The Nigger Factory (4 page)

Earl nodded constantly during her monologue as though he understood all of the things that she was trying to say. But as he reached the porch he was more sure than ever that he didn’t understand her and he wanted to go back and tell her to talk, say everything that was on her mind.

‘Earl,’ she called, ‘I don’ wanna hear you ramblin’ ’roun’ in my kitchen at no thousan’ o’clock like las’ night. I know you gon’ be wantin’ some a this somethin’ t’eat, but you can’ have it so if you don’ git it na you won’ have it.’

‘Yes ma’am, I hear you,’ he said.

Zeke heard Earl leaving as he came down to the kitchen. Mrs Gilliam still sat resting her elbows on the kitchen table as though she was tired. It was always a strain for her to deal with her youngest tenant. He never seemed to think twice before agreeing to skip a meal to attend something on campus. She
personally didn’t understand why so many meetings demanded his presence.

‘Earl ain’ eatin’ again,’ Zeke surmised.

‘That boy gonna run hisself to death,’ the landlady commented getting up and walking back over to the stew pot.

Outside, Sutton was just feeling the first kisses of autumn. The wind was a baby chick wiggling inside an egg beneath its mother. Evening came gliding down early to chase the sun and bring in Father Night with a blanket of black air to cloak the dying leaves. Though not a moment had passed since Earl’s hasty exit, both Zeke and Mrs Gilliam heard the footsteps on the back porch. Earl reentered the room allowing the screen door to slam behind him.

‘Uh, it’s not too cold now, but I think I’m gonna need my coat later,’ he announced looking around. ‘Uh, where is it?’

Zeke smiled and Mrs Gilliam put on her sternest face.

‘Iss hangin’ in the hall closet, but I oughta not let’choo have it ’cause it was layin’ ’cross the kitchen table when I got up this mornin’. You mussa lef’ it here when you sneaked in las’ night tryin’ t’git somethin’ t’eat . . . I’m tellin’ you Zeke, ain’ he somethin’?’ They exchanged glances. Earl smiled.

Earl grabbed his jacket off the hook in the hall closet and went back outside. His car was parked and the motor hummed a throaty tune. The night held a tingle of expectation. When Earl thought about the things that lay ahead for him there was a feathery tickle in his stomach. The sidewalk yawned up at him. The lawn was speckled with leaves of a thousand shades, dead or dying. At the side of the house Earl spotted Old Man Hunt pawing the ground with a toothless yard rake. They exchanged waves.

Earl’s car was a ’64 Oldsmobile; a gift from his father two summers past. It had been just the sort of thing he had come to expect from his father. The car had been in an accident and the left side had been caved in near the driver’s door. The owner had been asking three hundred dollars for it, but after a brief conversation with John Arthur Thomas he had been willing
to let it go for half that price. The elder Thomas said nothing about the purchase to his son, but kept the car parked in a garage and presented it to his son as a going-away present after Earl’s graduation from the two-year Community College.

‘It ain’ but a small thing,’ John Arthur Thomas declared struggling for words. ‘It ain’ like what I really want you to have, but I knew you wuz gon’ need a car to git around in.’

There was a stiff handshake and a rugged smile from the older man. Everything had been warm but awkward, sincere and yet limited. Earl had wanted to ask if his father had talked to his mother or seen her but had been afraid. The subject was a sore point; a constantly aching tooth that one became used to after awhile.

When he had been fifteen and his mother and father had been apart for almost a year, Earl had asked his father outright why the couple didn’t live together any more.

‘Yo’ mama’s a good woman,’ John Thomas had said softly. ‘She a independent woman by nature, but I convinced her when we wuz seein’ each other that she could depend on me an’ be a woman for a while. I knew that wuz what she wanned to be. But I wasn’t a good provider for her. Everything wuz workin’ out bad for me an’ her. We wuz damn near at razor’s edge when we found out you wuz comin’ . . . I guess that saved our marriage if you can call what we ended up havin’ somethin’ worth bein’ saved. We said we wuzn’t gon’ bring you out without some people lookin’ after you. So we tried to keep things together, but we stopped talkin’ to one another an’ really stopped havin’ anything for one another exceptin’ the fact that you were a link b’tween us.’

‘I’m s’pose to be grown now?’ the fifteen-year-old Earl had asked.

‘Grown enough to understand, I reckon,’ his father had replied.

‘I really don’t,’ Earl had confessed.

‘Whoa!’ John Thomas said laughing a bit. ‘Neither do yo’ mama an’ me. Folks don’t never really understand themselves,
but they always rely on havin’ someone that they love understand. Thass what we wuz doin’.’

