Never Love a Stranger (33 page)

Put the black man in his place. White men need the jobs.

Look around you. Who owns all the businesses? The Jews. Who have the banks? The Jews? Who have the best jobs? The Jews. Who has the most doctors and lawyers? The Jews. Who are the Communists? The Jews. Who are the strikers? The Jews. Is this our country or theirs?

It was a bad winter in more ways than one. I remember the night in February—the night of Lincoln’s birthday—the night I heard Gerro cry.

I stood way in back of the room. The club was half empty and the members were

standing around talking quietly. There were no more bands or dancing. The money was needed for more important things. People had stopped coming to the meetings. They had lost hope or had listened to others’ whispering lies, and had been seduced away by coarse, loud-mouth corner orators.

Gerro had climbed up on the table to speak. He held up his hands for silence. “Friends,” he said, but that was as far as he got.

Just as he spoke, a rock smashed against the window and into the room. More rocks followed. For a minute we stood still, not being able to realize what was happening. Gerro stood there on the table, his mouth open.

I was nearest the window. I moved towards it and looked out. There were twenty or thirty men outside in the street; they were looking up towards us. I didn’t recognize any of them. I felt a hand grab mine. It was Terry.

“What do they want?” she asked. She sounded frightened.

I didn’t have to answer that. Someone in the crowd downstairs did. “We want that damn man. He cain’t go aroun’ with white women in this neighbourhood. We’ll teach him how to act around white people.”

I looked back at Gerro. He was standing in the centre of the room. Somehow he seemed to stand alone there. With white frightened faces, the others shrank against the wall. A woman drew in her breath with a half a scream. “Why don’t someone call the police?”

“I’d better go down and talk to them,” Gerro said quietly. He started for the door. “Don’t let him go, Frankie,” Terry whispered. “They’ll kill him!”

I reacted to her statement automatically. “Gerro, wait a minute. If you go out there, it may not do any good. Let’s get the women out first.”

He stopped near the door and came back towards the window. “Stay where you are!” I told him.

He stopped in his tracks and stood there looking at me.

I turned back to the window. “If we let you have him,” I shouted down into the street, “will you let the others out?”

I could see a few men talking. “O.K.,” someone shouted.

“All right, then,” I hollered. “The women will come out first, then the men. When they’re all gone, you can come up and get him.”

“No!” someone shouted. “You come out last with him.” “O.K.!” I hollered back.

“Frankie, you can’t do that. You can’t turn him over to them like that,” Terry whispered.

“Shut up!” I whispered. “They won’t get him. When you get out, call the cops. Then go home and stay there until I get in touch with you.” I spoke loud now. “You people will get out of here, so don’t worry. Go out single file. Keep your hats off so they can see you’re white. Go home and stay there until morning. And don’t open your mouth to talk to anyone. Just get out and beat it!”

One of the men protested: “We can’t leave Gerro here.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Now you get out; you don’t want any of the women to get hurt, do

you?”

They began to move towards the door.

A voice from the street shouted up: “Bring the black guy to the window so we can see he ain’t getting away.”

That put a monkey in my plans. I had planned to tell Gerro to hotfoot it up to the roof and over to the other buildings. Now they wanted to see him and that would slow us up. Gerro started over.

I stopped him. I saw Joey. I called Joey over and told him to go up to the roof and open the trap so we could get right out, and then to come down and go out with the rest. He nodded and left.

“Now,” I told the others, “go out single file and slowly. We need all the time we can get.”

They began to move out of the room slowly. There was no confusion. Quietly, stolidly, they went downstairs and out. I looked out the window and saw the first of the group emerge from the building. They hurried along the fringe of the crowd and went to the corner and disappeared from sight.

Someone in the crowd hollered: “Where is he?”

I motioned to Gerro with my hand. He came to the window. His face was set and hard, his lips drawn together firmly. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it. I saw Terry walk down to the corner. She stopped there and looked back at us and lifted her hand in a half wave and went out of sight. A rock came hurtling to the window. I instinctively ducked it, and it hit Gerro on the side of the face just under the cheek-bone. He didn’t move under the impact.

