Whitman was staring into space. All right, he said. All right. Maybe if we wait till dark nobody will see what we’re doing. For Mr. Morgan’s sake, and his goddamn Gutenberg Bible and his five-page goddamn letter from George Washington.
And so the negotiations were completed.
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everal calls to the Ford motorcar people had brought forth by eight in the morning a truck carrying all the interchangeable parts for a Model T. The Pantasote Company delivered a top. Aides of Morgan had agreed that he would be billed for everything. As the crowd watched from the corner, Fire Chief Conklin, under the direction of two mechanics, piece by piece dismantled the Ford and made a new Ford from the chassis up. A block and tackle was used to hoist the engine. Sweating, grunting, complaining and at times crying, Conklin did the work. New tires replaced old, new fenders, new radiator, magneto, new doors, running boards, windshield, headlamps and upholstered seats. By five in the afternoon, with the sun still blazing in the sky over New York, a shining black Model T Ford with a custom pantosote roof stood at the curb.
All day the followers of Coalhouse had come to him with appeals to change his mind. Their arguments became wilder and wilder. They said they were a nation. He was patient with them. It became apparent they wouldn’t know what to do without him. They recognized his decision as suicide. They were forlorn at their abandonment. By the late afternoon the Library was in gloom. The young men watched listlessly from the windows as the automobile in which Coalhouse had done his courting reappeared at the curb.
Coalhouse himself never once went to the window to look at it. He sat at Pierpont Morgan’s desk in the West Room and composed his will.
Younger Brother had withdrawn in silent bitterness. Father, who was now closeted in the Library as an official hostage, wanted to talk with him. He was thinking what he would have to tell Mother. Only when it grew dark and the hour of the departure was approaching could he bring himself to confront him. It might be the last privacy they would have.
The young man was in the lavatory behind the entrance hall. He was wiping the burnt cork from his face. He glanced at Father in the mirror. Father said I myself require nothing from you. But don’t you feel your sister deserves an explanation? If she thinks about me, Younger Brother said, she will have her explanation. I could not transmit it through you. You are a complacent man with no thought of history. You pay your employees poorly and are insensitive to their needs. I see, Father said. The fact that you think of yourself as a gentleman in all your dealings, Younger Brother said, is the simple self-delusion of all those who oppress humanity. You have lived under my roof and worked in my business, Father said. Your generosity, Younger Brother said, was what you felt you could afford. Besides, he added, I have repaid that debt, as you will discover. Younger Brother washed his face with soap and hot water. He used a vigorous motion, his head over the basin. He dried himself with a hand towel embroidered with the initials JPM. He threw the towel on the floor, put on his shirt, dug in his pockets for cuff links, buttons, placed his collar over the shirt, tied his tie, raised his suspenders. You have traveled everywhere and learned nothing, he said. You think it’s a crime to come into this building belonging to another man and to threaten his property. In fact this is the nest of a vulture. The den of a jackal. He put on his coat, ran his palms over his shaved head, placed his derby on his head and glanced at himself in the mirror. Goodbye, he said. You won’t see me again. You may tell my sister that she will always be in my thoughts. For a moment he gazed at the floor. He had to clear his throat. You may tell her I have always loved her and admired her.
The band met in the entrance hall. They were dressed now in their Coalhouse uniforms of suit and tie and derby. Coalhouse told them they should pulled their brims down and turn up the collars of their jackets to avoid identification. Their means of safe conduct was the Model T. He explained how to set the spark and throttle and how to turn the crank. You will ring the telephone when you’re free, he said. Father said Am I not to go? Here is the hostage, Coalhouse said, indicating Younger Brother. One white face looks just like another. They all laughed. Coalhouse embraced each of them before the great brass doors. He embraced Younger Brother with the same fervor he accorded to the others. He looked at his pocket watch. At this moment the floodlights in the street went out. He took his place in the alcove at the back of the hall, straddling the white marble bench with his hands on the dynamite detonation box. There is slack in the plunger to a point halfway down, Younger Brother called to him. All right, Coalhouse said. Go on now. One of the young men unbolted the doors and with no further ceremony they filed out. Then the doors closed. Bolt them, please, Coalhouse commanded. Father did so. He put his ear to the door. All he heard was his own heavy and frightened breathing. Then after what seemed a torturously long interval, in which almost all his hope for his own life flowed from him, he heard the sibilant cough and sputter of a Model T engine. A few moments later the gears were engaged and he heard the car drive off. There was a thump thump as it went over the planks laid over the crater. He ran to the back of the hall. They’re gone, he said to Coalhouse Walker Jr. The black man was staring at his hands poised on the plunger of the box. Father sat down on the floor with his back to the marble wall. He raised his knees and rested is head. They sat like that, neither of them moving. After a while Coalhouse asked Father to tell him about his son. He wanted to know about his walking, whether his appetite was good, whether he’d said any words yet, and every detail he could think of.
IV
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bout two hours later Coalhouse Walker Jr. came down the stairs of the Library with his arms raised and started to walk across 36th Street to the brownstone. This was according to the negotiated agreement. The street had been cleared of all observers. Facing him on the opposite sidewalk was a squad of New York’s Finest armed with carbines. Lined up from one sidewalk to the other were two troops of mounted police facing each other at a distance of thirty yards, the horses shoulder to shoulder, so that a kind of corridor was formed. Coalhouse was therefore not visible to anyone looking on from the intersection at Madison Avenue or, more remotely, Park Avenue. The generators on the corner made a fearsome roar. In the bright floodlit street the black man was said by the police to have made a dash for freedom. More probably he knew that all he must do in order to end his life was turn his head abruptly or lower his hands or smile. Inside the Library, Father heard the coordinated volley of a firing squad. He screamed. He ran to the window. He body jerked about the street in a sequence of attitudes as if it were trying to mop up its own blood. The policemen were firing at will. He horses snorted and shied.
Up in their Harlem hideout the Coalhouse band could reason what the outcome would be. They were all there but the man they had followed. The rooms were empty. Nothing mattered. They could barely bring themselves to talk. All but Younger Brother thought they would remain in New York. The Model T was hidden in an adjoining alley. They assumed it had been marked. Since Younger Brother wanted to leave town he was awarded the car. He drove that night to the waterfront at 125th Street and took the ferry to New Jersey. He drove south. Apparently he had some money although it is not known how or where he got it. He drove to Philadelphia. He drove to Baltimore. He drove deep into the country where Negroes stood up in the fields to watch him pass. His car left a trail of dust in the sky. He drove through small towns in Georgia where in the scant shade of the trees in the squares citizens spoke of hanging the Jew Leo Frank for what he had done to a fourteen-year-old Christian girl, Mary Phagan. The spit in the dirt. Younger Brother raced freight trains and clumped his car through the cool darkness of covered bridges. He used no maps. He slept in the fields. He drove from gasoline pump to gasoline pump. He collected in the back seat an assortment of tools, tire tubes, gascans, oilcans, clamps, wires and engine parts. He kept going. The trees became more scattered. Eventually they disappeared. There was rock and sagebrush. Beautiful sunsets lured him through valleys of hardened sun-cracked clay. When the Ford broke down and he couldn’t fix it he was pulled by children sitting up on wagons drawn by mules.