Chapter 3

There was no sun the next morning, and the low forest mists surrounding the clapboard shack created an air of dismality that seemed to permeate the atmosphere with a heavy cloak of doom.

Susan sat huddled before the fire, draped in one of the tattered blankets from the bed upon which she had been so brutally ravished last night. Her body ached horribly in all the tender places the three negroes had so mercilessly pressed their attentions upon. Duke had awakened her early, in the same position she lay after the horrible depraved attack, and she was grateful for she had been able to freshen herself a little in the cold water from the kitchen before the others awoke. She had repaired her torn gown in a makeshift way, using several pins she found around the cabin, and Duke had retrieved her panties and brassiere from the car. From these few remnants of cloth, she had covered herself as best she could.

The others had awakened shortly afterwards. She had prepared them breakfast, refusing to look any of them in the eye, though she could feel their arrogant gazes peering right through her all the time she worked. Duke had not mentioned what had happened to any of them, but it was plain he was not happy that he had given her up for the evening. In fact, she felt rather secure in the knowledge that it was not likely to happen again in that way. If she was called upon to give herself, it would be only to him and not the others. Strange, she thought, as she raised her head and looked around the room at the four negroes who held her captive, how the perspective of things changed when one had no other choice. All things in the world were really relative to one another. She had taken her choice of all the boys in high school, and had picked Richard because he was most like her.

Now, she had only the choice between these four brutal criminals, all of whom, except the imbecile Stitch, had ravished her against her will, but she still had to make a choice between them for her protector. She knew it wouldn't take much show of preference on her part to get anyone of them on her side, although Duke was the one she needed. He was the leader because he was the strongest. He may be more brutal than the others, but still he had exhibited a certain tenderness toward her after the rape in the car, and would not have let the others take her last night if he hadn't been so confident of himself in cards. Even then, when he had lost and had disappeared from the room to let the victors have their way with her, she half expected him to return and reclaim her. But, o f course, under their code, which she knew she could never understand, he could not, no matter how much he may have wanted to. Life itself meant so little to those brought up in the ghetto jungles, so how could she expect they, the survivors, to care about such a small intimate thing as her lost virginity? She was an object to be used, like a tin can they might suddenly come upon in the gutter and kick along the street until they became bored, and then kick back again into the gutter from which it came No, her only hope for survival was Duke, and that meant subjugating herself to him completely, until she could find a way to get out of this horrible mess she had fallen into.

"I-I-I think I hear them c-comin'," Stitch, who had been sullenly reflecting on his missed chance last night, suddenly exclaimed. "T-T-There's a c-c-car."

The others jumped up and rushed to the window expectantly. They had been waiting patiently all morning for whoever they were supposed to meet. Susan had heard them quietly discussing a plan of some kind where the word riot had come up often, and she had begun to wonder then if they really were just ordinary hoodlums, or something much more dangerous. What ever it was that they had in mind, it seemed to be something very important to them. Duke had been nervous and on edge all the while they had been waiting, as though he were afraid of something or someone... perhaps, she would learn the answer soon now.

"It's about time," Duke growled, looking at his watch. "They's over two hours late."

The low roar of a car engine could be heard coming up the road, and then turning into the short dirt driveway that led to the shack. It stopped, and the sound of two doors being slammed could be heard from the outside.

"Hot damn," Shorty sudden slapped his knee and grabbed his stomach in laughter, "He's done brought Jodie with him. You gonna ketch hell ovah this lit' honky chick now, Duke."

Susan turned from the fireplace where she had kept her head down looking into the blazing logs, when she heard the loud laughter and the words that Shorty was throwing at Duke. She felt his eyes turn to her for a moment and then look back out the window.

There were two pair of steps coming across the porch, and then the door opened. A tall lithe mulatto Negress entered first, and seeing Duke, rushed to him and threw her arms around. She held him for a moment, and feeling no response, backed off with a puzzled expression on her face.

"What's the matter, Baby, don'cha recognize me?" she asked quizzically.

"That isn't the reason, is it, Duke?"

A second well-dressed negro, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and sporting a small goatee, entered behind her and nodded toward the confused Susan, who still sat huddled beneath the blanket.

The Negress turned her head, and for the first time saw the cowering white girl before the fireplace. She stood still for a moment, her hands on hips, and glared down at her from across the room She was a striking thing, as a really good-looking negro woman can be, with long flowing jet black hair that glistened down over her shoulders, and fiery black eyes that burned through Susan like two hot belching volcanic craters smoldering before eruption.

"Who's the honky bitch," she hissed through her tightly clench teeth, a quick rising hatred in her voice.

