The Howling Man

by Beaumont, Charles

  Sometimes he thought about his job; relived pleasant hours when work was not so hard. He'd had the job for seventeen years, and although he'd never risen in rank, neither had he ever been docked or rolled.

  And he thought about stories of poor Negroes constantly out of work and how nobody would hire you if you were black. He didn't believe it. He was black and he had a job. He was black and he had a wife. What else, he wondered, could there be in life?

  Time dragged, stood still, waited, inched, stopped.

  Then the day arrived, the day Willie so longed for: his last execution.

  The attendant delicacies were hurried this time and somewhat embarrassed. The man in the frock coat had refused to come and so another man like him came instead. Willie listened politely to the Last Prayers, but he was feeling too good to really hear them. Aunt Lucy had seen him the afternoon before and he hadn't noticed the fear in her eyes. He had only heard the kind, happy words that came from the friendly face. He knew them by heart now, every word and every nuance.

  "You gonna be home little while, boy. They gonna let you go and you gonna be home. The Lord has taken care of his young lamb."

  The yard was filled with many people this time. It was a special occasion; rules were relaxed. Many had notebooks open and pencils in their hands. Some looked afraid--those faces he recognized, they looked afraid. Others looked interested or expectant.

  There was a slight breeze, so the rope swung gently backward and forward from the scaffold. Its shadow on the wall was many times enlarged and grotesque.

  When Willie came in, everyone stopped whispering. There was absolute quiet, the quiet that is born of a beating heart. Willie grinned widely and tried to wave his hands so they could see.

  He knew the way by now. He knew how many steps it was from the door to the platform of the scaffold. He knew the moment the hood would be lowered. Willie smiled at the blackness as the trapdoor was dropped five times. He smiled at the executioner, but the executioner didn't smile back.

  Then the long wait. Through the coarse black cloth over his head, Willie heard the frightened gasps and the sharp little cries. He heard someone say:

  "My God, it didn't work! It didn't work!"

  He was carefully led from the platform back to his cell. He remembered to thank the Lord and then he went back to sleep.

  The following week Willie was told exactly when he would be released, and until that time he found many interesting things to read in the newspapers.

  Aunt Lucy and the men from the newspapers were waiting for Willie the day he walked out of prison a free man. Many pictures were taken of him and many questions asked and Willie was polite to everyone. But when he would ask Aunt Lucy where Cleota was, Aunt Lucy would turn her head and someone else would say something. After a time, Willie got worried and told the people he would talk with them tomorrow.

  When he got home, Willie learned that his wife had left him. He didn't grasp it at first. Cleota had run off with a man named Frank Jones. She had left him.

  Aunt Lucy remarked that she never did care much for Cleota and had told Willie so the day he married her. She reminded him of George Manassan and asked him why he had never blamed Cleota. But whenever Aunt Lucy would say anything bad about Cleota, Willie would tell her to be quiet. He wanted to think.

  Alone in his room, he lay on the bed and wept. He understood why he had felt strange about those letters and why he had put the feeling aside. Cleota would never sleep with him again; she would never come back.

  He fought the tears until his eyes hurt and then he slept.

  The next morning he rose early, put on the clothes that had hung in the closet for almost a year and a half and took a bus to his work terminal.

  The sight of the huge ornate building restored Willie's spirits. He forgot about Cleota. This was the other of the two important things in his life; he proposed to marry himself completely to his job now.

  The foreman shook his head at Willie.

  "Sorry, fella, but the Line's full up now. Union tightening up . . . letting off help . . . sorry."

  The foreman had to talk a long time to convince Willie that he had no job. The big man, with his black arm-sleeves and green head-shield, was puzzled that anyone could have the nerve to ask for a job after an absense of a year and a half. That a murderer could expect to have his job back.

  Willie walked out of the building slowly, trying to put things together in his head. He asked the Lord what had happened, but the answer was indistinct. He boarded the bus and got off before it started. He walked the three miles to Aunt Lucy's apartment.

