The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams Page B

he had puzzled: How could one man kill and eat another? The more he thought about it, the more it became like a man studying a sore on his own body, a chancre. In the office there were jokes, but there was also an underlying tension, a curiosity, a strange, heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. But no one, maybe because Crockett had given a cue of some kind, brought the case up. Only Max Reddick.
    â€œWe ought to do something about this Boatwright guy, Crockett,” Max said one day as he handed in some copy, which Crockett promptly dropped as though it had been dipped in acid. He leaned back in his chair and stared at Max. Strange guy. Could be living in the Village—next door to Boatwright. Educated nigger. College even. Crockett didn’t trust Negroes who had been to college. He had not been and had done all right. But he knew that if, suddenly, all the barriers fell away, he would have to stay where he was and people like Reddick would be the ones to move on ahead. That was the first thing out of white folk’s mouths—education. He hated Max for being prepared. But the Boatwright thing: it would sell papers in Harlem, but there had to be a hook. Discrimination? Segregation? Cannibalism the result of? Derangement the result of? Crockett knew that the owner of the Democrat , a man who owned funeral parlors in four of the five boroughs took great pride in having a novelist on the paper. It was the owner in fact who had suggested that Max be moved from advertising to editorial and given a by-line. At the suggestion, Crockett, sagely nodding his head, said that he was thinking about getting approval for just such a move. What else could he say? He knew that Reddick was the owner’s first choice to replace Crockett if he didn’t behave. If Max took on the Boatwright case (the owner would be slow to anger if Max were the reporter) and flopped, Crockett got rid of a challenger. If Max succeeded, Crockett got some credit too. For initiative.
    Crockett picked up the copy and scanned it. “You know we’ve got the pride, the racial uplift thing, Reddick. What kind of angle you got?”
    â€œJust the Negro angle. I mean, was there something in his being black that made him do this? He may give us something he hasn’t given the white boys downtown.”
    Crockett tossed the copy in the ready basket “See how much you can get.” Crockett knew he shouldn’t have said it. Reddick didn’t need to be told how to do his job, and that disturbed Crockett too.
    Max entered the jail, leaving a listless Indian summer day flooding the streets; he walked slowly. It was after all ridiculous for a man to be anywhere near a jail if he was not consigned to be in it. And he thought of all the people who had been placed in jail because they were poor and knew no one to help them, of the falsely arrested, the interminable democratic process which frequently placed a man inside with a minimum of effort, but took forever to get him out. This is the place, he thought, walking down the corridors behind a guard, where they locked up black asses and threw away the key. Where they locked up white asses and threw away the key, but not as far. He felt a stab of fear, just as he did whenever he saw a policeman and the cop put that extra something into his casual stare. Perhaps it was that the look carried a threat, a menace. Black boy, I could have you whenever I wanted to, it said, that look. It was not as though Max had not been inside jails and precinct houses before. Maybe it wasn’t even the fear of jails and cops as such, but the knowledge that under the existing system they were his natural enemies. And it did not matter that the police blotter could read about a woman who had had love made to her by her dog so that her shoulders, buttocks and back were covered by deep scratches; it was really no concern of his that two men had been hospitalized, under guard, still together like dogs, one