The crazy kill (coffin johnson and grave digger jones)

by Chester Himes

  "Ain't never gonna get this mess cleaned up nohow," she complained.

  "Git, girl," Alamena said harshly.

  Baby Sis shoved her way through the mob of crying drunks in the packed sitting room.

  "Somebody open this door!" the voice yelled desperately from outside.

  "I'm coming!" Baby Sis shouted from inside. "Keep your pants on."

  "Hurry up then!" the voice shouted back. "Baby, it's cold outside," one of the drunks inside cracked.

  Baby Sis stopped in front of the locked door and shouted, "Who is you who been beating on this door like you tryna bust it down?"

  "I'm Reverend Short," the voice replied.

  "I'm the Queen of Sheba," Baby Sis said, doubling over laughing and beating her big strong thighs. She turned to the guests to let them share the joke. "He say he's Reverend Short."

  Several of the guests laughed as though they were stone, raving crazy.

  Baby Sis turned around toward the closed door again and shouted, "Try again, Buster, and don't tell me you is Saint Peter coming for Big Joe."

  The three musicians kept ruing away in dead-pan trances, their fixed eyes staring from petrified faces into the Promised Land across the river Jordan.

  "I tell you I am Reverend Short," the voice said. Baby Sis's laughing expression went abruptly evil and malevolent.

  "You want to know how I know you ain't Reverend Short?"

  "That's exactly what I would like to know," the voice said exasperatedly.

  "Cause Reverend Short is already inside of here," Baby Sis replied triumphantly. "And you can't be Reverend Short, 'cause you is out there."

  "Merciful God in heaven," the voice said moaningly. "Give me patience."

  But instead of being patient, the hammering commenced again.

  Mamie Pullen unlocked the bathroom door and stuck out her head.

  "What's happening out there?" she asked, then, seeing Baby Sis standing before the door, she called, "Who's that at the door?"

  "Some drunk what claim's he's Reverend Short," Baby Sis replied.

  "I'm Reverend Short!" the voice outside screamed.

  "It can't be Reverend Short," Baby Sis argued.

  "What's the matter with you, girl, you drunk?" Mamie said angrily, advancing across the room.

  From the kitchen doorway Alamena said, "It's probably Johnny, pulling one of his gags."

  Mamie reached the door, pushed Baby Sis aside and flung it inward.

  Reverent Short stepped across the threshold, tottering as though barely able to stand. His parchment-colored bony face was knotted with an expression of extreme outrage, and his reddish eyes glinted furiously behind the polished, gold-rimmed spectacles.

  "Hush my mouth!" Baby Sis exclaimed in an awed voice, her black greasy face graying and her bulging eyes whitening as though she'd seen a ghost. "It is Reverend Short."

  Reverend Short's thin, black-clad body shook with fury like a sapling in a gale.

  "I told you I was Reverend Short," he sputtered.

  He had a mouth shaped like that of a catfish, and when he talked he sprayed spit over Dulcy, who had come over to stand with her arm about Mamie's shoulder.

  She drew back angrily and wiped her face with the tiny black silk handkerchief that she held in her hand and that represented her dress of mourning.

  "Quit spitting on me," she said harshly.

  "He didn't mean to spit on you, honey," Mamie said soothingly.

  " Po' sinner stands a-trembling…" Deep South shouted.

  Reverend Short's body twitched convulsively, as though he were having a fit. Everyone stared at him curiously.

  "… stands a-trembling, Daddy Joe," Susie Q. echoed.

  "Mamie Pullen, if you don't stop those devils from jamming that sweet old spiritual, Steal Away, I swear before God I won't preach Big Joe's funeral," Reverend Short threatened in a rage-croaking voice.

  "They're just trying to show their gratitude." Mamie shouted to make herself heard. "It was Big Joe who started them on their way to fame when they was just hustling tips in Eddy Price's joint, and now they're just trymg to send him on his way to heaven."

  "That ain't no way to send a body to heaven," he said hoarsely, his voice giving out from shouting. "They're making enough noise to wake up the dead who're already there."

  "Oh, all right, I'll stop' em," Mamie said, and went over and put her black wrinkled hand on Deep South's dripping wet shoulder. "That's been fine, boys, but you can rest a while now."

