He finished drinking the beer and turned to leave.
“Have another one, Billy,” Jimmy said.
“No, thanks,” Billy said. “I got work to do.”
“He’s heading cross the river,” Derby said. “Trying to recruit some more boys to go crawl round that bayou.”
“You got a ride cross the river?” Jimmy asked Billy. “Man here going cross the river.”
Billy had already pushed the door open. He let the door shut and came back to where Phillip was standing.
“You going toward Sun Rise?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Chippo Simon,” Phillip said.
“He might be over there gambling,” Billy said. “He gambles in Port Allen and Sun Rise.”
“Be sure you take him to Hebert, not to Pichot Plantation,” Derby said. “He want see Chippo, not crawl round that bayou.”
A short yellowish man standing next to the derby man imagined Phillip crawling round the bayou and started laughing. He had just raised his drink to his mouth, but he started laughing so hard that he had to set the glass back down on the counter. He leaned on the counter laughing and shaking his head.
“That’s right, keep on laughing,” Billy said. “Keep on laughing. Don’t organize. Laugh.” He turned to Phillip. “You ready?”
“Don’t go near Pichot with him,” Derby told Phillip. “He’ll make you tie leaves all over your clothes, then run you through that bayou full speed—nothing but a stick for a gun.”
The yellow man who was leaning on the counter raised one big hand up in the air, waved it round twice, and slammed it back down on the counter. He wanted to stop laughing, but the man wearing the derby wouldn’t stop talking.
Billy asked Phillip again if he was ready to go, and they went out. The men were still laughing. Billy and Phillip could hear them laughing all the way to the car.
“Nobody laughs more than niggers,” Billy said. “Nobody suffers more than niggers, nobody organize less than niggers—but nobody laughs more than niggers—nobody.”
Phillip turned the car around and started toward the bridge that would take them out of Baton Rouge.
“What’s this about Pichot Plantation?” he asked Billy.
“Me and some boys been meeting over there,” Billy said. “I been teaching them guerrilla tactics.”
“That’s a dangerous game you playing there, Billy,” Phillip said.
“Nobody’s playing,” Billy said.
“Even thinking about things like that can get a lot of people killed.”
“In war people die,” Billy said. “I was in Viet Nam. I know.”
“It won’t be war, it’d be suicide,” Phillip told him.
“It’s war if you plan it right,” Billy said.
“Plan it right, how?” Phillip asked. “Where your guns, your tanks, your airplanes, your armies?”
“I don’t need none of that.”
“No?”
“They got twenty-five million black people in this country. All I need is a million for one day.”
“A one-day war?” Phillip asked.
“One day.”
“And how do you plan to win a one-day war?”
“Burning this country down.”
“Burning it down?”
“To the level ground,” Billy said.
“The white man’s just go’n stand round with his hands in his pockets and let you burn this country down?”
“Nothing he could do about it,” Billy said. “What could he do if all the fields and swamps caught fire at the same time one day? What could he do if every department store in a big city like New Orleans or New York or Atlanta caught fire at the same time one day? What could he do if ten, fifteen thousand gas pumps all waste gas at the same time, and somebody there to throw the match? The same thing for jails, the same thing for hospitals, schools, banks—we got people in all these places—what could he do if all this happened at three o’clock one hot summer day? Not a damn thing but watch it burn down. There ain’t enough water on land to put out that kind of fire, and they damn sure can’t use that much dynamite. It’ll burn to the ground, and with that the honky’ll cut his own throat. You wouldn’t have to shoot him.”
“And with that fire all over the place, where do your own people go?”
“We’ll fight, and most of us’ll die.”
“And what have you won?”
“This country here is the last crutch for Western Civilization—what they call civilization,” Billy said. “Burn it down, you destroy Western Civilization. You put the world back right—let it start all over again. Somebody got to pay for it, that’s all.”
“And you want us to do it?”
“We been giving our lifes for nothing all these years, we might as well die for something big. I don’t mind putting mine on the line.”
“And the rest of the people?”
“Some listening.”
“And the others?”
“Laughing—like them old-ass niggers back there.”
“You know why they’re laughing, Billy?”
“No, I don’t know why niggers always laughing,” Billy said. “Any other race would be storming that fucking capital for what happened today.”
“That young man who was killed?”
“That’s who I’m talking about,” Billy said. “They was sad about one hour—one hour. Now they in that goddamn liquor store drinking and laughing they ass off. Forgot about him already.”
“They ain’t forgot about him, Billy,” Phillip said.
“That’s a hell of a way to show the world they remember him.”
“What else can they do, Billy? Tell me.”
“Man, don’t hand me that ‘What else can they do?’ shit,” Billy said. “That’s all I been hearing all my life. ‘What else can poor niggers do? What else can poor niggers do?’ If they stop grinning long enough they can organize themself—that’s what they can do.”
“A guerrilla army? That’s the kind of organizing you mean?”
“Exactly.”
“Get that out of your mind, Billy.”
“Not in my lifetime.”
“You go’n get yourself killed.”
