The Big Gold Dream

by Chester Himes

  A hair-raising noise issued from Dummy’s tongueless mouth, sounding like a wild horse screaming in terror. But his body moved automatically from an instinct born in the ring. He gripped the arms of the chair and pushed back with both feet, shifting his full weight to his shoulder blades braced against the back of the chair, and kicked out with his feet tight together. The canvas sneakers didn’t carry the impact that hard-soled shoes would have, but the pushing power did the trick. They caught Susie at the top of the thighs and sent him crashing backward into the television set as the arc of the slashing blade passed within a fraction of an inch of Dummy’s eyes.

  With the same motion, Dummy came down on his feet as Susie bounced from the heavy television set as though his flesh were made of rubber. Susie came in, stabbing sideways in strictly an amateur’s thrust, and Dummy wove beneath it and right-handed him in the solar plexus. Spit-drenched air spewed from Susie’s stretched mouth in a rush of whining sound, and his eyes bugged out.

  “Cut it out,” Slick said in a level voice as he picked up the automatic pistol.

  Dummy didn’t see him, and Susie didn’t hear him. Susie moved in a rage that didn’t need breath and stabbed backhanded at Dummy’s crouching figure. It was a desperate, unbalanced, half-aimed thrust, but it would have caught Dummy in the back of the neck if he hadn’t made a blind, headlong dive. He dove into the cocktail table and smashed to the floor, landing, belly flat, on top of the broken glass.

  “Cut it out, I said,” Slick repeated without moving from his seat. He acted as though he had seen a lot of fights and had command of the situation.

  But still Susie didn’t hear him. The blood was beating in his ears, and his vision was blurred. He doubled to the floor, retching, his neck muscles swollen and corded from his effort to get his breath.

  For a moment the tableau held.

  At that moment the woman opened the door and took one step into the room. Her gaze darted about as though to locate the source of the commotion, but she didn’t look at anyone in particular.

  A sudden pool of silence dropped into the room like an air pocket in a raging storm, and she said in an anxious voice, “Honey, you all right?”

  Lying on his belly, Dummy read her lips and felt his hair rise.

  Susie got his breath with a sound like hissing steam and straightened up. He saw Dummy and started toward him. Dummy pushed to his feet and ran, doubled over, past the woman and through the door. She didn’t look at him, but when he ran past her she screamed.

  “I’ll kill you,” Slick said in a flat, absolute voice.

  Susie pulled up as though he had run full tilt into an invisible wall.

  “Put that knife away and sit down,” Slick ordered. Then he said to the woman. “It’s all right, baby.”

  Susie folded the knife, stuck it into the watch pocket of his corduroy pants, went back to his chair and sat down. But he wasn’t looking at Slick; he was looking at the woman and frowning.

  “The other one,” the woman said hesitantly.

  “He’s all right,” Slick said, adding as though by way of explanation, “he’s a dummy.”

  “Oh,” the woman said.

  Dummy could be heard working with the locks on the outside door.

  The woman returned through the door she had entered and closed it behind her. She lay on the bed, reached over to the bed table and turned up the small gilt radio she had been listening to. Dummy had passed through the room to the hall, but he couldn’t get the outside door open.

  Finally Slick got up from his seat and went through the other door and down the hall, carrying the pistol loosely at his side. He touched Dummy on the shoulder and said, “You can’t get out without a key.”

  It was too dark in the hall for Dummy to read his lips, but Dummy knew what he wanted. He turned, walked docilely ahead of Slick back to the front room and resumed his seat.

  Slick returned to the chaise longue, ignoring the broken table.

  “Let’s don’t have any more of that,” he said. “It disturbs baby.” He placed the automatic on the floor beside him, then took the other two pages from Dummy’s pad and held them out toward Susie.

  “Now read these and let’s talk about it,” he said.

  Susie got up, took the pages, sat down and read them, his lips moving as he spelled out the words.

  “Well, what about it?” Slick demanded.

  “About what?” Susie muttered sullenly.

  “Where’s the money?”

