Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [201]
"Come on," someone called nearby.
"Let's go, buddy," the man who had helped me said. He took my arm, a thin man who carried a large cloth bag slung over his shoulder.
"The shape you in wouldn't do to leave you round here," he said. "You act like you drunk."
"Go where?" I said.
"Where? Hell, man. Everywhere. We git to moving, no telling where we might go -- Hey, Dupre!" he called.
"Say, man -- Goddam! Don't be calling my name so loud," a voice answered. "Here, I am over here, gitting me some work shirts."
"Git some for me, Du," he said.
"All right, but don't think I'm your papa," the answer came.
I looked at the thin man, feeling a surge of friendship. He didn't know me, his help was disinterested . . .
"Hey, Du," he called, "we go'n do it?"
"Hell yes, soon as I git me these shirts."
The crowd was working in and out of the stores like ants around spilled sugar. From time to time there came the crash of glass, shots; fire trucks in distant streets.
"How you feel?" the man said.
"Still fuzzy," I said, "and weak."
"Le's see if it's stopped bleeding. Yeah, you'll be all right."
I saw him vaguely though his voice came clear.
"Sure," I said.
"Man, you lucky you ain't dead. These sonsabitches is really shooting now," he said. "Over on Lenox they was aiming up in the air. If I could find me a rifle, I'd show 'em! Here, take you a drink of this good Scotch," he said, taking a quart bottle from a hip pocket. "I got me a whole case stashed what I got from a liquor store over there. Over there all you got to do is breathe, and you drunk, man. Drunk! Hundred proof bonded whiskey flowing all in the gutters."
I took a drink, shuddering as the whiskey went down but thankful for the shock it gave me. There was a bursting, tearing movement of people around me, dark figures in a blue glow.
"Look at them take it away," he said, looking into the dark action of the crowd. "Me, I'm tired. Was you over on Lenox?"
"No," I said, seeing a woman moving slowly past with a row of about a dozen dressed chickens suspended by their necks from the handle of a new straw broom . . .
"Hell, you ought to see it, man. Everything is tore up. By now the womens is picking it clean. I saw one ole woman with a whole side of a cow on her back. Man, she was 'bout bent bowlegged trying to make it home -- Here come Dupre now," he said, breaking off.
I saw a little hard man come out of the crowd carrying several boxes. He wore three hats upon his head, and several pairs of suspenders flopped about his shoulders, and now as he came toward us I saw that he wore a pair of gleaming new rubber hip boots. His pockets bulged and over his shoulder he carried a cloth sack that swung heavily behind him.
"Damn, Dupre," my friend said, pointing to his head, "you got one of them for me? What kind is they?"
Dupre stopped and looked at him. "With all them hats in there and I'm going to come out with anything but a Dobbs? Man, are you mad? All them new, pretty-colored Dobbs? Come on, let's get going before the cops git back. Damn, look at that thing blaze!"
I looked toward the curtain of blue fire, through which vague figures toiled. Dupre called out and several men left the crowd and joined us in the street. We moved off, my friend (Scofield, the others called him) leading me along. My head throbbed, still bled.
"Looks like you got you some loot too," he said, pointing to my brief case.
"Not much," I said, thinking, loot? Loot? And suddenly I knew why it was heavy, remembering Mary's broken bank and the coins; and now I found myself opening the brief case and dropping all my papers -- my Brotherhood identification, the anonymous letter, along with Clifton's doll -- into it.
"Fill it up, man. Don't you be bashful. You wait till we tackle one of these pawnshops. That Du's got him a cotton-picking sack fulla stuff. He could go into business."
"Well, I'll be damn," a man on the other side of me said. "I thought that was a cotton sack. Where'd he get that thing?"
"He brought it with him when he come North," Scofield said. "Du swears that when he goes back he'll have it full of ten-dollar bills. Hell, after tonight he'll need him a warehouse for all the stuff he's got. You fill that brief case, buddy. Get yourself something!"