I looked at him without speaking. His cheek had been cut by the rock and it was bleeding. He didn’t turn his head. He didn’t show any signs that it had hit him. The blood ran down his cheek and neck, and stained the clean white collar of his shirt a dull, soggy red. I gave him my handkerchief, which he pressed to the side of his face with as little emotion as a barber applying a hot towel. He stood there at the window looking out at the crowd.

“You know any of them?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he said simply, his voice trembling a little, “I know most of them.”

Some of them were probably members here at one time or another, I thought. I didn’t say anything. I hoped Joey would get back quickly before the last of the crowd filed out.

“Frank!” Joey’s voice came from the doorway.

I didn’t turn my head from the window. “O.K.?” I asked. “O.K.!” he whispered back.

“Beat it!” I said, still looking out. “Don’t forget to go out last.”

I heard him move towards the stairway. “Get ready to run for it,” I told Gerro. “Follow me when you see Joey come out.” He didn’t answer.

A few more rocks came flying in. I dodged them but Gerro just stood there motionlessly. I saw Joey come out of the building.

“We’re coming out!” I hollered. I stepped back into the room. From the corner of my eye I could see some of the crowd surge towards the entrance. Gerro still stood at the

window. I grabbed him by the hand and yanked him towards me. “C’mon, damn it!”

I started to run towards the doorway, half dragging Gerro with me. We got to the hall. I could hear footsteps on the lower staircase. I turned the other way and ran up the steps to the top floor. There was a ladder leading to the roof. I saw the square box-like cover of the exit had been removed, and I could see the stars in the sky above. “Good boy, Joey!” I thought.

I pushed Gerro up the ladder ahead of me and saw him disappear through the vent; then I started up. There was hollering on the flight below us in the clubroom. I could hear furniture being smashed. There was more noise on the stairway coming up to us. I was almost at the opening when I felt a hand clutching at my feet. I looked down. A man was partly up the ladder grabbing at me. I kicked viciously at him. My foot landed in his face. He fell off the ladder to the floor, and I went up and out of the vent.

I looked around. The roofs were covered with the remains of the last snowfall. I saw the cover lying near the vent, and next to it an old rotting mattress that some tenant had probably left there after sleeping on the roof some summer night. “Gimme a hand with this,” I snapped at Gerro.

His face was still bleeding, but he bent and helped me replace the cover. Then I threw the mattress over it, hoping it would delay them a little more. I straightened up and looked around. Some of the roofs had regular entrances to them. I started over the buildings towards them. The first one was about two houses away. I ran up to it and tried to open it, but it was locked.

I looked back over my shoulder to the building we had come from. The cover was still on the vent, but I could see it move as they tried to open it. The mattress was moving up and down and sliding off a little. We ran to the next building.

We were luckier there: the door was open. We ran inside the building. I turned and locked the door behind me. There was a little hook that fastened into the door and held it closed from the inside. We ran downstairs and out of the building. We came out on Sixty- eighth Street and ran up towards the park.

I looked down the street. There weren’t any signs of pursuit. We picked up a cruising cab on Central Park West and piled in. “Keep rolling!” I told the driver. “I’ll tell you where to go in a minute.”

Gerro sank back into the seat and covered his face with his hands. The handkerchief he held in his hands was covered with blood by now. I turned to him and pulled his hands away from his face and looked at the cut.

“That’s a bad one,” I said. “We’d better get you to a doctor.” I leaned forward and told the driver to take us to the Roosevelt Hospital.

At the hospital we got out and I paid the driver. We went into the emergency ward. I got one of the interns to look at it. It needed several stitches. While the doctor attended to Gerro, I answered the questionnaire the nurse had to fill out. The doctor finished and put a bandage over the cut. He told Gerro he had better go home and lie down for a while. He gave him some pills to take, and we left the hospital.

A clock in a store window across the street showed it was eleven o’clock. I looked over at Gerro. “You’d better go home now. You look a bit wobbly to me.”

