Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (31 page)

"Overwork," I said.
The papers played it that way. Only a few guys knew the dirt, and they were paid for, so Shecky was turned into a martyr. I forget what to. His public, I think. I have most of the clippings. "In his efforts to bring joy to the people of the world, The King went beyond the limits of his endurance; he had gone beyond ordinary human limits long before…"
"He had no ambition other than to continue entertaining his fans…"
"Following the old show business motto, 'Always leave 'em laughing', Shecky King departed this world at the height of his popularity. No other performer has ever matched his success…"   "He is a legend now, the man who had everything and gave everything . .
I don't think about it much any more.
I just lie awake nights and thank God that I'm bald.

THE CRIME OF WILLIE WASHINGTON

by Charles Beaumont

The second after Willie Washington put his knife in George Manassan's stomach, he knew he'd done a bad thing. But all the demons in Hades put together couldn't have made Willie run or lose his head, so he stood around very quiet, waiting to see what would happen. He figured deep inside his head that he'd done an evil deed, although he wasn't exactly sorry. George had told tales about Cleota and as far as Willie knew, there wasn't a man alive who'd stand for another man telling tales about his wife. He wasn't sorry and he wasn't glad and there was a sharp thing eating at his insides, sharper than the knife that had cut George.
Willie waited for a considerable time, but George only groaned and wheezed. And since the blood didn't stop oozing out over the rug, Willie finally decided that he must do something. He put on his hat and walked quickly down the street until he came to an apartment like his own.
He knocked hard on the door, several times.
The old woman who opened the door was very withered and dried up with the years, but when she heard the news she moved faster than she had for quite a while. She flew about the rooms, gathering all the clean rags she could find and muttering under her breath and Willie had to trot to keep up with her when she hobbled out the door and back up the street.
When they got to the room, however, there was no sign of George Manassan except for the blood left on the rug and floor.
The old woman looked around and when she was convinced that George had left, the fear in her face disappeared.
"You cut him deep, boy?" she asked.
"No'm, Aunt Lucy, I didn't. I don't think he got hurt too bad," Willie answered.
Then Willie went to the sink and wet a large cloth. He bore down and managed to get the blood off the floor, but it wouldn't come out of the rug.
"You send that to the cleaners, boy. You never get that out alone."
The old woman sat down and breathed heavily. Her face and arms were shiny with perspiration.
Cleota got off work at the bakery at eleven-thirty and when she got home Willie told her everything that had happened. She said she was sorry and that she thought Willie had done right.
Aunt Lucy later learned that Doctor Smith was the one who fixed up George. She was more relieved than she let on, to hear that the wound had been a minor one; and she sermoned to Willie and to Cleota for months afterwards when she was positive that George had left town.
Now this was the only bad thing Willie ever did in his entire life, up to the time the policemen came to put him in jail for something else, so he didn't forget it right away. He didn't miss a day on his job and he didn't spoil his record by doing poor work, but most of the fellows on the line noticed that Willie Washington was not quite himself again until almost a half year had passed. It was then that he forgot about cutting George Manassan and that Cleota once more took up smiling at men in the bakery.
It was a great surprise to Willie when they shook him out of bed and carried him off to jail.
The night was sticky and hot but the pillow hadn't turned damp yet. It was soft and cool and he sank into it gratefully. Cleota was already asleep, silent, as always, like a cat. Willie had never slept with anyone else so he had the impression that only men snored. It struck him as a very masculine thing.
He finished his prayers to the Lord and fell into a pleasant languor that soon turned into sleep.
The sound of voices outside in the hall was not disturbing because there were frequently voices in the hall. Willie had gotten used to lovers' goodnights and sleepless women's babble as a soldier gets used to sleeping amid gunfire. He didn't even hear the door tried and opened.
What did awaken Willie finally was a rough hand on his shoulder, pressing hard and shaking. He heard the voice halfway through consciousness.
"Come on, you're not kidding anybody. Get the hell out of that bed."
And when he came to completely he saw three men in his room, two of them with flashlights and the third with a gun in his hand. He did not understand.
The men were all white. They were very energetic looking men, with sharp chins and unblinking eyes. There was no hesitation.
The one with the gun pulled Willie to his feet.
"Okay, let's go, fella."
Cleota awakened with a nasal little cry. She clutched the sheets to her breasts and said nothing.
"Go where?" Willie's mind was not clear.
The man with the gun looked over his shoulder and laughed.
Willie looked angry. He didn't understand, but he knew he didn't like these men. He hated to be called a nigger in Cleota's presence.
The man with the gun grabbed \Villie's undershirt and twisted it in his hand. He turned his head towards the door and took out a police credential.
Willie started to move, but the gun was pushed into his stomach. The two other men edged closer.
So Willie turned his eyes to Cleota and got dressed quickly. The men kept their flashlights on even though Cleota had switched on the lamp.
In a short time Willie was shoved into the waiting police car and taken to the city jail. He was then put into a moderately crowded cell.
No one told him exactly what he was supposed to have done, but through constant questioning he learned that he was being held for the rape and murder of a white girl. He didn't know why they had thought of him, but he did not know what the charges meant. He thought and thought and could provide no good proof of where he actually had been at the time of the crime.
He had been home, reading, but of course no one would believe that.
Cleota came to see him whenever she could and so did Aunt Lucy. They both made him feel good, though it was actually Aunt Lucy who gave him hope.
During the long days before the trial she would say to him, "Willie, it's bad trouble but they won't hurt you. \Ve both know you ain't done nothin' wrong, an' when you don't do nothin' wrong the law can't hurt you. You gonna be all right, boy. You gonna get out of this all right."
And Willie would smile until one day he stopped being afraid. He was offered a lawyer but he said he didn't want one. He ate well and looked forward to the day of the trial, because he felt sure that would be the day they would let him go.
