If He Hollers Let Him Go (9 page)

‘Relax, baby,’ I said as we passed a group of middle-aged people. ‘I’ll show ‘em my shipyard badge and if that don’t help, all they can do is lynch us.’ I didn’t try to keep my voice lowered and the people must have heard; they drew away as we passed.

Alice blushed a deep dull red, but some of the stiffness left her. ‘You don’t have to prove it,’ she said. ‘They expect you to be a clown anyway.’

‘Well anyway, I’m running true to form,’ I said. We were both just making words.

Looking up, I caught a young captain’s eye. He didn’t turn away when our gazes met; he didn’t change expression; he just watched us with the intent stare of the analyst.

The head waiter came quickly up the four steps from the dining-room with bleak eyes and a painted smile. He was a slight, round-faced man with a short sharp nose and thin, plastered hair. ‘We are sorry, but all the tables are reserved,’ he greeted us blandly in a high, careful voice.

I looked down at him with a broad smile that went all down in my throat and chest. It was all I could do to keep from putting my finger in his face. ‘Don’t be sorry on my account,’ I said, slightly slurring the words with too much throat. ‘I have one reserved. Jones—Robert Jones.’

The painted smile came off, leaving slackness in his face, and his eyes looked trapped. ‘Jones, Mr. Jones …’ The ‘Mr.’ almost strangled him, but he recovered quickly. ‘Certainly, sir. I’ll have to consult my lists for tonight. We have so many unexpected officers whom we must serve, you know.’ This time his smile included me.

But I wouldn’t accept it. Alice squeezed my arm.

He turned, left us standing on the platform at the head of the entrance stairway, walked the length of the dining-room, and disappeared through the doorway into the pantry.

‘He must keep his lists in the icebox,’ I said, and Alice squeezed my arm again.

I jerked a belligerent look at her, then suddenly felt good all over. She had regained her control and she looked so poised and assured and beautiful, standing there among the white folks, I filled right up to the throat. I noticed a number of the white men sliding furtive glances of admiration at her, and I thought, ‘You just go right on and keep yours, brothers, and I’ll keep mine—and won’t miss a thing either.’ Alice looked up and caught me looking at her and I winked.

‘You’re a cute chick,’ I said. ‘How ‘bout a date?’

She smiled. ‘It’s nice to go out with you,’ she whispered. ‘I feel so well protected.’

I didn’t get it so I just grinned. But when several other diners came up, walked past us down into the dining-room, and were seated by the captains, her smile faded. I began getting on my muscle again; I looked down over the sea of curious faces disdainfully. Breath started choking up in me and I thought, Tomorrow I’m going to kill one of you bastards, and it loosened up again. I lit a cigarette to steady my hands, thumbed the match toward the sandbox.

Finally the head waiter returned from the pantry and now he was affable. It was more insulting than hostility. He led us down to the last table by the pantry door and beckoned a crooked-faced, slightly stooped Greek waiter to take our order.

‘We came here to get something to eat out of the kitchen, not to eat in it,’ I said.

The head waiter lifted his brows. ‘I don’t understand.’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘This is the only table we have vacant, sir. You were fortunate, sir, to get reservations at all at such a late hour.’

‘—
at all
, period,’ I said.

Alice looked extremely embarrassed. The head waiter hovered hopefully. The Greek waiter held the chair for her and the head waiter departed. The orchestra began playing something sticky, sweet. I sat down and looked at the menu, determined to get my money’s worth out of the joint. Most of the courses were listed in French and I had an impulse to sail it across the room. Then I laughed.

‘Bring us a couple of martinis while I consult my dictionary,’ I said to the waiter, and when he left I said to Alice, ‘I’m going to have some broiled pheasant and champagne and I know the white folks are going to say, “That’s the nearest that nigger can find to chicken and gin,” but I don’t even give a damn.’

Alice’s eyes frightened me; I thought for a moment that I’d lost her. Then she said in an even voice, ‘A good sauterne would be better with your pheasant,’ and I breathed again.

When the waiter returned with the martinis she became more at ease. The knowledge that she could order a meal with confidence set her up again. I started to bring her down but decided against it; she needed whatever she could get from any source, I thought.

‘You order for both of us,’ I said.

