Black No More Page 7

  “Oh, he’s well heeled—the old crook!” remarked the detective. “Damnify could ever understand how such ignorant people get a-hold of th’ money; but there y’are. Owns as pretty a home as you can find around these parts an’ damn ’f he ain’t stahtin’ a new racket.”

  “Do you think he’ll make anything out of it?” inquired Matthew, innocently.

  “Say, Brother, you mus’ be a stranger in these parts. These damn, ignorant crackers will fall fer anything fer a while. They ain’t had no Klan here fer goin’ on three years. Leastwise it ain’t been functionin’.” The old fellow chuckled and spat a stream of tobacco juice into a nearby cuspidor. Matthew sauntered away. Yes, the pickings ought to be good.

  Equally enthusiastic was the Imperial Grand Wizard when he came home to dinner that night. He entered the house humming one of his favorite hymns and his wife looked up from the evening paper with surprise on her face. The Rev. Givens was usually something of a grouch but tonight he was as happy as a pickpocket at a country fair.

  “What’s th’ mattah with you?” she inquired, sniffing suspiciously.

  “Oh, Honey,” he gurgled, “I think this here Knights of Nordica is going over big; going over big! My fame is spreading. Only today I had a long talk with a famous anthropologist from New York and he’s going to address our mass meeting tonight.”

  “Whut’s an anthropologist?” asked Mrs. Givens, wrinkling her seamy brow.

  “Oh-er, well, he’s one of these here scientists what knows all about this here business what’s going on up there in New York where them niggers is turning each other white,” explained Rev. Givens hastily but firmly. “He’s a mighty smaht feller and I want you and Helen to come out and hear him.”

  “B’lieve Ah will,” declared Mrs. Givens, “if this heah rheumatism’ll le’ me foh a while. Doan know ’bout Helen, though. Evah since that gal went away tuh school she ain’t bin int’rested in nuthin’ upliftin’!”

  Mrs. Givens spoke in a grieved tone and heaved her narrow chest in a deep sigh. She didn’t like all this newfangled foolishness of these young folks. They were getting away from God, that’s what they were, and she didn’t like it. Mrs. Givens was a Christian. There was no doubt about it because she freely admitted it to everybody, with or without provocation. Of course she often took the name of the Creator in vain when she got to quarreling with Henry; she had the reputation among her friends of not always stating the exact truth; she hated Negroes; her spouse had made bitter and profane comment concerning her virginity on their wedding night; and as head of the ladies’ auxiliary of the defunct Klan she had copied her husband’s financial methods; but that she was a devout Christian no one doubted. She believed the Bible from cover to cover, except what it said about people with money, and she read it every evening aloud, greatly to the annoyance of the Imperial Grand Wizard and his modern and comely daughter.

  Mrs. Givens had probably once been beautiful but the wear and tear of a long life as the better half of an itinerant evangelist was apparent. Her once flaming red hair was turning gray and roanlike, her hatchet face was a criss-cross of wrinkles and lines, she was round-shouldered, hollow-chested, walked with a stoop and her long, bony, white hands looked like claws. She alternately dipped snuff and smoked an evil-smelling clay pipe, except when there was company at the house. At such times Helen would insist her mother “act like civilized people.”

  Helen was twenty and quite confident that she herself was civilized. Whether she was or not, she was certainly beautiful. Indeed, she was such a beauty that many of the friends of the family insisted that she must have been adopted. Taller than either of her parents, she was stately, erect, well proportioned, slender, vivid and knew how to wear her clothes. In only one way did she resemble her parents and that was in things intellectual. Any form of mental effort, she complained, made her head ache, and so her parents had always let her have her way about studying.

