Cotton comes to Harlem cjagdj-6

by Chester Himes

  "Right you are, my boy. You just send them to me and we'll do right by them. The Happy Southland is the only home of your people."

  The two young colored clerks who had been eavesdropping on the conversation were downright shocked to hear Barry say, "Well, sir, I'm inclined to agree with you, sir."

  The blond young man was standing at the front window, peering out at the milling black mob which he now began to see in a different light. They didn't look dangerous any longer; now they appeared innocent and gullible and he could barely suppress a smile as he thought of how easy it was going to be. Then he frowned at a sudden memory and turned back to stare at Barry with searching suspicion. This nigger sounded too good to be true, he thought.

  But the Colonel didn't seem to entertain a doubt. "You just trust me, my boy," he went on, "and we'll take care of your people."

  "Well, you see, sir, I trust you," Barry said. "I know you'll do the right thing by us. But our leader, Reverend O'Malley, won't like it, my giving you my confidence. You see, sir, he's a dangerous man."

  A line of white dentures peeped from beneath the Colonel's white moustache, and Barry had a fleeting thought that this mother-raping white man looked too mother-raping white. But the Colonel continued unsuspectingly, "Don't worry about that nigra, my boy, we're going to take care of him and put an end to his un-American activities."

  Barry leaned a little forward and lowered his voice. "You see, sir, the point is we have the eighty-seven families of able-bodied people all packed and ready to go; and I've got to tell them if you're ready to pay them their bonuses."

  "My boy, their bonuses is as good as in the bank. You tell them that," the Colonel said and rolled the cheroot between his lips only to find it had gone out.

  He tossed it carelessly on the floor and carefully selected another from a silver case in his breast pocket. Then he clipped the end with a cigar cutter from his vest pocket, stuck the clipped cheroot between his lips and rolled it over and over until the outer leaves of the lip-end were agreeably wet. Both Barry and the blond young man snapped their lighters to offer a light, but the Colonel preferred Barry's flame.

  Barry said, "Well, that is fine of you, sir, that's all I want to know. We got more than a thousand families recruited and I'll sell you the whole list."

  For an instant both the Colonel and the blond young man became immobile. Then the Colonel's dentures showed. "If I heard you correctly, my boy," he said smoothly, "you said sell."

  "Well, sir, you see, sir, it's like this," Barry began, his voice pitched low and grown husky. "Naturally I would want a little something for myself, taking all this risk. You see, sir, the list is highly confidential and it has taken us months to select and recruit all these able-bodied people. And if they knew I was turning this list over to you, they might make trouble, sir — even though it is for their own good. And I'd want to be able to get away for a while, sir. You understand, sir."

  "My boy, nothing could be plainer," the Colonel said and puffed his cheroot. "Plain talk suits me fine. Now how much do you want for your list?"

  "Well, sir. I was thinking fifty dollars a family would be about fair, sir."

  "You're a boy after my own heart, even though you do belong to the nigra race," the Colonel said. The blond young man frowned and opened his mouth as though to speak, but the Colonel ignored him. "Now, my boy, I understand your predicament and I don't want to jeopardize your position and usefulness by permitting you to come back here and be seen and suspected by all your people. So I'm going to tell you what I want you to do. You bring the list to me at midnight. I'll be waiting down by the Harlem River underneath the subway extension to the Polo Grounds in my cah, and I'll pay you right then and there. It will be dark and deserted at that time of night and nobody'll see you."

  Barry hesitated, looking torn between fear and greed. "Well, frankly, sir, that's a good sound idea, but I'm scared of the dark, sir," he confessed.

  The Colonel chuckled. "There's nothing about the dark to fear, my boy. That's just nigra superstition. The dark never hurt anyone. You'll be as safe as in the arms of Jesus. I give you my word."

  Barry looked relieved at this. "Well, sir, if you give me your word I know can't nothing happen to me. I'll be there at midnight sharp."

  Without further ado, the Colonel waved a hand, dismissing him.

  "Are you going to trust that — " the blond young man began.

  For the first time the Colonel showed displeasure in a frown. The blond young man shut up.

  As he was leaving, Barry noticed the small sign in the window through the corners of his eyes: Wanted, a bale of cotton. What for? he wondered.

