She became abruptly angry and showed it. Jumping to her feet, she said: “Good night! I’m going to bed!”
He reached up and caught her wrist and pulled her back. “If you go to bed I’m going with you. Who do you think you are that you can dismiss me at your will?”
“I think you’re stupid and hypersensitive and have absolutely no understanding of historical progress.”
“I don’t think you’re so smart, either. And since you’ve been trying all night to get me—on orders, I suppose—now you can have me.”
“Now who do you think you are?”
“Just a man. Just the man you’ve been tempting with your body since we came inside the house, that’s all.”
“Well, now that I’m bored with you, you can go.”
“It’s not going to be that easy,” he threatened hoarsely.
But inside of him was that crazy, tearing sense of desperation—
the knowledge that he was again being a fool, that he had always been a fool, and was unable to restrain himself from being so. He was furious with himself for this sense of confusion, and angry at her for confusing him with the words of a white Southerner. For there was that part of his mentality that rejected anything a white Southerner might say, and another part that, against his will, found the words of Lieutenant Colonel Parrish as inspiring as Jackie had said they were. It was this awful necessity of facing his dilemma in reality, instead of blindly revolting against it, that provoked in him the impulse to hurt her, dominate her, subdue her and bend her to his will. She was here, and she was white, and there was no one else to take it out on but himself.
“I think I’ll make you kiss me,” he said harshly, and took her in his arms.
“Don’t!” She tried to free herself without giving the impression of struggling. “I don’t want to kiss you now.”
“I can hurt you and make you kiss me.”
Now she began struggling slightly.
“Don’t you believe it?” he persisted.
“Please go home, Lee.”
He clutched her wrists and began bending back her arms.
“You’re hurting me!” she cried angrily.
“I’m going to make you kiss me!”
“Don’t hurt me!” And now she became alarmed.
“Kiss me then!”
He pushed her back on the sofa while she fought wildly. “Goddamnit, kiss me!”
“Don’t do this to me!” she pleaded. “Don’t, Lee! For your sake!”
“Kiss me then, if it’s for my sake.”
She began crying, thoroughly frightened. “Don’t! Please don’t! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“I will hurt you as sure as hell if you don’t kiss me.”
“Oh, don’t! Please don’t! You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you! You know I wouldn’t! You know it!”
He forced her roughly down on the seat. “I’m tired of your fighting!”
“Why do you take advantage of me like this? You know if you were white, all I’d have to do would be to scream. You know it! The doorman and the elevator operator could hear me. They could hear me on the street. You know I wouldn’t cry that you were raping me.” She began sobbing hysterically. “You know I couldn’t do that to you J”
He released her and got slowly to his feet. “I wasn’t trying to rape you,” he said.
“Oh, what are you trying to do to me then?” she asked. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you even if you raped me.”
His face creased with a tight groping frown, because in his mind he actually was not trying to rape her. There was no desire in him for sex—just a deep sterile hurt he had sought to release. But he did not know himself how he had sought to release it or what he had intended to do. And the fact that he did not know frightened him.
“I thought you wanted me to hurt you,” he said, as shocked by his own words as she was.
“Why, in heaven’s name? Why would I want you to attack me?”
Now in his own mind it took the shape of truth. Welling from some deep subconscious source within him came the strange bewildering knowledge of his attitude toward her. From the very first he must have thought she wanted him to hurt her.
“Well—” he groped for the words to explain. “Well—because you’re a Communist for one thing—” That didn’t make any sense so he tried again: “Well—you must have expected something like that when you didn’t respond—”
“Please go home.” She stood up. For the first time he saw the fear in her eyes. “Please go.” He watched her lips flatten, widen, swelling at the edges, and her face begin to quiver, breaking up as she began to cry again, her eyes pinned on him with the deepest look of pity that he had ever seen.
“Well—” In all the world there were no words to tell her that he had not wanted to rape her. “Okay—All I can say is that I’m sorry—”
She went into the bathroom and brought his still-damp clothes. Then she gave him one last bewildered look and crossed quickly into the bedroom and closed the door.
He dressed and went out and walked through the fog to catch a Sunset bus. He felt lost and depraved and horrified by his own emotions and his own reactions, which were as strange to him as to anyone.
Chapter 9
A MOMENT back, when he had boarded the bus, searching in his raincoat pocket for change to pay his fare, his hand had encountered a folded sheaf of papers. But at the time he had been so immersed in mortification he had thought nothing of it. Now it came back into his consciousness with the grim review of other things, and he drew it from his pocket. It was some sort of document. Frowning, he unfolded the clipped typed pages and began to read:
EXCERPTS FROM THE RASMUS JOHNSON CASE TRANSCRIPT
The excerpts have been selected to show the following points:
1. The prejudiced remarks of the judge;
2. The improbable story told by the prosecution to explain the fight; the contradictory testimony of the prosecution witnesses;
3. Johnson’s own story;
4. The failure of the defense attorney to prepare a case for his client;
Just some more Communist propaganda, Lee thought. He vaguely recalled the case—it had been in the daily papers several years back. And the Communists had picked it up as they had done with the “Scottsboro Case” to inflame Negroes to revolutionary fervor.