She and the Greek had a fine time discussing food. He was enjoying it too, it seemed, and she was getting her kicks until a woman at a nearby table giggled. Chances are the woman hadn’t given her a thought; but she went into her shell again. Even the waiter noticed it. She finished ordering and the waiter left.

I looked across at the party next to us. A young ensign with chiselled features sat across from a very blonde girl in a gorgeous print dress. Her hair was drawn in a bun at the nape of her neck, showing a small, shell-like ear. I let my gaze rest on her for a moment, taking in the delicate lines of her chin and throat, the sensitive lines about her mouth and the clean curved sweep of her neck. My gaze moved slightly and I looked squarely into the eyes of the ensign. There was no animosity in his gaze, only a mild surprise and a sharp interest. There were two elderly people at the table, probably the parents of one of them, and the man laughed suddenly at something that was said. After a moment he switched his gaze to Alice; it stayed on her so long the blonde girl looked at her too. Her face kept the same expression. Alice didn’t notice either of them; she was drinking her martini with a rigid concentration.

I had a sudden wistful desire to be the young ensign’s friend. I would have liked to send him a note inviting them to join us after dinner and go to some night spot. Then I met the frosty glare of the elderly lady. I looked away.

Alice began one of her one-sided monologues, this time about literature. I knew suddenly that she was fighting; that she’d been fighting before, I let her fight.

‘Don’t you like to go out with me?’ I asked her suddenly.

She stopped talking and gave me a long solemn look. ‘I always like to go out with you, Bob,’ she said. ‘You make me feel like a woman. But this is the first time you’ve ever made me feel like an exhibit.’

‘But I really thought you liked to go to places like this,’ I said.

She said without thinking, ‘But, Bob, with you everybody here knows just what we are.’ I didn’t get it at first. She hadn’t meant to state it so baldly, so she began covering up. ‘I’m not trying to justify it, I’m just stating how it is.’

‘You mean—’ I burst out laughing and people from several tables turned about to stare with disapproval. Finally I got it out: ‘You mean when you go in with the white folks the people think you’re white.’

There was pure murder in her eyes. ‘You don’t have to be uncouth.’

‘On top of being black too, eh?’ I added, chuckling. ‘Hell, they probably think we’re movie people anyway, or that you’re white as it is. I’ll tell them I’m an East Indian if you think that’ll help. Next time I’ll wear a turban.’

The nearby diners had quieted to listen. Alice got a strained smile on her face and began talking politics. But I wouldn’t let her get away with it. ‘What are you trying to do now, educate me?’ I said.

Neither of us said another word; we were both relieved when it was over. The waiter brought me a slip of paper clipped to the bill face down on the tray. When I picked up the bill I read the two typed lines:

We served you this time but we do not want your patronage in the future.

I started to get up and make my bid, to do my number for what it was worth. But when I looked at Alice I cooled. I could take it, I was just another nigger, I was going to lynch me a white boy and nothing they could do to me would make a whole lot of difference anyway—but she had position, family, responsibility.

The bill was twenty-seven dollars and seventy-three cents. I figured they’d padded it but I didn’t beef. I simply borrowed the waiter’s pencil and wrote: ‘At your prices I cannot afford to eat at your joint often enough for you to worry about,’ and put the note, three tens, and some change on the tray.

The waiter leaned over and said, ‘If it will make you feel any better I’m going to quit. And you can read what I think about it in the
People’s World
.’

I looked at him a moment and said, ‘If you’re thinking about how I feel, when you should have quit was before you brought the note.’

When I held Alice’s wrap I could feel her body trembling. A tiny vein throbbed in her temple and nerve tension picked at her face. On the way out it was an effort to walk slowly; she pulled at me as if she wanted to run. We had to wait for the car. Passing people looked at us curiously. I thought we should have waited inside, but it didn’t make any difference now. When the car came Alice ran out to it and slipped beneath the wheel. I gave the doorman a five-dollar bill, his assistant a couple of ones.

The doorman fingered the five, hesitated for an instant, then said impassively, ‘Thank you, sir, and good evening,’ in his thick impersonal brogue. The assistant said nothing.

‘You can always tell a shipyard worker by the tips he gives,’ Alice sneered when I got in beside her and dug off with a jerk.

‘A fool to the bitter end,’ I said, slumping down in the seat. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t like it.’

