Invisible Man (47 page)

"Such was the short bitter life of Brother Tod Clifton. Now he's in this box with the bolts tightened down. He's in the box and we're in there with him, and when I've told you this you can go. It's dark in this box and it's crowded. It has a cracked ceiling and a clogged-up toilet in the hall. It has rats and roaches, and it's far, far too expensive a dwelling. The air is bad and it'll be cold this winter. Tod Clifton is crowded and he needs the room. 'Tell them to get out of the box,' that's what he would say if you could hear him. 'Tell them to get out of the box and go teach the cops to forget that rhyme. Tell them to teach them that when they call you
nigger
to make a rhyme with
trigger
it makes the gun backfire.'

"So there you have it. In a few hours Tod Clifton will be cold bones in the ground. And don't be fooled, for these bones shall not rise again. You and I will still be in the box. I don't know if Tod Clifton had a soul. I only know the ache that I feel in my heart, my sense of loss. I don't know if
you
have a soul. I only know you are men of flesh and blood; and that blood will spill and flesh grow cold. I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers. And I know too how we are labeled. So in the name of Brother Clifton beware of the triggers; go home, keep cool, stay safe away from the sun. Forget him. When he was alive he was our hope, but why worry over a hope that's dead?

So there's only one thing left to tell and I've already told it. His name was Tod Clifton, he believed in Brotherhood, he aroused our hopes and he died."

I couldn't go on. Below, they were waiting, hands and handkerchiefs shading their eyes. A preacher stepped up and read something out of his Bible, and I stood looking at the crowd with a sense of failure. I had let it get away from me, had been unable to bring in the political issues. And they stood there sun-beaten and sweat-bathed, listening to me repeat what was known. Now the preacher had finished, and someone signaled the bandmaster and there was solemn music as the pallbearers carried the coffin down the spiraling stairs. The crowd stood still as we walked slowly through. I could feel the bigness of it and the unknownness of it and a pent-up tension --whether of tears or anger, I couldn't tell. But as we walked through and down the hill to the hearse, I could feel it. The crowd sweated and throbbed, and though it was silent, there were many things directed toward me through its eyes. At the curb were the hearse and a few cars, and in a few minutes they were loaded and the crowd was still standing, looking on as we carried Tod Clifton away. And as I took one last look I saw not a crowd but the set faces of individual men and women.

We drove away and when the cars stopped moving there was a grave and we placed him in it. The gravediggers sweated heavily and knew their business and their brogue was Irish. They filled the grave quickly and we left. Tod Clifton was underground.

I returned through the streets as tired as though I'd dug the grave myself alone. I felt confused and listless moving through the crowds that seemed to boil along in a kind of mist, as though the thin humid clouds had thickened and settled directly above our heads. I wanted to go somewhere, to some cool place to rest without thinking, but there was still too much to be done; plans had to be made; the crowd's emotion had to be organized. I crept along, walking a southern walk in southern weather, closing my eyes from time to time against the dazzling reds, yellows and greens of cheap sport shirts and summer dresses. The crowd boiled, sweated, heaved; women with shopping bags, men with highly polished shoes. Even down South they'd always shined their shoes. "Shined shoes, shoed shines," it rang in my head. On Eighth Avenue, the market carts were parked hub to hub along the curb, improvised canopies shading the withering fruits and vegetables. I could smell the stench of decaying cabbage. A watermelon huckster stood in the shade beside his truck, holding up a long slice of orange-mealed melon, crying his wares with hoarse appeals to nostalgia, memories of childhood, green shade and summer coolness. Oranges, cocoanuts and alligator pears lay in neat piles on little tables. I passed, winding my way through the slowly moving crowd. Stale and wilted flowers, rejected downtown, blazed feverishly on a cart, like glamorous rags festering beneath a futile spray from a punctured fruit juice can. The crowd were boiling figures seen through steaming glass from inside a washing machine; and in the streets the mounted police detail stood looking on, their eyes noncommittal beneath the short polished visors of their caps, their bodies slanting forward, reins slackly alert, men and horses of flesh imitating men and horses of stone. Tod Clifton's
Tod,
I thought. The hucksters cried above the traffic sounds and I seemed to hear them from a distance, unsure of what they said. In a side street children with warped tricycles were parading along the walk carrying one of the signs, BROTHER TOD CLIFTON, OUR HOPE SHOT DOWN. And through the haze I again felt the tension. There was no denying it; it was there and something had to be done before it simmered away in the heat.