  At the age of eleven she had been taken from the third grade in public school and sent to an exclusive seminary for the double purpose of gaining social prestige and concealing her mental incapacity. At sixteen when her instructors had about despaired of her, they were overjoyed by the decision of her father to send the girl to a “finishing school” in the North. The “finishing school” about finished what intelligence Helen possessed; but she came forth, four years later, more beautiful, with a better knowledge of how to dress and how to act in exclusive society, enough superficialities to enable her to get by in the “best” circles and a great deal of that shallow facetiousness that passes for sophistication in American upper-class life. A winter in Manhattan had rounded out her education. Now she was back home, thoroughly ashamed of her grotesque parents, and, like the other girls of her set, anxious to get a husband who at the same time was handsome, intelligent, educated, refined and rolling in wealth. As she was ignorant of the fact that no such man existed, she looked confidently forward into the future.

  “I don’t care to go down there among all those gross people,” she informed her father at the dinner table when he broached the subject of the meeting. “They’re so crude and elemental, don’t you know,” she explained, arching her narrow eyebrows.

  “The common people are the salt of the earth,” boomed Rev. Givens. “If it hadn’t been for the common people we wouldn’t have been able to get this home and send you off to school. You make me sick with all your modern ideas. You’d do a lot better if you’d try to be more like your Ma.”

  Both Mrs. Givens and Helen looked quickly at him to see if he was smiling. He wasn’t.

  “Why don’tcha go, Helen?” pleaded Mrs. Givens. “Yo fathah sez this heah man f’m N’Yawk is uh—uh scientist or somethin’ an’ knows a whole lot about things. Yuh might I’arn somethin’. Ah’d go mys’f if ’twasn’t fo mah rheumatism.” She sighed in self-pity and finished gnawing a drumstick.

  Helen’s curiosity was aroused and although she didn’t like the idea of sitting among a lot of mill hands, she was anxious to see and hear this reputedly brilliant young man from the great metropolis where not long before she had lost both her provincialism and chastity.

  “Oh, all right,” she assented with mock reluctance. “I’ll go.”

  —

  The Knights of Nordica’s flag-draped auditorium slowly filled. It was a bare, cavernous structure, with sawdust on the floor, a big platform at one end, row after row of folding wooden chairs and illuminated by large, white lights hanging from the rafters. On the platform was a row of five chairs, the center one being high-backed and gilded. On the lectern downstage was a bulky Bible. A huge American flag was stretched across the rear wall.

  The audience was composed of the lower stratum of white working people: hard-faced, lantern-jawed, dull-eyed adult children, seeking like all humanity for something permanent in the eternal flux of life. The young girls in their cheap finery with circus makeup on their faces; the young men, aged before their time by child labor and a violent environment; the middle-aged folk with their shiny, shabby garb and beaten countenances; all ready and eager to be organized for any purpose except improvement of their intellects and standard of living.

  Rev. Givens opened the meeting with a prayer “for the success, O God, of this thy work, to protect the sisters and wives and daughters of these, thy people, from the filthy pollution of an alien race.”

  A choir of assorted types of individuals sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” earnestly, vociferously and badly.

  They were about to file off the platform when the song leader, a big, beefy, jovial mountain of a man, leaped upon the stage and restrained them.

  “Wait a minute, folks, wait a minute,” he commanded. Then turning to the assemblage: “Now people let’s put some pep into this. We wanna all be happy and get in th’ right spirit for this heah meetin’. Ah’m gonna ask the choir to sing th’ first and last verses ovah ag’in, and when they come to th’ chorus
, Ah wantcha to all join in. Doan be ’fraid. Jesus wouldn’t be ’fraid to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers,’ now would he? Come on, then. All right, choir, you staht; an’ when Ah wave mah han’ you’ll join in on that theah chorus.”

  They obediently followed his directions while he marched up and down the platform, red-faced and roaring and waving his arms in time. When the last note had died away, he dismissed the choir and stepping to the edge of the stage he leaned far out over the audience and barked at them again.

  “Come on, now, folks! Yuh can’t slow up on Jesus now. He won’t be satisfied with jus’ one ole measly song. Yuh gotta let ’im know that yuh love ’im; that y’re happy an’ contented; that yuh ain’t got no troubles an’ ain’t gonna have any. Come on, now. Le’s sing that ole favorite what yo’all like so well: ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile.’” He bellowed and they followed him. Again the vast hall shook with sound. He made them rise and grasp each other by the hand until the song ended.

