Darktown by Thomas Mullen Page B

call himself. But didn’t move.
    Little carefully pulled the stabbed man to his knees, then turned him so he was leaning against a telephone pole. The car’s blue lights strobed the scene. The man’s howl had gone back down to a moan. He wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and the lower left-hand side was black with blood, glistening.
    â€œYeah, he did get you pretty good.” Dunlow whistled. He still wasn’t making a move for his car radio, clearly enjoying how he could drag this out. “Why you throw a bottle at an officer of the law come to help you, boy?”
    Judging from the Negro’s scrunched eyes and locked jaw, he was in too much pain to talk.
    Boggs took a ginger step and said, “ I’ll call the ambulance.”
    â€œDon’t you go near my car, boy,” Dunlow warned.
    They stared each other down. Rake was behind Dunlow and he could see the look on Boggs’s face, the anger there. Pain and the blood seemed to have washed a certain veneer from the preacher’s son.
    Then Dunlow kicked the stabbed Negro directly in his wound.
    The man screamed and at least one of the Negro cops yelled, too.Dunlow laughed. Rake realized one of his own hands was clasped around the handle of his billy club.
    â€œWhat you think you were doing, boy, throwing a bottle at an officer of the law?” Dunlow demanded. “Or maybe you don’t think they’re real officers of the law, do you?”
    The Negro had fallen onto his side and was gasping for air, the act of breathing too painful now.
    â€œAnd you know what?” Dunlow said. “You’re right.”
    Dunlow loomed over the Negro. Rake was still gripping his billy club. The two Negro officers were standing exactly where they’d been before but they both seemed crouched, bracing for what might come next.
    â€œBecause, boy, if you did throw a bottle at a white officer, you’d damn well be a dead nigger right now.”
    â€œWhy are you even here, Dunlow?” Boggs asked. “We didn’t call for help.”
    â€œI’m here because this is my city, boy. I’m here because the good nigra citizens of the area called the police asking for help. That’s why I’m here. The better goddamn question is why you’re here.”
    Then Dunlow pulled at his belt buckle, as the kicking had caused it to slide a bit beneath his gut. “You want an ambulance for the nigger, you can call it your damn self.”
    Rake followed Dunlow back to their car, then he said, quietly, “Dunlow, they need an ambulance.”
    Dunlow stared at him. “You ain’t calling one from my radio.”
    Rake stood there, thinking of what he could do.
    Dunlow asked, “What’s your damn problem, son?” He was just quiet enough so that the Negroes couldn’t hear this dispute among white men. “You want to help the niggers so bad? What about your ‘better kind of segregation’?”
    Rake had no answer.
    Dunlow opened the driver’s door and got in. “There’s a call box a block away. Call it your damn self.”
    He slammed his door and drove off, nearly driving over one of the fallen Negroes.
    Rake felt he had crossed a line he had meant only to toe, and now he’d been abandoned.
    Neither of the Negro officers were looking at him when he told them he’d call for an ambulance and a wagon. He ran to the call box as fast as he could.

    For twenty minutes Little applied pressure to the man’s wound while Boggs sat on the sidewalk denying that he needed medical treatment. Rake, after making the call, knew he should seek out the witnesses the officers had referred to, a woman and some kids, but this situation before him seemed plenty volatile enough and he felt the need to stay. He hadn’t been able to stop Dunlow from attacking the man. Yet he needed to believe that, if something like that were to happen again, he would stop it. He would not let events