'Membering
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… and a Negro was yesterday found frozen to death in a path that enters the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Police, investigating the death, said they do not know why the man was walking in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. They have no knowledge as to any relative of the dead man who was buried there. Police informed this newspaper that because of the Christmas holidays, at this busy time in December, authorities might not know the cause of death, until after an autopsy on Boxing Day. No relatives have been discovered as at press time …
But, in its unrevealing, life is more simple than that. Life has no miracles. No complexities. “The man get-lost. The type o’ man the man was, is the type o’ man who won’t know how to get outta Rosedale, particular on a night with snow covering the ground and making everything more whiter than it already is! He bound to get-lost. That type o’ man don’t live there, don’t work there, don’t have friends up in there, don’t know no blasted body up there, and can’t, therefore, quod-a-rat, call-on ’pon nobody to extricate him from field-after-field of whiteness. He must end-up in Mount Pleasant Cemiterry.”
So, when the man saw from the distance, a subway station, and could pick out a few letters in the name on the white horizontal board on a telephone pole, and could guess at the correctness of a few other letters, he realized he was at LAWRENCE AVENUE. And he knew where he was. He was lost.
He ducked down and raised the wire over his head, and he straddled the wire for a moment, and then picked himself up from the thick snow. He was now white. When he returned to his true colour, of fear and shame, he was able to run and slide and stumble down a slight incline to the street, and put up his hand, now black from slapping against his British Navy duffel coat, and the bus driver saw him, and slowed down and slid a little, making meandering river beds with the tires, and he thought again, not for more than one second, trying to unravel the mysteries of the streets of Rosedale, why didn’t he take a taxi from his basement, to the CBC Studio Nine?
When he opened the door to Studio Nine on the side street, there was a man in the small office, the size of the section in a bank where a teller sits and checks your identity, asking you for your name which is written down on the cheque you have just given her; asking for your address which is written down on your ID; asking if you have an account here in this bank, although your passbook says you have; and asking you these questions two times, in order for her to trust you; or sometimes, standing before her, asking you no question that is verbal, but that is imagined, before you can get your cheque cashed, because a previous cheque of yours, “not so long ago,” came back “with not sufficient funds” stamped horizontal, rising from the left corner, at an angle of forty-five degrees … and I see the supervisor sitting, and I cannot tell him that that cheque that came back “not so long ago, with not sufficient funds” stamped on it, in red, was written for a delivery of oil, in the middle of January, one winter ago, and the bath towels had to be boiled in water in the saucepans; and the Lilliputian-sized bathtubs for Janice and Loretta, had to be filled with water boiled in the large enamel saucepan that rice and peas had been cooked in, earlier; and the water bottles, and bottles filled with water had now to be filled with water from the kettle that screamed steaming-mad when the water, unlike the heat in the rented house, reached boiling point. I would rub my larger hand over the soft, innocent, shivering hands and bodies of the two babies, who did not know why all of a sudden they were cold in this deathlike January; and this was always after I had walked into the basement, and had placed my hands on the pipes, which I knew were cold, when I came down the previous five minutes, expecting as a fool expects luck to save his poverty, hoping as a poor man hopes that a miracle would happen. In the thin line of another man’s footprints in the snow, that January 18th in 1958, a man I would never know, would never track down to his lair, I felt the denuding cold in my bones, and in the desperation, and in the hope that “the game is up,” that you “gonna freeze your arse off, this winter, boy! That’s for goddamn sure!” I was that man, a man from Detroit, who tracked another man down, driving over the speed limit from Detroit to find Walmer Road, to find the man who had run off before he had settled his account, with the drugs, in a darkened room on the east side of the second-floor staircase, telling him, “Ma-fucker! Mafucker! You’s mine now, ma-fucker!” And he shot him dead. And was himself tracked down through unknown drifts and rooming houses in Toronto, and became, at his death by hanging in the Don Jail, more famous than when he was in the quick. “The last man to be hanged, and hanged back-to-back with a French-Canadian, a murderer like himself, was …”
But black Americans, like this stranger from Detroit, have always helped themselves with the notoriety that made us, less interesting people, famous. He is even a clue in a crossword puzzle. “Who is the last Negro to be hanged in Canada, for murder?”
They have never posed the question from the other side: “Who is the first Negro to be hanged in Canada, for murder?”
“Clarke?” the supervisor said.
“Clarke,” I said.
“It-is-a’-hour-and-forty-five-minutes-you-late,” he said, making his sentence into a one-word conviction. “Two hours almost …”
“Almost two hours?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m gonna send you home, Clarke.”
“Yes, sir.”
On Mr. W.H. Linklater’s memo, there is the entry: “Jan. 18 — 1 hour 45 minutes late, sent home.”
I have that memo, under the subject “Lateness.” The word is underlined. And written in capital letters. It is written and signed by W.H. Linklater. It is “dated at Toronto, Ontario, February 16, 1959, WHL: odh” — referring to the initials in the name of the secretary, whose name I never did know.