  “I ain’t talking in front of this dummy,” Susie said. “He’s a stool pigeon.”

  “So what?”

  Susie began to puff up; his neck began swelling as though he were choking, and his cheeks puffed out. “Look man, what is you trying to do?” he challenged. “You and him ain’t trying nothing like a frame on me, is you?”

  “Not me,” said Slick indifferently. “I just want the money.”

  “Because if you is,” Susie went on, “you’re going to have to use that rod ’stead of just waving it ’round.”

  Slick nodded toward Dummy. “Ask him what he’s trying to do.”

  Both of them turned and stated at Dummy. He sat forward on the edge of his seat, gripping his knees with his hand, and looked from one to the other.

  “What you want?” Susie asked in a threatening tone of voice.

  Dummy shrugged and made a V with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

  “What’s that mean?” Susie asked.

  Slick turned his stare back to Susie. “You’re not very bright, rockhead,” he said. “He wants to cut himself a slice of our pie.”

  “He’s going to get more slices than he’s looking for,” Susie threatened.

  “You worry too much,” Slick said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Maybe you does, but I don’t,” Susie said.

  “Let him alone,” Slick said. “We might need him.”

  “Need a stool pigeon?” Susie echoed.

  “Why not? If he’s really a stool pigeon, it’s a damn good thing we got hold of him in time, with what he already knows,” Slick pointed out.

  “I just ask you, don’t oversport yourself,” Susie said. “I ain’t nobody to play with.”

  “We got that settled,” Slick said coldly. “Now where’s the money?”

  “Listen, I told you what was what,” Susie flared.

  Again Slick nodded in the direction of Dummy. “He doesn’t believe you.”

  Susie turned and looked at Dummy again. “You’re going to be sorry you ever messed in my business,” he promised.

  “I’m getting tired of this,” Slick said in his flat, deadly voice. “I asked you where was the money.”

  “I ain’t got it,” Susie said, giving him a straight answer.

  “Okay - I hope you’re leveling,” Slick said.

  “I’m leveling,” Susie said.

  “Okay, you haven’t got it. Let’s start from there. What did you find in her joint?”

  “Nothing. Her joker had already searched it again before I got there, and if anything was hid there he’d been sure to find it,” Susie said.

  “How do you know he didn’t,” Slick asked.

  “He didn’t,” Susie said. “I found him asleep on the floor, and I looked around and saw he’d searched the joint; then I searched him. He didn’t even wake up. You can bet if he’d had anything worth stealing, he’d been wide awake.”

  “Let’s get back to the mattress,” Slick said.

  “I has told you, there wasn’t nothing in that mattress,” Susie flared angrily.

  “So you did,” Slick said. “You also said you saw her put it there.”

  Susie corrected him. “I said I seen her sewing the mattress up. And I took it for granted that would be the only reason she’d be sewing up a mattress in the middle of the night.”

  “Too bad you didn’t get it then,” Slick said.

  Neither of them noticed Dummy leaning forward with his eyes stretched.

  “I couldn
’t have with her joker hanging ’round,” Susie said.

  “And it wasn’t in the mattress when you got it,” Slick said.

  “It weren’t there, and the side of the mattress had been cut open again,” Susie said. “One of them beat me to it,” he added. “But I don’t know which one.”

  Grunting sounds issuing from Dummy’s mouth drew their attention. He had gotten out his scratch pad and was writing in it.

  He got up and showed Slick what he had written.

  Slick looked up at Susie. “He says neither of them got it.”

  Susie’s face swelled with sudden rage. “If he keeps on trying to frame me, I’m going to stick him,” he threatened again.

  Dummy moved away from the broken table so it wouldn’t be in his way if he had to protect himself.

  Slick reached out a foot and touched him on the leg. “How do you know neither of them got it?” he asked.

  Dummy wrote in his pad: i know alright.

  “He just says he knows,” Slick told Susie.

  “He knows more than what’s good for him,” Susie said.

  maybe she still got it on her, Dummy wrote in his pad and showed it to Slick.

