“No,” said Simple, “I am only thinking how awful this atom bomb can be! If one fell up North in Harlem and charged me, then I went downtown and punched that time clock where I work, the clock would be charged. Then a white fellow would come along behind me and punch the time clock, and he would be charged. Then both of us would be so full of atoms for the next million years, that at any time we would be liable to explode like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And from us, everybody else in the plant would get charged. Atoms, they tell me, is catching. What I read in the News said that if you even look at an atom bomb going off, the rays are so strong your eyes will water the rest of your life, your blood will turn white, your hair turn gray, and your children will be born backwards. Your breakfast eggs will no longer be sunny-side up, but scrambled, giving off sparks—and people will give off sparks, too. If you walk down the street, every doorbell you pass will ring without your touching it. If you pick up a phone, whoever answers it will be atomized. So if you know somebody you don’t like, for example, just phone them—and you can really fix them up! That’s what they call a chain reaction. I am getting my chain ready now—the first person I am going to telephone is my former landlady! When she picks up the phone, I hope to atomize her like a Japanese tuna! She will drive a Geiger counter crazy after I say, ‘Hello!’”

“My dear boy,” I said, “what makes you think you, of all people, would be able to go around transferring atomic radiation to others? You would probably be annihilated yourself by the very first bomb blast.”

“Me? Oh, no,” said Simple. “Negroes are very hard to annihilate. I am a Negro—so I figure I would live to radiate and, believe me, once charged, I will take charge.”

“In other words, come what may, you expect to survive the atom bomb?”

“If Negroes can survive white folks in Mississippi,” said Simple, “we can survive anything.”

Two Sides Not Enough

Two Sides Not Enough

“A MAN ought to have more than just two sides to sleep on,” declared Simple. “Now if I get tired of sleeping on my left side, I have nothing to turn over on but my right side.”

“You could sleep on your back,” I advised.

“I snores on my back.”

“Then why not try your stomach?”

“Sleeping on my stomach, I get a stiff neck—I always have to keep my head turned toward one side or the other, else I smothers. I do not like to sleep on my stomach.”