The Angry Ones

by Williams, John A. ;

  “Well,” I said, as he stood up, “thanks for the time.” I started for the door.

  “Steve,” he called. I returned to his desk. He was frowning at my resumé. “I’m going to do something for you. I’m going to try to land you a job.”

  “Let me correct you, Mr. Graff.”

  He looked up; he was mildly surprised.

  “You’re going to do something for yourself if you land me a job.”

  The sudden smile again. “You’re right, I guess. Something for myself. Now, it’s going to be tough. I don’t have to tell you. And it may not always be something in your line—”

  “Mr. Graff, I have to stick to my line.” I smiled as I said it. “I wouldn’t know how to do anything else.”

  He slapped his leg and laughed until his pipe almost fell from his mouth.

  “Besides,” I said, more soberly, “I’ve got to.”

  “All right, Steve. That’s fair enough—just as long as you understand that it’s going to be tough.”

  “I understand.”

  “Your phone number’s correct?”

  “Yes. You’ll call me? I shouldn’t call you?”

  “Call whenever you please, Steve.”

  We shook hands at the door.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said. “What I said.”

  “Forget it, son.” He looked at me appraisingly, then said, “I’ve had my moments when I thought Bilbo had been doing a fine job.”

  So we understood one another. Looking at him, I saw for the first time that his eyes were blue. Then, almost inexplicably, we laughed so loud that the receptionist smiled up at us.

  “Now,” he said, “my conscience gets up off its tail. That’s why I’ve saved the cards.”

  I returned to the office feeling better than I had in weeks. It was a perfect time—as rain, slow and cruel, swept through the city—for Grace to call and say she’d be down the next day.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I pleaded ill at the office and took a couple of days off. I think Rollie was glad, because whenever I had the chance I usually gave him that I-have-something-on-you look. It seemed to bother him so I got kicks out of it.

  I met Grace at the train. She didn’t look like the mother of two Dennis-the-Menace-type boys. She came through the crowd smiling. She looked lovely, and walking out of that predominantly white crowd, she looked more attractive than ever. I took her bag and we walked north a half block on Vanderbilt. That way we were out of the crush of people waiting for cabs in the station driveway. We got one right away, before it turned into the station. We held hands in silence for a while, pausing only to look at one another and smile. Occasionally she would say something in a low voice, moving her lovely lips carefully and precisely so I would know what she was saying; she didn’t want the cabbie to hear her.

  We settled back. Traffic had gotten clogged up in the light rain.

  “Were you surprised,” she asked, “when I called?”

  “Yes. How are the kids? Who’s with them?”

  “They’re fine. They sent you these.” She opened her purse and took out some drawings that had been folded. Nothing unusual; kid stuff.

  I said, “They’re fine. I’ll have to write and thank them.”

  She laughed. “Mrs. Moody is with them. She’s very nice and they love her.” She sighed and threw herself back against the seat. “It’s good to be back in New York. I want to relax a couple of days.” She batted her lashes at me a couple of times, meaningfully. I chuckled and tweaked her on the knee.

  “How come the time off?” I asked.

  “Another strike. They’re always having them. This one started at the Syracuse plant and spread.”

  “I was coming up Christmas,” I said.

  “So come up. We’re planning on it.”

  “We?”

  “All right. I.”

  “I hope you’ll have a good time this week end.”

  She sat up. “What do you mean?”

  I patted her hand. “Nothing, baby.”

  Still looking at me, she leaned back against the seat. “Once everything is in the open, it’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

  “Now what do you mean?”

  She must have been feeling very good because she laughed again. “You’ve always been in love with me just as I’ve always been in love with you, Steve.”

  “So what?”

  “So you might have done a little better than you did.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference—you’d have walked out anyway. I have a feeling that even if I were in social work you wouldn’t be happy, Grace. Anyway, Grant had what you thought you wanted—security.”

  “I waited a long time, Steve, and you know it. I think you were glad Grant was there. At least, then, he was between you and me, and you didn’t have me nagging you for security.”

  “I wasn’t in love with you anymore,” I lied.

  “And now?”

  “Let’s talk later,” I said, indicating the cab driver. “Go through the park!” I told him.

  “Aw right awready, buddy,” he said. “I’m not in love wit’ you.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. The cabbie shook his head when we got out. Grace didn’t look at all contrite. Kittenish, rather, was the way she was, and I found I couldn’t stay angry with her.

