Chapter 11
Snake held one arm, Sam the other, and Joan stood, fully clothed, more frightened that she had ever been in her life. On the sofa, Claw lounged, his bad arm hooked under Martha's chin, her naked body, sprawled in an awkward revealing pose. Claw's good hand held the switchblade with the point making a small dimple in her mother's throat.
"You make a mistake and I cut her a new cunt, from ear to ear, see?" he growled. "Ain't no way the fuzz can come through the door fast enough to keep me from slicing her, y'understand?"
"Yes-I understand," Joan husked.
"And you forget the gin I peel her tits and that's a fact," he added. "A'right. Show in one hour, cunt, or it's holiday in the butcher shop, right? Right. Let her out, cats."
"Don't worry Mama. I'll do as they say," Joan assured her mother.
"Yes, baby. I'll be all right," Martha murmured.
Then Joan was in the hallway and stumbling to the elevator. A thousand hysterical thoughts tangled in her mind; the memory of Claw's cold words and the colder steel in his strong hand cleared them all. She had no choice, She would go to the supermarket, to the liquor store and go back home, trapped by viciousness and her love for her mother. Walking along a familiar street, nothing seemed familiar. In a few hours, the world had become a strange place, populated by people, filled with meaningless things and showered by sunlight, bright, happy and indifferent, Walking, she felt the soreness of her cunt and the ache in her back place. She smelled black man all over her, despite a quick bath, and her head whirled with impossible images, of spewing cocks and straining muscles and white flesh, bending, urging, seeking. She wanted to cry, but, there was little time and many things to do.
Telephones were pure torture. There was a public phone on one corner, one whole row of them in the supermarket and another in the liquor store. Twice she stood, debating. Logically, Claw would not add the murder of a helpless white woman, old enough to be his mother, or maybe grandmotber, to the crimes he already had committed, Illogically, he was pure animal, admittedly alarmed by his status, helpless without help and desperate with an innate ignorance. Finally, both arms loaded with big bulging sacks, she started home, resigned to circumstances.
Only then did she start to think of herself. And her mother.
On the face of it, they had had no choice. Joan flushed, knowing that was a lie no educated woman, or women, should consider. She wondered where, in the psychology books she had so blithely studied in college, she and Martha had become case histories. Bad enough with clean, well-groomed white men, who had some grace and some standards of decency, if only personal. To have succumbed so quickly and easily to three ruthless, filthy and brutal Negroes, to have wilted under their crude brutality and actually furthered their lusts with inventive eagerness seemed impossible, but she had laughed and her mother had giggled and neither of them had resisted anything the lean black men had desired.
She resettled the heavy sacks and looked across the street. Two women, one pushing a small laughing child in a walker. Did they, she wondered, ever feel as if their cunt were going to explode unless a huge cock rammed up and in? Did they lie helpless and trembling while rough fingers stretched and searched their vaginas, or plunged lewdly into their rectums? Joan shuddered, suddenly wracked by the unreasonable need. The word was nymphomaniac, and her single consolation was that her mother, dear sweet mother, seemed to be even more avid to submit to insane sexual extremes than her daughter. Joan speeded her steps, abruptly heady with overwhelming desires.
Martha lay across six similar thighs, black, warm but no longer tense. She sucked Claw's cock, also no longer tense. The thick weight in her mouth was limber, soft, but swollen enough to seem virile. Sam's cock equally listless, was a hot form against her belly, and Snake's fingers toyed lethargically in her cunt, his thumb playing at her tingling asshole. They were drowsy, content, obscene and overly entertained. Martha didn't know what she was. Hands were all over her back, sliding possessively around her shape, fiddling with hollows and bulges, tired.
"'Damnedest cunt I ever saw," Sam muttered.
"Yeah," Claw grunted. "How old are you, woman?"
Martha hit his cock with a sharp pointed lick. "Fifty-something. Can't you get this thing hard, Claw baby?"
He chuckled. "Ain't that something? Wait till she gets back with the gin! You want to fuck, old woman?"
Martha turned her head. "Fuck me in the ass, Snake honey."
"Shit, woman! I'm blown out! How you, Sam?" "Uptight, man!"
Taking the first chance, Martha slid off of their legs, finding the floor, looking up at the grinning trio with derision on her face. "Men!" she said. "Well, take a nap then. I'm going out to make tea."
"Tea," Claw mumbled. "Goddamn, that's what we need!"
"Lipton's," Martha said.
"Naw, Grandma Moses," Snake said.
