A Rage in Harlem

by Chester Himes

Jackson, the porter, and the third colored man stepped back from the hearse in unison as though they had suddenly looked upon the naked face of the devil.

  Big Fats shuffled closer, looked over Jackson’s shoulder. The locomotive stopped dead on the tracks.

  All four black men had turned putty-gray.

  “Great Gawdamighty!” Big Fats shouted. “Look at that!”

  Underneath the trunk black cloth was piled high. Artificial flowers were scattered about in garish disarray. A horseshoe wreath of artificial lilies had slipped to the back. Looking out from the arch of white lilies was a black face. The face was looking backward from a head-down position. resting on the back of the skull. A white bonnet sat atop a gray wig which had fallen askew. The face wore a horrible grimace of pure evil. White-walled eyes stared at the four gray men with a fixed, unblinking stare. Beneath the face was the huge purple-lipped wound of a cut throat.

  Jackson felt his scalp ripple as he recognized the face of his brother Goldy. His mouth came half open and caught. His eyes stretched until he felt as though the eyeballs were hanging from the sockets. His jaws began to ache. A warm wet stream flowed suddenly down his pants leg.

  “That’s a dead body, ain’t it?” the porter said in a cracked voice, as though his suspicions had suddenly come true. His own eyes were as white-walled and fixed as the eyes of the corpse.

  “Where?” Jackson said.

  His brain had gone numb with panic and fear. His whole fat body began to shake as though he had the ague.

  “Where?” the porter shrilled in a high whining voice that sounded like a file scraping across a saw. “Right there, that’s where!”

  The third colored man was still backing up the street.

  “Cut sidewise to the bone,” Big Fats said in a hushed, awed voice.

  The taxi drivers sauntered over and looked down at the gory black head.

  “Jesus Christ!” one exclaimed.

  “It’s a wig,” the other one said

  “What is?”

  “See, there’s short hair underneath. By God, it’s a man.”

  The uniformed cop approached slowly like a forerunner of doom, nonchalantly twirling his white nightstick. He looked down into the hearse with the air of a man who had been washed with all waters. The next instant he drew back in pallid shock and sucked in his breath. This was the water he’d never seen.

  “How did this get there? Who did this? Whose hearse is this?” he asked stupidly, trying to collect his wits and looking quickly about for help.

  He caught the eye of one of the plainclothes detectives at the waiting-room entrance and beckoned to him.

  The third colored man had kept backing up Park Avenue toward the dark until he considered it safe to turn around. Now he was running up the dark street as fast as his feet would carry him.

  Big Fats had turned cold sober and was trying to inch away too when the cop said sharply, “Don’t anybody leave here.”

  “I ain’t leaving,” Big Fats denied. “Just stretching my feet a little.”

  The white taxicab drivers backed away and stood shoulder to shoulder against the baggage-room wall.

  The white plainclothes detective pushed the porter aside, saying, “What’s this?”

  He took a look into the hearse, turned pale. “What the hell is this?”

  “A body,” the cop said.

  “Who’s the driver?”

  “Me, boss,” Jackson quavered.

  The harness cop blew out his breath in a sighing sound, glad to let the plainclothes detective take over. A crowd had begun to gather and he was glad to find something he could do.

  “Get back!” he ordered. “Stand back!”

  The detective took out his notebook and pencil.

  “What’s your name?” he asked Jackson.

  “Jackson.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  “Mr. H. Exodus Clay, on 134th Street.”

  “Where’d you pick up this corpse?”

  “I don’t know, boss. It was in there when I got in. I swear ’fore God.”

  The detective suddenly stopped writing and stared at Jackson incredulously.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “He say he done found a stiff and don’t know where it come from,” someone in the crowd exclaimed.

  Jackson was trembling so that his teeth were chattering like ratchets. He wasn’t scared now of losing his woman or losing her gold ore. He wasn’t thinking about his woman or her gold. He was thinking only of his brother lying there in death with his throat cut. This was the instinctive fear of the violently dead. Fear of the dead themselves. He hadn’t started yet thinking about what was going to happen to him. But the detective’s next question made him think about it.

