Harlem Redux (40 page)

“Yeah!”

“Let’s get to it!”

The mob lost interest in David. The people began to turn their backs on him. On impulse, he took a tentative step forward and asked: “But what has this man done?”

One of the white men slowly turned. He was tall, nearly skeletal and had a fanatic’s gleam in his eyes. He held a coiled bullwhip. “What d’ya mean, what’s the nigger done?” he hissed. He looked David up and down, and his gray eyes glinted with renewed suspicion. Gesturing toward Jonah with the bullwhip, he said: “Niggers don’t need to do nothing to die, but this one’s done a-plenty. He’s been spreading lies about them nigger deaths.”

“Take him to the sheriff,” David said. “Whatever you think he’s done, he deserves a fair trial.”

More laughter, but bitter this time and laced with poison.

“Damn! Where you come from anyway?” the lanky man asked. “A fair trial? It’s the American way, right? Well, hell, down here, son,
lynching
is the American way. Y’see the niggers down here—
our
niggers—they gets a hot tongue—a very hot tongue—when they forgets their place.”

The lyncher turned back to the crowd. Laughing amiably, he slowly uncoiled his bullwhip. Then he spun around and brought the lash down across David’s left shoulder. David reeled backward with a cry. The material of his jacket tore and his shoulder reddened with blood. The lyncher pulled the whip back with a resounding crack, and then flicked it forward. It wrapped around David’s ankles like a thick snake. The lyncher yanked and David’s feet went from under him. He lay in the dust, sprawled on his back. The lyncher stood over him.

“Now I don’t b’lieve in whipping no white man. But I will if I have to. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll just settle down and enjoy the show. This here’s gonna be a good one.”

A babble of malicious chuckles and comments went up. The mob surged back to their victim. Children were sent to scavenge for twigs, urged on by their parents’ pointing fingers. It was a game to see who could gather the most. Some of the children were no older than three. Jonah watched mutely as they ran hither and thither, laughing and giggling. The oldest staggered back quickly, their thin arms weighed down with twigs, their small faces suffused with pride. Kneeling down next to Jonah, they arranged the branches snugly at his side.

How can they do this?
David wondered.
They’re old enough to realize that he’s a human being, old enough to know better. Don’t they know what they’re doing?

What they were doing was their parents’ bidding, as the cheering yells of the adults testified.

The hedge of kindling grew higher.

One of the men raced forward with a small knife. Another darted forward. He too, held a blade. David, confused, thought they were going to stab Jonah. But no, the men knelt down on either side of him. They yanked on his ears, pulled them away from the side of his head, and sliced them off. Jonah arched at the pain and bit back a scream. The first man stood and gave a great yell, waving Jonah’s right ear in his hand. The other man soon did the same with the left ear. Others scurried forward, their knives held ready. They stripped the skin from his face and hacked away at his fingers. Through it all, Jonah never once gave them the satisfaction of a cry or an appeal for mercy. Only once, as the dull knives were being used to doggedly—and slowly—cut off his fingers, did David hear Jonah speak, and then it was to moan, “Oh, Jesus.”

“Clear away!” came the sudden yell. “We’re gonna set to it!”

The souvenir hunters ended their bloody work. Other men came forward. One laid down his shotgun, grabbed hold of Jonah’s jaw, and forced open his mouth; another poured in kerosene. As Jonah lay there choking and gagging, a third dropped in a lit twig.

The flames bubbled up in Jonah’s mouth for a moment, then shot up with a whoosh. The crowd cheered. Jonah’s exhalations were literally on fire. And every time he inhaled, he sucked the flames deeper into his body.

God, no!
David inwardly cried.
They’re burning him! My God, they’re burning him! For having talked to me! They’re burning him alive!

Jonah’s agonized face contorted in silent screams. Cherry-red flames licked him and kissed him and he writhed in their embrace. Meanwhile, the flashbulbs popped, blitzing the area with white light, as photographers took pictures for later sale as postcards. And the children stared, wide-eyed, while their parents grinned and pointed, to see Jonah’s blood vessels burst and his blood boil in the heat.

David watched, impotent and overwhelmed, and as he watched he prayed, prayed harder than when he was in the woods of Belleau and the Germans were racing toward him.

God help him. Help him help him, please.

From the west came the soft rumble of faraway thunder, and gradually, the crowd fell silent. Most stared dumbly. One or two had even turned away, sickened. Others still looked, but had shielded their eyes and peeped through their fingers. Now, there was nothing but the sound of the crackling flames. The air was nearly unbreathable, heavy with the stench of burning flesh. And Jonah, unbelievably, still twitched.

David cried to his God in anguish.
Jesus, please!

Jonah’s struggles suddenly stilled and a bolt of lightning tore the sky. It cast the faces of everyone in that mob in a ghostly glow. In that flash of cold, blue light, they all appeared dead.

We’re all walking corpses,
thought David.
We all look like we’re out for a night on the town in Hell.

