“What makes you think I’ll take it now?”
Eagle stuffed the money back in his pocket. “Cool,” he said.
“I heard you was tryin’ to get off,” Brindle said.
“First I heard.”
They returned to the room. The girl was back on the couch.
“Suzy, is she on the way?”
“Yes.”
Aside Brindle said, “These broads’re a couple of graduate students. Dumb! Don’t know nothin’ but television, eatin’ and makin’ love!”
Eagle looked at the girl on the couch. She was quite handsome. Her hair was cut short and wild on her head, falling down to where her two arched brows rose slowly from above her nose. Now she touched a marijuana cigarette to her lips, her slim hand cupped around it to trap the smoke. She snuffled quietly.
“A fine, brown frame,” Eagle said, settling in a chair, suddenly tired, strangely sad. “How’s business?”
“Could always be better.” Brindle turned to pass Eagle the whisky; his guest sometimes—after he’d had his—became moral about the business.
“Shirley got titties like that?”
“Bigger,” Brindle said.
The girl on the couch hadn’t heard them.
Eagle leaned his head back on the chair, allowing himself to relax, letting the stuff run its lean journey through his body until he felt loose, there, and yet apart from Brindle and the girl. The sounds of television came in louder than the music on the speaker. The piquant odor of the girl’s cigarette filled the room. Brindle was smoking one too now, smoking carelessly, the cigarette dangling from between his full lips. Eagle held out his hand for one and Brindle gave it to him without a word. They touched cigarette tips: a match would have consumed too much too quickly. Brindle gave Eagle—Brindle now had a smooth, fluid motion, it seemed to Eagle—five cigarettes; Eagle placed them in his pocket. Once, Eagle thought: sitting here waiting for some broad. Like some spots in Europe, where the hospitality includes giving you a broad. Great! Dig that!
He wondered how old the girl on the couch was. Maybe twenty-two, twenty-three. Her friend would be about the same. Young. Firm. No wrinkles in all those secret places beneath the breasts or on them, no dry, harsh valleys carved into the buttocks.
“Get the door, baby!” Brindle said sharply. “It’s Shirley.”
The girl got, up, staggered momentarily and went out as Brindle said, “You had your last roach for tonight. Lay here on your ass and get your brains fried.”
To Eagle it seemed that the girl had stepped out of the room for but a second before she was reentering with the girl named Shirley. Eagle could only think, Goddamn! Gawwwddamn!
“Get a drink, Shirley,” Brindle said, “and take this.” He held out a cigarette. The girl hesitated.
Eagle watched wordless. She took the cigarette slowly, let Brindle light it for her. “That’s Eagle,” Brindle said.
“Hello,” Shirley said.
“Hey, baby,” Eagle said. She was a small woman, shy, young and firm, and for some reason, abashed. “Sit down,” Eagle said. Shirley sat, looking from Eagle to the television set. For a number of moments the only sounds came from the set and the record player. Finally Brindle said to the girl on the couch, “Let’s go. Turn off the set.”
“You splittin’?” Eagle asked.
“We got a little run to make. Make yourself at home. We’ll be gone for a little while.”
“Crazy.”
“Bye, Shirley,” the girl in tights said with a pout as they went out.
“S’long,” Shirley said.
When they’d gone Eagle said, “C’mere, Shirley.”
The girl put her drink on the floor, put a smile on her face and came, making a motion to sit on Eagle’s lap. “Don’t,” he said. “Sit there.” He pointed to the arm of the chair. “You work for Brindle?”
“No,” she said, quickly. “Just a friend of Edith’s.”
“Stop lyin’. You really go to college, you and that girl?”
Shirley nodded.
“I bet you didn’t have to study anatomy. Why do you hustle? Do you like it? I mean, you’re goin’ to school to try to make somethin’ of yourself, but Jesus, I guess you can give it away and learn too. Don’t seem right though. Why don’t you get a job?”
“There aren’t many jobs around that pay.”
“Why not? You got some education.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Just yes.”
“We lookin’ to people like you to help lead us an’ here you are—”
“I like it, Eagle,” she said with a queer smile. “Just like you can’t help certain things.”
