A Rage in Harlem

by Chester Himes

  “Lord, you just have to forgive me in this emergency,” he said silently, then spoke in a loud voice, “Got to clean the steps now.”

  Mr Clay didn’t answer.

  Jackson tiptoed back to the broom closet, put away the cloth and mop, tiptoed silently back toward the front door. Smitty and the woman were still enjoying life.

  Jackson let himself out silently and went down the stairs to the marshal’s car. He palmed two of the hundred-dollar bundles and slipped them through the open window to the marshal.

  The marshal held them down between his legs while he counted them. Then he nodded and stuck them into his inside coat-pocket.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Jackson,” he said. “Crime doesn’t pay.”

  2

  As soon as the marshal drove off, Jackson started running. He knew that Mr. Clay would count his money the first thing on awakening. Not because he suspected anybody would steal it. There was always someone on duty. It was just a habit. Mr. Clay counted his money when he went to sleep and when he woke up, when he unlocked his safe and when he locked it. If he wasn’t busy, he counted it fifteen to twenty times a day.

  Jackson knew that Mr. Clay would begin questioning the help when he missed the five hundred. He wouldn’t call in the police until he was dead certain who had stolen his money. That was because Mr. Clay believed in ghosts. Mr. Clay knew damn well if ever the ghosts started collecting the money he’d cheated their relatives out of, he’d be headed for the poor house.

  Jackson knew that next Mr. Clay would go to his room searching for him.

  He was pressed but not panicked. If the Lord would just give him time enough to locate Hank and get him to raise the three hundred into three thousand, he might be able to slip the money back into the safe before Mr. Clay began suspecting him.

  But first he had to get the twenty-dollar bills changed into ten-dollar bills. Hank couldn’t raise twenties because there was no such thing as a two-hundred-dollar bill.

  He ran down to Seventh Avenue and turned into Small’s bar. Marcus spotted him. He didn’t want Marcus to see him changing the money. He came in by one door and went out by the other; ran up the street to the Red Rooster. They only had sixteen tens in the cash register. Jackson took those and started out. A customer stopped him and changed the rest.

  Jackson came out on Seventh Avenue and ran down 142nd Street toward home. It came to him, as he was slipping and sliding on the wet icy sidewalks, that he didn’t know where to look for Hank. Imabelle had met Jodie at her sister’s apartment in the Bronx.

  Imabelle’s sister, Margie, had told Imabelle that Jodie knew a man who could make money. Imabelle had brought Jodie to talk to Jackson about it. When Jackson said he’d give it a trial, it had been Jodie who’d gotten in touch with Hank.

  Jackson felt certain that Imabelle would know where to find Jodie if not Hank. The only thing was, he didn’t know where Imabelle was.

  He stopped across the street and looked up at the kitchen window to see if the light was on. It was dark. He tried to remember if it was himself or the marshal who’d turned off the light. It didn’t make any difference anyway. If the landlady had returned from work she was sure to be in the kitchen raising fifteen million dollars’ worth of hell.

  Jackson went around to the front of the apartment house and climbed the four flights of stairs. He listened at the front door of the apartment. He didn’t hear a sound from inside. He unlocked the door, slipped quietly within. He didn’t hear anyone moving about. He tiptoed down to his room and closed himself in. Imabelle hadn’t returned.

  He wasn’t worried about her. Imabelle could take care of herself. But time was pressing him.

  While trying to decide whether to wait there or go out and look for her, he heard the front door being unlocked. Someone entered the front hall, closed and locked the door. Footsteps approached. The first hall door was opened.

  “Claude,” an irritable woman’s voice called.

  There was no reply. The footsteps crossed the hall. The opposite door was opened.

  “Mr. Canefield.”

  The landlady was calling the roll.

  “As evil a woman as God ever made,” Jackson muttered. “He must have made her by mistake.”

  More footsteps sounded. Jackson crawled quickly underneath the bed, keeping his overcoat and hat on. He heard the door being opened.

  “Jackson.”

