XXIII

In the small back room of Pat’s place, the regular evening blackjack game was in session. A green shaded electric light hung low over an oval dining-room table covered with a dishonorably discharged brown army blanket. Around it a dozen players sat and around them a dozen side-betters stood. The room was full of men, and smoke and low talk.

The dealer, standing, taunted the players in a soft, half plaintive voice:

“What’s your contribution, friend? Only a half? Can’t buy the sweet mamma shoes on four-bit bets. How much to you, dumb-and-ugly? One buck, right. Next? A dollar and a dime to Jinx, the freckle-face wonder⁠—dime’s for luck⁠—my luck. How ’bout you, Squatty? Make it light on y’self. Two-dollar bills is bad luck, you know. Wha’ d’ y’ say, Stud? The rest of it? Nineteen bucks four bits to you. Deal it? Consider it doled. Perfect, gentlemen, perfect.”

He had dealt each player a card as he spoke. Now he dealt them each another, renoting the amounts of their bets as the second card fell. He put down the rest of the deck, picked up his own two cards and, holding them close to his chest to prevent his neighbors’ seeing them, studied them long and hard. Suddenly he warned with exaggerated malignancy⁠—“Don’t a man move!⁠—knew I’d turn the bug on you dinkies this time!” And he threw down an ace and a jack, the supreme combination.

He was collecting his winnings when Shine came in, edging sidewise through the crowd. Finding no place available at the table, Shine would have ordinarily lifted some player out by the collar, thanked him with a grin, and assumed his place. Tonight he simply looked on. Had anyone else appropriated valuable space just to look on without betting, there would have been trouble; first gentle hints about how crowded it was, then less gentle hints about the value of fresh air to kibitzers, and finally, if the offender was especially dense, an ultimatum suggesting that he try the pool room or the roof. Nobody however, manifested a trace of annoyance at Shine’s profitless presence.

As for Shine, he felt tonight a new exhilaration, a satisfying ability to fill his lungs, a conscious, pitying superiority over these companions of his. For to him, through Linda and after considerable meditation, had come a new outlook on old things. He had finally been able to phrase it for himself in terms that brought it home to him, terms that made it ridiculous to feel shame for having let Merrit off unpunished. He put it thus:

“The guy that’s really hard is the guy that’s hard enough to be soft.”

That about got it. That covered him. That made him unafraid to do what he damned pleased in any situation. If he felt like letting a bird off, he was big enough to do it. Hitherto he’d been like a little shrimp that dares not go without a gun or a knife, only his size and strength had taken the place of the weapon. Sort of coward, sure ’nough⁠—no wonder it made Lindy sore. She sure had got him told, too. Sure had⁠—some kid, no lie. Funny he never could see it before⁠—the walls of Jericho. Lindy⁠—Judas Priest⁠—he’d forgotten to ask where she was going from the hospital. Dumbbell. Well he’d find out. Gee, what a feeling! Boy! Like a port-wine drunk⁠—

He saw the men ’round about anew⁠—lean and long bodies, thick and short, round heads, egg heads, bullet heads, steeple heads, thick lips stuck out, thin lips drawn in, skins black, brown, tan, yellow. He picked out two or three strangers, conjectured about their occupations. This lopsided one was undoubtedly a waiter, that plump cocoa one a porter, the bald, custard one whose cheeks had been left in the oven a trifle too long a⁠—Well, what the hell else were boogies but waiters and porters?

In this superior frame of mind, he was not at all prepared for what he was now to learn.

Wearying of the turn of cards, the stereotyped comments of players, the occasional deft, furtive exchanges between collaborating cheaters, Shine waded out into the pool room, where the air was a trifle less thick. Here the talk was loud and the laughter unmuffled; the clack and clatter of pool balls, the thump of cue sticks, the eager shuffle of players’ feet, freed this room of the covert atmosphere oppressing the other.

As Shine abandoned the game room he encountered Patmore who was coming toward it; and he was a little surprised to observe Patmore quite so drunk. A slick coat of sweat made Pat’s face shine as though it had been greased; his eyes, also, were unusually bright and his manner a trifle too genial.

“Hello, Mr. Jones!” he greeted Shine. “What’s Mr. Jones gonna say tonight?” And Shine felt a vague disproportionate annoyance at the ironic form of address. He brushed past with a noncommittal response, while Pat stood back, turned to watch him pass, and grinned derisively: “Must be turnin’ dickty.”

