He picked up the razor in his right hand, gave it a little flip and the blade came open and lay back, edge out across his knuckles. He showed me his hand; the handle of the razor was in his fist, the blade was open across the knuckles, held in place by his forefinger and his thumb. The blade was solidly in place all across his fist, the edge out.
“You observe it?” George said. “Now for that great requisite skill in the use of.”
He stood up and patted out with his right hand, his fist closed, the blade open across the knuckles. The razor blade shone in the sun coming through the window. George ducked and jabbed three times with the blade. He stepped back and flicked it twice in the air. Then holding his head down and his left arm around his neck he whipped his fist and the blade back and forth, back and forth, ducking and dodging. He slashed one, two, three, four, five, six. He straightened up. His face was sweaty and he folded the razor and put it in his pocket.
“Skill in the use of,” he said. “And in the left hand preferably a pillow.”
He sat down and wiped his face. He took off his cap and wiped the leather band inside. He went over and took a drink of water.
“The razor’s a delusion,” he said. “The razor’s no defense. Anybody can cut you with a razor. If you’re close enough to cut them they’re bound to cut you. If you could have a pillow in your left hand you’d be all right. But where you going to get a pillow when you need a razor? Who you going to cut in bed? The razor’s a delusion, Jimmy. It’s a nigger weapon. A regular nigger weapon. But now you know how they use it. Bending a razor back over the hand is the only progress the nigger ever made. Only nigger ever knew how to defend himself was Jack Johnson and they put him in Leavenworth. And what would I do to Jack Johnson with a razor. It none of it makes any difference, Jimmy. All you get in this life is a point of view. Fellows like me and the chef got a point of view. Even if he’s got a wrong point of view he’s better off. A nigger gets delusions like old Jack or Marcus Garvey and they put him in the pen. Look where my delusion about the razor would take me. Nothing’s got any value, Jimmy. Liquor makes you feel like I’ll feel in an hour. You and me aren’t even friends.”
“Yes we are.”
“Good old Jimmy,” he said. “Look at the deal they gave this poor old Tiger Flowers. If he was white he’d have made a million dollars.”
“Who was he?”
“He was a fighter. A damn good fighter.”
“What did they do to him?”
“They just took him down the road in one way or another all the time.”
“It’s a shame,” I said.
“Jimmy, there’s nothing to the whole business. You get syphed up from women or if you’re married your wife’ll run around. In the railroad business you’re away from home nights. The kind of a girl you want is the kind of a girl that’ll jig you because she can’t help it. You want her because she can’t help it and you lose her because she can’t help it and a man’s only got so many orgasms to his whole life and what difference does it make when you feel worse after liquor.”
“Don’t you feel all right?”
“No I don’t. I feel bad. If I didn’t feel bad I wouldn’t talk that way.”
“My father feels bad sometimes too in the morning.”
“He does?”
“Sure.”
“What does he do for it?”
“He exercises.”
“Well, I got twenty-four berths to make up. Maybe that’s the solution.”
It was a long day on the train after the rain started. The rain made the windows of the train wet so you could not see outside clearly and then it made everything outside look the same anyway. We went through many towns and cities but it was raining in all of them and when we crossed the Hudson River at Albany it was raining hard. I stood out in the vestibule and George opened the door so I could see out but there was only the wet iron of the bridge and the rain coming down into the river and the train with water dripping. It smelled good outside though. It was a fall rain and the air coming in through the open door smelled fresh and like wet wood and iron and it felt like fall up at the lake. There were plenty of other people in the car but none of them looked very interesting. A nice looking woman asked me to sit down next to her and I did but she turned out to have a boy of her own just my age and was going to a place in New York to be superintendent of schools. I wished I could have gone back with George to the kitchen of the dining car and heard him talk with the chef. But during the regular daytime George talked just like anyone else, except even less, and very polite, but I noticed him drinking lots of ice water.
It had stopped raining outside but there were big clouds over the mountains. We were going along the river and the country was very beautiful and I had never seen anything like it before except in the illustrations of a book at Mrs. Kenwood’s where we used to go for Sunday dinner up at the lake. It was a big book and it was always on the parlor table and I would look at it while waiting for dinner. The engravings were like this country now after the rain with the river and the mountains going up from it and the grey stone. Sometimes there would be a train across on the other side of the river. The leaves on the trees were turned by the fall and sometimes you saw the river through the branches of the trees and it did not seem old and like the illustrations but instead it seemed like a place to live in and where you could fish and eat your lunch and watch the train go by. But mostly it was dark and unreal and sad and strange and classical like the engravings. That may have been because it was just after a rain and the sun had not come out. When the wind blows the leaves off the trees they are cheerful and good to walk through and the trees are the same, only they are without leaves. But when the leaves fall from the rain they are dead and wet and flat to the ground and the trees are changed and wet and unfriendly. It was very beautiful coming along the Hudson but it was the son of thing I did not know about and it made me wish we were back at the lake. It gave me the same feeling that the engravings in the book did and the feeling was confused with the room where I always looked at the book and it being someone else’s house and before dinner and wet trees after the rain and the time in the north when the fall is over and it is wet and cold and the birds are gone and the woods are no more fun to walk in and it rains and you want to stay inside with a fire. I do not suppose I thought of all those things because I have never thought much and never in words but it was the feeling of all those things that the country along the Hudson River gave me. The rain can make all places strange, even places where you live.