The last of the carnival atmosphere was gone. A vague unease settled over the mob. The people glanced at one another, then looked away, suddenly unable to meet one another’s eyes. They shuffled in place. For one split second, something very like terror rippled through the crowd. David could feel it. He could see it. People began to sidle away. One by one, they left. Men pulling away wives, mothers dragging away children; in some cases, shielding their children’s eyes from the very sight they’d brought them to see.

David stayed. He kept witness until the bitter end.

Jonah’s torso arched and his legs drew up as his muscles contracted in the heat. After about forty eternal minutes, his roasted body was reduced to an unrecognizable smoking mass. The flames sputtered and popped, briefly flared up again, then went down.

David turned away. He was alone. The others were long gone. He stumbled a short distance, then collapsed on a boulder and vomited. The war in Europe, despite its vast horrors, had not prepared him for what he’d just seen: the specter of God-fearing, churchgoing, patriotic Americans burning a fellow man to death.

For talking to me. For telling the truth.
His breath came in hitches.
I was a fool. All us colored who fought for this country—we were fools.

He felt worse than a fool. He was ashamed to be black.
We’re a race of victims. Always at the mercy of some white man’s whim. That’s what we are. Always at the mercy of some white man’s whim.

Then he heard another voice, a voice that would come to haunt him.

You did nothing. Nothing. But stand by and watch.

Self-hatred surged through him and he spilled hot tears. If he were honest, if he faced the truth, he would have to admit that he was less ashamed of what he was, than of what he had done.

You betrayed the Movement. Betrayed it and everything you swore to uphold.

There was nothing I could do!

Nothing? Nothing but stand by and watch?

He couldn’t have saved Jonah. What could he have done against a mob? Saving himself was the least—and the most—he could have done. But an implacable voice, a voice that sounded so much like his father’s, condemned him as guilty of unforgivable cowardice.

David bent his head and gave in to gut-wrenching sobs. He was a strong man. He’d seen a lot during the war and survived it all. But the lynching was something else. That single atrocity did what a year in the trenches had failed to do: savage his hope for humanity, his belief in his country, his faith in his God—and his respect for himself.

Suddenly, the rains came, hard and heavy, drenching him to the skin. Casting his eyes to the sky, he held out his hands, palms upward. He felt the slanting rain splatter against his face and laughed harshly.
So, now you send the rain. Too late, my Friend, too late.

He clenched his fists, closed his eyes, and whispered a bitter prayer.
You’re guilty too. You know that, don’t You? You and I, we both did nothing. Nothing but stand by and watch.

He dragged himself to his feet and staggered back through the muddy streets to the rooming house.

Early the next morning, he went to see Sheriff Payne and told him what he had seen––and what he’d learned. He’d already filed his report, one that named names, the city superintendent’s name among them.

“Leave town,” was Payne’s polite advice. Saying it was for David’s safety, Payne had him escorted to the station and put on the next train that came through. But five men were waiting at the next stop––Payne among them. They dragged David off the train, down into the dust.

“You one lucky white bastard,” Payne said. “We hates Yankee nigger-lovers down here, almost as much as we hates niggers themselves.”

He delivered a ferocious kick to David’s side. One of the men standing alongside slammed the toe of his boot into David’s lower back. The others moved to join in, but Payne held up his hand. Bending down, he grinned in David’s face with brown, tobacco-stained teeth.

“Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna let them kill you. I wouldn’t do that to one of my own. But you gots to learn how we do business down here. You gots to learn not to stick your nose where it don’t belong.” Straightening up, he nodded at the others. “All right. Get to it, boys. I ain’t got all day. Just don’t kill the sonuvabitch.”

David awoke days later in a hospital in Lovetree. Railroad workers had found him lying by the side of the tracks. The doctors and nurses had assumed he was white and treated him better accordingly. Broken spiritually, mentally, and physically, he did not correct them.

After leaving the hospital, he drifted. One morning, he woke up in a filthy flophouse in a city he did not know. He did not remember where he had come from or when he had arrived. His reflection in the small mirror over the washbasin indicated that it had been weeks since he had shaved. His new beard was hard and matted. His hair was newly touched with gray. He cleaned himself as best he could, then left the flophouse and began walking.

He learned that he was in Philadelphia. He walked for hours. Finally tired, he decided to rest on a park bench. A black woman sat there, neither old nor young, but visibly bent under the weight of sorrow. Her sobs were silent but her shoulders heaved. He half-turned, intending to walk on. But something told him not to. Something in that woebegone figure drew him back. In her hunched figure was the personification of his own desolation.

She looked up. Alarm flickered across her face at the sight of him. His face was clean but unshaven and his clothes were dirty and disheveled. He realized that he appeared disreputable, so he spoke quickly.

“I don’t want to bother you, lady. I just want to ask if I can help.”

She drew back and shook her head, but she seemed reassured. Her thoughts apparently went back to her troubles. Her gaze drifted away and her head bowed again. He took a step toward her.

“Maybe it would help to talk. I’m good at listening.”

She ignored him. He hesitated, then slid onto the bench next to her, not too close, but not too far away either. He waited patiently. Minutes passed.

“My boy,” she said in a sudden whisper. “They’ve got my boy.”

He waited, but she said nothing more. “Who’s got him?”