw,

  I got a flaw,

  All god’s chillun got flaws.

  When you get to heav—

  Obie started up suddenly and ran out. I dashed into the hall shouting, “Obie! Obie! I’m sorry!” He didn’t stop. “Stay in touch!”

  He didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There were young men coming into the office with portfolios nearly every day now, and I could hardly work for thinking that Rollie was interviewing people to take my place. And I hadn’t turned up anything yet. Between the job situation and Obie, I was sleeping little, and had become surly and quiet. I spent my evenings trying to do something constructive but doing very little of that.

  About that time, my phone began ringing late at night. When I picked it up and said, “Hello,” there was no answer, just a click at the other end. One night as I was walking past it, it rang and I snatched it up. “Hello,” I barked. There was a sharp intake of breath at the other end. I could sense confusion.

  “Hello,” Lois said. Her voice was sheepish.

  “How are you?”

  “All right. I didn’t expect you to be home.” There was a pause.

  “I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want you to be home.”

  “Doesn’t make sense.”

  “You understand.”

  “Haven’t seen you around,” I said.

  “I use the subway mostly now.”

  “Oh.”

  “How’s the work?”

  “Lousy.”

  “Are you getting things done at home?” She meant the freelance writing.

  “Not much.”

  “Haven’t you been able to turn up anything jobwise?”

  “Nothing, honey.”

  “Oh, gee.” She sounded like a little girl.

  “How are you making it with the head-shrinker?”

  “We talk a lot about you.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, I tell him how much I still—still love you.”

  “But why?”

  “I tell him how good you are for me,” she said. “He doesn’t agree, of course.”

  “Course not.”

  “I told him we had stopped seeing each other,” she rushed on, “but tonight, I felt I had worked at it so hard that I deserved something special, something good, like talking to you, even if you were home.”

  “Well … I’m glad you called—and that I was home.”

  “So am I—now. How was your holiday?”

  “Pretty good. And yours?”

  “Deadly.”

  Then she began talking about her parents and how if it were not for them, things could have been so different with us.

  “Stop it.” I paused. “Will you have some coffee, baby?” I guess maybe I shouldn’t have tossed that question at her. It was sort of a curve, I realized.

  “Again, I don’t know what to say. I only wanted to talk to you.”

  “Wasn’t there more to it than that?”

  “No, dear, I swear it.”

  “How about the coffee?”

  “You know we shouldn’t, Steve.”

  “Yet you called me,” I reminded her.

  “I wish I hadn’t now. Everytime I do, I seem to lose hold of everything. I want to see you, but—”

  “All right. Forget it.”

  Her voice came very small then. “Just coffee?”

  “Just coffee.”

  She came and we had coffee. “You look the same,” she said. “Better, even.”

  “You look wonderful,” I said. I avoided touching her and when she wrapped her arms around my back I didn’t respond.

  “You are being good, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. When we finished the coffee I took her home.

  “You have a date or something?”

  “No, you wanted coffee. That’s what I invited you here for. We’ve had it and I’ve brought you home.”

  She stood facing me, her back against a wall in her lobby. She turned and placed her forehead against it. “I know, I know.”

  “See you tomorrow?” I asked.

  She nodded; she seemed very tired. “Yes, dear.”

  I left. I didn’t feel good about what I’d done. The generations of phony taboos should have steered me clear of Lois, just as the ones she’d learned should have kept her from knowing me. I don’t know why or where they broke down. I know only that she came spinning out of the blackness of time from one side of the world, and I from another, like two meteors birthed in opposite ends of the universe, rushing along in nothingness until they collide because they were destined to in the scheme of things.

  It was true that she’d made the first overtures, but it was also true I had wanted her to make them, and perhaps this was why she did. If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have been as we were a few days after the last coffee incident lying arm in arm in the darkness smoking.

  She had come about an hour before. She said she thought she had seen Lint on the way over. We were pretty quiet in general; we hadn’t had much to say to each other in the hour she’d been here.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked her.

  “Europe. Some parts of it with you.” She laughed softly and buried her mouth in my neck.

  “Funny, not to ever think of America,” I said.

  “I had thought about it, but each time I think of Yorkville, the idea becomes very sad.”

  “It’s nice here like this,” I said. I put my arm around her.

  “That’s because of you.”

  “Is it now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think it’s because of you.”

  “I said it first,” she said.

  She was staring into space. I studied her unnoticed; her hair, the back of her neck, the slope of her shoulders. Even her ears. Lois turned suddenly and caught me looking. She gave me a soft, wondering smile. “What is it, dear?”

  I felt suddenly as I had that night with Rollie. I wanted to tease Lois into showing her colors, white or black. “Lois?”

  “Yes, Steve. What’s the matter?”

