Blind Man With a Pistol by Chester Himes

asked.
          "Nope, that's homicide, baby," Grave Digger said. "Me and Ed are trying to find out who incited the riot."
          Dick's hysterical outburst of laughter seemed odd indeed from so cynical a man.
          "Man, that's how you get dandruff," he said.
     
     
                            _______________
     
    Interlude
     
          Good people, your food is digested by various juices in the stomach. There is a stomach juice for everything you eat. There is a juice for meat and a juice for potatoes. There is a juice for chitterlings and a juice for sweet potato pie. There is a juice for buttermilk and a juice for hopping John. But sometimes it happens these juices get mixed up and the wrong juice is applied to the wrong food. Now you might eat corn on the cob which has just been taken out of the pot and it's so hot you burn your tongue. Well, your mouth gets mixed up and sends the wrong signal to your stomach. And your stomach hauls off and lets go with the juice r cayenne pepper. Suddenly you got an upset stomach and the hot corn goes to your head. it causes a burning fever and your temperature rises. Your head gets so hot it causes the corn to begin popping. And the popped corn comes through your skull and gets mixed up with your hair. And that's how you get dandruff.
     
                      Dusty Fletcher at the Apollo Theater on
                            125th Street in Harlem
     
                            _______________
     
    9
     
          A man entered The Temple of Black Jesus. He was a short, fat, black man with a harelip. His face was running with sweat as though his skin was leaking. His short black hair grew so thick on his round inflated head it looked artificial, like drip-dry hair. His body looked blown up like that of a rubber man. The sky-blue silk suit he wore on this hot night glinted with a blue light. He looked inflammable. But he was cool.
          Black people milling along the sidewalk stared at him with a mixture of awe and deference. He was the latest.
          "Ham, baby," someone whispered.
          "Naw, dass Jesus baby," was the harsh rejoinder.
          The black man walked forward down a urine-stinking hallway beneath the feet of a gigantic black plaster of paris image of Jesus Christ, hanging by his neck from the rotting white ceiling of a large square room. There was an expression of teeth-bared rage on Christ's black face. His arms were spread, his fists balled, his toes curled. Black blood dripped from red nail holes. The legend underneath read:
     
                            THEY LYNCHED ME.
     
          Soul brothers believed it.
          The Temple of Black Jesus was on 116th Street, west of Lenox Avenue. It and all the hot dirty slum streets running parallel into Spanish Harlem were teeming with hot dirty slum-dwellers, like cockroaches eating from a bowl of frijoles. Dirt rose from their shuffling feet. Fried hair melted in the hot dark air and ran like grease down sweating black necks. Half-naked people cursed, muttered, shouted, laughed, drank strong whiskey, ate greasy food, breathed rotten air, sweated, stank and celebrated.
          This was _The Valley_. Gethsemane was a hill. It was cooler. These people celebrated hard. The heat scrambled their brains, came out their skulls, made dandruff. Normal life was so dark with fear and misery, a celebration went off like a skyrocket. _Nat Turner_ day! Who knew who Nat Turner was? Some thought he was a jazz musician teaching the angels jazz; others thought he was a prizefighter teaching the devil to fight. Most agreed the best thing he ever did was die and give them a holiday.
          A chickenshit pimp was pushing his two-dollar whore into a dilapidated convertible to drive her down to Central Park to work. Her black face was caked with white powder, her mascaraed eyes dull with stupidity,