Dark Stain (18 page)

“They’ll be safe, some day, mom. Mom, you stay here. Ill be finished in a few minutes.”

“The Communist, he’s still there?” she asked. “To wake you up! No consideration!”

“He’s got nothing to do with the phone call, mom.”

“In your business I don’t interfere. All I want is your best. You’re not a baby. Marry the
shicksa
but keep your eyes open, my little one. The world is a bad place.”

Sam returned to the kitchen. “Listen,” he said, sitting down at the table. “Yesterday morning, Tuesday morning, I received a phone call. The party said they were the Harlem Equality League to my mother who answered the call. When I got there, they asked me if I was Sam Miller. When I said I was, the party, a Negro from the sound of him, called me a kike, a white bastard, and told me to get out of Harlem if I wanted to live.” He glanced at the doorway and lowered his voice. “This morning, the same thing happened but the party told my mother they were the Communists. Like a sap I fell for the gag. Then somebody gave me the works just like yesterday.”

“Did you notify the police?”

“I’ve notified nobody. You’re the only one that knows.”

“Were you in Harlem yesterday?”

“All day. I spoke to bar owners. I was over Sydenham Hospital to see those Jewish storekeepers beaten up Monday.” He felt foolish as he spoke. Of all the morons! He had behaved, Sam realized now, like a magazine serial hero who all by himself rounds up the saboteurs. Cashman was grinning. Sam hastened to justify himself. “Don’t look so wise. What do you know about police procedure?”

“Plenty on the receiving end.”

“First-hand testimony is important.”

“What about that first-hand testimony you suppressed?”

“Crank calls.”

“Two crank calls! How do you know they’re cranks, Tarzan? How do you know they aren’t the same cranks running wild over Harlem?”

“Don’t rub it in. What do you think I told you for?”

“Want my advice?”

“Well?”

“The first thing you do is inform the cops.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“They’d say cranks were phoning me.” He hesitated a long minute, his sense of police discipline gagging him. “This is between us. It’s not for your union committee. It’s between us.”

“Okay.”

“When a cop kills somebody in Harlem he’s usually transferred out of Harlem. That’s the usual. I’m not doing the usual. I took a leave of absence. I’m still in Harlem. This is between us — ” Cashman nodded and Sam went on. “I spoke to several important officials in the P.D. yesterday about the storekeepers and all those bars. Anyway — they said — this is between us, that the bars was jealousy on the part of the Negroes. As for the storekeepers, that was mugger work, muggers sore at Jews account of me.”

“Where does that leave us?” Cashman said, sober and unsmiling. “We’ve got to get people in this city moving! Moving against the lice working for a race riot! It’s the old shell game. Whites against blacks. Split the people two ways, three ways, a dozen ways and then some louse in a shirt rides in on the big white horse. Sam, we’ve got to stop this splitting! Every time they crack us, we got to sew up the crack. We got to get together. It’s not going to be easy. The war’s got everybody. Everybody’s got somebody in the Army and there’s a tendency to think in overseas terms as if fascism is only overseas. It’s right here at home. We got to get together! My union’s interested in this Harlem stew. The Harlem Equality League is investigating. The N.A.A.C.P., the American Labor Party, the American Civil Liberties Union — I could name you a dozen organizations all acting by themselves. That’s wrong. The Greater New York C.I.O. Council, the Central A.F.L. Trades Body have got to come in. We’ve got to get unity. Fighting fascists wearing the red-white-blue label is the same as fighting the Nazi brown label or the rising sun label. People’ve got to be made to see that it’s the same louse under all the labels. Take this Harlem stew. A mob’s operating sure as fate. It’s got members. It’s got money. It’s got brains. It’s camouflaging itself behind the grievances people got there in Harlem. Now you can help a lot, Sam. You’re one of the main characters like it says in the theatre program.” He grinned slowly. “We got to cast you out of that lone wolf Tarzan part. How about us dropping in on Clair. Maybe I’ll pick me up another cup of java.”

One hour later, Sam and Butch Cashman were sitting in the inner office of the H.E.L.; Clair was staring through the window thoughtfully after having listened to what the pair of them had had to say; Suzy was leaning against the partition; she had come running through the door when Sam had mentioned the two anonymous phone calls; at last Clair swung around in his swivel chair. “It’s all quite ominous,” he said. “Tomorrow, the Negro papers will be on the stands. Sunday’s meeting will be featured.”

