Night Song

by John A. Williams

  Eagle was surprised but he didn’t show it. “Crazy,” he said. In the car, again with his face turned toward movement as if he and only he might, if he looked long and hard enough, discover the secret of its existence, he knew Yards felt both sorrow for him and guilt for himself. Poor Yards. He’d been very young when he came, not so young in years, for they all, by the time they were seventeen, were on their way if they had it, but young in experience. He had made up for lost time, Eagle thought, and he was—good, goddammit. “Let’s run down to the Battery, man, and look at the water.”

  “All right,” Yards said. With a screech of wheels which made heads turn, Yards, his sunglasses in place—Eagle had noticed them with a smile for he, Eagle, wearing them first to hide his bloodshot eyes and second to keep out the glare of the spots, had turned all the cats on with sunglasses on the stand—held the wheel effortlessly and they headed west for the highway. He knew Eagle would get a kick out of the ships. Once as they hurtled down, squat between the American models which whistled along, Eagle said, “Man, this is so nice.”

  Yards grinned in answer.

  “Look at that skyline,” Eagle said.

  “It’ll kill you,” Yards answered.

  “I can’t think of any other place where I’d rather be killed,” Eagle answered. Then he said, “Fly, man. Fly!”

  Yards grinned again and said, “Cool it, baby.”

  “There it is,” Eagle said, and he pointed to the Liberté. “There’s that mother.”

  In the silence that followed they both thought of their first trip to Paris; both had travelled on the Liberté.

  “I dig Paris,” Yards said. As an afterthought he said, “So do you.”

  “No problems of any kind there,” Eagle agreed.

  Yards had been on then and they had bumped into one another one bright summer afternoon on the Champs Elysées. Both had had crowds of admirers with them, and both had been high. There was always a connection in Paris, simply because you were Eagle or Yards. Yards had been off—clean—for five years now. He had always been like a colt that couldn’t be broken, not by drugs or men. Still sort of a colt, Eagle thought. Sometimes the way Yards chopped off his phrases, not playing the notes close to the end of a bar, reminded him of a kid running into the house, leaving his scooter for one hot second to get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And the notes he chose to play often sounded like the petulance of an adolescent, and still Yards was able to delineate sharply the sadness of a time which knows what lies ahead isn’t worth the trouble. The anger he played was cold and calculating—almost obscene in its intensity.

  After a while Eagle said, “Me an’ you, Yards. We ought to make it back to Europe. Really do it up.”

  “Yeah,” Yards said.

  And the way he said it made Eagle know it was next to the most impossible thing in the world. They had once had so much—52nd Street, the Village, all the cities and towns which stretch from New York to Los Angeles, Harlem flats and lower east side railroad tenements; heroin and women, room to room so that all the sounds were audible; cars and time and adulation; the compositions worked on the spot, tried out, changed, formed, welded into fundamental bop, as the white boys called it. “Hard bop”—Yards called it, which he took and molded into a lyrical mood, fusing the intricacy of the music. All this was gone and Eagle was glad when they parked near the Battery and got out to walk to the rail.

  They had stared into the water for twenty minutes without a word when Yards said, “What you goin’ to do, baby?”

  “Them people, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eagle turned. “Look, Yards, I’m still Eagle. I make a lot of bread for everybody. He does me in and the lid comes off. You cats worry too much. Pussy ain’t never excited nobody.”

  “It must have excited this cat.”

  “He ought to be glad to get rid of the bitch for a while. It was nothing. Sayin’ nothing.”

  “But you don’t ever know when these cats are goin’ to stop goin’ along with the program.”

  “Then let rigor mortis set in. I couldn’t care less.”

  “You don’t sound right, man,” Yards said. He had given up trying to talk Eagle into doing something for himself, but the guilt stayed with him. You assumed in this business that when a man said something he meant it, and Yards’ mild efforts to make Eagle reconsider his situation were a violation of that ethic—and they both knew it. Of course, if a cat who owed you money promised to pay you next Monday, you took that with a grain of salt; or if someone was supposed to meet you in front of the Turf at noon and didn’t, you took that with a little salt also. This was different. Yards was trying to save something that didn’t want to be saved. And maybe—Yards doubted this—Eagle did know all the ins and outs and did hold all the strings. If this were the case, Yards thought, I’m gonna look pretty damned silly.

