Lonely Crusade (43 page)

“Yes, I did. But now—”

“You’re through with them,” Foster said. “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you differ with them on tactics or objectives?” Although his manner still retained its polished charm, now there was the slight indication of contempt in it.

“Well—tactics, I suppose,” Lee replied. “They’re a bunch of dirty, rotten double-crossers, and I got out!”

“Is that so? There was a young woman in my office who got into some sort of difficulty with the union and was expelled.” His sharp blue eyes searched Lee’s reaction. “Did you know about it?”

“That was one of the reasons I quit,” Lee felt compelled to admit. “She was innocent. The Communists framed her.”

“So I heard. Do the Communists control the union?”

“No, not yet—”

“But they are working toward that end?”

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“It would work a definite hardship on all of the employees if the Communists got control of the union,” Foster said, as a threat more than a remark.

“I don’t think they have much chance of getting control.” Lee found himself defending them involuntarily.

“Perhaps not. They are an untrustworthy lot—but wily. There was a colored boy, a big black fellow who worked with you, I believe. McGregor.” Foster chuckled over the name. “I always thought he was a Communist. Was he a union organizer?”

Now Lee knew that he was being baited, but there was no way out. “No, he didn’t have any connection with the union. To tell you the truth, he’s a Communist Party organizer. We just let him work with us because at that time we felt that his help was valuable.”

“Oh, I see,” and Foster’s sharp blue glance penetrated. “It’s the union policy to accept the aid of the Communists. That’s rather dangerous, though, don’t you think?”

“They didn’t make a rule of it. They just used McGregor because they felt I needed some help with the Negro workers.”

“They didn’t object to subjecting the Negro employees to communistic propaganda.”

“McGregor didn’t have much opportunity to disseminate any propaganda. And anyway, he’s through now.”

“He is?” Foster showed a surprise which Lee felt certain was false. “Why?”

“Well—I don’t know,” Lee said, avoiding Foster’s eyes. “He—well—just quit, I suppose.”

“Smitty isn’t a Communist, is he?” Foster shot the question.

It caught Lee unawares. “Oh, I don’t think so; I couldn’t be sure though.”

“I’ve always considered Smitty a square shooter.” Now he was suave. “I have the greatest respect for him.”

“Well—yes. Smitty’s all right.”

“As I told you before, Gordon, I am not opposed to the union as long as it is a representative union of the employees and not a tool of the Communists.”

“Well, I’m not opposed to the union, either,” Lee said. “I just couldn’t put up with the double-crossing tactics of the Communists in the union, along with some of the officials.”

“What officials?”

“Well, Joe Ptak—”

“Is Joe a Communist?”

“I’m not sure. But he upheld them when they framed Miss Forks.”

“Then he’s a Communist or he would not have done it.”

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose so though. I hadn’t thought of him as a Communist, but as you say, if he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have upheld them.”

“Gordon,” Foster stated, “you will always know a man by the company he keeps.”

“Well—” and that was as far as he could get, because what this made of him he would not think.

“Now what can I do for you?”

“Oh!” Now again caught unawares, he lost his sense of tact. “About the job! You remember—the job you mentioned. I wanted to talk to you about it. I—”

“At that time, Gordon, the job was open,” Foster said, cutting him off. “But it is no longer available. Perhaps I can place you in the assembly department.”

Well, that was the way it went, Lee Gordon thought dejectedly. When you were down to the level of the boot, the boot was for you.

Standing, he replied: “Well, thanks, but I have my mind set on some sort of office work. You see, I’m a college graduate.”

“Yes, I know. It’s difficult for you colored boys with education,” Foster said sympathetically. “There are so few white-collar jobs which you can fill.”

“Well, I’ll look around for a while anyway.” He turned to leave.

“Do you have any definite plans?” Foster stopped him.

“Well, no. If I don’t find anything today, I think I’ll leave the city.”

u Give me your address, Gordon,” Foster asked. “If I think of anything before the day is out, I’ll get in touch with you.”

As he gave him the address of his hotel, Lee thought that was the end of it, and went out into the day. Walking down the street to catch the bus back to town, he saw Joe Ptak from a distance. But though Joe saw him, Joe did not speak, nor did he.