“Somewhere in the world people dying every day for changes,” Billy said.
“You don’t think your people have died here for changes?” Phillip asked him. “You don’t see any changes your people have died for?”
“None,” Billy said. “Niggers can vote. Vote for what? Voting can’t fill your belly when you hungry. Another nigger sit up there in the capital. Doing what? Another one go to Washington. For what? They put another couple on television to broadcast news—them the changes you talking about? I’m talking about changes that keep white men from coming into South Baton Rouge and shooting down our people. If it happen, we pick up guns, we pick up torches, and we hit back. That’s the changes I want to see.”
“I pray we never have to pick up torches, or guns, Billy.”
“I done forgot how to pray,” Billy said.
“I hope you’ll never have to strike that first match.”
“I ain’t hoping, neither; I’m planning on it.” He looked at Phillip and grinned. But his eyes were deadly serious. “This little black ass nigger you see sitting here ’side you will one day destroy this world, Pops. We been here nearly four hundred years—nothing to show for it but pain and sorrow.” He touched the big permanent scar across his left temple. “I got news for you, Pops, this world ain’t going on like this much longer. This little black ass nigger you see sitting here ’side you go’n make sure of that. He go’n take one match—one match one day—and he go’n start the biggest revolution this world ever knowed. If I go with it, I go. If the world go with it, let the world go. Let the roaches have the ashes.”
He lay his head back on the seat and shut his eyes. He was very tired. Phillip looked at his Army field clothes and at the big scar on his face. The scar was about the size of a two-inch-long pencil, and much lighte
r than the rest of his skin. Phillip wondered how Billy had been cut, but he wouldn’t ask.
After keeping his eyes shut a few minutes, Billy raised his head from the back of the seat.
“You know, Chippo might not be over here,” he said. “Much as he moves around.”
“Maybe somebody’ll know where he’s at,” Phillip said.
“Looking for him on a night like this, he must owe you some money.”
“It’s not money,” Phillip said.
Billy looked at Phillip, waiting for him to go on.
“I want him to tell me about my oldest boy,” Phillip said.
“In some kind of trouble?” Billy asked him.
Phillip nodded his head thoughtfully.
“What happened, Billy?” he said, turning to the young man beside him. “What ever happened between us?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Billy said.
“You married?” Phillip asked him. “You got children?”
“No. I live with my mama and daddy.”
“What’s your daddy do?”
“Nothing much now. Semi-retired. Used to work at Standard Oil. Janitor.”
“Y’all get along, you and your daddy, Billy?”
“I guess so. ’Bout average.”
“What’s average, Billy?”
“I don’t bother him, he don’t bother me.”
“That’s average?” Phillip asked him.
Billy shrugged his shoulders for the answer.
Phillip shook his head. “That’s average? That’s average?”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Billy said. Then he said, “Better watch the road there, Pops.”
“When did it happen?” Phillip asked, looking out on the road.
“When did what happen?” Billy asked.
“When did that gap come between you and your daddy?”
“I don’t remember,” Billy said.
“Not a particular day, not a particular thing?” Phillip asked.
“I don’t remember no one day, no one thing,” Billy said.
Phillip looked at him. “You mean we’re born that way? The gap’s already there when we take the first breath?”
“You getting a little deep for me,” Billy said. “But you better watch the road. I don’t want land in that ditch.”
“How do we close the gap, Billy?” Phillip asked.
“I don’t know,” Billy said.
“The church?”
“Shit,” Billy said, without hesitating a moment. “There ain’t nothing in them churches, Pops, but more separation. Every little church got they own little crowd, like gangs out on the street. They all got to outdo the other one. Don’t look for that crowd to close no gap.”
“The whole civil rights program started in the church.”
“Just because I can eat at the white folks’ counter with my daddy, just because I can ride side him in the front of the bus don’t mean we any closer,” Billy said.
“Then the civil rights movement didn’t bring us together at all?”
“Not that I can see,” Billy said.
“Then what will close the gap between you and your daddy, between me and my boy?”
“My daddy got to catch up with me,” Billy said. “I can’t go back where he’s at.”
“You mean pick up a match?”
“If that’s what it come to.”
“I don’t think he can do that, Billy.”
“And I sure can’t become a janitor, mister,” Billy said. “I see what it can do to you. At forty-five a massive heart attack. Frustrated over all the things you wanted to be but couldn’t be. I’m twenty-four now. When I’m forty-four I’ll be dead or free. But I won’t be part of the living dead.”
“Your daddy, me, we’re the living dead?”
“No more than I am, mister,” Billy said. “I just don’t plan to be it all my life.”
They were coming up to Hebert’s, and Billy nodded for Phillip to pull off the highway. Hebert’s was no more than a cabin with beer, cigarette, and cold drink signs nailed against the wall. Cars driving up to the front door and backing away had dug ruts into the gravel, and the holes were filled with water. Two or three cars were parked before the door now. Billy told Phillip that he would go inside to see if Chippo was in there. Phillip could hear the music from the jukebox when Billy opened the door. A minute later he heard the music again when Billy came back out. No, Chippo wasn’t there, but he might show up any time.
