‘Homer & Langley’

My brother's voice had become raspier. I knew he was toying with the fellow. I thought I would like to take him aside and review the matter, but he was well on his way. Did you really think, he said to the officer, did you really think that the Collyers would give in to a police department shakedown? In my book that's called extortion. So if anyone is breaking the law around here it is you.

The cop tried to interrupt.

You've come to the wrong door, Officer, Langley said. You're a thief, plain and simple, you and your sergeant together. I can respect true bold criminality but not the sly sniveling corruption of your sort. You're a disgrace to the uniform. I would report you to your superiors if they weren't of the same miserable beggarly caste. Now you will get off our property, sir—out, out!

The cop said, You have a sharp tongue, Mr. Coller. But if that's your pleasure I'll be seeing you.

As the cop turned and went down the steps Langley shouted something I will not repeat here and slammed the door.

Langley's exertions had brought on one of his coughing spells. It was difficult to listen to, his wheezing, basso, lung-riddled cough. I went to the kitchen and brought him a glass of water.

When he had calmed down I said to him, That oration was pretty good, Langley. Had a kind of music to it.

I alleged he was a disgrace to his uniform. That was wrong. The uniform is a disgrace.

The cop said he'd be seeing us. I wonder what that meant.

Who cares? Cops are crooks with badges. When they're not taking payoffs, they're beating people up. When they get bored they shoot someone. This is your country, Homer. And for its greater glory I have had my lungs seared.

For a week or two, that seemed to be the end of it. Then during one of our dances, there they were, as if that one cop had budded and rebudded until multiples of him were muscling through the rooms and ordering everyone to leave. People didn't understand. In a moment we had a melee—scuffling, shouting, people tripping over one another. Everyone was trying to get out but the police in pushing them, shoving them were intent on creating havoc. The band I had put on the record player moments before kept playing as if in another dimension. How many police there were I don't know. They were loud and bulked up the air. The front door was open and a chill wind blew in off the avenue. I didn't know what to do. The shrieks I heard could have been merriment. With so many bodies in the room, I had the wild idea that the police in all their bulk were dancing with one another. But our poor tea dancers were being driven out the door like cattle. Grandmamma Robi-leaux had been standing near me with her salver of cookies. I heard a resounding gong, the sound made by a silver salver coming down on a skull. A male yowl and then a rain of cookies, like hail, splattering the floor. I was calm. It seemed to me of utmost importance to stop the music, I removed the record from the turntable and meant to slip it into its jacket when it was grabbed out of my hands and I heard it shatter on the floor. The Victrola was yanked away and heaved against the wall. Without knowing what I was doing—it was instinctive, an animal impulse, like the swat of a bear's paw but something lazier, a sightless man's distraction—I swung my fist through the air and hit something, a shoulder I think, and for my pains received a blow in the solar plexus that sent me to the floor gasping. I heard Langley shout, He's blind, you idiot.

And so ended the weekly tea dance at the Collyer brothers'.

We were charged with running a commercial enterprise in an area zoned only for residences, serving alcohol without a license, and resisting arrest. We notified the lawyers who were the executors of our parents' estate. They would act promptly enough but not in time to save us from a night in the Tombs. Grandmamma Robileaux went downtown with us as well to spend the night in the women's detention.

I couldn't sleep—not only because of all the noisy drunks and maniacs in the adjoining cells—I couldn't get over the vindictiveness of the police who had raided the premises as if we were running a Prohibition-era speakeasy. I was outraged that I had been punched and didn't know by whom. There was no way to avenge this. There was no appeal. There was nothing I could do about it except suffer my helplessness. I don't know of a more desolate feeling than that. For the first time in my life I felt the incomplete man. I was in a state of shock.

Langley was calm and reflective, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be sitting in the Tombs at three in the morning.