The Devil's Own Rag Doll (35 page)

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Authors: Mitchell Bartoy

BOOK: The Devil's Own Rag Doll
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I lifted Lloyd up and tossed him over the rail. And then, as Rix leveled the gun at me, I dropped over the rail myself. The water of the Detroit River struck like a fastball low on the handle. Though the weather had been unbearably hot, it was still too early in the season for the water to be warm. The murky water frightened me more than the barrel of Rix's gun; at least with the gun, you could see it coming. I did not swim well.

I saw Lloyd's head bobbing and guessed the old man was doing a breaststroke or a modified dog paddle, heading for the city, making for the naval station at the foot of the bridge.
They mean for the navy boys to come out blasting niggers because of all this,
I thought. I turned and swam as well as I could for the lights I took to be Belle Isle, still some distance downstream. I thrashed across the current, hoping to catch the island before I was swept downriver. I knew Hardiman's little bullet had passed into my back and had settled at the edge of my shoulder blade because I could feel it tearing every time I stretched forward. I could not feel any pellets from Rix's shot.

From the yacht I heard shouting. I did not look back, but I guessed that Rix and Sherrill were arguing on the top deck. The engines cut back and rumbled and sputtered. Then they kicked up again, and I did not need to look to know that the yacht was headed my way. I veered left, more sharply toward the island, and sucked in a deep breath when I felt the craft drawing near. I dived under as well as I could, but still the hull knocked me deeper as it passed over. The blast from the inboards tore open my shirt and spun me around under the water. Though the big yacht could not have managed more than fifteen knots in such a short run, the weight of it in the shallow water churned up enough silt and pebbles to score my face.

I flailed under the water for a moment in a panic and then forced myself to keep still until the stale air in my bursting lungs could show me the way to the surface. When I began to rise, I stroked my way to the open air, my lungs feeling brittle, about to crack like glass. I sucked in air and water and coughed and choked as I resumed my swimming to the island. The yacht had turned hard away and now came around for another pass. Once again, I let myself go under. The rush of the boat's displacement pulled me more quickly along in the current, and I soon made the island. As I pulled myself through the cattails near the wrecked pier of the Yacht Club, I turned to see that Lloyd's yacht now circled crazily on the water and appeared to be heading for the bridge. I reached more solid ground, found my feet, and crashed through the cattails onto the grassy slope. Hacking up water and mucus and algae and solid bits of something, I staggered toward the fenced-in parking lot of the Yacht Club and climbed over.

Hardiman's car was still there, surrounded now by a small crowd of well-dressed gawkers, wondering at the damage done to the pier by Lloyd's yacht. They stared at me as I trotted past but said nothing and made no move to stop me. There was no sign of Johnson, so I ran through the lot and past the guardhouse. I made it out to the street, which was dense with tired picnickers. Struggling toward the bridge on jellied legs, I heard shouts of surprise and female screams ahead of me as the yacht came up to the bridge. It was too tall in the water, and I heard metal scraping as the high running lights and the glass windscreen broke off on the underside of the bridge. I pushed through the crowd frantically, bulling my way through throngs pushing back to Belle Isle; the panicked civilians ran crazily from the yacht, as if it might knock down the bridge.

Hands clawed at me and slight fists smacked into me. But I kept on. Over the heads of the swirling crowd, I saw Sherrill come up suddenly over the rail of the bridge, clutching his satchel, pushed up roughly by Rix, who appeared soon after. Sherrill gained his feet and began to limp toward the land end of the bridge. Rix followed and bowled over a colored woman holding a bundled baby in her arms. She fell and fell hard, turning onto her back as she went to cushion the fall for the baby. As I passed her, she was groaning and stamping her feet in pain on the paved surface of the bridge, and the baby was squawking in alarm. The river's strong, slow current and the yacht's rumbling inboards pushed the craft screeching under the bridge, bobbing and crunching on its own wake until it came through to the other side. Then it cruised peacefully, slowly, down the river.

