Blind Man With a Pistol Read Free

overlook the fact that every living person has two beings, the physical and the spiritual, and neither has ascendancy over the other; they could, at best, and with rigid discipline, be carefully separated -- which was what he had succeeded doing with his wives. All right, all right, but why didn't his children wear clothes? Why, it was more comfortable without them, and clothes cost money. And eat at tables, like human beings, with knives and forks? Knives and forks cost money, and troughs were more expedient; surely, as white gentlemen and officers of the law, they should understand just what he meant.
          The twelve cops reddened to a man. The sergeant, doing most of the questioning, took another tack. What did you want another wife for? Reverend Sam looked up in amazement from beneath his old drooping lids. What a curious question, sir. Shall I answer it? Again the sergeant reddened. Listen, uncle, we're not playing. Neither am I, I assure you, sir. Well, then, what happened to the last one? What last one, sir? The one who died. She died, sir. How, Goddammit? Dead, sir. For what reason? The Lord willed it, sir. Now, listen here, uncle, you're just making it hard on yourself; what was her disease, er, ailment, er, the cause of her death? Childbirth. How old did you say you were? About a hundred, as far as I can determine. All right, you're a hundred; now what did you do with her? We buried her. Where? In the ground. Now listen here, uncle, there are laws about burials; did you have a permit? There are laws for white folks and laws for black folks, sir. All right, all right, but these laws come from God. Which God? There's a white God and there's a black God.
          By then, the sergeant had lost his patience. The police continued their investigation without Reverend Sam's assistance. In due course they learned that the household was supported by the wives walking the streets of Harlem, dressed as nuns, begging alms. They also discovered three suspicious-looking mounds in the dirt cellar, which, upon being opened, revealed the remains of three female bodies.
     
     
    2
     
          It was 2 a.m. in Harlem and it was hot. Even if you couldn't feel it, you could tell it by the movement of the people. Everybody was limbered up, glands lubricated, brains ticking over like a Singer sewing-machine. Everybody was ahead of the play. There wasn't but one square in sight. He was a white man.
          He stood well back in the recessed doorway of the United Tobacco store at the northwest corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, watching the sissies frolic about the lunch counter in the Theresa building on the opposite corner. The glass doors had been folded back and the counter was open to the sidewalk.
          The white man was excited by the sissies. They were colored and mostly young. They all had straightened hair, conked like silk, waving like the sea; long false eyelashes fringing eyes ringed in mascara; and big cushiony lips painted tan. Their eyes looked naked, brazen, debased, unashamed; they had the greedy look of a sick gourmet. They wore tight-bottomed pastel pants and short-sleeved sport shirts revealing naked brown arms. Some sat to the counter on the high stools, others leaned on their shoulders. Their voices trilled, their bodies moved, their eyes rolled, they twisted their hips suggestively. Their white teeth flashed in brown sweaty faces, their naked eyes steamed in black cups of mascara. They touched one another lightly with their fingertips, compulsively, exclaiming in breathless falsetto, "Girl. . . ." Their motions were wanton, indecent, suggestive of an orgy taking place in their minds. The hot Harlem night had brought down their love.
          The white man watched them enviously. His body twitched as though he were standing in a hill of ants. His muscles jerked in the strangest places, one side of his face twitched, he had cramps in the right foot, his pants cut his crotch, he bit his