Lonely Crusade

by Chester B Himes

  “On a job like this, the union can’t show any special interest in your people or we antagonize the Southern whites. Don’t look for none.

  “The Communists will be after you. Just be prepared. In case you don’t know, this is how they’ll work. They’ll get somebody to make friends with you—either another colored man or a white girl. Then they’ll try to recruit you. Anyway, they’ll try to control you. But as long as they don’t catch you agitating on discrimination, they’ll help. They got that unity crap going and they won’t want you around agitating. Now take their help. It can be good. They got better inside contacts than you’ll ever get. But don’t let ‘em run your show. Play the discrimination, and play the Communists, too. It’s all in not letting ‘em see you. If it’s another colored man they send out for you, he’ll be a dumb son of a bitch, anyway. Just remember, you’re organizing for the union, not for Joe Stalin. Watch out they don’t undermine you or double-cross you. And don’t you fight ‘em, for God’s sake. Let me do that. It’s up to you how you do it. But it’s gotta be done. We’ll need that colored vote to win an election. That’s your job. You got to get ‘em. The next meeting will be in two weeks. The leaflets announce it. When the shift changes today, go down to No. 2 gate and pass some out. Try to get some colored workers at the meeting. After the first come, others’ll follow. Do the best you can. When you need help, come to me. If you believe in the union, you can convince others. If you don’t, you can’t That’s the score, brother,” Joe concluded. “Now how ‘bout some chow?”

  The spell of Lee’s complete attention was broken. His thoughts diffused rapidly. His emotions lost sharp definition and spread into confusion. Contemplation of the job Joe had outlined nurtured his sense of inadequacy. He could not bear the thought of food. But when it came, he ate.

  At ten minutes of four, Lee carried an arm full of leaflets down to the No. 2 gate. The sun had come out and the pavement steamed in the bright sunshine. It was pleasant after the rain.

  A line of cars turned slowly into the parking lot across the street, moving intermittently as those in front selected parking spots. Of those workers who had come earlier, some stood in groops in the bright sunshine conversing; others crowded around the hot-dog stands, drinking pop. In most instances the Negro workers remained by themselves. Here and there a black face stood out in a white group.

  Dressed in the abandon encouraged by the climate—the women in slacks and waists, their hair tied with kerchiefs, the men in slacks and T-shirts, carrying their jackets on their arms—talking and laughing, they mirrored animation. Lee felt stuffy and overdressed in a suit and tie. He loosened his collar and took off his coat. His was no executive’s job, he thought deprecatingly.

  As if the four o’clock whistle had been a starter’s gun, workers erupted from the plant in a rush. They surged over the sidewalks and filled the street, swamping Lee, carrying him along. Southern dialect mingled with the melodious lilt of Spanish. Here and there came a loud Negro laugh. Pushing and running. Laughing and cursing. Giving and taking. The white and the black and the in-between. Warworkers homeward bound. Full of their self-importance. Fighting on their front. Owning the street and the air above the street and recognizing no authority but their own patriotism. Like no other workers on earth. Because they could believe it. For a dollar and more an hour, and time and a half for over time, they did not find it too hard to believe.

  Now the cars came roaring from the parking lot. Hurtling toward the pedestrians. Barely missing them as they jumped aside. The shrill whistle of traffic cops sounded again and again. But within a few minutes the customary day-end traffic jam had piled up. Already fenders had been dented, nerves frayed, tempers lost. T-shirted youngsters, too young for service, drove their hopped-up Fords over the curb scattering the pedestrians, raced their motors frighteningly, and were gone. Too late were the cops’ whistles screaming with futile rage.

  Lee’s vision sought out the Negro workers. All seemed either too loud or too sullen. Their demeanors set them apart. Lee felt an odd, unwanted embarrassment for them that they should always be so different.

