"Well, if it seems like I'm never going to shut up, just tell me. You and Mark are the first people I've talked to in a long time. There ain't much to say to these nurses." I could see that. What can you say to nurses?
"Well," Mike began, "I always had this soft spot for chicks. I was always making like Sir Galahad, opening doors for them and complimenting even the homely ones, and I beat out a lot of guys better looking than me and they never could figure out why. But it wasn't just a line with me. I guess I'm a sucker--I've been taken a few times, like 'loaning' money to chicks who came on with a sob story--but I'll always believe the best about a girl until I'm proved wrong, which is my own hang up.
"That explains the way I acted that night the gang and me was hanging around the drugstore and this black chick came in to buy some cigarettes. Me, I just see a nice-looking chick with really beautiful eyes, all black and inky-soft. I guess I'm a little funny that way, because Negroes just don't get me all upset. I mean, I can see a black guy and a white chick together, and it sure don't bother me, while most white guys can't stand to see that. Like the gang--the minute she walks in, they get all tensed up because black anyone, chick or otherwise, just don't happen to come around much where I live. I guess she worked downtown and got off late and just stopped in on her way to the bus stop. I think she told me that later. I don't remember too good now.
"So she gets her cigarettes and starts for the door, when a couple of guys block her way. Now the gang I hang with is a pretty good bunch of guys--a lot of heart and only a couple of wise apples in the group--but see, nothin' much had been happenin' and they were bored so they start picking on the chick, calling her Black Beauty and some other choice things. They were really getting rude, and I was feeling sorry for the girl. She kept her eyes down and just said, 'Let me by, please,' real soft-like. The guys started pushing her around, not enough to hurt her but enough to scare her plenty. She just gripped her purse with both hands and tensed all over like she was trying to keep from running, which was pretty smart. Running is just an invitation to be chased, and if she got caught it wouldn't be in a lighted drugstore. The old guy who runs the drugstore had disappeared. He was scared silly of the gang. I don't know why. We never done anything to him.
"When one of the guys grabbed hold of her and really got crude, I got fed up. I went over and said, 'Let her go,' like I meant it. They all looked at me for a while, like they were trying to make up their minds whether or not to jump me. We don't usually go around beating each other up, but it has happened. They finally decided not to. My big brother, he's got a pretty big rep as a tough guy in our neighborhood. He's in jail now, that's why he don't come to see me. It was his rep and not mine that stopped them, because I ain't never been known as a tough guy.
"So they turned her loose and went back to reading comics, and I followed the girl outside. She was looking up and down the street kind of desperate-like, and I knew she'd missed her bus. I said, 'Hey, uh, girl, if you've missed your bus I can give you a ride home.'
"She just kept her eyes down. Finally she said something--but, brother, I'm not going to repeat it. I saw then and there she thought I had evil intentions. I don't blame her. Hell, if I'd had to take what she just did, I'd be sore and suspicious too.
"I said, 'Look, I don't want a pick-up or anything . . .' She gave me a funny look so I added quick, 'Not that you're not real cute or anything--I mean, you'll have to stay here another hour to catch the next bus and I'll be leaving and I don't know what those other guys might do.'
"She saw the logic in that, because it was getting dark. Not too many cops come around that area; it's kind of a deserted street. You know how cops are; there's a million over on the Ribbon, making sure the nice kids don't kill each other or run each other down, while we can cut each other's throats and they don't give a damn.
"Finally she said she'd let me drive her home. I had my old Ford parked in the drugstore parking lot. It was really my brother's car but he said I could drive it any time he got busted, which is often. He's a pretty good guy, but if you've got a rep for fighting, somebody's always trying to take you on. The last time that happened, my brother busted a bottle over the guy's head and got charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. He never used weapons before, but he had finally got fed up with the whole routine. It wasn't his first offense, so they sat on him kind of hard.
"Anyway, we get into my Ford, and I can see the poor kid is still scared--she sits hugging the door on her side like she's going to jump out any second. I got a couple of good looks at her; she was real slender, looked like she'd sort of sway in the wind, and her hair was down to her shoulders and it must have been straightened. She had on a yellow dress and yellow shoes and she had her straw purse sitting on her lap. She held onto it with one hand and the door handle with the other. She really was cute.
"I started talking to her about just everything. Would her old lady chew her out because she was late? My old lady did. Man, they never liked anything you did, did they? But still, sometimes you couldn't get along without them. Did she go to school? I did but, boy, it was really a hell of a place to spend all day. I wanted to drop out but the old lady said she'd kill me if I did.
"I kept talking because that's what I do with animals when they're hurt and scared, and pretty soon they get over being scared. I've got a hang up with animals, too.
"I could tell she was beginning to calm down a little, at least she let go of the door handle. I even got her to smile once, I forget what I'd been saying. And then I said, 'I'm sorry about what happened to you back there,' and suddenly she started to cry.
"Man, that got me so shook. Nothing gets me shook like chicks crying." Mike stopped here, and I gave him another drag on my cigarette.
"That's funny," I said. "Chicks crying bore me. Go on, Mike, finish your story."
"Well, I didn't know what to say to her. I finally said, 'Hey, don't cry,' which never does any good. She kept on sobbing and now and then I'd catch a word or two. I got the idea that she was fed up with getting walked all over by white people. I could see that. I get fed up with getting walked over by the fuzz, teachers, my old man, and the upper-class kids at school. So I could see that. Bryon, do you know that my old man keeps my mother from coming to see me? Said I was a dumb kid for ever gettin' into this hospital. So anyway, this chick, she tells me about her problems, and she uses some pretty bad language but nothing I ain't heard before from white chicks. I finally pulled the car over to the curb and reached into my pocket. She sat up straight and got all uptight.
"'What we stoppin' for?' she says, and I said, 'I thought I had a handkerchief, but I guess I don't.' I pulled back out on the street. She looked at me for a minute--I kept staring straight ahead but I could tell she was watching me--and she said, 'Thank you.'
"I drove her home. She lived way out on the north side where most of the blacks live; you know where. It is a pretty lousy neighborhood, about as bad as mine. As I pulled up in front of her house, I could see a bunch of kids hanging around on her porch and in her yard.
"'Well, here you are,' I said, a little nervous. For somebody who'd been practicing in her mind how to get the door open, she was pretty slow about getting out. That's how it seemed to me, anyway. I think she was tired out from crying so much.
"Then there was all these black kids around my car. Some big guy opened the girl's door and pulled her out and said, 'What's the matter, Connie? What happened?' You could tell she'd been crying.
"Then they opened my door and dragged me out. It seemed like there was a hundred black faces staring at me. I guess it was really just about a dozen, but it seemed like a hundred. I just stood there, backed up against the car. Talk about scared--man, was I scared. To top it off, the chick had started crying again so she couldn't talk."
Mike paused here for a minute. He was staring off in the distance, and when he started talking again, it was slowly, like he was living the whole thing over again.
"The big guy came around to my side of t
he car. 'You hurt her, white boy?'
"'No,' I said, and it didn't sound very loud so I cleared my throat and said, 'No, I didn't,' so loud that it sounded like I was shouting. It was real quiet; you could hear somebody's TV from down the street and a dog barking a block away and Connie's soft sobbing. I could even hear my heart pounding in my ears. Then the big guy said, really quiet-like, 'What if we don't believe you?' And I got so scared I was about to cry and said, 'Ask her, huh, just ask her!' The guy called across the car, 'Connie, what you want me to do with this white cat?'
"And real soft--her voice was so soft, just like her eyes--she said, 'Kill the white bastard.'
"And sure enough, they almost did."
*