The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

Author:Chester Himes [Himes, Chester]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-80327-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

10

White light coming from the street slanted upward past the edge of the roof and made a milky wall in the dark.

Beyond the wall of light the flat tar roof was shrouded in semi-darkness.

The sergeant emerged from the edge of light like a hammerhead turtle rising from the deep. In one glance he saw Sonny frantically beating a flock of panic-stricken pigeons with a long bamboo pole, and Inky standing motionless as though he’d sprouted from the tar.

“By God, now I know why they’re called tarbabies!” he exclaimed.

Gripping the pole for dear life with both gauntleted hands, Sonny speared desperately at the pigeons. His eyes were white as they rolled toward the red-faced sergeant. His ragged overcoat flapped in the wind. The pigeons ducked and dodged and flew in lopsided circles. Their heads were cocked on one side as they observed Sonny’s gymnastics with beady apprehension.

Inky stood like a silhouette cut from black paper, looking at nothing. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the dark.

The pigeon loft was a rickety coop about six feet high, made of scraps of chicken wire, discarded screen windows and assorted rags tacked to a frame of rotten boards propped against the low brick wall separating the roofs. It had a tarpaulin top and was equipped with precarious roosts, tin cans of rusty water, and a rusty tin feeding pan.

Blue-uniformed white cops formed a jagged semi-circle in front of it, staring at Sonny in silent and bemused amazement.

The sergeant climbed onto the roof, puffing, and paused for a moment to mop his brow.

“What’s he doing, voodoo?” he asked.

“It’s only Don Quixote in blackface dueling a windmill,” the professor said.

“That ain’t funny,” the sergeant said. “I like Don Quixote.”

The professor let it go.

“Is he a halfwit?” the sergeant said.

“If he’s got that much,” the professor said.

The sergeant pushed to the center of the stage, but once there hesitated as though he didn’t know how to begin.

Sonny looked at him through the corners of his eyes and kept working the pole. Inky stared at nothing with silent intensity.

“All right, all right, so your feet don’t stink,” the sergeant said. “Which one of you is Caleb?”

“Dass me,” Sonny said, without an instant neglecting the pigeons.

“What the hell you call yourself doing?”

“I’se teaching my pigeons how to fly.”

The sergeant’s jowls began to swell. “You trying to be funny?”

“Naw suh, I didn’ mean they didn’ know how to fly. They can fly all right at day but they don’t know how to night fly.”

The sergeant looked at the professor. “Don’t pigeons fly at night?”

“Search me,” the professor said.

“Naw suh, not unless you makes ’em,” Inky said.

Everybody looked at him.

“Hell, he can talk,” the professor said.

“They sleeps,” Sonny added.

“Roosts,” Inky corrected.

“We’re going to make some pigeons fly, too,” the sergeant said. “Stool pigeons.”

“If they don’t fly, they’ll fry,” the professor said.

The sergeant turned to Inky. “What do they call you, boy?”

“Inky,” Inky said. “But my name’s Rufus Tree.”

“So you’re Inky,” the sergeant said.

“They’re both Inky,” the professor said.

The cops laughed.

The sergeant smiled into his hand.

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