Earl pulled away from the curb thinking about his father. He would have to write the man a letter and admit that he had received some valuable information. Things were happening in his life that he didn’t understand. Yet he was the only one who could be held responsible for them.

In the rear-view mirror Earl caught sight of a black Ford that seemed to be trailing him. He was brought back to the present, hoping that the car was the Ford supplied by the school to members of the Sutton newspaper staff who had to travel to get their stories. Just as he was about to pull over and allow the Ford to draw abreast of him, the trailing car pulled off down a side street.

But now Victor Johnson was on his mind again. Somewhere at that moment he knew Vic was working on a backbreaking story against him. The move by MJUMBE would probably be built up as a great blow against the Sutton establishment, which included the SGA. It didn’t matter that Earl hated the establishment as much as any of the rest of them or even more since he knew exactly how it sucked in Black students and warped their minds. It only mattered that during the course of the election none of Earl’s speeches had made reference to faculty members as ‘racist bastards’ and that he hadn’t filled students’ ears with militant denunciations of Calhoun or the administrators. To many narrow-minded students anyone who didn’t carry out the flimsy, outraged rhetoric of a television revolutionary was a Tom. It was just circumstance blown up out of proportion to truth. Earl could already picture the front-page story in the student paper asserting that his inactivity had spurred MJUMBE’s movement.

‘Shit!’ he swore loudly.

Earl’s mind was busy trying to organize strategy. It was too late for any of the moves that came readily to mind. He was
now
under
the eight ball. The only thing that he could do was wait.

‘One more week,’ he grumbled again without conviction. ‘Johnson would have had the story of his life. There would be no way for any demands to be turned down!’

MJUMBE COUP D’ETAT! the headline would scream.

‘Goddamn hick bastard Johnson,’ Earl breathed. ‘Goddamn hick bastards! I need a damn drink!’

4

Lawman and Odds

When Earl Thomas arrived on Sutton University’s campus for the very first time he had in his pocket a letter that he had received over the summer from a junior named Kenny Smith. The letter was actually a mimeographed note from the Dean of Admissions office designating Kenny as a student orientation assistant who should be looked up when the newcomer arrived; he was the person who would help the incoming student find his way around campus.

Kenny Smith had been easy to locate. Earl found him sitting in the Admissions Office reading a copy of the special
Statesman
that welcomed freshmen and transfer students. The thing that immediately warmed Earl to his orientation assistant was the young man’s dress. Kenny was wearing a pair of low-cut sneakers, no socks, cut-off blue jean shorts, and a Sutton sweat shirt. He was a world apart from the other orientators lining the walls dressed in slacks, shirts with collars; even a suit and tie or two could be seen.

‘My whole wardrobe is odds and ends,’ Kenny told Earl when the transfer student pointed out the contrast.

It had become understood between the two young men, who hit it off immediately, that Kenny could not be held to tradition and conformity of any description. Kenny did not seem to care in the least what any other students did, thought, wore, or acted like. He was his own man and described himself as the odd one even in his family circle. The nickname ‘Odds’ became quite natural between them.

At approximately the time that Earl was leaving Mrs Gilliam’s boarding house for his meeting with MJUMBE, Odds was just learning of the day’s political activities. Earl’s campaign manager had been in bed all day with a cold and had managed
to sleep through the afternoon MJUMBE announcements in his room. Only a trip to the bathroom and an open dormitory door gave him any inkling of the ingredients that were bubbling in the political cauldron.

‘Wonder why Thomas let Baker take over?’ someone was asking as Odds passed the open door.

‘Aw, bruh, c’mon,’ was the reply. ‘Thomas ain’ lettin’ Baker do nothin’. Thomas ain’ never been nowhere. Baker just dug that we was gittin’ ready to have another bullshit year an’ did his thing. The bullshit intellectuals voted for Egghead Hall, the brothers voted for Baker, and the bitches put Thomas in office from the col’ ass jump.’

Odds tried to place the voices and couldn’t. He wanted to hear more about the ‘takeover’ they were discussing and he didn’t particularly like being referred to as a bitch. He had voted for Earl.

‘Ya gotta be tough to deal wit’ Calhoun, man. You know what happened to Peabody las’ year,’ the voice went on. ‘He bullshitted an’ Tommed jus’ like Thomas an’ in the end didn’ nuthin’ git done.’

‘As usual,’ someone added.

‘An’ Baker’s gonna mess with Calhoun?’ Odds asked entering the room.

‘Whuss happ’nin’? . . . Fuckin’ right!’ The speaker went on. He was a tall, bearded boy wearing sunglasses. ‘Baker’ll git over.’

‘Kin I git a match?’ Odds asked.

‘Yo, bruh. I got one,’ a second student with sunglasses offered.

‘Did’joo see the thing today when MJUMBE got it together? They came out on that platform bad wit’ capital letters!’

