“No, I’ll sleep downstairs and my housemate can sleep in the guest room. The bed in there is only large enough for one. Y’all can have our room. Goodnight. Sleep well,” the big woman urged.
The two comrades began undressing, dismissing H.’s advice to sleep with their clothes on. J. noticed a newspaper and sat on the bed to scan its contents.
“I’m tired of mourning men. I told Poochie to let me slice that prick’s throat. Then we wouldn’a had to deal with no gun. He coulda been outa the state by the time they found Halloran’s body and then we coulda been on our way.”
“And why’d he have to go back to Erlene’s? He ain’t seen her in months. He wasn’t no fool, now. He musta known they’d be camped out there waitin for him. Bad time for him to get sentimental,” N. replied. “Sentimental, shit. The nigger had a death wish.”
“Oh, you know they’d been on his ass since the bombing.”
“But how come they keep saying he ‘murdered’ that motherfucker. They can’t find no gun. I got rid of that myself and of that Rambler. The only thing they coulda pinned on him was the bombing,” J. reflected.
“I wish some other black folk would be askin themselves that question out loud.”
“All that rhetoric about warriors dyin in the struggle and all that maudlin bullshit coming from the PBA about Halloran’s wife and family, and everybody’s forgotten that Ava Crocker’s murderer is still breathin air and collectin a salary.”
“Poochie knew he was gonna die, but why’d he have to go back to Erlene’s? Why’d he have to put her life in danger? She woulda got to him. Now, she’s charged with harborin a fugitive. Ain’t nobody talking about that. Is SHAKA gonna take care of her child?” N. asked.
“Shit. The warriors still ain’t into that even if they women is carrying bayonets as well as babies on they backs.”
“Same ole same ole. We just ‘accomplices’ like the news says. Even if we do make the bombs that blow up those police stations and whatever else. You know, Simba wasted that bomb puttin it in the wrong place.
So, of course it didn’t blow up the area it was supposed to blow up! And had the nerve to get salty with Z., saying she ain’t make it ‘right’.” N. laughed, remembering the incident.
“The next man I work with that don’t treat me like a comrade just might get cut,” J. asserted with a yawn.
“Let’s not bad-mouth the dead. Poochie did what he thought he had to do, I guess. He was a warrior.”
“We warriors, too. This ain’t the spook who sat by the door,” J. hissed.
Realizing she had gotten her comrade’s back up, N. whispered soothingly, “Let’s get some sleep, baby.”
They lay in bed afraid of sleep, for the nakedness of unconsciousness rendered them vulnerable. They also feared the thoughts that gather about wakefulness. They turned around to face one another simultaneously. They clutched hands and smiled.
“Did you ever know you would be in this deep?” N. asked.
“Yes, and so did you.”
N. rubbed J.’s face with the back of her hand as J.’s eyes fluttered closed.
N. wondered when the police and feds would release their names and when their pictures would be posted in post offices. If L. F. could hold those boxes and that ditto machine she had ripped off from the student center until H. gave her word of new quarters, other warriors would be protected.
J. began to sleep fitfully. The image of the deputy police commissioner recurred all night long. He lay on some floor, spurting a red spray like a deflating white toy whale. Poochie was also in the dream, leaping into the air with a red stream trickling from his crotch. CMPN, J. saw herself giggling. The conked head and gold-toothed sardonic smile was playing across his reddish-brown skinned face, changing into a frown of surprised pain as the middle-aged “john” backed off of her knife.
“Wake up, baby, wake up!” N. rubbed her comrade’s shoulder.
“Whew!” J. wiped her sweaty brow in relief. “Glad to see you and the morning again!”
“Havin that dream again, girl?” N. asked consolingly.
“That one and some new ones. But you’d think that the two years L. did for runnin her house and the four years I did for doin my knife trick on that m.f. woulda been enough repentance.”
“Hell, I still dream about courtrooms and ‘Heah Come Da Judge’ and my suckered brother.”
“Think we can stick together?” J. asked, forlorn.
