The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Bobby knew a lawyer. We had a fund-raising drive among Lena’s friends. Even Bruce kicked in ten bucks. A week later, Lena was out on a five-hundred-dollar bail. The John was from out of town, didn’t want a scandal, and the case was dropped.

  Then Lena got busted again. I went to the trial and Lena cried in my arms, saying I was against her, everyone was against her. She was going back to Philly. Back to her middle-class, respectable family of social workers, teachers, post office clerks, and railroad conductors. Lena had studied dress design for two years.

  Now she lay in my arms, breathing hard, catnapping.

  Bobby came in with a whopping plate of fried chicken, greens, and buttered rolls. “Wake up, Miss Lena, and eat,” he said.

  Lena stretched and smiled up at me. “Look at this dumb bitch. Waking me up for some Goddamn food.”

  “Child,” Bobby exclaimed. “You sent me to all this trouble. Mercy me.”

  Lena sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Have you got anything to drink in this house?” she demanded. “I’ve gotta go out and see what’s on the log for the lizard.”

  “Miss Lena,” Bobby said, “It’s only five.”

  Lena glared at Bobby and shook her head sadly. “Listen to him, will you?” she said, her eyes dancing merrily as her work plan developed in her mind. “I’m going to do my eyes, freshen up my makeup. There’s this new bar that I’m dying to work. It’s cozy as a womb. Soft lights, deep rugs on the floor. I’m going in very grand, my dear. Like those whores in Miami. I’ll spend ten or fifteen bucks across the bar. But I’ll come out with a hundred dollar trick. Now what do you bet, bitch? Miss Subway Queen?”

  Just then, Claudia swept in grandly with the ever-present, silent Lady P. “The queen’s head is tore up,” Claudia cackled.

  Bobby closed the door and glared at him. “Miss Claudia, you are too much.”

  “She’s a grand bitch,” Lena said. “Have you been in drag lately?”

  “Oh, child,” Claudia sighed. He gestured haughtily as if dismissing an invisible royal court. “Let me tell you, Miss one—”

  But Bobby interrupted: “Really? I don’t see how you go in drag. You’re not femme. You have buck teeth.”

  Claudia threw back his head and snapped his fingers. “Ain’t no man asked me for teeth yet.”

  “The kind of men you have,” Bobby huffed. “Butch sissies.”

  “And when have you had a man?” Claudia asked. His large, doe eyes seemed to be larger.

  “Why my boyfriend, Hank—” Bobby began.

  “You stupid faggots make me sick,” Claudia said. “You wouldn’t know a man if you saw one. You don’t think a real man would sleep with a hard-ass faggot like you?”

  “I don’t have to take that,” Bobby cried.

  “Oh, please, Miss Thing,” Claudia laughed. “There’s only one real man in this room. It’s Lady P.”

  EVENING FINDS ME on the stoop with a beer. Vapor holds the air. You would expect the neon signs to melt like multicolored candles. Standing in front of the hotels and restaurants like wilted sentries are the people who live on this block. It is too hot to sleep. The lights of the tall buildings gleam down like ghosts and create a nightmare haze. The smell of fresh baked bread wars with the garbage smells from the litter baskets. I see a wet, burned sofa cushion, rotten bananas (the gypsies), a head of crushed Iceburg lettuce, and a half-moon of hamburger on toasted bun. Broken soda bottles and a gin bottle, a pink paper napkin smeared with lipstick. A drunk knocks over the litter basket which usually sits in front of our stoop like a piece of cheap, abstract, garden sculpture. I refuse to go down and pick it up. The owners of the bars do not care. Nor does the haughty, homeless cat strutting by, cursing. And then, all this suddenly is drowned out by the crude, imploring voice of a nightclub singer from down the street: “I wanna be loved. . . .” A terrible proclamation.

  Miss Roberta trips up like a shy gazelle. She is dressed in white from head to foot, her dyed strawberry-blond hair has been freshly set. She offers me a swig of brandy from a silver purse flask. Her Thunderbird is in the repair shop and she has to walk her beat; the twenty-five-dollar I. Miller’s are giving her hell. Miss Roberta spots a likely prospect and moves on.