  “Do you mean to say you didn’t know this corpse was in the hearse when you took it out?”

  “No sir. I swear ’fore God.”

  The colored detective came up at that moment and said casually, “What’s the beef about?”

  A patrol car turned in from 125th Street, driving on the wrong side, plowed a path through the crowd that was spreading across the street.

  “He’s got a corpse in there and he says he doesn’t know how it got there,” the white detective replied.

  “Couldn’t have walked, that’s for sure,” the colored detective said, pushing between Jackson and the porter to look at the corpse.

  “I’ll be a mother-for-you!” he exclaimed, half choking, more repulsed by sight of the cut throat than shocked.

  Then he looked more closely.

  “That’s Sister Gabriel. And that son of a bitch was a man all this time!”

  The white detective continued to question Jackson as though he were uninterested in the corpse’s sex.

  “How did it happen that you took the hearse out without knowing there was a corpse in it?”

  “Boss told me to bring this trunk to the station and check it.” He talked in gasps, scarcely able to breathe. “Swear ’fore God. I just brought the trunk down like he told me to do and put it there on the rack and drove on here to the station, like he told me to. Lord be my judge.”

  “Check the trunk for what?”

  Behind them the patrol-car cops were pushing back the crowd.

  “Get back, get back!”

  The gray had left Jackson’s face and he had begun to sweat again. He wiped the sweat from his face, dabbing at his red-veined eyes with the dirty handkerchief.

  “I didn’t understand you, boss.”

  Bums and prostitutes and working johns and loiterers and the night thieves and bindle stiffs and blind beggars and all the flotsam that floated on the edges of the station like dirty scum on bog water were jostling each other, drawn by the word of a cut-throat corpse, trying to get a look to see what they were missing.

  “I said what does he want to check the trunk for?”

  “For Chicago. He’s going to Chicago tonight and he wanted to check his trunk now so when he got his ticket he wouldn’t be bothered with it,” Jackson said gaspingly.

  The white detective snapped shut his notebook.

  “I don’t believe a God-damned word of that bullshit.”

  “It could be true,” the colored detective said. “One driver might have brought in the corpse and left it in the hearse for a moment and this driver—”

  “But God damnit, who’s checking a trunk at this time of night?”

  The colored detective laughed. “This is Harlem. His boss might have the trunk stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Well, I’ll soon find out. You hold him. If he got the corpse legitimately, it was released by the homicide bureau.” He looked about, over the heads of the crowd. “Where the hell’s that patrol car? I’m going to contact the precinct station.”

  Suddenly Jackson could see the electric chair and himself sitting in it. If they took him to the precinct station they’d find out about Slim and his gang. And they’d find out about Coffin Ed getting blinded and Grave Digger getting hurt,
maybe killed. They’d find out about the gold ore and about Goldy, and about him stealing the five hundred dollars and stealing the hearse too. They’d find out that Goldy was his brother and they’d figure that Goldy was trying to steal his woman’s gold ore. And they’d figure he’d cut Goldy’s throat. And they’d burn his black ass to a cinder.

  “I’ve seen the order,” he said, inching toward the sidewalk. “It was on the front seat, but I didn’t know who it was for.”

  “Order?” the white detective snapped. “Order for what?”

  “Order for the body. We get an order from the police to take the body. I saw it right there on the front seat.”

  “Well, God damnit, why didn’t you say so? Let’s see it.”

  Jackson went to the front of the hearse and opened the door. He looked on the bare seat.

  “It was right here,” he said.

  He crawled halfway into the driver’s compartment on his hands and knees, groping behind the seat, looking on the floor. He heard the old Cadillac motor turning over softly. He inched half of his rump onto the seat to lean over and look into the glove compartment. His elbow touched the gear lever and knocked it over to drive, but the motor purred softly and the car didn’t move.