  Matthew, who sat on the platform alongside old man Givens viewed the spectacle with amusement mingled with amazement. He was amused because of the similarity of this meeting to the religious orgies of the more ignorant Negroes and amazed that earlier in the evening he should have felt any qualms about lecturing to these folks on anthropology, a subject with which neither he nor his hearers were acquainted. He quickly saw that these people would believe anything that was shouted at them loudly and convincingly enough. He knew what would fetch their applause and bring in their memberships and he intended to repeat it over and over.

  The Imperial Grand Wizard spent a half-hour introducing the speaker of the evening, dwelt upon his supposed scholastic attainments, but took pains to inform them that, despite Matthew’s vast knowledge, he still believed in the Word of God, the sanctity of womanhood and the purity of the white race.

  For an hour Matthew told them at the top of his voice what they believed: i.e., that a white skin was a sure indication of the possession of superior intellectual and moral qualities; that all Negroes were inferior to them; that God had intended for the United States to be a white man’s country and that with His help they could keep it so; that their sons and brothers might inadvertently marry Negresses or, worse, their sisters and daughters might marry Negroes, if Black-No-More, Incorporated, was permitted to continue its dangerous activities.

  For an hour he spoke, interrupted at intervals by enthusiastic gales of applause, and as he spoke his eye wandered over the females in the audience, noting the comeliest ones. As he wound up with a spirited appeal for eager soldiers to join the Knights of Nordica at five dollars per head and the half-dozen “planted” emissaries led the march of suckers to the platform, he noted for the first time a girl who sat in the front row and gazed up at him raptly.

  She was a titian blonde, well-dressed, beautiful and strangely familiar. As he retired amid thunderous applause to make way for Rev. Givens and the money collectors, he wondered where he had seen her before. He studied her from his seat.

  Suddenly he knew. It was she! The girl who had spurned him; the girl he had sought so long; the girl he wanted more than anything in the world! Strange that she should be here. He had always thought of her as a refined, educated and wealthy lady, far above associating with such people as these. He was in a fever to meet her, some way, before she got out of his sight again, and yet he felt just a little disappointed to find her here.

  He could hardly wait until Givens seated himself again before questioning him as to the girl’s identity. As the beefy song leader led the roaring of the popular closing hymn, he leaned toward the Imperial Grand Wizard and shouted: “Who is that tall golden-haired girl sitting in the front row? Do you know her?”

  Rev. Givens looked out over the audience, craning his skinny neck and blinking his eyes. Then he saw the girl, sitting within twenty feet of him.

  “You mean that girl sitting right in front, there?” he asked, pointing.

  “Yes, that one,” said Matthew, impatiently.

  “Heh! Heh! Heh!” chuckled the Wizard, rubbing his stubbly chin. “Why that there’s my daughter, Helen. Like to meet her?”

  Matthew could hardly believe his ears. Givens’s daughter! Incredible! What a coincidence! What luck! Would he like to meet her? He leaned over and shouted “Yes.”

  FIVE

  A huge silver monoplane glided gracefully to the surface of Mines Field in Los Angeles and came to a pretty stop after a short run. A liveried footman stepped out of the forward compartment armed with a stool which he placed under the rear door. Simultaneously a high-powered foreign car swept up close to the airplane and waited. The rear door of the airplane opened, and to the apparent surprise of the nearby mechanics a tall, black, distinguished-looking Negro stepped out and down to the ground, assisted by the hand of the footman. Behind him came a pale young man and woman, evidently secretaries. The three entered the limousine which rapidly drove off.

  “Who’s that coon?” asked one of the mechanics, round-eyed and respectful, like all Americans, in the presence of great wealth.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” inquired another, pityingly. “Why that’s that Dr. Crookman. You know, the fellow what’s turnin’ niggers white. See that B N M on the side of his plane? That stands for Black-No-More. Gee, but I wish I had just half the jack he’s made in the last six months!”

  “Why I thought from readin’ th’ papers,” protested the first speaker, “that th’ law had closed up his places and put ’im outta business.”