  “Not in jail, she hasn’t,” Slick said. “And it was you who said she didn’t know where it was.”

  Dummy shrugged.

  “Maybe she took it out the mattress and hid it somewhere else,” Susie said.

  Dummy shook his head in the negative.

  “I got a feeling that we ain’t being very smart,” Slick said.

  “You’re supposed to be the brains,” Susie reminded him.

  “That’s right,” Slick acknowledged. “And I’m going to start using them.”

  20

  BETWEEN EIGHT AND NINE O’CLOCK on weekday evenings Sweet Prophet received in private such of his followers who had problems or wished to make confession and new recruits who wished to arrange for baptisms at some future date.

  He sat behind the hand-carved mahogany desk in his sumptuous receiving room on the third-floor of his Temple of Wonderful Prayer, while his supplicants sat in the high-backed period chairs across from him.

  Attired in a Geneva gown of canary-yellow silk and a sequined headpiece similar to that seen on the statues of Krishna, he looked like the rising sun. The diamonds in the rings on all his fingers sparkled whenever he gestured, and his long twisted fingernails of rainbow hue squirmed as though alive.

  Elder Jones stood at his right side, wearing a fresh white uniform.

  His private secretary - a quiet, middle-aged woman of culture - sedately dressed in a freshly laundered black linen frock, stood at his left.

  The assistant secretary, who had been entrusted with the weekend income to take to the bank, was still downtown in the Fingerprint Bureau of the Central Police Department examining photos of colored confidence men, trying to pick out the one who had swindled her that morning. She had looked at the mugs of criminals until her head swam, but still she stayed on, afraid to report to the Prophet that his money was lost.

  Outside, seen through the open front windows, the day was dying. The street lights were on, and the lights in the show windows of stores and in the hot-box apartments; and the sign lights and automobile lights lit up the many-colored faces of the people crowded on the burning hot sidewalks.

  Sweet Prophet’s hour of consolation was almost over. He was glad of it; other folks’ problems had never seemed so distasteful. Strain showed in his face; his bulging eyes looked worried and harassed. It had been a long day for him; he hadn’t been able to sleep again after the detectives’ pre-dawn visit.

  “Who else is there?” he asked.

  “Sister Alberta Wright,” Eider Jones replied.

  Sweet Prophet looked startled. He hesitated. Finally he sighed and said. “Send the sister in.”

  Alberta paused just inside the door and stared at Sweet Prophet. She looked downcast and bedraggled in the now-filthy garments in which she had been baptized; but her eyes were wide and alight with hope. Sitting there in his brilliant garb, Sweet Prophet appeared to her as a great shining light that had come into this dark moment of her life.

  She fished the last ten dollars from her brassiere, went forward and laid it on the desk in front of him. Wearily, he found a crumb of bread for her in the pocket of his gown and pocketed the money. She put the crumb in her mouth and knelt on the floor.

  “Arise, my child,” he said.

  She got up from her knees and sat forward on the edge of the chair.

  “What is troubling you, my child?” he asked.

  “I hate to keep bothering you after you have been so good to get me out of jail,” she said. “But I’m in big trouble.”

  “Tell me about it, my child,” he said.

  “It began with my dream,” she confessed. “When I dreamt about those three pies exploding with hundred dollar bills, I knew The Lord had sent me a message. So I went and played twenty dollars on the money row in the three biggest houses in Harlem. That was all the money I had, sixty dollars, but I knowed The Lord had sent me a message, and I had faith. And just like I believed, my number popped out like it were sent for, and I hit for thirty-six thousand dollars.”

  “Thirty-six thousand dollars,” Sweet Prophet echoed. “That is a lot of money, child.”

  “Yes, Sweet Prophet, it sure was,” she admitted.

  “So the houses have gone back to paying six hundred to one,” he remarked.

  “Yes, Sweet Prophet, they pays off good if you got the message,” she said.

  “And you had twenty-nine thousand, four hundred dollars left after paying off the commissions?”

  “Yes, Sweet Prophet. I had to give the writers the ten per cent which they collects on a hit, and then I had to give the payoff men from each of the houses a thousand dollars for bringing me my money safely. But how did you know?”

