The Sharers

My wife Adele says that if I had ever really made peace with myself, as I keep telling her I have, I would not refer to myself as "colored." Instead, I would say, "I'm black" or "I'm a Negro," but never "I'm colored." This reasoning stems from the fact that her father was a very light Jamaican who, when he came to this country, referred to himself constantly as "a person of color." Adele is very conscious of any such attempt at masquerade, though I have never heard her refer to herself as a "Negress," which term she finds derogatory. She also goes to the beauty parlor once a week to have her hair straightened, but she says this is only to make it more manageable, and disavows any suggestion that she does it to look more like a white woman. She, like her father, is very light.

For Adele's benefit and to correct any possible misunderstanding, I hereby state that I am a colored black Negro. I was born and raised in a little town near Saint Petersburg, Florida, and the only racial discomfort I ever experienced was when I was still coming along and was walking with my sister over a little wooden bridge leading somewhere, I didn't know where, and a gang of white kids attacked me. They did not touch my sister. They beat me up and sent me home crying. When my grandmother asked me why I had been so foolish as to attempt walking over that particular bridge, I said, "I wanted to see what was on the other side."

I left home in 1946 to attend Fordham University in New York, where I majored in accounting. I got my degree in June of 1950 and was immediately shipped to Korea. I met a lot of different people there, black and white, Northerner and Southerner, and the only problems I had were trying to stay warm and fed and alive. I will tell you more about that later. I met Adele in 1953, when I was discharged; and shortly after that, I got the job with Goldman, Fish and Rutherford. I still work there. Adele and I were married in October of 1954, and we now have one child, a daughter named Marcia, who is 11 years old and is having orthodontic work done. I tell you all this merely to provide some sort of background for what happened with Harry Pryor.

I have always thought of myself as a reasonable man, you see. I am 38 years old; and whereas it infuriates me whenever I hear a racial slur, I still don't think I would go to the South to do civil rights work. I'm very content with what I have: a good marriage, a good job, a daughter who is going to be a beauty, once she gets rid of her braces, a house in North Stamford and many many friends, some of whom are white.

In fact, everyone in my train group is white. I usually catch the 8:01 express from Stamford, which arrives at 125th Street in New York at 8:38. That's where I get off. The train continues on down to Grand Central, but I get off at 125th Street, because Goldman, Fish and Rutherford has its offices on 86th and Madison and it would be silly for me to go all the way downtown only to head back in the other direction again. There are generally six or seven fellows in the train group, depending on who has missed the train on any given morning. We always meet on the platform. I don't know where the 8:01 makes up, but when it reaches Stamford, there are still seats, and we generally grab the first eight on either side of the aisle coming into the last car. We carry containers of coffee with us, and doughnuts or coffeecake, and we have a grand time eating our breakfast, chatting and joking all the way to New York.

The morning I met Harry Pryor, I spilled coffee on his leg.

He is white, a tall person with very long legs. He has a mustache and he wears thick-lensed glasses that magnify his pale-blue eyes. He is about my age, I would guess, 38 or 39, something like that. What happened was that I tripped over his foot as I was taking my seat and spilled half a container of coffee on him, which is not exactly a good way to begin a relationship. I apologized profusely, of course, and offered him my clean handkerchief, which he refused, and then I sat down with the fellows. None of them seemed to mind Harry being there among us. I, myself, figured he was a friend of one of the other fellows. He didn't say anything that first morning, just listened and smiled every now and then when somebody told a joke. I got off at 125th Street, as usual, and took a taxi down to 86th Street.

You may think it strange that a fellow who earns only $200 a week, and who has a $20,000 mortgage on his house and a daughter who is costing a fortune to have her teeth straightened, would be so foolish as to squander hard-earned money on a taxicab to and from work when the Lexington Avenue subway is only a block away from the New York Central tracks and only a single express stop from 86th Street. Why, you may ask, would a workingman allow himself the luxury of a taxi ride every morning and every night, which ride costs a dollar plus a 25-cent tip each way, when the subway costs only 20 cents? I'll tell you why.

