I took a drink, shuddering as the whiskey went down but thankful for the shock it gave me. There was a bursting, tearing movement of people around me, dark figures in a blue glow.
"Look at them take it away," he said, looking into the dark action of the crowd. "Me, I'm tired. Was you over on Lenox?"
"No," I said, seeing a woman moving slowly past with a row of about a dozen dressed chickens suspended by their necks from the handle of a new straw broom ...
"Hell, you ought to see it, man. Everything is tore up. By now the womens is picking it clean. I saw one ole woman with a whole side of a cow on her back. Man, she was 'bout bent bowlegged trying to make it home -- Here come Dupre now," he said, breaking off.
I saw a little hard man come out of the crowd carrying several boxes. He wore three hats upon his head, and several pairs of suspenders flopped about his shoulders, and now as he came toward us I saw that he wore a pair of gleaming new rubber hip boots. His pockets bulged and over his shoulder he carried a cloth sack that swung heavily behind him.
"Damn, Dupre," my friend said, pointing to his head, "you got one of them for me? What kind is they?"
Dupre stopped and looked at him. "With all them hats in there and I'm going to come out with anything but a Dobbs? Man, are you mad? All them new, pretty-colored Dobbs? Come on, let's get going before the cops git back. Damn, look at that thing blaze!"
I looked toward the curtain of blue fire, through which vague figures toiled. Dupre called out and several men left the crowd and joined us in the street. We moved off, my friend (Scofield, the others called him) leading me along. My head throbbed, still bled.
"Looks like you got you some loot too," he said, pointing to my brief case.
"Not much," I said, thinking, loot? Loot? And suddenly I knew why it was heavy, remembering Mary's broken bank and the coins; and now I found myself opening the brief case and dropping all my papers -- my Brotherhood identification, the anonymous letter, along with Clifton's doll -- into it.
"Fill it up, man. Don't you be bashful. You wait till we tackle one of these pawnshops. That Du's got him a cotton-picking sack fulla stuff. He could go into business."
"Well, I'll be damn," a man on the other side of me said. "I thought that was a cotton sack. Where'd he get that thing?"
"He brought it with him when he come North," Scofield said. "Du swears that when he goes back he'll have it full of ten-dollar bills. Hell, after tonight he'll need him a warehouse for all the stuff he's got. You fill that brief case, buddy. Get yourself something!"
"No," I said, "I've enough in it already." And now I remembered very clearly where I'd started out for but could not leave them.
"Maybe you right," Scofield said. "How I know, you might have it full of diamonds or something. A man oughtn't to be greedy. Though it's time something like this happened."
We moved along. Should I leave, get on to the district? Where were they, at the birthday celebration?
"How did all this get started?" I said.
Scofield seemed surprised. "Damn if I know, man. A cop shot a woman or something."
Another man moved close to us as somewhere a piece of heavy steel rang down.
"Hell, that wasn't what started it," he said. "It was that fellow, what's his name ... ?"
"Who?" I said. "What's his name?"
"That young guy!"
"You know, everybody's mad about it ..."
Clifton, I thought. It's for Clifton. A night for Clifton.
"Aw man, don't tell me," Scofield said. "Didn't I see it with my own eyes? About eight o'clock down on Lenox and 123rd this paddy slapped a kid for grabbing a Baby Ruth and the kid's mama took it up and then the paddy slapped her and that's when hell broke loose."
"You were there?" I said.
"Same's I'm here. Some fellow said the kid made the paddy mad by grabbing a candy named after a white woman."
"Damn if that's the way I heard it," another man said. "When I come up they said a white woman set it oft by trying to take a black gal's man."
"Damn who started it," Dupre said. "All I want is for it to last a while."
"It was a white gal, all right, but that wasn't the way it was. She was drunk --" another voice said.
But it couldn't have been Sybil, I thought; it had already started.
"You wahn know who started it?" a man holding a pair of binoculars called from the window of a pawnshop. "You wahn really to know?"
"Sure," I said.
"Well, you don't need to go no further. It was started by that great leader, Ras the Destroyer!"
"That monkey-chaser?" someone said.
"Listen, bahstard!"
"Don't nobody know how it started," Dupre said.
"Somebody has to know," I said.
Scofield held his whiskey toward me. I refused it.
"Hell, man, it just exploded. These is dog days," he said.
"Dog days?"
"Sho, this hot weather."
"I tell you they mad over what happen to that young fellow, what's-his-name ..."
We were passing a building now and I heard a voice calling frantically, "Colored store! Colored store!"
"Then put up a sign, motherfouler," a voice said. "You probably rotten as the others."
"Listen at the bastard. For one time in his life he's glad to be colored," Scofield said.
"Colored store," the voice went on automatically.
"Hey! You sho you ain't got some white blood?"
"No, sir!" the voice said.
"Should I bust him, man?"
"For what? He ain't got a damn thing. Let the motherfouler alone."
A few doors away we came to a hardware store. "This is the first stop, men," Dupre said.
"What happens now?" I said.
"Who you?" he said, cocking his thrice-hatted head.
"Nobody, just one of the boys --" I began.
"You sho you ain't somebody I know?"
"I'm pretty sure," I said.
"He's all right, Du," said Scofield. "Them cops shot him."
Dupre looked at me and kicked something -- a pound of butter, sending it smearing across the hot street. "We fixing to do something what needs to be done," he said. "First we gets a flashlight for everybody ... And let's have some organization, y'all. Don't everybody be running over everybody else. Come on!"
"Come on in, buddy," Scofield said.
I felt no need to lead or leave them; was glad to follow; was gripped by a need to see where and to what they would lead. And all the time the thought that I should go to the district was with me. We went inside the store, into the dark glinting with metal. They moved carefully, and I could hear them searching, sweeping objects to the floor. The cash register rang.
"Here some flashlights over here," someone called.
"How many?" Dupre said.
"Plenty, man."
"Okay, pass out one to everybody. They got batteries?"
"Naw, but there's plenty them too, 'bout a dozen boxes."
"Okay, give me one with batteries so I can find the buckets. Then every man get him a light."
"Here some buckets over here," Scofield said.
"Then all we got to find is where he keeps the oil."
"Oil?" I said.
"Coal oil, man. And hey, y'all," he called, '"don't nobody be smoking in here."
I stood beside Scofield listening to the noise as he took a stack of zinc buckets and passed them out. Now the store leaped alive with flashing lights and flickering shadows.
"Keep them lights down on the floor," Dupre called. "No use letting folks see who we are. Now when you get your buckets line up and let me fill 'em."
"Listen to ole Du lay it down -- he's a bitch, ain't he, buddy? He always liked to lead things. And always leading me into trouble."