  The music stopped so suddenly it caught Dulcy whispering angrily-"Why do you let that store-front preacher run your business, Aunt Mamie-" in a sudden pool of silence.

  Reverent Short turned a look on her that glinted with malevolence.

  "You'd better dust off your own skirts before criticizing me, Sister Perry," he croaked.

  The silence became weighted.

  Baby Sis chose that moment to say in a loud drunken voice, "What I want to know, Reverend Short, is how in the world did you get outside that door?"

  The tension broke. Everyone laughed.

  "I was pushed out of the bedroom window," Reverend Short said in a voice that was sticky with evil.

  Baby Sis doubled over, started to laugh, caught sight of Reverend Short's face and chopped it off in the middle of the first guffaw.

  The others who had started to laugh stopped abruptly. Dead silence dropped like a shroud over the revelry. The guests stared at the Reverend Short in pop-eyed wonder. Their faces wanted to continue laughing, but their minds pulled the reins. On the one hand, the expression of suppressed vindictiveness on Reverend Short's face could easily be that of a man who'd been pushed out of a window. But on the other hand, his body didn't show the effects of a three-story fall to the concrete sidewalk.

  "Chink Charlie did it," Reverend Short croaked.

  Mamie gasped. "What!"

  "You kidding or joking?" Alamena said harshly.

  Baby Sis was the first to recover. She laughed experimentally and gave Reverend Short an appreciative push.

  "You takes the cake, Reverend," she said.

  Reverend Short clutched her arm to keep from falling. She grinned the imbecilic admiration of one practical joker for another.

  Mamie turned in a squall of fury and slapped her face.

  "You get yourself right straight back to that kitchen," she said sternly. "And don't you dast drink another drop of likker tonight."

  Baby Sis's face puckered up like a dried prune and she began blubbering. She was a big strong-bodied mulelike young woman, and crying gave her an expression of pure idiocy. She turned to run back to the kitchen but stumbled over a foot and fell drunkenly to the floor. No one paid her any attention because, with her support withdrawn, Reverend Short began to fall.

  Mamie clutched him by the arm and helped him into an armchair. "You just set right there, Reverend, and tell me what happened," she said.

  He clutched his left side as though in great pain and croaked in a breathless voice, "I went into the bedroom to get a breath of fresh air, and while I was standing in the window watching a policeman chasing a thief, Chink Charlie sneaked up behind me and pushed me out of the window."

  "My God!" Mamie exclaimed. "Then he was trying to kill you."

  "Of course he was."

  Alamena looked down at the twitching bony face of Reverend Short and said in a reassuring tone, "Mamie, he's just drunk."

  "I'm not the least bit drunk," he denied. "I've never drunk a drop of intoxicating liquor in my life."

  "Where's Chink?" Mamie asked, looking about. "Chink!" she called. "Somebody get Chink in here."

  "He's gone," Alamena said. "He left while you and Dulcy were in the crapper."

  "Your preacher's just making that up, Aunt Mamie," Dulcy said. "Just 'cause him and Chink had an argument 'bout the guests you got here."

  Mamie looked from her to Reverend Short. "What's wrong with 'em?"

  She intended the question for Reverend Short, but Dulcy answered. "He said the
re shouldn't be nobody here but church members and Big Joe's lodge brothers, and Chink told him he was forgetting that Big Joe was a gambler himself."

  "I'm not saying that Big Joe didn't sin," Reverend Short said in his loud pulpit voice, forgetting for the moment he was an invalid. "But Big Joe was a dining-car cook on the Pennsylvania Railroad for more than twenty years, and he was a member of The First Holy Roller Church of Harlem, and that's how God sees him."

  "But these folks here is all his friends," Mamie protested with a look of bewilderment. "Folks who worked with him and saw him all the time."

  Reverend Short pursed his lips. "That ain't the point. You can't surround his poor soul with all manner of sin and adultery and expect God to take it to his bosom."

  "Jus' what do you mean by that?" Dulcy challenged hotly.

  "Let him alone," Mamie said. "Everything has done gone bad enough without all this argument."