When I was a soldier in Korea, I was very hungry and very cold most of the time. Also, I almost got shot. So I decided if ever I was lucky enough to become a civilian again, I would not deny myself any little luxuries that might make life more comfortable or more interesting or even just more bearable. The first luxury I did not deny myself was buying Adele a two-carat engagement ring that cost me $3500, which was every penny I had managed to save during the War. Anyway, that's why I take a taxicab every morning. And every night, too. I like to pamper myself. When you've almost been shot once or twice, you begin to realize you'd better enjoy whatever time you have left on this good sweet earth of ours.

The next time I saw Harry, he was carrying a container of coffee and he looked exactly like the rest of us. He took one of the seats we usually reserved for the group and made a little joke about my not spilling coffee on him this morning, please. I laughed, because I still thought he was somebody's friend. In fact, we all laughed. This encouraged him to tell a joke about two guys in the men's room, which was really a pretty good joke. I got off, as usual, at 125th, and Harry said goodbye to me when all the other fellows did. I took my taxicab downtown, smoked a cigar and read my newspaper.

The next morning, Harry got off at 125th Street, too.

Now, I don't know whether or not you're familiar with this particular section of New York City. It is Harlem. On one corner, there's a big red-brick building that must have been an armory at one time, but which now houses a gymnasium and an association trying to combat drug addiction, and another association soliciting clothing and food for the people down South. There's a luncheonette on the opposite corner and a newsstand and a Loft's on one side under the overhead tracks, and a hot-dog stand on the other side. If you come straight out onto 125th Street and stand on Park Avenue waiting for a taxicab, you're out of luck. Every commuter who was on the train comes rushing down the steps to grab for cabs with both hands; it's a regular mob scene. So what I usually do is walk a block north, up to 126th Street, and I wait on the corner there, which is similar to shortstopping the chow line, an old trick I learned in Korea, where I was hungry all the time.

Harry and I came down the steps together that morning, but I immediately started for 126th Street, not asking him where he was going, because I figured it was none of my business. He usually rode the train in to Grand Central, but here he was, getting off at 125th, and I didn't know what to think. Maybe he had a girl up there in Harlem or something, I didn't know and I wasn't asking. All I was interested in doing was getting a taxicab, because it can get pretty chilly standing on 126th Street and Park Avenue in January. I got my taxi within five minutes and I sat back and lit my cigar; but as I passed the next corner, I noticed that Harry was still standing there trying to get a cab for himself. I didn't ask the driver to stop for him, but I made a mental note of it, which I forgot soon enough, because Harry didn't get off at 125th again until maybe two or three weeks later.

This was already the beginning of February, and Park Avenue up there in Harlem looked pretty bleak. It is not like Park Avenue down around 80th Street, if that's what you thought. Harlem is a ghetto, you see, with crumbling tenements and garbage-strewn back yards. I have even seen rats the size of alley cats leaping across the railroad tracks on 125th Street, bigger than the ones I saw in Korea. But in the winter, in addition to everything else, the place gets a bleak, forbidding look. You just know, in the winter, that there are people shivering inside those crumby buildings, afraid to come out, because it's even colder in the streets. You can stand a ghetto in the spring, I guess, because you can walk outside and look up at the sky. In New York, there is a sky above the building tops and it is often a beautiful blue sky, even in a ghetto. But in the winter, you are trapped. There is only you and the four walls and the extra heat you can maybe get from a kerosene burner. I never go through Harlem in the winter without thinking how lucky I am.

I was standing on the corner of 126th and Park when Harry Pryor walked up to me and said, "Are you taking a cab downtown?"

"Yes," I said, "I take one every morning."

"To where?" he asked.

"To Eighty-sixth and Madison."

"Well," he said, "I'm going down to Eighty-fourth and Park. Shall we share a cab?"

