The Nigger Factory. Gil Scott-Heron

death,’ the landlady commented getting up and walking back over to the stew pot.

      Outside, Sutton was just feeling the first kisses of autumn. The wind was a baby chick wiggling inside an egg beneath its mother. Evening came gliding down early to chase the sun and bring in Father Night with a blanket of black air to cloak the dying leaves. Though not a moment had passed since Earl’s hasty exit, both Zeke and Mrs Gilliam heard the footsteps on the back porch. Earl reentered the room allowing the screen door to slam behind him.

      ‘Uh, it’s not too cold now, but I think I’m gonna need my coat later,’ he announced looking around. ‘Uh, where is it?’

      Zeke smiled and Mrs Gilliam put on her sternest face.

      ‘Iss hangin’ in the hall closet, but I oughta not let’choo have it ’cause it was layin’ ’cross the kitchen table when I got up this mornin’. You mussa lef’ it here when you sneaked in las’ night tryin’ t’git somethin’ t’eat … I’m tellin’ you Zeke, ain’ he somethin’?’ They exchanged glances. Earl smiled.

      Earl grabbed his jacket off the hook in the hall closet and went back outside. His car was parked and the motor hummed a throaty tune. The night held a tingle of expectation. When Earl thought about the things that lay ahead for him there was a feathery tickle in his stomach. The sidewalk yawned up at him. The lawn was speckled with leaves of a thousand shades, dead or dying. At the side of the house Earl spotted Old Man Hunt pawing the ground with a toothless yard rake. They exchanged waves.

      Earl’s car was a ’64 Oldsmobile; a gift from his father two summers past. It had been just the sort of thing he had come to expect from his father. The car had been in an accident and the left side had been caved in near the driver’s door. The owner had been asking three hundred dollars for it, but after a brief conversation with John Arthur Thomas he had been willing to let it go for half that price. The elder Thomas said nothing about the purchase to his son, but kept the car parked in a garage and presented it to his son as a going-away present after Earl’s graduation from the two-year Community College.

      ‘It ain’ but a small thing,’ John Arthur Thomas declared struggling for words. ‘It ain’ like what I really want you to have, but I knew you wuz gon’ need a car to git around in.’

      There was a stiff handshake and a rugged smile from the older man. Everything had been warm but awkward, sincere and yet limited. Earl had wanted to ask if his father had talked to his mother or seen her but had been afraid. The subject was a sore point; a constantly aching tooth that one became used to after awhile.

      When he had been fifteen and his mother and father had been apart for almost a year, Earl had asked his father outright why the couple didn’t live together any more.

      ‘Yo’ mama’s a good woman,’ John Thomas had said softly. ‘She a independent woman by nature, but I convinced her when we wuz seein’ each other that she could depend on me an’ be a woman for a while. I knew that wuz what she wanned to be. But I wasn’t a good provider for her. Everything wuz workin’ out bad for me an’ her. We wuz damn near at razor’s edge when we found out you wuz comin’ … I guess that saved our marriage if you can call what we ended up havin’ somethin’ worth bein’ saved. We said we wuzn’t gon’ bring you out without some people lookin’ after you. So we tried to keep things together, but we stopped talkin’ to one another an’ really stopped havin’ anything for one another exceptin’ the fact that you were a link b’tween us.’

      ‘I’m s’pose to be grown now?’ the fifteen-year-old Earl had asked.

      ‘Grown enough to understand, I reckon,’ his father had replied.

      ‘I really don’t,’ Earl had confessed.

      ‘Whoa!’ John Thomas said laughing a bit. ‘Neither do yo’ mama an’ me. Folks don’t never really understand themselves, but they always rely on havin’ someone that they love understand. Thass what we wuz doin’.’

      Earl pulled away from the curb thinking about his father. He would have to write the man a letter and admit that he had received some valuable information. Things were happening in his life that he didn’t understand. Yet he was the only one who could be held responsible for them.

      In the rear-view mirror Earl caught sight of a black Ford that seemed to be trailing him. He was brought back to the present, hoping that the car was the Ford supplied by the school to members of the Sutton newspaper staff who had to travel to get their stories. Just as he was about to pull over and allow the Ford to draw abreast of him, the trailing car pulled off down a side street.

      But now Victor Johnson was on his mind again. Somewhere at that moment he knew Vic was working on a backbreaking story against him. The move by MJUMBE would probably be built up as a great blow against the Sutton establishment, which included the SGA. It didn’t matter that Earl hated the establishment as much as any of the rest of them or even more since he knew exactly how it sucked in Black students and warped their minds. It only mattered that during the course of the election none of Earl’s speeches had made reference to faculty members as ‘racist bastards’ and that he hadn’t filled students’ ears with militant denunciations of Calhoun or the administrators. To many narrow-minded students anyone who didn’t carry out the flimsy, outraged rhetoric of a television revolutionary was a Tom. It was just circumstance blown up out of proportion to truth. Earl could already picture the front-page story in the student paper asserting that his inactivity had spurred MJUMBE’s movement.

      ‘Shit!’ he swore loudly.

      Earl’s mind was busy trying to organize strategy. It was too late for any of the moves that came readily to mind. He was now under the eight ball. The only thing that he could do was wait.

      ‘One more week,’ he grumbled again without conviction. ‘Johnson would have had the story of his life. There would be no way for any demands to be turned down!’

      MJUMBE COUP D’ETAT! the headline would scream.

      ‘Goddamn hick bastard Johnson,’ Earl breathed. ‘Goddamn hick bastards! I need a damn drink!’

       4

       Lawman and Odds

      When Earl Thomas arrived on Sutton University’s campus for the very first time he had in his pocket a letter that he had received over the summer from a junior named Kenny Smith. The letter was actually a mimeographed note from the Dean of Admissions office designating Kenny as a student orientation assistant who should be looked up when the newcomer arrived; he was the person who would help the incoming student find his way around campus.

      Kenny Smith had been easy to locate. Earl found him sitting in the Admissions Office reading a copy of the special Statesman that welcomed freshmen and transfer students. The thing that immediately warmed Earl to his orientation assistant was the young man’s dress. Kenny was wearing a pair of low-cut sneakers, no socks, cut-off blue jean shorts, and a Sutton sweat shirt. He was a world apart from the other orientators lining the walls dressed in slacks, shirts with collars; even a suit and tie or two could be seen.

      ‘My whole wardrobe is odds and ends,’ Kenny told Earl when the transfer student pointed out the contrast.

      It had become understood between the two young men, who hit it off immediately, that Kenny could not be held to tradition and conformity of any description. Kenny did not seem to care in the least what any other students did, thought, wore, or acted like. He was his own man and described himself as the odd one even in his family circle. The nickname ‘Odds’ became quite natural between them.

      At approximately the time that Earl was leaving Mrs Gilliam’s boarding house for his meeting with MJUMBE, Odds was just learning of the day’s political activities. Earl’s campaign manager had been in bed all day with a cold and had managed to sleep