Chapter 22

When I saw them sitting in their shirtsleeves, leaning forward, gripping their crossed knees with their hands, I wasn't surprised. I'm glad it's you, I thought, this will be business without tears. It was as though I had expected to find them there, just as in those dreams in which I encountered my grandfather looking at me from across the dimensionless space of a dream-room. I looked back without surprise or emotion, although I knew even in the dream that surprise was the normal reaction and that the lack of it was to be distrusted, a warning.

I stood just inside the room, watching them as I slipped off my jacket, seeing them grouped around a small table upon which there rested a pitcher of water, a glass and a couple of smoking ash trays. One half of the room was dark and only one light burned, directly above the table. They regarded me silently, Brother Jack with a smile that went no deeper than his lips, his head cocked to one side, studying me with his penetrating eyes; the others blank-faced, looking out of eyes that were meant to reveal nothing and to stir profound uncertainty. The smoke rose in spirals from their cigarettes as they sat perfectly contained, waiting. So you came, after all, I thought, going over and dropping into one of the chairs. I rested my arm on the table, noticing its coolness.

"Well, how did it go?" Brother Jack said, extending his clasped hands across the table and looking at me with his head to one side.

"You saw the crowd," I said. "We finally got them out."

"No, we did not see the crowd. How was it?"

"They were moved," I said, "a great number of them. But beyond that I don't know. They were with us, but how far I don't know . . ." And for a moment I could hear my own voice in the quiet of the high-ceilinged hall.

"Sooo! Is that all the great tactician has to tell us?" Brother Tobitt said. "In what direction were they moved?"

I looked at him, aware of the numbness of my emotions; they had flowed in one channel too long and too deeply.

"That's for the committee to decide. They were aroused, that was all we could do. We tried again and again to reach the committee for guidance but we couldn't."

"So?"

"So we went ahead on my personal responsibility."

Brother Jack's eyes narrowed. "What was that?" he said. "Your what?"

"My personal responsibility," I said.

"His personal responsibility," Brother Jack said. "Did you hear that, Brothers? Did I hear him correctly. Where did you get it, Brother?" he said. "This is astounding, where did you get it?"

"From your ma --" I started and caught myself in time. "From the committee," I said. There was a pause. I looked at him, his face reddening, as I tried to get my bearings. A nerve trembled in the center of my stomach.

"Everyone came out," I said, trying to fill it in. "We saw the opportunity and the community agreed with us. It's too bad you missed it . . ."

"You see, he's sorry we missed it," Brother Jack said. He held up his hand. I could see the deeply etched lines in his palm. "The great tactician of
personal
responsibility regrets our absence . . ." Doesn't he see how I feel, I thought, can't he see why I did it? What's he trying to do? Tobitt's a fool, but why is
he
taking it up?

"You could have taken the next step," I said, forcing the words. "We went as far as we could . .

."

"On your personal re-spon-si-bility," Brother Jack said, bowing his head in time with the words. I looked at him steadily now. "I was told to win back our following, so I tried. The only way I knew how. What's your criticism? What's wrong?"

"So now," he said, rubbing his eye with a delicate circular movement of his fist, "the great tactician asks what's wrong. Is it possible that something could be wrong? Do you hear him, Brothers?" There was a cough. Someone poured a glass of water and I could hear it fill up very fast, then the rapid rill-like trickle of the final drops dripping from the pitcher-lip into the glass. I looked at him, my mind trying to bring things into focus.

"You mean he admits the
possibility
of being incorrect?" Tobitt said.

"Sheer modesty, Brother. The sheerest modesty. We have here an extraordinary tactician, a Napoleon of strategy and personal responsibility. 'Strike while the iron is hot' is his motto. 'Seize the instance by its throat,' 'Shoot at the whites of their eyes,' 'Give 'em the ax, the ax, the ax,' and so forth." I stood up. "I don't know what this is all about, Brother. What are you trying to say?"