  “My child, a prophet must know all the workins of sin in order to combat it,” he said.

  “But I didn’t figure it was no sin if The Lord himself sent me the message,” she argued.

  “No, my child, the sin was that you took this money which The Lord sent to you for the expiation of your sins and hid it for your own self, instead of bringing it to Sweet Prophet, who would have taken a share for The Lord, and returned you the rest in safety.”

  “How did you know I hid it?” Alberta asked in surprise.

  “My child, a prophet knows everything,” he said.

  “Then where is it now?” she asked.

  “We ain’t come to that part yet,” he said testily. “You ain’t finished your confession.”

  “I didn’t intend to keep it hid, Sweet Prophet,” she resumed. “I honestly intended to bring it to you for you to take out The Lord’s share; but I hadn’t got religion then, and I figured I ought to get religion first and get myself baptized so I could come to you in my purity and place the money at your feet for you to give me back in your bounty what you figured I should have. And besides that, Sweet Prophet, my man was away from home when they paid me off, and I figured it would be no greater sin to put temptation in his way. So I hid the money in my mattress, figuring you wouldn’t want to deal with the money of a sinner anyway. And so that’s why I came to you early Sunday morning and give you the five hundred dollars -”

  “You gave to The Lord through me,” Sweet Prophet corrected, to keep the record straight in case of an inquiry by the income tax collectors.

  “Yes, Sweet Prophet, gave to The Lord through you,” Alberta parroted, “the five hundred dollars for to pay to get baptized.”

  “And afterwards you dilly-dallied around for so long before performing this duty to The Lord that the money was stolen,” he said.

  “I weren’t dilly-dallying around,” she protested. “It was stolen whilst I was in my trance.”

  “The Lord will forgive you,” he consoled her. “The Lord wouldn’t be expecting you to guard your money while you were in a trance.”

  “Yes, Sweet Prophet, I be
lieve The Lord will forgive me,” she said. “But The Lord ain’t done it yet. All The Lord has done so far is chastise me. And that’s what I can’t understand. Why would The Lord want to chastise me by letting my money be stolen whilst I was setting in heaven at His feet?”

  “You haven’t told me all that happened as yet, Sister Wright,” Sweet Prophet said. “I can’t explain The Lord’s actions until I know what you have been up to.”

  Alberta recounted in detail everything that had happened to her since her release from the morgue.

  “Now they are saying I beat out the Jew-man’s brains with a hammer and cut my husband’s throat with a knife,” she concluded.

  “If they have charged you with that, you are really in big trouble, Sister Wright,” Sweet Prophet admitted. “But you didn’t do it?”

  “No, Sweet Prophet, I didn’t do it,” she wailed. “You’ve got to believe me. Sweet Prophet. I ain’t never in all my life hit nobody in the head with a hammer hard enough to kill him, and I didn’t cut my husband’s throat neither, as much as he deserved it.”

  “Then why do they think you did it, Sister Wright?” he asked.

  “It was because of the knife,” she said. “They caught me trying to get rid of the knife I found. They said it was the knife that Rufus had been killed with, and, when I saw it lying there, I thought so, too. I didn’t know what had happened. All kinds of thoughts ran through my head. I hadn’t seen Sugar, and it came to me all of a sudden he might have found out that Rufus had stole my furniture, and I could see them getting into a fight. I figured maybe Sugar might have stabbed Rufus in self-defense, because it would be just like Sugar to throw away the knife and run.”

  “If that is what happened, all you have to do is tell the police, and they will arrest Sugar and drop the charges against you,” Sweet Prophet said.

  “But he didn’t do it,” she declared. “I’d bet my life he didn’t do it. He’s so tenderhearted he won’t even cut off a chicken’s head, and I know he wouldn’t have stabbed Rufus all those times.”

  “Well, there is one good thing that has come out of it,” Sweet Prophet consoled her. “The Lord has saved you the trouble and expense of getting a divorce; He has made it possible for you to go and sin no more.”