Shine ignored this as he had ignored Pat himself ever since the dance. He found a cue stick and an empty table and proceeded to amuse himself solitaire. He had hardly racked-’em-up when Bubber appeared at his side.

“Come ’eh,” Bubber said. “Come listen to this.” And Joshua Jones went and listened.

Pat was proclaiming to all his friends in the game room:

“Yassir. Fair and square, that’s Henry Patmore. Anything you do for him, he’s gonna do for you. Good or bad, don’t make no difference. You know what the man says⁠—as ye sow so shall ye reap. You see me go⁠—I’ll see you go. You put it on me, I’ll put it on you. Sooner or later. Don’t make no difference⁠—sooner or later, thass all. Five years ago, I tell y’, this dickty⁠—dickty, mind y’⁠—put it on me, see? Cost me damn near all I had. Ten thousand Got-damn dollars. Cost me that to stay out o’ jail. Yassir⁠—ten thousand berries. Well⁠—thass aw right. Jes’ go up on Court Avenue and look at his house now. Huh. Thought I’d forgot it, see? So damn smart, movin’ in ’mongst d’ fays. Fay nigger. Movin’ in ’mongst d’ white folks. Well, d’ white folks sho’ give ’im a welcome. Jes’ go up on Court Avenue and see what d’ white folks done. White folks. Yea. Henry Patmore⁠—white folks. Hah!⁠—damn if this ain’t d’ first time in my life I ever passed for white.”

The players were giving Patmore only divided attention. They had heard such proclamations before, and no particular example of any of Pat’s special excellences could be expected wholly to detract them from their game. But at this moment the dealer, who was still standing, caught sight of Shine looming in the doorway; and the dealer became fixed as suddenly as a figure in a cinema when the projector abruptly stops; fixed in the act of dealing, with his thumb at his lip and the deck in his hand, his eyes wide, set, unmoving.

All the men turned and looked. What they saw affected them differently. The dealer, now like an actor in a slow motion picture, his eyes still set on Shine, put the deck down on the table, gathered up the bank without looking at it, and retreated toward the far door of the room, which led into the saloon. Those nearest him seized their piles and moved in the same direction, as if the dealer were attached to them, drawing them along by strings. The lopsided waiter backed terrified against the wall and stood there as if stuck, while the plump cocoa porter, his eyes on Shine, clawed absently and futilely at the place on the blanket where his pile should have been, and made no effort to rise. Some pushed back their chairs and yet seemed too fascinated to get out of them, some jumped up and elbowed their way through the midst of their slowly retreating comrades, while a few sat quite still as if aware that the effort to get clear of danger was useless. All this because of what even the blindest of them saw in the face of Shine.

Not slowly, first with doubt, then with mounting conviction, had revelation come to Shine this time; not as in the case of the ruined house, nor of the sobbing Merrit, nor of Linda’s analysis of his hardness. Not so, but instantaneously, like something revealed by lightning in the dark⁠—the moment he heard Patmore’s words he knew all of what had happened; knew who had craftily sent Merrit that fake warning the day before the lawyer moved in; knew who had thus established an alibi, awaiting an opportune moment to strike safely when suspicion would fall elsewhere. Knew who, finding Linda alone, had renewed the advances which had been interrupted at the Manhattan Casino dance; knew all Pat’s motives and all his moves, from the unsuccessful attempt months ago to enlist his own aid as an “agent” to this last vicious spiteful snap at him himself, through Linda. And it seemed that all the hatred he had ever felt for anybody welled up within him to be concentrated now on Henry Patmore alone: his hatred of the asylum superintendent, of the fay who had called him Shine, of all fays, of the evil thing he’d escaped in pianos, of dickties in general and the blameless dickty Merrit in particular⁠—all these now gathered in one single wave, advanced in one tidal onrush. And all that he knew and felt gleamed in his bronze face.

Patmore saw it there and confessed everything by reaching for his gun. Jinx, one of those who had not moved from his seat at the table, was near enough to strike at Pat’s arm as the weapon went off. Shine felt his left hand go numb, felt his hatred break into action. All of a sudden he became a madman with no notion of what he was doing, with no sustained consciousness, only a succession of fragments that thumped in his head.

