who comes along? Let the white people get some goddamned unity.'
He gave me a funny look, 'I'm white,' he said. 'I'm not kicking you around.'
That made me blind mad for him to put me on a spot like that. I blew up. 'Dammit to hell, don't look at me!' I said. 'I believe you. Tell it to some of these crackers around here who don't. They'd refuse to work with you as quick as they would me.'
Now he got a hurt enduring look. 'Jesus Christ,' he said. 'I never saw a guy so confused.'
'Okay, I'm confused,' I said. 'I knew that was coming.' I took a breath and pinned him down. 'All I want to know are you coming with me to talk to this dame?'
'Bob, you know damned well I can't do that. I'd start-'
'Well, go to hell!' I said, and walked off.
I rubbed my face with the flat of my hand, dug my finger tips into my scalp. That guy could really get on my nerves. He could give more phoney arguments in five minutes than the average chump could think up in a day. And the hell of it was he could make a weak-minded chump fall for 'em. All I'd wanted was for him to straighten out the dame, and he'd damn near shown me where she was right and I was wrong.
Now I didn't know what to do. I hadn't turned in the timecards because I didn't want any stuff out of Kelly. I stood there on the deck for a time, looking out across the harbour. A cruiser was silhouetted against the skyline. The white folks are still going strong, I thought; then I thought about the black sailors aboard waiting on the white. In the good old American tradition, I thought; the good old American way.
My face felt drawn in, thin, skin-tight on the bone. I wondered what would happen if all the Negroes in America would refuse to serve in the armed forces, refuse to work in war production until the Jim Crow pattern was abolished. The white folks would no doubt go right on fighting the war without us, I thought-and no doubt win it. They'd kill us maybe; but they couldn't kill us all. And if they did they'd have one hell of a job of burying us.
The thought pushed a laugh through my nose, loosened me slightly, then I remembered that Mac had said I'd lose my job deferment. I'd be in there soon myself, if I didn't get my job back, I thought, looking at the long lean cruiser. I gripped the rail until my knuckles showed white through the brown, clamped my teeth until my jaws ached. I wouldn't take it, I told myself; I just wouldn't take it, that was all.
Then I thought of Alice saying, 'But it's not just you now, Bob. It's you and I… Don't you understand?' I began hurting inside, all down in my chest and stomach. I could see the planes of her face moving, the smooth mobile motion of her lips. 'In the things you do and the decisions you make you just can't think of yourself alone. You have to consider our future…' The plea in her eyes… 'Is that too much to ask?' The finality of her voice… 'If you don't go to that girl and apologize and try in every way you know to get reinstated- If you can't do that much, Bob, don't consider me as being with you any more…'
I felt something hammering on my brain, banging away with a ten-pound sledge. I gave a violent shake of my head, trying to get it off. Me and my goddamned two-cent pride, I thought; my cut-rate muscle and my blind dukes. Who in the hell did I think I was?
I took a deep breath and pushed away from the rail. I really liked that chick, I thought-she was strictly tops.
Then I started looking for Madge. But not to apologize. I was going to rack her back, I told myself. I was going to ask her what the hell she meant by saying she wouldn't work with a nigger, where did she get that stuff calling me a nigger, anyway? And if she didn't like it I was going to kick in her teeth. And if it meant losing Alice I was going to lose her. Goddamnit, I was a man like any other man; I wasn't asking any favours, and I wasn't taking no kicks.
I found her on the deck below, working with the same two mechanics, tacking a conduit to the deck plating. She was sitting on the deck with her feet drawn underneath her, bending forward over the arc. Her skin showed in a white line where her jacket and waist hiked up, and below her hips spread tight in her leather pants like an hour- glass. Don stood to one side, shading his eyes against the flash with his outstretched hand.
'What say, Don,' I greeted, coming up. 'How's things breaking?'