  "If he don't stop picking at me with his dirty hints all the time I'm gonna have Johnny whip his ass," Dulcy said in a low grating voice intended only for Mamie, but everyone heard her.

  Reverend Short gave her a look of triumphant malevolence.

  "Threaten all you want, you Jezebel, but you can't hide it from the Lord that it was your own devilishness that drove Joe Pullen to an early death."

  "That just ain't so," Mamie Pullen contradicted. "It was just his time. He's been taking naps like that, with his cigar in his mouth, for years, and it was just his time that he happened to swallow it and choke to death."

  "If you want to put up with this chicken-season preacher's lying, you can," Dulcy said to Mamie. "But I'm going home, and you can just tell Johnny why when he gets here."

  Silence followed her as she turned and walked from the apartment. She slammed the door behind her.

  Mamie sighed. "Lord, I wish Val was here."

  "This house is full of murderers!" Reverend Short exclaimed.

  "You shouldn't say that just because you've got a grudge against Chink Charlie," Mamie said.

  "For Christ's sake, Mamie!" Alamena exploded. "If he'd fallen from your bedroom window he'd be lying out there on the sidewalk dead."

  Reverend Short stared at her through glazed eyes. A white froth had collected in the corners of his mouth.

  "I see a terrible vision," he muttered.

  "That ain't no lie," Alamena said disgustedly. "All you is seeing is visions."

  "I see a dead man stabbed in the heart," he said. "Let me fix you a toddy and put you to bed," Mamie said soothingly. "And, Alamena-"

  "He don't need no more to drink," Alamena cut her off.

  "For Jesus Christ's sake, Alamena, stop it. Go phone Doctor Ramsey and tell him to come over here."

  "He's not sick," Alamena said.

  "I didn't say I was sick," Reverend Short said. "He's just trying to stir up trouble for some reason." "I'm hurt," Reverend Short stated. "You'd be hurt, too, if somebody had pushed you out of a window."

  Mamie took Alamena by the arm and tried to pull her away. "Go now and telephone the doctor."

  But Alamena pulled back. "Listen, Mamie Pullen, for God's sake be your age. If he fell out of that window it's a cinch he couldn't have walked back upstairs. I suppose he's going to tell you next that he fell into the lap of God."

  "I fell into a basket of bread," Reverend Short declared. At last the guests laughed with relief. Now they knew the good reverend was joking. Even Mamie couldn't restrain herself.

  "See what I mean?" Alamena said.

  "Reverend Short, shame on you, pulling our leg like that," Mamie said indulgently.

  "If you don't believe me, go look at the bread," Reverend Short challenged.

  "What bread?"

  "The basket of bread I fell into. It's on the sidewalk in front of the A amp;P store. God put it there to break my fall."

  Mamie and Alamena exchanged glances.

  "I'll go look, you go call the doctor," Mamie said.

  "I want to look, too."

  Everybody wanted to look.

  Sighing loudly, as though indulging the whims of a lunatic against her better judgement, Mamie led the way.

  The bedroom door was closed. When she opened it, she exclaimed, "Why, the light's on!"

  With growing trepidation she crossed the lighted bedroom and leaned out of the open window. Alamena leaned out beside her. The others squeezed into the medium-sized room. As many as could peered over the two women's shoulders.

  "Is it there?" someone in back asked.

  "Does they see it?"

  "There's a basket of some kind, sure enough," Alamena said.

  "But it don't look like it's no bread in it," the man peering over her shoulder said.

  "It don't even look like a bread basket," Mamie said, trying to penetrate the early morning shadows with her near-sighted gaze. "It looks like one of them wicker baskets they take away dead bodies in."

  By then Alamena's sharp vision had become accustomed to the dark.

  "It's a bread basket, all right. But there's a man already lying in it."

  "A drunk," Mamie said in a voice of relief. "No doubt that's what Reverend Short saw that gave him the idea of fooling us."

  "He don't look drunk to me," said the man who was leaning over her shoulder. "He's lying too straight, and drunks always lay crooked."

  "My God!" Alamena exclaimed in a fear-stricken voice. "He's got a knife sticking in him."

  Mamie let out a long moaning keen. "Lord, protect us, can you see his face, child? I'm getting so old I can't see a lick. Is it Chink?"

