The Crazy Kill Part 1

THE CRAZY KILL.

by Chester Himes.

1.

It was four o'clock, Wednesday morning, July 14th, in Harlem, U.S.A. Seventh Avenue was as dark and lonely as haunted graves.

A colored man was stealing a bag of money.

It was a small white canvas bag, the top tied with a cord. It lay on the front seat of a Plymouth sedan that was double-parked on Seventh Avenue, in front of an A&P grocery store in the middle of the block between 13 1st and 132nd Streets.

The Plymouth belonged to the manager of the A&P store. The bag contained silver money to be used for making change. The curb was lined with big s.h.i.+ny cars, and the manager had double-parked until he'd unlocked the store and put the money in the safe. The manager didn't want to risk walking a block down a Harlem street at that time of morning with a bag of money in his hand.

There was always a colored patrolman on duty in front of the store when the manager arrived. The patrolman stood guard over the cartons and crates of canned goods, groceries and vegetables, which the A&P delivery truck unloaded on the sidewalk, until the manager arrived.

But the manager was a white man. He didn't trust the streets of Harlem, even with a cop on guard.

The manager's distrust was being justified.

As he stood in front of the door, taking the key from his pocket, with the colored cop standing by his side, the thief sneaked along the other side of the parked cars, stuck his long bare black arm through the open window of the Plymouth and noiselessly lifted the bag of silver money.

The manager looked casually over his shoulder at just the instant the stooping figure of the thief, creeping along the street, was disappearing behind another parked "Stop thief!" he shouted, a.s.suming the man was a thief on general principles.

Before the words had got clear of his mouth the thief was high-balling for all he was worth. He was wearing a ragged dark green cotton T-s.h.i.+rt, faded blue jeans and dirt-blackened canvas sneakers, which, along with his color, blended with the black asphalt, making him hard to distinguish.

"Where's he at?" the cop asked.

"There he goes!" a voice said from above.

Both the cop and the manager heard the voice, but neither looked up. They had seen a dark blur turning on a sharp curve into 132nd Street, and both had taken off in pursuit simultaneously.

The voice had come from a man standing in a lighted third-story window, the only lighted window in the block of five- and six-story buildings.

From behind the man's silhouetted figure came the faint sounds of a jam session holding forth in the unseen rooms. The hot licks on a tenor sax kept time with the feet pounding on the sidewalk pavement, and the ba.s.s notes from a big piano were echoing the light dry thunder of a kettledrum.

The silhouette shortened as the man leaned farther and farther out the window to watch the chase. What had first appeared to be a tall thin man slowly became a short squat midget. And still the man leaned farther out. When the cop and the store manager turned the corner, the man was leaning so far out his silhouette was less than two feet high. He was leaning out of the window from his waist up.

Slowly his hips leaned out. His b.u.t.tocks rose into the light like a slow-rolling wave, then dropped below the wmdow ledge as his legs and feet slowly rose into the air. For a long moment the silhouette of two feet sitting upside down on top of two legs was suspended in the yellow lighted rectangle. Then it sank slowly from view, like a body going head-down into water.

The man fell in slow motion, leaning all the way, so that he turned slowly in the air.

He fell past the window underneath, which bore the black-lettered message:

STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT.

Anoint the Love Apples With Father Cupid's Original ADAM OINTMENT.

A Cure For All Love Troubles

To one side of the cartons and crates was a long wicker basket of fresh bread. The large soft spongy loaves, wrapped in wax paper, were stacked side by side like cotton pads.

The man landed at full length on his back exactly on top of the mattress of soft bread. Loaves flew up about him like the splash of freshly packaged waves as his body sank into the warm bed of bread.

Nothing moved. Not even the tepid morning air.

Above, the lighted window was empty. The street was deserted. The thief and his pursuers had disappeared into the Harlem night.

Time pa.s.sed.

Slowly the surface of the bread began to stir. A loaf rose and dropped over the side of the basket to the sidewalk as though the bread had begun to boil. Another squashed loaf followed.