He tried to smile. “Yes, I’d better. I guess I can make it home all right by myself.

Thanks for everything, Frank. You were swell!”

“Forget it!” I said. “Do you think you can make it all right?” “Sure!” he told me. “Sure I can.” He seemed to sway a little.

I put out my hand to steady him. “I think I’ll go along. We might as well finish the night together. We started that way.”

He didn’t protest. “Where do you live?”

He appeared: to be trying to think. “Maybe I shouldn’t go home. My folks will be too upset if they see me. I’d better go down to a friend’s house.”

“Anywhere you say,” I told him. “Only let’s get going. You need a little rest.”

We climbed into a cab. He gave the hackman an address in Greenwich Village. The cab started off. He leaned back against the cushions. For a while as the hack went down town we didn’t speak; he just sat there looking out the window. I looked at him from the corner of my eye every few minutes.

At last he leaned his head forward and put it in his hands. He began to cry. I know it wasn’t the pain. It was the hurt, the humiliation he felt that was expressed in his hard, choked-back sort of sobs. “The fools,” he said, “the poor, misguided fools! When will they learn?”

Chapter Five

T
HE
taxi stopped in front of a small renovated apartment house. There was a sign over the doorways, “Studio Apartments”. I got out and paid the driver. I turned to Gerro and we went into the building. We stopped at a door about two flights up. He rang the bell. The cut was beginning to pain him now. I could see the way he stood there that he was very uncomfortable.

I rang again. We waited about a minute but there wasn’t any answer. “Maybe your friend’s not in,” I said.

He shook his head. “I have a key,” he told me, and taking it from his pocket, he opened the door.

I followed him into the apartment. He put on a light. In one corner of the room there were a typewriter and some torn sheets of paper lying near it. On the other side of the room there was an easel with a half-completed portrait of a man on it. There were a table and several chairs scattered about the room. Off in one corner near the window was a small kitchenette, containing a small stove and refrigerator and pantry. There was a door on the opposite side of the room. Gerro went over to the door and looked into the room. I could see a set of twin beds and a small vanity table over his shoulder. He closed the door and came back into the room.

“It looks like they aren’t at home,” he said. He stood there uncertainly a moment as if he didn’t know what to say next. “Well,” he continued, “I guess I’ll be all right now. You might as well go home. It’s pretty late and you must be exhausted.”

“I’ll go,” I told him, “after I see you in bed, and after you take a hot drink and those tablets the doctor gave you.”

“I can make it all right,” he protested.

I got the feeling he wanted me out of here. “Nix!” I said. “Go inside and get into bed.

I’ll put some water on to heat. You got any tea here?” He nodded. “There’s some tea bags in the pantry.”

I went over to the small range, filled a pot with water, and put it on the stove. I turned and saw him standing there watching me. “Go on in and undress and get into bed,” I said.

He turned and went into the other room and closed the door behind him.

I waited a few minutes until the water began to boil. Then I looked through the pantry until I found some cups and the tea bags. I put a bag into one of the cups and poured the hot water on it and started for the bedroom. I stopped outside the door. “Tea is ready,” I called through the closed door.

“Come in,” I heard him answer.

I went into the room. He was in a bed at the far end of the room near the window. He had put on a pair of blue pyjamas. His dark face shone against the pillow, the white bandage adding an incongruous look to the scene. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

“A little better,” he said, “but I’m getting a terrible headache.”

“Drink this and you’ll feel better,” I told him. “You got those tablets the doctor gave you?”

He held out his hand; they were in his palm. “Take them,” I commanded, “then drink this.”

He swallowed the pills and held out his hand for the cup of tea. I gave it to him, but when he took it I could see his hand was trembling so much he could hardly hold it. I took the cup back and fed it to him by the spoonful. At last he finished and laid his head back on the pillow.

I sat there watching him for a while. He looked back at me. “Anything else I can do for you?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” he said, “you’ve done enough.”

We were silent for a little while. I could see him drowsing off. Suddenly he opened his eyes and asked: “Frank, were you afraid back there in the club?”