  9

  No one knew where Uncle Bud slept. He could be found any night somewhere on the streets of Harlem, pushing his cart, his eyes searching the darkness for anything valuable enough to sell. He had an exceptional divination of anything of value, because in Harlem no one ever threw anything away valuable enough to sell, if they knew it. But he managed to collect enough saleable junk to exist, and when day broke he was to be seen at one of those run-down junkyards where scrawny-necked, beady-eyed white men paid a few cents for the rags, paper, glass and iron he had collected. Actually he slept in his cart during the summer. He would wheel it to some shady spot on some slum street where no one thought it strange to find a junk man sleeping in his cart, and curl up on the burlap rags covering his load and sleep, undisturbed by the sounds of motor-cars and trucks, children screaming, men cursing and fighting, women gossiping, police sirens wailing, or even by the dead awakening. Nothing troubled his sleep.

  On this night, because his cart was filled with the bale of cotton, he wheeled it towards a street beneath the 125th Street approach to the Triborough Bridge, where he would be near Mr Goodman's junkyard when he woke up.

  A police cruiser containing two white cops pulled up beside him. "What you got there, boy?" the one on the inside asked.

  Uncle Bud stopped and scratched his head and ruminated. "Wal, boss, I'se got some cahdbo'd and papuh an' I'se got some bedsprings an' some bottles an' some rags an' — "

  "You ain't got no money, have you?" the cop cracked. "You ain't got no eighty-seven thousand dollars?"

  "Nawsuh, wish I did."

  "What would you do with eighty-seven grand?"

  Uncle Bud scratched his head again. "Wal, suh, I'd buy me a brand new waggin. An' then I reckon I'd go to Africa," he said, adding underneath his breath: "Where wouldn't any white mother-rapers like you be flicking with me all the time."

  Naturally the cops didn't hear the last, but they laughed at the first and drove on.

  Uncle Bud found a spot beside an abandoned truck down by the river and went to sleep. When he awakened the sun was high. At about the same time Barry Waterfield was approaching Colonel Calhoun on Seventh Avenue, he was approaching the junkyard alongside the river south of the bridge.

  It was a fenced-in enclosure about piles of scrap iron and dilapidated wooden sheds housing other kinds of junk. Uncle Bud stopped before a small gate at one side of the main office building, a one-storey wooden box fronting on the street. A big black hairless dog the size of a Great Dane came silently to the gate and stared at him through yellow eyes.

  "Nice doggie," Uncle Bud said through the wire gate.

  The dog didn't blink.

  A shabbily dressed, unshaven white man came from the office and led the dog away and chained it up. Then he returned and said, "All right, Uncle Bud, what you got there?"

  Uncle Bud looked at the white man through the corners of his eyes. "A bale of cotton, Mr Goodman."

  Mr Goodman was startled. "A bale of cotton?"

  "Yassuh," Uncle Bud said proudly as he uncovered the bale. "Genuwine Mississippi cotton."

  Mr Goodman unlocked the gate and came outside to look at it. Most of the cotton was obscured by the burlap covering. But he pulled out a few shreds from the seams and smelled it. "How do you know it's Mississippi cotton?"

  "I'd know Mississippi cotto
n anywhere I seed it," Uncle Bud stated flatly. "Much as I has picked."

  "Ain't much of this to be seen," Mr Goodman observed.

  "I can smell it," Uncle Bud said. "It smell like nigger-sweat."

  Mr Goodman sniffed at the cotton again. "Anything special about that?"

  "Yassuh, makes it stronger."

  Two colored workmen in overalls came up. "Cotton!" one exclaimed. "Lord, lord."

  "Makes you homesick, don't it?" the other one said.

  "Homesick for your mama," the first one said, looking at him sidewise.

  "Watch out, man, I don't play the dozzens," the second one said.

  Mr Goodman knew they were just kidding. "All right, get it on the scales," he ordered.

  The bale weighed four hundred and eighty-seven pounds.

  "I'll give you five dollars for it," Mr Goodman said.

  "Five bones!" Uncle Bud exclaimed indignantly. "Why, dis cotton is worth thirty-nine cents a pound."