  “Let’s get married.”

  She sat straight up and she tried to say everything at once, but what came out was: “No! I couldn’t! Not ever!” And she shook her head vigorously. Then I sat up. I hadn’t expected so violent a rejection. She touched
my hand. “I—I didn’t—” She shook her head and tried to smile. “Your question took me by surprise, dear.”

  I removed my hand. I got up and started walking around, all around the room. And then around some more. I had got my answer—why the hell was I walking?

  “Then it was and is true, isn’t it, Lois?”

  “What, Steve?” She looked frightened.

  “You used me as a tool against your parents—against your mother. You wanted to get even with her, Lois.”

  “No, no, no.”

  “For Christ’s sake, stop and think. Your mother gave you a hard time, Lois. She still does—but, boy, if she knew you were sleeping with a Negro, wouldn’t she be fit to be tied? Wouldn’t she, Lois? Aren’t you happier knowing if she knew it she would drop dead in her tracks?”

  “No,” she said, but she didn’t say it convincingly.

  “I knew it the very first night we slept together,” I said. Her eyes widened. “But I sat on it.” I was still walking and talking, like a goddam fool. “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t say anything, and do you know why, Lois?”

  She was up now and she squeezed her fists to make her body stop shaking. “Because I used you too, baby. Oh, hell, I’m not clean in this. You had many faces, Lois, and I realize now I hated every white one of them. Nearly every time I called you, it had been a bad day for me, and I had to get back, if not at them directly, at you, and that worked out fine. It kept me from going nuts.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What is it you can’t accept, Lois—that Negroes can think and feel and want revenge? Is that what your lily-white mind tells you?”

  “I don’t believe you, I don’t.”

  “Then why are you shaking? Why don’t you stop trembling?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “You wanted revenge for the way your folks treated you. I wanted revenge for the way people treated me. We’re even. Retaliation all around.” I paused and took a deep breath. “I guess that’s it, Lois. I don’t think there’s much sense stretching this out then, is there? I suppose you may as well go now.”

  She took a step toward me. “Can’t we talk about—”

  I had already started shaking my head. What the hell was there to talk about?

  There was a pounding on the door; it shivered along its hinges.

  “Let me in, Steve.” It was Lint. He was shouting. “Damn it, I saw Bobbie come in here. I caught you this time, didn’t I, you bastard. Open this goddam door before I break it in!”

  He rushed against it. Bam!

  “Lint,” I said. “Bobbie’s not here. This is someone else.” I looked around at Lois, wondering if I should tell Lint she was here, not his wife, but I didn’t recall Lint ever being so angry and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t track Lois down and call her a liar for standing up for me and hurt her. Lois had been hurt enough. “Lint, will you listen to me? Bobie’s not here! This is not Bobbie, man.”

  “You black sonovabitch, I’ll kill you, Steve. So help me, I’ll kill you.”

  “You’re drunk, Lint.”

  “I’m going, Steve, but I’ll be back, God damn you, and I’ll kill you.”

  I heard him stomp down the hall. I sat down and lighted a cigarette. Lois slumped down in a chair, sniffled, then fumbled out a cigarette of her own. We sat that way, smoking, not speaking, for about fifteen minutes. Then I said, “I guess it should be all clear now.”

  “Thanks for not involving me.”

  “I was thinking of Lint.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Good-bye, Lois.”

  “Good-bye, Steve.”

  I held the door open for her. She started through it, then stopped. “What can I say?”

  I said, “You’ve said it.”

  She looked thoughtful and walked off. I watched her go down the hall and turn out of sight. I closed the door and locked it. I went to bed wondering where Bobbie was. I wondered if she’d return to Lint that night, or was this it, the time she’d picked for leaving him?

  I was feeling out of sorts the next morning and it had to be the day Hadrian Crispus came to the office.

  He came in just before noon. Rollie had arrived about a half hour before. Crispus walked through the door without saying anything, passing Leah who watched him enter Rollie’s office. She rushed in to call me.

  “Crispus is here and he doesn’t look right.”

  “Who?”

  “Crispus, Crispus. O, Come Ye Back.”

  “Shhh!” I said.

  The voices—Crispus’ and Rollie’s—were coming loud and sharp from Rollie’s office. They built up to a crescendo, followed by a silence. There was a sudden gagging noise.

  “Go see! Go see!” Leah urged me, just as Sarah and Anne came rushing in from the john.

  “It’s Crispus!” Sarah said. “He’s mad! Mad!”

  I went in thinking of Crispus’ letters, the sound of them; the way they were scrawled and the way Rollie ignored them. When I caught sight of the man, Crispus had Rollie by the neck and was squeezing very slowly.

