Tales of the Out & the Gone (3 page)

The administration functioned by having people come to work in the city. Most of the good city jobs (most of the real jobs in Finland Station) were held by whites from the opulent suburbs—Livingston, Short Hills, Forest Hills, Essex Fells, Madison. In fact, New Jersey had the second highest per capita income in the United States. But in cities like Finland Station, Newark, Jersey City, Camden, and Trenton, where the niggers lived, the people who came in made the dust and ran back to the suburbs, while the urbs went to the outskirts of town and worked in shoestring factories or auto factories, iron works, paintbrush factories, breweries, and toy factories— when they could get gigs. That’s why Tim had to come on not too sparkly. It was bad enough already. Old folks still smiled at him, but some of these loudmouths were beginning to blow their bad breath heavy his way. “Look, I do what I can. What can I do? We just don’t have the money. The federal government sends no more money. We do what we can.”

But mostly it seemed, especially to the loudmouths including Tim’s ex-friend Ray Sloane, like Stevie Wonder’s tune, “You Haven’t Done Nothin’
.”
And they kept saying that every time Tim surfaced.

“Like when those bitches from Redspear Health Insurance were demonstrating, Sloane brings these goddamn women down through the streets to City Hall. Then, when I went out to dedicate the park across the street, he gets on a bullhorn and starts to shout me down, and sics these freaking women on me. I had to get back inside.”

Somebody was passing around red cigarettes with gold filters. “Boss, you want one?”

But sometimes it brushed him further than he wanted to go. He was there, on top. He knew presidents, kings, and had been halfway around the world. The State Department sent him to Poland to tell those people how black people are really living, so they wouldn’t believe the propaganda.

“According to those guys, the Klan’s still taking people out they house! But Jesus, I’ve done something, something any one of these guys would give their left and right nut to do. Me. The Mayor. [Caught it.] And still, you got these jealousass niggers wanting to try to show me up. But it won’t work. They can’t beat me.”

The time Jerry Lloyd, the preacher and radical councilman, led students down to City Hall to dump garbage that wasn’t picked up in the 3rd Ward, Tim had them busted. He knew them—they’d initially campaigned together in the big push in ’70 that sent old Mayor Bucarillo to prison. But “Lloyd was wrong.” A couple of black cops got busted that day too, trying to protect the women. Cops arresting cops, white and black cops fighting in the street.

“He was in with that Sloane. That’s why he got beat in the elections too. Trying to tear my ass and got his own ass torn.”

Also, the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, Democrats, and Republicans backed Lloyd’s opponent, “Rip” Dalton. Sloane said he was one of the original Daltons, and came to the council meetings with a bandana around his face so people would be hip to him. S.O. should wear a mask and an all-black suit and big ten-gallon hat. At least then you’d be clearly hip to who and the others there: two liberal blacks—one a college professor on the slightly trembly side, the other an overweight used-to-be-good-guy back in the Civil Rights days, who passionately wanted to be a councilman, and then one day he was, but he’d by then promised his whole 700- pound behind to Tim for backing him. A blushing prostitute, therefore. And five white folks—three ex-cops, a storekeeper, and the wife of a dead man, who got in on his rep and mostly his name.

All the contradictory motions of the place, cross-currents in this here “democracy,” where whatever wants to bite you can bite. Its teeth could look like anything; you might even vote for them to bite you. Sloane running it down outside City Hall to the pickets: “Whatever mob wants to bite you. Gratitude owns Tim Fatson. That’s Manufacturers Trust and them. Rockefeller owns Jisholm & Bangel and them. Morgan owns them Kennedy-chasing Bloods. The mafia own people like S.O. Hares and Rip-Off Dalton. One mob or another. These politicians are lieutenants, the big ones and the lackies—the small rip-offs peeing on us around here.”

Tim listened through the windows. Made himself a cup of tea in front of the big picture windows. The sound boomed in. “That bastard.”

Ethan squinted down and Augie made a straight face, trying to joke with Tim about it. “That bastard is gonna bite off more than he can chew one day. Somebody’s gonna come runnin’ down here to cry how some of them cops blasted him.”