“You don’t have to like a thing because you can’t help it,” Eagle said. He snorted. “All you folks’re filled with psychology, aren’t you, you new Negroes?” The room seemed to bulge with the sounds of music; everything came at Eagle, big, lunging, all-enveloping. Wearily he leaned forward and wrapped an arm around Shirley’s waist; he bent her backwards, watched her respond as one might an overturned insect. The survey lasted but a minute before he pressed his sweating, bloated face to hers. They hit the floor with a soft thud; neither of them minded the impact. Already her face had gone blank, like smooth clay about to be inscribed upon. Eagle wanted to smash her; why was there always a closing that made a circle when there should have been a way out? Something far more naked than desire propelled him to the floor where she lay not in submission but in something akin to tolerance or greed. Eagle didn’t make love; he mounted an attack.
She was a memory by noon the next day.
When it was time, he left her without a word, and pulling the soiled notation of appointment from his pocket, proceeded to the corner of Drake and Hammond; Hillary was late. Eagle planted himself stolidly on the corner, dully amazed that he was allowing Hillary so much leeway. He smoked furiously and took pleasure in his anonymity; then he cursed it. But he continued to smoke and he continued to wait.
Patrolman Howard Procopio saw Eagle planted on the corner smoking. In this section the few Negroes seen were students, definitely students, with cashmere sweaters and white buck shoes. But this one was bloated, black and Procopio was both repelled and infuriated by him. The Negro’s clothes, his loud plaid suit, flapped loosely in the light wind, like a threat. Procopio, after patting down his jacket, took the first step toward him, still wondering who he was. The officer had worked the beat in the Negro section for two years and knew most of the right underworld people by sight. This Negro was not familiar. For some reason, Procopio hesitated a moment, then, that moment past, moved to intercept the Negro who had suddenly begun walking away at a crisp pace.
Eagle had seen the cop move and dumped the cigarettes on his blind side as he passed a row of hedges. He would intercept the cop, but without fear.
“Just a minute, mac,” Procopio said, throwing one leg out to the side and rocking on it. Eagle stopped and looked, careful not to show the indignation the officer expected. But Procopio, expecting that look and not receiving it, was positive he’d done the right thing in stopping the Negro. Before the police court judge Procopio could only have said that the Negro looked suspicious.
“What’s happenin’?” Eagle asked, leaning his body forward to indicate that he was in a hurry.
“Live around here?” Procopio asked, knowing the answer, but using the words as a preface.
“No.”
“Work around here?” Some of them were cooks in the frat houses.
“No.”
Procopio paused, baffled at the Eagle’s short answers and his unabashed delivery. Ordinarily the response would’ve been, “No, But—”
Procopio frowned. “What’s your name?”
“Why?” Eagle asked, wanting to get out of it but with some remnant of dignity.
Procopio asked belligerently, “Didn’t I ask you your name? Now, what’s your name?” He had stopped rocking.
Eagle, having made his decision, sighed.
“The point is, why do you want my name?”
“What’s—”
“Richie Stokes,” Eagle said quickly—reversing his decision, he told himself, just once more, but drawing up nevertheless.
“Stokes? Stokes?”
“Yeh,” Eagle said, going back to his first decision, irrevocably going back. “What’s yours, cop?” His face split into a cold smile.
“Look, wise guy,” Procopio said, rocking on the leg again, “you been up here chasing these co-eds?”
Eagle reflected on the truth. Shirley was a co-ed. He didn’t speak; instead, he brushed by. It wasn’t the brushing that infuriated Procopio; it was the seeming unworthiness of himself that the Negro had communicated. He whipped out his nightstick in a single rolling motion. Startled—Eagle communicated this too to the officer, though he wasn’t—Eagle skipped clumsily out of the way. “Have you lost your mind?” He hoped the words would make the cop find it.
Eagle curbed his anger. He feigned fright and stood ludicrously still; this had worked before, why not now?
Procopio approached, club upraised. Eagle held his hands at his sides and mumbled, “Cop, I’m standin’ here, mindin’ my own business and you strong-arm me—”
Procopio was close to his man now, and frisked him hurriedly.