Martha got to her feet, trying to not show the weariness of her muscles and the flaccidity of her spine. She looked down at the three black men, lying back, eyes half closed and cocks resting limply between their splayed thighs. When she moved toward the kitchen, none of them moved nor seemed to see her.
She made no noise filling the teapot and putting it on the stove. Moving about put tone back in her weary muscles and alerted her sex-drugged mind. She thought about nothing; a necessity tugged at her mind but the weird happiness she had known for seemingly endless hours shrouded its details. Her savior was wisdom, intent and a massive certainty that however pleasant, now was impossible to tolerate and that there could be no tomorrow. She stood in the doorway and surveyed the three naked Negroes. She suddenly hated her daughter, for without Joan, Martha thought the future could be deliciously endless. Then she hated the three dozing men and loved Joan. On silent feet, she walked past them to her bedroom.
Half dressed, she remembered the dildo, and with quick hands, she removed the spindle, wrapped the balloon covered cock and put them both away. A second awareness made her pick up Joan's rubber cock and take it to her daughter's bedroom. She chose a high cupboard to hide it in and there, she saw the cardboard box. Stealing a moment, Martha took it down, and the only thing she saw was the very realistic plastic revolver. She held it in her hand, aimed it as she had seen spindle-assed television heroines do, and instantly, she had another vision.
Finished dressing, Martha chanced a return to the living room. Claw and Snake seemed sound asleep; Sam was dozing, his head trying to find comfort on the sofa back. Martha laid the plastic pistol on the end table within inches of Claw's good hand. Then she stood, hating them, hating what she was going to do, and forcing herself to do it only because she had had more excitement in the terror of this situation than she had ever expected to have. Nearly sobbing, she quietly stepped backward until she reached the door to the outside hall. She manipulated the door knob soundlessly and within seconds, was standing free and unhampered in the normal, unexciting world.
They only half believed her. Bonnie sat, thin arms and legs drawn together, her cheeks flowing with tears, and tried to answer their questions. Outside on the street, two hundred Sugartown residents milled and jeered at the three patrol cars and the grim-faced officers who stood guard around the Price house. The crowd had reluctantly parted to let the ambulance carrying Ben Price's body leave, but it had closed again, more surely and imaginative than before.
"Now, look, young lady," the grizzled police sergeant said. "Let's start from the beginning again. You live here with your father and brother. For a week, you and your dad were held prisoner by two men you call Claw Johnson and Snake Vinson. We know who they are and we want them on another homicide charge. Okay Where was your brother all this time?"
Bonnie shook her head. "I don't know, mister. They kept me and poor Pa tied up all the time. I don't know where Sam is."
"The pair we want left last night, you said, and it took you until this morning to untie yourself Did you know your father was dead then?"
"N-not until I went in to see why he didn't come help me after they left," Bonnie said. She was having a bad time keeping her story straight because she couldn't think very clearly. Why she was protecting Sam she did not know, but it seemed like something she was bound to do. Through her fright at such confusion and trouble she had some small faith left in her brother; she was sure he hadn't tied the gag around her father's face although there was no doubt that he had gone along with whatever Claw and Snake had suggested. She sat stiffly, trying to hear what went on in soft voices between the policemen. There were many of them, big, stern, and in command; their uniforms were clean and precise and they spelled a kind of power to Bonnie she hadn't really understood before. When the big one in charge turned back to her, she tensed, expecting to be struck or kicked.
"You have any idea where Johnson and Vinson went after they left here? You must have heard some of their plans. Talk up now!"
It was the question she had been fearing ever since they had arrived, and she still didn't know how she wanted to answer it. She looked up at the officer, her mind racing. If she told, Sugartown would get her. If she didn't tell, then Snake and Claw and Sam, too, might go on and on, ruthless, vicious and mean. She thought of Joan Gilbert and her mother, sick, hurt or maybe even dead. She had a terrible vision of what the three hungry, desperate Panthers might have done, alone with two soft and helpless white women.
"Something about a place uptown," she said slowly. "In the white district. I-I don't know just exactly where, mister."
"You're lying, young lady. You know exactly where! Now, you'd better cop-out because when we get that pair, we'll make 'em talk and you'll wind up in Juvenile for protecting murderers, do you hear? " Bonnie's tears gushed and she began to sob hysterically. The trap into which she had stepped seemed endless in its finding. She had departed being a Negro by calling the law and now the law was making it overwhelmingly difficult to be on their side. "Somewhere on Armand Avenue," she whimpered.