“How do you think they’ll spot the Italian stuff?” Cashman asked. “And the Jewish stuff?”

“Merely as news items.”

“No big spotlight, no big play, no treating them as parts of one big pattern, no editorials?” Cashman pattered.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Cashman. Furthermore,” Clair said, straightening in his chair. “I must say that I do not see the one big pattern you have mentioned. I know of your work in the union field, Mr. Cashman. I know you are a sincere friend of the Negro people — ”

“What’s the catch?” Cashman said.

“There is absolutely no proof of that one big pattern. I suggest that we maneuver cautiously until we have such proof or we will alienate many influential white groups and newspapers who are disposed to be friendly to us. I know that recent speeches by Vice President Wallace, Willkie and others have been outspoken in their demands for ethnic or racial equality but we Negroes must maneuver cautiously. Centuries of hatred are not too eradicated by speeches or by hasty actions …” As he spoke Sam was looking across the room at Suzy. Her grey eyes seemed painted on her pallid face; now and then her head and neck quivered uncontrollably. He wanted to go to her but he was afraid that she would burst into tears if he did. He, himself, felt chilled. It was like the night of the hearing at the station house.

Poor darling, he thought. The two nights he had spent with her in her living room streaked across his consciousness like summer clouds seen out of the corner of an eye, warm and faraway and peaceful. He shook the meaning, the memory of her love for him from his thoughts. That second, he loved her with an all-embracing intensity that included everything about her; her wisecracks were as sweet to him now as her body. He heard Butch Cashman answering Clair, such urgency in Cashman’s voice that it was as if he were pacing up and down.

“Clair, proof like that we’re not getting in a hundred centuries. The lynchings South, what proof’s there the Klan’s behind them? Or some other native fascist lice? But Negroes are found lynched to trees and bridges. Those lynchings are part of the one big pattern we’ve been batting up and down here. What the hell is this, a ping-pong game? Those lynchings — nobody arrests the lynchers! The decent people down South are against it. They don’t like mob violence any more than us. But the F.B.I. doesn’t get anywhere. If a Southern Governor does send State Guards to some lynch town and some mobsters are arrested, what happens? They get released. The Judges are too busy to call Special Grand Juries. The Grand Juries do nothing. The ministers by and large do nothing. The decent people down South are frustrated. But not the other side. Their lynch Congressmen get up in Congress and speak about Negroes being diseased, and the whites being worried with all their young men going off to war and leaving white women unprotected. And nothing happens. The negligent officials aren’t removed. The sheriffs don’t arrest. The juries don’t convict. But it’s not one big pattern! Cee-rist, what is it? What’s been happening in Harlem since Randolph was shot, Clair? Leaflets inciting to riot. The Italian bars. The Jewish stuff. And the newspapers talking about muggers and how dangerous Harlem is to a white after dark. What do you need to happen today, tonight, tomorrow, to convince you it’s one big pattern, Clair? A lynching?”

“Mr. Cashman, you cannot precipitate me into any left-wing course of action,” Clair said angrily. “Madison Square Garden mass meeting emotion is futile. Left-wing rhetoric is futile.”

“Take the facts out of wrapping paper and the fancy ribbons and they become left-wing! Cee-rist, Clair! Joe Stalin and me don’t meet in a telephone booth over on Union Square. Look here, Clair. You said before I was a friend of the Negro people. Does that still hold?”

“Yes, but we have to be careful with our friends on the left.” Clair picked up a pencil from his desk and stared at it.

“I’m on the left all right,” Cashman admitted. “I’m for militant labor unionism. I’m so left I think the unions’re the heart of our democracy. But you and me, Clair, we want the same thing. If I stepped on your toes, I’m sorry. I haven’t got a smooth manner or a smooth tongue. My old man is a seaman right now and I was brought up rough and tumble. But, Cee-rist, we have to get together, all progressive organizations, all liberals and left-wingers, too, damn it! Or Harlem’ll explode in our face and we’ll all be saying how sorry we are.”

“Are you suggesting a mass meeting?” Clair asked more calmly.

“I’m after all and any actions that’ll give us unity.”

“What are your concrete suggestions?”

“As a starter. For me to round up all the white organizations I can. For you to round up the Negroes. I hear the All Negro Harlem Committee’s meeting tonight. Are you a member?”

“Yes.”