"She ain't nobody," Duke suddenly defended. "I brought 'er here to keep us company while we plan the thing. That's all."

The others snickered. It was obvious they were enjoying the position Duke had been put in by the unexpected arrival of his girl, and also the thought that perhaps it would free the white girl for them to enjoy again as they had last night.

Susan sensed this, and she could see the imbiced a certain tenenly brightening as the thought penetrated his & mind. He had sulked all morning after Shorty refused to let him ravish her battered body, but she knew he had not given up by any means. She had caught his eyes flickering over her with an undisguised lust in them when he had thought no one was looking, and she found herself trembling each time he did. She remembered him masturbating over her broken and exhausted form last night and shooting his lewd sperm across her naked breasts, as she had lain helpless and beaten on the bed. God help her if she ever were at his mercy without Duke to protect her.

"Well," the Negress sneered with cocky self-assurance and started with a swagger across the room toward Susan. "I just gotta see what this little honky gal's got that I ain't."

Susan cowered back against the wall next to the fireplace, as the girl reached down grabbing the corner of the blanket and ripped it from her shoulders, exposing her tattered gown to the eyes of the others in the room. "Well, looks like somebody's been havin' some fun, and it better not be you, Duke, baby," she half snarled as she saw the condition of the cringing Susan's dress.

"Leave 'er alone," Duke growled from the window where he was still standing. "I do what I like, ya hear. Nobody tells me what I can do or cain't do.

"Stop it, you two," commanded the well-dressed negro. "We've got more important things to discuss now than who gets lover boy here."

Susan held her breath as the angered Negress towered over her, still holding the blanket in her hand She glared down at Susan for a moment with the most intense contempt she had ever seen in any human's eyes, and then suddenly threw the blanket back at her, and turned away.

"Ain't no honky bitch got what I got anyway," she said, walking seductively across the room and placing her arm in Duke's. "He's my man, and he's gonna stay that way, ain'cha honey?"

"Aw, shut up, and let's get to work," Duke said, ignoring her question directly. He turned to the other negro, "Did ya bring the bread, man?"

"Yes," the new arrival answered, raising the briefcase he carried in his hand. "But," he hesitated, "there are some things that have to be settled first, some very important things."

"Then let's git with it," Duke said, walking toward the table. "We got some questions for you too."

Susan watched them pulling chairs up to the rickety wooden table that stood in the corner away from the fireplace, and preparing for what evidently was to be an extremely important meeting. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there seemed to be an undercurrent of conflict between Duke and the man who had just arrived. Duke had greeted him with a cold reserve that she hadn't noticed he possessed before. He could be cruel, yes, but the reserve was something else, and she was certain she could detect a little fear mixed in his almost contemptuous manner toward the man.

The man was educated, there was no question about it from the way he dressed and spoke, and perhaps, this was the element that Duke feared the most. He obviously did not know about the world beyond the power of strength, and maybe he could feel himself being bypassed, even by those of his own kind.

This was something new to many negroes, she thought as her mind raced back in retrospect, remembering things her father had said‹things she had never absorbed before because she had never been directly exposed to them. She could remember him talking about the sudden push for educating the negroes, and how this was creating a gap among their own people, the educated and the ignorant. This gap began to breed suspicions among those like Duke who had learned to live on strength and cunning alone.

Perhaps, she reasoned, Duke had his place too, by virtue of the fact that he had developed such animal cunning and physical strength. This was his education of survival that was older than the human race itself. The new university breed, the lucky ones who had escaped the ghetto, or had never been born there... they knew about the ways of the law and how it could be used to accomplish the same purpose with greater effect than the strength of old. Their movement, her father said, was much like the American labor movement and the rise of unionism It hadn't been many years since union organizers were treated as criminals and jailed for trespassing on company property. Now, they had their own laws that protected them just like the negroes that benefited from the new civil rights laws.

But, as with the unions of yesterday, opportunists were always there to exploit the great unrest smoldering beneath this kind of social movement for their own fortune and power. These were the new breed, like the well-dressed man sitting at the table now, she thought. The university ones, who had nothing to lose because they had already passed the barrier. They already had their position in either world and could use those still attempting to climb up from the ghettos with impunity and disregard. They were expendable and exploitable because they worshipped their educated leaders, and if a man could boast of this, they asked nothing more from him. They're like lambs being led to slaughter, Susan thought, as she studied the man with the horn-rimmed glasses with a renewed interest.

"Hey," Duke's voice burst across the room, interrupting her digressions. "Help Jodie with some chow."