  “Crispus,” I said, but he didn’t bother to turn. Rollie saw me behind Crispus and his eyes went big with pleading. “Crispus!” I said again, more sharply this time. Still he didn’t turn.

  I picked up a chair, poised it for an instant over his head, then brought it down. It shattered into bits, little whole bits. I looked stupidly at them as Crispus sank to the floor.

  Sarah hustled to a phone and in minutes the police were there, and Crispus, his head bleeding, was taken away. Sarah walked in and out with cold cloths for Rollie, saying “He’s mad, that man. Absolutely mad, I tell you. Look what he did.”

  Late in the afternoon Rollie came in to thank me.

  “Forget it,” I said, not wanting to talk about it.

  I left the office early, hating every atom of the place. I knew I’d have my job a little longer, thanks to Hadrian Crispus, but I didn’t know how much longer I could take it. The events of the past evening had left me tired and discouraged.

  I let my feelings about Crispus and Rollie juggle around on the bus home. What were my feelings really? I couldn’t say for sure what I’d wanted to happen. Let Crispus kill Rollie? I had been a little slow getting there. Let them kill each other? Why not? I hated Rollie for his astute and horrible juggling of economics and sociology in taking advantage of me. And I disliked Crispus for his prejudice. I didn’t know which was worse.

  When I got home I thought of Lois. I wondered when, if ever, she would realize that what she thought was love stemmed from revenge. I hoped she would, and I hoped she’d work things out with her doctor. After all, he was getting twenty bucks a session. It was with a vague feeling of relief that I turned to thinking of Grace, Teddy and Frankie, and later on in the evening it became a damned good feeling, thinking about them. Still later, Obie called and I invited him to lunch the next day, feeling even better because Lint had not come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There was not much doing in the office in the morning, so I left for lunch early to meet Obie. He was late and I ordered without him. I was halfway through my meal when I glanced at the door again and saw Obie entering, shambling between the tables toward me. I got an odd feeling the moment I saw him.

  “Jesus,” I said to myself. Obie looked so damned lean. And he seemed insensitive to everything; he just kept shambling. I hoped people wouldn’t notice him the way I did. He bumped into tables and waiters and didn’t turn around. He just kept coming ahead as if he’d been wound up and would keep moving until the machinery stopped.

  “Hey, man,” he greeted me. He sounded very tired. He was trying to be his old flip self. He tried to smile, but it was a queer smile that hung on his wretched face.

  “Sit down, man,” I said.

  Obie tried to grin. He looked at the food on my plate. “I’m a little late. Forgive me, man.”

  “It’s all right.” I could not rid myself of that feeling of uneasiness. “Order
.”

  The waitress came and Obie slowly gave her his order.

  “Nothing?” I asked, meaning the job situation.

  “No,” he answered briefly.

  He slumped back in his chair and watched the diners.

  “Once,” he said, “when things were real bad, man, I mean bad, I took a job nights as a clean-up man in a bank. I had to tall all sorts of damned lies to get the job. They destroyed money in the bank. Pieces of it stuck to my shoes every night and I couldn’t get it off. I know I couldn’t have pieced it together, but anyway, I like to have flipped with so many pieces of money underfoot,” he finished softly.

  “Allegory?”

  He merely sighed. The waitress came with his plate.

  “I was thinking about going back to a job like that for a while,” he said, “if I could lie my way into it.” He looked up and tried to smile again. “Man, I got so good on that job, I could go to sleep standing up, holding the broom in my hands. The minute I heard the elevator doors open, I automatically stepped forward, pushing the broom. By the third step I was wide awake and the boss never caught on.”

  He gave a weird laugh. He reached for things on his plate and put them back. He made me nervous. “It gets harder and harder to go back like that. It’s almost as though they won’t let you go back and won’t let you get forward.” He looked archly at me. “Even if you did want to compromise.”

  Obie talked without looking at me. I might just as well not have been there. Only once had he looked directly at me. It was as if he was trying to hide something. I had another cup of coffee. Obie tried to eat from habit. He kept looking up from his plate with the oddest, hangdog appearance, still without looking at me. Then he placed his fork carefully alongside his plate.

  “Steve, I’m tired, awfully tired. Not afraid anymore—just tired.”

  He leaned toward me and still managed not to look at me. The way he had said “tired” jarred me. “You know something? That flaw we talked about …”

  Hypnotized, I nodded.

  “It’s not the flaw—”

  “Obie,” I said, “Obie,” and I had a fleeting image of my brother Dave sitting beside me, helpless. “Listen, Obie, things gotta break.” I wanted the words to have weight and power and strength in them. I wanted them to knock him down and make him get up fighting and angry. “This afternoon,” I said desperately, “you’re moving in with me. I’ve had enough of you and your goddam pride. So let’s go get your stuff, man.”