Chester Himes

The Something in a Colored Man

Originally published in Esquire, January 1946

WHEN MAC TURNED from 42nd onto Central Avenue, a gang of cats in front of the
Down Beat had it and gone—“…cut that chump a coffin caper—a duster-buster … bust
his heart-string two-way side and flat … two to one it was a broad; it was a broad what
cut him, now I say it was a broad what shot him…”

Everywhere he’d been that day, they’d been talking about it—all up and down the
Avenue, at the Dunbar Grill and the Chicken Shack, at Pogue’s Bar-b-coo and Sonny’s
Billiard Parlor “…old slick got it at last….” Somebody had lowered the boom on one
Harold Rivers, a slim dark boy with a mellow voice, L.A.’s gift to the juke boxers, idol
of the tall tan blondes. Fifteen minutes after he’d done his final number at the Cotton
Club, he was opening the door of his Kitty parked around the corner of 43rd Street,
when somebody walked up behind him and played I’ll Walk Alone in his back with a
.32. Now they were all gabbing, some crowing, some weeping—the slicks and the
squares, the janes and the jills.

It did Mac good to hear them. Right back of him was the memory of Hal taking his fine
banana skin chick away from him, and her slipping away in the dead of the night with
his stash of hard-saved layers. It pacified his mind.

He whistled a sharp, high-breaking scale of “If You Can’t Smile And Say Yes … ”,
shrugged his tan and green jacket snug about his thin bony shoulders, fingered the collar
of his maroon sport shirt, hitched up his solid draped hunter’s green slacks, minced
across the Avenue on his tan and white kicks like a hundred dollar winner in a penny
crap game, pushed into the Last Word, straddled a stool and ordered Scotch.

They were talking about it there, the bartender and three jills perched on stools across
the circular bar… “It was some old jealous nigger,” a jill was saying. “No woman
would shoot that man…”

His little monkey eyes were glassy red in the dim bar light and his rough black skin was
purple. But he had a wide sardonic smile that was white from jaw to jaw.

“You hear ’bout Hal?” the guy next to him asked.

“What about him?”

“He been shot! Ain’t you heard?”

“I heard that. What I wanna know is what about him now?”

The guy turned and gave him a look. “Ain’t nothin’ ’bout him now but he dead.
Ev’body wanna know who done it.”

Across the bar a jill said, “The world’s gone mad…”

Mac paid for his drink and went out. Riotous colored people in their riotous colored
garb surged up and down the sidewalk, in and out of the joints, jabbering and
gesticulating, crowing and crying, all talking about it. A sudden yen for limelight
needle-pricked excitement through the beat of Mac’s mind. Saucy brown mamas, bold-
eyed, sway-hipped and provocative, switched by, filling the sultry summer night with a
swelling sensuousness. The impulse to go tell the police what they all wanted to know,
to grab the center of the stage and give out, grew in him, built up in his mind. All his
life he’d wanted to be a crooner and now he could sing his song.

But he wasn’t ready yet. He suckered his knowledge like a dog a bone, savored it,
chewed it like as cud, swallowed it and belched it up and chewed it again. Feeling nine
foot tall. He’d tell ’em all right, but he wasn’t ready yet.

At the barbeque joint he turned in and ordered, “Skeleton of poke with the liquid fire.”

Next to him a guy pushed back his empty plate and said, “Look, poppa, I got two cubes
of sugar here. I’ll give you one and I’ll keep one. Take airn one you choose. I’ll bet you
ten bucks a fly lights on mine before it do on yourn.”

“It’s a bet,” Mac said, taking a cube of sugar.

When the fly lit on Mac’s cube first, he thought even the flies knew who he was.

Before the guy paid off he cursed out the fly, swatting at it with his hand. “Dare you
goes, you black bilker. You been here drinkin’ my coffee and eatin’ my mean and
suckin’ my blood for de past half hour and now when I wants you to have some of my
sugar, what does you do? Go lookin’ somewheres else.” Then he had to laugh.
“Somebody shot Hal Rivers and dey’ll swat you too.”

It built up in Mac again, stirred a crazy rashness in his mind—to go tell the police who
done it. He could hardly wait to eat his ribs.

But outside again, he wasn’t ready yet. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he
was waiting. Down the street was the red neon sign of Jack and Jim’s. He headed there.