Slowly, the man began erupting from the basket like a zombie rising from the grave. His head and shoulders came up first. He gripped the edges of the basket, and his torso straightened. He put a leg over the side and felt for the sidewalk with his foot. The sidewalk was still there. He put a little weight on his foot to test the sidewalk. The sidewalk was steady.

He put his other foot over the edge to the sidewalk and stood up.

The first thing he did was to adjust his gold-rinimed spectacles on his nose. Next he felt his pants pockets to see if he'd lost anything. Everything seemed to be there--keys, Bible, knife, handkerchief, wallet and the bottle of herb medicine he took for nervous indigestion.

Then he brushed his clothes vigorously, as though loaves of bread might be sticking to him. After that he took a big swig of his nerve medicine. It tasted bittersweet and strongly alcoholic. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

Finally he looked up. The lighted window was still there, but somehow it looked strangely like the pearly gates.

2.

Deep South was shouting in a hoa.r.s.e ba.s.s voice: "_Steal away, daddy-o, steal away to Jesus_ . . ."

His meaty black fingers were skipping the light fantastic on the keys of the big grand piano.

Susie Q. was beating out the rhythm on his kettle drum.

Pigmeat was jamming on his tenor sax.

The big luxurious sitting room of the Seventh Avenue apartment was jam-packed with friends and relatives of Big Joe Pullen, mourning his pa.s.sing.

His black-clad widow, Mamie Pullen, was supervising the serving of refreshments.

Dulcy, the present wife of Big Joe's G.o.dson, Johnny Perry, was wandering about, being strictly ornamental, while Alamena, Johnny's former wife, was trying to be helpful.

Doll Baby, a chorus chick who was carrying a torch for Dulcy's brother, Val, was there to see and be seen.

c.h.i.n.k Charlie Dawson, who was carrying a torch for Dulcy herself, shouldn't have been there at all.

The others were grieving out of the kindness of their hearts and the alcohol in their blood, and because grievmg was easy in the stifling heat.

Holy Roller church sisters were crying and wailing and daubing at their red-rimmed eyes with black-bordered handkerchiefs.

Dining car waiters were extolling the virtues of their former chef.

Wh.o.r.ehouse madams were exchanging reminiscences about their former client.

Gambler friends were laying odds that he'd make heaven on his first try.

Ice cubes tinided in eight-ounce gla.s.ses of bourbon whisky and ginger ale, black rum and Coca Cola, clear gin and tonic water. Everybody was drinking and eating. The food and liquor were free.

The blue-gray air was thick as split-pea soup with tobacco smoke, pungent with the scent of cheap perfume and hothouse lilies, the stink of sweating bodies, the fumes of alcohol, hot fried food and bad breath.

The big bronze-painted coffin lay on a rack against the wall between the piano and the console radiotelevision-record set. Flowers were banked about a horseshoe wreath of lilies as though about a horse in the winner's circle at the Kentucky Derby.

Mamie Pullen said to Johnny Perry's young wife, "Dulcy, I want to talk to you."

Her usually placid brown face, framed by straightened gray hair pulled into a tight knot atop her head, was heavily seamed with grief and fear.

Dulcy looked resentful. "For Chrissake, Aunt Mamie, can't you let me alone?"

Mamie's tall, thin, work-hardened old body, clad in a black satin Mother Hubbard gown that dragged the floor, stiffened with resolve. She looked as though she had been washed with all waters and had come out still clean.

On sudden impulse, she took Dulcy by the arm, steered her into the bathroom and closed and locked the door.

Doll Baby had been watching them intently from across the room. She moved away from c.h.i.n.k Charlie and pulled Alamena to one side.

"Did you see that?"

"See what?" Alamena asked.

"Mamie took Dulcy into the c.r.a.pper and locked the door."

Alamena studied her with sudden curiosity.

"What about it?"

"What they go so secretive to talk about?"

"How the h.e.l.l would I know?"