Black Ass at the Cross Roads
“Black Ass at the Cross Roads,” a completed short story, was written between the end of World War II and 1961.
WE HAD REACHED THE CROSS ROADS before noon and had shot a French civilian by mistake. He had run across the field on our right beyond the farmhouse when he saw the first jeep come up. Claude had ordered him to halt and when he had kept on running across the field Red shot him. It was the first man he had killed that day and he was very pleased.
We had all thought he was a German who had stolen civilian clothes, but he turned out to be French. Anyway his papers were French and they said he was from Soissons.
“Sans doute c’était un Collabo,” Claude said.
“He ran, didn’t he?” Red asked. “Claude told him to halt in good French.”
“Put him in the game book as a Collabo,” I said. “Put his papers back on him.”
“What was he doing up here if he comes from Soissons?” Red asked. “Soissons’s way the hell back.”
“He fled ahead of our troops because he was a collaborator,” Claude explained.
“He’s got a mean face.” Red looked down at him.
“You spoiled it a little,” I said. “Listen, Claude. Put the papers back and leave the money.”
“Someone else will take it.”
“You won’t take it,” I said. “There will be plenty of money coming through on Krauts.”
Then I told them where to pu
t the two vehicles and where to set up shop and sent Onèsime across the field to cross the two roads and get into the shuttered estaminet and find out what had gone through on the escape-route road.
Quite a little had gone through, always on the road to the right. I knew plenty more had to come through and I paced the distances back from the road to the two traps we had set up. We were using Kraut weapons so the noise would not alarm them if anyone heard the noise coming up on the cross roads. We set the traps well beyond the cross roads so that we would not louse up the cross roads and make it look like a shambles. We wanted them to hit the cross roads fast and keep coming.
“It is a beautiful guet-apens,” Claude said and Red asked me what was that. I told him it was only a trap as always. Red said he must remember the word. He now spoke his idea of French about half the time and if given an order perhaps half the time he would answer in what he thought was French. It was comic and I liked it.
It was a beautiful late summer day and there were very few more to come that summer. We lay where we had set up and the two vehicles covered us from behind the manure pile. It was a big rich manure pile and very solid and we lay in the grass behind the ditch and the grass smelled as all summers smell and the two trees made a shade over each trap. Perhaps I had set up too close but you cannot ever be too close if you have fire power and the stuff is going to come through fast. One hundred yards is all right. Fifty yards is ideal. We were closer than that. Of course in that kind of thing it always seems closer.
Some people would disagree with this setup. But we had to figure to get out and back and keep the road as clean looking as possible. There was nothing much you could do about vehicles, but other vehicles coming would normally assume they had been destroyed by aircraft. On this day, though, there was no aircraft. But nobody coming would know there had not been aircraft through here. Anybody making their run on an escape route sees things differently too.
“Mon Capitaine,” Red said to me. “If the point comes up they will not shoot the shit out of us when they hear these Kraut weapons?”
“We have observation on the road where the point will come from the two vehicles. They’ll flag them off. Don’t sweat.”
“I am not sweating,” Red said. “I have shot a proved collaborator. The only thing we have killed today and we will kill many Krauts in this setup. Pas vrai, Onie?”
Onèsime said, “Merde” and just then we heard a car coming very fast. I saw it come down the beech-tree bordered road. It was an overloaded grey-green camouflaged Volkswagen and it was filled with steel-helmeted people looking as though they were racing to catch a train. There were two aiming stones by the side of the road that I had taken from a wall by the farm, and as the Volkswagen crossed the notch of the cross roads and came toward us on the good straight escape road that crossed in front of us and led up a hill, I said to Red, “Kill the driver at the first stone.” To Onèsime I said, “Traverse at body height.”
The Volkswagen driver had no control of his vehicle after Red shot. I could not see the expression on his face because of the helmet. His hands relaxed. They did not crisp tight nor hold on the wheel. The machine gun started firing before the driver’s hands relaxed and the car went into the ditch spilling the occupants in slow motion. Some were on the road and the second outfit gave them a small carefully hoarded burst. One man rolled over and another started to crawl and while I watched Claude shot them both.
“I think I got that driver in the head,” Red said.
“Don’t be too fancy.”
“She throws a little high at this range,” Red said. “I shot for the lowest part of him I could see.”
“Bertrand,” I called over to the second outfit. “You and your people get them off the road, please. Bring me all the Feldbuchen and you hold the money for splitting. Get them off fast. Go on and help, Red. Get them into the ditch.”