  The old woman was crying.

  "Boy, I don't know 'zactly what could he'p you now. You got no job and you got no wife. But you got to live, 'cause that's what the Lord say you got to."

  And Willie knew she was right. He had to live.

  He went home and put on his suit. It was wrinkled where it had draped across a wire hanger, but it still had class. Willie had never worn it much, but he always felt good in it. He put on his flamingo tie and polished his shoes with an old shirt. He sat down to decide what to do.

  He walked down Government Street and entered an S.P. ticket office. He asked for a job and was quickly refused.

  He went to every ticket office, steamship, railroad and freight line in the city. He didn't pause to eat. At nightfall, when he returned home, there were smiling newspapermen waiting for him. He admitted them and talked politely.

  ". . . you got to live, boy . . ."

  The next day he went to garages, filling stations and miscellaneous stores. He went through the factories and warehouses, to the Civil Service building and to the employment agencies. He was not even asked to fill out forms.

  ". . . there isn't a thing for you . . ."

  'No use to fret, Willie Washington, you had it good most of your life. The Lord took good care of you. You just got to scrounge a little now. - .', was what Willie said to himself.

  He went to large office buildings, printing shops, frame makers, construction companies, the city hall, grocery stores.

  Some grimaced at him, most recognized him from the pictures in the paper. But no one gave Willie a job.

  He went to Aunt Lucy and she just told him to keep looking.

  He put an ad in the paper, he answered all the ads. He went to janitors and street cleaners, to airports and railroad stations.

  He walked until his feet hurt and turned numb to pain. And when he looked at his money he started to become a little frightened. But he didn't stop walking and he didn't stop talking.

  And then one day, when the newspapermen had had enough of Willie's story and he was left entirely alone, Willie sat in his room a whole day, thinking. He asked the Lord numerous questions and waited for the answers that did not come. He looked in his pockets and saw that his money was nearly gone.

  He remembered the looks of hate on people's faces when they saw him, how they whispered when he left. He had done nothing, and had proven it, but he began to see that there was no one who believed him. No one but Aunt Lucy.

  Everyone thought that he had actually killed that little girl. Didn't they realize that he would have been hanged, that his neck would have been broken and that he would have died, if he'd been guilty?

  Or did they care . . . ?

  For the first time in his life, Willie Washington really hated. He hated the people who hated him; he hated everything around him. He had forgiven them and their wrong, but they would not forgive him his innocence! Hate surged and churned in his heart. It did not have time to mature. It was now and it was full-grown.

  Aunt Lucy was afraid. She sensed in her old heart what had happened, so she got out of bed and went over to Willie's room.

  She said, "Boy, you got to get that look out of your eyes. It ain't good."

  And Willie said, "But they won't give me work an' I'm runnin' out of money,"

  They sat.

  Then the old woman looked very deep inside Willie's heart and she lef
t in fear. It had dried up in her but she recognized the budding shoot. She remembered it and how it had conquered her. But she had been a woman, and Willie a man, and that is why she was afraid.

  Willie didn't say very much to anyone the next day. He'd ask for a job and he'd be refused and he'd walk out, looking so grim and confused people would stare.

  The black flower began to press his throat and his breast, so that he shook when he asked the question, defeatedly, under his breath.

  "Lord, it ain't right what you're doing to me. I been good and look at me! I got no money, no job, no wife . . . And it wouldn't none of it a happened if you hadn't put me in that jail. Why'd you let it happen, O Lord!"

  Willie had a mind full of confusion, a mind full of angry hornets.

  When he heard the white woman say "There's the murdering nigger they couldn't hang," hot vomitous acid rose in his throat and eyes and he went back home.

  He spoke directly to the Lord.

  "It ain't been right, you know it ain't been right! My money's all gone, Lord, an' I can't get any more! What am I gonna do? Tell me, Lord, 'cause Willie Washington, he's slippin'."

  He waited, hunched and silent, for an answer that did not come.