“For awhile. Till we find out where the action’s happenin or until the pigs know we’re travelin together. Might find some interestin work pickin tobacco. Might be able to get some folks angry enough there to start a little underground railroad.”
“We might hafta split up. It won’t take them long to find an informer who’ll give your name. If they ain’t already found one.” J. yawned and closed her eyes again in sleep.
N. drifted into an early morning sleep, too. She awoke to the sound of conversation outside the bedroom window. It came from the front porch. Mrs. Johnson was telling the two friends that the police had been checking an abandoned car parked on their street for two days. N. jumped out of bed and peered out the window. She was just in time to see the patrol car pulling slowly away from their street. N. expelled a hiss and switched on a small table radio.
Bad Black News straight from the street to your soul! City police have reported that the fifteen-year-old son of police officer Jefferson Madigan, recently acquitted of murder charges, did not return to his classroom after lunch yesterday afternoon. His parents reported that he did not return home after school. Police have put out an all-points bulletin with the description of the youngster. Madigan and his family have been under police guard for six months.
Erlene Williams, wife of slain SHAKA warrior, Poochie Williams, has been retained in custody for harboring her husband, a known fugitive, and is under $50,000 bail.
Babylon Defense Committee for Political Prisoners has stated that police have produced no conclusive evidence that Williams executed Deputy Police Commissioner Patrick Halloran or that he bombed a police station and are holding Mrs. Williams illegally.
That’s it for news. Now, back to music straight from the street to your soul.
J. jack-knifed to a sitting position and N. stood frozen by the window. They looked at one another with did-you-hear-what-I-heard expressions.
“Right on, SHAKA and Bad Black News straight from the street to my soul,” J. exulted, scratching her knitted-knotted head with both hands.
“M. sent him outta the classroom and K. and W. got him in the little boys’ room. Right on. Bloods are definitely crazy out here. Even with his police guard, SHAKA still snapped him. I just feel a little guilty that the kid is such an innocent bystander, who probably hates his father too,” N. confessed.
“M. is a better teacher since she let us rap to her about ‘revolutionary education.’ And anyway, we can’t take the chance that the little m.f. will grow up just like his daddy. Maybe this little episode will teach him not to be a nigger hater.”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won’t, that is if he lives through the experience.”
“Oh, you know they ain’t gonna kill the little m.f.,” J. responded, making N. feel almost foolish.
“Yeah, well I’m not so convinced that the warriors don’t take the eye-for-an-eye outlook—no pun intended—more seriously than you,” said N., wanting to conclude their bickering.
In preparation for their showers J. took her .32 from out of her duffle bag. “I never was one for getting caught in the shower…”
“Go ahead, woman,” N. commanded gruffly.
“You sure is evil this morning, comadre.”
They showered, dried themselves, and oiled their bodies distractedly, each in turn having offered to scrub, dry, and oil the back of the other.
They joined the friends at breakfast.
“The city’s poppin,” said the tag-woman, as she greeted the two women with squeezes and hugs.
The big friend s
ipped her coffee, lit a cigarette, frowned, and motioned all three women to the back. They settled on the porch again. The tag-woman carried the coffee-tray as J. carried the cups. N. brought the black leather hassock out and placed it close, almost underneath the wicker chair of the big friend.
“Your stuff is together,” said the big friend in solemn, clipped tones. “You have two driver’s licenses and two student i-dees. All four up to date but bearing four different names. Our contacts were only able to secure one passport, with legally validated photos. I am certain neither of you will have any trouble making up to look like the women in the photos, since all niggers look alike. You all can decide between you who uses it, if that becomes necessary.” She paused to drag off her cigarette and shrug her shoulders. J. became impatient with her seeming smugness. And N. nearly laughed at the flat, pat rap the big woman must have given countless times.
After a dramatic exhale of the smoke, the woman continued, “You have some money here, which should sustain you until you reach your first destination. If you run into some bread, we would be grateful for a return of any portion of it so we can continue to do our work. I assume you have equipment to protect yourselves.”
