Savage Holiday

by Richard Wright

  A subtle sense of terror, potent but vague, seeped into his soul and the night’s damp heat made sweat beads on his upper lip. Yes, God; this was that unwelcome, uncanny, haunting sensation against which he had to employ all his emotional energies now; the dodging, the eluding of this nameless and invisible enemy had gripped and preoccupied him more and more since his life had turned from a settled routine into a nagging problem. He was plagued by a jittery premonition that some monstrous and hoary recollection, teasing him and putting his teeth on edge because it was strange and yet somehow familiar, was about to break disastrously into his consciousness. He blinked his eyes, shook his head, touched the tips of his four pencils in his inner coat pocket to free himself of these filmy cobwebs dusting at his mind...A red traffic light made him halt and he felt the hot pavement vibrating beneath his feet as a subway train sped through the underground. Nervously he slipped the flat, black box holding his gold medal into his outer coat pocket and swabbed his face with his handkerchief. He sighed, angry and repelled by this haunting sense of not quite being his own master.

  Work had not only given Erskine his livelihood and conferred upon him the approval of his fellow men; but, above all, it made him a stranger to a part of himself that he feared and wanted never to know. At some point in his childhood he had assumed toward himself the role of a policeman, had accused himself, had hauled himself brutally into the court of his conscience, had arraigned himself before the bar of his fears, and had found himself guilty and had, finally and willingly, dragged himself off to serve a sentence of self-imposed labor for life, had locked himself up in a prison-cage of toil...Now, involuntarily reprieved, each week six full new Sundays suddenly loomed terrifyingly before him and he had to find a way to outwit that rejected part of him that Longevity Life had helped to incarcerate so long and successfully. He was trapped in freedom. How could he again make a foolproof prison of himself for all of his remaining days What invisible walls could he now erect about his threatening feelings, desires? How could he suppress or throttle those slow and turgid stirrings of buried impulses now trying to come to resurrected life in the deep dark of him? How could he become his own absolute jailer and keep the peace within the warring precincts of his heart?

  The majority of men, timid and unthinking, obey the laws and mandates of society because they yearn to merit the esteem and respect of their law-abiding neighbors. Still others, reflective and conscious, obey because they are intelligently afraid of the reprisals meted out by society upon the breakers of the law. ( There are still other men of a deeper and more sensitive nature who, in their growing up, introject the laws and mandates of society into their hearts and come in time to feel and accept these acquired notions of right and wrong as native impulses springing out of the depths of their beings and, if they are ever tempted to violate these absorbed codes, act as though the sky Itself were about to crash upon their heads, as though the very earth were about to swing catastrophically out of its orbit...

  Such a man was Erskine Fowler, but the laws and mandates which he had introjected into his heart were of a special sort, and were unknown to him until, one day, time accidentally exposed what they were...

  But, now, to avoid the commission of what crime— or had the crime already been committed and was he trying to escape its memory?—was Erskine hankering so anxiously to imprison himself? What had he ever done—or what did he fear doing?—that made him feel so positively that he had to encircle himself, his heart, and his actions with bars, to hold himself in leash?

  The air was close and humid. It was nearing midnight; the traffic and the passers-by had lessened. He walked, brooding.

  Reaching home, he rode up in the automatic elevator to the tenth floor of the Elmira apartment building which was located in the upper Seventies of Manhattan; he entered a bedroom that had never been dishonored by the presence of a stray woman of pleasure. Undressing, he assured himself that he’d soon solve the problem of his enforced leisure; that his general state of mind was all right; that he was a good man, honest, kind, clean, straight—the kind of man who loved children. Why, take that little five-year-old Tony Blake who lived next door...He’d given that child so much ice cream and so many toys that his mother, Mrs. Blake, a shapely, plump, brunette war-widow, was astonished and blushed when trying to stammer her gratitude.