But what concerned him at the moment was that he could not recall who had given it to him. He searched his memory for a clue. Rosie? No, he hadn’t seen Rosie since the conversation about the Jews. Don? Ed? The old man, Goldman? That memory made him shudder.
It was in his raincoat pocket. Now who did he talk to while he had been wearing his raincoat? Jackie? He dismissed Jackie; he did not want to think of her in any way.
What worried him was not the possession of the document, but the discovery that he had blank spots in his memory. What he could remember—the episode at Mollie’s and all this mess at Jackie’s—was depressing to the core. Now the possibility that he might have done things he could not remember at all unnerved him.
Against his will his thoughts came back to Jackie. But why? Had she thought she could convert him to the cause with this sort of cut-rate agitation? No, she had not been interested in his philosophy, he was certain.
But someone had wanted him to read it, and now he began to read again, curious as to the reason:
5. The biased instruction to the jury which precipitated the conviction of Rasmus Johnson and caused his subsequent sentence to prison for sixty-five years;
6. The mockery of justice when a Negro is tried in any American court on the charge of raping a white woman…
So! His eyes stopped seeing and his body tensed as from some sixth sense of danger. In the wake of realization emotions surged through him so violently that he trembled in his seat. So! What more could any Georgia woman do? he thought.
Now he forced himself to read with controlled concentration, holding his body rigid to clamp his screaming nerves; bec
ause he had to see each typed word to know, and when he knew—
THE COURT: I thought all the spectators were excluded.
MR. BROWN: (defense attorney) They are relatives and close friends of the defendant. You have no objection to their staying, Mr. Loesser?
MR. LOESSER: (prosecuting attorney) I haven’t, no.
THE COURT: Pardon me, I still think, gentlemen, either we exclude them all or none. If the young lady is going to take the stand, the very purpose of it is to save embarrassment. I don’t know why one row should remain here. I feel that all should be excluded.
MR. BROWN: Very well, Your Honor…
(Lieutenant Gregory is on the stand)
MR. LOESSER: When you left the car, where, if anywhere, did you go with the young lady?
LT. GREGORY: We went for a walk through the park.
Q. Did you encounter anyone on the way?
A. We saw that man (indicating the defendant) hiding in the bushes. I believed he might be a Peeping Tom or something like that. I was slightly angered and I made some remark to him to the effect—No, I didn’t make a remark. I thought—
Q. Never mind what you thought, Lieutenant, what did you say or do?
A. I hesitated and stood and looked at him.
Q. I see.
A. Then he came closer and stepped through the bushes. I realized he had a mask and a hat on and he had a gun in his hand.
Q. Then what happened, Lieutenant?
A. Then he told me to walk over a short distance, about five feet north and kneel down with my face in the bushes.
Q. Yes.
A. I did so. And he had me move up a little farther. Then he said he was going to—well—I had never heard the expression before and I asked him what it meant. Well—he said—he told me what he was going to do. He said that was all he was going to do. He said for her not to be frightened. Then he made the young lady lie down…
Lee Gordon lifted sick eyes from the defiling words and almost vomited at the repulsive insinuation. Was she trying to tell him that this was what she thought of him, that this was what she had expected from the first and all else had been insolence? Because if it was, he would have to go back and rape her to prove it wasn’t so. And he knew he could not do that. He would rather kill himself, because that would prove something else to her that wasn’t so—that he desired her body above his freedom.
But he refused to believe that she had thought of this. He put it from his mind and told himself that she could not have thought of it—that there had been nothing in his words or actions to give her cause to think of it. So now he began to read again from urgency:
Q. Could you see, Lieutenant, from where you were?
A. I could not. From time to time I tried to turn around, but he was evidently watching me closely and every time I turned he made me turn with my face in the bushes again.
Q. Do you know how approximately long you remained there in that position and at that place?
A. I haven’t the slightest idea. It could have been a year or ten minutes.
Q. Then what occurred, Lieutenant, or what, if anything, caused you to change your position?
A. Why, I heard a movement back there, cloth moving and elastic snapping.
Q. You come from Alabama?
A. I come from Rhode Island. I was stationed in Alabama for a while.
Q. Go ahead, Lieutenant.
A. Then just shortly afterward I heard the young lady cry out.
Q. Yes? Then what did you do, if anything?
A. Well, I don’t know. Something snapped, and I just turned around and jumped on him…
MR. BROWN: (questioning the witness) When was the first time that you observed the defendant was a colored man?
LT. GREGORY: Immediately after I attacked him.
Q. Up to that time you didn’t know he was a colored man?
A. That is correct.
Q. Did you observe a gun during the time he was committing these acts you described to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury?
A. No. I may explain I tried to look around several times and he wouldn’t let me. He turned me around again.
Q. Did the young lady make any exclamation to you or to your brother officer or to the young lady who was in the automobile, that is, in your presence, that the defendant had raped her?
