Three Days Before the Shooting ... (89 page)

“Now look, man,” the white man said, “don’t try to snow me, understand? Because, like, man, I been
around;yo
u dig?”

Suddenly, the atmosphere became dream-like. Listening to the white man, he had the sensation of having been snatched bodily from the hall, plunged outside into the night, held in black silence for an indefinite interval, and then set back to find the detective replaced by a double or an identical twin of drastically different personality. A double with whom it was nevertheless his embarrassing necessity to continue the interrupted interrogation….

“But Officer,” he stammered, “but
Officer …
“hearing his voice trail off; as now, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wilhite staring at the white man with open mouth. And beyond the sullen posture of the detective’s challenge he could see the shadows coming alive with the widened eyes of the tenants. They were looking at the white man with the undisguised disgust of people who had just seen him quite deliberately degrade himself in public. Several appeared physically pained, and one man’s flared nose was wrinkled as by the stench of rotten fish. Then, as his eyes shifted back to the detective’s unreal face it came to him that the man was caught up in the grips of an arrogant, insane illusion which had led him to believe that with no more than a clumsy change of accent and manner he could not only transform
himself from white to black but could achieve in the process such a penetrating insight into the secret lives and histories of his out-maneuvered black audience that no lies or deceptions that they might contrive to protect themselves could withstand his omniscient scrutiny.

Not only does he think he’s become a Negro
, Hickman thought,
he thinks he’s become a super Negro…
.

And as the man’s voice echoed in his head, he felt himself beginning to tremble, shaken by the man’s apparent belief that by acting out his misguided white folks’ notion of Negroness not only could he strike through all of the age-old mysteries of race and age and individuality, but that he could bewilder his audience into a defenseless state of absolute fear and truthfulness.

It’s mammy-made magic
, he thought,
he’s acting in the name of the law and trying to work magic! Black magic! Shades of Stackalee!

“Officer,” he said, struggling to maintain his calm, “I’m trying to understand you, but you seem to have something on your mind that we don’t know about. Nobody told us that Mr. McMillen had a business, so maybe if you’ll take a second and explain what you’re talking about we could arrive at—”

The white man held up his hand.

“Oh, man,” he said, “come
on
! I dig the deal, so quit
stalling
. You know damn well that the stud’s a bootlegger!”

“Bootlegger,” he began, only to have the cross-eyed woman snatch the words out of his mouth, leaving him gasping the air.

“Bootlegger?” she screamed with an angry snap of her head. “BOOTLEGGER? Did you people hear
that?
Now
that’s
what we’re up against! They send these young whippersnapper white cops into our community and look at what happens. Never even been here before and already he’s set Mr. McMillen up in the bootlegging liquor business! I’m telling you, this white man must be out of his head! Here this building is so respectable that some of the tenants don’t even want a person to cook herself some
collard
greens, and he’s talking about bootlegging going on in here!”

“If you have any doubts,” the white man said, returning to character now, “just take a deep breath.”

“But Officer,” Hickman said, “maybe if you’ll let us explain the reason we had to come here at this time you could see—”

“No, mister,” the cross-eyed woman called, “No! You just hold your water for a second, will you please? Because I have to get something off my chest!”

He paused, his feeling of disorientation mounting rapidly as now he found himself the object of the woman’s extremely crossed eyes.

“Very well, mam,” he said, “you go ahead.”

“Thank you, darlin’,” the woman said, with a fierce intake of breath. “That’s very kind of you. Now I don’t mean to be impolite but, like I say,
there’s something that I have
got
to get off my chest and I have to do it right here and now—understand? Things are building up….”

“Yes, mam,” he said.

“Thank you, darlin’. And don’t go begging that white man’s pardon, you hear? Let
him
do the apologizing! He’s the one who’s come around here signifying to you strangers about Mr. McMillen being a bootlegger, which is a lie because everybody knows that he’s a good, respectable, responsible, hardworking, God-fearing super who’s
known
for going out of his way to be helpful!”

“That’s right,” a voice broke in, “she’s telling the truth!”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “sister …”

“And it’s the truth,” the woman said, “but now, just because this rookie policeman has heard that the poor man takes him a drink every now and then—and I mean that’s just to lift his spirits, you understand—right away he’s done set McMillen up in the bootleg liquor business.”

“What she means, gentlemen, is,” a stentorian voice said from the dark part of the crowd, “that he’s done up and made the man
illegitimate
—which is gross hearsay and unfounded allegation!”

Staring, he tried to identify the new speaker, as the cross-eyed woman continued, “That’s right, done thrown the poor man outside the law! Why, it’s enough to make a person sick to her stomach! Understand what I mean?”

He nodded, staring into the crowd, then up to the woman, who had thrust her body between the shoulders of two men now and looked down at him with a fierce expression as they tried to give her room.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, just as the voice boomed again from the back of the crowd.

“Now you listen to me, Maud,” it said, “don’t you go getting yourself all upset over something that ain’t worth it…. Watch out the way there y’all: let a man up there who’s got something to say….”

As he stretched his neck to see who was speaking the crowd gave way before a short, heavyset man who wore a nightcap improvised from the top of a woman’s black nylon stocking, the frayed top of which had been tied in a fat knot and its bottom pulled down around his huge head so tightly that a network of sharp indentations appeared in the flesh above his large, frog-like eyes. Thinking,
Now here’s an old chitt’lin ‘- eater if I ever saw one
, he noted that the man wore a mangy-looking bathrobe of dark brown artificial fur which caught the light as he came aggressively forward, bellying and elbowing people out of his path—until reaching a spot just behind the tenants standing immediately in front of the white man, where he stopped and stood gravely shaking his head, regarding the detective with the air of a world-weary judge.