  “I’m cool, man,” Eagle said, spitting at the sea, “but I got to see me a man. Run me over.” Eagle wanted to say: For old times sake—join me. Let’s get on together—one more time. But he didn’t.

  “If you want,” Yards said, “I’ll run you.”

  They walked back to the car, Eagle fighting hard to pull himself out of the ennui which had settled over him since Onondaga Falls. “Goddamn, Yards,” he said in an effort to be cheerful, “you lookin’ more pressed than ever, baby.”

  Yards grunted. Shit, he knew he was dap, had always been. He might have been able to go along with the game, but the idea of taking Eagle to his connection stirred ugly memories. Yards could neither smile nor comment, only grunt.

  Once, Eagle recalled, Yards had had his hair straightened—he had looked like a black, little Lord Fauntleroy, but with more devil flashing from his eyes. The broads had dug him, the way they would a doll they’d like on the table near their beds. That was in another time. Now they dug him in a different way, but now the broads were of another type. After all, Yards was older now, more hip, and had more bread.

  They made the short trip in silence. Yards waited in the car and from behind his sunglasses watched the slouching Eagle enter the Barrow Street basement apartment. When he came out he would feel better. With nothing to do Eagle might really turn himself on. Really. That’s what he wants, crazy. Who am I to say he shouldn’t?

  Poor sonofabitch.

  Poor Eagle.

  Now Eagle came out, walking briskly to the car. He climbed slowly in. “Move, baby,” he growled.

  Yards looked at him once and threw the car in motion and they squealed through the Village, pulling up short before Eagle’s apartment.

  “Later,” Yards said, without moving.

  “See you,” Eagle said. He hesitated a moment. Maybe they should have slapped palms or something, but Yards was already jerking away from the curb. Eagle turned and climbed the steps to his place.

  He left his saxophone case sitting in the middle of the floor and went to the phone. His head was limber upon his neck. “Hey, Rod?”

  The voice of Rod Tolen came grating back.

  “Rod, I want to ask you just one thing—”

  After Rod had asked, somewhat cautiously, what, Eagle began to laugh. It was funny. After all these years of bitterness and anger and sometimes overt rage, it was funny that this man who had once sold secondhand suits, then made a small fortune on pegged trousers, should have been so typical of the people who’d held Eagle’s life in their hands. “What I want to ask, man, is—” Eagle paused and took a big breath with all the superfluous grimaces of a child:

  “HOW IN THE EFF ARE THE PEGS SELLIN’, YOU MOTHER!”

  Eagle slammed down the phone, rolled off the chair onto the floor, laughing until he was breathless. He went to the window on his knees, stuck his head out and laughed at the passers-by, pausing to sigh pleasurable “oooohs.” He started to the shower and fell twice, laughing each time. “Whee,” he said, snapping his finger to some beat remembered from the crowded past. He emerged from the shower, wet, and paced the floor. There was somethi
ng he meant to do, he thought between bellows of laughter, but he couldn’t think. What …? What …? Water popped down upon the floor.

  “A towel!” he shouted in triumph. “A goddamned towel!” He skidded to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, dug it into his body. “How the eff—” he started again, but couldn’t finish because he was laughing so hard. He saw a pair of pegged pants wearing glasses talking: “Eagle,” the pants said, “You’re the greatest”; and Eagle said, “Pants; how the hell do you know?”

  “You’re a gas,” the pants said.

  “And you’re a pair of mothers,” Eagle answered.

  “Eagle.”

  “You’re a pair of—”

  “Eagle.”