A. She did when we were driving to the station. I asked her definitely and she answered me definitely.
Q. Well, at any rate, is it true that you and the police officers went to the hospital?
A. The emergency station, whatever that is.
Q. Do you remember what emergency hospital you went to?
A. No, sir, I don’t.
Q. After leaving this hospital where were you taken?
A. They took us—they took both young ladies from the emergency station to another hospital for further examination and treatment for shock.
Q. You didn’t accompany them to that hospital?
A. No. At the time they left us to go there, we left to go to the scene.
Q. Was there anything said when they left as to what hospital they were going to?
A. I believe they did say. I believe they also told me the name of the doctor but I don’t remember…
(Lieutenant Roberts takes the stand)
MR. LOESSER: What did you see, if anything, when you appeared on the scene?
LT. ROBERTS: Well, the nig—the defendant and Lieutenant Gregory were wrestling on the ground and Johnson was on top so I jumped on his back, pulling him off. I pulled him off and he started to strike at me with what appeared to be a knife.
Q. You saw that, did you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Then what happened?
A. We took what later turned out to be a broken drinking glass away from him and subdued him…
MR. BROWN: Was there any particular reason why you were looking for a knife at that time?
LT. ROBERTS: Well, sir, the defendant started to strike at me with something Lieutenant Gregory said he thought was a knife.
Q. Did he have something in both hands?
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you know when you were subduing the defendant that he was a colored man?
A. Yes, sir, I did know it, but I can’t say how I knew it.
Q. Well, did you observe that he was a colored man?
A. There was a full moon, sir, but you couldn’t naturally tell—I mean by the time I got there everything was so mixed up—Lieutenant Gregory said, “He has a knife.”
MR. BROWN: Thank you very much…
(Mary Lou Haskell takes the stand)
MR. LOESSER: Did the defendant say anything before he made you lie down?
MISS HASKELL: Yes, sir. He said—oh, Lieutenant Gregory said: “What are you going to do?” and the fellow says: “I am going to tickle your girl friend.” And Lieutenant Gregory says: “Listen, fellow, you can kill me or anything you want to, but please let my girl alone,” The fellow says: “It isn’t you I want, it’s the girl.” So he made—every time Lieutenant Gregory would start to say something, he would put the gun in his back, and tie told him to be sure and not make a move or it would be too bad for him. And so then he made me lie down. He made me put the blouse up over the top of my head so I couldn’t see anything. And then he—well, Chuck started to move and he made him be still then. And then—just—well, I guess that took place about five minutes. Five or ten minutes. And then he attacked—he started to rape.
Q. Then what did you do?
A. Well, I started to cry just as he started and then Lieutenant Gregory jumped on him…
MR. BROWN: When was the first time if at all that you learned he was a colored man—the defendant?
MISS HASKELL: Well, when he attacked me, I kind of thought he was but I didn’t know for sure, and I didn’t know for sure until the boys got him in the car.
Q. When he told Lieutenant Gregory to turn around the other way and bend down on his knees and keep his hands up, was Lieutenant Gregory facing him
?
A. No, sir, he never did face him.
Q. Now you testified, I believe, on direct examination that it took some five or ten minutes while the defendant was committing this bad act upon you, is that true?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Then subsequent to that time he raped you, is that true?
A. Well, just as I felt it, Lieutenant Gregory realized that he had gone that far and jumped on him.
Q. Do you remember what hospital you went to, Miss Haskell?
A. No, sir.
Q. Were you examined by a lady doctor?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you remember the name of the lady doctor who examined you?
A. No, sir…
As in slowly mounting horror, Lee Gordon saw revealed before his eyes the ease with which a Negro could be convicted of rape when the white woman was willing to take the stand and confess that he had raped her. The first motive he had attributed to Jackie passed from mind. Now he was torn between accepting it as a warning or a threat. But he could not stop .reading until the gristly revelation came to its inevitable end:
(John O’Shaunessey, Police Officer, takes stand)
MR. BROWN: Was any statement made by the defendant ever reduced to writing?
OFFICER: To writing? A written statement? We took no written statement…
(Inspector Kelly takes stand)
MR. BROWN: Isn’t it the custom of the police department in a case of such a serious nature as this, when the defendant gives a statement, to reduce it to writing?
INSPECTOR: Not particularly so. And in this case for the simple reason that the man was caught right in the act.
Q. Was the defendant in this case asked to give a written statement?
A. Yes, he was.
Q. What was his reply?
A. He denied that he had done anything…
(Rasmus Henry Johnson (the defendant) takes stand)
(He testified that he had received his check, cashed it, had some drinks, played pool, gone to the theater, gone to the beach, walked along the beach, and then walked across the park to catch the Geary Street car to go home.)
MR. BROWN: How far did you go along the beach?
JOHNSON: I imagine two or three block farther down to the old diner there.
Lonely Crusade Page 13