The officer turned and made a finger wave at another. The latter left the house, to return in a minute or so. "Hey, the kid didn't lie! Headquarters just got a hot one from two women on Armand Avenue. The black sons-of-bitches are holed up in their apartment!"
"We'll leave two cars and the lab boys here. Let's go! Come on, girl, we are going to find out a lot of things damned quick!"
Sam awakened with a start and because it had been his turn to watch, he looked at Claw to be sure his nap had not been noticed. Then he sat up, aware that the three of them were alone in the living room and the apartment was very quiet. He stood up, dragging his pants into place, his mind rolling with lethargic memories of the hot time they'd have with the two pink broads. If he'd doubted the wisdom of crashing whitey's district and shacking in with two wild babes, he didn't question it now. He moved on big bare feet, into the hall and toward the bedrooms. He looked in the first one, shrugged, then went to the back bedroom. He frowned, alarm mounting. He stared at the spinning wheel, the big red prick-thing was gone. Turning, he went back and opened the bathroom door.
He'd half expected the old babe to be sitting on the toilet or nursing her well-hosed crotch. The emptiness of the cool, clean room was like a knife in his guts-Claw's knife when he found out the old woman was gone. Stunned, Sam moved slowly down the hall to where he could stand and look at Claw and Snake. Fear rose in his throat like a hot stone.
He had no idea how long she had been gone, but he had a certain conviction that by now, she was babbling out her story to the fuzz. With her four-eyed daughter backing her claim of robbery, rape and terror. They had been fooling the three of them all along; hung high with pussy, food and the put-on. Sam started to holler his friends awake, then a more pertinent fear stilled his voice.
Even asleep, Snake and Claw looked fearsome. He knew of a hundred times when their vicious tempers and lust for blood had maimed or crippled some victim of their mugging tactics. They slept now like jungle savages, a comparison Sam shivered in the making. He stared at Claw's huge prick, half hard and swollen, and to Sam, a symbol of cat might, black power, killer man. He could rouse them and they could all cut out, but when the first dash was over and they stopped for breath, Claw and Snake would turn on him. Dumb nigger. Stupid shit. Fuck-up. Sam started to back away. Get his shoes and his shirt and split.
Then he saw the revolver almost under Claw's limp left hand.
It looked like a thirty-two, shiny, deadly and exciting. Sam frowned, trying to remember about the gun, then he decided that he had not been in on everything. He knew none of them had had a gun when they first came to the apartment. Claw had evidently snooped it out of the broads' dresser drawers, or from under something. He stooped and peered at the chambers, and each showed a small copper bullet in place. It was loaded. It needed only to be picked up and cocked, and Sam Price was boss honcho. In one of Claw's pants pockets, folded down now around his bony ankles, was the rest of the bread they'd scrounged from the white women's pocketbooks. If he had that bread and the revolver, he could make miles and the need for space weighed heavily on his back.
Suddenly, Claw snorted and the moment of decision was rammed down Sam's throat. His hand darted for the revolver as Claw came awake. Too late, Sam's nerves and mind told him the gun was a phony. Still panic-stricken, he continued to act. The feather-light plastic pistol came up and he pointed it right between Claw's eyes. His finger pulled the trigger and the snap of the cap pistol hammer seemed as loud as the thunder of doom.
"What-why, you dirty nigger mother-fucker!" Claw roared. He bent and his good hand went down beside his lean bare hip. Then another snap and Sam screamed as the switchhlade came up and caught him in the high belly Uselessly, spasmically, he pulled the toy gun's trigger again, and as he gasped for a final breath, his blood spurting from the buttonhole to his heart, he pivoted and sank down. The last thing he saw was the two uniformed police officers, crouched in the silently opened door.
Sam started to laugh, mixing sound with the blood welling up in his throat.
The drawn gun in his hand testified to the sergeant's readiness but he had never seen a man knifed before and to augment his shock, the raging black man with the bloody-knife was naked, his huge prick swinging wildly as he moved. Behind him was another equally naked Negro, grabbing for a glass vase on the coffee table. Then the knife man seemed to recover and he lunged. As the sergeant pulled the trigger of his thirty-eight, he knew it was murder because the charging Negro had obviously forgotten that his ankles were nearly shackled together by his own trousers. He dove forward, screaming curses, flinging the knife from his one good hand so he could clutch at his bony chest, and the sergeant shot the other man with more verve. The hurled vase crashed against the wall, and then all was deadly quiet except for the fading moans of dying men. "Jesús Christ!" the sergeant gasped.
"Nope. Allah got that trio. Mac," the officer at his shoulder said. "Hell to pay in City Hall tonight, though! Oh well."