The driver fished a roll of black tape from his pocket and got out. Lucky sat where he was a few minutes, then climbed down, walked to the glare of the headlights, opened his paper. There it was:
L.R. NOTT, R.R. MAN, KILLED
The decapitated body of L.R. Nott, 1327 De Soto Street, a detective assigned to a northbound freight, was found early this morning on the track near San Fernando station. It is believed he lost his balance while the train was shunting cars at the San Fernando siding and fell beneath the wheels. Funeral services will be held tomorrow from the De Soto Street Methodist Church.
Mr. Nott is survived by a widow, formerly Miss Elsie Snowden of Mannerheim, and a son, L.R. Nott, Jr., 5.
He stared at it, refolded the paper, tucked it under his arm, walked back to where the driver was taping the air hose. He was clear, and he knew it. “Boy, do they call you Lucky? Is your name Lucky? I’ll say it is.”
He leaned against the trailer, let his eye wander down the street. He saw the two red lights of the police station glowing. He looked away quickly. A queer feeling began to stir inside him. He wished the driver would hurry up.
Presently he went back to the headlights again, found the notice, re-read it. He recognized that feeling now; it was the old Sunday-night feeling that he used to have back home, when the bells would ring and he would have to stop playing hide in the twilight, go to church, and hear about the necessity for being saved. It shot through his mind, the time he had played hookey from church, and hid in the livery stable; and how lonely he had felt, because there was nobody to play hide with; and how he had sneaked into church, and stood in the rear to listen to the necessity for being saved.
His eyes twitched back to the red lights, and slowly, shakily, but unswervingly he found himself walking toward them.
“I want to give myself up.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re wanted for grand larceny in Hackensack, New Jersey.”
“No, I—”
“We quit giving them rides when the New Deal come in. Beat it.”
“I killed a man.”
“You—? … When was it you done this?”
“Last night.”
“Where?”
“Near here. San Fernando. It was like this—”
“Hey, wait till I get a card…. Okay, what’s your name?”
“Ben Fuller.”
“No middle name?”
“They call me Lucky.”
“Lucky like in good luck?”
“Yes, sir…. Lucky like in good luck.”
THE NIGHT’S FOR CRYIN’
BY CHESTER HIMES
South Los Angeles
(Originally published in 1937)
Black boy slammed his Tom Collins down on the bar with an irritated bang, turned a slack scowl toward Gigilo. Gigilo, yellow and fat like a well-fed hog, was saying in a fat, whiskey-thickened voice: “Then she pulled out a knife and cut me ’cross the back. I just looked at ’er. Then she threw ’way the knife and hit me in the mouth with her pocketbook. I still looked at her. Then she raised her foot and stomped my corns. I pushed her down then.”
Black Boy said: “Niggah, ef’n yo is talkin’ tuh me, Ah ain’ liss’nin’.” Black Boy didn’t like yellow niggers, he didn’t want no yellow nigger talking to him now, for he was waiting for Marie, his high yellow heart, to take her to her good-doing job.
Gigilo took another sip of rye, but he didn’t say anymore.
Sound bubbled about them, a bubble bursting here in a strident laugh, there in accented profanity. A woman’s coarse, heavy voice said: “Cal, Ah wish you’d stop Fo’-Fo’ frum drinkin’ so much” … A man’s flat, unmusical drone said: “Ah had uh ruff on 632 and 642 come out.” He had repeated the same words a hundred solid times … “Aw, she ain’ gibin’ dat chump nuttin,” a young, loud voice clamored for attention … A nickel victrola in the rear blared a husky, negroid bellow: “Anybody heah wanna buy …”
The mirror behind the bar reflected the lingering scowl on Black Boy’s face, the blackest blot in the ragged jam of black and yellow faces lining the bar.
Wall lights behind him spilled soft stain on the elite at the tables. Cigarette smoke cut thin blue streamers ceilingward through the muted light, mingled with whiskey fumes and perfume scents and Negro smell. Bodies squirmed, inching riotous-colored dresses up from yellow, shapely legs. Red-lacquered nails gleamed like bright blood drops on the stems of whiskey glasses, and the women’s yellow faces looked like powdered masks beneath sleek hair, bruised with red mouths.
Four white people pushed through the front door, split a hurried, half apologetic path through the turn of displeased faces toward the cabaret entrance at the rear. Black Boy’s muddy, negroid eyes followed them, slightly resentful.
A stoop-shouldered, consumptive-looking Negro leaned over Black Boy’s shoulder and whispered something in his ear.
Black Boy’s sudden strangle blew a spray of Tom Collins over the bar. He put the tall glass quickly down, sloshing the remaining liquid over his hand. His red tongue slid twice across his thick, red lips, and his slack, plate-shaped face took on a popeyed expression, as startlingly unreal beneath the white of his precariously perched Panama as an eight ball with suddenly sprouted features. The puffed, bluish scar on his left cheek, memento of a pick-axe duel on a chain gang, seemed to swell into an embossed reproduction of a shell explosion, ridges pronging off from it in spokes.
He slid back from his stool, his elbow digging into a powdered, brownskin back to his right, caught on his feet with a flat-footed clump. Standing, his body was big, his six foot height losing impressiveness in slanting shoulders and long arms like an ape’s.
He paused for a moment, undecided, a unique specimen of sartorial splendor—white Panama stuck on the back of his shiny shaved skull, yellow silk polo shirt dirtied slightly by the black of his bulging muscles, draped trousers of a brilliant pea green, tight waisted and slack hanging above size eleven shoes of freshly shined tan.
The woman with the back turned a ruffled countenance, spat a stream of lurid profanity at him through twisted red lips. But he wedged through the jam toward the door, away from her, smashed out of the Log Cabin bar into a crowd of idling avenue pimps.
The traffic lights at the corner turned from green to red. Four shiny, new automobiles full of laughing black folks, purred casually through the red. A passing brownskin answered to the call of “Babe,” paused before her “nigger” in saddle-backed stance, arms akimbo, tight dress tightened on the curve of her hips.
Black Boy’s popped eyes filled with yellow specks, slithered across the front of the weather-stained Majestic Hotel across the street, lingering a searching instant on every woman whose face was light. Around the corner, down on Central Avenue, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a yellow gal climbing into a green sedan, then a streetcar clanged across his vision.
He pulled in his red lips, wet them with his tongue. Then he broke into a shuffling, flat-footed run—through the squawk of a horn, across suddenly squealing brakes, never looked around. A taxi-driver’s curse lashed him across the street. His teeth bared slightly, but the bloated unreality of his face never changed.