  Two more prostitutes. This begins to seem like a union meeting. They’re Negro and do a land office business downtown. Sally and Sue. Sally is very dark, with short slick hair and a great body. She looks like some rich jungle fruit that has been carefully preserved in waxed paper. Sue is delicate, light-skinned, very ladylike. Sometimes Sally and Sue use me as a front and turn an occasional trick at my place.

  Sue and Sally came rushing up, breathing hard, and shaking like jelly on those spike heels. The cops have run them off Broadway. They have to rest and get their bearings.

  “I don’t feel like working tonight, anyway,” Sally says hoarsely, chewing gum avidly. “And, baby, I can’t afford to get busted. Went to the can last Wednesday night and was picked up again Saturday night. I’m trying to talk those cops into letting me go. Maybe give’m a little free pussy.” She laughs. “Anyway, baby, so they take the doll to the West Fifty-fourth Street station. Way up on the top floor. And then, in the squad room, all hell breaks loose. The cops run out. Baby, they shouldn’t have done that. Leaving me there all by my lonesome. I took off my heels and crawled down those four flights and pressed.”

  We laughed. A young rookie cop is suddenly on the scene, swinging his nightstick, walking stiffly like he had a board up his ass. He comes up to the stoop and demands, “What’re you girls doing here?”

  Sally, cracking her gum, looks over the cop’s shoulder at a crowded station wagon pulling out of Tip Top Parking. She swings her fine brown legs and begins humming “John Brown’s Body.”

  “You girls ain’t talking, huh? I bet if I took you in, you’d talk plenty. Didn’t I see you about an hour ago on Broadway?”

  “Officer, we ain’t doing nothin’,” Sally drawled. “We just trying to cool off.”

  “Cool off at home.”

  I decided to speak. “These girls are friends of mine,” I said firmly, looking the cop straight in the eye. “And we’re sitting here cooling off. We are planning to sit here as long as we feel like it.”

  The cop was stunned. “Oh. Is that so? Who the hell are you, their pimp? I can take you in too, you know.”

  “I’ve lived on this block for five years,” I said, rising. “I know you have enough to keep you busy without bothering people who are trying to cool off.”

  I have very little respect for policemen, because I’ve walked the streets enough to know that if the cops really worked hard, the jails would overflow.

  After my remark, the cop turned quickly and headed for Sixth Avenue. He still moved as if he had a board up his ass.

  “A tough cop-shitter,” Sally said.

  Finally Sally and Sue start off, ready to sign in for the early morning shift.

  I go up to my place, and Maxine pops in, wanting to know why I haven’t gone to bed.

  “I’m goin’ to the country,” Maxine said. “Not with those fresh air kids. I’m going to Virginia with my grandmother, and then we’re going to Canada. You’ve never been to Canada, have you, Charles?”

  “No, Cookie,” I said, “lots of places, but never to Canada. You’re a lucky girl.”

  SAW MY OLD ARMY BUDDY, JELLY, on Sixth Avenue this morning, standing at the subway entrance, wolfing down a bag of French pastry. His brown face seemed paralyzed with terror.

  “Charlie, my man,” he whined. The day was pleasant, about sixty-five degrees, but sweat poured down Jelly’s face. Jelly gave me a panicky grin and said, “Where you going? Let’s get a beer.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We started off and were almost at the corner when Jelly stopped. “Wow,” Jelly exclaimed, the panicky grin still glued on his sweaty face. “Look, Dad. I don’t want any beer. I’ve gotta have a fix and I know where I can get a twenty-dollar fix for fifteen dollars and it’s real good shit and Char
lie, my man, I don’t wanna hit you like this but I swear I’m dying, my guts feel like they’re coming loose. Oh baby, I gotta have that fix or I’ll go nuts and it only costs fifteen dollars fifteen bucks. . . .”

  “I can let you have five,” I said.

  Jelly threw his arms around me and, for a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. His fat, trembling hands clung to my shirt and his eyes had a worshipful gleam. “Daddy,” he said, “you are a doll. A real living doll. You’ve been a swinging stud ever since Korea.”

