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Ras struck his thighs with his fists. "Me crazy, mahn? You call me crazy? Look at you two and look at me -- is this sanity? Standing here in three shades of blackness! Three black men fighting in the street because of the white enslaver? Is that sanity? Is that consciousness, scientific understahnding? Is that the modern black mahn of the twentieth century? Hell, mahn! Is it self-respect -- black against black? What they give you to betray -- their women? You fall for that?"
"Let's go," I said, listening and remembering and suddenly alive in the dark with the horror of the battle royal, but Clifton looked at Ras with a tight, fascinated expression, pulling away from me.
"Let's go," I repeated. He stood there, looking.
"Sure, you go," Ras said, "but not him. You contahminated but he the real black mahn. In Africa this mahn be a chief, a black king! Here they say he rape them godahm women with no blood in their veins. I bet this mahn can't beat them off with baseball bat -- shit! What kind of foolishness is it? Kick him ass from cradle to grave then call him brother? Does it make mahthematics? Is it logic? Look at him, mahn; open your eyes," he said to me. "I look like that I rock the blahsted world! They know about me in Japan, India -- all the colored countries. Youth! Intelligence! The mahn's a natural prince! Where is your eyes? Where your self-respect? Working for them dahm people? Their days is numbered, the time is almost here and you fooling 'round like this was the nineteenth century. I don't understahnd you. Am I ignorant? Answer me, mahn!"
"Yes," Clifton burst out. "Hell, yes!"
"You t'ink I'm crazy, is it c'ase I speak bahd English? Hell, it ain't my mama tongue, mahn, I'm African! You really t'ink I'm crazy?"
"Yes, yes!"
"You believe that?" said Ras. "What they do to you, black mahn? Give you them stinking women?"
Clifton lunged again, and again I grabbed him; and again Ras held his ground, his head glowing red.
"Women? Godahm, mahn! Is that equality? Is that the black mahn's freedom? A pat on the back and a piece of cunt without no passion? Maggots! They buy you that blahsted cheap, mahn? What they do to my people! Where is your brains? These women dregs, mahn! They bilge water! You know the high-class white mahn hates the black mahn, that's simple. So now he use the dregs and wahnt you black young men to do his dirty work. They betray you and you betray the black people. They tricking you, mahn. Let them fight among themselves. Let 'em kill off one another. We organize -- organization is good -- but we organize black. BLACK! To hell with that son of a bitch! He take one them strumpets and tell the black mahn his freedom lie between her skinny legs -- while that son of a gun, he take all the power and the capital and don't leave the black mahn not'ing. The good white women he tell the black mahn is a rapist and keep them locked up and ignorant while he makes the black mahn a race of bahstards.
"When the black mahn going to tire of this childish perfidity? He got you so you don't trust your black intelligence? You young, don't play you'self cheap, mahn. Don't deny you'self! It took a billion gallons of black blood to make you. Recognize you'self inside and you wan the kings among men! A mahn knows he's a mahn when he got not'ing, when he's naked -- nobody have to tell him that. You six foot tall, mahn. You young and intelligent. You black and beautiful -- don't let 'em tell you different! You wasn't them t'ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I'd have killed you, mahn. Ras the Exhorter raised up his knife and tried to do it, but he could not do it. Why don't you do it? I ask myself. I will do it now, I say; but somet'ing tell me, 'No, no! You might be killing your black king!' And I say, yas, yas! So I accept your humiliating ahction. Ras recognized your black possibilities, mahn. Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead he cry. Ras is a mahn -- no white mahn have to tell him that -- and Ras cry. So why don't you recognize your black duty, mahn, and come jine us?"
His chest was heaving and a note of pleading had come into the harsh voice. He was an exhorter, all right, and I was caught in the crude, insane eloquence of his plea. He stood there, awaiting an answer. And suddenly a big transport plane came low over the buildings and I looked up to see the firing of its engine, and we were all three silent, watching.
Suddenly the Exhorter shook his fist toward the plane and yelled, "Hell with him, some day we have them too! Hell with him!"
He stood there, shaking his fist as the plane rattled the buildings in its powerful flight. Then it was gone and I looked about the unreal street. They were fighting far up the block in the dark now and we were alone. I looked at the Exhorter. I didn't know if I was angry or amazed.
