Blind Man With a Pistol Read Online Free PDF

her excitement at the sight of all those naked limbs in the amber light. From the shoulders up she had the delicate neckline and face of a Nordic goddess, but below her body was breastless, lumpy with bulging hips and huge round legs like sawed-off telegraph posts. She felt elated, sitting there with her man who was leading these colored people in this march for their rights. She loved colored people. Her eyeblue eyes gleamed with this love. When she looked at the white cops her lips curled with scorn.
          A number of police cruisers had appeared at the moment the march was to begin. They stared at the white woman and the colored man in the command car. Their lips compressed but they said nothing, did nothing. Marcus had got a police permit.
          The marchers lined up four abreast on the right side of the street, facing west. The command car was at the lead. Two police cars brought up the rear. Three were parked at intervals down the street as far as the railroad station. Several others cruised slowly in the westbound traffic, turned north at Lenox Avenue, east again on 126th Street, back to 125th Street on Second Avenue and retraced the route. The chief inspector had said he didn't want any trouble in Harlem.
          "Squads, MARCH!" Marcus shouted over the amplifier.
          The black youth driving the old Dodge car slipped in the clutch. The white youth sitting at his side raised his arms with his hands clasped in the sign of brotherhood. The old command car shuddered and moved off. The forty-eight integrated black and white marchers stepped forward, their black and white legs flashing in the amber lights of the bridge approach. Their bare black and white arms shone. Their silky and kinky heads glistened. Marcus had been careful to select black youths who were black and white youths who were white. Somehow the black against the white and the white against the black gave the illusion of nakedness. The forty-eight orderly young marchers gave the illusion of an orgy. The black and white naked flesh in the amber light filled the black and white onlookers with a strange excitement. Cars slowed down and white people leaned out the windows. Black people walking down the street grinned, then laughed, then shouted encouragement. It was as though an unseen band had struck up a Dixieland march. The colored people on the sidewalks on both sides of the street began locomotioning and boogalooing as though gone mad. White women in the passing automobiles screamed and waved frantically. Their male companions turned red like a race of boiled lobsters. The police cars opened their sirens to clear the traffic. But it served to call the attention of more people from the sidelines.
          When the marchers came abreast of the 125th Street station on upper Park Avenue, a long straggling tail of laughing, dancing, hysterical black and white people had attached itself to the original forty-eight. Black and white people came from the station waiting-room to stare in popeyed amazement. Black and white people came from nearby bars, from the dim stinking doorways, from the flea-bag hotels, from the cafeterias, the greasy spoons, from the shoe-shine parlors, the poolrooms -- pansies and prostitutes, ordinary bar drinkers and strangers in the area who had stopped for a bit to eat, Johns and squares looking for excitement, muggers and sneak thieves looking for victims. The scene that greeted them was like a carnival. It was a hot night. Some of them were drunk. Others had nothing to do. They joined the carnival group thinking maybe they were headed for a revival meeting, a sex orgy, a pansy ball, a beer festival, a baseball game. The white people attracted by the black. The black people attracted by the white.
          Marcus looked back from his command car and saw a whole sea of white and black humanity in his wake. He was exultant. He had made it. He knew all people needed was a chance to love one another.
          He