  I remember the Korean Jelly. He’d tip into the tent at four in the morning, treading lightly, his voice high and tremulous, like a woman’s. Sometime’s he’d do a couple of graceful ballet turns and yell “On guard!” or get tangled up in the mosquito bar. I would have to help. I’d get up, trying to keep him quiet so he wouldn’t wake the other guys. All of them knew the score: several were novice junkies.

  It wouldn’t be long before reveille and I never tried to undress Jelly. But he would always ask, breathing hard like a man with heart trouble, “Charlie, my boy, take off my boots, please.” After unlacing Jelly’s boots, I’d light a cigarette and sit on the footlocker beside his bunk. I’d do most of the talking. Jelly either giggled or let out a heavy, “Yeah man!” Silently we’d listen to the changing of the guards, cursing up at the motor pool, and the peasants singing down the hill, starting for the Seoul markets before the hot sun and heavy frontline GI traffic blocked the dusty roads. The peasants padded along barefooted as if they were moving through a valley of sand. Moonlight made their white muslin clothes seem more white. It was like watching a carvan of ghosts.

  Finally Jelly and I would doze off. A couple of hours later, he would awake cursing in that high and tremulous woman’s voice, snapping his eyes angrily around the tent, jerking the mosquito bar and frame from the bunk and, as always, moan: “I don’t feel well this morning. I think I’ll go on sick call.” Then he would give orders to the silent, moon-faced Korean houseboy to go into Seoul and get his drugs and his deep “Yeah man” voice back.

  The memory of the United States Army begins for me with the exuberant spirit in which I took basic training. I really enjoyed the hikes on cold, rainy mornings with full field pack, the infiltration course, bivouac. There were guys who went through training because they were afraid of their superiors and guys who trained diligently because it seemed to them that it was the right thing to do. Then there were guys, and these were the great majority, who constantly fucked off during those first six weeks of basic training. Most of us were young—18, 22—and away from home for the first time. There were days and nights when things happened, when the army outdid itself and surpassed the tales of toughness we had heard all our lives.

  As novice soldiers we talked very little of the fighting in Korea. After basic training I waited eagerly for my overseas orders, which never came. The mess sergeant took a liking to my buddy and me, and we were farmed out as cooks, though I had never fried an egg in my life. Then one weekend, I got on a roaring drunk and went AWOL. Upon my return I was shipped out to another company filled with green trainees and manned by a company predominantly of white southerners.

  My color, as always because of GI records, had preceded me. I came into the new barracks and was unpacking my duffle bag when the platoon sergeant walked in. We exchanged a few short comments. The trainees had gathered around us like a group of excited fans in the last round.

  Then the platoon sergeant said, “You think you are a smart nigger, doncha?”

  I looked up at him and said: “No. I don’t think I’m smart. But I do think I’m intelligent.”

  There was nothing much left for the man to do but walk away. But after that, pressure was put on me from all sides, in a hundred ways, and my nightly prayer was to be sent overseas. I went AWOL about three times during this assignment, because I had heard a rumor that if you took off you would be sent to Korea without orders. The last time I was picked up AWOL I was marched to the stockade with a guard punching a loaded carbine into my back. Later, after my court-martial, I heard that the officers of my company celebrated the fact that they had put me away for six months.

  The second day I was in the stockade, I received permission from the chaplain to visit the library. My court-martial had been swift. I was certain that they had put the screws on me. I read up on court-martial procedure and discovered that within seventy-two hours after he has been sentenced a soldier may have the proceedings reviewed.

  The reviewing colonel was very understanding. I had had a good record and he was going to suspend the six-month sentence. How could a nice, intelligent young man like me get into such trouble?

  But what about overseas, I wanted to know? There was plenty of time, the colonel said.

  I walked into the mess hall that noon and a silence fell. I had conquered the company. After that, I had no more trouble. I spent a year at Fort Leonard Wood, only one hundred and twenty miles from home.

  Finally, though, it was the boat for Korea. Our Korean ship docked at San Francisco at nine on a fine Saturday morning. We were not allowed to get off and had to console ourselves with a view of the city.