  He waited for sleep, but that didn't come either.

  He thought of the little murdered girl, who lay in the rain with a cruel cross carved in her stomach.

  "What about the man what did that, Lord? Is you punishing him? Why do you gots to punish me--what did I do? Lord, tell me, tell me, WHY! If I knew that then it'd be all right, but I don't know! I don't know why!"

  Willie raised his voice and called into Heaven.

  "Why, Lord God?"

  Then he tore at his shirt and rolled on the dirty bed, sobbing and moaning. The night went and the day came, but Willie did not sleep. He was hungry and tired.

  He walked out the door, feeling dirty.

  People stared at him, whispered at him and around him.

  "Aunt Lucy! What am I gonna do? I got no money! You got money?"

  "No, boy, you know that. I got twenty-seven cents. Here, take that. And let me fix you a little food. Boy, you look poorly!"

  Willie fell in a chair and put the cereal to his mouth.

  "Aunt Lucy, what do the Lord say to you?"

  "He been kinda quiet lately, boy."

  "The Lord ain't with me, Aunt Lucy. He against me!"

  "Hush now! Don't you let me hear you talk like that. That's you daddy's blood talkin'! The Lord works in wonderful ways, boy, don't you know that?"

  "He wouldn't get me a job."

  "He kept 'em from hangin' you, didn't He?"

  Willie put his head on the old woman's breast.

  "Now don't that mean somethin', Willie boy?"

  Willie cried.

  "No, it don't! It don't mean nothin'!"

  Willie straightened and went out of the room quickly. The old woman called for him to come back, then she fell on her knees and cried to the Lord.

  Willie almost ran to his room. He looked through two dresser drawers and got his small pocket knife. He looked at it for only a few moments, remembering how he had cut a human being and why he had cut a human being.

  The black flower covered him. He was full: his stomach and his heart and his soul were full.

  He put it in his pocket and went into the street.

  "Lord, remember. You left, me. You did it. Wasn't me left you!"

  Willie walked all the way to the railroad tracks without knowing why. He sat in a small clearing until it got dark, thinking. About the faces and the mouths and breathing hot that the Lord had left him.

  Then he walked on down the tracks, hating. He walked for miles, walked till his legs refused to move. He took out the knife, opened it and looked at the blade.

  He walked back into town and hid behind a warehouse. He held the knife tightly and perspiration coursed down the handle.

  Willie waited and he was afraid he knew what he waited for, this time. The whole world started to pound in his ears and his body shook.

  And then the tears came. They fell from his eyes as if they would never stop, and he turned his back to the street, weeping onto the wooden slats of the warehouse. The knife dropped to the ground and as it struck, Willie knelt with both knees on the cement.

  "Lord, Lord God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry! I'll not leave you again, not ever again!"

  Willie walked back to Aunt Lucy's. And when the old woman saw his face, she smiled broadly. The vise around her neck relaxed and she felt young again.

  "Well, boy, you get the hate cut out of you!"

  "Yes'm."

  "You ain't no different from any of us, boy. It jus' come to you late, that's all. You never saw what you was, boy, that was your trouble."

  Willie looked up and smiled.

  Aunt Lucy hurried to fix coffee.

  "You know, Willie boy, we mus' be the Lord's favorites, 'cause we got the biggest cross of all to carry. You know what I'm talkin' about, boy?"

  "Do you suppose the Lord'll forgive me, Aunt Lucy?"

  "I kinda think He will. He's a mighty understandin' person."

  Then Willie began to laugh and the old woman laughed with him.

  They laughed for a long time.

  * * *

  THE MAN WITH THE CROOKED NOSE

  * * *

  He was very small. And, he was invisible. Or almost: there and not there, existing and not existing--like a shadow just before the lights come on, or a face you see in the window of a speeding train, or birds at midnight. He lived in the corner of your eye. Turn around, quick! and stare and--he's gone, he's somewhere else.