  Jackson could feel her examining the room. He heard her try to open Imabelle’s big steamer-trunk.

  “They keeps this trunk locked all the time,” she complained to herself. “Him and that woman. Living in sin. And him calls himself a Christian. If Christ knew what kind of Christians He got here in Harlem He’d climb back up on the cross and start over.”

  Jackson heard her walk back toward the kitchen. He rolled from underneath the bed and got to his feet.

  “Merciful Lawd!” he heard her exclaim. “Somebody done blowed up my brand-new stove.”

  Jackson flung open the door to his room and ran down the hall. He got out of the front door before she saw him. He went upstairs instead of down, taking the stairs two at a time. He had scarcely turned at the landing when he heard the landlady run out into the corridor, chasing him.

  “Who you be, you dirty bastard!” she yelled. “It you, Jackson, or Claude? Blew up my stove!”

  He came out on the roof and ran to the roof of the adjoining building, past a pigeon cage, and found the door to the stairway unlocked. He went down the stairs like a bouncing ball but stopped at the street doorway to reconnoiter.

  The landlady was peering from her doorway in the other building. He drew back his head before she saw him, and watched the sidewalk from an angle.

  He saw Mr. Clay’s personal Cadillac sedan turn the corner and pull in at the curb. Smitty, the other chauffeur, was driving. Mr. Clay got out and went inside.

  Jackson knew they were looking for him. He turned, running, and went through the hallway and out of the back door. There was a small concrete courtyard filled with garbage cans and trash, closed in by high concrete walls. He put a half-filled garbage can against the wall and climbed over, tearing the middle button from his overcoat. He came out in the back courtyard of the building that faced 142nd Street. He ran through the hallway and turned towards Seventh Avenue.

  A cruising taxi came in his direction. He hailed it. He’d have to break one of the ten-dollar bills, and that would cost him a hundred dollars, but there was no help for it now. It was just hurry-hurry.

  A black boy was driving. Jackson gave him the address of Imabelle’s sister in the Bronx. The black boy made a U-turn in the icy street as though he liked skating, and took off like a lunatic.

  “I’m in a hurry,” Jackson said.

  “I’m hurrying, ain’t I?” the black boy called over his shoulder.

  “But I ain’t in no hurry to get to heaven.”

  “We ain’t going to heaven.”

  “That’s what I’m scared of.”

  The black boy wasn’t thinking about Jackson. Speed gave him power and made him feel as mighty as Joe Louis. He had his long arms wrapped about the steering wheel and his big foot jammed on the gas, thinking of how he could drive that goddam DeSoto taxicab straight off the mother-raping earth.

  Margie lived in a flat on Franklin Avenue. It was a thirty-minute trip by rights, but the black boy made it in eighteen, Jackson biting his nails all the way.

  Margie’s husband hadn’t come home from work. She looked like Imabelle, only more proper. She was straightening her hair when Jackson arrived and had a mean yellow look at being disturbed. The house smelled like a singed pig.

  “Is Imabelle here?” Jackson asked wiping the sweat from his head and face and pulling down the crotch of his pants.

  “No, she is not. Why did not you telephone?”

  “I didn’t know y’all had a telephone. When’d y’all get it?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “I ain’t seen you since yesterday.�
��

  “No, you have not, have you?”

  She went back to the kitchen where her hair irons were on the fire. Jackson followed her, keeping his overcoat on.

  “You know where she might be?”

  “Do I know where who might be?”

  “Imabelle?”

  “Oh, her? How do I know if you do not know? You are the one who is keeping her.”

  “Know where I can find Jodie, then?”

  “Jodie? And who might Jodie be?”

  “I don’t know his last name. He’s the man who told you and Imabelle about the man who raises money.”

  “Raises money for what?”

  Jackson was getting mad. “Raises it to spend, that’s for what. He raises dollar-bills into ten-dollar bills and ten-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills.”

  She turned around from the stove and looked at Jackson.

  “Is you drunk? If you is, I want you to get out of here and do not come back until you is sober.”

