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Authors: Lawrence Block
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arms,” Jenkins said. “You read the Constitution, that’s right in there. Right to bear arms.”
“Those do-gooders in Washington, what do they know about any Constitution?”
Jenkins extended his tongue, worried his upper lip. He said, “Say, do me a favor? Just turn the bolt on that door and tug the shade down. Won’t be any business this hour anyhow. Thanks. You know, Ben, this ain’t Clay County or Hamblen County neither, but there’s still folks up here think this ought to be a free country. You come on back a minute.”
The girl wore a loose-fitting African robe and a pair of leather sandals. Her hair was in a natural, a tight cap of black curls. She set three plates of food on the card table. The men did not speak to her or she to them. She left the room.
The smaller of the two men, whose name was Charles Mbora, forked okra into his mouth, chewed meticulously, swallowed. “Soul food,” he announced. “Honkie got no soul. Honkie eats dead food, has dead white skin and a dead soul inside him. Dead heart and dead soul. You know how he stays on his feet?”
Howard Simmons nodded. “Steals our soul.”
“Sucks it like a vampire. Our blood and our heart and our soul. They trying to kill us now, you believe it, brother, they got the gas ovens built and ready. What the honkie don’t know is kill us and he dies. He lives on us, brother. We die and he starves. No blood left to suck, no heart to suck, no soul to suck, and the honkie, he plainly starves to death.”
The third man, black as coal, fat as Buddha, said nothing. He had not said a word in Simmons’ presence, and Simmons had been with him and Mbora for three hours, first in the coffee shop on Atlantic Boulevard and now on the fifth floor of a rat-infested tenement in the heart of the Newark ghetto. Soul food, he thought. The day they closed the deal on the house, he gave Esther an order: no black-eyed peas, no okra, no chitlings, no mountain oysters, and for the love of God no collard greens. Colored greens, that’s what they ought to be called. “No nigger food,” he told her, watching her wince at the word. “And I say that because that’s what it is. Three hundred years our people ate that garbage because it was what was left. Everybody knew it was only fit for niggers. Mountain oysters—those are pig’s testicles, and it says something about a man if he’ll eat that kind of thing. Nigger food. You know what I want? I want my children to grow up not knowing what nigger food tastes like.”
Now, he thought, it was soul food. It was black people’s food and you were supposed to be proud you were black. He knew they needed it, needed this pride, and walking these murderous streets and seeing the homes and smelling the stench of the hallways—God, the stench of the hallways—well, they were welcome to whatever pride they could find.
Not for him. He had all the pride he needed in being Howard Simmons. He had such a soulful pride in his own self that he didn’t need to be proud of being black or eating collard greens or listening to soul music. He listened to Ray Charles and Otis Redding because they were good, damn it, and he listened to Vladimir Horowitz and the Budapest String Quartet for the same reason, and he thought Mahalia Jackson was talented but boring and that Moms Mabley was a dirty old lady, which perhaps made him a prude and a square, but that was the way he was. He had his pride in his home and his yard and his wife and his children and himself and the money he made with his hands and his brains. That was pride enough for him.
He finished the food on his plate, though. He didn’t like it and never would, but now he ate it and pretended to like it.
Mbora was saying, “And something else. Two men, and one is sucking the other’s blood, and what has you got? The one is evil and the other is a fool, and the fool deserves the evil that is visited down upon him. The willing victim is as bad as the villain. Those Jews
“Those do-gooders in Washington, what do they know about any Constitution?”
Jenkins extended his tongue, worried his upper lip. He said, “Say, do me a favor? Just turn the bolt on that door and tug the shade down. Won’t be any business this hour anyhow. Thanks. You know, Ben, this ain’t Clay County or Hamblen County neither, but there’s still folks up here think this ought to be a free country. You come on back a minute.”
The girl wore a loose-fitting African robe and a pair of leather sandals. Her hair was in a natural, a tight cap of black curls. She set three plates of food on the card table. The men did not speak to her or she to them. She left the room.
The smaller of the two men, whose name was Charles Mbora, forked okra into his mouth, chewed meticulously, swallowed. “Soul food,” he announced. “Honkie got no soul. Honkie eats dead food, has dead white skin and a dead soul inside him. Dead heart and dead soul. You know how he stays on his feet?”
Howard Simmons nodded. “Steals our soul.”
“Sucks it like a vampire. Our blood and our heart and our soul. They trying to kill us now, you believe it, brother, they got the gas ovens built and ready. What the honkie don’t know is kill us and he dies. He lives on us, brother. We die and he starves. No blood left to suck, no heart to suck, no soul to suck, and the honkie, he plainly starves to death.”
The third man, black as coal, fat as Buddha, said nothing. He had not said a word in Simmons’ presence, and Simmons had been with him and Mbora for three hours, first in the coffee shop on Atlantic Boulevard and now on the fifth floor of a rat-infested tenement in the heart of the Newark ghetto. Soul food, he thought. The day they closed the deal on the house, he gave Esther an order: no black-eyed peas, no okra, no chitlings, no mountain oysters, and for the love of God no collard greens. Colored greens, that’s what they ought to be called. “No nigger food,” he told her, watching her wince at the word. “And I say that because that’s what it is. Three hundred years our people ate that garbage because it was what was left. Everybody knew it was only fit for niggers. Mountain oysters—those are pig’s testicles, and it says something about a man if he’ll eat that kind of thing. Nigger food. You know what I want? I want my children to grow up not knowing what nigger food tastes like.”
Now, he thought, it was soul food. It was black people’s food and you were supposed to be proud you were black. He knew they needed it, needed this pride, and walking these murderous streets and seeing the homes and smelling the stench of the hallways—God, the stench of the hallways—well, they were welcome to whatever pride they could find.
Not for him. He had all the pride he needed in being Howard Simmons. He had such a soulful pride in his own self that he didn’t need to be proud of being black or eating collard greens or listening to soul music. He listened to Ray Charles and Otis Redding because they were good, damn it, and he listened to Vladimir Horowitz and the Budapest String Quartet for the same reason, and he thought Mahalia Jackson was talented but boring and that Moms Mabley was a dirty old lady, which perhaps made him a prude and a square, but that was the way he was. He had his pride in his home and his yard and his wife and his children and himself and the money he made with his hands and his brains. That was pride enough for him.
He finished the food on his plate, though. He didn’t like it and never would, but now he ate it and pretended to like it.
Mbora was saying, “And something else. Two men, and one is sucking the other’s blood, and what has you got? The one is evil and the other is a fool, and the fool deserves the evil that is visited down upon him. The willing victim is as bad as the villain. Those Jews
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