Keel rose and smiled. “Prof, how the hell are you? You get the job? See Eagle?”
Hillary came on, lumbering awkwardly between tables. He stopped before them, his body swaying slightly. “I was just leaving,” he said.
“You got the job, then?”
“Yes.”
“Is anything wrong?” Keel asked. Hillary could have written or called, and if he hadn’t they would’ve known that everything had worked out for him, that he was set with other people, other things.
“Eagle?” Della asked.
“Eagle,” Hillary said. “Well, I was late for the appointment—”
“Sit down,” Keel said. Hillary wasn’t drunk; what was wrong?
“I just left Eagle,” Hillary said. “He’s back.”
Keel sat down cautiously, then said briskly, as though tired of a game, “What’s wrong, man?”
Beside him Della leaned forward. “What’s happened to Eagle?”
Keel looked wonderingly at her: Was that it, Eagle?
Hillary, looking at her before he answered her question, saw that there was nothing in her eyes for him. He told himself that her eyes lied.
“Why don’t you say something?” Keel said. It was bad enough that his presence disturbed the day, but his attitude completely shattered it. Della sensed that Hillary was close to telling Keel what he already knew. She thought: Don’t! Not now! For a truth accepted well enough the first time became ugly the second time around. Then she felt Keel’s hand gripping hers, and startled, she allowed hers to lie limply, giving itself up to his firmness. He seemed to be answering her skittering doubts, and she tightened her fingers about his.
Hillary watched the long brown fingers curl possessively between the white ones with their gentle swirl of soft red nails.
“You’re not drunk,” Keel said.
“You don’t know how drunk I am,” Hillary said. He looked beyond them, and, swaying, he talked of Eagle and the cop. He spoke slowly, dropping his eyes to theirs, lowering them to the floor, then sweeping them up again. Once Della’s eyes closed, not in horror, but in a great wave of disgust. Hillary, fascinated, paused to watch her. A slow flush came to Della’s face, and when she opened her eyes they burned into his.
Keel’s form crossed her vision. He moved deliberately, pausing a moment before Hillary to draw himself up to his full height, and then, like a father disgusted with a half-grown child, slapped him with the palm and then the back of his hand. The blows drew red to Hillary’s face. He wanted to touch both hands to his jaw, hold his head in his hands, but he stood and let a little smile come to his face. He said to Della, just as she was rising, “I guess you’re next.”
Della swung. Hillary was surprised at the power of the blow and flinched as the next one landed, but held steady for the next and the next. The next, Keel stopped. “Don’t,” he said, and they both turned from him. “He did what he had to do, Della;” he said to her, as if Hillary were not present. He turned and looked at Hillary and repeated it. “He did what he had to do.”
Why don’t I sit down? Hillary asked himself. His face burned. He watched them sit down again, before him, like judges.
“A guy like you has to spend his life dying,” Keel said. Studying him, Keel thought: This is an example of a good white person, the kind who do nothing when it counts for everyone. “You owed Eagle nothing, I guess. Even if he did give you money, his bed, his food, and yes, love. Eagle has love. You could never understand: you still look in the sky—yes, you do—for God, when God is people, has always been people and that’s where Eagle looks; where else would a man with sense look?”
Della got up and went to the kitchen; there was something so illogically truthful in Eagle’s devastated life and his peering for God.
“All I did,” Hillary mumbled, “was nothing.”
“In this world you can’t do nothing, because it’s all not much, and you have to do something, anything positive to make it something. It can do nothing of its own logical accord.”
After a while Hillary said, “Eagle’s flying.”
“You told him?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot him? He’s like anyone else; he likes to know he’s loved. What you told him was that you hated him—”
“No!”
“Forget it.”
Hillary said, dazedly, “He was wearing shorts.”
Della, bringing coffee, said, “Walking shorts?”
“And a beret and an umbrella. He’s in a bad way. Laughing and talking to himself.”
“Why didn’t you stay with him?” Della asked. “Ashamed?”
