The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Little Jimmie groaned deeply. “Lord. I might as well be back in Kings County’s nut ward.”

  “It ain’t that bad.”

  “That’s your story, morning glory. It wasn’t bad when I was riding through like Caesar in my bulletproof Caddie . . .”

  “You have got to get used to the streets again. That’s all. Doesn’t it feel good to be home again?”

  “I suppose so,” Little Jimmie said slowly. “I guess I been away too long.”

  “Everything’s still the same,” I told him. “We’re very fortunate to live in a ghetto that still honors traditional values.”

  Little Jimmie motioned across the street. “What’s that funny-looking little green house over there?”

  “That’s an electronic snake pit. When things get too tough, you just hold this electronic cord until you can’t stand it any longer. A gas. Almost like taking dope. Cheaper than the subway.”

  “It jest don’t seem like Harlem anymore.”

  “But this is home, baby! This is the only place in the world where you can have the time of your life. You always could, and we still do.”

  “That’s why I’m scared,” Little Jimmie said.

  “But it’s different now,” I tried to explain. “Even the cops are different.”

  “I don’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  I tried to reassure Little Jimmie, brushing back a curly lock that rose in the wind that whipped through the skeleton of an apartment house fringing a condemned residential park. “The cops are our friends.”

  “Then why do we have to run?”

  “You’ll never understand,” I said, sighing. “Are you ready?”

  “Give me a head start,” Little Jimmie whined.

  “Why do you want a head start?”

  “Didn’t they give you a medal last year ’cause the bloodhounds couldn’t catch you?”

  “Jesus. I’d almost forgotten. I guess I’m sort of an American hero.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve always been a movie star. But give me a head start. I’ve been taking the waters at Kings County.”

  “We gotta make it just to Eighth Avenue. It’s not like a crosscountry race.”

  “It’s the same!” Little Jimmie cried. He pulled the felt hat down over his ears and started off.

  I let him have a comfortable lead. Arching my arms, head held high, I bounded off graciously, the son of a desperate, dead runner.

  Up ahead, a policeman sharpening a bowie knife snapped to attention as I dashed across Lenox Avenue.

  Bowing, the policeman said, “Good morning, sir.”

  “Morning,” I replied, gasping for breath. I’d never been frightened before, believe me. Little Jimmie’s gloomy forecast, I told myself. He’s a very sick has-been.

  And soon I bypassed him, smoothly sprinting toward a photo finish. I galloped across the right side of Eighth Avenue, feeling my ego-oats. I was in good condition for the Spring Run-Nigger-Run track meet (the winner of this meet receives a dull black wrought-iron Davis Cup. There is always savage bribery; each borough president shills and makes a play for his favorite black son). Sunrise, sunset, winter, or summer—it had never been Succoth—the Promised Land, or the ingathering of the harvest for me. But with The Wig it might soon be.

  I wiped my sweaty brow and saw three whores standing on the corner, adjusting white kid gloves.

  “Little Jimmie,” I called. “Look at our reward. Standing tall, sweet, and brown.”

  Little Jimmie eased up his pained physical-fitness smile. “Call the mojo man. Too bad Caddie number twenty is in the repair shop.”

  Stalking coolly, we approached the three whores.

  I opened. “What you pretty girls doing out in this weather?”

  The finely built group spokesman scanned the sky and giggled. “We’re waiting on the Junior League pick-up truck. Those fine ladies, always so discriminating, have consented to see us. We’re gonna add a little funky color to their jaded lives. Ain’t that nice? They’re planning a tea benefit for Harlem settlement houses. We’re in charge of the entertainment. Ain’t that nice?”

  “It sure is,” Little Jimmie guffawed boyishly.

  “An honor,” I agreed, eyeing the innocent, lyrically pretty debutante. Tawny, a smasher, she toyed with short white gloves and averted her dark bacon-and-eggs eyes.

  I remained worldly, indifferent, like Marcello Mastroianni. Then, to change the pace, I grinned a Humphrey Bogart grin.

  Spongecake number two cleared her throat. “Well, well. I do declare.”

  “You look sort of familiar,” the group spokesman said to Little Jimmie.