I fought my way forward, careening between groups of blindly lashing young colored men with their dates and families. Over the hump of the bridge, I saw a lone mounted officer trying to control the tumult in the broad, open area along Jefferson at the foot of Grand Boulevard. As I drew closer, I could see the mare's frantic eyes and the tightness of her neck, the bobbing, half-rearing panic. The officer had given up on the crowd and now tried just to calm the horse, to turn her toward the wide boulevard. Rix and the hobbling Sherrill reached the center of the crowd. They pulled the officer from the horse, and he disappeared from my view. A moment later, Sherrill came up onto the saddle, still clutching his satchel somehow, holding it between his legs, hunched over it. He whipped the mare's flanks with his thin cane.

By this time I had ripped off my jacket and my torn shirt, and I plowed bare-chested through the crowd, pale and hairy in the lights of the bridge. I found that people were beginning to get out of my way. Rix stood waiting for me with his feet planted, blood streaming over one side of his face from a gash on his forehead. When he saw me, he smiled and winked, drawing blood into his eye. Even in the riotous crowd, a circle cleared around him.

Before I could reach him, though, a very large Negro came up on Rix's blind side and brought down a big bear's paw to the side of his head. Rix went down but sprang up and onto the larger man, looping wide blows to his head. I ran up and beyond them, wheezing now from the effort, buzzing from draining adrenaline. I saw Sherrill on the horse about fifty yards ahead and continued to plow through the crowd toward him.

Sherrill might have made it past the thickest part of the crowd and out of the mess entirely. Instead he sat high in the saddle and looked around him. He spied a tight group of colored men gathered on the east corner of the boulevard and turned the mare toward them. With a quick twist, he opened the cane and drew out a slender blade and began to slash madly about him as he drove the horse into the group.

Sherrill whipped the silvery blade into the group of colored men. They cringed at first but then drew close as they realized that Sherrill was doing little harm. The horse felt itself closed in and reared up; and as it did, Sherrill dropped from the saddle down into the furious gang. They parted to let the horse go but quickly came together over Sherrill, swinging wildly, kicking and tearing at the frail old man. In a moment, a roar went up as the satchel ripped open, sending a plume of bills into the air.

I took a long look around me. Already, on every side of me, fistfights were breaking out, and small groups rushed past, some heading for the fights, some away. A number of white-suited navy men were rushing up the little hill toward the foot of the bridge, all white men spoiling for a fight. It seemed to happen all at once, flaming up in pockets along every angle of my vision. I bent over and put my hands on my knees and tried to suck in enough air to satisfy myself.

Walking down Jefferson toward the heart of the city, I felt cool for the first time in weeks. I was bare to the waist, and the dirty water of the Detroit River had almost dried from my trousers. Gusts of rioting men and boys blew by me, scrambling in and out of alleys and doorways and racing down the middle of the roadway. None of it seemed to touch me. I wondered idly how a man might go about setting fire to such a great building as the Penobscot. It would take something to get it going.

The only fires I saw burned in upended trashcans, splashing sparks whenever a car whipped by. Rioters seemed to spring up from everywhere and came from all directions. They threw or carried bricks, bats, chains, pipes, whatever they could pick up, like a cleaning crew gone mad, cut loose from everything. The stores and shops close to the street lost their windows, but only the ones at ground level, as if the cost of doing a thorough job meant missing too much action. A car now and then found an open stretch on Jefferson and squealed away, but for the most part the street was blocked by clogs of rioters. Groups of men and a few women huddled together as if to make one bigger animal, taunting and provoking other groups. Squealing, screaming, the low sobs of disbelief from the injured passing by me, blaring car horns, the occasional pop and splash of a shattered window, all of it came together like hissing in my ears.

I was walking, strolling really, down the middle of the westbound side of Jefferson, heading generally toward the real downtown, where the tall buildings made it seem like you were in a kind of hard forest. I knew well that I was steering myself toward the tightest part of Black Bottom, where I surely did not want to be walking. But I kept on, and I began to feel a chill from the wind off the river. I realized that I had lost my eye patch somewhere along the way. I pictured it hooked onto the skull of some unlucky bootlegger at the bottom of the river, fallen through the ice on a winter run to Canada. I didn't miss it, and the coolness made me feel as comfortable as I could ever remember feeling. The bottoms of my bare feet drew some warmth from the pavement.