“You going?”

“Yes.”

“You can tell them from me that I can almost promise that the Greater New York C.I.O. Council’ll take an active part in any common course of action. I suggest that you might tell Councilman Vincent and the publisher of the other Negro paper, Harbinger, I think his name is, that they ought to blast out at all these Harlem incidents if they aren’t already doing so tomorrow.”

“Mr. Cashman,” Clair said. “I will do nothing of the sort. I am not interfering with the independence of our press. I will not constitute myself a special interest lobby. You may be a friend of our people but your ideology hampers your understanding. Six thousand people attended that meeting in Harlem last Sunday. That is big news to Harlem and that news will be featured. The majority of our leaders, exclusive of the extreme left-wing and the Communists, are primarily interested in Negro news, in the Negro people.”

“So am I,” Cashman declared.

“No, you’re a sincere friend but — ”

“Don’t give me that sincere-friend-but business!”

“Can I say something?” Sam said. “They’ve done a good job at keeping us apart,” he spoke slowly, his eyelids almost meeting, as if looking inwards at his seething thoughts. “We’re all unsure of each other. I redbaited Cashman, Mr. Clair, just like you did. Because I’m a liberal like you. We’re different and not so different. We’ve got more in common than I thought at first. I can see things more clearly than I could a week ago, or even a few days ago. Remember, Mr. Clair, what I said to you Monday about not seeing Vincent until I had dug up something first? Do you know why I felt that way? At bottom I was still the white man, a white cop, and Vincent was colored, and I distrusted how a colored man would react to me, any colored man. But now — now, I see we’ve got to face our prejudices, admit them, and do something about them. I’d see Vincent tonight if he’d see me. By God, Mr. Clair, let’s all get together.”

Suzy walked over towards Sam, standing behind the chair in which he was sitting. She placed both her hands on his shoulders. He felt tired as if he had been under water a long time and had just now come up to the surface. “May I say something, too?” Suzy said. “It’s my turn. We all want the same thing. It’s like Pearl Buck said in her book. If we don’t fight together for the colored peoples as well as the whites, for their freedom as well as our own freedom, we’re not fighting for democracy but we should be on Hitler’s side.” She smiled, embarrassed. “I’m making a speech — ”

“What the hell, Sis?” Cashman grinned. “We all are.”

“I think,” Suzy continued, “that we should appeal to the people as well as to the leaders. I think we ought to run an ad or maybe we’ll get the space, gratis, in the Negro newspapers. This ad’d ask the people in Harlem to be on the lookout for those troublemakers or fascists or whoever they are. The people could send information to Mr. Clair. If it’s possible let’s get this ad in tomorrow’s papers.”

“A good idea,” Clair said instantly. “I will see the managing editors right now. I am positive they will donate the space.”

Cashman stood up. “Clair, how about you and me trying to see some of the A.N.H.C. people. I know some of them. We might ask them about Sam talking to them tonight? Get their opinion?”

“I’d be glad to talk to them,” Sam said.

Clair frowned. “Perhaps? However, we will see. If we get some favorable response — Are you going to be out, Miller?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose you drop by at five o’clock. I’ll have definite word then.”

The H.E.L. functionary and Cashman filed out of the office, arguing. Sam picked up a newspaper from the desk as if alone. He listened to the clicking of Marian Burrow’s typewriter in the outer office, grinned to himself, and glanced at the synagogue story. The newspaper turned into a glass and he was visualizing, not the synagogue, but the black crayon scrawlings he had seen on Harlem buildings yesterday: Scummy Kikes Are War Heroes. Scummy Kikes Are Red War Heroes.

“Sam.”

He grinned again. “You still here, Soozy-Sowzy? Don’t cry over me. Things are going to be okay, Soozy-Sowzy.”

She stared at him. “The charm act as I live and breathe.”

“Monday night, when I was waiting for you, I did variations on your name, baby.”

“Sam, I want to tell you you were swell before. You convinced Mr. Clair.”

“You were swell, too. We’re both swell. You and me and Pearl Buck and Abe Lincoln.”

“Don’t be so smart. On you it’s not becoming.”

He got up, sat on the edge of the desk, and swooped his arm around her waist. Her eyes laughed up at him and he said. “How the hell can I be smart when I’m in love, Swuzy?” Her eyelids fluttered down, a warm pink colored her ears and he kissed her on the nose.