N. and J. looked at her blankly.
“Okay, when you get to your grandmother’s be open and friendly, because if it’s small and rural, by dawn everybody’s going to know you are there anyway. So, don’t raise any questions by being secret. N., you’re your grandmother’s grandchild home from college and J., you’re a fellow student visiting the South for the first time.”
Appearing to have absorbed her limit, N. said, “I know how to deal with that scene, sister. My grandmother will take care of us.”
“Okay, but will she be hip to calling you by a different name? Can she deal with who you are, if it comes down to having to square with her?” the friend tested N. Turning and looking directly at J., almost throwing down the glove, the friend asked, “Can you take low to white folk?…”
N. interrupted the friend’s interrogation, “Sister, my mother told me that for thirty years both my grandparents fed and sheltered and aided blacks escaping from prison farms down there. My grandmother took low to white people for thirty years so she and my grandfather could do their work. She sharecropped, took in wash, cleaned white people’s houses and buildings until she saved enough money to build her own house. So, she don’t owe white people nuthin, cept a bullet through the head. And it wouldn’t be the first time she shot a white man. She keeps a .28 in her night table and a shotgun at her door—for rabbits, she says—but it’s in her hand everytime she opens the door.”
“I ain’t never known a rabbit to knock,” said the big friend smiling, retreating from her verbal foray. She continued with the instructions: “You’ll get to W. around nine tonight. Roomie here will take you to our friend’s club. It’s a cool place. She’s running it for her sister for the summer. You’ll stay there for five hours. Three for her to close the joint and two for her to blow some z’s. The nearest city to your destination is five hours from W. You’ll be dropped just outside a city by the name of T. T. has a sometime bus service to a town ten miles from your grandmother’s. Hitch or hike to your grandmother’s. It’ll be nice weather for bare feet and rolled-up jeans with shirttails tied above the waistline.” The friend paused again to dump her ashes and crush her cigarette.
“If you must contact us at any time, call information. We’re listed as Scott. And you can call collect,” added the tag-woman encouragingly.
“Think you’ll dig the country?” the big friend taunted J.
J. and N. took turns braiding their hair and reacting silently to the cloak-and-dagger instructions of the big woman. J. had been wanted at least ninety times—seventy of those being bogus—before this recent knowing and not-knowing hocus-pocus. But this time she also knew that this flight was not a “flight to avoid prosecution” as much as it was to take her skill and fervor elsewhere. “Next time I go to jail, I’ll be a corpse first,” J. had decided. N. appreciated the thoroughness and drama of the friends, their warm impersonalness, their caring. In all her years of radical campus politics, taking over buildings, burning files, receiving stolen goods, bombings, N. had never heeded the get-out-before-they-get-you advice of friends, enemies, or well-wishers. “Let them come and get me. They better have a warrant or a subpoena. I can go to court. I been to jail before…” But not like that last time. Not like that last isolation. She couldn’t be an activist in the joint. She had always justified her guilty silence while in prison by saying things like, “I’ll do better next time I’m in the joint.” But she knew she would do everything in her power not to go back, just as she did everything in her power to get paroled.
“Let’s raise, sisters. We got a four- to five-hour drive with traffic,” said the tag-woman.
J. and N. went obediently upstairs to change their clothes. J. put on a khaki shirt and coveralls. N. wore cut-offs, sweat socks and sneakers, and pulled a white tee shirt over her head that sported the letters U. of M.
“Let’s hat up. This state is hangin heavy on our heels,” J. advised. The tag-woman was at the door waiting and ready. The big friend came over to the door and kissed her roommate heavily on the lips and embraced the two women. “Go well,” she said softly to all three.
“We gonna need the juju dust of Marie LeVeaux to get us where we goin, it’s so far into the sticks,” laughed J., finally seeming to relax.
The tag-woman opened the door and J. and N. followed. Mrs. Johnson sat on the steps of her porch between two of her children. “Have a nice trip, all of you.”
“Thanks and it was nice meeting you. Maybe next time we visit we can spend more time together,” N. proffered warmly.
“Alright now. I’m gonna hold you to your word.”
The tag-woman hopped into an old Ford and adjusted the seat and switched on the radio. J. and N. piled in after her.