  The rusty gates of glory creaked open; Little Jimmie cocked his hat on the back of his head and said in a resonant voice: “I jest might be. I is Little Jimmie Wishbone from Aukinsaw.”

  The group spokesman clutched a gloved hand over her right tit. “Little Jimmy Wishbone, the movie star? Oh, I feel faint!”

  “I do declare,” Spongecake said. “I heard you were on skid row.”

  “That was only for a proposed television series,” Little Jimmie said modestly.

  The whores feigned belief. Little Jimmie beamed. I blushed, watching three spotted horses trot toward the Harlem Premium Priceless meat factory. My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t eaten in two days due to my extravagant Silky Smooth act.

  “When you gonna make another picture like Southern Sunset?” the group spokesman asked in matronly tones.

  “Well,” Little Jimmie began grandly, “my old company, MGM, wants to sign me up for a Western epic. But my agent warned we’d better be incorporated in Switzerland first. I’m a hot property, you know.”

  The group spokesman gave her fellow travelers a firm didn’t-I-tell-you-so expression. “A comeback, girls. A surefire sellout benefit première. I must inform our ticket scalpers.”

  “Hollywood is very excited over Little Jimmie’s comeback,” I said.

  “I do declare,” Spongecake said.

  The calculating charm of the finely built, matronly spokesman began to show. “Which direction might you be headed, Mr. Wishbone?”

  Little Jimmie shrugged, basking in the glow of the past. “Me and my boy jest out for a bit of fresh air.”

  “You and your valet?” Spongecake asked. “I read about your servants in Screen Horror.”

  “I got him in Hong Kong last year.”

  “I do declare.”

  I wanted to kill the dirty, wine-drinking son of a bitch. I bowed my beautiful head in shame, silently vowing to see Madame X, the reincarnation of Medusa, the smoldering rage of the Harlem firmament. A few incantations by her, and Little Jimmie’s wagon would really be fixed.

  “Orientals make the best servants,” the spokesman commented.

  “That’s true,” Little Jimmie was quick to agree. In Hollywood, he’d had a Finnish cook and a British gentleman’s gentleman.

  “We’re servantless. Thursday, you know,” the spokesman smiled sweetly. “And we’re simply delighted to meet you, Mr. Wishbone, in the flesh. I think we should give those Junior League girls a rain check. Another day for dice and cards and chitchat and Bloody Marys. But I’d be delighted if you’d join me in my study for an informal lunch. I’m a follower of Dione Lucas and James Beard, you know. I’ll try to whip up something simple. Kale and turnip greens cooked with juicy ham hocks. Yankee pot roast. German potato salad. Green beans soaked in fat back. And my specialty, cornbread and sweet-potato pie.”

  Little Jimmie made a dapper bow. Lordly he said, “Delighted. One gets tired of frozen frog legs, frozen cornish hen, instant wild rice, and pasteurized caviar.”

  “Well, just come along with us,” Hostess spokesman smiled. “The Deb can stay with your valet and keep him company. ’Bout as close to royalty as she’ll ever get.”

  Swooning, Spongecake said: “I do declare. Such a refreshing change from the round of parties and balls and dinners at the Bath Club where we’re always encountering the same crowd.”

  The worms
in my stomach were too hurt to cry over the great luncheon—they were resigned.

  I watched spokesman and Spongecake proudly encircle Little Jimmie, saunter down Eighth Avenue.

  “And you have twenty-five Caddies,” Spongecake marveled.

  “Forty-two,” Little Jimmie lied. “And I’m getting a Rolls next week.”

  A loner, always on the outside, I looked at The Deb.

  “You sure got pretty hair,” she said.

  “You really think so?” I asked, ready to assume my lover-boy role.

  She nodded. I could see her body tremble under her battered tweed windbreaker. “My hair is so short and kinky. Nobody wants me.”

  Silly girl. Poor, innocent, and good—Lord, a piece of my lonely heart and hot hands telepathically grabbed her bosom. We were on the same wavelength.

  “Everybody wants you,” I said. “You’re lovely.”

  “No,” The Deb cried. “I’ve got bad hair. I’ve tried Madam C. J. Walker and Lady Clairol too. Oh, I don’t know how I can go on living.”