  “—mothers,” Eagle finished before he recognized David Hillary in the room. Eagle blinked dangerously and set himself, then he was sure the man was Hillary and rushed to hug him to his bosom, to show how he loved nearly everyone. But even as Eagle tried to embrace the man, he felt him recoil from his touch. Eagle paused, anticipating then voicing the accumulation of Hillary’s thoughts by retreating a step, holding out his black, flabby arms and twirling around on his toes, quivering the rolls of unhealthy fat on his body. “Lovely, no?”

  Hillary smiled tightly, too late masking his distaste.

  Eagle began talking in a torrent. “I called Rod Tolen”—he interrupted himself with laughter, wobbled to a dresser, got a pair of shorts that were ripped up the front and put them on—“and you know what I asked him?”

  “What?” Hillary asked, stunned by this disintegration which remained neatly interred within the form of the body.

  Eagle laughed again. “I asked him, ‘How in the eff are the pegs sellin’, you mother’!” Eagle tossed his bulk through the air onto the bed, still laughing.

  “Eagle,” Hillary said, not moving.

  Eagle got up and put on an undershirt. “Hey,” he said, suddenly recalling, “where were you!” He spun around so quickly that he almost fell. He stepped heavily toward Hillary. “Where were you? Look. Look!” He touched the scar along his temple. “I waited for you and a cop beat my ass. Where were you, man?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  “Beat my ass good.” Eagle mumbled. “I coulda had him, though. I coulda stomped him, but they’da put me under the jail then.” He turned away. “Talk, baby.” He staggered, grabbed the corner of the dresser and steadied himself. He struggled into a fresh shirt. “Talk, but don’t tell me about no—pegs.” At the last word the pitch of his voice rose until it cracked into laughter.

  “The appointment,” Hillary said, “well, it lasted longer than—”

  “I don’t even want to hear about that pigpen,” Eagle growled. His mood had run quickly to the other extreme; his head seemed bent into a wind he would weather somehow; his clumsy, tentative movements carried a threat of unlimited power. Hillary, noticing, went on. “I was late, but—”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I saw you.”

  “At the concert? Why didn’t you come ’round?”

  “No.”

  “What the hell you mean, no?”

  “I was across the street when the cop worked you over. I was late, I said, and I saw a crowd when I came along and I—”

  Eagle sat on the bed and rolled the long stockings up his heavily calved legs; the calves were twice as big as the ankles. He looked carefully at the stockings, then raised his head and looked out the window. Eagle lit a cigarette. All this before he said, “Oh.”

  Hillary stood. Eagle sat smoking. An ugly tableau in an ugly frame.

  Finally Eagle said, “Goddamn.” He said it in that child’s way, sounding like one who expects but doesn’t want disappointment. For the first time in minutes he looked directly at Hillary. “You were right across the street?”

  “Right across the street.” It came out sounding as if “so what” should have followed it, and Hillary recoiled at the flash of hatred which stabbed from the blood-shot eyes, which was then withdrawn, tucked beneath eyelids closed in simulated patience.

  “I could kill you,” Eagle said with his eyes still closed. “I could kill you.” He opened his eyes. “But why, why did I expect anything from you in the first place. I, of all people should’ve known better.” He closed his eyes again. “You think you came here to confess, don’t you?” He paused and smiled. “No, baby, you didn’t. You wanted to see, to bear true witness to what those extensions of your arm have done to ol’ Eagle. Like a ghoul, chasing death, digging it up, loving it—”

  “No—”

  “Yes! I ask no man to do anything for me except to let me live: let me live my life, without hurting anyone else: let me live and enjoy it.” Eagle opened his eyes again. “I don’t feel bad because of me—because of you, baby, because you’re a waste, another turd sliding by down the drain. You won’t even help yourself. If you’d taken one step toward me, just one, baby, think what you’d have done for yourself.”

  “Eagle—”

  “It’s all right, baby. That long arm of yours has served you well; it’s whipped ol’ Eagle to death. To death.” He reached in a drawer and absently pulled out a beret. He got up, stood before the mirror and fitted it to his head. “You get the job?”

  “Yes.”

