The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams

of sanity tests to Boatwright—after the tearsheets had been sent to them. Circulation had jumped a few hundred. So? “Are you going?”
    â€œHe asked me to come.”
    Crockett shuffled papers impatiently. “And you’re going just because he asked you to?”
    Max looked at his cigarette. “Yes.”
    â€œOkay, Reddick. That’ll wind it up.” Crockett watched him rise and walk to Mary’s desk. Damn fool, he thought. I don’t see no nail holes in his hands or feet.
    â€œReady?” Max asked Mary. She was a small, brown woman with slight hips but shapely legs. Not much breast.
    â€œIn a minute,” she said. “I’ve got to make up. Be right back.” She took her purse and walked quickly to the rear of the office. Max felt drained, like a man unable and unwilling to shed an unfaithful wife and who hopes death will resolve the problem, death in sleep, an auto accident, a heart attack. He would feel better next week, after the execution. He wondered what phrases, what look of the eyes, bound him to Boatwright and Boatwright to him.
    Mary returned, stuck out her tongue at Crockett’s back, put on her coat and they left the office, drifted down Eighth Avenue where they were meeting Harry and Charlotte. Max hadn’t spent too much time with Harry in the past weeks. On the way down he debated whether or not they should join them. For one thing, he didn’t want to put the damper on what was to be a fun night. Mary wouldn’t object. She never objected to anything. That was what was wrong with her. On the other hand, Max wanted desperately to begin living himself again; he wanted to be with people, be smothered by them, people who wanted to live, people who did not seek with uncanny diligence a way to die.
    When they were all settled at dinner, Harry said, “I see where your boy gets the chair next week.”
    â€œIs it next week?” Charlotte said, tossing her yellow hair with a snap of her sharp chin. “My, how quickly time flies.”
    â€œYou been invited?” Harry asked, wolfing down some ham hocks and red beans.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGoing?”
    â€œI don’t know yet,” Max lied. He sensed Mary looking covertly at him.
    â€œWell, there’s your next novel,” Harry said, nudging Charlotte with his elbow. “The other side of the coin to my last book. Here you have a kid from, for Negroes today, a middle-class family. Good education. Bright. Stinking bright. But black, see. New pressures. New disappointments, frustrations. Hope, but after all, no hope. Right, Max?”
    Max gave Harry a wry smile. He thought, Well, listen to old Harry. “You could be right.” Inwardly Max drew back, then gave himself to the floor show, the chorus line of fleshy, false-eyelashed brownskins stamping and bucking, shimmying and boogieing to the music, high-kicking. He watched the musicians sitting behind their scarred and battered bandshells in their dark glasses. Most of them had seen better days: some tune with Jimmy Lunceford or Duke or Basie; with Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy or with Erskine Hawkins. The attraction came on. A man with a phony whip and a sinuous “slave woman” chased each other across the small, dirty floor. They fell panting and slow-moving toward each other. Each time the man, with an excess of facial grimacing lashed forward with the whip, the woman snapped up, rolled her buttocks and moved forward, pelvis in perpetual motion. Finally, to the bray of brass, they collapsed in the center of the floor.
    Max looked at Charlotte, then at the couple climbing to their feet for the applause. Charlotte clapped loudly. Harry bent forward toward Charlotte and she stopped. Harry didn’t want to be stared at, even in Harlem. The show went on, but Max placed it beyond his thoughts. He would not go to Boatwright’s execution. How could Harry have known that he was thinking of writing about