“Naw, Maud,” said the man over his shoulder. “Naw, sir! It ain’t worth a
sweat and you’ll see that it ain’t the moment you calm down and take a look at what’s going on around here. Then you’ll realize that all this cop is looking for is a little … easy …” the man paused, widening his heavy-lidded eyes and rising suddenly on tiptoe as he shouted, “GRAFT!”

He stared at the man, thinking,
Where on earth did a type like this come from? That type of Negro had gone out with the horse and buggy, but instead here’s one alive and well in Washington
.

As he saw the fleshy lips shoot out and clamp down in a grimace of absolute conviction, he could see the man’s barrel-like body begin bouncing up and down as though set in motion by the weight of what he had said.

“That’s all it is,” the man said. “So now … here … way early in the mawn-ing, he’s got the unmitigated gall to be trying to hit a bunch of sophisticated D.C. folk like us with some of his ignunt … peckerwood … law-and-order … mystification!”

As the hallway popped with a firecracker flurry of angry agreement, he could see the detective’s face flame into a bright red and saw him stab an angry finger at the man in the stocking cap.

“Now you listen to this, Jack,” he shouted. “That’ll be enough of that! You hear me?”

“You dam’ right, I hear,” the pop-eyed man shot back, waving his arms for quiet. “What’s more, I know my rights to an opinion. Therefore, I’m holding that Miss Maud up there’s got no business getting herself worked up just because
you
want to put down a simple-minded hype!”

“What’s that?” the wigged woman called, squinting fiercely as she cupped a hand to her ear, repeating shrilly, “What? WHAT?”

“… Because all that’s involved here,” the fat man went on, “is a little
smalltime …
hustling!”

“… Lonnie!” the wigged woman called….

“… Yes, sir,” the pop-eyed man said, looking directly at him now, “when you strip it down to the nitty-gritty that’s all it is: a simple case of trying, as some of the boys like to say, ‘to twist the
loot
outta the
Boot
!’ ”

“Listen, fellow,” the detective said, “what’s your name?”

“
…
And,”
the man said, still looking him in the eye as he ignored the detective and waved his arm above his head, “I’ll be glad to explain how it’s done: Now the first thing you do in a hype like this is to find you a tight situation, one that you can go about naming anything you dam’ please—like larceny, suspicion, exciting a riot, spitting on the public sidewalk, littering, playing a transistor radio with the volume up—any dam’ thing you dam’ please. Next, you find yourself a Boot who’s in some kind of questionable predicament—and, as we all know, that’s liable to be true of
any
Boot at
any
time—because these white folks have got the system set up and arranged in such a way that it’s more normal for a Boot to be
in
trouble than out of it.
Therefore, all the Man has to do is to find the tight situation and find him a Boot, and then set about
terrorizing
him until he can make him own up to being responsible for whatever he charges him with doing. Then the
next
thing he does is to throw the Boot smack-dab in the middle of the situation and force him to confess that he’s guilty—which, unfortunately, he’s more liable to do than most, because when you get right down to it the average Boot figures he’s
got to
be guilty of something because otherwise he has no explanation as to why his life is always as messed up as it usually is. Therefore it’s just a question of the Man finding him a situation, then finding him a Boot to match up with it—and once he does that, ladies and gentlemen, he has got it
made!”

“Now, you listen,” the white man said, “I’m asking you once more,
What is your name?”

The pop-eyed man looked surprised. “Who, me?” he said. “Why, Barnes. Everybody around here in the community knows me. Does that satisfy you?
Barnes! Lonnie
Barnes, and at your service.”

“Now, you listen, Barnes,” the detective repeated, “if you …”

“So now, like I said, that’s all that’s happening here. As your neighbor and fellow-tenant, I’m hipping you to it so you’ll
all
know what this is all about. In brief, this cop is just trying to twist him a Boot from some loot! McMillen is the Boot.”

“A.Z.,” Wilhite whispered behind him, “I can’t figure out what’s going on in this place, but from the
sound
of things some of these Negroes have got to be drunk!”

“No, Wilhite,” he said. “It’s more than that.” Then, seeing the detective looking their way, he said, “Officer, could we please get this over with? As I’ve explained, we don’t live here and we would like to …”

“Hold it,” the white man said, starting forward, and now he saw the pop-eyed man spin with the tilting motion of a barrel bobbing in swift water and dart back into the suddenly fluid crowd; wherein, as it closed quickly around him, he stood looking out at the white man defiantly.

“Yeah,” he shouted, waving a fuzzy arm, “he don’t want me to expose it but he’s just trying to drop a shuck that he don’t know how to drop, so I’m going to spell it out so that you’ll
all be
forewarned: First, he comes on this present situation in the line of duty, then he names it to his own convenience…. Which has
got to
be in the area of the criminal because as a cop he
lives
on crime. Remember that. Because any way you look at him you’re up against crime. That’s a fact! He eats crime and he drinks crime. He pays for his suits with crime and he buys his hats and shoes with crime. As a matter of fact, he’s situated in crime from the heels of his shoes up to the fillings in his teeth! So like I say, he finds him some kind of questionable, borderline situation, the kind which is neither criminal or un-criminal but can look like
either one, then he pokes around until he finds somebody he can drop into it without any backfire, and somebody he can use to make it pay off. Which appears in this case to be Brother McMillen. So now what he’s trying to do is to trap Brother McMillen and make him confess to some bogus, unfounded, and ill-conceived circumstantial evidence, and he means to try to make Brother McMillen, our neighbor, buy his way out of it. And sad to say, if he can just twist McMillen
hard
enough he’ll make it stick—and then WHAM!—he’s got it
made!
All he’s got to do then,” the fat man said, grimacing sadly as he slowly shook his head, “is twist the Boot and he’s
got the
loot!”