Free Tales of the Out & the Gone by Imamu Amiri Baraka Page B

American life, the separation still existed. So there were white bars and colored bars and a few fairly mixed. But most, even there in Puerto Rico, were either one or the other.
    The American was notorious, anyway. Black and white soldiers had frequently locked asses inside its doors. And a few times, the place had been closed with Off-Limits signs put up. Laffy got to the door first and pushed it open, peering in.
    “Why you come to this joint, Laffawiss? You gotta meet some old Klan buddies in there? Jeez, Laffy, let’s not get into no abstract shit.”
    Laffawiss looked over his shoulder. “Hey, we’re stalking our prey, man. I thought you were trying to release your tension.”
    “In The American? Ain’t nothing in there but farmhouse motherfuckers. And they got all them bitches in there sick as them.” Johns meant that the more backward of the white soldiers would try as quickly as possible to infect the local women with their own anti-black views. First, because they themselves had been long-shaped by the sickness of racism, but also, more practically, they were trying to protect their choice pieces of chocha from getting “pulled” by the aggressive black troops. Hence, fights in and around The American and a lot of other places, in this “neutral zone” outside the U.S. mainland, where the “bitch pulling” competition was conducted by a slightly different set of rules.
    “I ain’t goin in that lousy joint.” Johns stepped back from the doorway as two obvious “farmer cats” stumbled by, tossing him a death look. They pushed past Laffawiss, who was still peeping in the door, seeing what he could see and talking to Ray over his shoulder.
    “Hey, they’re all dogs in here anyway.” Then, in response to being slightly shoved by the drunken duo, Laffy added, “Creeps, you’ll probably die with clap of the mouth.”
    “Laffawiss, let’s go. I ain’t in no goddamn boxing mood, man. You don’t want to release tension—you want to build the shit up.” Johns turned now as if he was going to leave Laffawiss in front of the bar.
    “Hey, Ray—shit! Shit, Ray. Look who’s in this joint.” The sight of whoever was cracking Laffy up. “Hey, look. Come on, it’ll do you good. Come on, look!”
    Reluctantly, Johns crept up toward the pushed-open bar door and peered in. There were two white airmen in uniform, or mostly in uniform, their “cunt caps” or other class-A visorless caps sliding all the way to the back of their heads. Or else there were those in what was supposed to be “civilian clothes,” which included “Hawaiian”-inspired obscenities as shirts, loud trousers, jeans, some pants high-styled with contrasting “pistol pockets” and seams. Bottles, mostly beer, being raised. Loud profane talking and shouting, confederate whoops, and spaced appropriately throughout the joint, on the stools and at the tables, different sizes, shapes, and colors of Puerto Rican women—some prostitutes, some not. The soldiers in the bar didn’t care too much one way or the other, as long as they got over. (If they could still get it up after falling down and throwing up on each other.)
    But Laffawiss was pointing now, almost frantically, at a fat, stoop-shouldered, red-faced white Airman Second with his “cunt cap” cocked way over on the side of his head. But not far over enough to hide the screaming red knife scar dug into a white valley down his cheek. Laffawiss could not contain himself. He was laughing out loud and jiggling from one foot to the other.
    “What?” Ray Johns stared into the now fully lit bar. “Oh, it’s that goddamn farmer that Grego cut. Wowee, first time I seen that sucker since Jack the Ripper got his ass.”
    Grego was a Mexican-American airman who hung with Laffy and Ray and the others in their little lightweight intellectual gang. Grego was blond and you couldn’t tell he was Chicano until he opened his mouth. Or unless you spotted the tiny cross tattooed between his