  After a while I stopped trying to find him. It made things easier. In at nine: "Good morning, Mr. Gershenson!" (a quick silent grin from the little man); out at six: "Good night!" (the same) and repeat. A few requests: Bring that set of Dickens up front, please; don't forget to dust the A secton, will you?--Nothing more.

  And it seemed to work all right. Actually, it didn't. Because he was there and we worked together, eight hours a day, and it isn't very pleasant, ever, to give orders to a man who is twice your age and then watch him jump and run like a monkey set on fire. Yet so quietly.

  He was always running. Even when he swept up, as though his life depended on it--Switch! Switch! with the broom down the aisles, getting the dirt off the floor, Switch! billowing it over all the books, and then off, fast, to another chore. I never saw a man work with such speed. Or so hard. Or do such a poor job--poor Martin, and he had the world's easiest. An idiot could have done it better.

  The others got a big kick out of him. They called him 'Pop'--although he wasn't very old: maybe fifty, maybe sixty, no older--and they pulled fancy gags, thought out days in advance, planned in secret conclave. Once Berman called from New Books downstairs and asked for Martin and double-talked until he had the little man shaking. They laughed at him all day long.

  It wasn't easy not to laugh, I suppose. He was pretty funny; right from the first, from the day Steinberg hired him. In a lot of ways: the quick-padding Mandarin's walk he had, feet barely touching the floor; the outsized mixed-up clothes he wore; and all those boxes and phials and bottles of medicine! It seemed that every time you looked, he was popping a pill into his mouth or swigging cough syrup. Which is funny to watch, although I didn't feel much like laughing, somehow. He was always so intense about it. As if he thought, if I don't take all this medicine, I'll die, almost certainly. I'll catch a horrible disease and die.

  And that made you wonder--well? Why should he want to stay alive to the point of fighting death every five minutes? An old man with most of his years behind him, and what is he now? A stockboy in a bookstore, without a hope of anything better.

  But he didn't frown any oftener than he smiled. He just worked. Gently and quickly and poorly and quietly--always quietly: I never heard him speak a word, then. It gave rise to the rumor that he was a mute, but I don't think anyone actually believed that.

  Maybe it was h
is eyes that kept me wondering. It probably was, at first, because there wasn't anything else. They were so bright beneath those black-clumped John L. Lewis brows, so bright and full. While he fumbled about like the wrong machine for the wrong job, I watched his eyes, and sometimes they seemed about to fly loose from their sockets and sometimes they rested there like milk.glass marbles, looking, beyond the shelves and beyond the walls.

  Of course, after a few weeks the newness wore off. We all got used to Martin's quick little movements and his silence. Business picked up over the holidays, so there wasn't much time for finding him. Gradually, pieces floated in. Not many, not enough to make a picture--but some.

  For one thing--and we should certainly have guessed it--Martin had been in America only a few months. The reason he never talked was that he hadn't learned English; he could understand it, but not speak it. And the fact that he was a foreigner explained, for almost everybody, the other peculiarities.

  The 'Pop' label stuck. As the days passed, he melted into a fixture, like the rest of us, as if he'd always been with the store, ever since it was built. I covered his mistakes and didn't push and he smiled good morning and good night and that was that. We had a funny little foreigner working in Used Books. He was quiet. He took medicine. He put in his hours. That's all we knew, that's all we needed to know.

  But I was the one who worked with him. I was the one who saw his eyes. And 'that' couldn't be exactly that, with me.

  I went back on the hook when I first heard his music. It was near closing time and we were alone. He was pulling books from the F section, I was pricing some Americana. I could see his short little monkey's body scrambling up and down the ladder, and in the dusty murk between aisles, the whiteness of his skin was like white wax. Especially then, climbing, he reminded me of a newsreel I'd once seen of some man who had lived in a cave for a year, without any of the civilized comforts, and who had then been brought before the cameras, shaved and bathed, hair combed but not yet cut, cheeks scrubbed--nervous and unnatural, a little terrified and colorless as a slug.