If He Hollers Let Him Go (23 page)

‘See you, Papa,’ I said as lightly as I could and walked off before he could stop me.

I went back to the booth and called Alice again. This time I got her. ‘It’s Bob, baby,’ I said, swallowing. ‘Look, if I pick you up in about an hour, can I take you to lunch?’

‘Where are you now?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I’m on the job,’ I said. ‘But I’m going to check out in a few minutes. I want to talk to you.’

There was a long pause and when she spoke again her voice sounded distant. ‘What can we possibly talk about, Bob, that we haven’t talked about before? You reject everything I say to you. All we do is quarrel.’

The receiver got so heavy I could hardly hold it. ‘Okay, baby,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you.’

I hung up, went back out on the yard, stood for a long time in the hot sunshine. Beyond was the road leading down to the outfitting dock, flanked by the various shops, dropping off in the blue-grey stretch of the harbour. Off to the left was a row of hulls in various stages of erection, spaced apart by the craneways. Cranes were silhouetted against the sky like long-legged, one-armed spiders, swinging shapes and plates aboard. Over there the workers walked with care. Everywhere was the hustle and bustle of moving busy workers, trucks, plate lifts, yard cranes, electric mules, the blue flashes of arc welders, brighter than the noonday sun. And the noise, always loud, unabating, ear-splitting. I loved it like my first love.

But now I was cutting out, I told myself. Atlas wasn’t for me any more. I was getting the hell out of L.A. Away from Alice too. Going to ‘Frisco, maybe. Las Vegas. Somewhere. I shook my head. Goddamnit, maybe she just don’t know how much I need her, I thought. Maybe she thought it was easy for me to do the things she wanted. Maybe it was easy to some folks, I thought. But not to me. I’d already read and I was running. Read and run, nigger.

But when I started moving again I knew I was looking for Madge. I went up to the fourth deck first, found the team she’d been working with, but she was nowhere in sight. I searched the ship from fore to aft, from the superstructure down to the flat keel, but I didn’t find her. I went out on the dock, walked down to the water, looked out across the harbour. But I couldn’t stand still; I felt as if a thousand things were tearing at me, pulling at me. My feet felt weighted, my mouth sour. My coveralls chafed. My jacket was hot. I peeled it off, unbuttoned the top buttons of my coveralls, kicked my hat back from my eyes, dug a cigarette from a squashed pack and lit it.

Then I started looking for her again, with seven devils beating in my head. I just couldn’t help it. I had to talk to her. Had to get it out my system and all of Texas wasn’t going to stop me.

I had to do something to bring her down, to hurt her in some kind of way, humiliate her, make a fool out of her like I’d made out of myself, or I just wouldn’t be able to keep out of trouble, I knew. I wouldn’t be able to think straight about Alice either, after she’d gone out with Leighton last night.

So I climbed back to the weather deck and started off again. My head felt swollen; heat was growing in my brain. Somebody slapped me on the back. I jumped a good six feet, whirled with my dukes up.

Herbie Frieberger said in his loud jubilant voice, ‘Jesus Christ, you’re jumpy. What the hell’s the matter with you?’

‘Man, goddamnit, are you fighting or playing?’ I said. ‘How many bowls of Wheaties did you eat this morning?’

He looked aggrieved. ‘I’ve been looking for you all morning to get that grievance, fellow. Jesus Christ, is this all the thanks I get?’

‘I haven’t got any grievance,’ I grated.

He looked blank. ‘What about what we were talking about?’ He frowned. ‘Don’t you remember? I told you to write out the grievance and give it to me and I’d present it before the executive board.’

I tried to quiet my nerves and be pleasant. But it was no go. ‘Look, Herbie,’ I said. ‘I’m not gonna make any grievance. I’m gonna let it go.’ My voice was raw and shaky; all of a sudden I felt sick.

‘But I thought you wanted—’ he began.

I cut him off. ‘All I want is peace,’ I said. I was tired, tired, tired. ‘Just peace, Herbie. Is that too hard for you to understand?’

Herbie looked at me for a long moment. ‘You’re lucky you’re not a Jew,’ he said.

When one of Kelly’s flunkeys came up at about a quarter of twelve and said there was a call for me, all I thought was, Please just let it be Alice. I held my breath all the way down to the tool crib, and when the girl gave me a different number to call I went dead inside. For an instant I started not to call it, then I went ahead on the off-chance.

