by John Sanford
“Cliff?” Dan said. “I’m looking for Julian.”
The pencil clicked down over one more flap. “You mean the nigger?” the man said.
“I mean Julian Pollard.”
The man removed his glasses and twirled them, saying, “You a friend of the nigger’s?”
“Don’t use that word again.”
“I only asked are you a friend of his.”
“That’s a whole lot better.”
“Let’s quit making faces,” the man said. “I don’t know you from a hole in the ground. You come in here asking for somebody, and I want to know are you a friend. That don’t call for guff.”
“The word you used gets my ass out.”
“Your ass gets out quick, but that’s neither here or there. I got a reason for my question if you’re a friend of this Pollard.”
“We’ve been friends for fifteen years.”
“All right,” the man said. “You’re friends. That means you like him. It means you’re looking out for his good. Now, supposing you take a look at that notice—that little one over there.” Dan crossed the anteroom to the punch-in and punch-out slots. “Pasted on the clock.”
Typed in the spaces of a PERISHABLE sticker were the words:
Niggers will use the nigger tiolet. They will not use the white tiolet.
This means you.
The man came from behind the partition and went to a window overlooking the yards. “Show you something,” he said. “See that little shanty with the black door near the switch-tower? That’s the can for colored—if you like that word better.”
“About as big as a dog-house,” Dan said. “Why didn’t the company just put up a few fire-plugs?”
“Sure thing,” the man said. “Now, take a look at that little white-door shanty sticking out back of the Seaboard reefer. That’s the can for whites.”
“Same God damn dog-house,” Dan said. “Is that what I’m supposed to say?”
“To the letter,” the man said. “So what’s the odds if the whites use one dog-house and the colored another? You answer.”
“The answer to two lousy cans is one good one.”
“Or anyway, two good ones. But things being like they are, why should there be any fight in these yards? There ain’t a smicket of difference between them two shanties, and nobody’s getting gypped, and nobody’s getting discriminated. So for Pollard’s own good, I’m telling you he’s going to walk in that white-door can one of these days, and he ain’t going to walk out—not ever. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Did you put that warning up on the clock?”
“What do I look like—a KKK?”
“Nobody looks like a KKK,” Dan said. “But, by God, somebody gets under those hoods!”
“Could’ve been any one of forty guys stuck that thing up there,” the man said. “But I told you all I know, and I got to get back to chopping weeds. You want this Pollard, he’s on Platform Three.”
“Mind if I ask you one thing?” Dan said. “Why did you take all that time over a single colored man? You don’t particularly care for the colored people, do you?”
“I don’t particuly care for nobody,” the man said. “But I don’t hate nobody. I’m you might say in between, if you follow.”
“I follow,” Dan said.
“I don’t like trouble.”
“I follow that too.”
“Whether it’s trouble for me or whoever, I don’t like trouble.”
“You’re strictly anti-trouble.”
“You sure follow,” the man said, and he returned to the inner office.
At one side of Platform Three, a string of cars wearing the heralds of many roads were being unloaded, and at the other, motortrucks with their plackets open stood backed in for cases from Texas and crates from Georgia. Elsewhere, chinless yard-goats fussed with empties, and smoke and cinders rolled on the cold eastern air.
Dan spoke to one of the handlers, saying, “I’m looking for Pollard.”
“Ask a checker.”
The checker said, “Pollard? Find him four cars up—meat-wagon on the Nickel Plate.”
From the side-door of a yellow refrigerator, men were trolleying hooked-up slabs of beef to a packing-house Diesel across the platform. When Julie appeared, he was shoving a burlap-covered quarter, and as he passed Dan with it, he said, “How’s Mr.White-collar?”
Dan waited for him to derail the load and make his way back. “Lumpy,” he said. “When do you knock off for lunch?”
“Ought to be getting on for soon,” Julie said.
The handler behind him said, “Blow on it, Pollard.”
There were four in the meat-gang, and each of them made two more round-trips before the noon-whistle was blown at the time-office. As the men emerged from the frost-lined car, the driver of the Diesel said, “Another couple, and I’m full up. What say?”
“Go eat,” one of the gang said. “Go eat.”
“Ah, have a heart,” the driver said.
“Phrig you,” the handler said.
The driver addressed Julie now, saying, “How about it, eight-ball?” and Julie stopped with one arm down the sleeve of his mackinaw. “I got to go all the way over to Brooklyn, eight-ball, and I…”
“That’s two eight-balls,” Julie said. “You must have plenty of balls. I hear about one more, and I start knocking you loose from some.” The driver turned away, and Julie nodded at Dan. “Come on, ofay. Let’s eat.”
As they went down the ramp at the end of the platform, Dan said, “Where do you stoke up around here?”
“Alongside of a tin pail,” Julie said.
“Hell with that on a day like this. Too damn cold. What you got in that suitcase?”
“Piece of lunch.”
“Christ, you look like you’re moving.”
“I don’t go for moving,” Julie said. “I’m a stayer.”
“So I hear.”
“We eat over by that mess of ties.”
Near the creosoted stack, trash smoldered in an up-ended oil-drum. Julie fed it a few splits of wood, and fire soon climbed above the rim. “Just like home,” he said, “and you can have it.”
“What’s on the me-and-you?” Dan said.
“Jew-boy feesh. Ever eat Jew-boy feesh?”
“Before you ever knew you were black.”
“You been on it a long time, then,” Julie said, and opening his dinner-pail, he handed Dan a smoked-salmon sandwich on pumpernickel bread, and then he poured him a thermos-cap of coffee. “I’ll take mine from the jug.”
Dan gazed at the fire in the drum, saying, “I have bad news, Julie.”
“What other kind is there?”
“Mig was killed in Spain.”
Julie spat. “That’s bad, boy, even for bad,” he said.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.”
Do or say, and he’s still dead.”
“It was Tootsie told me about it. Shot in the head, he wrote. Mig with a hole in his head, like Lincoln. If a thing like that can happen, there was never a Jesus.”
“It only happened account of Jesus.”
“He was mighty near where I live, Mig was—mighty damn near.”
Julie touched his hand briefly, saying, “If I was the sorrying kind, I’d say I’m sorry, but if Mig had to get killed, I wish he’d’ve got killed right here in America: there’s a whole lot to get killed here for. You’re one of the two—three good whites I ever met in my life.
I feel high when I’m aroundabout you. I even disremember I’m supposed to stink. But there’s something I never disremember: that you’re white, and I’m black. Nobody’s after you like they’re after me, and they’ve always been after me, and I don’t run. I told that to Tootsie the last time I saw him, and he said what’s the good of abolishing the poll-tax over here when the Fascists over there are busy abolishing the vote; he said even a thing like lynching was a littler thing than the thing in Spain. But that’s Tootsie—it ain’t
me. Don’t nobody have to cross water to get to Fascism. If you’re black, you only have to try and pass water!”
“I saw that notice in the time-office,” Dan said.
“A lawyer in the court, I wanted to be, and they aim to even stop me pissing in a hole! What anybody have to go to Spain for? What I been up against all along in the U. S. white A.? A lawyer in the court, getting justice for the people. Hoo-hah!”
“I can still hear you reading that paper, Julie.”
“And I can still see the look on that old screw, Doc Page.”
“What about Miss Campbell? She had a look on her face too.”
“Did it get me on the graduation-program?”
“Some day, maybe.”
“Some day shite,” Julie said. “That sign on the clock look like ‘some day’?”
“When was that thing put up there?”
“Three—four days back. I first saw it when I punched in Monday.”
“Which can you been using since?”
Julie glanced at him before replying. “We been friends many a year,” he said. “You shouldn’t ought to have to ask.”
“All the same, I am asking.”
“I been using the white one.”
A voice said, “Why?”
The timekeeper was standing before them, working an apple-core against his teeth. He tossed it away white, and it came to a stop black with ash.