Hillary, taking the coffee Della handed him, stared across at her. Yes, he could see her with him, on Fifth Avenue, supporting that black, putrefying blob of a man, ignoring his insane laughter and his antics—Hillary almost dropped the coffee.
Keel frowned and voiced his thought. “He’s in a little trouble. He ought to try and stay close.”
“Last night,” Hillary mumbled, somehow unable to raise his voice to its normal pitch, “I noticed a car outside. A guy in it.”
“You ought to try to find him,” Della said.
Keel asked Hillary: “Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
“He could be anywhere,” Della said.
Hillary noticed for the first time that records were not being played. “It’s odd,” he said, “without the music.”
Neither Keel nor Della answered.
“I’d better go,” Hillary said. “But where?” he mumbled to himself. Neither person looked at him.
“Out of here,” Keel said, not harshly, but softly, wearily. “Things could’ve been better.” He rapped the table. “But you learned nothing here!”
“And there were things to learn.” Hillary said.
“Yes, there were things to be learned.”
“But for all that,” Della said impatiently, “you feel better now, don’t you?”
“Hush, Del. Let him be.”
“Keel,” she said, “why do you keep trying to be kind to him?”
Keel rose. “I’m going to the bus with Prof, then see if I can find Eagle. Please stay and keep the shop.”
As Hillary and Keel started out, Della said suddenly: “Hillary, I wanted you to make it—”
They stopped. Keel looked obliquely at Hillary, listening for his answer. “I guess I couldn’t.” He gestured toward Keel. “A man like Keel doesn’t have the choice. He can’t be a coward; he’s got to make it.”
“Let’s go,” Keel said.
“Good-bye,” Della said.
Hillary paused on the walk and looked up and down the street. “Ahhh,” he said, ignoring Keel’s inquiring glance.
“I’m glad you’re going,” Keel said.
“And I’m glad.”
They walked slowly to the bus stop and waited.
“It’s funny standing here,” Keel said. “Waiting as usual, always waiting for something to come or be over, good or bad, but waiting. Maybe waiting for someone like you to come, who’d leave us and go out into the classrooms like St. John, yet knowing on the face of it that that’s impossible, because St. John wouldn’t have been able to make it here either, but hoping, waiting just the same, sitting on a cushion of bullshit.”
The bus came and they got on.
“But I’m not a coward really,” Hillary said half-aloud, half-introspectively.
“We all are, but some are less cowardly than others.”
“Why are you going with me?”
“Only to prove that I’m a bigger man than you. I met you with hate and I was about to let you go with it. I didn’t want that.”
“Thanks.”
“Kiss my ass,” Keel said without rancor.
Hillary didn’t look at him for several moments. The bus jumbled along, wind blowing cool air in through the open windows. When Hillary spoke, he asked, “Will you be happy—you and Della?”
Keel inspected him. “I’m n
ot accepting confessions any longer today. Yes. Yes, we’ll be happy.”
“I’ve nothing more to confess,” Hillary said. He did not flinch when he met Keel’s cold gaze.
“My old man used to say,” Keel said, “that the essence of being alive is to declare yourself—show how far you’ve moved from the animal—in public. Lay yourself on the line. We had the old Methodist Communion: Nabisco wafers, or matzoth, and Welch’s grape juice. You didn’t have to tell anyone anything. I guess it couldn’t have worked for you; you’d have to spill your guts to another human. The thing about the Communion though was that when you got off your can and walked down the center aisle all alone, with every good sister and brother watching you, you made your declaration and kept it; you didn’t transfer it to someone else.” Keel smiled a little.
“And that’s funny.” He chuckled. “How could we be unworthy of your love and yet worthy of your confession? It’s not only that you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where we are. Are you at the top looking down or at the bottom looking up? Has someone been playing with mirrors? Who? Or what? Most important, why?”
Hillary said hopefully, ignoring in part what Keel had said, “I can do a lot in front of a class.”
At this Keel laughed so heartily that the passengers in the bus turned. “You?” he said. “You?”