“—then you pull that stave on me,” Eagle was saying. “What have I done? I know why. You don’t have to tell me.” He said the last resignedly, and as he did, he felt the officer’s hands assume a heaviness they had not possessed a second before. Eagle said, as if it had suddenly shattered out of him, “And take your goddamn hands out of my pocket!”
Procopio felt him stiffen and darted a look at him, and saw when he did that he had stretched it too far, that he had lost it.
“I said, take your hands out of my pockets,” Eagle said, the decision having suddenly been made again.
Procopio pulled back, still looking for a sign of fear in the Negro’s eyes, but saw instead, something that the Negro saw about him. Procopio pushed him and waved the club.
Then, with a weariness he had known only hours before with Shirley, and knowing better, much better, Eagle moved—impelled by a gnawing rage, by a sad anger at Shirley, a masquerader, and by fury at this man with the sloppy uniform, one of the closers of circles. Eagle stabbed for the club, his hand a huge, black claw; his fingers closed about it and he held it motionless. Procopio, attacked by a sudden fear, yanked backwards, wresting the club loose while feeling with a small corner of his mind that the Negro had let him pull backwards. His fear increased; the officer stepped down heavily with his leading foot and smashed the club desperately through the upraised hands. Eagle moved backwards. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Procopio advanced, beguiled by the clumsy, retreating figure, and slashed home with the club; he hesitated the split second of an instant for reaction. It came. The Negro turned fully around. Procopio saw the shoulders moving slowly, ponderously. Even amusingly. Procopio started to laugh, but was unable to follow through; only his forward momentum saved him from going down with the blow the Negro landed on his face. The officer rushed again. The man avoided it, growling from his belly. Another fist crashed against his head. Procopio struck out blindly; he had to. He did not stop until he realized the man was no longer protecting himself, but taking all the blows fully, and quivering with the landing of each. Now the officer moved behind Eagle, gripped his collar tightly and moved him toward a call box. Only then did he see the small knot of students standing a few feet away. “Let’s go,” Procopio muttered, giving his prisoner an extra shove, which the prisoner accepted limply. Eagle counted their steps: one, two, three. He tested the officer’s grip, found it lasting and gave it up. They stood before the call box. It had taken five minutes.
David Hillary breathed deeply of the spring air and walked luxuriously from Doerffer’s office. From the building he could see the city lying below in a soft, purple haze; from here the city looked attractive. He paused and turned to look east, toward his home out among the drumlins. When he got settled in a couple of weeks or so, he’d run out sometime and visit. It would be all right then; a college instructor always manages to appear respectable. He’d tell his folks this first; that would take the edge off. “David’s back at the university,” he could imagine them saying with the old pride of people used to having just the right things, or doing them.
He had been hopeful, of course, of getting an appointment, but it had gone better than expected: he had been offered survey courses for both summer and fall. The appointments were good for a new beginning. Doerffer had asked about the drinking, and Hillary had been able to say that it was no longer a problem. Then Doerffer had spoken gently of Angela—what a lovely girl she’d been and how, surely, Hillary must have been very much in love with her; Doerffer was glad to see he hadn’t ruined himself with grief, i.e., drink; and on and on, Hillary wanting to sigh with relief, but not daring to until Doerffer had spoken the words, “Welcome back to the family.” Then suddenly it was all behind him as though it had never existed; he was back among the softly rolling hills, the bellow from the stadium in the fall, the Gothic edifices, the long, bisecting walks.
