CHESTER HIMES

Chester Himes (1909-1984) was nearly fifty when he began writing detective stories and novels. But what a fifty years it was. He had served seven years in the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he had discovered Black Mask magazine. "When I could see the end of my time inside, I bought myself a typewriter and taught myself touch typing. I'd been reading stories by Dashiell Hammett in Black Mask and I thought I could do them just as well. When my stories finally appeared, the other convicts thought the same thing. There was nothing to it. All you had to do was tell it like it is." And tell it he did. His stories about Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson were not throwaway violent pulp stories, but angry tales about growing up in a bleak city with an even bleaker future. As the timeline in the novels progresses, the characters grow more disillusioned and cynical about their jobs, their own people, and the world they live in. A longtime staple in France, his first crime novel, A Rage in Harlem, which was written at the request of Marcel Duhamel, editor of the famous Serie Noire line of Gallimard, was awarded the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in 1958.

The Meanest Cop in the World

How he got there, and how long he had been there, Jack didn't know: but there he was, sitting on the steps of the Administration building. He had some books under his arm and a little red cap perched on the back of his head, and he knew that he would not have suffered these ignominies had he not been a freshman.
A couple of girls hove into view from the direction of the Chemistry Building and attracted Jack's attention. They were pretty girls and Jack uncurled his long, slim frame and bowed to them with his cap in his hand and his dark hair glinting in the sunshine. There was a touch of hesitancy in his actions, a hint of shyness in the corners of his infectious grin, that counteracted the offense of his boldness.
The girl on the inside, a brunette with a tinge of gold in the bronze of her skin and nice curves beneath her simple little dress, nodded to Jack and smiled a dimpled, wide-mouthed smile. She found something strangely appealing about Jack's incongruous mixture of shyness and boldness. And then she looked into Jack's eyes and knew with the subtle intuition of a woman's heart that Jack was only lonely.
Jack's heart did a little flip-flop and his eyes sparkled with delight as his mind registered the warmness of her smile. For a moment he seemed enraptured, and all by a mere smile from a common co-ed, That seemed very peculiar, for a young man as handsome as Jack should have known and been admired by many pretty girls.
The girl felt well repaid for her nod and little smile: and little wonder, for the heart of any girl would have been warmed by the patent delight in Jack's brown eyes.
The next day at the same time Jack met the girl again as she came out of the Chemistry Building. It was a little after noon and he screwed up his courage and asked her to lunch with him. She accepted, as he should have known that she would, but he hadn't-he was that dumb in the ways of modern maids. He took her to one of those cosy, intimate little cafes which seniors and part-time instructors usually avoid.
She smiled across the table at him and told him that her name was Violet: and she ate a dollar and sixty cents' worth of tit-bits. And Jack then understood why underpaid instructors and economic seniors avoided such nice little cafes. He couldn't eat a thing himself after he had looked into her eyes and felt the glow of her smile: and he felt emptier still when the waiter presented him the bill.
But he smiled and paid it like more money was the least of his worries. He and Violet left the cafe and sauntered down the lazy, tree-shaded college lane, and the first thing they knew, they were holding hands in the darkened mezzanine of the University Circle Theatre. The picture was Southern romance, and the warm intimate darkness of the interior seemed to draw them together. They stole a precious, fleeting kiss in the darkness that marked the end of the feature picture, and a subtle understanding was created between them.
When they left the theatre the gentle gray of twilight had descended upon the land leaving a faint touch of rose in the Western sky. Jack knew that he had lost his job in the bookstore where he worked as a clerk in the afternoons, but he didn't care. He was drunk, they were both drunk, with youth and understanding and the mellow wine of first love. They walked the streets 'til late that night: and he whispered in her ear those things that lovers have whispered since time immemorial: and they looked at the moon and dreamed: and she stored way in that deep fastness of her woman's heart his stammered love words-so meaningless, so worthless to the rest of the world-but to her, they were priceless.
Jack awoke the next morning to a world of realities, and things such as money and jobs once more attained their right importance. He realized that he was very poor and that a job was vital to the continuance of his education; and what was more important than that, the continuation of his relationship with Violet. But jobs were very scarce that year, even such jobs as clerking in bookstores.
But he continued to take Violet to lunch, even though he owed two weeks' room rent and hadn't been able to find any kind of employment. Violet loved him, he loved her: and what else under the sun mattered to them except their love? But he was to learn that food mattered, for he had spent his scant savings treating and entertaining Violet, and now only the Lord knew where his next meal was coming from.
And then, to top it off, Violet invited him to a formal dance given by the pledges of her sorority. Jack didn't have any money, and he didn't have a tuxedo, and he didn't see how he could possibly make it-until his eyes lighted upon his portable typewriter, his one outstanding asset.
So he took his typewriter to a pawnshop and returned with a rented tuxedo, rented dance pumps, rented silk topper and cane-all slightly the worse for wear-and ninety cents in his pocket which he had wrangled from Abie, the pawnbroker, by virtually out-talking him. He bought a pint of gin and a package of mints with the ninety cents and swaggered down to the sorority house like a millionaire playboy on an afternoon stroll.
He and Violet had a swell time that night-he ceased to think of his predicament: and what did she have to think of, other than him, when she was in his arms? They had such a grand and noisy time of it that the other Kappa girls, or Omega girls, or whatever girls they were, began to take notice of the handsome freshman that Violet had in tow.
It was late when Jack got back to his room in a somewhat dilapidated rooming house over back of the stadium: and Jack was pretty drunk and not nearly so quiet about it as he should have been, knowing that he owed two weeks' room rent. The landlady, a devout church sister of Amazonian proportions, awoke from pleasant dreams of the coming of Gabriel the third time that Jack yelled: "Who-o-o-p-e-ee!" She promptly stalked out into the hall with her faded pink kimono drawn closely about her ample body and asked Jack for his room right then, that very minute.