“Ain’t no other can in the yards,” Julie said.
“What about that one over there?” the man said.
“What one over where?”
“The black-door one, the one for colored.”
“Never did see it.”
“You been here for months. You just ain’t looked.”
“Looking all the time.”
“You don’t have much to show for it,” the timekeeper said. Four tracks away, a group of white yardmen and freight-handlers were lounging at the foot of the switch-tower. They too had a drum-fire going, and their shapes and the tower-shape behind them trembled in the heated air. “And you’re going to have less.”
“Couldn’t have,” Julie said.
“You could have a lot less breath,” the man said. “Like I told your friend, I ain’t pro or con a thing in the world but trouble, and I’m con-trouble every day and extra-good for Sunday. But trouble’s coming to this yard if you don’t stay out of that white toilet.”
“I wouldn’t dispute you.”
“I’m asking you man-to-man. Why won’t you use the colored toilet?”
“Account of that black door says colored.”
“Just that?” the timekeeper said. “Then suppose we painted both doors the same—black or white, take your pick. There wouldn’t be nothing to show.”
“To show what?” Julie said.
“To show which was for you.”
“If they ain’t both for me, save your paint.”
“But why? You just said it was the doors got your pecker up.”
“You mean, you heard it that way,” Julie said. “A door don’t fret me. Black or white, it’s only a door—but if any color means I can’t go through, I’m going to bust it down.”
“There’s people around would stop you.”
“Ain’t seen ’em so far.”
“I told you, you don’t look real hard,” the timekeeper said. “Now, I’m standing with my back to that tower, and I’ll lay you I can see more than you with your front. There was five—six men over there when I came along, but there’s a dozen now, or I’m wrong. And they ain’t horsing, either—they’re watching—and if you say one of’em’s laughing, I’ll throw in with you and walk off. Who wins?”
“You win the bet,” Julie said.
“But who wins the argument?”
“I win that—pants down.”
“That’s a good one,” the timekeeper said. “I’ll have to remember it.”
“Be sure you remember who said it.”
“I won’t miss. And to be all-square, I got a thing I want you to remember—a little story.”
“Give you till the whistle blows.”
“Ever hear of a place in Nevada called Beatty?”
“Just now,” Julie said.
The timekeeper said, “About twenty miles south on Route 95 and another twenty-odd off over the sand, there’s a magnesium-plant—or was, the time I’m talking about. I took a job with the outfit back in ’17—timekeeping, like here—and I stuck with it till along in ’23. There was two kinds of people working for the company, whites and Mexicans, and they didn’t mix worth a fart. The whites being mostly draft-dodgers, you’d think they wouldn’t’ve been so pickery, but they was even more so. They wouldn’t be in the same crew with a Mex, they wouldn’t eat with a Mex, they wouldn’t live in the same part of the desert with a Mex, and they had to get a dime more an hour to show why: they was a dime better. Things went pretty smooth, though, till some personnel-bastard brang in a brand-new batch of Mexes from Sonora. I was the one checked ’em in, and I knew right off that somebody pulled a boner: that shipment just didn’t look good. I don’t mean I don’t like Mexes. I said before, I ain’t pro or con nothing but trouble—and this bunch just plain stunk of that, the thing I hate most. They wasn’t the kind you find around towns in the Southwest—broke in to working for the big set-ups, knowing what to expect, and lumping it. These guys was green, and to cap it, they was practicly pure Yaqui. Well, it didn’t take a week, and the trouble came and went. It was fast—I’ll say that for it—but it was trouble. It wasn’t account of the Mexes living in separate districts, and it wasn’t account of they ate separate or got a dime less. It was account of something else, a little thing, a thing you wouldn’t hardly expect.” The timekeeper paused. “Or would you?”
“Whistle ain’t blew yet,” Julie said.
“It was account of separate toilets.”
“Couldn’t be. You must be kidding.”
“Just like here,” the timekeeper said. “Ain’t that odd?”
“Odder than even,” Julie said.
