A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes Page B

this side and that, and he was standing there between the devil and the deep blue sea.
    Better to get shot running than standing, he decided. He crouched.
    Coffin Ed sensed his movement.
    “Are you still there, Jackson?” he barked.
    Jackson sprang through the open doorway, landed on his hands and knees, and came up running.
    “Jackson, you bastard!” he heard Coffin Ed screaming. “Holy jumping Moses, I can’t take this much longer. Can’t the sons ofbitches hear? Jackson!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
    Three shots blasted the night, the long red flame bursting the black darkness from the barrel of Coffin Ed’s pistol. Jackson heard the bullets crashing through the wooden walls.
    Jackson churned his knees in a froth of panic, trying to get greater speed from his short black legs. It pumped sweat from his pores, steam cooked him in his own juice, squandered his strength, upset his gait, but didn’t increase his speed. In Harlem they say a lean man can’t sit and a fat man can’t run. He was trying to get to the other side of the old brick warehouse that had been converted into Heaven but it seemed as far off as the resurrection of the dead.
    Behind him three more shots blasted the enclosing din, inspiring him like a burning rag on a dog’s tail. He couldn’t think of anything but an old folk song he’d learned in his youth:
    Run, nigger, run; de patter-roller catch you;
Run, nigger, run; and try to get away …
    His foot slipped on a muddy spot and he sailed head-on into the old wooden loading-dock at the back of the reconverted Heaven, invisible in the dark. His fat-cushioned mouth smacked into the edge of a heavy floorboard with the sound of meat slapping on a chopping block. Tears of pain flew from his eyes.
    As he jumped back, licking his bruised lips, he heard the clatter of policemen’s feet coming around the other side of the Heaven.
    He crawled up over the edge of the dock like a clumsy crab escaping a snapping turtle. A ladder was within reach to his right, but he didn’t see it.
    Overhead the 155th Street Bridge hung across the dark night, strung with lighted cars slowing to a stop as passengers craned their necks to see the cause of the commotion.
    A lone tugboat towing two empty garbage-scows chugged down the Harlem River to pick up garbage bound for the sea. Its green and red riding lights were reflected in shimmering double-takers on the black river.
    Jackson felt hemmed in on both sides; if the cops didn’t get him the river would. He jumped to his feet and started to run again. His footsteps boomed like thunder in his ears on the rotten floorboards. A loose board gave beneath his foot and he plunged face forward on his belly.
    A policeman rounding the other side of the Heaven, coming in from the street, flashed his light in a wide searching arc. It passed over Jackson’s prone figure, black against the black boards, and moved along the water’s edge.
    Jackson jumped up and began to run again. The old folk song kept beating in his head:
    Dis nigger run, he run his best,
Stuck his head in a hornet’s nest.
    The tricky echo of the river and the buildings made his footsteps sound to the cops as coming from the opposite direction. Their lights flashed downriver as they converged in front of the wooden shack.
    “God damn it, in here,” Jackson heard Coffin Ed’s roar.
    “Coming,” he heard the quick reply.
    “Somebody’s getting away,” Jackson heard another voice shout. He put his feet down and picked them up as fast as he could, but it took him so long to get to the end of the dock he felt as if he’d turned stark white from old age and had withered half away.
    From the corners of his white-walled eyes he saw the policemen’s lights swinging back up the river, slowly closing in. And he didn’t have anywhere to hide.
    Suddenly he went off the edge of the dock without seeing it. He was running on wooden boards and the next thing he knew he was running on the cool night air. The