  Diffidence overcame him. He felt like an interloper. It required a special effort to approach them with the leaflets. Most brushed the leaflets aside and walked on. He did not blame them. Others accepted the leaflets, guiltily glancing about, and quickly stuffed them in their pockets as if they feared some sudden punishment. A very few carried them defiantly, reading as they walked. But there was some slight shade of apprehension on the faces of them all.

  These misgivings were transmitted to Lee. For a moment he felt as if he was being used to embroil them in some hoax, an instrument of harm more than a bearer of good tidings. The sense of guilt was also in his manner as he grew apprehensive for his safety. Suppose the plant guards came out and attacked him? What was to stop them? The union afforded no protection. Declaring that he was within his rights as a citizen had never been of any protection to a Negro—that he could recall. The guards could say he was a Communist, agitating warworkers. The law would uphold them in anything they did to him, he told himself. Reading of it in the newspapers, the people would condemn him—even Negro people. The very same Negro workers who had accepted leaflets would turn on him in court and testify that he was agitating. It was as if by passing out union leaflets at a war plant’s gates he was committing a crime for which the guards would have the right to jump on him and beat him up.

  So deep was he within this morbid meditation that he had not noticed that the street had cleared. He looked up and it was empty. Nothing had happened; no one had challenged him; no plant guards were in evidence.

  The trepidation left, but a distaste for the job remained. Negroes had been kicked around so much, had been told so many lies, so often betrayed, he did not relish trying to sell them on another Utopia. He did not like people that much, anyway—neither Negro people nor any people. He did not feel that much involved in humanity or in the struggle of humanity.

  And to try to convince against their wills a bunch of ignorant Negro migrants of the value of a union, which he doubted as much as they, was a task he found personally repellent. He was no medicine man, no Marcus Garvey, no Black Messiah. Let people go to hell in their own particular way was one thing America had taught him.

  Yet it was a job, and that was what he needed most. He would make the best of it. But he would not like it, he knew. It was with a sense of resignation that he walked back to the union shack.

  The shack was closed and locked.

  “They left you,” some one said in a flat, plantation voice.

  Caught in the irritation of being left, Lee wheeled about. The sharp retort died on his lips. Before him stood a man who normally looked dangerous. Fully as tall as Lee, his six-foot height was lost in the thickness of his torso and the width of muscular shoulders that sloped like an ape’s, from which hung arms a good foot longer than the average man’s. His weird, long-fingered hands of enormous size and grotesque shape, decked with several rings, hung placidly at his side, and his flat, splayed feet seemed comfortably planted in the mud. He wore a belted, light-tan, camel’s hair overcoat over a white, turtle-neck sweater, above which his flat-featured, African face seemed blacker than the usual connotation of the word. On his left cheek a puffed bluish scar, with ridges pronging off from it in spokes, was a memento of a pickax duel on a Southern chain gang; and the man who gave him the razor welt, obliquely parting his kinky hair, he always said was dead. He surveyed Lee without emotion through slanting eyes as yellow as muddy water.

  “Yes, it looks that way,” Lee finally replied.

  “Now you’ll have to take the bus.”

  “I suppose so,” Lee confessed, starting to turn away.

  “Nev’ mind, man, you can ride with me.”

  Lee turned around and looked at him again. “Maybe he’s a halfwit,” he thought…Extending his hand, he said: “My name’s Lee Gordon, I work as an organizer here.”

  “Aw, I know, man,” the fell
ow replied, shaking Lee’s hand with a half-hearted grip. “I’m Luther McGregor.” He announced it as though it should carry some special significance, but Lee had never heard the name before.

  “I’m glad to know you, Luther.”

  “Come on, my car’s parked ‘round the corner.”

  Following, Lee wondered who he was, what he did. “Do you work in the plant?” he asked.

  “Me?” Luther looked over his shoulder. “You know me! I’m Luther, man, I’m Luther!”

  “Oh, Luther!” Lee forced himself to exclaim although he still could not recall the name.

  When they came to a swank, rose-colored club coupe, Luther climbed in beneath the wheel, and Lee took a place beside him on the rich upholstery.