“Dumb thing to have trouble over—a toilet,” the timekeeper said. “Well, anyway. I don’t know what give him the notion, but one of these new Mexes wanted in the white toilets—just took it in his head he wanted in, that’s all. He could’ve easy used the toilets for Mexicans—they was marked in Mex on all four sides, and I know he could read, because he wrote a pretty fair hand when he filled out a complaint once—but he wanted in the white toilets, and there it is. First time the whites seen him come out, they figured maybe he made a mistake, and they took pains to point out just what the mistake was. He listened without saying nothing, and the next day he went and made the same mistake all over again. A couple of whites was watching for it, and they followed him in and flang him out on his back—pants down, like you say—but he still didn’t say nothing, just picked himself up and walked off. In the morning, there was signs all over the plant, in Mex as well as American, and they told who should use which toilets, and why—but this one Mex, he kept right on being wrong every time he had a Nature-call.
The whites got sorer and sorer, and finally they beat on him real hard, and when he wouldn’t promise to quit—wouldn’t even open his mouth—they drug him back in the plant and pulled the cord, and everybody knocked off while one of the whites made himself a speech. Here’s what he said: ‘We’re Americans, and you’re Mexicans. That means we’re better than you are. There’s no argument about that. It’s a fact, and what proves it is that we’re white, and you’re not. Now, there’s a man laying on the floor here that seems to want more proof to convince him, and if he wants it hard enough, he’s going to get it all over his body. We’ve tried to be fair about this toilet-business, and we’ll even be fairer: there’s no law says this man has to use the Mexican toilets; if he feels like it, he can go out in the mesquite. But if he thinks he can use the American toilets, by Christ, he better only think it while he does it off in the brush. Otherwise, we’ll teach him a lesson that won’t do him
a damn bit of good: he’ll be dead.’ That was the end of the speech, and the men went back to work, all but this Mex on the floor. It took him quite a while to even stand up, and when he did, he still wasn’t much account, and he had to go away some wheres and sit it out. Now, being strong against trouble from ’way back, I thought it my duty to put in a word, and come noonday, I did.”
“Peculiar,” Julie said. “Just like now.”
“I told him how things shaped up in this country,” the timekeeper said, “and I told him how no one man ever had much luck trying to change ’em. I took care not to say if separate toilets was right or wrong. Being open-minded, I only said we had separate toilets, and a man was free to go back where he come from if he didn’t like it, and no hard feelings, and I wound up with, ‘So which’ll it be, amigo?’ He said, ‘Si señor,’ about the only words I know for sure that he spoke. Well, I done what I could, I figured, and I sat me in the shade and waited. It was kind of quiet, I remember, just like around here, with everybody sort of watching and not watching, if you follow my meaning. The Mex rolled him a home-made, and he smoked it out, all the time flicking off ash with his pinkie, and then, cool as a church, he got up and headed for the toilets. It goes to show how quiet it was that all you could hear was his sandals slapping on the duckboards. He went straight for the shack marked American, and the door closed on him.”
Dan glanced at the switch-tower. The group was larger now, some of the men heel-sitting about the fire-blackened drum, some loafing against a tool-shed, and some astride tie-ends and rail, but all at rest, all engines with steam up.
Using the edge of his shoe, the timekeeper smoothed out a fan of cinders. “It won’t take long to tell the rest,” he said, “because it didn’t take long to happen. That door no sooner slammed than half a dozen whites was on their pins and running: it was all arranged, I guess. A couple of ’em had a piece of two-by, another couple had cans of coal-oil, the fifth guy had hammer and nails, and the last one a greasy swab and a box of striking-matches. In no time at all, they had that toilet sealed up and sloshed down—and the feller with the swab touched it off. I’ll say this for the other Mexes: they did come alive finally and try to stop the accident. Only when them six whites swang around with their backs to the fire, they had an awful lot of guns in their hands: I guess that was arranged too. Anyway, nobody put the fire out. It burned out. That’s the story.”
