Read Online American Hunger by Richard Wright - Free Book Online Page B

shook his head pityingly and chuckled again.
    “Stop that damn laughing at me!” Cooke said angrily.
    “I laugh as much as I wanna,” Brand said. “You don’t know what you talking about. The
Herald-Examiner
says it’s the coldest day since 1873.”
    “But the
Trib
oughta know,” Cooke countered. “It’s older’n that
Examiner.”
    “That damn
Trib
don’t know nothing!” Brand drowned out Cooke’s voice.
    “How in hell you know?” Cooke asked with rising anger.
    The argument waxed until Cooke shouted that if Brand did not shut up he was going to cut his “black throat.”
    Brand whirled from the sink, his hands dripping soapy water, his eyes blazing.
    “Take that back,” Brand said.
    “I take nothing back! What you wanna do about it?” Cooke taunted.
    The two elderly Negroes glared at each other. I wondered if the quarrel was really serious, or if it would turn out harmlessly as so many others had done.
    Suddenly Cooke dropped the Chicago
Daily Tribune
andpulled a long knife from his pocket; his thumb pressed a button and a gleaming steel blade leaped out. Brand stepped back quickly and seized an ice pick that was stuck in a wooden board above the sink.
    “Put that knife down,” Brand said.
    “Stay ’way from me, or I’ll cut your throat,” Cooke warned.
    Brand lunged with the ice pick. Cooke dodged out of range. They circled each other like fighters in a prize ring. The cancerous and tubercular rats and mice leaped about their cages. The guinea pigs whistled in fright. The diabetic dogs bared their teeth and barked soundlessly in our direction. The Aschheim-Zondek rabbits flopped their ears and tried to hide in the corners of their pens. Cooke now crouched and sprang forward with the knife. Bill and I jumped to our feet, speechless with surprise. Brand retreated. The eyes of both men were hard and unblinking; they were breathing deeply.
    “Say, cut it out!” I called in alarm.
    “Them damn fools is really fighting,” Bill said in amazement.
    Slashing at each other, Brand and Cooke surged up and down the aisles of steel tiers. Suddenly Brand uttered a bellow and charged into Cooke and swept him violently backward. Cooke grasped Brand’s hand to keep the ice pick from sinking into his chest. Brand broke free and charged Cooke again, sweeping him into an animal-filled steel tier. The tier balanced itself on its edge for an indecisive moment, then toppled.
    Like kingpins, one steel tier lammed into another, then they all crashed to the floor with a sound as of the roof falling. The whole aspect of the room altered quicker than the eye could follow. Brand and Cooke stood stock-still, their eyes fastened upon each other, their pointed weapons raised; but they were dimly aware of the havoc that churned about them.
    The steel tiers lay jumbled; the doors of the cages swung open. Rats and mice and dogs and rabbits moved over the floor in wildpanic. The Wassermann guinea pigs were squealing as though judgment day had come. Here and there an animal had been crushed beneath a cage.
    All four of us looked at one another. We knew what this meant. We might lose our jobs. We were already regarded as black dunces, and if the doctors saw this mess they would take it as final proof. Bill rushed to the door to make sure that it was locked. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was 12:30. We had one half hour of grace.
    “Come on,” Bill said uneasily. “We got to get this place cleaned.”
    Brand and Cooke stared at each other, both doubting.
    “Give me your knife, Cooke,” I said.
    “Naw! Take Brand’s ice pick
first,”
Cooke said.
    “The hell you say!” Brand said. “Take his knife
first!”
    A knock sounded at the door.
    “Sssshh,” Bill said.
    We waited. We heard footsteps going away. We’ll all lose our jobs, I thought.
    Persuading the fighters to surrender their weapons was a difficult task, but at last it was done and we could begin to right things. Slowly Brand stooped and tugged at one