  “My old lady’s,” Luther said proudly, referring to the car.

  “Nice car,” Lee praised, more curious now than ever. “You know Joe Ptak?” he fished lightly.

  Luther started the motor and wheeled the car into the city-bound traffic. “It was me who sent for Joe to come here and set up the local,” he informed Lee.

  “Oh! Then you’re with the union?” Lee was genuinely surprised; he did not know they had another Negro organizer employed.

  “I been here organizing on this shop since the start. I’m the one what told them to get you.”

  Lee doubted this, and now he became suspicious. “I didn’t see you around today.”

  “I do all my work underground,” Luther said.

  “Then you’re not with the union?” Lee persisted.

  “Sure I’m with ‘em,” Luther contended. “I works right along with ‘em. That’s how come I had ‘em send for you. I need a buddy to help me.”

  “What I mean is, you’re not on the union payroll?”

  “I gets paid, all right. You can bet on that. Luther always gets paid. I just don’t get paid like you. My work is more on the political side.”

  So that was how it was, Lee Gordon thought. The Communists used to slide up to you on the street. Now they picked you up in a big automobile. That was prosperity for you.

  “I see,” Lee commented dryly and said no more.

  For a time the sun shone dazzlingly, but when they came into the one-storied, car-tracked monotony that was Los Angeles proper, the sky clouded and the day grayed.

  “What you think about Joe?” Luther finally broke the silence.

  “About him how?”

  “Is he straight?”

  “He seems straight enough to me.”

  “You know what I mean, man, is his thinking right?”

  “His thinking seems all right to me.”

  Seeing that Lee was not to be drawn out, Luther changed his tactics. “Say, how much the union pay you, man?”

  “Forty-two, fifty,” Lee replied truthfully.

  “Joe Ptak gets ninety,” Luther said.

  “Yes, but he works for the union. I work for the council.”

  “You’ll get more,” Luther promised. “Just stick with me.”

  “You can let me out anywhere on Western,” Lee said.

  “Aw, man, I’ll take you home.”

  “Thanks, but that’s not necessary,” Lee declined. “I don’t want to take you out of your way.”

  “It ain’t no trouble, man,” Luther persisted. “Gas ain’t hard to git and time is all I got.”

  It began to rain again. “Well, okay,” Lee finally accepted. “I live on 39th Place off of Western. I’ll show you the house.”

  To anyone but a Communist he would have felt a gratefulness. He was physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, and a ride home in the rain was a godsend. But he had such an antipathy for Communists he suspected a hidden motive in anything one did for him. However, he maintained a surface cordiality. When they arrived his “Thanks, old man” contained a genuine warmth.

  But Luther was not to be dismissed. “I’ll come in for a minute,” he said getting out behind Lee.

  Fury at this unmitigated gall scalded Lee. Only an unprincipled Communist would presuppose a ride in the rain to ensure an invitation to come in, he thought. Now he would have to introduce him to Ruth. It would put him in the position of doing the thing he had objected so bitterly to her doing. But he saw no decent way he could avoid it.

  “Sure, come on in,” he invited, keeping his voice controlled.

  The house was cold and empty for Ruth had not come home.

  Lee’s first emotion was a sense of relief at having escaped a scene over bringing Luther home. Then he suddenly felt a letdown.

  “Where’s your old lady?” Luther asked, strolling about the house. “She at work?”

  Lee did not reply.

  Luther wandered into the kitchen. “She didn’t leave you nothing to eat, man,” he called.

  Lee sat in a chair with bowed head, waiting for him to finish his inspection. His nerves were raw and edged. He could only stand so much of Luther, he knew.

  Returning to the living-room, Luther said cheerfully: “Now you got to eat in some hash joint.”

  “My wife’ll be home in a minute,” Lee replied defensively.

  “Come on home and eat with me,” Luther invited. “My old lady beats up a good scoff.”

  “Some other day,” Lee said, then added: “Thanks, anyway.”

  “You’re welcome, man.”