He looked around, didn't exactly give a start at sight of me, but his sharp brown eyes behind their rimless lenses got sparkbright. 'Oh, hello, Bob,' he said. 'I want to see you.'
The arc died for a moment and he took a quick squint at the job, looked away before a flash could catch him, and said to her, 'That's good.'
The two mechanics took off their flash glasses, gave me nervous looks, and began piddling about. It wasn't tense, but it was itchy.
I pulled the edges of my mouth down, dropped a flat-eyed evil glance on her hooded head, then looked at Don. 'A rugged playmate,' I said. 'Must have snake in her. Will she bite you too?' I wanted her to hear me, but she didn't.
She kicked back her hood, flipped the rod butt across the floor, unhooked her stinger, and began chipping the scale off the weld burrs with her iron hand chipper. She didn't see me either.
Don put his hand to his chin, worried at his lip with his index finger, then headed me off. 'I'm sorry about it, Bob. Now don't get down on me,' he said. 'I told Mac I'd let you have her; I told him how it was. I had no idea-'
Her sudden movement stopped him and we both turned startled looks on her. She came to her feet like a jack-in-the-box and went right straight into her act. She cringed back into the bulkhead and her big blue mascaraed eyes peered out at me in sheer terror.
I wouldn't let her have it. 'Get a load of this,' I said to Don, dipping my head at her; then turned and found him studying me with that sharp speculating curiosity of white men watching Negroes' reactions to white women.
She said something under her breath and now her face took on a wild raw excitement that shook me. She looked crazy enough to call me a nigger again, and I tightened instinctively against it; this time I knew I'd smack her. But instead she pumped a mean, hard contempt into her eyes and said in her flat, unmusical, nigger-baiting drawl, 'Sometimes I sho wish I was back in Texas.'
I took a breath and held it. One of the mechanics said gruffly, 'Come on Madge, we got a divider to put in before noon.'
Now I was ready to shoot her. I wrenched my gaze away, then felt Don's eyes on me again.
But all he said was, 'I want you to believe me, Bob, I had no idea she'd give you any trouble. If you want me to I'll go with you to Mac and-'
'Naw, I'm going to fight it through the union,' I said. 'I want some of Mac too.'
He was curious to know just what had happened, but he didn't want to ask right out, so he said, 'Did you have a fight with her before?'
'Hell naw,' I said. 'I ain't never seen her before.' Then I decided to tell him; I felt I could talk to him all right. 'When I went to get her, she started that phoney act you just saw and said she wouldn't work with a nigger, and I called her a cracker slut.'
Red came up in his face in slow waves, but he didn't pull away from it. 'Some stinker,' he said. 'What she needs is a good going over by someone.' I knew he wanted to say by some coloured fellow but just couldn't bring himself to say it. Instead he got redder and said, 'It'd take some of the stinking prejudice out of her.'
'What she really needs is just some discipline,' I said. 'Some of these officials to tell her what's what, to lay the line down and make her walk it.'
He blinked at me and his eyes got bright again. 'I told you her name, didn't I? Madge Perkins.'
I gave a little laugh. 'I found that out. What I want to know is what's eating her. She knows goddamned well nobody wants to rape her.'
He hesitated a moment, then said, 'She hasn't got a phone,' digging out a little black address book. 'But I'll give you her address.' He grinned sheepishly. 'I knew her room-mate, but she joined the WAC's.'
I gave him a quick startled look; I didn't get it. 'What do I want with her address, man?'
Now he began getting red again, but he gave me a curious little look. 'Maybe you can cure her,' he said.
'Look, man…' I began, then didn't know what to say. I couldn't tell whether he figured I was making a play for the dame and was using the beef as an opening, or was trying to tell me how to get even with her, or whether he was trying to prove he didn't have any racial bias himself. It could have been he felt badly about it from a white point of view and wanted to show me that all the men in his race didn't approve of that sort of thing.
Whatever it was, he went on giving me her address with a painful insistence. 'It's the Hotel Mohave on South