“They don’t know for sure?” Phillip asked.
“Not with Chippo,” Billy said.
“Any other places round here he gambles?”
“I don’t know of any right here in Sun Rise,” Billy said. “Got a couple back up the road there in Port Allen.”
“What they got in there to eat?” Phillip said, nodding toward the door of the nightclub.
“Pig feet,” Billy said. “Crackling. Pig lips.”
Phillip frowned and shook his head. “None of that.”
“Good food at Red Top, if you want drop in there,” Billy said.
Phillip nodded agreeably. “I used to go there years, years ago,” he said. “You think Chippo might be there?”
“They gamble there; anywhere they gamble you might find him,” Billy said. “I brought you here first because this where he hangs out most on this side the river. But anywhere you can find a table …”
“You want me to drop you off anywhere?” Phillip asked.
“No, I’m go’n hang around here a while,” Billy said. “Some boys in here I want talk to.”
Phillip looked closely at him. “Be careful, Billy,” he said.
“You got to take some chances,” Billy said.
“Chances like that can get you in a lot of trouble.”
Billy grinned. “Mister, I been through hell. Nothing scares me no more. I know I got to take chances. But that’s the only way you get things done. You know any other way?”
“No,” Phillip said. “But it’s the aim you have in mind.”
“No more than what that honky’s got in mind,” Billy said. “You don’t think that honky got genocide in mind?”
“I don’t know that,” Phillip said.
Billy tapped the side of his head. “I do know that,” he said. He leaned on the car and looked at Phillip a moment before going on. “You see all them empty fields round here, mister?” he asked. “Go all over this place—empty fields, empty houses, empty roads. Where the people used to be—nothing. Machines. Every time they build another machine that takes work from the people, they hire another hundred cops to keep the people quiet. Oh, they let a black slip in here, slip in there every now and then, but for every one that get a little position they hire another hundred cops to keep the rest back. That’s why they killed Hal today. They didn’t kill Hal for the food he took. Niggers steal food like that all day long. Them honkies know it; they see them doing it. They don’t do nothing but cheat the next man who come along. Hal wasn’t killed because of sausage and bread, he was killed because he was one of my boys. Killed because we been hollering. Hollering about how they work you for nothing, how they cheat you, how they make you pay for third-rate food. Food they can’t sell in other stores, they bring here in South Baton Rouge and sell to the niggers. They killed Hal to shut him up; they killed him to shut me up. Well, they ain’t shutting nobody up. They just go’n make us work harder.”
“Hard work, yes,” Phillip said. “But what kind of hard work?”
“The honky don’t understand but two things, mister—bullets and fire. This whole country’s been built on bullets and fire. Go ask the Indians, go ask the Japs. Go ask the Koreans, the Vietnamese. All nonwhite people. Even when they lynch a nigger they have to burn him too. Bullet and fire is all he knows. Well, I intend to get there first.”
Phillip took a deep breath. He felt very tired. He was too tired to make a comment, too tired to ask another question. He glanced at the scar but wouldn’t ask about it either.
Billy touched the scar with his finger. “Got them like that all over my body,” he said. “A grenade. Six of us. I was the only one got out. My best friend got it. Boy from Detroit. Sweetest old boy you ever seen. Named Boopy Scott. Ugly—good Lord, that nigger was ugly—but funny as hell. Always making people laugh. Had a’ Indian boy there from California. A Catholic. One of the nicest people in the world. Never knowed a’ Indian could be a Catholic. Not the shit they done took from people claim to be Christians. Had a’ Italian boy there too. Couple other boys from the Midwest. All of them got it but me.”
Phillip could see in Billy’s face the love he had for his dead comrades. He could detect the sorrow in his voice as he talked about them.
“God spared you for a reason, Billy,” he said.
“I got out of there, mister, because I had the best shelter,” Billy said. “If you think I can thank God for saving me and letting my boys go like that you crazy. Well, I’m getting a little cold, I better go inside. Thanks a lot for the ride.”
He straightened up from the car and turned to leave. He had gone a couple of steps when Phillip called him back. Phillip was very tired, but he wanted to say one last thing.
“God spared you for a reason,” he said. “You a bright young man, a brave young man. Use your talent well to help your people. Nothing good will come out of that idea you have in mind.”
Billy leaned on the car again.
“Mister,” he said. “My boys all died. Boopy died. Jerry died. Manny died. Jim died. Hal died today. All of them fought for this country—all of them dead. For what? For nothing. Nothing changed. Detroit ain’t changed, Chicago ain’t changed, California, neither South Baton Rouge. Nothing go’n change till somebody change it.”
He stood away from the car, saluted Phillip, then turned and went back into the bar.
Phillip sat there a moment watching the door. He wondered what else he could have said to Billy to make him change his mind. He could see that he was a determined young man, and he knew he should have said something else to him—but what? What advice could he have given him? What had he to offer Billy in place of what the world had already done to him?