  "You're thinking about the First World War," Mr Goodman said. "Nowadays they're giving cotton away."

  The two workmen exchanged glances silently.

  "I ain't giving dis away," Uncle Bud said.

  "Where can I sell a bale of cotton?" Mr Goodman said. "Who wants unprocessed cotton? Not even good for bullets no more. Nowadays they shoot atoms. It ain't like as if it was drugstore cotton."

  Uncle Bud was silent.

  "All right, ten dollars then," Mr Goodman said.

  "Fifty dollars," Uncle Bud countered.

  " Mein Gott, he wants fifty dollars yet!" Mr Goodman appealed to his colored workmen. "That's more than I'd pay for brass."

  The colored workmen stood with their hands in their pockets, blank-faced and silent. Uncle Bud kept a stubborn silence. All three colored men were against Mr Goodman. He felt trapped and guilty, as though he'd been caught taking advantage of Uncle Bud.

  "Since it's you, I'll give you fifteen dollars."

  "Forty," Uncle Bud muttered.

  Mr Goodman gestured eloquently. "What am I, your father, to give you money for nothing?" the three colored men stared at him accusingly. "You think I am Abraham Lincoln instead of Abraham Goodman?" The colored men didn't think he was funny. "Twenty," Mr Goodman said desperately and turned towards the office.

  "Thirty," Uncle Bud said.

  The colored workmen shifted the bale of cotton as though asking whether to take it in or put it back.

  "Twenty-five," Mr Goodman said angrily. "And I should have my head examined."

  "Sold," Uncle Bud said.

  About that time the Colonel had finished his interview with Barry and was having his breakfast. It had been sent from a "home-cooking" restaurant down the street. The Colonel seemed to be demonstrating to the colored people outside, many of whom were now peeking through the cracks between the posters covering most of the window, what they could be eating for breakfast if they signed up with him and went back south.

  He had a bowl of grits, swimming with butter; four fried eggs sunny side up; six fried home-made sausages; six down-home biscuits, each an inch thick, with big slabs of butter stuck between the halves; and a pitcher of sorghum molasses. The Colonel had brought his own food with him and merely paid the restaurant to cook it. Alongside his heaping plate stood a tall bourbon whisky highball.

  The colored people, watching the Colonel shovel grits, eggs and sausage into his mouth and chomp off a hunk of biscuit, felt nostalgic. But when they saw him cover all his food with a thick layer of sorghum molasses, many felt absolutely homesick.

  "I wouldn't mind going down home for dinner ever day," one joker said. "But I wouldn't want to stay overnight."

  "Baby, seeing that scoff makes my stomach feel lak my throat is cut," another replied.

  Bill Davis, the clean-cut young man who was Reverend O'Malley's recruiting agent, entered the Back-to-the-Southland office as Colonel Calhoun was taking an oversize mouthful of grits, eggs and sausage mixed with molasses. He paused before the Colonel's desk, erect and purposeful.

  "Colonel Calhoun, I am Mister Davis," he said. "I represent the Back-to-Africa movement of Reverend O'Malley's. I want a word with you."

  The Colonel looked up at Bill Davis through cold blue eyes, continuing to chew slowly and deliberately like a camel chewing its cud. But he took much longer in his appraisal than he had done with Barry Waterfield. When he had finished chewing, he washed his mouth with a sip from his bourbon highball, cleared his throat and said, "Come back in half an hour, after I've et my breakfast."

  "What I have to say to you I'm going to say now," Bill Davis said.

  The Colonel looked up at him again. The blond young man who had been standing in the background moved closer. The young colored men at their desks in the rear became nervous.

  "Well, what can I do for you… er… what did you say your name was?" the Colonel said.

  "My name is Mister Davis, and I'll make it short and sweet. Get out of town! "

  The blond young man started around the desk and Bill Davis got set to hit him, but the Colonel waved him back.

  "Is that all you got to say, my boy?"

  "That's all, and I'm not your boy," Bill Davis said.

  "Then you've said it," the Colonel said and deliberately began eating again.

  When Bill emerged, the black people parted to let him pass. They didn't know what he had said to the Colonel, but whatever it was they were for him. He had stood right up to that ol' white man and tol' him something to his teeth. They respected him.