  “I have to go to the store,” I said when we’d got upstairs. I was out of liquor. “All you have to do is cook.”

  “All right.”

  She began whipping out of and into things. I slammed the door when I went out. All the way to the liquor store I thought of the jumbled relationships. My brother’s wife; and my nephews would be my stepsons! Oh, hell.

  “Yessir,” the clerk said.

  “Incest.”

  “What?”

  I came to and told him what I wanted. He put the bottle in a bag and I returned home. Dinner was ready and I fixed drinks.

  “Are you in love with me now?” She asked it leaning over my shoulder, her hair brushing against my cheek. In her hands was a plate filled with hot food, the like of which you couldn’t buy anywhere in the city.

  “Yes, I love you.”

  When I had cleaned my plate two or three times and sat back exhausted, she said, “You’re a liar.”

  “Well, you do cook like hell. I love you for that.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Grace. I love you. I love you, I love you.” I stood up. “But then I don’t love you.”

  “Going to be a little boy with me?”

  “Whatever you say.” I stalked to the bottle. “I wonder,” I said, “if marrying you on your terms wouldn’t be as big a defeat as my allowing these people to make me quit wanting what I mean to have.”

  “A defeat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything’s a battle, isn’t it, Steve? You either win or lose.”

  “It isn’t anything else, Grace. Hadn’t you ever thought of it like that?”

  “No, I hadn’t. It seems to me that’s not quite right.”

  “Maybe. But that’s the way it is.”

  “You make it like that, Steve?”

  “No, baby, I didn’t.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because it just is.”

  She traced her long fingers across her brow. “I don’t understand. What is it you want out of life? You’ve told me before. Tell me again.”

  “A little money, Grace. Enough so I don’t have to sit around a couple of days waiting for Friday to roll around. Enough so I can go bury someone if it had to be done all of a sudden. And I’d like to have a house somewhere. I don’t think I’d live in it all the time—I’d just like to have it. Most of all, I’d like to see the end of the day come knowing I’d done something worthwhile and not merely existed for that twenty-four hours. Grace, these are little dreams, and I don’t really want much more—”

  “Suppose, Steve, your dreams don’t come true?”

&nbs
p; I looked dumbly at the pitying smile playing on the edges of her mouth. I had never thought my dreams would not come true. It would take a long time, maybe, and perhaps there would be moments when the visions would be obscured completely, but they’d come true. I looked at Grace and had to drop my eyes.

  “If they don’t come true, then I just don’t know.”

  “That’s a little like the people who write books for your company, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, dammit!”

  She turned away as though I’d hit her, and, again, silence came between us.

  “Grace,” I said earnestly, “you’ve got to have dreams. Haven’t you ever had them?”

  “I’m afraid to have them.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because,” she almost sobbed, “I want to have them, but I’m afraid to.”

  Almost, I thought, like Lois. Grace moved then; she had been sitting at the table, but now she got up and moved slowly, almost sadly about, removing dishes, placing them in the sink. She washed them and dried them and in all that time neither of us said anything. But we did look at one another and we did try to smile. When she was finished, she sat down beside me.

  “I want to say something.”

  “Say it, dear.”

  “I don’t want you to get angry.”

  “Oh.” I paused. “Well, say it anyway.” I tried to pull her to me.

  “No, don’t. Wait until I finish. All right?”

  “All right.”

  “Honey, you’ve got to realize that you are a Negro. You’ve got to live with it, settle down with it. I don’t want you to feel that you have to fight, fight, fight.” She looked at me. “Don’t you ever give up?”

  “Grace, you talk as if white folks raised you.” I moved. “You want me to give up? Give up what, for God’s sake? I’m scrambling and scuffling for the littlest things every hour of the day—the right to walk the streets, in peace, the right to claim a job I can handle, the right to live where I choose because I like it and can afford it.”

  She tried to place her hands over her ears, but I took them away and held them.

  “Ten years from now, baby, Frankie and Teddy may be out here dragging around trying to find jobs they’re qualified for but can’t get. Why? Because they’re black—and, baby, they’re not going to make any headway if I give up, if a hundred qualified niggers give up and call it quits. That’s a part of the dream too, Grace.”

  “Don’t shout,” she said.

  I didn’t know I had been.

  “Why are you so concerned with the boys?”

  “Huh?” I said, to give myself a chance to think, to come back with an answer. Grace and her probing. “They’re my nephews,” I finally said. I lay back. I was tired and spent.