Susan automatically rose to her feet at his command, pulling the blanket tight around her like a cape and started for the kitchen. She dreaded going in there, because she knew she would be alone with the tall Negress who was Duke's girl. She knew also that she had made a bitter enemy that could be far more dangerous than any of the others had been so far. She had studied her back by the fireplace, and could tell by the way she hung onto Duke that she was insanely jealous of him. In fact, there was not the slightest doubt in her mind that Jodie would kill for him if she were forced into the position. Susan had read grim accounts in magazines of what girls from these gangs had done to each other over possession of their men, and shuddered as a few of the more grisly details filtered through her worried mind. She would just have to be as careful as she could, and stay as close to Duke as possible. She had to, for the sake of her life. Nothing she could do or say would change the negro girl's enmity towards her now, and without Duke's protection she would be at the mercy of all the others. She would rather die than go through another horrible ravishment that her body had been subjected to last night.

No, there was only one way out. And that was by giving her all to the negro leader, in spite of her repulsion of him and all the others. Duke was her only hope for survival.

"Here's the map," she heard the educated negro say as she passed the table. "We're gonna make last summer's little warm-up in Detroit look like a Sunday school picnic."

"Okay, man," Duke said skeptically, looking over the table at the two girls as they disappeared into the kitchen. "Spell it out fo' us."

Susan followed behind the Negress girl as they entered the kitchen, and did not say a word. She knew that whatever she did say would be taken with anger and didn't want to start anything, though she knew something was bound to happen sooner or later. The Negress did not intend to let her off so easily for her encroachment on her man, even if she had been raped. If Jodie had the least opportunity, she would make it unbearable for her.

Jodie went right to work, as though she had been through this kind of thing a hundred times before. She said nothing at all to Susan as she followed her silent indications over what was to be done in preparation for the meal. First, came the bread, and then the thinly sliced lamb that they had brought in abundance. She remembered looking for some ham in the grocery bags last night, but could find none. It was then she recalled reading about the black Muslim movement among the ghetto negroes; of course, they did not eat ham, instead they followed the Moslem religion of the Arabs and made their staple food, lamb. This fit so well with the many other puzzling factors about them that she still didn't understand fully.

There must be a strong purpose in this gathering, she thought, and a far more evil purpose than merely holding up supermarkets or mugging drunks in back alleys. She could not place her finger on it yet, but from the few things she had picked in isolated bits of conversation, it was sure to be something big they were planning.

"Don't touch it," Jodie snarled, as Susan made a move to pick up the tray that held the sandwiches. "I'll take care of 'em. You jist wash up and stay heah in the kitchen."

Susan gladly followed her command. The more she stayed away from the others, the less problems it would create for her. The imbicilic Stitch was beginning to get on her nerves the way he undressed her with his lewd glances out of the corner of his eye when he thought Duke wasn't watching. She realized that the less she stimulated his desire with her presence, the safer she would be later.

She busied herself washing up the things they had dirtied while the Negress disappeared through the door with the tray. She wished she could stay alone all day and collect her thoughts, or try to, but knew it would be impossible. She might possibly have a chance to escape if she had enough time to recover her wits and think hard enough. It shouldn't be too difficult, as they weren't watching her that closely now. They didn't even seem to be worried about it, but she knew that if she did try, she had better succeed. Once they caught her at it, she would never be given the chance again, and she was sure her punishment would be swift and harsh. No, she would just have to bide her time and wait for a chance that could not fail.

"Duke says you're to come out in the other room," Jodie suddenly said from the door. "He don't want you alone in heah."

The tone of her voice was cold and filled with a hatred of the most intense kind. The Negress had realized now that her position with the leader was in jeopardy by his concern over the white girl. Susan could feel the change of her attitude from one of sudden confused jealousy, to a deep animal loathing whose intensity knew no bounds.

The Negress filled half the doorway and would not move as Susan started out to join the others in the front room. She paused for a moment to give her the chance to let her by, but Jodie remained defiantly entrenched where she was standing, fire sparkling in her black eyes.

"He s mine, and I'll kill you if you touch him," she hissed into her ear, being careful that the others could not hear. "And," she added as Susan squeezed by her, "I won't do it fast- like It'll be nice and easy, so's you can feel it all the way down to white hell."

Susan trembled, pausing for the slightest of seconds as the girl spoke to her, and then continued on as though she had not heard her.

"Come on, baby," Duke smiled proudly as she came into the room. "I want ya to see this heah plan. Ya might wanna change sides in this heah war when ya see what we got cookin' for the honkies down in Chicago."

"I don't think she ought to hear this Duke," the newly arrived negro said quietly. "If it gets out before we're ready, it could ruin the entire plan."