The bars were now open on Skid Row and he turned into one. But after he had ordered the drink and it had been served, he was afraid to drink it. He was afraid now to affect in any way the structure of his emotions, afraid of what he might do afterward, or what might afterward be done to him. He paid the bartender, turned about, and went out, standing in the hot morning sun, absorbed in vacancy.

The first terrible hurt had now passed and the shock of his chagrin had worn to a thin, constant humiliation in the back of his mind, depressing but not compelling. And the despondency was yet to come. It was as if he were drugged, or entering into some mental state resembling amnesia where he had not so much actually forgotten who he was, as that it did not matter.

He went into a restaurant and ate—what, he never knew—and then over to Main Street to a cheap theater. Nothing of the picture, whatever it was, penetrated his walled-in mind. He sat there in growing discomfiture until the one thought stung him—but she was white at the beginning. Then he arose and went into the street again.

A streetcar came to a stop. He boarded it, and when it came to the end of the line at 51st Street and Hooper, he alighted and began walking through the afternoon sun. At Slauson, seven blocks distant, he turned west and continued until the sun was in his eyes. But at the end he was where he had begun. Nothing had changed but weariness. And yet, turning, he kept on walking, north now, because it had to change, because one goddamned man couldn’t keep on like this. Something had to break—his body or his mind.

His tall, gaunt frame sagging from the pull of gravity, sweat-soaked from head to foot, he plodded on, bone-tired. His legs were artificial things, hacked off and unrelated to the dead weight of his torso; and his heavy, wet coat, which he had not taken off since morning, was a vile and horrible growth out of the marrow of his bones. He walked from Slauson and Jefferson boulevards in Culver City back to his hotel on Fifth Street, more than twenty miles.

Now he would have to sleep, he thought, climbing to his room and dropping fully dressed across the bed. But he did not sleep. The ghosts of all his failures and of all his fears and trepidations and inadequacies began parading through his mind, until he lay trembling in the shell of what he once had been.

Then suddenly be began seeing Ruth—Her coffee-colored nakedness and crown of curly hair; neck curved out to wide, full shoulders like a handstroke; breasts like twin hills in that golden haze before some sunsets. And a face like a pale brown Madonna’s with a ripely bursting mouth. Stepping slowly from the dirty wallpaper with those dark condemning eyes. “All I ever wanted was just to love you, Lee,” And the thought tore through his mind: “My God, baby doll, what have I done to you?”

And for what? What had he expected—the woman to marry him? Love, honor, and obey him—and raise his nigger children on crumbs and love? Had he expected her to fight with his Negro wife and take him bodily? Or had he been looking for something he thought only a white woman could give him? And giving it to him would make her immortal—“Thy immortal woman will hold thy hand…”

As the questions buffeted through his thoughts, his emotions became distorted and ran together like white-hot glass so that he could not differentiate among them. He could not tell whom he hated or whom he loved. And in this state his despondency intensified until it became solid to the touch.

He began to cry—slowly at first, just a soft leak of tears from the river of his eyes, and then more rapidly, until his whole body shook with wracking sobs.

If she had ever known—or even if he, himself had known—that underneath all of his resentment, all of the things he had thought of her, he had been proud of her achievement and proud of her. He had been proud of her femininity, of her fidelity, and how much it had always given him, even though he had always known that he was never worth it. And now there was this thing she should know that she would never know. She would never know about his crying out his heart because of what he had done to her. He was suffering his bitterest moment of regret for having destroyed in her what had meant so much to him, neither of them having ever known it until the time had passed.

In the end he would dry his tears and rise and continue living, a dry and brittle shell of what he might have been, because he could not do this simple thing to bring their togetherness again—go to her and tell her that he had cried. He was restrained now by the Anglo-Saxon trait of emotional repression he had inherited. He was a Negro whom it did not fit, but he was bound by it as he was by all white traits he had inherited.

Chapter 27

S
OMEONE
knocked.

Lee Gordon rolled over and sat up. “Who is it?”

“Luther.”