  Alamena put her arm about Mamie's waist and slowly pulled her from the window.

  "No, it ain't Chink," she said. "It looks to me like Val."

  4

  Everyone rushed toward the outside door to be the first downstairs. But before Mamie and Alamena could get out the telephone began to ring.

  "Who in the hell could that be at this hour?" Alamena said roughly.

  "You go ahead, I'll answer it," Mamie said. Alamena went on without replying. Mamie went back into the bedroom and lifted the receiver of the telephone on the nightstand beside the bed.

  "Hello."

  "Are you Mrs. Pullen?" a muffled voice asked. It was so blurred she could scarcely distinguish the words.

  "Yes."

  "There's a dead man out in front of your house."

  She could have sworn the voice held a note of laughter.

  "Who are you?" she asked suspiciously.

  "I ain't nobody."

  "It ain't so goddam funny that you got to make a joke about it," she said roughly.

  "I ain't joking. If you don't believe me, go to the window and take a look."

  "Why the hell didn't you call the police?"

  "I reckoned that maybe you wouldn't want them to know."

  Suddenly the whole conversation stopped making sense to Mamie. She tried to collect her thoughts, but she was so tired her head buzzed. And all this monkey business of Reverend Short's, and then Val's getting stabbed to death with Big Joe lying dead there in the coffin, left her feeling as though she had stepped off the edge of sanity.

  "Why the hell wouldn't I want the police to know?" she asked savagely.

  "Because he came from your apartment."

  "How do you know he came from my apartment? I ain't seen him in my house tonight."

  "I did. I saw him fall out of your window."

  "What? Oh, you're talking about Reverend Short. And you sure enough seen him fall?"

  "That's what I'm telling you. And he's lying down on the sidewalk in the A amp;P bread basket, dead as all hell."

  "That ain't Reverend Short. He didn't even get hurt. He come back upstairs."

  The voice didn't say anything, so she went on. "It's Val. Valentine Haines. And he was stabbed to death."

  She waited for an answer, but the voice still didn't speak.

  "Hello," she said. "Hello! You still there! You're so goddam smart how come you didn't see that?"

  She heard a
very soft click.

  "The bastard hung up," she mumbled to herself, then added, "Now if that ain't almighty strange-"

  She stood still for a moment, trying to think, but her mind wouldn't work. Then she crossed to the dressing table and picked up a can of snuff. Using a cotton dauber, she dipped a lipful, leaving the dauber in the pocket of her lip with the stick protruding. It quieted her growing sense of panic. Out of respect for her guests, she hadn't taken a dip all night, and as a rule she lived with a dip in her lip.

  "Lord, if Big Joe was alive, he'd know what to do," she said to herself as she went with slow, dragging steps back into the sitting room.

  It was littered with dirty glasses and plates containing scraps of food, ashtrays overflowing with smoldering cigarette and cigar butts. The maroon-carpeted floor was a mess. Burning cigarettes had left holes in the upholstery, burned scars on the tabletops. The ashy skeleton of a cigarette lay intact atop the grand piano. There was a resemblance to a fairground after a circus has gone, and the smell of death and lilies of the valley and man-made stink was overpowering in the hot, close room.

  Mamie dragged herself across the room and looked down into the bronze-painted coffin at the body of her late husband.

  Big Joe was dressed in a cream-colored Palm Beach suit, pale green crepe de Chine shirt, brown silk tie with hand-painted angels held in place by a diamond horseshoe stickpin. His big square dark-brown face was clean shaven, with deep creases encircling the wide mouth. It looked freshly massaged. His eyes were closed. His stiff gray kinky hair had been cut short after death and had been painstakingly combed and brushed. She had done it herself, and she had dressed him, too. His hands were folded across his chest, exhibiting a diamond ring on his left hand and his lodge signet ring on his right.

  She removed all of the jewelry and put it down into the deep front pocket of her long black satin Mother Hubbard dress that swept the floor. Then she closed the coffin.

  "One hell of a wake this turned out to be," she said.

  "He's dead," Reverend Short said suddenly in his new croaking voice.

  Mamie gave a start. She hadn't seen Reverend Short.