"Man," Duke answered, looking him coldly in the eye, "You bring the bread and you lay the plan, but don't tell me how to git it done."

"Alright," the other negro said after pausing for a moment, "but remember, if anything goes wrong, you'll have to answer to the man. Not me."

"I'll answer to the man," Duke said confidently. "As long as he sends the bread."

It was obvious that whatever they were planning had something to do with the riots that had been going on in a small scale for the last several weeks. This negro tanking to Duke seemed to be an intermediary between Duke's gang and someone else who was running things on a much broader scale. Susan could see also, that the union between the two groups was very shallow, and was not being done on Duke's side for any particular social or philosophical reason. It was being done because he and his gang were being paid to do it, and nothing else.

"Sit down, baby, and listen." Duke motioned to an empty chair beside him. "You gonna see how the great race war of the summer nineteen hundred and sixty-eight really began."

Susan sat hesitantly in the chair, aware of the glaring eyes the negro girl had locked on her. She dared not look up at her for fear of giving away the dread that permeated her whole body. This would be a mistake now, and would only bring further retaliation. If she stayed near Duke and kept his confidence until her chance for escape arose, she should be safe, and, it was the only way she could be assured of escaping the others. Particularly, the lust-crazed Stitch, who even now was licking his lips nervously as he watched her from across the table.

"First, man, the bread." Duke halted the well-dressed negro as he started to point to an enlarged map of the Chicago Woodlawn ghetto area that was laid out on the table. "How much ya got?" Duke persisted.

"One grand, as we agreed before," he answered matter-of- factly. "Straight from Havana."

"Is it real?" Duke asked skeptically, and then added, "Lemme see it."

The negro lifted the briefcase off the floor and reached in to pull out a large stack of twenty dollar bills.

"Care to count them?"

"Naw, man, just wanna make sure they's real," Duke answered and peeled one from the stack where they had been placed on the table.

He looked it over carefully, studying every detail by raising it to the light and looking intently through it. After several minutes, he turned his head to the waiting visitor and nodded his approval.

"Looks okay," he said. "We been stuck with some phony stuff for some o' the other jobs we done for ya."

"You spent it, didn't you, like it was real," the other negro said impatiently.

"Yeah, yeah, man, it was good stuff, but for the risks me and my boys takes, it oughta be right stuff. We don't charge much, ya know."

"I'll tank to the man about it in the future," he was answered curtly, and the negro turned back to the map.

Susan watched him carefully. In spite of her concern over her own precarious position, her curiosity had been aroused by the trend of the strange conversation. Most of the people she knew were of the opinion that the negro ghetto flare-ups that had occurred throughout the country were a spontaneous kind of thing that had been brought on by accidental incidences, and were not the result of some master plan controlled by any central organized group. Now, she was not so certain, and concentrated on the well- dressed negro's words as he began to speak.

"This is where we start it," he said with a grim tone to his voice. She could see that he was pointing to a side street that ran adjacent to the main artery through the Chicago ghetto.

"They'll never expect it here. They'll be looking for it on the main drag where they've got all the fuzz concentrated. We could never get a crowd gathered otherwise. They'd have it broken up in two minutes after all the lessons they learned last summer."

"W-W-Where ya g-gonna git a c-c-crowd," Stitch stuttered, a puzzled expression on his face.

"That's what you four and the others of your group get the thousand for," the speaker answered with a smile. "You see this point on the map," he continued, pointing to the center of a block. "This is where two of you will get picked up by the cops for being drunk and breaking a window in the cleaning shop that's located here. When they arrive to arrest you, you'll start a fight so they'll have to call a patrol wagon and bring in others. This will isolate them from the main group on the next street so they can't organize into any kind of wedge formation to break anything up before we can get started."

"Man, that ain't gonna git no crowd," Shorty, who had been sitting silent, interrupted. "We gotta hundred beefs goin' all the time down there."

"Next step," the negro continued as though anticipating this objection, "is a molotov cocktail through the window of this supermarket just down the street. They've got a stock of cleaning fluid and other inflammable material stored right next to the window where it goes through. It'll go up like a roman candle. This, of course, brings in the fire department."

He paused for a moment with a self-assured smile on his face, and looked around the table.

"Does everyone see now the beginning of a crowd?"

"Ya crazy, man, ya talking about a hunderd years for anybody what gits caught," Duke spoke with alarm. "We cain't do that, for no money."

"You'll have help," their visitor said with quiet confidence. "Once this stage is reached, they won't have time to worry about arresting two drunken brawlers and an arsonist. You see these buildings?" he asked, marking five of them on an enlarged map.