  “It was right here just a minute ago,” he repeated.

  Now both detectives stood on the sidewalk by the door, eying him skeptically.

  “Contact precinct and inquire about a recent homicide,” the white detective called to a patrol-car cop. “Colored man impersonating a nun got his throat slashed. See if the body was released. Get the name of the undertaker.”

  “Right-o,” the cop said, hurrying off to his two-way radio.

  Jackson got all of his rump onto the seat in order to search on top of the sunshades where a stack of papers were shelved.

  “It was right here, I saw it.”

  He put his right hand on the wheel to steady himself to get a better look. Suddenly, with his left hand he slammed the door shut; he put his whole weight down on the gas treadle.

  The old Cadillac motor was the last of the ’47 models with the big cylinder-bore and had enough power to pull a loaded freight train.

  The deep-throated roar of the big-bored cylinders sounded like a four-motor stratocruiser gaining altitude as the big black hearse took off.

  Pedestrians were scattered in grotesque flight. A blind man jumped over a bicycle trying to get out of the way.

  There was a nine-foot gap between a big trailer-truck going east toward the bridge and a taxi going west on 125th Street. Jackson put the hearse in a straight line across the street and it went through that nine-foot hole so fast it didn’t touch, straight down the narrow lane of Park Avenue beside the iron stanchions of the overhead trestle. The gearshift was clumping as it climbed into second, third, and hit the supercharger.

  Pistols went off around the station like firecrackers on a Chinese New Year’s day.

  The soft mewling yowl of the patrol car sounded and swelled swiftly into a raving scream as the first of the patrol cars leaped into pursuit. It headed straight toward the side of the big trailer-truck as the cop tried to calculate the speed; he calculated wrong and skidded as he tried to turn. The patrol car went into the big, high, corrugated-steel trailer broadside, tried to go underneath it, was flipped back into the street, and spun to a stop with the front wheels bent out of use.

  The two other patrol cars were just beginning to whine. Over and above the din of noise was the big jubilant crowing of Big Fats.

  “What did I tell you? Can’t trust no fat man! That little fat mother-raper done cut his own mama’s throat from ear to ear!”

  21

  Grave Digger stood over the prone figure of Imabelle in a blind rage. That acid-throwing bastard’s woman, trying to play cute with him. And his partner, Coffin Ed, was in the hospital, maybe blinded for life. The air was electric with his rage.

  He was wearing Coffin Ed’s pistol along with his own. He had it in his hand without knowing he had drawn it. He had his finger on the hair-trigger, and it was all he could do to keep from blowing off some chunks of her fancy yellow prat.

  Two harness cops, passing through the booking room, turned tentatively in his direction to restrain him, saw the pistol trembling in his hand, then drew up in silent amazement.

  Two patrol cops bringing in three drunken prostitutes stopped, staring wide-eyed. The loud cursing voices of the prostitutes were cut off in mid-sentence. They seemed to shrink bodily, stood suspended in cowed postures, became sober on the spot.

  Everyone in the room thought Grave Digger was going to kill Imabelle.

  The silence lasted until Imabelle scrambled hastily to her feet and glared at Grave Digger with a rage equal to his own.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, cop?” she shouted.

  She was in such a fury she forgot to pull down her skirt and brush the dust from her clothes.

  “If you open your mouth once more—” Grave Digger began.

  “Easy does it,” the desk sergeant said, cutting him off.

  Imabelle’s left cheek was bright red and swelling. Her hair was disarranged. Her eyes were cat-yellow, her mouth a mangled scar in a face gone bulldog ugly.

  The harness cops looked at her sympathetically.

  Grave Digger controlled himself with an effort. His motions were jerky as he holstered the pistol. His tall, lank frame moved erratically, like a puppet on strings. He couldn’t trust himself to look at her again. He turned toward the desk sergeant.

  “What’s the rap on this woman?” His voice was thick.