  A half-hour later the pickets moved in. They marched up and down Seventh Avenue, holding aloft a Back-to-Africa banner and carrying placards reading: Goddamn White Man GO! GO! GO! Black Man STAY! STAY! STAY! There were twenty-five in the picket line and two or three hundred followers. The pickets formed a circle in front of the Back-to-the-Southland office and chanted as they marched, "Go, white man, go while you can… Go, white man, go while you can… " Bill Davis stood to one side between two elderly colored men.

  Colored people poured into the vicinity from far and wide, overflowed the sidewalks and spilled into the street. Traffic was stopped. The atmosphere grew tense, pregnant with premonition. A black youth ran forward with a brick to hurl through the plate-glass window. A Back-to-Africa follower grabbed him and took it away. "None of that, son, we're peaceful," he said.

  "What for?" the youth asked.

  The man couldn't answer.

  Suddenly the air was filled with the distant wailing of the sirens, sounding at first like the faint wailing of banshees, growing ever louder as the police cruisers roared nearer, like souls escaped from hell.

  The first cruiser ploughed through the mob and shrieked to a stop on the wrong side of the street. Two uniformed white cops hit the pavement with pistols drawn, shouting, "Get back! Get off the street! Clear the street!" Then another cruiser plowed through the mob and shrieked to a stop… Then a third… Then a fourth… Then a fifth. Out came the white cops, brandishing their pistols, like trained performers in a macabre ballet entitled "If You're Black Get Back".

  The mood of the mob became dangerous. A cop pushed a black man. The black man got set to hit the cop. Another cop quickly intervened.

  A woman fell down and was trampled. "Help! Murder!" she screamed.

  The mob moved in her direction, taking the cops with it.

  "Goddamned mother-raping shit! Here it is!" a young black man shouted, whipping out his switch-blade knife.

  Then the precinct captain arrived in a sound truck. "All officers back to your cars," he ordered, his voice loud and clear from the amplifiers. "Back to your cars. And, folks, let's have some order."

  The cops retreated to their cars. The danger passed. Some people cheered. Slowly the people returned to the sidewalks. Passenger cars that had been lined up for more than ten blocks began to move along, curious faces peering out at the black people crowding the sidewalks.

  The captain went over and talked to Bill Davis and the two men with him. "Only nine persons
are permitted on a picket line by New York law," he said. "Will you thin these pickets down to nine?"

  Bill looked at the elderly men. They nodded. He said, "All right," to the captain and thinned out the picket line.

  Then the captain went inside the office and approached Colonel Calhoun; he asked to see his licence. The Colonel's papers were in order; he had a New York City permit to recruit farm labor as the agent of the Back-to-the-Southland movement, which was registered in Birmingham, Alabama.

  The captain returned to the street and stationed ten policemen in front of the office to keep order, and two police cruisers to keep the street clear. Then he shook hands with Bill Davis and got back into the sound truck and left.

  The mob began to disperse.

  "I knew we'd get some action from Reverend O'Malley, soon as he heard about all this," the church sister said.

  Her companion looked bewildered. "What I wants to know," she asked, "is we won or lost?"

  Inside, the blond young man asked Colonel Calhoun, "Aren't we pretty well finished now?"

  Colonel Calhoun lit a fresh cheroot and took a puff. "It's just good publicity, son," he said.

  By then it was noon, and the two young colored clerks slipped out the back door to go to lunch.

  Later that afternoon one of Mr Goodman's workmen stood in the crowd surrounding the Back-to-Africa pickets, admiring the poster art on the windows of the Back-to-the-Southland office. He had bathed and shaved and dressed up for a big Saturday night and he was just killing time until his date. Suddenly his gaze fell on the small sign in the corner reading: Wanted, a bale of cotton. He started inside. A Back-to-Africa sympathizer grabbed his arm.

  "Don't go in there, friend. You don't believe that crap, do you?"

  "Baby, I ain't thinking 'bout going south. I ain't never been south. I just wanna talk to the man."

  "Bout what?"

  "I just wanna ask the man if them chicken really got legs that big," he said, pointing to the picture of the chicken.

  The man bent over laughing. "You go 'head and ast him, man, and you tell me what he say."