Linda resting comfortably. Merrit crying like a baby. Picture of his mother. Fays sure got him. Fays? Fays hell⁠—Patmore got ’im. Wonder how many kinds of a jackass that guy thinks I am⁠—? Never seen a man catch air so fast. Walls tumblin’⁠—damn if they ain’t. Offered me twenty-five dollars⁠—no⁠—Linda. Fly guy, passing for white. Assault with intent⁠—not Merrit⁠—Patmore. Patmore done it⁠—did it. Not the fays⁠—Patmore. Patmore put it on Merrit. Like this⁠—Walls⁠—haw!⁠—damn right, walls⁠—look at ’em fall⁠—let ’em raise hell when they fall⁠—like that Goddamn piano⁠—

From the saloon room a few observers, some of them those who’d escaped the game room but had in intention of sacrificing the spectacle of a good fight, watched the tumult grow. The game room door had been shut tight behind them, but the wide passage between the saloon and the pool parlor revealed a part view of the latter; and presently forms came into sight, were framed in the doorway, vanished, returned for brief moments. The field of vision was maddeningly small, but it showed that more men than Pat and Shine had become involved in the battle. Those who watched could not know that when Jinx had knocked Pat’s gun out of line, an adjacent friend of Pat’s had seized Jinx and retaliatively yanked him back; that Bubber had cheerfully kicked the shins of another interferer who would otherwise have tripped Shine at his first move; an interferer who resented interference and so promptly turned on Bubber; that from such small beginnings the conflict had grown to a come-one-come-all fracas, and that Jinx and Bubber were gleefully trouncing some of those who would have enjoyed seeing them trounce each other not long since.

Unintelligible, fragmentary glimpses came through the too narrow doorway⁠—Bubber ducking a cue stick, swung butt-end-to in a villainous arc⁠—somebody reaching for a pool ball in a corner of the one visible table⁠—a figure pitching forward headlong out of sight⁠—Jinx with a pianohold, vehemently bending his particular adversary back across the edge of the table⁠—wild swings of bodiless arms, senseless twist and tangle of disjointed legs and feet. Accompanying these glimpses, noise, a strident yet muffled tumult: shuffle of feet, grunts, curses, thumps, thwacks, hisses, stifled cries; a deep background of sound against which stood out an occasional wooden crash.

And now there swept into the doorway, framed as if by stage design, that pair of antagonists from whom all the others derived their energies, the two whose bitterness reduced the rest of the conflict to mere friendly tiff. Patmore, ordinarily no mean combatant, now gin-mighty and frantic with fright; and Shine, a gigantic madman, himself heedless of what everyone else saw: that his useless left hand was an impediment to himself and a decided advantage to Pat, a more than equalizing damage and all that had prolonged the battle.

They had lost their coats and clawed each other’s shirts into shreds, and though Pat had been shiny at first, he now glistened no more than Shine. Shine however, maintaining himself with one arm, gave the superior impression: blocked knee-jabs, anticipated kicks, foiled elbow-thrusts, invalidated all the other man’s rough-and-tumble skill. Even in the short time and brief space of this doorway view, one could see that all of Pat’s effort was maximum, final, as though he were trusting each blow to be decisive; while Shine’s every move only anticipated some future stroke that he knew would be wholly crushing. Every instant, every buffet seemed to enlarge his ominous intent; his purpose mounted visibly, so that those who watched saw in him not merely one crippled yet splendid in battle, but a towering, inescapable instrument of vengeance.

The end came suddenly. Had Pat been less of a toper and less of a jiver, it might have been different; but in a prolonged encounter these handicaps of his were far more telling than Shine’s. A thrust from the latter’s bare left shoulder sent Pat’s head back like a blow from a fist. It snapped away the last of his reserve, and of a sudden his whole body sagged as if his spine were broken. Clinging to Shine like a man slipping down a tree trunk, he sank to the floor on his knees, and his head remained sprung back like the open lid of a box. This was the moment that Shine had seemed to be awaiting; his fist hip-high, he deliberately drew back his right arm to strike the exposed throat. Every observer knew that if that blow should land Pat’s neck would be broken.

It did not land. Some friend of Pat’s in the room beyond hurled a pool ball at the imminent victor. The heavy ivory sphere missed its mark, sped through the doorway and over the observers’ heads, shattering the great bar mirror behind them.

The crash and jangle of the falling glass wall was all that snatched Shine out of madness. The sound transfixed him as if all the walls of the place had tumbled instead of just one. He stood set, motionless, blinked once or twice and stared a long moment at Pat.

Only then, perhaps, did he actually see him, on his knees, gasping, helpless. Presently the poised, retracted arm began to relax; the tension went out of Shine’s frame. His head sank a little forward, and his good arm slowly dropped to his side, as limp as its useless fellow.