  “I ain’t drunk. You sound more drunk than me. She met the man right here in your house.”

  “In my house? A man who raises ten-dollar bills into hundred-dollar bills? If you are not drunk, you is crazy. If I had met that man, he would still be here, chained to the floor, working his ass off every day.”

  “I ain’t in no mood for joking.”

  “Do you think I am joking?”

  “I mean the other one – Jodie. The one who knew the man who raises the money.”

  Margie picked up the straightening iron and began to run it through her kinky reddish hair. Smoke rose from the frying locks and a sound was heard like chops sizzling.

  “God damn it, you have done made me burn my hair!” she raved.

  “I’m sorry, but this is important.”

  “You mean my hair ain’t important?”

  “No, I don’t mean that. I mean I got to find her.”

  She brandished the hot hair-iron like a club.

  “Jackson, will you please take your ass away from here and let me alone? If Ima told you she met somebody in my house called Jodie, she is just lying. And if you do not know by this time that she is a lying bitch, you is a fool.”

  “That ain’t no way to talk about your sister. I don’t thank you for that one little bit.”

  “Who asked you to come here bothering me, anyway?” she shouted.

  Jackson put on his hat and left in a huff. He began to feel cornered and panicky. He had to get his money raised before morning or he was jailhouse-bound. and he didn’t know where else to look for Imabelle. He had met her at the Undertaker’s Annual Dance in the Savoy Ballroom the year before. She’d been doing day work for the white folks downtown and didn’t have a steady boyfriend. He’d started taking her out, but that had gotten to be so expensive she’d started living with him.

  They didn’t have any close friends. There was nowhere she could hide. She didn’t like to get chummy with folks and didn’t want anybody to know too much about her. He hardly knew anything about her himself. Just that she’d come from the South somewhere.

  But he’d bet his life that she was true to him. Only she was scared of something and he didn’t know what. That was what had him worried. She might have gotten so scared of the marshal she’d disappear for two or three days. He could telephone her white folks the next day to see if she’d shown up for work. But that would be too late. He needed her right then to get in touch with Hank to have his money raised, or they were both going to be in trouble.

  He stopped in a drugstore and telephoned his landlady. But he put his handkerchief over the mouthpiece to disguise his voice.

  “Is Imabelle Jackson there, ma’am?”

  “I know who you is, Jackson. You ain’t fooling me,” his landlady yelled into the phone.

  “Ain’t nobody trying to fool you lady. I just asked you if Imabelle Jackson was there.”

  “No, she ain’t, Jackson, and if she was here she’d be in jail by now where you is going to be as soon as the police get hold of you. Busting up my brand-new stove and messing up my house and stealing money from your boss put aside to bury the dead, and the Lawd knows what else, trying to make out like you is somebody else when you telephone here, figuring I ain’t gonna know your voice much as I done heard it asking me to leave you pay me the next week. Bringing that yallah woman into my house and breaking it up, good as I done been to you.”

  “I ain’t trying to hide my voice. I’m just in a little trouble, that’s all.”

  “You tellin’ me! You is in more trouble than you knows.”

  “I’m going to pay you for the stove.”

  “If you don’t I’m goin’ to put you underneath the jail.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m going to pay you first thing tomorrow.”

  “I go to work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll pay you first thing when you come home from work.”

  “If you ain’t in jail by then. What’d you steal from Mr. Clay?”

  “I ain’t stole nothing from nobody. What I wanted to ask was if Imabelle comes home you tell her to get in touch with Hank –”

  “If she comes here tonight, her or you either, and don’t bring a hundred and fifty-seven dollars and ninety-five cents to pay for my stove, she ain’t goin’ to have no chance to get in touch with nobody, unless it be the judge she goin’ to meet tomorrow morning.”

  “You call yourself a Christian,” Jackson said angrily. “Here we are in trouble and –”

  “Who’s any worse Christian than you!” she shouted. “A thief and a liar! Living in sin! Busting my stove! Robbin’ the dead! The Lawd don’t even know you, I tell you that!”