All this time he made prayers to the Lord that he'd get his job back and that he would be forgiven for hating the people around him and the people who came to ask him deep questions he couldn't figure out. Then he stopped worrying about his job and didn't hate.
And whenever he would get confused, Aunt Lucy would come by and say "Now rest easy, boy. Everything gonna be all right. You a innocent boy and the law ain't gonna hurt you," and he'd smile and feel good again.
When the day of the trial came at last, Willie sat in the courtroom without a fear or a doubt. He thought of the stories he'd be able to tell the gang on the Line when he went back to work, so he didn't hear much of the proceedings.
They asked him where he was on the night of the crime and he told the truth. "I was at home, readin' a magazine, your Honor," he said. They asked him other questions and the tall man in the gray suit talked so fast and so loud Willie couldn't hear him clearly. Only the words 'society' and 'justice' sounded so that he could hear.
And after a time, the people in the brown stall filed back to their seats. Willie folded his hands and craned his head to hear what would be said.
". . . do you find the defendant: guilty or not guilty?"
Willie wasn't nervous. He kept grinning, wondering whether or not to look back at Cleota.
"We find the defendant guilty, your Honor."
The words were spoken slowly and clearly, but with some emotion. The thin man with the furrowed face who spoke the words looked directly at the judge and then sat down.
Willie wanted to scream but then something pierced his stomach and held his insides tight. He couldn't move or say a word. Confusion swam in his head, in great hot waves. He rose with difficulty when commanded.
". . . sentence you, Willie George Washington, to the supreme penalty prescribed bylaw…"
These words were a haze out of which only one came clearly. Dead.
". . . to be hanged by the neck until you are dead…"
Willie struggled and pulled out the thing in his heart. He screamed.
"No, your Honor, you don' understand! I didn't kill nobody! I didn't do nothin' wrong! I'm innocent, your Honor!"
And two men had to hold Willie's arms and pull him back to his cell.
No one paid much attention to the old Negro woman who cried "No, Lord!" or the young one who smiled strangely.
It wasn't easy for Willie, but he had plenty of time to think and so after a while he started to smile again. Aunt Lucy was able to see him upon occasion during the months and Cleota came by a respectable number of times. They both said that everything would be all right.
And since Willie had been conceived of the strongest hope there is-a woman's hope-it took only the merest spark to ignite his courage. He told himself that he had not for a moment lost his faith in the ultimate rightness of things, not even in the courtroom that day he was told solemnly he must die, for a crime he did not commit.
And so the days passed and Willie grew stronger instead of weaker, all the while certain that the Lord would not permit him to be wrongfully punished.
So it was that on the morning designated as the time of execution Willie spoke lightly with the somber looking man in the black frock coat who wore such a long face.
"Reverend," Willie said, "I knows your intentions is good, but they ain't really much sense in your being here."
And the Reverend shook his head and opened his book.
"No sir, Reverend, they ain't nothin' gonna happen to me. It say so right here in the Good Book-here, let me show you the place where it say-"
And Willie took the book and thumbed quickly through the pages.
"Y'see, Reverend, the Lord say it: 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap'. It put different in your book, but it mean the same thing."
The man in the frock coat sighed.
"But my son, you have been proven guilty of the sin of murder."
Willie grinned.
"Yes, sir, but they got that wrong. It wasn't me what did that to that little girl. You gots to be honest bad 'fore you can do a thing like that! And Aunt Lucy can tell you- I ain't honest bad, Reverend. I studied hard all I could, when I was a kid, and I been workin' for the railroad since I was thirteen. Never missed a day-up to this, I mean. Never missed a Sunday at Church, neither. An' I got me a good woman too. No sir, I jus' never did this thing, Reverend, and you knows the Lord ain't gonna cast me down for somethin' I never did."
The man in the frock coat looked perplexed as he studied Willie's face. The prayers he said were not the ones he had previously considered nor could Willie hear them.
Not too long afterward other men came and walked with Willie down a long hall and into a small yard. The sun was shining but the yard was dark with shadows. The cement was clean and smelled of soap and water.
The men led Willie up some steps and onto a small door out into the planks. Directly above dangled a rope, the end of which had been formed into a noose. The rope was sturdy and strong; the fibers were close and smooth.
They asked Willie if he had anything to say and he told them yes, he did.
"You folks is really wastin' your time," Willie said. "I told you, I never did nothin' wrong and the Lord ain't gonna let you hurt me."
Then a man walked up and fitted a black cloth bag over Willie's head. After that he pulled down the rope and put the noose about Willie's neck. The noose was tightened somewhat.
No one could see, but Willie was still smiling. He couldn't think clearly about anything except what Aunt Lucy had told him. Her words roared in his ears and he knew that they couldn't be wrong.
Willie waited. He didn't know what he waited for, but he waited. A long time he stood, with the handcuffs heavy on his wrists, but nothing happened.
All was silent and then, as suddenly as if it had always been, loud with the hum of voices. Words Willie couldn't hear, words that pierced the air, words that were filled with fear and awe.
After a long while the bag was taken off and Willie was led back to his cell, Later he learned what had happened, why everyone had looked so strange. The lever that controlled the trapdoor had been pulled but the trapdoor had remained fixed. It did not fall away, allowing the body that stood upon it to sink into the yielding air. It did not suddenly become the mouth of death, which was its function. The trapdoor simply had not worked. And this was strange because it had been tested according to routine a few minutes before the actual time of execution, and stranger still that it operated with the greatest efficiency a few moments after Willie was taken from the platform.
Willie thanked the Lord and thought that would set him free, but he was wrong. Someone told him that they would try to hang him again, and Willie shrugged and said that it was very foolish.
It was Aunt Lucy who told him the laws of the state, which required a man con demned to death to be subjected to three attempts at execution before he be freed. The old woman whose face looked older and more withered than ever Willie had known it to be, still spoke confidently and Willie believed her. The Lord would not desert him now.
When he asked about Cleota he received answers he somehow didn't like, although they meant nothing in themselves. He put it aside and continued to write her letters. The answers were cheerful and evasive and so Willie was not disturbed.