"Now there is a good question, Brothers. Sit down, please, it's hot. He wants to know what we're trying to say. We have here not only an extraordinary tactician, but one who has an appreciation for subtleties of expression."

"Yes, and for sarcasm, when it's good," I said.

"And for discipline? Sit down, please, it's hot . . ."

"And for discipline. And for orders and consultation when it's possible to have them," I said. Brother Jack grinned. "Sit down, sit down --And for patience?"

"When I'm not sleepy and exhausted," I said, "and not overheated as I am just now."

"You'll learn," he said. "You'll learn and you'll surrender yourself to it even under such conditions.
Especially
under such conditions; that's its value. That makes it patience."

"Yes, I guess I'm learning now," I said.
"Right
now."

"Brother," he said drily, "you have no idea how much you're learning --Please sit down."

"All right," I said, sitting down again. "But while ignoring my personal education for a second I'd like you to remember that the people have little patience with us these days. We could use this time more profitably."

"And I could tell you that politicians are not personal persons," Brother Jack said, "but I won't. How could we use it more profitably?"

"By organizing their anger."

"So again our great tactician has relieved himself. Today he's a busy man. First an oration over the body of Brutus, and now a lecture on the patience of the Negro people." Tobitt was enjoying himself. I could see his cigarette tremble in his lips as he struck a match to light it.

"I move we issue his remarks in a pamphlet," he said, running his finger over his chin. "They should create a natural phenomenon . . ."

This had better stop right here, I thought. My head was getting lighter and my chest felt tight.

"Look," I said, "an unarmed man was killed. A brother, a leading member shot down by a policeman. We had lost our prestige in the community. I saw the chance to rally the people, so I acted. If that was incorrect, then I did wrong, so say it straight without this crap. It'll take more than sarcasm to deal with that crowd out there."

Brother Jack reddened; the others exchanged glances.

"He hasn't read the newspapers," someone said.

"You forget," Brother Jack said, "it wasn't necessary; he was there."

"Yes, I was there," I said. "If you're referring to the killing."

"There, you see," Brother Jack said. "He was on the scene." Brother Tobitt pushed the table edge with his palms. "And still you organized that side show of a funeral!"

My nose twitched. I turned toward him deliberately, forcing a grin.

"How could there be a side show without you as the star attraction, who'd draw the two bits admission, Brother Twobits? What was wrong with the funeral?"

"Now we're making progress," Brother Jack said, straddling his chair. "The strategist has raised a very interesting question. What's wrong, he asks. All right, I'll answer. Under your leadership, a traitorous merchant of vile instruments of anti-Negro, anti-minority racist bigotry has received the funeral of a hero. Do you still ask what's wrong?"

"But nothing was done about a traitor," I said.

He half-stood, gripping the back of his chair. "We all heard you admit it."

"We dramatized the shooting down of an unarmed black man."

He threw up his hands. To hell with you, I thought. To hell with you. He was a man!

"That black man, as you call him, was a traitor," Brother Jack said. "A traitor!"

"What is a traitor, Brother?" I asked, feeling an angry amusement as I counted on my fingers. "He was a man and a Negro; a man and a brother; a man and a traitor, as you say; then he was a dead man, and alive or dead he was jam-full of contradictions. So full that he attracted half of Harlem to come out and stand in the sun in answer to our call. So what is a traitor?"

"So now he retreats," Brother Jack said. "Observe him, Brothers. After putting the movement in the position of forcing a traitor down the throats of the Negroes he asks what a traitor is."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, and, as you say, it's a fair question, Brother. Some folks call me traitor because I've been working downtown; some would call me a traitor if I was in Civil Service and others if I simply sat in my corner and kept quiet. Sure, I considered what Clifton did --"

"And you defend him!"

"Not for that. I was as disgusted as you. But hell, isn't the shooting of an unarmed man of more importance politically than the fact that he sold obscene dolls?"

"So you exercised your personal responsibility," Jack said.

"That's all I had to go on. I wasn't called to the strategy meeting, remember."

"Didn't you see what you were playing with?" Tobitt said. "Have you no respect for your people?"