  I went over and put my arms around her. She moaned and fell into them easily.

  Yes. The touch of her flesh made lizards scale through my body as on sun-scorched rocks. I had never felt such sweet desire and I was grateful for the power and glory of The Wig.

  “You’re ever so kind,” The Deb whispered. “All foreign men are real gentlemen.”

  Despite icy winds, sweat trickled down my armpits. It was the first time I’d been called a gentleman. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “It’s true. Every time a Swedish ship comes to town I feel like the Queen of Sheba. And you’re a man of quality. So sensitive. I can feel it.”

  “You’re a sweet little thing,” I murmured, feeling rather Swedish myself.

  “You’re ever so kind.”

  “Let’s make it, baby. Some place that has a view, an open fire, soft lights, and sweet music.”

  “It sounds so romantic,” The Deb cried, her lips brushing against my chin. “But how much you gonna pay me?”

  “What?”

  “How much you gonna pay me for my charms. You know: money. Loot. Bread. Greenback dollar bills.”

  “In Europe,” I stammered, “we believe in free love . . .”

  “This ain’t Europe, honey. This is New York City. You gotta pay one way or the other. I’m a simple cash-and-carry girl.”

  She elbowed my chest and broke away.

  “You American females are very strange. In Europe . . .”

  “Sweetie, I dig you and your Wig. But they’d bar me from the union if I gave it away. The chairman said: ‘No finance, no romance.’ I hope you understand.”

  Sadly, I slumped against a litter basket. I’d had The Wig less than four hours and already I felt the black clouds gathering.

  “I’ll see you around, sweetie,” The Deb smiled and walked away.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled, comforted with the knowledge that I was at least on the right side of Eighth Avenue.

  Five

  REJECTED, DEJECTED, I started walking east on 125th Street. The wind was dying and the sun had come out. Those cool knights, the cops, were dozing or filing their fingernails or reading newspapers. Negroes no longer raced across streets. They had slowed to a sensual stride. It was siesta time in Harlem. Everything was so quiet and peaceful that you wanted to take the mood home in a paper bag and sleep with it.

  A candy store’s loudspeaker played a Bach sonata—Landowska on the harpsichord. But the only music I heard was “no finance, no romance.” The Deb, I sighed, feeling my whole body shake like thunder.

  Up ahead loomed a great big fat bank, a foreign bank. Bracing my shoulders, I went into the bank and asked about a porter’s job. I might as well try the dream of working my way up. Yes, there was an opening, I was informed by a very polite Negro girl with strawberry-blond hair. First, I had to fill out an application and take a six weeks’ course in the art of being human, in the art of being white. The fee for the course would be one-five-o.

  I thanked the girl with a weak smile, saying I’d return later in the afternoon or perhaps tomorrow. I’d have to place a long-distance call to Nassau.

  “My father’s in Nassau,” I added, “hitting the golf balls right down the middle. He’s dead set on Yale, but I like to build my own roads.”

  Outside, in the quiet street, I saw a crowd gathering and went over. A Negro Civil Service worker—he looked to be about forty-five—had dropped dead. His skin had turned purple blue-black.

  “Oh, Lord,” a woman cried, gesturing like a fishwife in an Italian movie. “I’m a widow and my husband is dead. All his life, he’d wanted to go to Florida in the wintertime, when the snow’s on the ground in New York. All his life he’d wanted that. And we were going next week. Oh, Lord. He’d been having these heart attacks caused by terrible racial nightmares . . .”

  A worldly looking young Negro couple next to me whispered: “It’s a publicity stunt. The dead joker aped those Buddhist monks who used to set fire to themselves.”

  “Jesus,” I shuddered and then began running, running home. Suddenly frightened, knowing if I didn’t swing a secure gig, twenty years from now, I’d be flat on my own back, my chafed lips open as if to receive a slice of honeydew melon. Purple blue-black and dead, spotlighted by the early afternoon sun.

  Darkness, symbol of life, arrived. I was naked and alone, clutching a patched gray sheet, lamenting The Wig’s first encounters with destiny.