  “Cuttin up a man over at the 125th Street station.”

  “Bad?”

  “Naw. A colored worker who lives back of the station in the bucket says she slashed him.”

  Grave Digger finally turned back and looked at Imabelle as if to question her, then changed his mind.

  “They took him to Harlem Hospital to get stitched,” the desk sergeant added. “They’ll bring him in shortly to prefer charges.”

  “I want her,” Grave Digger said in a flat voice.

  The desk sergeant looked at Grave Digger’s face.

  “Take her,” he said.

  At the same time he buzzed the captain’s office from the row of button signals on his desk. He didn’t want to argue with Grave Digger, but he couldn’t let him take the prisoner out of the station without orders.

  The lieutenant who was on night duty came from the captain’s office and asked, “Yeah?”

  The desk sergeant nodded toward Grave Digger and Imabelle.

  “Jones wants this pickup.”

  “She was at the whing-ding up on the river tonight,” Grave Digger said thickly.

  “What do you want her for?”

  “She going to show me where to find them.”

  The lieutenant looked as though he didn’t like the idea too well.

  “What’s on her in the book?” he asked the desk sergeant.

  “A colored man says she cut him. Over on Park Avenue, in the bucket. Haven’t brought him in yet.”

  The lieutenant turned back to Grave Digger.

  “Any connection?”

  “She’s going to tell me,” Grave Digger said in his thick, cottony voice.

  “I ain’t cut nobody,” Imabelle said, “I ain’t never seen that man before in my life.”

  “Shut up,” the desk sergeant said.

  The lieutenant looked her over carefully.

  “Strictly penitentiary bait,” he muttered angrily, thinking. It’s these high-yellow bitches like her that cause these black boys to commit so many crimes.

  “It’s getting late,” Grave Digger said.

  The lieutenant frowned. It was irregular, and he didn’t like any irregularities on his shift. But hoodlums had thrown acid in a cop’s eyes. This was one of the hoodlums’ women. And this was the cop’s partner.

  “Take her,” he said. “Take somebody with you. Take O’Malley.”

  “I don’t want anybod
y with me,” Grave Digger said. “I got Ed’s pistol with me, and that’s enough.”

  The lieutenant turned without saying another word and went back into the captain’s office.

  None of the other cops said anything. They stared from Grave Digger to Imabelle.

  Grave Digger walked up to her. She stood her ground defiantly. He snapped handcuffs on her wrists so quickly she didn’t know what was happening. When he took her by the arm and began steering her toward the door, she turned and appealed to the desk sergeant.

  “Are you going to let this crazy man take me away from here?”

  The desk sergeant looked away without replying.

  “I got my rights—” she shouted.

  Grave Digger jerked her through the door so violently that her feet flew out from under her. He dragged her down the concrete steps.

  His car was parked half a block down the street.

  “Turn me loose. I can walk,” she said, and he freed her arm.

  The car was the same black sedan in which he had followed Gus’s Cadillac to the gang’s hideaway on the river. He opened the front door. She got in awkwardly, hindered by the handcuffs. he went around and got into the driver’s seat.

  “All right, where are they?”

  “I don’t know where they’re at,” she said sulkily.

  He turned on the seat to face her.

  “Don’t play cute with me, woman. I want those acid-throwing bastards and you’re going to take me to them or I’ll pistol-whip your face until no man ever looks at you again.” His voice was so thick she could barely understand him.

  She felt the danger emanating from him. She might have still defied him if he had threatened to kill her. She wanted to get away herself before Hank and Jodie were caught and made to talk. Nothing could be done to her without their testimony. But she knew he meant what he said about destroying her face.

  “I’ll take you where they live. I want ’em caught. But I don’t know whether they’re still there. They might have lammed already.”

  He started the motor, tuned in the short-wave radio to the police signal.

  “Where is it?”

  “In a rooming house up on St. Nicholas Avenue, over a doctor’s. He lives in the first two floors and rents out the top two to roomers.”