Outside: “And what we got here in this town? Niggers in high places, black faces in high places, but the same rats and roaches, the same slums and garbage, the same police whip-pin’ your heads, the same unemployment and junkies in the hallways muggin’ your old lady. What is it? What is it? We strained to elect this nigger mayor, and what we got to show for it? Nothing but a burpin’ black bastard slippin’ his way around the city, sleepin’ with fat ladies.”

Sloane raved on. Loza laughed, hearing him in the crowd, and noted that the last statement wasn’t politically educational. He thought it seemed unprincipled. Too abrasive, he decided. It was not analytical enough.

But Sloane raved on: “It is this system of monopoly capitalism that must be destroyed. The private ownership of the means of producing wealth, the land, the factories, the minerals, the mines … These must be controlled publicly and collectively by the masses of people, under the dictatorship of the working class. These black faces ain’t enough. It is a system that oppresses us.”

“Now the creep is talking like a goddamn commie,” Ethan was saying. “Boy, they gonna carry his ass away from here.”

There was a line of fifteen policemen on the stairs of City Hall that day as the women from the Redspear sang, with the R.C. people among them urging the singers forward.

After the staff meeting, Tim inspected the hotel setup again, checked out the marked streets of the president’s route to the hotel. Talked to the newspapers at a press conference. He thought about Maureen and decided to stop by the library. Call from a phone booth—get her to come to a side entrance. But nobody answered. He pulled off, the car being driven by one of the cops, his bodyguard. And turning the corner, he saw Maureen and his wife, Madeline, standing in front of the library, talking. Madeline still worked for a real estate firm in the area, but it wasn’t that close. She wouldn’t give up her job—she said they needed to save all they could to get a house in the North Ward or Orange.

He was going to ride on by, but Maureen spotted him and looked, and Madeline turned right away. They both looked. It seemed that the contradiction was going to soon become antagonistic. He waved out the car. Slowed. “Hey, what you all into? I’m on my way to the hotel. You want a lift?” Maureen and Madeline had cars.

“How you doing?” Maureen tried smiling.

Madeline stared. “The hotel?”

“No, thank you,” they both said together.

“See you back at the house then. We ain’t got a lot of time. It’s 3 now—he gets in at 6.”

The car ran on, down through traffic. Stopping now at the police station, and checking with Chambers again. There was already a loose cordon being thrown around the general area of the hotel. A snow fence had been erected as well. There was to be an area in which no one was allowed but the police and the eaters at the thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner.

“They say they’re gonna sue, Tim, if we don’t let them demonstrate. We figure we’ll let them demonstrate, but put them in the middle of the park or somewhere, OK?”

“Yeh, what the hell. As long as they can’t make no trouble.” Really, he meant as long as they can’t get in the way of his future motion up the ladder to Colored Retainer Heaven. If that goddamn McGovern had won, he’d have already made it. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. A cabinet member. That was the spot. Get cut in on some nice deals that way too, rather than the greasy stuff you had to pick up on the lower level. And that was even a little dangerous now, in these recent post-Watergate years. The take is allowed—everybody there does it. Tim let it roll through his mind. Everybody did that. Nixon did it. But the stuff upstairs is worth the risk. Not this greasy stuff where you got to be connected up with people like Wurlitzer Willie and the rest of the crew. So don’t get in the way of the big trip. The big rip.

Sirens turned his head. They were normal for Finland Station every other minute. Sirens howling. It brought to mind the motorcade they would bring the president in with. There was talk all through the halls. And at every stop, people wanted to know and tell and speculate and myth-make.

He spotted Foster Tarasso, the congressman from the Dent District, coming out of the Eldridge Club with his entourage. The club was near his district office. Tarasso was in town for the dinner—all his trips to his district were strictly and only political. Washington was Tarasso’s real home. He was the silver-haired orator symbolizing the Italians’ rise to semi-respectability in America, when they could keep the frig-gin’ Mafia headlines out of the newspapers and squash those reruns of
The Untouchables.
They exchanged oblique compliments. Tarasso thought Tim wanted his spot. Tim thought Tarasso wanted the HUD spot. Now that Tim had become an official Democrat, the elections in the Finland Station municipal government were nonpartisan. Tarasso felt a little safer, but still had to watch his back. Tim had to watch his front. They discussed the dinner and the demonstration. The fact of the assassination attempts. The tight security. The newspapers bombing Tim on the $30,000 being spent to protect the president. Tarasso had a young girl, his legislative assistant, in the car. She waved and kept talking to the other couple sitting in there. Tarasso’s law partner or his companion, another legislative assistant, or secretary, or reporter, or what have you. Tim wondered what they looked like naked.