  But there was the fatback sensation of meeting The Deb, and the glorification of what I had always referred to privately as “my thorny crown,” The Wig itself. I turned uneasily on the sofa bed, wary of the night guard of cockroaches. “Happy Days Are Here Again,” I whispered softly, thinking of The Wig and trying to make myself feel good and then, Lord—my own private motion picture flashed on: memory.

  I remembered Abraham Lincoln, who had died for me. I remembered the Negro maid who had walked from Grapetree, Mississippi, to Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, and was flogged for being too maidenly fair. I remembered the young man who, competing for the title “Blacker the Berry, Sweeter the Juice,” was killed during an avant-garde happening in a Washington Mews carriage house. The killing did not take place during a Black Mass, as was first reported. The Negro youth had committed a sexual outrage, according to Confidential Magazine in its exclusive interview with the host and hostess, who were famous for their collection of Contemporary Stone Art. Their sexual safaris were legendary, too. Inspired by childhood tales of lynchings (ah, the gyrations, the moans, the sweat, the smell of fresh blood, the uncircumcised odor), the couple had explored Latin rice-and-bean delights, European around-the-world-scootee-roots, Near Eastern lamb, flip-flop, and it’s-all-in-the-family.

  Hoping to avoid the press, which arrived by helicopter, fifty miles from shore, exhausted, jaded, they returned to their native land on a luxury liner but in steerage class, with seventy pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage.

  “It was off-season,” the hostess had jokingly told reporters. The host added with great dignity: “We are returning to our native land, where fornication is pure and simple. We’re returning to the womb of nature.” They went into seclusion in their Greenwich Village carriage house until the night of the celebrated “happening,” the night that was to reestablish their worldly reputation. The gleaming, white-toothed young Negro with the rough but carefully combed kinky hair (if one ran one’s hand through his hair, one trembled and saw Venus and Mars) displayed a rosebud instead of a penis! The effrontery—a Negro and nipped in the bud! Certainly a shock that could drive anyone to murder, only it hadn’t been murder, the courts decided. It was only a happening.

  Sleepless still, I rolled over and scratched my stomach. I felt weak—a sure sign that happy days were here again and that I’d already opened a new door. As a child I’d always believed I could fly. One night, after sniffing The Big O in someone’s bathroom, I knew it was possible. Until the countdown. Then I couldn’t stand up, I was an
chored to the floorboards. But the sensation, the idea of flight, the sensation of being free, that had been wonderful! I touched The Wig. Yes. Security had always eluded me, but it wouldn’t much longer. American until the last breath, a true believer in The Great Society, I’d turn the other cheek, cheat, steal, take the fifth amendment, walk bare-assed up Mr. Jones’s ladder, and state firmly that I was too human.

  Lying in the quiet darkness, I decided to see Little Jimmie in the morning and work on a new big-time money-making deal. But first, we’d have an early morning seance with The Duke.

  Yes! This was the land of hope and that was it! Sweet brown girl, I’ll become a magician for you. Sweet brown girl. Bulldozing between your thighs, you with roses in your hair, I thought as my eyelids grew heavy.

  No. No, no!

  Sleep. Dream. Rest in peace. Until morning.

  2

  * * *

  “If I could holler like a mountain jack . . .”

  —FROM JOE WILLIAMS SINGS

  Six

  WE KEPT OUR early morning séance with The Duke. He’d come a long way from his handyman-porter days in Chicago. A perfect specimen of the young man on the Amen train to success, the Duke had recently returned from his forty-seventh expedition into the Deep South and he had returned with a fantastic collection of antiques, a rare, historic collection. Sincere culture-prowling clubwomen were bursting out of their Edith Lances bras, trying to persuade The Duke to let his collection be included on their spring house tours.

  The collection was extraordinary. It included the last word in expensive water hoses (nozzles intact, brassy but dented by human skulls); an enormous hunk of chestnut-colored hair from a Georgia policeman’s gentle dog (The Duke planned to have this among his contemporary masterpieces); a hand-carved charred cross seven feet long; three dried Florida black snakes in a filigree shadow box; a lace handkerchief, reputed to be one of the oldest in America. These assorted objects were casually arranged in The Duke’s mansion on the solid gilt edge of Central Park North and Fifth Avenue.