"These are better sniper positions than all the trees in the jungle of Viet Nam. We've marked out twenty vacant rooms that we can pick off the honky police and firemen from, and have another forty for alternate positions that each man moves to after his primary position is discovered. We've twenty-five of the best trained guerrilla fighters you can find anywhere already familiarizing themselves with the area and their escape routes. When one building is overrun, we'll get out through the sewers. If one knows those underground routes well, there's no one in the world who can catch them unless that person knows them too, and so far, the honkies haven't caught on to the fact that we aren't just another mob. They haven't planned for the way we're going to do it this time."

"Where'd ya git these guerrilla fighters ya talkin' so big about," Duke interjected, a forced skepticism in his voice. He didn't mind the planning and brainwork of something like this being in other hands if the money were good enough, but violence had always been his business, and he sensed a sudden tinge of jealous concern flicker through his mind with the realization that even this was being taken from him. "I got guys that kin take care o' honky cops."

"You got guys that can use a shive or zip gun," the smooth self-assured negro said contemptuously. "That did the job last summer, but it won't do it this time. We can't leave it in the hands of amateurs."

"Man," Duke half shouted at him and leaped to his feet. "I kin take on all twenty five of them cats o' yours anyday and don't ya try and tell me I cain't."

Unruffled by the sudden outburst, the negro out lining the plan stepped back from the table and put his hands in his pockets. He stood still for a moment not saying a word as Duke leered at him with clenched fists across the width of the table.

"Say it, man, say I cain't, lemme hear ya say it," the enraged Duke shouted again.

His antagonist turned back to him and spoke without raising his voice. "Can you fire an M-16 rifle, Duke?"

There was a long silence and Susan could see the blood rising in Duke's face as he suddenly sensed a defeat that he was unprepared for.

"Naw, man," he finally sputtered, his voice lowering a degree in bitter retreat. "But what's that got to do with it?"

"Just this," he was answered in a calm even tone. "The honky National Guardsmen down on the street know how and they've got them. They could cut down your boys with their knives and zip guns in a matter of minutes. You wouldn't stand a chance. The men we've got there now have learned to use their equipment well, taught by the honky army itself in Viet Nam. And, we've just brought them back from six additional months in Cuba where they've had the best guerrilla training in the world. And, another thing, they've got M-16's too, and can use them ten times better than the young green honkies in the guard."

Duke stood for a moment, his composure and command completely gone, and then sat slowly back down in the chair. He had no answer for that argument and knew the others knew it too. They had seen the city last summer when the guard had moved in with their tanks and machine guns and automatic weapons, and nothing he could say now would matter one bit. His own men would know he was wrong and that the smooth-talking educated son-of-bitch with the black horned-rimmed glasses was right. A puny thin bastard that he could twist into nothing with his little finger, and here he was humiliating and degrading him before the others like he was dirt. And, there was nothing he could do about it; nothing in his background had prepared him for arguing against this new confident breed that were slowly taking over the world he had known and controlled by brute cunning all his life.

Susan felt the impact of the heavy silence that followed the one-sided and unequal exchange, and suddenly within herself, in spite of all she had gone through at the hands of the four brutal negroes, found her heart going out to them and all their kind. For some reason, she remembered with clarity at this particular moment a favorite statement of Mr. Herman, her anthropology teacher in school, about how funny the first two legged clumsy creatures to walk upon the earth must have looked to the monkeys swinging gracefully through the trees. She had always pictured them following the earth-bound creatures through the jungles, taunting them with their excited chatter and throwing objects down on them from above, safe and secure

I

in their haven above the ground until one day, eons later, they suddenly found themselves caged and gaped at as objects of jest by those very creatures they had tormented with such impunity at an earlier time.

And now, now she could picture Duke and the others tormenting in the same way from a ghetto street corner someone much like the goateed and horn-rimmed negro now twisting and leading them into an oblivion that could set their cause back a thousand years. She could hear them throwing crude obscenities at his dress and perhaps tearing the books from his hands in a cruel gesture of superiority. And now, now he had returned with a vengeance to cage them in their own ignorance of the world outside the ghetto that only he had visited and could compete with. They had no choice, the new breed were the catalysts around which their cause had become centered, the black power, the militants, because no one else had a plan to lead them from their misery that promised anything else but a vague hope in the future. At least the promise they received was a promise of action... where that action would lead was another matter... but it was action. That was all that mattered now.

"So what's gonna happen to all those people, man, once we git 'em in the street and all fired up?" Duke spoke defensively now. He had conceded by his own primitive logic the point he had lost a moment ago.

"Some will die," the well-dressed negro answered matter-of- factly "They have to, it's a war."