  On occasion Mrs. Blake herself, with her easy, flashing smile, had caught his timid fancy. She was comely, as alone as he was and, at odd moments, he’d found himself wondering about her. Once, on a summer Sunday morning—he’d been brewing coffee in the kitchen—he’d caught a glimpse of her clad only in panties and brassiere and the image had lingered in his consciousness for days, confounding him with its drastic persistency. Another time, one summer evening, just before getting into bed, he’d seen her completely nude through the open window of his bedroom. That time he’d nipped in the bud the possibility of any such image haunting his mind by promptly becoming angry. “She doesn’t have to be so blasted careless, does she?” For a week after that he’d not treated little Tony to any dishes of ice cream at the corner drugstore. It was not until Tony’s puzzled, accusing eyes had reproached him that he’d resumed his role of the big father scattering gifts.

  He showered, climbed into bed, and sighed; he had to rise early in the morning and do his duty at Sunday School. But he couldn’t sleep; he tossed restlessly on the hot mattress, wondering what he would do with himself on Monday. Minnie, his colored maid, would be in the apartment and he’d hate her to see him at loose ends, pacing to and fro.

  Through his open window he heard Mrs. Blake’s phone ring once, twice, three times...She’s not in, he thought. She sure received a lot of telephone calls. He’d heard vaguely (was it from Mrs. Westerman, the wife of the building superintendent?) that she worked nights; but what kind of work...? And little Tony remained alone all night. What a mother! No wonder so many people in this world got into trouble; they didn’t get the proper kind of guidance in their childhood. Women who couldn’t give the right kind of attention to children oughtn’t to be allowed to have them. Well, Mrs. Blake was a war-widow; that excused her some. But, nevertheless, a child of five oughtn’t to be left alone all night...

  The night air was warm, heavy, motionless; he sighed and tossed on the hot sheet. Mrs. Blake’s phone rang six times. Some man, no doubt...Suppose the building caught fire? Why, poor Tony would be trapped...

  His eyelids drooped and soon he was breathing regularly. A shifting curtain of wobbly images hovered before his consciousness; the images slowly grew in density and solidity; he was in another world, but he couldn’t decide if he ought to accept the images he saw in that world as real or not. He turned, flung off the top sheet, swallowed, and breathed rhythmically again. Yes; the images were real and he allowed them to engage his emotions...

  ...He was walking down a narrow path bordered by tall black weeds and then suddenly the path widened into a strange, deep, dark forest with stalwart trees ranging on all sides of him and then he was aware of treading upon dried leaves and twigs and it came to him that he was tramping through a vast, wooded area which he had just bought and these majestic trees looming skyward were his own and he was filled with a sense of pride as he tried to see their vaulting branches whose heights soared beyond his vision and then he paused and began intricate mental calculations as to how much profit he would make if he ordered all the trees cut down and sawn into timber and shipped for sale to the nearby city and he started counting the trees four eight sixteen trees were in a space sixteen yards by thirty-two yards and now he assumed that he had a hundred acres of trees like these how much profit would he realize but all of the trees were not of the same size there were thicker and taller trees and he pushed farther on into the forest and then he was suddenly afraid and hid himself behind a large tree and listened to the sound of whack whack whack somebody was in the forest chopping down one of his trees and he peered cautiously and saw a tall man swinging a huge ax chopping furiously into a v-
shaped hollow of a giant tree and the chips were flying and the man’s face was hard and brutish and criminal-looking and he was now resolved upon surprising the man and demanding that he get out of the forest and stop stealing his trees and he crept closer and saw that the man was about to cut straight through the tree and all at once the man stopped and whirled and saw him and yelled run go quickly the tree’s about to fall and he looked up and saw the tall tree bending slowly and falling towards him and he heard the man yelling for him to run but he couldn’t move his feet and when he looked up this time the tree was crashing down upon him and he managed to move at last trying to keep his eyes on the falling tree and he tripped on something and fell headlong and when he looked back to see where the falling tree was it was too late for the tree was upon him and he could feel the leaves and branches swishing and stinging his face and eyes and ears and then the crushing weight of the tree trunk smashed against his head...