Bad Black News straight from the street to your soul:
City police have received a communique from SHAKA. Eliot Madigan, Jefferson Madigan’s fifteen-year-old son, was apparently kidnapped by SHAKA members in the lavatory of his high school—much to the dismay of his police guards, who were posted outside the lavatory when the kidnapping is said to have taken place.
“See! “ exclaimed J. “I told you those niggers was bad!” …This new SHAKA communique was received by WBAD producer Chembe Rogers, as well as by city police. It is addressed, “To Our People.” We will read an excerpt:
“In the name of black children, we have taken Eliot Madigan a prisoner of war. He will remain unharmed if the city police and FBI release Erlene Williams into the custody of her own community and if the prosecutor signs an affidavit in the presence of Mrs. Williams’ Imam, Hassan Shahid, and her mother, Mrs. Essie Davis, dismissing all charges of harboring a fugitive. Eliot Madigan will be returned to safety if his father, Jefferson Madigan, resigns from the police force. If he does not, Eliot Madigan will be given the same chance as his father gave Ava Crocker. The struggle continues.”
Police Commissioner Riley had no comment… Now, back to soul on the beat radio from WBAD— straight from the street to your soul.
“That’s what the niggers shoulda done at first. But no, they had to be bad black warriors and capture a chief pig,” growled N.
“I need some tampons, right now,” J. commanded.
It was a sunny day and folk were shopping, congregating, and shooting the breeze as the tag-woman drove through the town in search of tampons. The early summer air was still oozing the moisture of spring under their skins, making N. and J. almost regret their flight. J. spotted a black cop mounted atop a brown nag.
As he nodded to J., whose stare had conjured his eyes around, she murmured, “Does that nigger think he’s in Marlboro Country?”
N. and the tag-woman laughed at the analogy.
The tag-woman parked and asked J. her preference of tampons.
“Regular,” J. responded.
The
tag-woman sighed and jumped out of the car with, “Back in a minute.”
Both J. and N. were alternately drawn into their separate thoughts and distracted by the clusters of activity on the street.
The tag-woman returned with a box of “Super.”
“I said ‘Regular,’ sister.”
“I forgot. Want me to take them back?”
“Drive on, baby. Let’s make it,” N. asserted.
The ride to W. was a silent ride with the radio blaring music, news, and static.
“The business in the city with Madigan’s son is probably gonna keep the FBI busy for a week,” the tag-woman offered, to break the ice-like smoothness of the silence among the three of them.
“I doubt it. The feds is all over,” J. responded dispassionately.
“Think they know who the woman is who bombed the station with Poochie?” the tag-woman asked, but the women were again silent.
N. wondered how long she could remain in her limbo of above-underground, if it might be better to try to get to the frozen tundra of Canada. She fantasized about organizing and teaching young brothers and sisters who sharecropped in her grandmother’s town. No time to be having Bethune aspirations, she thought. She hoped J. could tolerate the inactivity of the Southern scene. She wondered, casually, if her grandmother would become an aider. Would she understand the necessity for fighting the white man openly and aggressively—no more rabbits? Then her thoughts fell upon the reality of her covert position—the result of open aggression.
J. felt sullen about having to leave the tense pace of her city for what she imagined to be the sultry, lazy stroll of the country. She hoped she could double her consciousness enough to be an ingratiating darkie and a subversive field nigger. From the first time the pigs came to her house to arrest her for a B ’n’ E, she had vocalized her contempt of white men and their presumed authority. Five years ago when an Italian judge sentenced her to ten years for manslaughter, she blaringly questioned his lineage before the court. His pride offended, he sentenced her to six months extra for contempt. After having been mercilessly beaten with an electric cord by a prison matron and restrained in her bed for three weeks in a psychiatric cell block, she especially couldn’t take but too low to white folk. She wondered if she and N. could hook up with any of those bad niggers who always lurk in the woods of small Southern towns, that don’t no crackers mess with cuz they know the nig-gers is crazy and ain’t afraid to shoot them. Or were they mythical like many things in Disneyland, U.S.A.
Black Like Us Page 31