“Well—yes,” Lee Gordon thought. This would be in logical sequence. “Just a minute,” he called, going over to the corner basin to wash his face in cold water. Then he unlocked and opened the door.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want to see you no more than you do me, buddy boy,” Luther muttered, his huge apelike body in tan slacks and a white T-shirt filling up the doorway, “but Foster sent me.”

“So you’re still working for Foster?”

“He still got money and I still ain’t. Are you coming?”

“For what?”

“For to see a man and get some money.”

“What do I have to do?”

“The man will tell you what to do.”

For just a moment longer Lee hesitated, then he said: “Why not?”

Luther turned without a word and led the way. Lee climbed into the car beside him, and without further conversation they drove out to Inglewood and turned into a driveway beside a small stucco bungalow. A man in his shirt sleeves opened the back door to admit them.

“Come in, boys, come in.”

As they entered a small, immaculate kitchen, Lee instantly recognized the man as Paul, one of the deputies who had beaten him, and felt suddenly trapped in a deep well of shame that he should come back begging this man for what he once had had the courage to refuse. In this upsurge of emotion he could not speak.

But Luther began Uncle-Toming from the start. “How’s tricks, Mister Paul,” he said with a servile grin.

“Tricks ain’t walking,” Paul replied, but gave his attention to Lee.

“Aw, you got everything, Mister Paul,” Luther continued in a voice so ingratiating it was sickening to hear. “Why’oncha give a poor boy a break?”

But Paul ignored him and addressed his questions to Lee. “All healed up eh, boy? No scars, no bad feelings, eh?”

“No scars,” Lee replied finally, succumbing to the pressure of Paul’s stare.

“No bad feelings, eh?” Paul said persistently.

“No bad feelings,” Lee said stolidly.

“Got a little sense now, eh?”

“Got a little sense,” Lee mumbled.

“That’s a good boy.” Paul laughed and clapped him on the back.

Sick from the shame of submitting to this, Lee sat suddenly in the nearest chair.

Now that this crisis was past, Luther went straight to the business. “Mister Foster said you got a little job for us, Mister Paul.”

“I got a little dough for you boys,” Paul winked.

“Aw, dough!” Luther rubbed his hands. “Now that’s my language. What’cha want us to do?”

“I’m just going to give you boys a little dough. You’re good boys and I’m going to give you a little dough.”

“How much you gonna give us, Mister Paul?” Luther’s smile remained white in his greasy black face but his eyes became small and cunning. “You know times is tight and things is high. Dough ain’t what it used to was.”

“Sit down, goddammit!” Paul cried. “You make me nervous with all that nigger cringing. By God, I believe you’d kill your own mama for a little money.”

Luther sat unsmiling and suddenly solemn. “Well, now, Mister Paul, you can’t blame a man for liking money.”

“Now that’s better,” Paul said. “I’m getting tired of your niggering all the time. You tryna make a fool out of me?”

“That’s just my way, Mister Paul,” Luther replied in a flat voice now. “You can’t coon a man for his way. That’s just my way to try to make everything fine and dandy. That’s the way I like things to go.”

“By God, things will go like I want ‘em to go!” Paul said, sensing Luther’s resentment and challenging it. “You got anything to say about that?”

“Me? Not me!” Luther said, ducking his head like an artful dodger. “Don’t get me wrong, Mister Paul. I’m happy ‘bout the whole thing.”

“You’d better be!” Paul said, relaxing into his lordly manner now that Luther had begun to fawn again. Sitting at the head of the table, he took out his wallet. “Now I’m going to give you boys a little money and I want you boys to keep in touch with me. I’ll have a little job for you boys in a day or so.”

Opening the wallet, he extracted a flat stack of hundred-dollar bills and looked from one to the other with a sly, taunting look.

Luther gave a long, expressive whistle. “You gonna give us all that money, Mister Paul?”

“What would you do for this much money, Luther?”

“Ain’t no telling what I wouldn’t do!”

Paul laughed, then looked at Lee. “How about you, boy?”

“Well—it looks like quite a bit of money,” Lee forced himself to say, rapidly reaching the limit of his subservience.

“Quite a bit of money, he says! Boy, this money would buy you all the gals on Central Avenue!”