  Bang bang bang came into Erskine’s ears. He opened puffy eyes and blinked at the bright sunlight. Morning already? He was still sleepy. He turned his head and saw the towering tops of Manhattan’s skyscrapers drenched in golden sunlight, but he was still staring at the strange dream images which were now fleeing from his consciousness. Again he heard that loud banging and he knew that Tony was beating his drum.

  “That child,” he muttered.

  His watch told him that it was seven-thirty; Sunday School did not commence until nearly ten; he had time to doze again. He rolled over, closed his eyes...Tony’s yell came strident and piercing:

  “Awhoo! Awhoo! Awhoo! The Indians are coming!”

  She’s sleeping and she lets that child bang and yell at this hour of the morning...The child’s noise ceased and he tucked his head deeper into his pillow and drifted into a semi-dream state, thinking of Tony, who, in turn, made him recall dimly his own, faraway childhood. Yes; he too had once romped and played alone, yelling war whoops, and there’d been no mother to look after him either. Wasn’t that maybe why he was so fond of Tony? And, too, wasn’t it maybe because Mrs. Blake—alone, sensual, impulsive —was so much as he remembered his own mother that he found himself scolding her and brooding over her in his mind?

  He had no memory of his father who had died when he was three years old; it was his mother whom he remembered or, rather, the images of the many men who always surrounded her laughing face—men who came and went, some indulgent toward him, some indifferent. Gradually, as he’d come to understand what was happening, he’d grown afraid, ashamed. They’d lived down in Atlanta then and the boys in the vacant lots and on the school grounds had flung cold, scornful words at him, and he’d been furious with his mother. Even now he winced with a dull, inner pain as he recalled his dreadful dilemma in trying to decide who deserved more to be killed for having behaved so that the boys on the playground could taunt him: ought the men be killed, or ought his mother be killed...?

  Erskine shook his head, trying to stave off emotional scenes stemming from his childhood...What was it that made him afraid to remember? He forced himself to lie still and there came to him a recollection of a tormented night: he’d been ill in bed and his mother had told him to go to sleep, that she was going out...He’d begged, wept, his teary eyes intent upon the fat, bald man who stood at his mother’s side. He’d hated that man. His mother had been powdered, rouged, wearing a wide hat...Whom had he hated more? His mother or the man? They’d gone out and he, burning with fever, had gotten out of bed and had gone to the window and had yelled and yelled...His mother had told him that she’d found him the next morning lying huddled under the window, dopey with fever. He’d had pneumonia and his mother had nursed him and he’d wanted to remain ill all of his life to keep her with him. But after he’d gotten well she’d gone off again, as always, and he’d been left alone in the house all day and night, hating her, trying to think of the many things he wanted to do to her to make her feel it...

  Full of sullen, impotent rage, he had let his heated imagination range wild and had choked back his yen to act. He’d developed into a too-quiet child who kept to himself, ignoring a world that offended him and wounded his sense of pride in what he loved most; his mother...He’d sought refuge in dreams of growing up and getting a job and taking his mother into some far-off land where there’d be no one to remember what had happened.

  Then one cold winter day—he was eight years old—his mother had been hauled off to jail as a public nuisance and Aunt Tillie had come down from New York and fetched him. He’d never learned the name of his mother’s offense; when he’d asked Aunt Tillie about it, she’d shaken her head and turned him off with: “It’s the men who ruin women, Erskine.”

  But he knew in his heart that whatever it was the men had done, his mother had been a willing accomplice, had laughed and had had a good time while doing it.

  His mother had remained in prison for two years and, a year after her release, she died. He recalled how Aunt Tillie had wept, for they had not had enough money to make the trip to Atlanta. Uncle Ted had attended to everything and had written him a long letter—he had lost that letter!—which had said: “Your poor mother who loved you has passed on...”

  He’d not wept; he’d just been stunned, surprised, and relieved. He knew that he’d been long waiting to hear that she was no more and, when he heard it, he’d felt so guilty that he’d been ill in bed for a week...From that time on he felt that he had something to live down, to overcome.

  He stirred on his bed, his eyes wide open, staring. Well, he’d overcome it, hadn’t he? He’d conquered that dark, shameful episode, had come through. His life no longer touched the dark, strange, twisted actions of his mother or his own agonized past reactions to her.