"Why not?" I said--first big mistake.

We got into the taxi together and I asked him if he minded if I smoked a cigar, explaining that it was my habit to have a cigar on the way down to work each morning. He said he didn't mind at all; in fact, he liked the smell of a good cigar; so I offered him the cigar I would have smoked after lunch and, thank God, he refused it.

"What sort of work do you do, Howard?" he asked, and I told him I was an accountant, stop in sometime and I'll figure out your income tax for you. He laughed and then coughed politely when I lit my cigar. He opened the window a little, which I really didn't need, as it was probably 80 degrees below zero outside, with Harlem looking gray and bleak and barren as the taxi sped past the market on Park Avenue, the pushcarts on our right, the sidewalk shopkeepers bundled in mufflers and heavy overcoats, salesgirls wearing galoshes, little school kids rushing across the avenue to disappear under the stone arches that hold up the New York Central tracks.

"What sort of work do you do?" I asked, beginning to feel the breeze from the window and wanting to ask him to close it, but also wondering whether he might not then choke on my cigar. As you can see, my troubles had already started.

"I'm in the travel business," he said. "I'm a partner in a travel agency." I didn't say anything. I had never met a travel agent before. The one time I took Adele to Bermuda, I had made all the reservations myself. Adele had said it was a luxury we could not afford. I told Adele there are certain luxuries you have to afford or you wither away and die. This was before Marcia's monumental dentalwork had begun, of course. I sometimes think that child will have braces on her teeth the day she gets married.

"Yessir," Harry said, "we've got two offices, one on Forty-fifth and Lex and the other up here on Eighty-fourth. I spend my time shuttling between the two of them."

"Well, that must be very interesting work," I said, "being a travel agent."

"Oh, yes, it's very stimulating." Harry said. "Do you mind if I open this window?" The window, it seemed to me, was already open; but without waiting for my answer, Harry rolled it all the way down. I thought I would freeze to death. It was plain to see that he had never been to Korea.

"Listen," I said, "would you like me to put out this cigar?"

"Oh, no," he said. "I enjoy the smell of a good cigar."

Then why are you freezing us out of this cab, I thought, with the window open. I thought, like an icebox in here, I thought, but did not say. I was very happy to see the New York Central tracks disappear underground, because that meant we had already reached 98th Street and I could get out of the cab very soon and run upstairs to the office, where I knew it was warm, because Dave Goldman always kept the heat at 80 degrees and wore a sweater under his jacket besides. The driver, whose head was hunched down into his shoulders now because he, too, was beginning to feel the wintry blast, made a right turn on 86th and pulled to a stop on the corner of Madison Avenue. I told him to hold his flag and then I took out my wallet and handed Harry $1.25, which is exactly what the ride cost me every morning and which I was, of course, more than willing to pay for having had the pleasure of being frozen solid.

Harry said, "Please."

"No, take it," I said. "I ride a cab every morning and this is what it costs me, so you might-----"

"No, no," Harry said.

"Look, we agreed to share a taxi. I can't let you pay-----"

"Traveling is my business," Harry said. "I'll charge it to the agency." He (continued on page 206)The Sharers(continued from page 92) smiled under his black mustache. His pale-blue eyes crinkled behind his glasses. "It's deductible, you should know that."

"Well, I feel kind of funny," I said, and thrust the money at him again. But he held out his hand, palm down, and then gently nudged the offer away, as though the money had germs.

"I insist," he said.

"Well, OK," I said, and shrugged, and said, "Thank you, have a nice day," and got out of the cab and ran for the office. It took me a half hour to get my circulation back.

The next morning, Harry got off at 125th Street again, and again he said, "Care to share a taxi?" So what could I say? Could I say, Listen, my friend, I like to ride alone in the morning, I like to smoke my cigar with the windows closed, you understand, closed very tight against the cold outside, not even open a crack, with cigar smoke floating all around me, reading my newspaper, nothing personal, you understand, no hard feelings, but that's one of my little luxuries, that's what I promised myself in Korea many years ago, could I tell that to the man?

I suppose I could have, but I didn't.

Instead, I got into the taxi with him and I lit a cigar for myself, and he immediately opened the window. So I immediately snuffed out the cigar and asked him if he would please close the window.

"How's the travel business these days?" I asked. I had folded my arms across my chest, because I was in a pretty surly mood. What I usually do, you see, is ration my cigars, one in the morning in the taxi on the way to work, another one alter lunch, another one in the taxi on the way back from work and the last one alter dinner. Four cigars a day, that's enough. I do 20 push-ups each morning and 20 before I go to bed, to keep the old "bod" in shape, as my daughter calls it. She kills me, that girl. So I was thinking I really didn't need this guy to ride down with me and deprive me of my cigar, who needed him? But there he was, telling me all about the travel business and about a charter flight they were getting up to Aspen, Colorado (just the thought of Aspen, Colorado, gave me the chills), and had I ever tried skiing?

"No," I said, "I have never tried skiing. I don't even like ice skating."

"That's too bad. Howard," he said. "I think you would find skiing a most agreeable sport."

"Well," I said, "I'm too old to go out and break a leg. When a man gets set in his ways, he develops certain habits, you know, that he doesn't like to break," hoping he would realize I was talking about my morning cigar, which he didn't.

"That's true," he said, "but you seem to be in pretty good shape, and I doubt if you would break a leg."

"My cousin broke a leg in his own bathtub," I said.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Harry said. "Did you know they shot The Pawnbroker on this corner?"

"Which pawnbroker?" I asked, not having heard about any shooting on that corner, which was the corner of 116th Street and Park Avenue.

"The movie," Harry said.

"Oh, the movie. I didn't see that movie."

"It was a very good movie," Harry said. "They shot it right on this corner."

I was really wanting a cigar very badly by that time. I looked out at the El Radiante bar and visualized Harry being shot on the corner.

"There were a lot of your people in that picture," Harry said.

"My people?" I said.

"Negroes," he said.

"Oh," I said.

"It was a very good picture."

The cab sped downtown. The overhead tracks came level with the ground, then sank below the pavement and disappeared. When we reached 86th Street, I took out $1.25 again and thrust it into Harry's hand, but he turned his hand over quickly and let the money fall onto the seat.

"Nossir," he said, "not on your life. I have to go down this way, anyway."

"But I have to go down this way, too," I complained.

"Can you charge it to the business?"

"No, but-----"

"Then don't be silly." He picked up the money and stuffed it into my coat pocket. "Now, go ahead, don't be silly, Howard."

"Well, thank you," I said, "I appreciate it," and then realized I didn't even know his name, I had never heard anyone call him by name on the train. "Thank you," I said again, and got out of the cab.

We have a small office and Concetta, our secretary, has asthma, which means that smoking a cigar and filling the air with deadly fumes would give her coughing fits all day long. So I stood in the corridor outside the men's room and smoked my morning cigar there. Dave Goldman came in at 9:30. I was still standing there smoking. He fanned the air with both huge hands and said. "Whoosh, you trying to fumigate the place?"

"Well. I know Concetta doesn't like cigar smoke." I said.

"You can smell that the minute you get off the elevator." Dave said. "What is that, an El Ropo?" he said, and nudged me and laughed.

"It's a good cigar," I said. "Cost me twenty-five cents."

"We're going to have complaints from the fire department." Dave said, and laughed again. "They'll probably send the commissioner around."

"Look." I said, a bit heatedly, "if I can't smoke it in the office and if I can't smoke it here in the corridor outside the men's room, where it isn't bothering anybody, where the hell can I smoke it?"

"Don't get excited." Dave said, and patted my arm. "Why don't you go smoke it downstairs?"

Downstairs was a hundred below zero: downstairs was troikas followed by packs of starving gray wolves.

Dave went into the men's room. I put out the cigar and went inside to my desk. All that morning. I thought about Harry. You have to understand that whereas I appreciated his having paid my cab fare on two separate occasions. I would have preferred paying my own damn fare so that I could have smoked my cigar in peace without a fresh-air fiend in attendance. I stress this point only because Adele later said perhaps I was really a Cheap Charlie who enjoyed having my cab fare paid each morning. This simply was not true and I told Adele so in very positive terms. For whereas things are sometimes a bit tight in North Stamford, what with Marcia's tooth alignment and all. I can certainly afford to pay my own cab fare. In fact, as I pointed out and as Adele well knew, the taxi rides to and from work were luxuries I felt I owed myself, essential elements of the private little party I had been throwing to celebrate the fact that I had not got killed in Korea.

So it seemed to me that Harry Pryor was sharing something more than just a taxi with me; and I decided to tell him Hat-out come Monday morning that whereas I enjoyed his company immensely. I really preferred riding down to work alone, as it gave me a chance for contemplation, an opportunity to ease into the long, hard day ahead, which was not exactly true but which I rehearsed nonetheless all through the weekend. Then I remembered that I didn't even know his name, so I called Frank Cooperman on Sunday night to ask about it.

"Who do you mean?" he said.

"The fellow who rides in with us each morning."

"Which fellow?"

"The one with the black mustache and the blue eyes and the glasses. Who tells all the jokes in the morning."

"I think his name is Harry." Frank said.

"Don't you know?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"He's your friend, isn't he?"

"No. no." Frank said. "My friend? What gave you that idea?"

"I just thought he was your friend." I said.

"I thought he was your friend," Frank said.

"Well, whose friend is he?" I asked.

"Search me," Frank said.

"Well, what's his last name?" I said.

"Pryor, I think."

"I hank you." I said, and hung up. a little annoyed with Frank. I'm not sure why. I debated whether I should call my taximate. "Mr. Pryor" (since he didn't seem to be anyone's friend) or just plain "Harry" when I broke the news to him, and then I rehearsed it both ways, figuring I'd play it by ear when the time came.

I could barely sleep that night. Adele finally poked me in the ribs and said, "Howard, if you don't stop tossing. I'm going to go sleep in Marcia's room." I didn't answer her, as she very often makes dire threats in her sleep.

On Monday morning. I drove to the station, and there was Mr. Harry Pryor waiting on the platform with the other fellows, coffee container in one hand, wrapped cheese Danish in the other.

"Morning. Howard." he said.

"Morning. Harry." I said.

"Getting off at a Hundred and Twenty-fifth as u-ual?" he asked.

"As usual." I said.

"Would you care to share a taxi with me?" he asked.

That was my opportunity and I should have given him my rehearsed speech right then and there, but I didn't want to embarrass him in front of the other fellows. So I said. "Yes. Harry," and figured this would be our last shared ride together. I'd tell him how I felt on the way down to 86th.

It was a bitter-cold day.

Men were hunched over small coal fire in empty gasoline drums, girls clutched coat collars to their throats, icicles hung from awnings, broken orange-crate slats jutted crookedly from frozen curbside puddles.

"I can't tell you how much I enjoy this morning ride with you, Howard," Harry said for openers.

I grunted.

"I don't know many Negroes," he said.

I didn't know what to say to that one, so I coughed.

"That's a bad cold you have there," Harry said.

I grunted again.

"You ought to quit smoking," he said.

"I have." I said. "Temporarily," and I thought, Now is the time to tell him. Right this minute. I turned toward him on the seat.

"How else can we get to know each other?" Harry said.

"I beg your pardon." I said.

"Negroes and whites," he said. "How else can we possibly breach the barricade?"

"Well," I said, thinking I didn't have any particular barricade to breach, and if Harry had one, he shouldn't attempt to breach it in a taxicab. "Actually-----"

"Can I walk up to a Negro on the street and say, 'Listen, fellow, let's have a drink together, I'd like to know you people better'? Can I say that?"

I thought, No. you had better not say that, Mr. Pryor, especially not up here in Harlem. I glanced through the window on my right, where the city had put up a housing development. On one of the walls, a teenage letterer had painted the name of his club. He had spelled it wrong. For posterity, the words The Redemers boldly asserted themselves in white letters on the brick wall.

"So just having the opportunity to talk to you this way, to get to know you this way, is very important to me, Howard. I want to thank you for it. I want to tell you how much I appreciate your generosity."

"Yes, well." I said, "don't mention it, really."

I felt trapped, and frustrated, and suddenly in danger. Once, in Korea, when we were trying to take this hill, we had two of our guys with a mortar about a hundred yards on the left, and the sergeant and another guy and me with the mortar rounds over on the right. But we couldn't get to each other, because the Chinese had set up a machine gun on top of the hill and they kept raking the ground between us. It was very frustrating. Finally, somebody called for artillery to knock out the emplacement. But that was after the sergeant had already sent my buddy to get killed trying to lug the ammo across that hundred yards of bullet-sprayed ravine to where the mortar was waiting. The sergeant tapped me on the shoulder. I was next. Just then, the artillery barrage started. I don't know who called for the support, probably the captain of Baker Company, which was on a little knoll looking down into this depression where we were trapped and frustrated. I never found out. That was one of the times I almost got killed.

I felt the same frustration now, as we rode down to 86th Street, and I also felt the same danger. That's ridiculous, I know. Harry was only sharing a taxicab with me. But I had the feeling he was also trying to move in on me; he had put all his furniture into a Santini Brothers van and now they were moving into my head and my heart and even my soul and were beginning to unpack their barrels.

The cab pulled to the curb at Madison Avenue. I silently took out $1.25 and handed it to Harry.

"Please," he said.

"Are you sure this is on the business?" I asked.

"Absolutely," he said.

"OK," I said, and shrugged, and put my money away and got out of the cab. I didn't tell him to have a nice day. I just closed the taxi door, slammed it, actually (the Negro cabby turned to give me a dirty look), and then stopped for a cup of coffee before going up to the office.

That night, I had my talk with Adele, the one in which she insisted I was a Cheap Charlie. When I finally shouted that the cab fare had nothing to do with the damn situation, she very quietly said, "You're allowing a white man to buy your freedom and your privacy."

"That's not true."

"It is true, Howard."

"You're a racist, is what you are," I said. "You're as bad as the segregationists down South."

"He's going to ask you to have lunch with him one day, you wait and see."

"I don't want to have lunch with him."

"Do you want to share a taxi with him?"

"No!"

"But you do share one," Adele said. She nodded sagely. "And you'll have lunch with him, too, wait and see."

"I will not have lunch with him," I said.

"You're allowing him to enslave you," Adele said. "Howard, you are letting him snatch you out of the African jungle and throw you into the hold of a ship in chains."

"He wants to be my friend!"

"Do you want to be his friend?"

"No, but-----"

"Are you afraid of him, Howard?"

"No, but-----"

"Then why can't you tell him you don't want to ride with him? I'll tell you why, Howard. You can't because he's white. And it's the white man's privilege to decide whether or not he'll ride with a nigger."

"Don't use that word in this house." I said.

"Howard," she said, "if you let Harry Pryor do this to you, you are nothing but a nigger," and she went up to bed.

I sat alone in the living room for a long time. Then I went upstairs and made sure Marcia hadn't kicked the blanket off, the way she usually did. She was sleeping with a wide grin on her face. Her braces gleamed in the dim light from the hallway. I touched her face gently, tucked the blanket in around her feet and then went into my own bedroom. Adele was asleep. A frilly cap covered her set hair. My grandmother had worn an old silk stocking on her head the day I came home from trying to walk over the bridge. The toe of the stocking, knotted, had flapped around her ears as she shook her head and washed my cuts.