If Jack showed a slight reluctance at granting her rather abrupt request, you can't much blame him, for he didn't have a place in the whole wide world to go. But still, you can't blame the landlady much either for tossing Jack out on the posterior end of his anatomy, for Jack's yelling was annoying, to say the least, and doubly so in light of the fact that he owed two weeks' back rent.
Jack got up from his semi-reclining position in the street and dusted his rented tuxedo with the palms of his hands, then he stumbled drunk-enly down the street, his silk topper slanted on the back of his head, the collar of his rented tuxedo pulled up about his neck, and a maudlin grin upon his face. He didn't have a place in the world to go, and that's exactly where he went.
It was six weeks later, a few minutes before the beginning of the season's last football game, that Jack showed up again. He was all togged out in a well-fitting worsted with a camel's-hair topcoat tossed across his shoulders, and he felt like the million dollars he looked, even if he did have only a dollar and ten cents to his name after he had bought a nine dollar and ninety cents box-seat ticket.
When he got to his seat he found that there were strangers all about him and even the game wasn't very interesting for the first three quarters. The ball was mostly in the air, one put after another-both teams were cautious, using a few power plays of simple variety and putting on the third down if they had more than three yards to go.
Jack drowsed a little, and then suddenly he sat up straight, as the halfback of the opposing team got loose on an off-tackle play and was romping through the open field like a leaf in the wind. Jack stood up, one hand extended: his voice stuck in his throat as he tried to yell. But the safety man got the runner just a scant two yards before it was too late, and Jack sighed with relief and relaxed into his seat. But the ball was on his home team's two yard line and it was first down, two yards to go-for a touchdown and victory.
There was a tense moment of play, a power drive straight through center against a stonewall defense. A foot was gained and a player was hurt. The referee blew time out, the doctor scampered across the field with his bag to administer first aid. Finally the player got to his feet and limped to the sidelines with his arms about the shoulders of two of his teammates.
Down at the end of the stadium in the bleachers the whole section was cheering the hurt player at the tops of their voices, but the spectators about Jack were glum and silent. Jack looked about him with cool eyes and he noticed that the people in his section were downtown business people who had paid their ten bucks to see a winning team and not a hurt tackle. That made Jack angry. He jumped to his feet and yelled:
"Cheer, you lousy slobs, cheer! This ain't no horse race, this is college football!" And then he gave an Indian war whoop to show them just how it was done.
People turned and stared at him. A girl down in front of him turned about and looked into his eyes. They both gave a start, then he cried:
"Violet!"
"Jack!" she answered, and the tone of her voice made him think that she had missed him almost as much as he had missed her, and that was a whole lot. "Where have you been all these years?" she asked, and there was reproach in her voice.
He wanted to tell her all about it, as a man does when he is in love but she stopped him with a gesture. It was not because she didn't want to hear him, but she didn't want to be rude to the man who was escorting her.
So she said: "Come around to the house and tell me about it this evening." She spoke like she would be breathless in anticipation until they met that night-at least that was the way she sounded to him.
Jack went around to the Kappa house or the Omega house, or whatever house it was, that evening about eight o'clock. A girl met him in the foyer and took his hat and coat, and when he mentioned Violet, she said "Oh yes," and took him into a dimly lit reception room.
There were several girls and a couple of young men grouped in a circle on the carpeted floor. Violet got up from the davenport where she had been sitting and took him by the arm.
She said, "The matron is away and we were planning to play some stud poker on the floor. Come on, it's great fun."
But Jack hesitated. He was slightly embarrassed, for he only had a dollar and ten cents to his name and he didn't want to win, but he couldn't afford to lose for that dollar and ten cents was his meal ticket. One of the girls went out for a deck of cards and Jack took advantage of the delay to edge Violet over to a settee in a corner where there wasn't much light.
He tried to kiss her but she told him to wait until some of the gang cleared. And then suddenly, before either one of them was really aware of it, she was in his arms and their lips were sealed together. He had been away six weeks and six weeks is a long time when you are young and in love. Jack realized then that he loved her a lot more than he had any business loving anyone with his capital amounting to only a dollar and ten cents.
A girl came into the room then and called Jack's name, jarring him out of the ethereal loveland of Violet's arms back to the cold concreteness of reality. The girl told Jack that there was someone at the door to see him and Jack got up reluctantly and went out into the foyer.
A huge policeman with a hard bronze face and slitted eyes awaited Jack. The policeman wore a high blue helmet pulled down over his forehead and the brass buttons of his leather-belted overcoat gleamed like lobster eyes in the softened light of the foyer. The policeman held a three foot nightstick in his right hand and a dull black service revolver in his left. The round muzzle of the gun was pointing at Jack's stomach, and Jack felt goosefleshy about the nape of his neck.
The policeman commanded Jack to stick up his hands. Jack stretched his arms ceilingward. Then the policeman asked Jack if he knew how to pray. Jack nodded, wondering what it was all about, and getting kind of angry at the policeman's bulldozing methods.
The policeman told Jack to get on his knees and pray. Jack frowned, beginning to get a little frightened. He dropped to his knees, still holding his hands above his head. The policeman pushed the revolver straight into Jack's face-and Jack sat up in his bed yelling bloody murder.
The guy across the darkened cell turned over in his bunk and said "Aw, pipe down, mugg, and let a guy sleep, will ya?"
And then suddenly Jack realized that he wasn't a freshman in a nice old college, and he wasn't in love with a pretty girl called Violet, that he didn't even know such a girl, that he was just convict number 10012 in a dark, chilly cell, and he had eaten too many beans at supper. But for hours afterward he lay there silently cursing the huge policeman who had made him realize this.