I thought with a sudden sinking of my heart that it would be good to have my brother Tommy walking along with me, as we had done as boys so long ago. It would be good to have something to lean against. There was so much I wanted to tell him. After a moment of thought, and with a shrug of resignation, I thought that it would be good to have our father along, too. All of us walking abreast down the middle of the street, our own little group; surely we'd pass with no trouble. Maybe Bobby could tag along as well, an overeager mascot, trotting on ahead.
And curse me down to hell,
I thought,
if it wouldn't be nice to have old Toby Thrumm along, too. That poor nigger saved my life.

My watery chest heaved for breath as I thought of my two dead girls, little sister Eliza and Jane Hardiman. They could not have met in life, but now I pictured them walking hand in hand somewhere, in a world where babies and girls could grow up safe and healthy and happy. With all of us watching over them—my father, my brother, my friends … I wondered briefly if all that kind of thinking meant I was already dead, doomed to walk half-naked for eternity through the streets of the city I'd lived in all my life.

Behind me a car revved and squealed, leaning on the horn so much that its sound had faded to a strangled squawk. When it drew close, I meandered toward the edge of the roadway to give it room to pass. I glanced at the old Negro driver clutching the wheel and then wandered back to my old path after it had passed. The sagging jalopy made it another block in fits and starts, stopping and threatening to stall every few feet.
He doesn't have the sense to turn up from Jefferson and onto a side street,
I thought.
Why doesn't he just get out of this?

A block ahead of me, the jalopy stopped for good when a swarm of white boys surrounded it and began hitting and kicking at the windows. When the windows were gone, I could see that the punks were trying to drag the colored occupants out the windows. They pulled one out the passenger side, but the old driver stuck tight. They began to rock the car, surging on one side until they could lift it up and over. In all the excitement, the passenger broke free and hightailed it up the street toward Black Bottom. As the car tipped all the way over onto its roof, part of the gang split off and chased after the colored boy.

Though my legs felt numb, I picked up and started to trot after them. I kept to the balls of my feet to keep from slapping on the hard pavement. I passed the gang at the car and saw the runners far ahead of me, still holding to Jefferson. There was no hope of catching them, I knew, until they caught the poor nigger at the front. But I kept on, my legs warming somewhat, loosening up. The air I sucked into my lungs felt humid, heavy with river moisture.

They caught up to the boy and brought him down like a pack of dogs, snarling around him and dragging him to the ground. To my bleary eye, it looked like a fizzy smear on the street. I drew closer, my chest heaving, sharply painful.

I bowled through the boys at the edge of the fray, slamming them from behind with heavy forearms. Then I began to swat away the boys closer in, knocking them silly with quick pokes to the backs of their heads. As I made it to the tight ball of writhing boys at the center, I peeled them off one by one, spinning each away onto the sidewalk and street. Had they been men instead of boys, they might have regrouped and overwhelmed me from behind; but they picked themselves up and stood trembling in fright and anger and disbelief.

When I worked my way down to the last white boy, I found him clutching the colored boy in a desperate hug, trying to ward off the hail of blows that had fallen on him, too. I sank my fingers sharply into the back of the white boy's neck and grabbed one wrist, and then I pried him loose and lifted him, tossed him to one side. We're like animals, there's no denying it; when I had my hands on that last white boy,
I knew that I was touching Alex.
I knew without seeing his face that I was laying hands on someone who shared my own blood.

The colored boy was battered beyond recognition, bloodied and torn up but not yet swollen. His front teeth had been pushed in and hung toward the back of his throat in his open mouth. His knees had been drawn up and now lay out on either side almost to the sidewalk, and his arms lay out from his body like a bird fallen from the nest. I could not tell, with the blood pounding in my temples and in my ears, if he drew breath. His eyes were rolled up in his head, showing just the whites under fluttering lids. A wide swath of blood glistened against the dark brown skin below his smashed-in nose, brilliant red under the streetlight.

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