  Eagle pulled on walking shorts, buttoned them and took the towel back to the bathroom. He passed Hillary without a word and left the flat. Hillary sped down after him, trailed him on the street, then pulled abreast as Eagle stopped in an umbrella shop. Eagle bought one to use as a cane. He stepped grandly into the street and hailed a cab. When it stopped, he acknowledged Hillary’s presence by saying, “Get in, get in.”

  Inside Hillary asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Out of this neighborhood.”

  “Where?” the driver asked.

  “Fifth Avenue,” Eagle said, “and quick.” He started to laugh again, then stopped. He seemed amazed at the weather. “It’s lovely,” he said. “Lovely weather, oh, my God, it’s lovely.” He paused. “God, these white folks are too much, but the weather’s lovely. Crazy. God, it’s nice.”

  The driver looked back with some uneasiness. He exchanged glances with Hillary.

  “Didn’t you want to help me?” Eagle asked suddenly. “Or were you really glad?”

  “I wanted to help.”

  Fiercely Eagle said, “I felt like the whole world was cheering, laughing, clapping: ‘Eagle’s gettin’ his ass beat! Eagle’s gettin’ his ass beat’!” He stomped his feet on the floor of the cab in time to his words, then stopped. There was no sound in the cab now, and it moved north into the heavy traffic and then into Fifth Avenue.

  “Gaw-awdamn,” Eagle said, and Hillary couldn’t tell whether he was burlesquing or not, “you mean to tell me all these people are outa work?” The Avenue churned with people and cars and gaudy shop windows.

  “This’ll do, this’ll do,” Eagle said, jabbing the cabby in the back. “Pay the man,” Eagle said to Hillary when the taxi lurched to a stop. He stood on the curb while Hillary paid the fare and they started toward Rockefeller Plaza, Eagle swaggering recklessly with his umbrella. He repeated, as if he couldn’t believe it, “It’s nice out. It’s nice.”

  But Hillary, trying to keep up and still stay apart, was growing angry. Why was Eagle doing this, strutting through the Plaza in his ridiculous shorts and stockings, with his knobby legs and pot-belly, making himself—and Hillary, Hillary supposed—the laughing stock of the mid-town masses? And what, Hillary continued to think with speeding horror, was he doing here, actually trying to keep up with Eagle? Penance? Expiation? Or like Eagle said, had he, sensing decay begin its reek beneath the feathers, come to see the end, to know the certainty of that end and to take some satisfaction in it? Eagle, he knew, knew that whatever the reason, Hillary would stay, had to stay. He had not once looked behind to see if Hillary was there. Now Eagle tapped an elderly lady gently on the behind with the umbrella in order to get by. “Please excuse me, madam,” he s
aid, slashing himself into a crude bow as he moved around her when she stopped to see who had touched her, and having seen, scrambled back on stiff, ancient feet. Eagle laughed in her face. He brought his great, sweating, black face flush with hers and laughed, bellowed, and beneath it there was a flood of anguish bolted up, but starting to leak.

  At the west end of the Plaza, where the flags fly, Eagle paused, trembled and aimed his umbrella like a rifle at the first flag. “Blam!” he said, then strolled to the next and took aim, then the next. “Blam!” People turned to look at him with mixed smiles, cold stares, outraged looks. The chauffeurs waiting by the limousines of the NBC executives gathered into a blue uniformed wall and nodded at Eagle as Hillary melted into the watching crowd.

  His face glistening with sweat, his body twirling like an out-of-balance top, Eagle shouted, “Eff you all! Eff you all!” He banged the umbrella against the flag poles and tugged at his walking shorts. “Here, here!” he said. “The Eagle flies high.” Then, laughing, he plunged into the crowd, which knifed apart of its own accord at his lunging approach.

  Hillary stood alone for some moments, feeling an uneasy relief. Then he boarded a bus and headed back downtown again.

  CHAPTER 15

  The man moved as though he wanted not to, Keel observed, as Hillary entered the shop. Della, incited to desert her job for the afternoon by Keel, who had drawn her attention to the beautiful day and had declared that people should not work on days like this, looked quickly at Hillary, then at Keel. The beauty of the day vanished.