A big tough dame sitting beside him began to tell him the history of her life …

“Yass, but Ah left dat nigger. Dat nigger was too much for me. Ah didn’t mind so much
him kickin’ me in de face w’en he knocked me down but w’en he start chasin’ me up’n
down de street wid de ax. Ah left ’im…”

Mac ordered another shot of rye with a beer chaser and asked politely, “Then what’d
you do?”
“Den dare Ah wuz, done jes got rid of one no-good nigger. An’ what Ah do? Go git
mahself anothern…”

Mac drank his rye and sipped his beer. “Then what’d you do?” he asked.

“Well, first Ah hit ’im over de haid with de iron skillet,” she said. “Dat stunned ’im.
Den Ah stuck ’im with de butcher knife.”

“Did you hurt him?” Mac asked.

“Ah didn’ miss it,” she said.

“He didn’t die, did he?”

“He didn’t live/”

“I gotta go,” he said, getting up.

“Wut’s de hurry?” she asked, trying to grab hold of him.

“I gotta see a man about a grave,” he cracked.

It came back, ate into him, gnawed at him—go tell the police who done it…. But
something held him.

He went out, walked up 42nd Street to Bessie’s. The house was full of people, gambling.
He stopped at a table of six women. Two of them were showing down their hands. One
had the seven of spades, the trey of hearts, the six of clubs, the nine of diamonds, and
the queen of spades.

She said, “I got a royal spade flush.”

The other one had the five of hearts the king of clubs, the eight of hearts, the ace of
spades, and the jack of diamonds.

“I got you beat,” she said. “I got a heart royal.”

“How you git that way?” the first woman challenged. “A spade royal is de highest.”

“Not in poker it ain’t,” the other one argued. “A heart is the highest in poker.”

The first one looked up and saw Mac. “What’s the highest hand in poker?” she asked
him. “A spade royal or a heart royal?”

“Before I answers,” Mac replied. “Just what is you-all playing.”

“Oh, we’re playing poker, dealer’s choice,” the first woman replied. “I just dealt a hand
with everything wild but the deuces.”
“In a case like that,” Mac said. “I better keep quiet. I ain’t gettin’ messed up with all
you women.”

“You got more sense than Hal Rivers then,” a third woman said.

Everytime he heard the name, it put him on the go. He turned and started out. A crowd
of guys at the door blocked his way. Two guys were arguing and the rest ringed them in.

One was saying, “I bet you a hundred dollars I can take ten cards out a coon-can deck
and tee-roll it.”

“I bet you a hundred you can’t,” the other one said.

“Put up,” the first one said.

“Put yourn up,” the second one replied.

“Ifn you gonna bet sho nuff make it a fin.”

“You must a been in my pocket, man—”

Everybody laughed. Mac pushed through, opened the door, started out. He heard
somebody say, “You niggers reminds me of Hal Rivers, more mouf than money—only
y’all ain’t dead…” kept on down the stairs, down the street, turned back onto Central.

A chick coming out the Down Beat gave him a look then drew up sharp and did a
double-take. She was a tall Peola with a pageboy bob, light, bright, but not quite white,
dressed in a pink draped dress that cost forty bucks. He oughta know, he bought it.

“Lonesome?” he cracked in a signifying voice.

“Not for you, nigger,” she spat at him. “When I left you I was through burning coal.”

“I didn’t mean for me. I meant for your honey-boy, so tall and so sharp and—so dead!”

Suddenly she burst out crying. “Honey, don’t be so mean.”

Every time she used to cry, it used to cost him plenty. Now it wasn’t gonna cost him
one red cent. He knew then that was all he’d been waiting for—to see that chick shed
some tears for free. Sweat popped out on his face, underneath his naps, ran down his
back and chest like the four rivers. He was ready now—solid ready.

He turned quickly, jumped into the black and white cab that had just unloaded, said to
the driver, “Take me to the Central Police Station, Jaxon.”

There was drama in his swagger as he walked toward the desk, pride in his voice when
he said, “I shot Hal Rivers, the bastard.” Boasting. He felt big, important, strictly fine,
like a man on a tree-top gage.
But days of waiting for the gas up in San Quentin’s death row sobered him. There were
nights he used to lie and wonder what it was that got in a man that made him tell on his
own damn self.