Read Online If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes - Free Book Online

that. I liked those two white kids; they were white, but as my aunt Fanny used to say they couldn’t help that.
    When we got closer to town and saw more women on the Street we started a guessing game about every one we passed, whether they were married or single, how many kids they had, whether their husbands were in the Army, if they played around at all. All the elderly women they called ‘Mom.’ We had a lot of fun until we came to a dark brown woman in a dark red dress and a light green hat carrying a shoebox tied with a string, falling along in that knee-buckling, leaning-forward, housemaid’s lope, and frowning so hard her face was all knotted up. They didn’t say anything at all. I wanted to say something to keep it going, but all I could have said about her was that she was an ugly, evil-looking old lady. If we had all been coloured we’d have laughed. like hell because she was really a comical sister. But with the white boys present, I couldn’t say anything. I looked straight ahead and we all became embarrassed and remained silent for a time. When we began talking again we were all a little cautious. We didn’t talk about women any more.
    When we neared Vernon Avenue I asked them where they were going and they said down to Warner’s at Seventh and Hill. I took them down and dropped them in front of the box office. They thanked me and went off. I kept over to San Pedro and turned south. It was two-thirty when I got home. Henry had already left for work and Ella Mae had taken the baby out for a sunning.
    I took a shower, shaved, put on slacks, sport shirt, and sandals; got my .38 Special out of the bottom bureau drawer, checked to see that it was loaded, went out, and got in my car and drove over to Central to get some gas. I put the gun in the glove compartment and left the car in the station for Buddy to check over while I strolled down past the Dunbar Hotel.
    I felt tall, handsome, keen. I was bareheaded and my hair felt good in the sun. A little black girl in a pink draped slack suit with a thick red mouth and kinky curled hair switched by. I smelled her dime-store perfume and got a live-wire edge.
    Everything was sharper. Even Central Avenue smelled better. I strolled among the loungers in front of Skippy’s, leaned against the wall, and watched the babes go by. A white woman in a Ford roadster with the top down slowed for the traffic and a black boy called, ‘Hello, blondy!’ She didn’t look around.
    Tia Juana pulled up in his long green Cat and parked in a No Parking zone. He got out, a short, squat, black, harelipped Negro with a fine banana-skin chick on his arm, and went into the hotel, and some stud said, ‘Light, bright, and damn near white; how does that nigger do it?’
    A bunch of weed-heads were seeing how dirty they could talk; and a couple of prosperous-looking pimps were standing near by ignoring them. Some raggedy chum came from the barber shop across the street where they had a crap game in the rear and said that Seattle had won two grand. The coloured cop grabbed him for jay-walking and started writing out a ticket; and he was there trying to talk him out of it: ‘You know me, man, I’m ol’ Joe; everybody know ol’ Joe—’ Everybody but that cop, that is.
    It was a slick, niggerish block—hustlers and pimps, gamblers and stooges. But it didn’t ruffle me. Even the solid cats in their pancho conks didn’t ruffle me. It wasn’t as if I was locked up down there as I’d been just yesterday. I was free to go now; but I liked it with my folks.
    A couple of my boys came up. ‘You still on rubber, man?’ one wanted to know.
    ‘That’s right,’ I said.
    ‘Say, run me out to Hollywood, man.’ It was twelve miles to Hollywood. I laughed.
    ‘Don’t pay no ‘tention to that nigger, man,’ the other one said. ‘That nigger’s mad. Lemme take a sawbuck, man. I got a lain hooked down here and all he needs is digging.’
    ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Try a fool.’
    They