  She banged down the receiver so hard it stung Jackson’s ears.

  He left the booth, wiping the sweat from his round, shiny black face and head.

  “Calls herself a Christian,” he muttered to himself. “Couldn’t be more of a devil if she had two horns.”

  He stood on the corner bareheaded, cooling his brain. There was nothing left now but to pray. He hailed a taxi, rode back to his minister’s house on 139th Street in Sugar Hill.

  Reverend Gaines was a big black man with a mighty voice, deeply religious. He believed in a fire-and-brimstone hell and had no sympathy for sinners whom he couldn’t convert. If they didn’t want to reform, accept the Lord, join the church, and live righteously, then burn them in hell. No two ways about it. A man couldn’t be a Christian on Sunday and sin six days a week. Such a man must take God for a fool.

  He was writing his sermon when Jackson arrived. But he put it aside for a good church-member.

  “Welcome, Brother Jackson. What brings you to the house of the shepherd of the Lord?”

  “I’m in trouble, Reverend.”

  Reverend Gaines fingered the satin lapel of his blue flannel smoking-jacket. The diamond on his third finger sparkled in the light.

  “Woman?” he asked softly.

  “No, sir. My woman’s true. We’re going to get married as soon as she gets her divorce.”

  “Don’t wait too long, Brother. Adultery is a mortal sin.”

  “We can’t do anything until she finds her husband.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you stolen some money, Brother Jackson?”

  “Not exactly. I just need some money bad. Or it’s going to look as if I stole some.”

  “Ah, yes, I understand,” Reverend Gaines said. “Let us pray, Jackson.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what I want.”

  They knelt side by side on the carpeted floor. Reverend Gaines did the praying.

  “Lord, help this brother to overcome his difficulties.”

  “Amen,” Jackson said.

  “Help him to get the money he needs by honest means.”

  “Amen.”

  “Help his woman find her husband so she can get her divorce and live righteously.”

  “Amen.”

  “Bless all the poor sinners in Harl
em who find themselves having these many difficulties with women and money.”

  “Amen.”

  Reverend Gaines’s housekeeper knocked at the door and stuck her head inside.

  “Dinner is ready, Reverend,” she said. “Mrs. Gaines has already sat down.”

  Reverend Gaines said, “Amen.”

  All Jackson could do was echo, “Amen.”

  “The Lord helps those who help themselves, Brother Jackson,” Reverend Gaines said, hurrying off to dinner.

  Jackson felt a lot better. His panic had passed and he began thinking with his head instead of his feet. The main thing was to have the Lord on his side. He had begun to think the Lord had quit him.

  He caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, rode down to 125th Street and turned over to the Last Word, a shoe-shine parlor and record shop at the corner of Eighth Avenue.

  He put ninety dollars on numbers in the night house, playing five dollars on each. He played the money row, lucky lady, happy days, true love, sun gonna shine, gold, silver, diamonds, dollars and whiskey. Then to be on the safe side he also played jail house, death row, lady come back, two-timing woman, pile of rocks, dark days and trouble. He wasn’t taking any chances.

  While he was putting in his numbers behind blown-up pictures of Bach and Beethoven, the girl selling the real stuff played rock-and-roll records on request, and the shoe-shine boys were beating out the rhythm with their shine cloths. Jackson’s feet took out with the beat, cutting out the steps, as though they didn’t know about the trouble in his head.

  Suddenly Jackson began feeling lucky. He gave up on the hope of finding Hank. He stopped worrying about Imabelle. He felt as though he could throw four fours in a row.

  “Man, you know one thing, I feel good,” he said to the shoe-shine boy.

  “A good feeling is a sign of death, Daddy-o,” the boy said.

  Jackson put his faith in the Lord and headed for the dice game upstairs on 126th Street, around the corner.

  3

  Jackson climbed three flights of stairs and rapped on a red door in a brightly lit hall.

  A metal disk moved from a round peephole. Jackson couldn’t see the face, but the lookout saw him.