  “I’m sure of that. But I don’t want to go out any more.”

  “See you tomorrow then,” Luther said and took his departure.

  It was dark now and Lee sat in the darkness alone. Now the hurt and disappointment came; the one hope crumbled to dust. Unconsciously he had built his entire day around his coming home. He had looked forward to painting a glowing picture of his first day at work—a picture of the white fellows and himself laughing, talking, working together in complete unison. To overwhelm her with the evidence that he could get along. To convince her again of his ability to provide a life for them—food, shelter, and some measure of happiness. And to win back her regard for him.

  He had come so laden down with precious gifts of fantasy, to seek the haven of her smile. What was the line? It is in his heart that she is queen, he recalled.

  Well—yes, Lee Gordon thought. But who wants to be queen in a Negro’s heart?

  He arose and walked out of the house in the darkness. For a long and bitter moment he stood on the little stone porch saying goodby to that part of their marriage which had held a hope for happiness. Then he went down the steps in the rain.

  Chapter 3

  LEE AND RUTH had been married for eight years that spring of 1943. For Lee their marriage had been the beginning of his life. Before had been nothing but a bewildering sense of deficiency and a vague fear of momentarily being overtaken by disaster.

  At the time of his birth in 1912, Negroes were only servants in California. His parents, Tom and Anna, worked as domestic servants on a Pasadena estate, and he was born in the pleasant little servants’ cottage out in back. In later years when he wondered why he was the only child, his mother told him that he had caused a problem by his birth, and her “missus” had asked her not to have another.

  The schools in Pasadena were not segregated. But the Negro students were known to be the children of the servants and were treated as such.

  When he first entered school, Lee was the only Negro in his class. Even then before it was given other meaning, his black skin was a handicap. It made him hard to hide. Whatever he did, he was always caught.

  But it was not until his first year of geography when he was nine that he came to understand the stigma of his skin. All the class learned that black people were heathen savages, many of whom were cannibals besides. The teacher explained, however, that those in America had been Christianized. But even with that, it was a hurting thing to learn.

  Soon afterwards in his history class he learned that’ Negroes had been slaves. For a time he wondered if his parents were still slaves, but he was too ashamed to ask them.

  In 1926 he was fourteen. He was in the ei
ghth grade. Outside of the curriculum he had not participated in any school activities. He had never had a buddy. The white students had not been deliberately unkind; they had ignored him.

  He had learned nothing to make him proud of being a Negro and everything to make him ashamed of it. The most complimentary thing he had learned concerning Negroes was that they had been freed from slavery. He had never heard the mention of a Negro above the level of a servant. When asked concerning his nationality, he did not know whether to say he was an American or a Negro.

  He came to believe that something was lacking in Negroes that made them less than other people. In gym, during showers, he carefully observed the white boys. The only difference he discovered was the color of their skin, and this seemed no superior attribute. In his first year biology class, he asked about the qualities of skin a number of questions that caused the teacher embarrassment. The teacher kept him after class one day to find out what was troubling him.

  “Is white skin better than black skin?” Lee asked bluntly.

  “There is little difference in the skin itself,” the teacher carefully replied. “But the color of skin—along with other things, of course—denotes the division of the races.”

  Lee was not answered, but at least he knew that white skin of itself was no advantage.

  Perhaps the difference was in girls, he thought. He had heard sly talk among the white boys that the vaginas of Chinese women extended crosswise. This decided him to hide in the girls’ gym and watch them undress. “They don’t look any different,” he observed. They weren’t even prettier.

  Then he was caught, expelled. His parents were discharged, requested to leave the city. It happened with such sudden devastation, devoid of warning or appeal, that he was terror-stricken. He could not understand what he had done that called for so great a penalty. The year before, a white boy, halfback on the football team, had been caught in the very act with a girl. Though he had been expelled, nothing had happened to his parents, his home had not been destroyed, his family had not been banished from the city overnight. What Lee Gordon could not understand was why his spying on the white girls in the gym was considered so much worse.