“Yes, me!” Hillary said, angrily.
Bitterly Keel said, “What can you teach? You must know to teach.”
“I know my subject,” Hillary snapped.
“Yes, of course. I forgot.” Keel turned away.
Tentatively Hillary said, “You’ll stay in New York?”
“We’ll stay.”
“But wouldn’t it—”
“We’ll stay.”
At the station, after Hillary got his ticket, Keel said, “I’ll bet Della’s writing you an apology right now.”
Hillary didn’t know if he should believe him, he didn’t answer. The tired voice of the female dispatcher announced the departure of Hillary’s bus. Keel held out his hand, looked at it and pushed it in Hillary’s direction. “Here’s my hand, Prof.”
“No.”
“To hell with you.” Keel spun quickly and started out at a lope. Hillary ran after him. “I meant: no, I didn’t want to leave; I want to help you find Eagle.”
Soberly Keel said, “When you finally leave all you’ll have to remember is running around looking for Eagle.” He paused. “I think.”
Hillary wanted to say: No, I’ll have other people too. But he didn’t because Keel was already off and Hillary had to hasten after him. Why is it, Hillary thought, when these fellows go off on their searches, I always bring up the rear? If I had anything to search for, would they go with me, follow me at least?
“No, baby,” the barmaid said languidly, looking at Hillary, “I ain’t seen him, but if you do—tell him Clarice got somethin’ for him.” Her teeth were big when she smiled. She snapped her finger. “Tell him now.”
“Tell ’im yourself,” Keel muttered, taking Hillary’s arm and guiding him outside the uptown bar. They hadn’t bothered to look downtown; when Eagle had his habit on he didn’t make the Bowery scene. That was only for drinking.
Minton’s was next and there Yards rose from his table in a corner and came over. While they waited, the leader of a group that was rehearsing said to his tenorman, “You don’t need all them damned notes.” There was a dry tapping of a foot and the group went into its number.
“You gotta be lookin’ for Eagle,” Yards said when they came up.
Keel noted that for once there seemed to be a semblance of anxiety in the trumpeter’s face. “Seen him?”
“Not since this morning.”
“Talk to him?”
“Yeah, but you know how that mother is,” he finished softly. He looked at Hillary and said as an afterthought, “How y’ makin’ it?”
“We better keep movin’,” Keel said. “You gonna be around?”
“I’ll be here if you need help,” Yards said.
“Later,” Keel said, going out with Hillary beside him. Just outside they brushed past Background and Kilroy who were staggering in from the direction of Seventh Avenue. “Saaaaay, man.…” Kilroy started, but Hillary and Keel were gone, out into the street, waving down a cab.
They rode in silence down the dusk gathering in Seventh Avenue and into the park where they took the turns on squealing wheels. The park was green now with late spring, and the last shouts of the late-inning softball games drifted across the road. Occasionally they caught sight of a bicyclist pedaling majestically along the bike path. They eased out of the park just past Fifth Avenue and stopped before Candy’s apartment.
“Not again,” Hillary said.
Keel grunted. “Wait for us,” he told the cabby.
A flicker of recognition leaped in the elevator operator’s eyes, but he turned quietly and stared at the call system, waiting until they were in. He closed the door and started up. Without asking which floor, he stopped at Candy’s and suffered Keel’s look when they got off.
Hillary pressed the bell to Candy’s apartment. “It’s quiet,” he told Keel.
“Ring again.” Keel’s forehead was knotted with worry. “Where in the hell is he?” he mumbled. Impatiently he knocked on the door. “Candy? Candy? It’s Keel and Prof.” He placed an ear to the door. “Let’s go,” he said, finally. “She’s not there. He might be floating in the river by now.”
“He’s probably all right,” Hillary said to try to reassure him.
“Want to bet?”
Hillary thought. “No bet.”
Keel nodded his head grimly. “Well, we’ll find his ass if it takes all night.”