They made the last stop and went back to the house. Madeline was already there. He picked up his brown tuxedo with the tossed ruffle shirt and neat velvet tie. The schedule indicated to pick up the convoy and arrive at the airport by 5:15. Air Force One would land at exactly 18:00 hours and the motorcade would proceed—after a briefing with the Secret Service men—directly to the hotel. Fifty miles an hour all the way.

Madeline was dressing. She spoke when he came in and said nothing afterwards.

He began to take off his clothes. “You about ready?”

“Yeh.”

“How long you been home?”

“Long enough to be almost ready.”

A slight edge, barely rising. He was quiet, pulling his socks and suspenders out of the drawers. Emptying his pockets on the table. Making sure his cologne was out. And that he had some money in the clip. And all his ID cards. He turned to go into the bathroom and Madeline was standing there with her long skirt on, but her top in her hands, wearing her brassiere.

She said, simply, “If I catch you with that woman, I’m gonna kill both yo asses.”

“What?” The radio was playing. WDNL, Soul Radio. Millie Jackson had come on, talking about another woman. That’s what had set her off, the dumb-ass song. “What you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. My girlfriend saw your car down there at that library two or three times. I didn’t know that fat yellow bitch was in there. You just got rid of one fat yellow bitch. I shoulda known why. To pick up another one. But I’m telling you, Tim, I’ll waste both yo asses.” She turned and went out the door.

“What?” He started saying some other things, but convinced nobody in the apartment since only the two of them were there. They had no children. He’d had some by another marriage, but they were grown. He kept talking.

Madeline shouted back, “Yellow fat-ass bitch! You like them yellow-ass fat women, why you marry me then?”

Madeline was a brown-ass fat woman, chocolate-sweet when grooving, burning fire when crossed. It passed through Tim’s mind.
Yeh, why?
The yellow streak was on him—
in
him. He was himself a fat yellow person. It was 4:30. He had to rush into the bathroom. They said nothing else until it was time to go out together. He said, “You always hooking me up with somebody. Why pick her?”

“
You
picked her, not me.” Madeline went down the front stairs. It was a small white wooden house. A two-family house, the top floor occupied by Madeline’s sister and her husband, again kept up from the old days to maintain the image, though arrangements were already being made for a house in the country. You couldn’t be moving around all these people—the world’s petit bourgeois and the big boys too—without that life producing its own projections. Its notions that had to be fulfilled, its wobbly ideas and grand designs.

The turbulence of the Civil Rights black power decade was what brought Tim Goodson to this spot, yet the spot was ultimately something which was that decade’s opposite. Goodson had marched in front of Barton High to demand jobs for black contractors, and was in the picket lines around the proposed 200-acre medical school, which was a cold-blooded attempted rip-off of black people from out of the area to stave off the realities of what black power meant at that point. It was a gag to get rid of black voters.

He was a part of the Civil Rights movement, the thrust that hooked up with Martin Luther King pressing for the black vote all over the South, and the young SNCCers who followed that path, the struggle for democratic rights which boiled most fiercely in the land-base of the Black Nation, the black belt South. The fire of Malcolm had emerged then to raise the struggle to still higher levels with the true voice of the working people—aside from the motion that the black bourgeoisie could direct, the good preachers of SCLC representing the other preachers and teachers and doctors and lawyers. It’s why the student hook-up was exactly cool, the middles and upper-middles of the Black Nation. Yet the motion was a mass motion. The millions with their might opposed the segregation and discrimination, the white-only apartheid that finally even the big boys themselves saw was passé, that if they wanted to get on top of the world market as almighty U.S.A., the Camelot of the world, then they also had to cool out them old relationships. Stuff had to be modernized, Jimmy. Dig? Old Bull Connor’s just out of whack with the times, JFK could have remarked coolly to himself in the oval room, posing for a picture with the big six leaders and Rabbi Prinz and Walter Reuther.