  Then the ship was at sea, and the lights of the city became nothing more than tiny, earthbound stars. We settled in our bunks and the card and dice games began. Then they were over, along with the bull sessions, except for the all-night drinking sports like myself. Shortly after midnight, I stumbled down those tiers of bunks and was horrified to hear the muffled weeping, the cries of hundreds of young men. This unashamed weeping engulfed the whole ship.

  After a very long crossing, twenty-two days, we sailed into the port of Sasebo, Japan. We went ashore, were given lectures in Far East soldiery, and it was here that I gave away civilian clothing, toothpaste, soap, candy, cigarettes, books, money. Later this innocent Missouri boy was to learn that these poor Japanese met every ship; a very profitable activity of their existence.

  Next came the steep, dusty hills of Korea, riding in a two-ton truck, and suddenly hearing from far off the explosion of a bomb. GIs fell over each other getting out of the truck and scrambling into the nearby trenches, and Big Daddy yelled: “Where are the fucking gooks?” Everyone cut him hostile glances. But soon the others adopted Big Daddy’s bravo spirit. We were combat construction engineers. There were occasional skirmishes, but the fighting was already petering out by the time we got to Korea and in July the truce came.

  Now that the war, the Korean police action was over, military life became routine, petty. I grew bored and difficult. I was shipped off to fire-fighting school. Graduating from that, I was transferred to another engineering company and there I told myself to shape up.

  Part of my family were carpenters and I took easily to the back-breaking work of helping to rebuild Korea. I watched promotions and favors go to gold bricks, and seeing this happen taught me things it was good to know. The fire marshal, a corporal of our company, was soon to be transferred to Japan. His bunk was next to mine and he appointed me fire marshal. With the new job I had only about two days’ work a month and there were favors and a promotion, which I promptly lost because of the platoon sergeant. The platoon sergeant was a southern white, had spent ten years in a federal prison, and could not read or write. He disliked Headquarters tent of his platoon and he disliked Negroes.

  But there were many things to turn my mind away from company politics. The Korean people I ran across were wonderful, and I like to believe that my money and the country my uniform represented had nothing to do with the way they felt towards me. The ROK soldiers, the elite of the Korean army (the KATUSAS were the peasants) were better dressed than most of us GIs. (I’ll not soon forget trying to evade my houseboy’s question as to why I didn’t have new boots. He had taken my boots to the village shoemaker to try to have them repaired even though they were ready for the trash barrel.) On the Sunday afternoon when the ROK soldiers received word that they were no longer attached to American military units, they all got very drunk and tor
e up tents and equipment, shooting wildly with their weapons.

  The Korean children used to line up, hungry-eyed, at the fence, to watch all our rich food being dumped into the garbage cans. I remember being invited to a Korean home and, after the tea ceremony, each member of the family came over to me shyly and rubbed their hands through my hair.

  In September of 1953, Korea was shaking on her post-war legs in the changing world of East and West. The uncertain peace hovered over everything; at each loud noise our eyes scanned the sky.

  I came back home, to Missouri—to Grandma, my friends, with thousands of GIs for whom Korea had been pretty meaningless. It was as if they had never left this country.

  Before I went into the army, my feeling about it, about the war in Korea, was that of a boy who loved playing soldier. I looked forward to the United States Army and Korea with glee; it was to be another adventure, another experience, and, when I received my draft notice shortly after my nineteenth birthday, it was like Christmas. I looked forward to fighting, perhaps even to dying.

  The night before I left for the army, Grandma and I were sitting on the vine-covered front porch in Missouri. It was a soft, summer night and you could smell the honeysuckle vines which grew up the sides of the porch.

  “Sonny, do you still say your prayers?” Grandma asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied quickly and lit a cigarette.

  “You’re not lying to your old Granny, are you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “All right. I’ll take you at your word. Now you go on out and see your friends. Go on. We don’t have to sit here like someone has died. But first, before you go—pray with me, Sonny.”

  Grandma and I got down on our knees and put our elbows in the swing seat and bowed our heads.

  Grandma prayed first and her voice was like a peaceful hymn: “Dear Heavenly Father, again you’ve spared one of your humble servants to bend on their knees before thee. Father, I thank you for carrying me through this blessed day and giving me strength to live from minute to minute, hour to hour, on this blessed summer day.”