  Tony’s drum assailed his ears again. Yes; he’d get up. This was Minnie’s day off and he’d put on a pot of coffee. I’ll even have time to review my Sunday School lesson....

  He pulled from bed and lifted his six feet to full height; he yawned and rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. He stripped off his pajamas and loomed naked, his chest covered with a matting of black hair, his genitals all but obscured by a dark forest, his legs rendered spiderlike by their hirsute coating. Tufts of black hair protruded even from under his arms. Nude, Erskine looked anything but pious or Christian. He pulled on his robe and lumbered into the kitchen and filled the coffee pot, lit the flame of the gas stove, listening to Tony’s shouting:

  “Bang! Bang! Bang! You’re dead!”

  He sighed. If only he could take that child to Sunday School! As twigs are bent, so grow the trees...Twice he’d shyly asked Mrs. Blake’s permission to take Tony to Sunday School and she’d consented, but each Sunday morning when he’d been ready to go, she’d been sleeping and Tony had not been properly dressed. Too much nightclubbing, too much whiskey, and God knows what else...His nose wrinkled in disgust as he doffed his robe and entered the bathroom. He adjusted the hot and cold water faucets until the twin streams ran tepid. He was about to take off his wrist watch preparatory to stepping under the shower when his doorbell shrilled.

  “Who is it?” he called, turning and standing in the bathroom door, his right hand lifted to reach for his robe.

  “Paper boy!” an adolescent voice called. “Wanna collect this morning, please!”

  “Oh, yes. Just a moment,” he answered.

  He’d promised to pay that boy this morning but, gosh, he’d forgot to get change. Still nude, he crossed the room and put his mouth to the door panel and called out:

  “Say, will next week be all right? Really, I’ve no change; I’m sorry...Or do you want to take down a twenty-dollar bill and get some—?”

  “See you next week, Mister!” the boy called to him. “You owe me two-twenty; that right?”

  “That’s right,” he told the boy.

  He heard the thud of his thick Sunday paper hit the carpeted floor of the hallway outside and then the muffled sound of swift feet rushing toward the elevator; he caught the clank of the elevator door opening and
closing...Yes; he’d have to remember and pay that paper boy next Sunday; it wasn’t right to keep a kid like that waiting for his money...He might have need of it...

  Then he heard his coffee pot boil over in the kitchen. Golly! He’d made that flame too high! Still nude, he sprinted into the kitchen and lowered the gas fire. The redolence of coffee roused his hunger; he opened the refrigerator and hauled out the eggs, the butter, the bacon, a jar of strawberry jam, and a tin of chilled fruit juice. Padding on bare feet, he visualized the plate of succulent food he’d have.

  About to re-enter the bathroom, he paused. Better get my paper...Two weeks ago his Sunday paper had been stolen. Secreting his naked body, he cracked the door and peered to left and right in the sunlit hallway. Nobody’s there...Half of the bulk of his Sunday paper lay near his toes, but the other half, evidently having slid, was scattered at the foot of the stairway. Feeling a draft of air on the skin of his unclothed body, he stooped and gathered the wad of papers at his feet, his left hand holding open the door behind him. Why did that boy fling his paper about like this? Mad maybe because I didn’t pay ‘im...

  He pushed the door back into his room and waited to see if it would remain open. He saw it swinging to, towards him, slowly. He’d have to open the door wide, all the way back to the wall; and, in that way, he’d have time enough to grab the other section of the paper and get back to his door before it closed. Pushing his door all the way back until it collided with the wall of the room, he watched it; it was still. He sprang nudely forward in the brightly-lighted hallway and, with a sweep of his right hand, scooped up the second half of his paper, pivoted on his bare heels, and was about to rush forward to re-enter his apartment when the door began to veer slowly to, towards him. With his left hand outstretched, he dashed toward the door and reached the sill just as the door, pushed by a strong current of air, slammed shut with a thunderous metallic bang in his face. He blinked, quickly seized hold of the doorknob with his right hand and rattled it firmly. The door did not budge; it was locked!