“W-what do you want?” Penny found her voice. “Here. T-take my pocketbook.” She tried to hand it to him. “There’s not m-much in it, but you’re welcome to it.”
“Ah don’ want youah lousy money, white gal!”
“W-what do you want?”
“Mebbe same thang’s you’all want, sugah. Mebbe.”
“What do you m-mean?”
“Come off it, white gal! You a N’Yawker, ain’t y’all? Lib’ral an’ all like that. Sho ’nuf now you ain’t got no objections to a little cozy integration. Now have you?”
“B-but I don’t understand,” Penny said, looking once again at the brown stains on her fingertips. “Why are you bothering me? You’re not really a colored man. You’ve just got some kind of dye or something smeared all over you.”
“Hush up! Y’all hush now, heah!” The knife nicked Penny’s flesh. He looked around nervously, as if afraid someone might have overheard what Penny had said. Indeed, he seemed more concerned about that than about the much more likely possibility that someone might see him threatening her with the knife.
“But what do y-you want?” Penny asked fearfully. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Ah’m a-gonna love you up, sugah. Tha’s what. So’s ewabody can see. Then ah’s gonna cut you all up, niggah-style. Ewabody gonna see that, too. Then they all gonna know what a black man do when you let him neah a white woman. Even a Yankee white woman!”
“But you’re not a black man!”
“Shet up! An’ stay shet! You knows that, but the rest o’ them don’t. They gonna think a nigger done it. Jes’ one more animal run loose in N’Yawk to show how y’all keep youah crime rate up ’cause you Yankees don’t know how to control youah nigras. Then maybe y’all gonna think twice’ fore you send them beatniks down home to stir up trouble. Ah’m gonna show how that can work two ways, you heah? When ah gits through with you, them what sees is a gonna think twice ’bout how they oughta keep outa the South an’ get onna ball with they own niggahs up Nawth. Y’all see now?”
“I see.” Penny stared into the berserk face and finally she found the energy to scream. “Help!” she yelled. “Help! Rape! Help! Murder! Help!”
“What’s the trouble, Miss?” A man in the uniform of a transit system employee stopped a few feet from Penny, eyed the knife at her throat, and kept a cautious distance.
“This man wants to rape me! He’s threatening to kill me!”
“Y’all keep back!” The knife shot up to point at the transit worker, then returned to prick Penny.
“Won’t you help me?” Penny begged.
“I’d like to, Miss, but I can’t.”
“Why not? Are you afraid?”
“Yeah. But it ain’t that. I just can’t be a scab, that’s all.”
“A scab? What’s that got to do with it?” Penny asked, distraught.
“Well, it’s like this,” the transit worker explained. “The TWU’s goin’ into negotiations with the T.A. any day now and Mike Quill’s called for a slowdown so’s he’ll be in a stronger bargaining position. If we’re ever gonna get a four-day week—”
“The hell with a four-day week!” Penny exploded. “I need help! Can’t you see that?”
“Sure I can see. And it’s part of my job to help you. That’s the whole point. If it wasn’t, I’d help you in a minute. But it is, and that means if I help you, I’ll be scabbin’. Sorry, lady, but I just ain’t gonna be no scab.”
He tipped his hat and continued slowly up the aisle until he reached the next car. The door closed behind him, and he was gone.
“Okay, sugah. I done wasted enough time with you-all.”
Penny’s assailant grabbed a handful of the silk blouse she was wearing and ripped it down the middle. One of her naked breasts sprang into sight and he closed a hand over it, smearing it with brown dye.
From across the aisle a little old lady peered nearsightedly at the couple. “It must be a mirage,” she told herself as she saw the man embrace the girl. Then, squinting myopically, she made the natural—if incorrect-—racial distinction and tsk’d disapprovingly. “These mixed mirages never work out,” she muttered.
The man’s bulk blocked the knife from the old lady’s vision. Penny peered over his shoulder helplessly. “Don’t you see what he’s doing to me!” she wailed.
“I certainly do!” the little old lady replied. “And it’s disgraceful! I don’t know what gets into you young people nowadays. Right out in public where everybody can see. It’s shameful, that’s what it is! And I’m not going to sit here and watch this kind of brazen behavior one more minute!” And with that she got to her feet and flounced indignantly out of the car.
The man was sprawled across Penny now. The knife was pressed against her naked breast. His free hand was under her skirt, between her thighs, brutally trying to push them apart. Frantically, she tossed her head around, seeking help.
There was a man seated on the same side of the subway car a few seats down from Penny. His nose was buried in a newspaper. A hearing-aid cord dangled from one of his ears. Struggling, Penny managed to call to him. “He’s tearing off my clothes!” she screamed.
“Orioles?” The man looked up pleasantly. “They lost eight-five.”
“Stop this killer!” she screamed.
“Rockefeller? Says here he signed the sales-tax bill.”
“He’s a sex fiend!”
“Nope. Nothing here about Abe Beame.”
“Can’t you see he’s mad?”
“Yeah, it was sad. But you never know how an election will go. I’ll bet Lindsay was even more surprised than he was.”
“Are you blind!”
“No, I don’t mind. Go right ahead. I like to see youngsters enjoy themselves.”
“I’m being murdered right here in the subway!”
“Terrible. Terrible. You’re right. I’m afraid to ride the train myself. And people don’t care. You could get killed right in front of their eyes and they wouldn’t even notice. That’s the way it is, I guess. Nobody wants to get involved. Believe me, young lady, you’re fortunate to have your young man with you to protect you.” He buried his nose in the paper again.
Her assailant had pried Penny’s legs apart now and was fumbling with the zipper on his pants. “Please,” she begged. “I’m a pregnant woman! Please don’t!”
“Pregnant, hey? Tha’s awful! Jes’ ain’t no limit to the apostrophes us cullid is capable of. You shoulda thunk on that afore you passed that there Civil Rights bill.”
“Help!” Penny screamed, attracting the attention of two teenage boys strolling up the aisle.
The boys paused at Penny’s scream, and one of them removed the transistor radio from his ear. They both wore black leather jackets and sideburns. They had both been moving up the aisle like cats on the prowl.
“Hey, this car’s no good,” one of them said. “Somebody beat us to it.”
“Yeah,” the other replied. “And an amateur at that. Look at him. Man, he’s nowhere with technique.”
“Ahh, come on. Don’t be like that. You gotta have patience with beginners. You wasn’t born with a switchblade in your hand.”
“Still, some guys got it, and some guys ain’t. Looka how he’s holdin’ that knife. He’s gonna turn himself into a soprano, he ain’t careful.”
“Yeah. Hey, Mac,” the youth called in a kindly tone. “That ain’t the way. Don’t wrap yer fist around it. Ya gotta hold it lightly, with the fingertips.”
“Y’all mind your business!” the man atop Penny snarled.
“How d’ya like that. Try an’ give a fella advice an’ he gets nasty. I tell you, the class of people calls themselves muggers these days.”
“Yeah. Amateurs is ruinin’ the business. Come on. Let him botch it. The hell with him!”
“Ya right. The hell with him!”