I didn’t like Alice very much then, didn’t even respect her.

‘I did like it,’ she snapped. ‘Even with you acting boorish. The food was excellent.’

‘Yes, the food was delicious,’ I murmured.

She gave me a quick angry look and almost bumped into a car ahead as it stopped for the light.

‘But for thirty dollars,’ I added, ‘I could have bought a hunting licence, gone hunting and shot a couple of pheasants, bought a quart of liquor and got drunk and gone to bed with two country whores and had enough money left over to buy gasoline home.’

She said, ‘You don’t have to insult me any more, Bob. I don’t intend to see you after this anyway.’

I took a deep, long breath, let it out. ‘It had to end sometime,’ I said. ‘I suppose you knew I wasn’t going back to college.’

After that she didn’t say anything. She kept out Hill to Washington, turned west on Washington to Western. I thought she was going home, but at Western she turned north again to Sunset, jerking the big car from each stop, riding second to forty, forty-five, fifty, before shifting into high. She pushed in the traffic, shouldered in the lines, tipped bumpers, dug up to sixty, sixty-five, seventy in the openings as if something was after her.

At Sunset she turned west, went out past the broadcasting studios, past Vine, turned left by the Garden of Allah into the winding Sunset Strip. At the bridle path she began tipping off her lid: seventy, eighty, back to seventy for a bend, up to ninety again. I thought she was trying to get up nerve to kill us both and I didn’t give a damn if she did.

At Sepulveda Boulevard she turned south to Santa Monica Boulevard, then west again toward the beach. It was early, not eleven o’clock, and there was plenty of traffic on the street. But she didn’t even slow.

‘I like to go places in a party,’ she said suddenly. ‘Then to the theatre and a night club afterward.’

‘With the white folks,’ I remarked.

‘You go to hell!’ she flared, pushing back up to ninety.

We got the ticket just as we were coming into Santa Monica. Two motor-cycle cops pulled up and flagged us down. They rolled to a stop in front of us, stormed back on foot, cursing.

‘All right,’ one said, pulling out his book. ‘Start lying.’

Laughter came up inside of me. If they wait a couple of days they can get me for murder, I thought. ‘The lady’s going to have some babies,’ I said.

The cop leaned over to see me better. ‘A coon,’ he said. Then he looked at Alice again. ‘Both coons.’ Then on second thought he asked her, ‘Are you white?’

‘She’s a coon, too,’ I answered for her.

‘Well, we’ll just run you in,’ the cop said.

‘That’s fine,’ I taunted. ‘You on your puddle jumper and me in my Buick Roadmaster.’

The cop’s mouth opened and his face got blood-red. The other cop started back toward me.

‘Wait a minute,’ Alice said. ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like any of this.’ The cold hard authority in her voice stopped the cop. ‘I am a supervisor in the Los Angeles Department of Welfare,’ she went on, enunciating each syllable with careful deliberation. ‘My father’s a prominent Los Angeles physician, a personal friend of the mayor’s, and one of the civic leaders of our community. I don’t like the way you have spoken to me, the words you have employed, nor the tone of your voice. If you cannot give me the respect that is due me I’ll see to it that you are both discharged from the police force.’

Both the cops looked at her as if they didn’t believe they were hearing right. I had to look at her too.

Finally one of them asked her, ‘Your car?’

‘Mine,’ I said.

He gave me a long hard look. ‘I suppose your pa is a senator,’ he said.

I didn’t say anything. The other one said to Alice, ‘Lemme see your operator’s licence.’

‘I left it in another bag,’ she said imperiously. ‘Mr. Jones called to escort me to dinner and I didn’t think I’d need it.’

The cop grinned evilly. ‘Been to a gin party, eh?’

Alice turned a slow red. ‘May I have your names and identification numbers?’ she said.

The cop looked at the other cop, then said, ‘Okay, fall in behind me.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘And move over and let Rufus drive. You got your licence, haven’t you, Rufus?’

I got out and walked around the car. He blocked my path. The other cop closed in beside me. I took a breath, let it out, said: ‘Rufus isn’t the name on it.’

‘Lemme see it,’ he said.

I let him see it. He spat, moved aside, and let me get into the car. They took us to the station in Santa Monica. I put up cash bail and the desk sergeant said, ‘Now get back where you belong and stay there.’