Doll Baby frowned. It relieved the set stupidity of her expression. She was a brownskin model type, slim, tan and cute. She wore a tight-fitting flaming orange silk dress and was adorned with enough heavy costume jewelry to sink her rapidly to the bottom of the sea. She worked in the chorus line at Small's Paradise Inn, and she looked strictly on the make.

"It looks mighty funny at a time like this," she persisted, then asked slyly, "Will Johnny inherit anything?"

Alamena raised her eyebrows. She wondered if Doll Baby was shooting at Johnny Perry. "Why don't you ask him, sugar?"

"I don't have to. I can find out from Val."

Alamena smiled evilly. "Be careful, girl. Dulcy's d.a.m.n particular 'bout her brother's women."

"That b.i.t.c.h! She'd better mind her own business. She's so hot after c.h.i.n.k it's a scandal."

"It's likely to be more than that now Big Joe is dead," Alamena said seriously. A shadow pa.s.sed over her face.

Once she had been the same type as Doll Baby, but ten years had made a difference. She still cut a figure in the deep purple turtle-neck silk jersey dress she was wearing, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman who didn't care any more.

"Val ain't big enough to handle Johnny, and c.h.i.n.k keeps pressing Dulcy as if he ain't going to be satisfied until he gets himself killed."

"That's what I can't see," Doll Baby said in a puzzled tone of voice. "What's he giving such a big performance for? Unless he's just trying to get Johnny's goat?"

Alamena sighed, involuntarily fingering the collar covering her throat.

"Somebody better tell him that Johnny's got a silver plate in his head and it's sitting too heavy on his brain."

"Who can tell that yellow n.i.g.g.e.r anything?" Doll Baby said. "Look at him now."

They turned and watched the big yellow man push his way through the crowded room to the door as though enraged about something, then go out and slam the door behind him.

"He's gotta make out like he's mad just because Dulcy went into the c.r.a.pper to talk to Mamie, when all he's really tryin' to do is get the h.e.l.l away from her before Johnny comes."

"Why don't you go too and take his temperature, sugar," Alamena said maliciously. "You been holding his hand all evening."

"I ain't interested in that whisky jockey," Doll Baby said.

c.h.i.n.k worked as a bartender in the University Club downtown on East 48th Street. He made good money, ran with the Harlem dandies and could have girls like Doll Baby by the dozen.

"Since when ain't you interested?" Alamena asked sarcastically. "Since he just went out the door?"

"Anyway, I gotta go find Val," Doll Baby said defensively, moving off. She left immediately afterward.

Sitting on the lid of the toilet seat inside of the locked bathroom, Mamie Pullen was saying, "Dulcy, honey, I wish you'd keep away from c.h.i.n.k Charlie. You're making me awfully nervous, child."

Dulcy grimaced at her own reflection in the mirror. She was standing with her thighs pressed against the edge of the washbowl, causing the rose-colored skin-tight dress to crease inside the valley of her round, seductive b.u.t.tocks.

"I'm trying to, Aunt Mamie," she said, nervously patting her short-cut orange-yellow curls framing the olivebrown complexion of her heart-shaped face. "But you know how c.h.i.n.k is. He keeps putting himself in my face no matter how hard I try to show him I ain't interested."

Mamie grunted skeptically. She didn't approve of the latest Harlem fad of brownskin blondes. Her worried old eyes surveyed Dulcy's flamboyant decor--the rainbowhued wh.o.r.e-shoes with the four-inch lucite heels; the choker of cultured pink pearls; the diamond-studded watch; the emerald bracelet; the heavy gold charm bracelet; the two diamond rings on her left hand and the ruby ring on her right; the pink pearl earrings shaped like globules of petrified caviar.

Finally she commented, "All I can say is, honey, you ain't dressed for the part."

Dulcy turned angrily, but her hot long-lashed eyes dropped quickly from Mamie's critical stare to Mamie's man-fas.h.i.+oned straight-last shoes protrudmg from beneath the skirt oj Mamie's long black satin dress.