"It was a dangerous mistake to give you the opportunity," one of the others said. I looked across at him. "The committee can take it away, if it wishes. But meantime, why is everyone so upset? If even one-tenth of the people looked at the dolls as we do, our work would be a lot easier. The dolls are nothing."

"Nothing," Jack said. "That nothing that might explode in our face." I sighed. "Your faces are safe, Brother," I said. "Can't you see that they don't think in such abstract terms? If they did, perhaps the new program wouldn't have flopped. The Brotherhood isn't the Negro people; no organization is. All you see in Clifton's death is that it might harm the prestige of the Brotherhood. You see him only as a traitor. But Harlem doesn't react that way."

"Now he's lecturing us on the conditioned reflexes of the Negro people," Tobitt said. I looked at him. I was very tired. "And what is the source of your great contributions to the movement, Brother? A career in burlesque? And of your profound knowledge of Negroes? Are you from an old plantation-owning family? Does your black mammy shuffle nightly through your dreams?" He opened his mouth and closed it like a fish. "I'll have you know that I'm married to a fine, intelligent Negro girl," he said.

So that's what makes you so cocky, I thought, seeing now how the light struck him at an angle and made a wedge-shaped shadow beneath his nose. So that's it . . . and how did I guess there was a woman in it?

"Brother, I apologize," I said. "I misjudged you. You have our number. In fact, you must be practically a Negro yourself. Was it by immersion or injection?"

"Now see here," he said, pushing back his chair.

Come on, I thought, just make a move. Just another little move.

"Brothers," Jack said, his eyes on me. "Let's stick to the discussion. I'm intrigued. You were saying?"

I watched Tobitt. He glared. I grinned.

"I was saying that up here we know that the policemen didn't care about Clifton's ideas. He was shot because he was black and because he resisted. Mainly because he was black." Brother Jack frowned. "You're riding 'race' again. But how do they feel about the dolls?"

"I'm riding the race I'm forced to ride," I said. "And as for the dolls, they know that as far as the cops were concerned Clifton could have been selling song sheets. Bibles, matzos. If he'd been white, he'd be alive. Or if he'd accepted being pushed around . . ."

"Black and white, white and black," Tobitt said. "Must we listen to this racist nonsense?"

"You don't, Brother Negro," I said. "You get your own information straight from the source. Is it a mulatto source, Brother? Don't answer --the only thing wrong is that your source is too narrow. You don't really think that crowd turned out today because Clifton was a member of the Brotherhood?"

"And why
did
they turn out?" Jack said, getting set as if to pounce forward.

"Because we gave them the opportunity to express their feelings, to affirm themselves." Brother Jack rubbed his eye. "Do you know that you have become quite a theoretician?" he said.

"You astound me."

"I doubt that, Brother, but there's nothing like isolating a man to make him think," I said.

"Yes, that's true; some of our best ideas have been thought in prison. Only you haven't been in prison, Brother, and you were not hired to think. Had you forgotten that? If so, listen to me: You were not hired to think." He was speaking very deliberately and I thought, So . . . So here it is, naked and old and rotten. So now it's out in the open . . .

"So now I know where I am," I said, "and with whom --"

"Don't twist my meaning. For all of us, the committee does the thinking. For
all
of us. And you were hired to talk."

"That's right, I was
hired.
Things have been so brotherly I had forgotten my place. But what if I wish to express an idea?"

"We furnish all ideas. We have some acute ones. Ideas are part of our apparatus. Only the correct ideas for the correct occasion."

"And suppose you misjudge the occasion?"

"Should that ever happen, you keep quiet."

"Even though I am correct?"

"You say nothing unless it is passed by the committee. Otherwise I suggest you keep saying the last thing you were told."

"And when my people demand that I speak?"

"The committee will have an answer!"

I looked at him. The room was hot, quiet, smoky. The others looked at me strangely. I heard the nervous sound of someone mashing out a cigarette in a glass ash tray. I pushed back my chair, breathing deeply, controlled. I was on a dangerous road and I thought of Clifton and tried to get off of it. I said nothing.

Suddenly Jack smiled and slipped back into his fatherly role.