‘Alice?’

When I heard her voice, light and gay, ‘Darling, I’ve changed my mind again. Isn’t that just like a woman?’ I let my breath out in a long soft sigh and felt the life come back into me.

‘My luck is really getting good,’ I said. ‘This is the very first time a woman’s prerogative has ever worked in my favour.’

‘There’s no such thing as luck,’ she teased. ‘It’s only the correct application of effort, energy, evaluation—’

‘And eccentricity,’ I supplied, laughing. ‘Do you know you’ve just won the Robert Jones medal for distinguished service?’

‘And by what action, General Jones? Certainly not merely because I am exceedingly glamorous, talented, intelligent, wealthy, famous, and unattached?’

I laughed again. She was determined to keep the mood light, and that was fine by me. ‘I’ll just keep my medal, baby, and give myself instead,’ I said, then asked, ‘Do you have your car?’

‘I’m at the parking lot now. I decided at the last moment that I couldn’t live without you.’

‘You sound groovy,’ I said, then, ‘Listen, you know the drive-in out on Avalon just beyond the riding academy? I’ll meet you there in half an hour.’

‘I’ll be there, darling.’

I never knew until that moment just how much she meant to me. It really built me up, made me feel wanted again, important too. A guy just had to feel important to somebody, even if only to himself. A woman’s a wonderful thing, I thought—when you love her.

On the way out I passed Kelly and gave him a broad wink, laughed out loud at the startled look that popped on his face.

The noon whistle blew as I was weaving my way through the machine shop and I joined the densely packed, gouging, pushing, fighting crush leaving the ship, stepping on one another’s feet, ramming the edges of our hard hats into one another’s eyes. But it didn’t bother me; I felt at peace with everybody. Anyway, I never minded the scramble nor the hard, hurried push, liked it, in fact.

I went over to Mac’s office, told Marguerite I had an appointment with the dentist, and had her write me out a two-hour pass. The gatekeeper asked sourly when did I work; and I told him executives never worked, he should know that. When I opened the door of my car heat rolled out as from a furnace. I had to open all the doors and stand there for a moment until it aired. Then I got in, squirmed down in the soft springy seat, and felt good all over.

Traffic was loose on the harbour road, making driving friendly, but the big Diesel trailers, long as freight cars, hogged the road in passing. The hot dry air was filled with motor smell, pungent, tantalizing; it poured in through the open windows over me, making me want to just squat on the highway and drive a thousand miles.

The vertical sun had a hard California brilliance, powderwhite and eye-searing. When I reached into the glove compartment for my sunglasses I felt the gun I’d put there Monday to kill Johnny Stoddart. I jerked my hand back as if I’d touched death, felt the shock run clear down into my soul. To realize that I’d been so close to murder, now that things had begun to look up, disturbed me more than anything that had ever happened to me in all my life and choked me up again with the old scared feeling. I knew I’d been pushed, but it really jarred me to know that I’d been pushed that far. It gave me a funny feeling of having been drawn outside of myself, of having been goaded beyond my own control. Now I could understand something of Alice’s reactions—she must have seen the trouble in me.

But the day wouldn’t hold it, cleared it from my mind. It was California on parade, one of those days that relax you like a light massage. If your thoughts will free you, a day like that will make you new. I began feeling excited about seeing Alice—more excited than I’d ever been before. I knew she’d never have called me back if she hadn’t really cared. I got something of the same thrill I got the first time I ever dated a girl—a live, tingling expectancy.

What I needed was to marry her, I thought. To settle down before they settled me—in San Quentin or some place. Then I got a strange yearning to have some children—two boys and two girls. I’d never thought seriously about children before, not about having any of my own; and now suddenly I wanted some, wanted the responsibility of raising them, supporting them, educating them; wanted to watch them grow. The girls would certainly have to look like Alice; if they didn’t I’d never forgive myself.

Then I had to laugh. It must be the heat, I thought deprecatingly. Or maybe the gas fumes were making me high. Me, a papa. I’d make one hell of a papa, I thought; every time I came home late my children would wonder whether the white folks had killed their papa at last.