He began to walk again, slowly, frowning when he thought of the meeting with Eagle. He knew it was late and in a way hoped Eagle would be gone, though in another way, he wanted Eagle to be there. And what if he were there, as they’d agreed? Hillary picked up speed going down-hill. He was, he told himself, a new man, changed by the people he’d been living with. Eagle; he thought warmly, as he loped across a street. How could he have hoped he’d not wait? Hillary saw himself greeting Eagle warmly, stepping into the Crimson for perhaps just one drink to celebrate, then sauntering slowly up the street to the campus and showing Eagle around. People would recognize him, speak to him; Doerffer would be pleased with Hillary’s new-found humanitarianism.…
Hillary saw movement on the corner. Somehow he knew the bulky, dark shape was Eagle’s, but he could not allow this fact to register. He continued a few paces down the street, not allowing himself to understand the commotion even subliminally. Then he stopped, his first emotion anger, not at the cop but at Eagle. He was still there! The crowd watched, no word spoken, no movement made. Hillary saw himself racing across the street, grabbing the cop’s arm and punching him in the face—the way he had slammed the guy in the Bohemia. But this wasn’t the Bohemia, that isolation in time and space which impelled one to act basically, to take an eye for an eye, and both cheeks as well. Someone said, “The police are becoming much too brutal with our Negroes.” Hillary grimaced, staring numbly. Eagle had stopped trying to defend himself, but the club continued to come down. Hillary could not turn his sight from the thundering club; he felt guilty but somehow joyous. The officer stopped. Watching the somber adagio, Hillary found himself waiting for another blow, just one more to finish out a subtle rhythm; he itched to have the officer strike once more. Instead he shoved Eagle toward the call box. There was a sad smile on Eagle’s face. He stemmed the flow of blood on his temple with a gentle, wearied gesture, touching it with the back of his hand. Hillary saw a police car come up, siren dying. Two cops dived out and pushed Eagle into the rear seat. The officer with the club surveyed the crowd of students, then with the insolence of his station climbed into the car, shoving Eagle across the seat. Hillary saw his mouth moving, his club still waving menacingly. The car, with a shriek of wheels and a tight turn, headed downtown. David Hillary, somewhat surprised to find himself in the last row of the crowd, peering from behind other people’s heads, walked away thinking grimly that he should have done something, he should have.
By seven that evening, Hillary, tired from walking aimlessly through the drab, flat town, decided that he would go to the concert after all. The papers and radio stations had broken the news of Eagle’s arrest and the suspension of his fine: he had been charged with disorderly conduct. Eagle had not tried to explain anything, and though Walter Demetriades had fumed in court over the arrest of his star, he suspected the publ
icity would bring an overflow crowd. It had.
Hillary sat in the balcony. Around and below him the customers hummed with anticipation; some knew what they were seeking; others were merely there as if suspecting the event would be memorable enough to talk about later. Hillary felt as if he were inside a steel cubicle, looking out at the audience through slits.
A cheer went up when the curtain parted. Eagle looked all right, standing aside from the group, a smug grin on his face, a bandage on the side of his head. The cheers grew louder, like the sound which accompanies the force of wind, and Eagle’s smile grew. They cheered him not because he was Eagle, Hillary thought, but because the cops had beat him up and jailed him. They were against cops—especially when they molested the public’s jesters. Eagle’s lips moved and Hillary imagined him saying, “Hello, you stupid mothers—” Eagle laughed with his head thrown back, and said something to the young guy with the tenor, whom Hillary recognized with a start; they both laughed as the drummer and the bass headed into the introduction of the first number, to the accompaniment of soft whistles and more cheers.
CHAPTER 13
Della had been thinking it for days. It now seemed all right to say it. “You’ve felt better lately.”
Keel grinned and shrugged, or rather she was sure he had grinned. In the darkness she had felt the movement of his body as he shrugged. Sleep was eluding both of them.
“Yes,” he said.
She felt his touch. The touch made her conscious of the shape and softness of her body, as if it never really lived until he touched it. Della lay warm in this thought and then another started from far away and she strained to feel his touch; it was like listening to it, listening to old, old echoes. Softly, she turned her face toward his, her eyes closed. It was the old, familiar touch, so old that it was new, beautifully new, and she froze herself to it so that it would not vanish.
Keel swallowed and it made a harsh, wet sound in the dark. He felt himself struggling upwards, upwards, but unsure of his progress; he was tense with it and he felt his forehead grow moist, his armpits wet. And then he knew he was going to make it, that he could make it, and he swallowed, easier this time, with relief. His body sighed and he withdrew his hand, trembling; some doubt remained but he would not test it. Let it take its time.
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