My grandmother's father had been a slave.

I decided to tell Harry in the morning that I no longer cared to share a taxi with him.

• • •

I kept putting it off.

He got into the taxi with me every morning, and every morning I would turn toward him and start to tell him and I would see those pale-blue eyes behind the thick glasses and I would remember how he had eased his way into our group on the train. And it would occur to me that perhaps Harry Pryor needed my companionship more than I needed my own privacy, which was crazy.

He kept asking me questions about Negroes.

He wanted to know how it felt to walk into a good restaurant, did I always fear I would be turned away, or not served, or otherwise treated badly? He wanted to know how I handled hotel reservations; did I explain on the phone that I was a Negro, or did I simply arrive with my luggage and surprise them? He asked me if I had ever gone out with white girls; so I told him about Susan, who had been in the School of Journalism at Columbia and whom I had dated for six months when I was going to Fordham. We were quite open about being seen in public together, I told Harry, even though Susan never mentioned me to her parents and even though I never wrote about her in my letters home. We had quite a thing going for six months, but then it all ended pretty routinely when I went off to fight in Korea. I wrote to her once or twice and once or twice she answered, and then it simply ended, almost as if it had never happened at all.

I also told him about my sister, who was in the English department at UCLA, and how she had gone through a severe Muslim phase, only to swing over to dating white men exclusively. She was now involved in all that crazy California scene of surfing and psychedelics and Oriental religion. I told him she still called me "Hub," which had been my nickname as a boy. I told him Adele's brother favored a separate Negro nation, that he had been jailed six times in Georgia and Alabama and that he had fled North this past summer after striking back at a deputy with a piece of lead pipe. His eyes burn in his head. I said. I think he's a fanatic. I told him that I, myself, respected only Martin Luther King as leader of the civil rights movement and that I would never ride a freedom bus or join in a march because, quite frankly. I was afraid I would be hurt or possibly killed. I told him I had an aunt named Florina, who hired out as a cleaning woman and whom I had not seen since I was coming along in the South, though every Christmas she sent a plumcake to the house in North Stamford. I told him that James Baldwin gave me a pain in the ass. And, at last, I told him about what had happened the day I tried to walk across that little wooden bridge a mile from where my sister and I lived with my grandmother.

"Why didn't you fight back?" Harry asked.

"I was just a little kid," I said.

"How old?"

"Six. And my sister was only four."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Yes."

"What did you think?"

"I thought I was a fool to get into a fight with bigger kids."

"Bigger white kids?"

"No."

"But you must have thought that, Howard."

"No. I didn't." I said. "Just bigger kids, that's all. White had nothing to do with it."

These conversations all took place in various taxicabs in the space of, oh, two or three weeks. I would guess. All that time. I had the oddest feeling that Harry was waiting for me to say something I had not yet said, reveal something I had kept hidden until then. do something--it was the oddest feeling. It brought to mind again the Chinese machine gunners waiting for us to try a run through that treacherous ravine.

One morning, as I got out of the cab. I realized I had forgotten to offer Harry my customary $1.25. I reached for my wallet.

"Forget it," he said.

"Harry," I said, "we've been riding together for a long time now. I wish you'd let me pay my share."

"It's deductible," he said, and shrugged.

"Are you sure?"

"I am absolutely positive," he said.

"OK." I said, and got out of the cab. "So long," I said, "have a good day."

"The same to you. Howard." he answered. "The same to you."

All through the next week, I rode down to 86th Street in a cab with Harry, telling him what it was like to be a Negro in America. I no longer offered to pay for the ride, because it seemed to me the point had been settled. If he really was deducting it, then why go through the same pointless routine each morning, taking out my wallet and extending the cash only to have it turned away?

"Goodbye, Harry." I would say. "Thank you for the ride."

"My pleasure. Howard." he would answer, "my distinct pleasure," and the taxi would gun away from the curb.