"Look," I said, shaking my head, "let's talk sense. From now on we'll be on the street corners every night and we'll be prepared for trouble. We don't want it, especially with you, but we won't run either . . ."
"Goddam, mahn," he said, leaping forward, "this is Harlem. This is my territory, the black mahn's territory. You think we let white folks come in and spread their poison? Let 'em come in like they come and take over the numbers racket? Like they have all the stores? Talk sense, mahn, if you talking to Ras, talk sense!"
"This is sense," I said, "and you listen as we listened to you. We'll be out here every night, understand. We'll be out here and the next time you go after one of our brothers with a knife -- and I mean white or black -- well, we won't forget it."
He shook his head, "Nor will I forget you either, mahn."
"Don't. I don't want you to; because if you forget there'll be trouble. You're mistaken, don't you see you're outnumbered? You need allies to win . . ."
"That there is sense. Black allies. Yellow and brown allies!"
"All men who want a brotherly world," I said.
"Don't be stupid, mahn. They white, they don't have to be allies with no black people. They get what they wahnt, they turn against you. Where's your black intelligence?"
"Thinking like that will get you lost in the backwash of history," I said. "Start thinking with your mind and not your emotions."
He shook his head vehemently, looking at Clifton.
"This black mahn talking to me about brains and thinking. I ask both of you, are you awake or sleeping? What is your pahst and where are you going? Never mind, take your corrupt ideology and eat out your own guts like a laughing hyena. You are nowhere, mahn. Nowhere! Ras is not ignorant, nor is Ras afraid. No! Ras, he be here black and fighting for the liberty of the black people when the white folks have got what they wahnt and done gone off laughing in your face and you stinking and choked up with white maggots."
He spat angrily into the dark street. It flew pink in the red glow.
"That'll be all right with me," I said. "Only remember what I said. Come on, Brother Clifton. This man's full of pus, black pus."
We started away, a piece of glass crunching under my foot.
"Maybe so," Ras said, "but I ahm no fool! I ahm no black educated fool who t'inks everything between black mahn and white mahn can be settled with some blahsted lies in some bloody books written by the white mahn in the first place. It's three hundred years of black blood to build this white mahn's civilization and wahn't be wiped out in a minute. Blood calls for blood! You remember that. And remember that I am not like you. Ras recognizes the true issues and he is not afraid to be black. Nor is he a traitor for white men. Remember that: I am no black traitor to the black people for the white people."
And before I could answer Clifton spun in the dark and there was a crack and I saw Ras go down and Clifton breathing hard and Ras lying there in the street, a thick, black man with red tears on his face that caught the reflection of the checks cashed here sign.
And again, as Clifton looked gravely down he seemed to ask a silent question.
"Let's go," I said. "Let's go!"
We started away as the screams of sirens sounded, Clifton cursing quietly to himself.
Then we were out of the dark onto a busy street and he turned to me. There were tears in his eyes.
"That poor, misguided son of a bitch," he said.
"He thinks a lot of you, too," I said. I was glad to be out of the dark and away from that exhorting voice.
"The man's crazy," Clifton said. "It'll run you crazy if you let it."
"Where'd he get that name?" I said.
"He gave it to himself. I guess he did. Ras is a title of respect in the East. It's a wonder he didn't say something about 'Ethiopia stretching forth her wings,' " he said, mimicking Ras. "He makes it sound like the hood of a cobra fluttering . . . I don't know . . . I don't know . . ."
"We'll have to watch him now," I said.
"Yes, we'd better," he said. "He won't stop fighting . . . And thanks for getting rid of his knife."
"You didn't have to worry," I said. "He wouldn't kill his king."
He turned and looked at me as though he thought I might mean it; then he smiled.
"For a while there I thought I was gone," he said.
As we headed for the district office I wondered what Brother Jack would say about the fight.
"We'll have to overpower him with organization," I said.
"We'll do that, all right. But it's on the inside that Ras is strong," Clifton said. "On the inside he's dangerous."
"He won't get on the inside," I said. "He'd consider himself a traitor."
"No," Clifton said, "he won't get on the inside. Did you hear how he was talking? Did you hear what he was saying?"