All Shot Up_ The Classic Crime Thriller - Chester Himes [57]
“Hurry up, man!” he called just as Big Six reached out a hand to clutch the drunk by the shoulder.
The drunk swung a long arc with his right hand, which he had held out of sight, and plunged the blade of a hunting knife through Big Six’s head. It went in above the left temple, and two inches of the point came out on a direct line above the right temple. Big Six went deaf, dumb and blind, but not unconscious. He teetered slightly and groped about aimlessly like an old blind man.
“Gooooodammmmm!” George Drake said, pushing open the door with his left hand, while reaching inside of his coat for his pistol with his right.
He had his left foot down on the street, buried in the snow, and his left hand gripping the edge of the door for leverage, when a noose was dropped over his head and he was jerked backward. A knee caught him in the back, and he felt as though his spine was broken. His hat fell off. The sap landed right above his left ear, and lights exploded in his head as he lost consciousness.
“Put him in the back,” the white man said from the other side, of the car. “And put the kiesters in the trunk.”
He turned his head, gave a last look at Big Six and forgot him.
Big Six was walking slowly down the sidewalk, dragging his feet in the snow. The wound bled scarcely any; a thin trickle ran down his cheek from where the point of the knife protruded. His eyes were open; his hat was on his head. But for the bone knife-handle sticking from one temple and two inches of blade from the other, he looked like the usual drunk. He was calling silently for George to help him.
The white man got into the back of the car and took hold of the end of the noose. One of the colored men got behind the wheel; the other was at the back, putting away the Gladstone bags.
A shining black hearse backed carefully from the garage beside the funeral parlor. It straightened up and pulled to the curb. A fat black man in a dark chauffeur’s uniform got out and closed the garage door. He looked across the street toward the Cadillac.
“Blink your lights once,” the white man said from the rear.
The driver hit the bright lights for an instant.
Jackson waved his right hand and got into the hearse.
The snowplows hadn’t got into the small side streets, and the hearse made slow progress until it came to Seventh Avenue. The Cadillac followed half a block behind with the lights dimmed.
The white man turned George Drake over on the floor, placed one foot on his back between the shoulder blades, the other on the back of his head, and drew the noose as tight as it would go. He kept it like that while the Cadillac followed down the cleaned traffic lane of Seventh Avenue and turned into 125th Street.
Scores of colored laborers, willing to pick up a few extra bucks on their off day, were shoveling the piles of snow into city dump trucks.
Cars were out again in the cleaned streets, and gay, laughing drunks were bar-hopping. Jokers were chunking tight, loose snowballs at their girl friends, who ran screaming in delight. A mail truck passed, emptying the boxes.
Big Six kept shuffling slowly toward Seventh Avenue with the knife stuck through his head. He passed a young couple. The woman gasped and turned ashy.
“It’s a joke,” the man said knowingly. “You can buy those things in the toy stores. Magical stuff. You stick ’em on each side of your head.”
The woman shuddered. “It ain’t funny,” she said. “A big grown man like him playing with kid stuff.”
He passed a woman with two children, on their way to the movies to see a horror film. The children shrieked. The woman was indignant.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, frightening little children,” she accused.
Big Six kept on slowly, lost to the world. “George!” he was calling silently in the rational