‘I didn’ dig it, man,’ Odds admitted. ‘What happened?’

‘Man,’ came the enthusiastic reply. ‘You missed a helluva thing. Lemme tell you. All day long they was announcin’ this meetin’ for fo’ o’clock in fronta the SUB, right? Nobody knows who’s callin’ it or what it’s about. So at four bells damn near
the whole school is millin’ ’roun’ in front a the platform steps leadin’ t’the SUB, but the only thing there is a mike. No people. Up through the crowd comes Baker and King an’ them. They all dressed in black dashikis with gold trim. All five of ’um got bald heads except my man from New York, whuss his name? Abul. Abul Menka. You know that dude wit’ the big ‘fro an’ the T-bird? . . . well, they read out this list a deman’s, grievances that they got t’gether for the Head Nigger an’ they say they gonna lay the shit on ’im t’night. That mean this muthafuckuh gonna be jumpin’ in the mornin,’ Jim.’

‘Or not,’ Odds said. ‘What did Earl Thomas have to say?’

‘Nuthin’, man. I didn’ even see him. What could he say? Iss all true. Most a the shit is stuff he been sayin’ he wuz gittin’ t’gether, but he ain’ done nuthin’.’

Odds already knew where Earl had been. Chances were that Baker had known too. Earl seldom came on campus on Wednesday since he didn’t have a class. For a second Odds was tempted to point this out to the students in the room, but he decided that there would be little reason. He wanted to tell them that Earl
had
been trying to get things together too, but his association with Earl would have made everything sound like a mere cop out.

‘Later,’ he said, sliding back out into the hall. Echoes of the discussion followed Odds back into his room, but his mind was far away. What should he do? Call Earl? No. Earl probably wouldn’t be at home by now. What time was it? Just past seven his watch told him. The best thing would be to try and find Earl and get something started. Started? Ended? Stopped?

It was at that moment that Odds thought of Lawman. Lawman was a good friend. He was surprised, as he thought about it, that Lawman had not called him. If ever there was a guy who could sort out a political mess it was the ever-serious pre-law major.

Odds grabbed a dime from the top of his desk and padded back out into the darkened hall. Quickly he uncradled
the receiver and dropped a dime into the pay phone. He turned the dial seven times and waited. The phone rang twice.

‘Hullo?’

‘Hello. Lawman?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look, brother. This is Odds. We got problems. Have you heard?’

“Bout what?’

‘As near as I can tell Baker an’ his knuckleheads took over Earl’s program this afternoon an’ s’pose to be goin’ to Calhoun’s t’night.’

‘Goddamn!’ Lawman breathed. ‘
When
did this happen?’

‘This afternoon. Were you on campus?’

‘I had a one o’clock class. I went to it an’ then I split.’

‘You didn’ hear?’

‘Nuthin, man. I met this bitch over here at two. She was talkin’ ’bout calculus, but you know better than that.’

‘Yeah. I know ’bout what got calculated . . .’

‘Where were you?’

‘In bed. Man, I had me a ass-kickin’ chest cold all week.’

‘You sound like it. Where’s Earl?’

‘You got me. Out makin’ like a hero I guess.’

‘Tryin’ to carry it by himself too. He didn’t call me.’ Lawman was thoughtful. ‘Whew! Man, this is too much. I can hardly get this shit together.’

‘I know.’

‘Where you at?’ Lawman asked.

‘In the dorm.’

‘Let’s get together an’ talk this over. I was jus’ sittin’ down to eat when you buzzed. You want to come over here and have a bite to eat?’

‘No grit, man. I figger with a half-gallon of Esso Extra or something I might be able to deal . . . why don’ you meet me at O’Jay’s ’bout eight o’clock?’

‘All right,’ Lawman agreed. They hung up.

Odds scuffled back down the hall to his room and prepared to wash up and brush his teeth. He was no longer concerned with the nagging cough and chest cold that had kept him in bed.

The Lawman turned back to a small pot of soup and the slices of ham that rimmed his plate. His small one-room apartment was a mess. Records were scattered all over the floor near his record player. The books he had been attempting to deal with when the young woman arrived earlier in the afternoon were still open and loose-leaf notes from his notebook had blown onto the floor. His small army cot in the corner was a disarranged mess with the stained sheets from three hours of love-making tangled up at the foot of the bed. He stepped over to the sink next to the hot plate and rinsed his mouth out and splashed his face with a double handful of cold water.

‘Rraugh!’ he snorted as the water shocked his circled, reddened eyes. He felt around the wall for the wrinkled towel and rubbed his face roughly when he ripped it from the rack.

‘Fuck!’ he cursed out loud. Then he sat down to eat.