But it wasn’t such a crazy dream. It was just that I’d never felt any stability, had never really felt confident that the white folks would let me have the next day coming up. And since I’d begun earning enough money to live my own life I hadn’t felt that my life belonged to me. Any moment the white folks might ask me to check it in.

A guy couldn’t live like that, I knew. I couldn’t, anyway. There wasn’t enough of me; there wasn’t enough of any man, just by himself. And as long as I was black I’d never be anything but half a man at best. I knew I had to get an anchor and hang on or I’d really be gone with the wind, as the good Southern lady said. I knew I’d have to give in, to both Alice and the white folks; but I didn’t mind that now. Because now I knew I had to duck or get my goddamn brains knocked out. That much I’d learned since Monday morning. Death had been right on top of me and I hadn’t even realized it.

I spotted Alice’s maroon Olds two-door sedan as I drove up, spic and span and freshly Simonized, in the circle of cars about the place, so I parked in the lot to one side and walked over. It was a typical southern California drive-in, a circular glassenclosed building shining with chrome trimmings with a counter inside and cars parked spokewise outside. Pretty girls in very brief red and gold costumes like those of ballet dancers, showing a lot of leg and thigh in the hopes they might be ‘discovered’ by some Hollywood talent scout, scampered in and out, waiting on the customers.

Alice had been watching through the rear-view mirror, and when she saw me coming around the back of the car she turned and smiled. She had on a beige gabardine dress, open at the throat, and tortoiseshell sunglasses; and her hair was loose and windblown, falling all over her shoulders. She looked fresh and feminine, a chick you’d be proud of anywhere, and her smile was wide and warm.

‘Hi, darling,’ she greeted, leaning over to open the door. ‘You look like a worker in a CIO win-the-war poster.’ Her voice was low and mellow, but there was an intimacy in it that made me the one and only.

I climbed in beside her, laughing; pulled shut the door. ‘I’m the twelve million black faces,’ I said.

She took off her sunglasses and set up her mouth. ‘Let me kiss one of your faces.’

‘I didn’t bring but this one.’ I tossed my hard hat on the back seat, leaned over, and kissed her lightly. ‘You taste good.’

She gave a girlish giggle. ‘I bet I’d be delicious with cold beer.’

‘Unh-unh, you’re more the sparkling burgundy type,’ I contradicted.

She curled up in her corner of the seat and drew her legs beneath her. ‘I have such a rotten disposition I doubt if I’d be palatable,’ she said with mock ruefulness.

I had to laugh out loud. I’d never seen her in just that mood before, gay and whimsical, so completely cut loose from her social worker’s attitude. But I liked it.

‘We ought to do this more often,’ I said.

‘What, speculate on our savouriness?’ she asked, raising her brows. ‘Do you by any chance think that you are more palatable than I?’

The little blonde waitress came up just in time to hear the last of it and she gave a spontaneous giggle. Alice blushed and looked disconcerted, but the waitress gave her a friendly smile and attached the tray to the car door. I ordered a couple of chicken sandwiches and milk, and Alice ordered a sandwich of tuna-fish salad and iced tea.

When the waitress left I said to Alice, ‘See, you got caught.’

She laughed. ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if she thought we were cannibals?’ Then after a moment she said wistfully, ‘I’d love to go to the beach today and just laze in the sun.’

‘Let’s do.’

‘Oh, I can’t. I have another conference at three.’ She sighed. ‘Life is just one damned thing after another.’

‘You’re not just saying it,’ I echoed.

We were silent for a moment and I looked around at the people in adjoining cars. With the exception of us, they were all white. I noticed several of them glancing furtively at us and I figured they were trying to make out what nationality Alice was. Now I felt self-conscious, slightly ill at ease. I wondered if I’d ever feel perfectly at ease around white people.

Alice hadn’t noticed; she was looking over toward the riding academy where three white girls were cantering their mounts around the oval.

‘Take me riding Sunday morning, darling,’ she said impulsively.

I felt myself frowning. ‘I don’t know of any place in the city we can go now. The place in Watts is closed for the duration and you know how most of these other places are—they don’t even want us to park and watch.’

She didn’t answer right away and I wondered for a moment if she’d been riding at the white places. Then I thought about her going out with Leighton the night before, and while it didn’t exactly bother me, I had to say something about it.

‘Did you have a-nice time last night?’ I asked politely, and the next instant I could have bitten off my tongue.