Since November your punctuality has been terrible as the following record will attest:
Nov. 10
punched in at 08.16
scheduled for 08:00
17
21.55
21:50
Dec. 10
08:56
08:00
18
11:02
11:00
22
08:05
08:00
25
12:55
12:50
28
08:08
08:00
Jan. 11
23:10
23:00
18
1 hour 45 minutes late, sent home
19
punched in at 06:55
scheduled for 06:50
21
08:10
08:00
29
21:58
21:50
Feb. 1
20:55
20:50
4
10:06
10:00
This incidence of lateness is far too high and, unless I see an immediate improvement, I shall have to recommend disciplinary measures.
I had not looked carefully at this memorandum, when I received it. I must have put it into my file and ignored it. I must have misunder-stood its significance. I must have deliberately wiped it from my mind. The sweating pipes that criss-cross my environment must have dropped an inch or two from their anchoring in the ceiling, and had smashed my head, temporarily damaging my brain. I had become a Foolbert. A late one.
“Disciplinary measures” had indeed been taken. I was fired. But the next morning, I was back in the studios. Without my hammer with its two claws. In my hand, I carried a script. For a “principal role.” In a “live” television drama. Directed by a man named Jarrett. Barbara Chilcott and Julie Christie starred. I was an actor, all of a sudden. As a stagehand, I’d always wondered what you had to do to be an actor. Turned out, not very much. They saw me on the set as a stagehand and invited me to be an actor. The euphoria made me think I was the great Percy Rodriguez from Montreal; or Paul Robeson; or the Negro actor who went before him, the greatest of all black actors, Laurence D
unbar — in the role of Othello, the Moor of Venice, at the Shakespearean Festival at Stratford, Canada. Not, Canada! On the London stage. Why not?
Chapter Six
It had come to its most dramatic crossing, my life, which contained a direction, a logic which although incomprehensible to me, at the time of crisis and terror that I might not be employed again, that I might be thrown upon the pile of the newspapers’ statistics about Negroes and Negro immigrants, “who come here to live on the dole” when they are not taking jobs from “decent white Canadians.” I could trace my predicament back to Barbados, and examine two events which were my explanation for the action taken by Mr. Linklater on January 18, 1959.
The first is the play-play military seriousness on the parade ground at Walkers cadet camp, when I was stripped of my rank as sergeant-major, because of my loyalty to a friend, a greater loyalty than I could ever have had toward the regulations of the Cadet Corps. Loss of rank, and status, pseudo-military and social, was small punishment of my attitude and understanding of friendship and loyalty. And I carried no rancour, was not diminished, did not accept it, with all its panoply and assumed British seriousness, as a reversal. It did not, and could not mark me as a failure.
The second event took place in the cellar underneath the George Challenor Stand, at Kensington Cricket Oval in Barbados, where the annual Inter-School Sports Day, participated in by all the government secondary boys’ schools, is held. The year is 1951. It is the last race of the day. The half mile, or 880 yards, race. My school, Harrison College, has to win this race, to win the cup — for the third successive time. In the race with me, from Harrison, is one other boy. Michael Simmons. Michael is in the Classical Fifth Form. He will be my pace setter. The rivals, and perennially they have been our rivals, are the boys from the Lodge School, a boarding school favoured by English expatriates, local whites, local blacks who pass for whites, Venezuelans who come to learn how to speak English, and three black boys, one of whom is my main rival. Glasgow. It is very tense in the basement. And more tense in the stands. The girls from all the government secondary schools have chosen their heroes. Queen’s College girls are with Harrison College. The one “white” girls’ private school, St. Winifred’s, cannot compete in this athletic event because it is a school, privately-endowed … Sin-Winifred’s are with the Lodge School.
Into the basement, sweating through anxiety and the surrounding tension and the humidity, comes the same man who had signed the orders placed in the glass case, protected by lock and key and history, outside the door of the Classical Sixth Form, proclaiming that “A.A.C. Clarke has the rank of Lance-Corporal, (Acting).” It was signed by Captain George Hunte, a kind of unofficial sports master, in addition to being the commanding officer of the cadet corps. I would see him stand on the boundary line of the college’s main playing field, and watch the boys sweating from their sprints, and stretches, and press-ups, without the benefit of a coach.
“Clarke, we’re depending on you. You have to win this race. We can’t win the cup, otherwise. You can’t come second, neither, Clarke. You have to come first …”
He did not ask me how I felt. He did not ask me if I needed a drink of water. He did not ask me if I needed a massage. Or a handkerchief soaked in ice water, to wipe the sweat from my face …
… but I had been winning the 880, the last race of the meet, for the past three years; and everybody expected that I would win this one, a fourth time. This was also the last race I could run before leaving Harrison College. So, Captain George Hunte’s words, even though not words of encouragement, but of expectation, were understandable, never-theless; and in my own “tenseness” and nervousness before the race … before every race … they did not seem to be spiteful coming from a man whom I had grown to hate; really hate, so much so that I made every attempt not to be in the same space as him; and luckily for me, Captain Hunte was a junior master, and he was not qualified to teach Sixth Form English and Latin; so Captain Hunte went his merry way, teaching Latin and French in the first form.
