Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [85]
A small crowd, children and curious passers-by, followed them as they walked the long, dusty, sunlight street. She hoped only that they would not pass anyone she knew; she kept her head high, looking straight ahead, and felt the skin settle over her bones as though she were wearing a mask.
And at the station she somewhat got past their brutal laughter. (What was he doing with you, girl, until two o’clock in the morning?—Next time you feel like that, girl, you come by here and talk to me.) She felt that she was about to burst, or vomit, or die. Though the sweat stood out cruelly, like needless on her brow, and she felt herself, from every side, being covered with a stink and filth, she found out, in their own good time, what she wanted to know. He was being held in a prison downtown called the Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and she could see him to-morrow. The state, or the prison, or someone, had already assigned him a lawyer; he would be brought to trial next week.
But the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had been beaten, he whispered to her, and he could hardly walk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no bruises, but was full of strange, painful swellings, and there was a welt above one eye.
He had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he left her that Saturday night, had gone down into the underground station to wait for his train. It was late, and the trains were slow; he was all alone on the platform, only half awake, thinking, he said, of her.
Then, from the far end of the platform, he heard a sound of running; and, looking up, he saw two colored boys come running down the steps. Their clothes were torn, and they were frightened; they came up the platform and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about to ask them what the trouble was when, running across the tracks toward them, and followed by a white man, he saw another colored boy; and at the same instant another white man came running down the underground steps.
Then he came full awake, in panic; he knew that whatever the trouble was, it was now his trouble also; for these white men would make no distinction between him and the three boys they were after. They were all colored, they were about the same age, and here they stood together on the underground platform. And they were all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and into the wagon and to the station-house.
At the station Richard gave his name and address and age and occupation. Then for the first time he stated that he was not involved, and asked one of the other boys to corroborate his testimony. This they rather despairingly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it sooner, but they probably also felt that it would be useless to speak. And they were not believed; the owner of the store was being brought there to make the identification. And Richard tried to relax: the man could not say that he had been there if he had never seen him before.
But when the owner came, a short man with a bloody shirt—for they had knifed him—in the company of yet another policeman, he looked at the four boys before him and said: ‘Yeah, that’s them, all right.’
Then Richard shouted: ‘But I wasn’t there! Look at me, goddammit—I wasn’t there!’
‘You black bastard,’ the man said, looking at him, ‘you’re all the same.’
Then there was silence in the station, the eyes of the white men all watching. And Richard said, but quietly, knowing that he was lost: ‘But all the same, mister, I wasn’t there.’ And he looked at the white man’s bloody shirt and thought, he told Elizabeth, at the bottom of his heart: ‘I wish to God they’d killed you.’
Then the questioning began. The three boys signed a confession at