The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  I began smoking filtered pot. There was a brief silence. Bruce, who is seven, jabbed me in the ribs. A charming clown of a little man, he neither smokes nor drinks. Surprisingly enough, the boys rarely curse and then mildly, like a tap on the shoulder.

  Fire-engine-shirted Mick was drinking canned beer. He is nine years old. “We had to leave our father,” he said, gesturing. His mannerisms, voice seem exaggerated. I believe these actions are nothing but excessive air from his vat of violence. “Man! He was stoned all the time and beat our mother.”

  Mick was interrupted by eight-year-old Ron. “That was in Jersey,” he said, and then frowning, snatched the beer from his older brother.

  Clasping her hands, Anne said, “I was born in Jersey.”

  “Shut your trap,” Bruce said. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You were born in New York. At Beth Israel.”

  “Charles,” Mick said, “Ron and me was born in New Jersey, and the rest of them were born in Beth Israel. We moved after the apartment building caught on fire. There was a deaf-and-dumb boy who was always doing things. One day he set the building on fire and we moved.”

  “Doing his thing.” Bruce laughed, twisting on the bar stool.

  “Bruce,” Ron warned. “Cool it. He couldn’t help it. No one loved him.”

  “God loved him,” Anne said.

  “Yes,” Ron agreed. “God loves everyone. I’ve got a picture of him. Do you wanna see it?”

  “It’s Jesus, stupid,” Mick said when Ron returned with a color reproduction and another can of beer.

  “Mama’s dancing,” Ron said.

  Then I heard heavy footsteps and lusty masculine voices in the hall, and we all looked at each other.

  “I hope she doesn’t get drunk,” Ron said.

  “Man! She’s already stoned,” Mick told him.

  I wanted to hear Bob Dorough sing “Baltimore Oriole” and went into the living room. I heard Bruce whisper, “I’m going over and see what’s happening. I’m gonna get some loot.”

  “Git some for me,” Mick told him.

  I could see their mother sitting at the chromed table, wearing the perennial purple-splashed muumuu gown. A pleasant, plump woman with a wardrobe of hair pieces, Nellie’s teeth look like ancient Spanish gold. A dark-haired young man was behind her chair, tonguing her left ear, his long slender hands racing up and down her bosoms as if trying to determine their length and quality. Between “No, oh no!” Nellie moaned.

  Mick eased over and peeped through the crack in the door. Anne was looking, too. Beatle-maned Ron did not get up. Pierced with cut-crystal sensitivity, he sat at the table writing his name over and over again.

  “It’s time for you to go to bed!” Mick exclaimed, slapping Anne violently. She screamed, her little arms outstretched as if to curtsy.

  “Mick,” I said. “Watch it.”

  “It’s gittin’ late, man.”

  “Do you wanna go to bed?”

  “No. I ain’t sleepy.”

  Now Anne was rolling on the floor, sobbing. Bruce soft-shoed back in. “I got it.” He grinned. I helped him count $1.37 worth of silver.

  “You have to pay for the party tomorrow,” I said.

  “What time?” he asked, unable to conceal his delight.

  “Late in the afternoon. Root beer, potato chips, and ice cream.”

  Ron looked up and smiled for the first time. He reminds me of the Mexican-Indian children I saw on the road to Boca del Rio. He is going through a bad time. The girl he likes is no longer allowed to play with him, although she sends him notes by messenger. Ron is a fine looking, healthy eight-year-old. Quiet, well-mannered, he looks like the type of boy you’d want your child to play with.

  Nellie called him. He returned with her glazed mug, singing “Georgy Girl,” and followed me into the living room.

  “Charles. Don’t give her too much whiskey. She’s drunk.”

  Ron took the Scotch to his mother, who was pushing a bereted, tall man out the door.

  “No,” Nellie said. “Get out. You hurt me. You’re dirty.”

  Ron took the mug into their apartment and wouldn’t look at his mother. Three-year-old Glen and the two-year-old twins, Mal and Bobbie, followed him to my place. Mal is always without his pants, and his brothers tease him. He shook his thumb of a penis at them. Ron wanted to get Mal a pair of pants. I told him to get some records from the bedroom. I did not want him to see his mother.

  The tall dirty man had her nailed against the wall of the hall. Hula-grinding, she had her arms around him.

  I closed the door, and Ron announced, “I want some more beer.”

  “You won’t drink my beer,” I said.

  “I’ll git it,” Mick said. “Mama lets us drink beer, and it’s Saturday night.”

  The two-year-old twins were boxing when Mick returned.

  “Man!” he said. “She’s got the lights off.”

  “Oh God,” I silently moaned to the moon. But I knew there were seven children in the room. I would have to make something of the night, regardless of what had happened or would happen.

  I lit another filter and announced, “All right. Let’s see if you remember how to type your name. Everyone will type except Mick and Ron. They’re drinking beer, and I don’t want them to spill it on the typewriter.”

  “Oh man.” Mick frowned. Ron took a long sip of beer, ran over, and put it down on the cabinet.

  Nellie called me. I went to the door and walked across the hall. The lights were still off. Nellie was naked.

  “Here’s a present,” she said, offering a newspaper-wrapped package, half the size of a bank book. “The kids no trouble?”

  “No,” I said. “And thanks.”

  “Mama’s naked.” Anne giggled.

  “Shut up,” Bruce screamed, and then all of the brothers ganged up on their sister on the blue-tiled floor.

  I pulled them apart and plotted the typing lesson. “All right. Knock it off. Anne is first. Everyone will have a chance to type. The twins will type too.”

  “Ah man,” Mick said. “They’re babies. They don’t know nothing.”

  “Charles Wright,” the young woman said, smiling. The young woman was a black reporter for a magazine. She was interviewing the writer for the magazine’s forthcoming lead story, “The Real Black Experience.”

  I had had a couple of pills and enough drinks to make me feel warm toward almost anyone I might run into between 5 P.M. and dawn. Certainly I felt very warm toward the lady reporter. We both had, in a limited sense, climbed the black progressive ladder in white America. It was a difficult time for blacks to be truly black in a black reality. It was very easy to get bedecked in an ethnic showcase. But I had been black for a very long time. Before black was beautiful. Marcelled blacks gave me the cold eye ten years ago. I had an uncoiffeured, bushy Afro. I loved blues, collard greens (“pot liquor,” as the collard juice was called), ham hocks before they became fashionable. And now I faced the young black reporter with lukewarm charm. I knew the magazine’s editor had supplied the questions. I was going to be a gentleman about the whole damned thing.

  By the time we reached the Cedar Tavern, despair said, “Good-evening, old sport. It’s me.”

  We ordered vodka martinis. The young woman had dinner. I had more drinks and was prepared for war, while she promised a truce in her Brooklyn Heights apartment. The young woman talked about her Italian holiday. Oh yes, Italian men. I ordered another round of drinks, forced charm. I was almost tempted to tell her about the postal cards of supermammary-blessed Ethiopian women, about Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. With the Pope’s blessing, they went to war with dreams of boobs. The young woman had a most respectable pair of mammaries. But I no longer wanted them or her. We had another round of drinks and left the Cedar Tavern. At Thirteenth and University I said, “Wait a minute, cunt. I have to take a piss.” I went inside the wide door opening of an antique shop and urinated.

  The black female reporter started running toward
Fourteenth Street and hailed a taxi. I watched the taxi move off. I laughed and said aloud, “Thank God.”

  I moved near Chinatown to get away from you. Then moved beyond Chinatown. The seemingly casual arrangement of fruits and vegetables in Chinese store windows intrigues me. Memory paints another Asian display: Mrs. Han’s flower stall in Seoul, Korea. A small woman, Mrs. Han was aloof. She had two sons. One was rumored to be a very important Communist in North Korea. The other son, aged ten, lived with Mrs. Han. He was a very large boy for his age, but he did not help his mother with the white mums, rose-red peonies, dwarf lemon trees. He stayed in back of the flower stall and painted watercolors. American and Allied soldiers were always pestering the boy. They wanted to take his picture, and they tried to bribe him. They wanted to take his picture and send it to the folks back home. The folks back home had never seen anything as funny as a star and cauliflower on a human face.

  AT 10 P.M. ON AUGUST 7, the moon was full and the air had turned cool. Vincent Jew and Wing Ha Sze were returning from the movies, walking down Bayard Street, next to the Chinese Garden—a semi-official, peeling, red and white plaque says in English and Chinese, “Manhattan Bridge Park.” José Ortez, his girlfriend, and another young couple were on the same side of the street. They had been to a social club and were going toward the subway, they said later.

  Returning from the liquor store with a chilled bottle of vino, I could not see them from where I was on the opposite side of the Garden, walking down Forsyth Street, about fifteen or twenty feet from the corner of Division. On the opposite corner, I saw a stocky young man standing next to the parking lot. He had shoulder-length dark hair, wore a light-colored shirt of the T-shirt style, dark trousers. A leather type of shoulder bag was strapped against his barrel chest. He fumbled with the bag and looked around as if uncertain which way to go. Then suddenly turned under the bridge, and out of my vision.

  Normally, I’m spaced out, move with the speed of a panther. But that night I was relaxed, my stride slow. Emerging from under the bridge, I started up Bayard and heard the first popping sound. Leftover firecrackers, I told myself.

  The street curves here and is not very bright. Remember: the moon did not glow like a white light. I heard voices, the sound of fast footsteps on the pavement, heard the popping sound again, saw near the curb two streaks of red-blue-yellow light, two thin slanted lines like the halves of two V’s. It was a fascinating, blinding light. On the far side of it, dark figures ran.

  The first person I saw was the stocky man, first in the middle of the street, then a few feet east of that light, running. I knew someone had been shot. I saw no one but him. Head held high, looking as if it were extremely difficult to breathe, he clutched that shoulder bag and ran, very fast for a man of his size. I did not know if he had a gun and decided to let him get a few feet in front of me before chasing him. He did not run in a straight line and headed down Market Street, which leads into East Broadway. He ran under the bridge and did not turn in the direction of Forsyth, where he had come from ten or fifteen minutes before. He continued east on Division Street. A car blocked me, and I lost him in the dark, then returned to Bayard Street.

  Wing Ha Sze lay on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the Garden. His head was on the curb. A small, slender man, he appeared to be middle-aged. Still breathing at the time, his blood streamed down Bayard and glistened in that half-bright light. Dazed young Vincent Jew clutched his right side and stood a few feet from Sze. Now and then Vincent looked around, his face in shock or pain. Then he’d look down at his friend. Vincent was wounded slightly.

  Baldwin, a man of the streets, arrived. “Don’t touch him,” he advised Vincent, “until the police get here. They’re down the street.”

  But Vincent Jew went over to his friend. The experienced Baldwin said, “Don’t touch him. He’s dead.”

  At the sound of fast footsteps, I turned and saw a policeman. He asked me to stand against the Garden wall and questioned Baldwin and Vincent. A squad car pulled up sharply, and a young policeman got out and grabbed me. “Hey! Wait a minute,” I protested. The first policeman came to my rescue (if he had suspected me, I doubt if he would have left me unhandcuffed, unguarded, about ten feet from him in the semi-darkness). Already you could hear voices and knew people were approaching.

  The first policeman asked me to get in the squad car. I obeyed and sat on his copy of Sunday’s Daily News. Other squad cars arrived. People began appearing as if God had snapped his fingers and created them by the Garden wall. All of them were peering in the car at me. I had that uncomfortable feeling which afflicts celebrated people: I was afraid the crowd would kill me. But I kept my cool, lit a cigarette, and looked out at them and saw José Ortez for the first time. Frequently the police park at Bayard and Chrystie Streets. They were there when they heard the shots. They saw Ortez running, they said, and added that although they fired six warning shots, Ortez did not stop. He was finally apprehended on Division Street.

  A café-au-lait-colored man, his dark hair was kept in place with a thin, old striped tie, and he wore a fancy knit shirt, the type which is popular with blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Italians. His trousers appeared to be less costly than the shirt. He was handcuffed and had a serene, saintly expression.

  Presently, Ortez, his girlfriend, and her friends, Baldwin, and I were driven to the Elizabeth Street Station of the Fifth Precinct—a slum of a station. A disgrace to the city and the men who work there. All of us except Ortez were ushered into a large room. Willard graffiti were printed all over the room. Willard the rat horror movie.

  Baldwin and I had a good rapport. Neither of us knew the other people. José’s petite girlfriend had an earthy sexuality, and she cried and cried and cried. The other young woman had the open face of a child. I might as well tell you: Charles Wright is a distrustful son of a bitch. But the girlfriend, the young couple gave off the aura of good blue-collar people out on a Saturday night. If they were acting, their air of innocence was the world’s greatest triangle act.

  We were asked our names and addresses. Then they brought in Ortez and took him into a back room. The girlfriend started crying again. Around 11 P.M. we went up to the fourth floor. “Willars hole,” the wall read. That was the way it was spelled.

  The five of us waited in the fingerprinting room for about twenty minutes before being escorted into another room—the large, depressing room of the detective squad. Bored, I began drinking vino. The detectives did not seem interested in my stocky young man or that he was white (later I would be asked if he were Chinese). I was asked to return to the fingerprinting room, where I drew a rough sketch of the stocky hippie, whom I believed to be an ordinary young man with the veneer of a hippie. Then I went over to the desk, read Vincent Jew’s testimony on page 36 of a small tablet. He and Wing Ha Sze were coming from the movies, walking by the bridge (they were walking on the sidewalk. The Chinese Garden was between them and the bridge). A man came between them, then started shooting. Vincent Jew ran across the street, then ran back to his friend. Wing Ha Sze was D.O.A. A bronze-colored book of matches, advertising Joe’s barbershop in Ridgewood, New York, was on the desk. That was all. Without being asked, I returned to the other room, finished my vino.

  Policemen, detectives surrounded José Ortez like desperate bees around the sweetest of summer flowers. The girlfriend was crying again. The other young woman picked blackheads from her husband’s face. His close-cropped head was in her lap, and his eyes were closed. All of us were out of cigarettes, and I went out to get some.

  On the first floor, I saw Vincent Jew and showed him my rough hippie sketch. Vincent did not remember seeing him or me. Puzzled, I left the station.

  It was a quarter of two Sunday morning when I returned with the cigarettes. Policemen, detectives were in a jubilant mood like a group of men after the victory of their team. Ortez gave me a long, grateful stare. I was angry that the police had forgotten about the hippie. He was certainly a star witness. The alleged weapon had no
fingerprints on it. The killer had supposedly had the foresight to wrap a handkerchief around it before firing, afterward it had been tossed on the sidewalk. It did not matter now. They had their man. Why should I get excited? It was only an ordinary Saturday night murder.

  A week later, things changed. The police were not so sure about their man. My irrelevant statement was suddenly valuable. Now, there were frantic phone calls. Visits by detectives, a visit to the D.A.’s office. I await a lie-detector test. All I can think of is a couple of lines from Jorge Luis Borges: “The acts of madmen,” said Farach, “exceed the previsions of the sane.”

  “These were no madmen,” Abulcasim had to explain. “They were representing a story, a merchant told me.”

  * * *

  By the time you read this, the celebrating will have cooled. The friendly neighborhood grocer will be paid, the common-law husband will have met his pusher, and the children will be stuffed with sweets. Perhaps there will be a visit to Busch’s, the famed credit jewelers, or a sharp new leather coat. The old-age pensioners and the “mentally disturbed and misfits” will pay their bar tabs and get jackrolled. However, all welfare stories are not grim. There are the old, the lame, and the helpless poor. This is their only way of life. But for others it is a new lease on living, almost as easy as breathing. Now all that remains are the twelve days of survival, the next check. I want to tell you about some of these men and women.

  Mary X. is “off.” Temporarily off. Brave, long-haired girl in midi-dress, the smart suède shoulder bag, living here and there. Starving. Almost tempted to take a job in a boutique. And why should Mary X. suffer in the richest country in the world? She had to miss Dionne Warwick at the Apollo and Soul Sister Franklin at Lincoln Center. She had been receiving her check at a friend’s pad. But the caseworker paid a routine visit. “Where’s Mary?” The friend’s old lady said, “She ain’t been here in over a month.”