On the following Monday. I arrived at the Stamford station late, approaching the train from the front end, which was closest to where I always parked my car. The train was about to pull out, so I hopped aboard and began walking back toward the last car when suddenly something powerful rooted me to the spot. I will not have to sit with the group. I thought. I will not have to ride in a taxi with Harry Pryor and tell him what it is like to be a Negro in America, I will not have to do either of those things if I stay up here in the first car. If I stay up here, I thought, if I take a seat up here, then I may be able to ride a taxicab down to 86th all by myself, light a cigar and enjoy some good luxurious smoke, read my newspaper in peace and quiet, ruminate upon the state of world affairs if I want to, or dream of belly dancers in Cairo if I want to. or pray for peace, or wonder about my daughter's teeth, or think about my wife's ear, or sketch out some plans for a boat I'd like to build one day, what with the Sound being so close and all. In short, if I take a seat in this first car of the train. I can perhaps avoid Harry at 125th Street and there-fore be a Negro in America instead of having to talk to him about being a Negro in America.

I took a seat next to a fat woman wearing a horrible perfume. I felt like a defector. I was certain they would come looking for me before the train reached 125th Street, certain Harry would burst into the car and shout, "Ah-ha, there you are!" exposing me for the runaway slave I most certainly was. The train rumbled across the Harlem River Bridge, the bleak gray tenements appeared suddenly on the horizon. I pulled my collar up high and leaped onto the platform. I saw Harry as he got off the train at the other end, but I pretended not to. Instead, I walked very quickly to the nearest staircase, raced down it and, rather than walk up to 126th Street, cut across Park Avenue and headed cross-town.

I had reached Lexington Avenue when two things happened at once.

A pair of taxis came rolling toward the corner and I saw Harry Pryor standing there with his arm raised, hailing one of them. He saw me in that same instant.

"Good morning. Howard." he said quickly, and pulled open the door of the nearest taxi. "I'll grab this one," he said, and got into the cab hastily and slammed the door.

The second taxi had just pulled to the curb. I opened the door and got in. "Eighty-sixth and Madison." I said, and watched as the taxi ahead, the one carrying Harry, gunned away from the curb and headed downtown.

I did not know what to think at first.

Had he realized I'd been trying to duck him, had he walked over to Lexington Avenue only to make it easier for me, figuring I'd head for my usual post at 126th and Park? Or had I offended him in some manner, had I said something the week before that had caused him to make a simultaneous and identical decision: We would no longer ride with each other, we would no longer share.

And then I realized what it was.

I had at last done the thing Harry had been waiting for me to do all along. After all that talk, after all those explanations and revelations and confidences freely offered. I had at last managed to convey to Harry the certain knowledge that I was only, at best, a Negro. I had finally and unprotestingly accepted his generosity, only to become in that instant the white man's burden. I had made the terrible mistake, again, of thinking I could walk across that bridge with immunity, allow Harry to pay my fare at last, because, you see. I was an equal who understood all about tax deductions, an accountant, you see, an educated man--even, perhaps, a friend.

It was not a cold day, it was the middle of March and spring was on the way, but I felt a sudden chill and longed to join the old men still huddling over coal fires in the side streets of Harlem. At 86th Street. I gave the driver $1.25 and got out of the cab.

I had forgotten to light my cigar.

• • •

Since that day. I have avoided Harry by taking an earlier train, the 7:30 out of Stamford, which arrives at 125th Street at 8:19. This gives me a little extra time, so I no longer have to ride a taxi to work in the morning. Instead, I walk over to Lexington Avenue and I board the downtown express there on a platform that is thronged with Negroes like myself.

I do not mind it, except when it's raining.

When it's raining. I think of Harry riding a cab downtown, alone, and I wonder if he has the window open a crack, and I wonder if anything will ever convince him that I was able to pay my own way and that I would have happily done so if he'd only given me the chance.