Hillary touched his shoulder as they went into the elevator. “Maybe I should take that bet after all,” he said. Keel seemed agitated and Hillary wanted to rekindle confidence in him.
Staring at the floor of the car, Keel said, “I’m covering all bets. Put your money down.”
CHAPTER 16
Eagle sat astride midnight in the small New Jersey club. The dull red and green lights beckoned to him; the shadows of the combo loomed large against the wall behind. The music was soothing. In his mind Eagle fashioned a solo, and he hummed and patted his huge foot to the beat.
“Please, baby,” Candy said. She kept starting, looking behind her. “Don’t cause any commotion.”
Eagle continued. Then he said: “I want to blow, blow, blow.”
“No.”
“I gotta. Y’ dig, I got to.”
Her pale face moved before him; above it the white hair shimmered. The small red lips moved and an hour later the voice, it seemed, came to him. “No.”
Eagle sensed that he was moving. A slim white hand wrapped itself tightly around his black wrist. Bewildered, he stared down at it and then at the perfectly shaped white face with its sharp eyes, the too sharp cheekbones, the too perfect teeth. “Sit down,” the voice came again.
Eagle fell back into the chair. “But my soul,” he said, “my soul feels so funky. Dig, dig, those kids, up there, feelin’ around in the goddamn dark, playin’ shit they feel, shit that moves—listen to ’em.”
The snap of Eagle’s fingers sounded softly in the corner where they were, and his shoulders moved as if he had to concentrate all his mind and muscle on snapping to the music. A waiter floated up in a white jacket, softly set drinks on the table and drifted away. “Listen!” Eagle said, “Did you hear that!” The pianist had hit a chord Candy had thought bad.
“Yes, I heard it.”
Eagle leaned across the table and took the face in one great hand. “Do you know I hate your effin’ guts?”
The face smiled unafraid from between the fingers of his hand. “You don’t mean that. What would you say if I said I hated yours?”
“I dig that,” Eagle said. “Hate. Goddamn. Let’s make the bed scene again.”
“Not right now. Later if you want, but not now, Eagle.” She smiled again and her lips
tilted downward and kissed his hand. The vision’ of him, almost unseen in the dark, moving toward her, clutching, as he almost always did first, her breast in his great, ungentle hands, chased the smile. Sadness and anxiety came to her face.
“And you can call me ‘Animal,’” he said.
She hadn’t meant it, not consciously, and it had been four years ago; couldn’t he ever forget or forgive? Besides he’d almost killed her when she said it; he’d pounded her body like it was a wet sawdust bag—and then made love to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and somehow she felt it had just happened all over again and she was saying “I’m sorry” for the very first time.
Eagle laughed. “Know somethin’? I haven’t been off all day. I feel like I’m passin’ Venus the third time around.”
She saw sadness strike his face quickly as though it were pain, and she wracked her mind to say something. The second was past, and he said, “You do it good, y’know?”
Her eyes were wet and she knew it. She was glad for the darkness. She pulled slowly away from him so that he would not see the tears. “For you,” she said, “I do it good.”
“You like it?”
“With you I like it, Richie.”
“Don’t put me on, baby. You’d like it with any spook.”
Then why, Candy thought, am I crying like this?
“Let’s go,” he said.
“No!” She realized she’d said it too quickly. “I have to make a phone call,” she explained. She rose and went to call Keel again. She tried his place and Della’s. There was no answer. She stepped outside the booth, heard the shouting and rushed over where Eagle was cursing the waiters. They wouldn’t be able to hide out here until she got in touch with Keel now, Candy thought as she advanced to calm him down.
Eagle weaved on his feet. The waiters backed into the shadows as Candy drew up. “I’m ready, baby. Gonna love you up good. Very good. Every whicha way.” He paused to giggle and buttonholed a waiter who had not moved far enough away. “You hear that, baby? Every whicha way.” Candy walked ahead to the door.
“Yessir,” the waiter said, backing off.
“Let’s go home,” Eagle said, clutching Candy by her waist and lifting her.
Night Song Page 16