I watched the road to the west beyond the estaminet while the cleaning up was going on. I never watched the cleaning up unless I had to take part in it myself. Watching the cleaning up is bad for you. It is no worse for me than for anyone else. But I was in command.
“How many did you get, Onie?”
“All eight, I think. Hit, I mean.”
“At this range—”
“It’s not very sporting. But after all it’s their machine gun.”
“We have to get set now fast again.”
“I don’t think the vehicle is shot up badly.”
“We’ll check her afterwards.”
“Listen,” Red said. I listened, then blew the whistle twice and everybody faded back, Red hauling the last Kraut by one leg with his head shuddering and the trap was set again. But nothing came and I was worried.
We were set up for a simple job of assassination astride an escape route. We were not astride, technically, because we did not have enough people to set up on both sides of the road and we were not technically prepared to cope with armored vehicles. But each trap had two German Panzerfausten. They were much more powerful and simpler than the general-issue American bazooka, having a bigger warhead and you could throw away the launching tube; but lately, many that we had found in the German retreat had been booby-trapped and others had been sabotaged. We used only those as fresh as anything in that market could be fresh and we always asked a German prisoner to fire off samples taken at random from the lot.
German prisoners who had been taken by irregulars were often as cooperative as head waiters or minor diplomats. In general we regarded the Germans as perverted Boy Scouts. This is another way of saying they were splendid soldiers. We were not splendid soldiers. We were specialists in a dirty trade. In French we said, “un métier très sale.”
We knew, from repeated questionings, that all Germans coming through on this escape route were making for Aachen and I knew that all we killed now we would not have to fight in Aachen nor behind the West Wall. This was simple. I was pleased when anything was that simple.
The Germans we saw coming now were on bicycles. There were four of them and they were in a hurry too but they were very tired. They were not cyclist troops. They were just Germans on stolen bicycles. The leading rider saw the fresh blood on the road and then he turned his head and saw the vehicle and he put his weight hard down on his right pedal with his right boot and we opened on him and on the others. A man shot off a bicycle is always a sad thing to see, although not as sad as a horse shot with a man riding him nor a milk cow gut-shot when she walks into a fire fight. But there is something about a man shot off a bicycle at close range that is too intimate. These were four men and four bicycles. It was very intimate and you could hear the thin tragic noise the bicycles made when they went over onto the road and the heavy sound of men falling and the clatter of equipment.
“Get them off the road quick,” I said. “And hide the four vélos.”
As I turned to watch the road one of the doors of the estaminet opened and two civilians wearing caps and working clothes came out each carrying two bottles. They sauntered across the cross roads and turned to come up in the field behind the ambush. They wore sweaters and old coats, corduroy trousers and country boots.
“Keep them covered, Red,” I said. They advanced steadily and then raised the bottles high above their heads, one bottle in each hand as they came in.
“For Christ sake, get down,” I called, and they got down and came crawling through the grass with the bottles tucked under their arms.
“Nous sommes des copains,” one called in a deep voice, rich with alcohol.
“Advance, rum-dumb copains, and be recognized,” Claude answered.
“We are advancing.”
“What do you want out here in the rain?” Onèsime called.
“We bring the little presents.”
“Why didn’t you give the little presents when I was over there?” Claude asked.
“Ah, things have changed, camarade.”
“For the better?”
“Rudement,” the first rummy ca
marade said. The other, lying flat and handing us one of the bottles, asked in a hurt tone, “On dit pas bonjour aux nouveaux camarades?”
“Bonjour,” I said. “Tu veux battre?”
“If it’s necessary. But we came to ask if we might have the vélos.”
“After the fight,” I said. “You’ve made your military service?”
“Naturally.”
“Okay. You take a German rifle each and two packs of ammo and go up the road two hundred yards on our right and kill any Germans that get by us.”
“Can’t we stay with you?”
“We’re specialists,” Claude said. “Do what the captain says.”
“Get up there and pick out a good place and don’t shoot back this way.”
“Put on these arm bands,” Claude said. He had a pocket full of arm bands. “You’re Franc-tireurs.” He did not add the rest of it.
“Afterwards we can have the vélos?”
“One apiece if you don’t have to fight. Two apiece if you fight.”
“What about the money?” Claude asked. “They’re using our guns.”
“Let them keep the money.”
“They don’t deserve it.”
“Bring any money back and you’ll get your share. Allez vite. Débine-toi.”
“Ceux, sont des poivrots pourris,” Claude said.
“They had rummies in Napoleon’s time too.”
“It’s probable.”
“It’s certain,” I said. “You can take it easy on that.”
We lay in the grass and it smelled of true summer and the flies, the ordinary flies and the big blue flies started to come to the dead that were in the ditch and there were butterflies around the edges of the blood on the black-surfaced road. There were yellow butterflies and white butterflies around the blood and the streaks where the bodies had been hauled.
“I didn’t know butterflies ate blood,” Red said.
“I didn’t either.”
“Of course when we hunt it’s too cold for butterflies.”