“First” was driven into me, from the time my mother carried me about in her hands, because I was small and fragile for her shoulder, in the two neighbourhoods of Sin-Matthias and of Dayrells Road. “You gotta come first! Hear? Everything after first is last! There is only one first.” And it is probably my inhaling this philosophy of egocentric determination, accepting her attitude, too, that “coming first” was a declaration that I was trained not to share my laurels with anyone. I chose athletics, not without reason. In cricket, in football, in basketball, you needed the team as much as you needed your individual excellence. In athletics — except for the relay race! — you hit the tape first. And every other runner was “last.” You shared your glory with no one. You were Victor Ludorum.
“On your marks!”
The voice was a familiar one. He had started all the races I ran at Combermere, for five years, and at these Inter-School Sports meet, for three years.
I steadied myself in my “blocks.”
They were not the starting blocks athletes use today. They were holes gouged into the ground by your heel. I inhaled one of the three deep breaths I would take.
“Set!” He drew the word out, making it almost three syllables long.
In all these years, with the same starter, I had got to know his rhythm. And as I had been a cadet, with a little knowledge of rifles and guns, and the meaning of first and second pressure on a trigger, I knew when to expect the sound of the starting pistol. There would be no false start in such a long race.
Count two, my mind reminded me, after the echo of “Set!” had settled in the tall casuarina trees and the coconut trees surrounding Kensington Oval; and in the hush, and the coolness of the late afternoon, I counted off the two pauses, like heartbeats. And true enough. The pistol went, bang! Too close to my moving out of the “blocks,” to call it a false start. But it was a long race … get to the inside; get in behind the pace setter; do not get locked in, and be no farther back than third at the end of the first 220 yards. Yes!… settle into your own rhythm and pace; try not to breathe too hard; relax, relax … yes!… the end of the second 220, you should be moving up into second place; watch out for the spikes of your rivals, the boys from the Lodge School, “those bastards!” … and then, suddenly, out of the pack, in a move that had never happened before in the five years I had been running and winning the 880, a boy sprinted, as we were rounding the beginning of the last turn; and before I could readjust my pace, a second Lodge School boy slipped by. Yes! In all the years, in all the sweating victories, I always made my move at the top of the last turn, just where the 220 yards dash started. And in those previous times, I would glance over my right shoulder, we ran counter-clockwise in those days, and never once over my shoulder would I glimpse a competitor, only his breath I would hear, “blowing like a horse!” and I would know … he was exhausted; the pace was too much for him … it was the end. No! This time, one slipped past. Then a second. And my arch-rival, Glasgow, was not seen. And when, with characteristic confidence, I looked over my right shoulder, as I had done, all those five long winning years, there was Glasgow, coming at me with a new confidence and greater wind and speed, that I knew this was the end. No one had challenged me like this before in all my years as a middle-distance runner. My athletic career was sinking. The sun was below the roofs of the houses surrounding the grounds. And when it happened on this Friday afternoon at Kensington Oval, in the presence of the girls from Queen’s College, the girls from St. Michael’s Girls School, the girls from Green Lynch, from the Modern High School, from the Ursuline Convent and the girls from Sin-Winifreds; and the boys from the Lodge School, Combermere School, the Boys Foundation School, the Alleyne School and the Coleridge & Parry School, and my own Harrison College fans, the stands became noisier than when filled with spectators applauding the making of test cricket centuries by Barbadian batsmen … it all ended at that last corner, when the body is slightly leaning to accommodate turn and speed an
d endurance and pain; and guts. It all ended there. In the last 220 yards. I could not face the failure of coming second.
“Yuh can’t come in second!” Captain George Hunte had said, un-necessarily, minutes before, in the basement of the George Challenor Stand.
“Yuh have to come first, otherwise we can’t win the cup!”
I had never come second in the 880 yards, not since that first Saturday morning at Combermere, when athletes were running heats, when I joined in the last heat, the half mile, just for the fun of it, to see how long I could keep up with bigger boys, and couldn’t stop running. I liked the excitement so much that I continued running and running; and came third, and never stopped running since then; but I had been prepared, unknown to myself, for this “long-long race and you are still a lil’ boy! Jesus Christ, boy! You is a running-fool, a race horse!” I had practised my art of running, attempting to escape from my mother, at the slightest threat of a flogging. And she was a young woman, and vigorous and beautiful, and I am sure the men found her sexy and “looking sweet”; and if I was not careful, meaning if I wasn’t “a little more faster than she,” she would have crippled me with her fat rod of chastising tamarind, or with an old shoe, or a window stick, a broom handle, a slap, with her opened palm if she caught me, and then collared me.