He spent his time praying, in between executions.
And when it came time for them to try to hang Willie again, the same somber man in the frock coat dropped into the cell to mumble; the same walk and the same tiny yard. The same dark shadows, but a different rope and a more thoroughly oiled trapdoor mechanism.
Willie got up to the scaffold unhesitatingly. He was stood to one side as the trapdoor was tested for good measure. He watched it drop swiftly and saw the blackness below, without relaxing his smile. Then the hood was fastened securely.
A man started to say "Any last words," but he stopped. The man nodded to the executioner.
And when the lever was pulled all the way back, a great murmur went through the crowd. The trapdoor had not moved.
Some time later, Willie read in the newspaper about how he was fooling death but, of course, he knew that was wrong. They didn't understand. They didn't understand that the Lord protects his own and that an innocent man can't die for something he didn't do.
Time passed slowly after this. And when he realized that he had been a prisoner for over a year, Willie became bored and restless. His prayers became routine and he wished mightily that they would hurry up with whatever they were going to do, so he could get back to his job and wife. Aunt Lucy told him he looked tired these days and he agreed with her.
Cleota wrote more frequently and visited more frequently now that they had tried to hang Willie twice already. It scared her, but only this far. She found it remarkably easy to lie to Willie now, so the sacrifice was not a great one. She had fallen in love with a number of people since her husband was first put in jail. A man named Frank Jones wanted her to go to Detroit with him. She was considering it.
Time crept, the boredom of the minutes filling Willie with a growing urge to leave the prison and have it all done with. The game had lost its amusement; it was like waiting interminable hours on a streetcorner for someone you know will show up, eventually.
So he finally stopped praying and thanking the Lord and began to pace restlessly in his cell. Even the newspaper reports had lost their interest. Everything had lost its interest, except getting out. Willie thought and the more he thought the more he wanted to have this foolishness over.
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 left 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.