  “Oh, that’s a lotta hockey,” said the other fellow. “Why just yesterday th’ newspapers said that Black-No-More was openin’ a place on Central Avenue. They already got one in Oakland, so a coon told me yesterday.”

  “’Sfunny,” ventured a third mechanic, as they wheeled the big plane into a nearby hangar, “how he don’t have nuthin’ but white folks around him. He must not like nigger help. His chauffeur’s white, his footman’s white an’ that young gal and feller what was with him are white.”

  “How do you know?” challenged the first speaker. “They may be darkies that he’s turned into white folks.”

  “That’s right,” the other replied. “It’s gittin’ so yuh can’t tell who’s who. I think that there Knights of Nordica ought to do something about it. I joined up with ’em two months ago but they ain’t done nuthin’ but sell me an ole uniform an’ hold a coupla meetin’s.”

  They lapsed into silence. Sandol, the erstwhile Senegalese, stepped from the cockpit grinning. “Ah, zese Americains,” he muttered to himself as he went over the engine, examining everything minutely.

  “Where’d yuh come from, buddy?” asked one of the mechanics.

  “Den-vair,” Sandol replied.

  “Whatcha doin’, makin’ a trip around th’ country?” queried another.

  “Yes, we air, what you callem, on ze tour inspectione,” the aviator continued. They could think of no more to say and soon strolled off.

  Around the oval table on the seventh floor of a building on Central Avenue sat Dr. Junius Crookman, Hank Johnson, Chuck Foster, Ranford the Doctor’s secretary and four other men. At the lower end of the table Miss Bennett, Ranford’s stenographer, was taking notes. A soft-treading waiter whose Negro nature was only revealed by his mocking obsequiousness, served each with champagne.

  “To our continued success!” cried the physician, lifting his glass high.

  “To our continued success!” echoed the others.

  They drained their glasses, and returned them to the polished surface of the table.

  “Dog bite it, Doc!” blurted Johnson. “Us sho is doin’ fine. Ain’t had a bad break since we stahted, an’ heah ’tis th’ fust o’ September.”

  “Don’t holler too soon,” cautioned Foster. “The opposition is growing keener every day. I had to pay seventy-five thousand dollars more for this building than it
’s worth.”

  “Well, yuh got it, didn’t yuh?” asked Johnson. “Just like Ah allus say: when yuh got money yuh kin git anything in this man’s country. Whenever things look tight jes pull out th’ ole check book an’ eve’ything’s all right.”

  “Optimist!” grunted Foster.

  “I ain’t no pess’mist,” Johnson accused.

  “Now gentlemen,” Dr. Crookman interrupted, clearing his throat, “let’s get down to business. We have met here, as you know, not only for the purpose of celebrating the opening of this, our fiftieth sanitarium, but also to take stock of our situation. I have before me here a detailed report of our business affairs for the entire period of seven months and a half that we’ve been in operation.

  “During that time we have put into service fifty sanitariums from Coast to Coast, or an average of one every four and one-half days, the average capacity of each sanitarium being one hundred and five patients. Each place has a staff of six physicians and twenty-four nurses, a janitor, four orderlies, two electricians, bookkeeper, cashier, stenographer and record clerk, not counting four guards.

  “For the past four months we have had an equipment factory in Pittsburgh in full operation and a chemical plant in Philadelphia. In addition to this we have purchased four airplanes and a radio broadcasting station. Our expenditures for real estate, salaries and chemicals have totaled six million, two hundred and fifty-five thousand, eighty-five dollars and ten cents. . . .”

  “He! He!” chuckled Johnson. “Dat ten cents mus’ be fo’ one o’ them bad ceegars that Fostah smokes.”

  “Our total income,” continued Dr. Crookman, frowning slightly at the interruption, “has been eighteen million, five hundred thousand, three hundred dollars, or three hundred and seventy thousand and six patients at fifty dollars apiece. I think that vindicates my contention at the beginning that the fee should be but fifty dollars—within the reach of the rank and file of Negroes.” He laid aside his report and added: