So they lay there, both of them, in the smutty darkness, each dreaming and wishing the other would make a move. Billy, of course, was afraid that Jack would break his neck if he got funny.
One morning on the big yard, Jack was watching a game of dominoes between two of the best players in the prison, and a man standing next to him, whom he knew only slightly, said, “That Billy’s awfully sweet, isn’t he?”
“I guess so,” Jack said. He was getting resigned to this kind of talk, even though it sent a pang of guilt through him.
“You guess so?” the man grinned. “Who would know better than you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, motherfucker?” Jack snarled.
“Shut up, you guys,” said one of the players.
That night Jack said to Billy, “What’s all this shit about you and me?”
“You and me what?” Billy asked.
“You know goddam well what. Everybody in the joint thinks you and me’re shacked up.”
“Well, we ain’t,” Billy snapped. “So why bug me about it?”
“Because I think you probably started it yourself, that’s why, you little shit.”
Billy looked disgusted and climbed up on his bunk with a book. Jack was ashamed of himself, but he would not apologize. “Piss on the little bitch,” he thought.
A few nights later Jack heard strange noises from the upper bunk. He knew what was going on. Still, out of spite, he whispered, “What’s goin on?”
The noises stopped. After a moment, Billy’s furious whisper: “I’m jackin off! What the fuck did you think I was doin?”
Jack giggled. “I thought you had somebody up there with you.”
There were moments of silence.
Jack whispered, “Well, go ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”
“She-it,” Billy said. “I done lost mah train of thought.”
Gutty little bastard, Jack thought. He went into a deep and pleasant sleep.
But if homosexuality was absurd, what about no sex, or masturbation, or normal sex itself? Wasn’t it all equally absurd, futile, and comical? Think of the things people do to each other, and for each other, just to get rid of an itch! Think of how it must look to an observer! Think of a creature so constructed that in order to survive, eat, sleep, procreate, get the snot out of its nose, it had to be triggered by pleasure instead of rationality; think of an animal that wouldn’t have sense enough to evacuate its bowels if it weren’t fun, and who, blinded by that very pleasure, actually pursued it as if the pleasure was the goal! Think of the lengths this creature would go, to make sure his itch was stroked by one particular person, of one particular size and shape, when in truth any other person would accomplish the same end! What a joke! Imagine a man horribly afflicted with psoriasis, great itching scabs covering his entire body, who got it into his head that no one but a certain girl’s fingers could relieve him; think of this man in all his agony dressing in an itchy woolen suit, his whole body trembling, screaming out, while he stands before a mirror combing his hair, scenting himself, then rushing across the city to the home of this girl, waiting on her, babbling to her about home and future and love and flowers and sweetness, while beneath his suit his body cries out in anguish to be scratched; think of him, seated on the couch beside her (she all modestly pulled away into the corner, and he knowing deep in his heart that she, too, itched and must be scratched or die) and secretly rubbing himself against the couch for some partial relief, until the great moment comes and they strip themselves and expose their scabby reddened bodies and begin, modestly, delicately, to scratch each other while the pleasure of it all swells up into their minds and blots out all thought; until, finally, and naturally, they lie back exhausted, knowing that soon, very soon, they are going to start itching again...just think of it!
It struck him with horrible force. His parents, whoever they were, had probably made love out of just such an itch. For fun, for this momentary satisfaction, they had conceived him, and because he was obviously inconvenient, dumped him in the orphanage; because he, the life they had created while they were being careless and thoughtless, was not part of the fun of it all; he was just a harmful side effect of the scratching of the itch; he was the snot in the handkerchief after the nose had been blown, just something disgusting to be gotten rid of in secret and forgotten. Cold rage filled him, rage at his unknown parents, rage at the life he had been given, and for such trivial, stupid reasons! For one wild second of ejaculation! For that, he had been born. This same thing that was keeping him awake nights, and inexorably turning him into a prancing faggot, was the cause of his existence. Fifteen or twenty minutes on a forgotten bed between two probable strangers had given him twenty-four years of misery, pain, and suffering, and promised, unless he were to die soon, to go on giving him misery for another forty or fifty years, locked up in one small room or another without hope of freedom, love, life, truth, or understanding. A penis squirts, and I am doomed to a life of death. It has got to be insanity; there has got to be a God, because only an insane God could have created such a universe.
There was no reason at all why Jack should not do exactly as he pleased. He and Billy became lovers. It was an arrangement, coldly conceived for sexual satisfaction, without even words that first time, but limited by coldly precise and rational language from there on out. The terms were that they would use each other’s bodies for that ornate form of masturbation called Making Love, but there was to be no question of emotional involvement, or prying into one another’s soul. This, they decided coldly, would keep them from going crazy or queer.
Fifteen
Things had been going much too well at the bowling alley, perhaps that was what was the matter. Billy’s shoeshine stand was right next to the check-out counter and only a few feet from either the all-night lunch counter or the pool tables, and he had a team of four boys who did the actual shining of shoes (although Billy would take over for special customers, big spenders, etc.) and there didn’t seem to be anybody in Seattle who could beat him at his own games of one-pocket, nine-ball, or straight pool. He was making money, very good money, not only from his stand but an actual salary from the management: Billy was in charge of maintenance, and he had discovered in himself a talent for managing things, for halting arguments, for overseeing the hundred details of a 24-hour establishment without undue strain on himself.
Perhaps Billy’s status as resident pool artist was as important to the management as anything else. Billy drew people to the bowling alley, especially from 2 A.M. to dawn, when nothing much else was open, and the poolhall habitués from all over Seattle would gather, sitting in the double row of theater seats overlooking the pool section. These men, especially the better players, respected Billy for his talent, and among them there was an inner circle, including and revolving around Billy, of men who had been out on the road and played in the big poolhalls of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and who could talk about the great players and the great games; who had adventures of their own to tell the younger men, the boys, who had never been on the road. And of course they all played, especially the kids, and the usual winner of the games they played—two-bit nine-ball, dollar snooker, an occasional five-dollar game—was the house, and so the house did not mind if they came around when they were broke, because the house knew that when they did have some money they would bring it and spend it.
Especially the kids, who were getting their taste of night life savored with illegality and the dirty game of pool; it often pleased their sense of daring to mingle with a Negro, even a pale one like Billy, buy him cups of coffee and listen to his advice on how to hold a cue, make a good game, assess a mark, learn the language. And these kids came in handy for Billy, too, as the source of his maintenance manpower. They would show up broke, with not even enough money for coffee or cigarettes, and Billy could hire them for the one night to sweep down alleys, empty ashtrays, sort pins, or even sweep out under the pool tables, the work being no disgrace because Billy w
as their boss. They worshiped him, these kids, and he knew they did, and basked in it.
It was not just his talent that drew them. Billy was one of the few, one of the very few, poolshooters with money. Another was old Larkin, a short gray man who wore dark blue suits, wine-colored shirts, and a gray hat. He was a snooker expert, retired from the postal service after forty years of traveling around the country on trains, but old Larkin carried only three or four hundred dollars on him and he was getting old and cranky. Billy always had at least a thousand dollars buttoned up in his left shirt pocket. Just knowing it was there made him special in the eyes of the kids; they were just at that point in life when money begins to show its importance, and a thousand dollars was a lot of money.
It was his caseroll, and he had had it for so long now, since the wild days on the road, that he sometimes dreamed about losing it and would wake up chilled with the remembrance of the emptiness of being broke and alone; sometimes it got awful, and cursing himself he would have to get out of bed and go to the chair, feel in his pocket to see that it was still there, and then even carry his shirt into the kitchen, turn on the light, and, still cursing his fears, take the money out and count it. Then he would go back to bed, and his wife might stir and ask him sleepily, “Where have you been?”
“Checkin the kids,” he might say. Often he would do just that, go quietly into their room and tuck them in, feeling that incredible tenderness allotted only to parents, and then return to his bed and his bad thoughts. But most of the time he was not at home nights, slept days, and the children were merely loud noises in the other part of the house. But his son and daughter had much to do with his increasing worry over his caseroll; for so long the roll had been his edge, his margin, the means of his escape at any time from whatever world he in-habited, and lately it had become more than this and yet less, as he thought about the children and what they were, and who they were.
Years before he had said and meant, “Fuck the niggers”—he had seen too many of his friends swallowed up in bitterness, and he wanted to escape, not drown. But now there was no escape and he was in the awful position of seeing his children grow toward that moment when they would know, would be shown, told, that they were niggers and not human beings.
Because no matter how Billy twisted and dodged his way through life he could not get away from the central fact of his existence; whether he liked it or not, he was black, and there was nothing he could do about it, no action he could take without first thinking about it. It was just there. He could not love it or fight it or be proud of it, it was just there. He could not even hate it any more.
His children were beautiful; how could anybody be so cruel? They were so affectionate and full of joy, so eager and innocent; why did somebody have to come along and with one stiff, ugly word, cut the innocence out of them? From the moment they understood that word they would proceed through life half-murdered of their ability to love; the moment their eyes became wary they would cease to be children, and Billy was certain that he himself would not love them so much. It might have been better, he thought with bitterness, if they had not been born at all; and then he saw them in his mind and knew that he could not stand their nonexistence; life without them would be life without life. And some day, a white kid, innocent himself, would tell them who they were, and there would be no path for Billy’s rage, no one for him to murder, only the emptiness of despair and frustration as he saw the hurt eyes of his children.
Sometimes he saw it that way, but other times he would try to remember his own reaction. It was a hurt, yes, but children get over hurts. It was not as if they were alone with it. And for that matter, they probably would not hear it from a white kid at all, but from their own playmates. As he must have. They are alive, he thought; they have to put up with misery, like every living human. That’s the only way you ever learn anything. So it might have just been self-pity, like when you lie there and torment yourself by seeing them killed by a car or turning out idiots. Self-pity and the night-dread of losing his money.
Because the roll was the secret—with it he could cushion his children’s pain. Not prevent it; that was impossible; but take away some of the hardest edges. Money could make the difference; he had always believed it. He hadn’t really known what money was for until he had children. It is for them. Good skirts and sweaters for the girl, a fine mitt and shoes for the boy. College; it had failed for Billy but it would not fail for them, because he had gone to college to find something and they would go to get something; the personal right to jobs where you dressed nicely and met nice people who would have you over for cocktails before dinner on the patio. What difference did it make if all your friends were colored, as long as you did not have to live through the black agonies of poverty or the humiliations of government aid? The roll could do that. It was not his to play with. It belonged in the bank. Yet it was only a thousand dollars. It was pitiful. It was nothing. A little frantically, Billy felt the need for hundreds of thousands of dollars; he felt trapped and cornered without thick wads of money to save him, save his children.
And again, he would think about leaving them. Maybe that was the best way, after all. Teach his children the first hard lesson himself. “You can’t trust nobody.” And flee from all that burden, his children already tempered against injustice. Billy often thought of leaving his wife. He loved her, yes, but that was not enough. Maybe love is enough for a woman, he would think, but it’s not enough for a man. A man has got to have his life. He and his wife were constantly picking at each other. She knew, and of course he knew, that he did not have to spend all those long hours at the bowling alley. He was a man of some importance (isn’t that a joke? he thought) and he had assistants who could run things. She wanted some family life, some evenings out among friends, and Billy did not have a single real friend in the Negro community. She, of course, had dropped all her friends from college when she married Billy. She had to make do with the neighbors, and they were a poor lot. None but she among the women had been to college, and all they ever found to talk about was children, clothes, food, prices, television. When she was not busy with the children she was horribly bored, and she would not watch television, even though they had a set. The neighbors thought she was too sensitive about television, but to her it was just the white man’s world shoved rudely into her living room, and she would not have it. She let Billy know several times how dull things were.
That was a woman’s place, he would think angrily, to stay home and keep house and mind the children. If that bored her, tough shit. Nobody said life had to be one thrill after another. But inside himself he knew what a stupid lie that was; he knew he stayed away from home because he could not stand the boredom either, and secretly he sympathized with her—only he could not see how both of them being bored would help matters. It was a bind. He often dreamed of running away, and several times he did go out on the road, but he always knew he would be back.
So what was his life? Look out there at all the ten million things life can be, and tell yourself which are yours, and which you will never do. And there was the agony of it; so much he wanted to do, and so little he could do. Why wasn’t he content to be what he was? After all, look at it rationally. He was one in ten thousand already. He was a man of importance. He could earn enough money right where he was to support his family properly, and all that other dream-nonsense was wrong. He did not need hundreds of thousands of dollars for his children, he didn’t even need them for himself. He had a good life. He was one of the rare ones who actually loved his family, and one of the pitiful handful of Seattle Negroes who could earn a good living. He knew he had quit the road life for college because he had seen this possibility; he knew he could not have stood the life on the road much longer; the loneliness alone was murdering him; and he knew he quit college and got married not for any abstract reasons but because he had fallen in love and wanted with desperate urgency to begin his family. All this was true. What was the matter? Talent?
So he was a
talented poolshooter. There were better in the world. He would never be champion, and so what? What was being champion poolshooter? That was no great thing to be. Certainly he got his few rare moments of joy, his first and his fullest, out of the game; but so what? He was a man now, with the responsibilities he wanted and needed. He did not feel whole without them. But, of course, he did not feel whole anyway. He felt that he needed to be challenged. It had been a long time since he had felt his heart in his mouth. He knew what he was: out of the running. He missed it terribly. He missed victory, and he even missed defeat. He had everything he had ever dreamed of, and it was not enough.
So he got himself a mistress. What else, he thought ironically. Isn’t that what the fellow does? He dreams of greater things, so he gets himself a girl friend and comes on with her about how Tom he is; he takes all that damned anxiety and focuses it in one place; he bunches it. Cool; now when I feel shitty, I can blame it on her.
Billy’s wife, like himself, was pale and semitic, with thin lips, small breasts, and slender limbs. Neither of them had more than an eighth of Negro blood. This was satisfactory, and Billy always thought if he ever fooled around on the side it would be with a woman even paler than his wife, perhaps a white girl. Just a fling, a fillip, getting some strange just for the sake of strange. But that is not how it happened. Actually he fell into a panic of love for the blackest girl he had ever seen in his life.
Hard Rain Falling Page 20