  She said, “You’re angry, Steve, and afraid.”

  “I am afraid—you’re right. I wonder why it is that guys like me and Obie don’t seem to fit. Ah, hell, be Negro.” I sat up again. “Grace you’ve always known right from wrong, and to be willing to accept the rear seat offered to a Negro is as wrong as their pointing it out for you. Do you know what all this miserable fighting is about?”

  “What? I’d like to know.”

  “In a sense it’s sort of teaching them all over again the democracy they forgot or ignore.”

  “You’re impossible.” She turned, and I took her in my arms then and we didn’t talk until minutes later when she said, “You think it’s a defeat to marry me because I wouldn’t let you fight and dream?”

  “Yes. You wouldn’t fight or dream with me.”

  “You love me?” This time she didn’t ask to tease. She didn’t sound confident, cocksure.

  “For a long, long time. Maybe for always. Somehow it’s a little different.”

  “You mean not as much?”

  “No, just different.”

  “And if I wanted you to keep on fighting?”

  “But you’re not sure, baby—still, you’d be awful welcome to the team.”

  Women cry over the damnedest things. When she was over it, I touched the curves of her body, let my fingers rest lightly upon them, so that it could have been like touching the outline of a cloud. It had been a long time, she said. We kissed. Her mouth opened slowly and I pressed her down and soon I was moving beneath the arch of her arms.

  The phone woke us the next morning. I went to answer it, and Grace, still kittenish, followed me. I kept thinking how alive and healthy her brown body looked. Once Lois had asked me if she looked sickening, her color, and I had said no, but I had not told her the truth. Sometimes, when I was with her, I could understand why suntanning was so popular.

  And, damn, it was Lois on the phone.

  “Are you feeling all right?” She rushed on before I could answer. “I had to talk to you and the urge became so great this morning that I called your office. They said you were out ill.”

  My mind was whirling. I hadn’t seen or talked to Lois after that night in Yorkville. There had been times when I had wanted to call her.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You?”

  “You are ill, aren’t you?” She sounded suddenly suspicious.

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s there? Man or woman? You’re not sick.” There was surprise, and a touch of humor, in her voice.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Grace kissed me on the neck and made a loud noise—she suspected that I was talking to a woman. I mean, what can you do when they’ve got you in the middle?

  “What’s that noise?” Lois asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is a woman, isn’t it?” Her voice had become sad.

  “Well …”

  “Is it that woman from Albany?”

  After a while I said, “Yes.”

  “Will you call me tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” Slowly I placed the receiver back upon its cradle.

  Grace looked kind of foolish standing there nude with her hands on her hips. “One of your women?” she asked.

  “Kid from the office.”

  “Oh.”

  She didn’t say anymore. I suppose something in my expression told her I didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t mention the call again.

  When Grace and I went walking later, I half expected to see Lois lingering on the street somewhere, but I didn’t and I was glad.

  I enjoyed Grace’s being there more then I thought I would. She had done very well what she had come for—to tell me it was all right, whatever I wanted to do. It was all very good, but I could not help wondering if Grant’s ten thousand and her job security hadn’t made the difference.

  In the evening we shopped for the kids, then went downtown to sample coffees in the coffeehouses. On the way back uptown we stopped to visit Lint and Bobbie. We played darts with them. Grace got us out of an hour’s game with a double one shot, confessing gleefully that she hadn’t even aimed.

  Later, at home, we lay talking quietly while Frank Sinatra did a bunch of things. We kept playing “Wee Small Hours” over and over again. That Sinatra. You can feel he enjoys singing. As Grace and I talked, my thoughts of Lois grew less and less frequent, then went away altogether.

  Then it was morning. Grace was taking the Empire State out at seven-thirty. We woke, showered together and took a cab to the station. We checked her bag and got breakfast. A guy on the corner at Vanderbilt and 42nd was selling gardenias.

  “How much?” I asked.

  He looked at the bills, which I foolishly held in my hand, and said, “Two fifty.”

  Bastard, I thought, but it was too late—you let your guard down in this town and it’s your butt. So I bought the gardenia and pinned it on Grace’s coat. The vendor smiled as we walked away. Grace kept smiling down at the flower. We walked down the ramp again, into the smell of dust and oil and people. We followed the redcap to her seat. Grace kissed me good-bye and said, “Go on fighting, but please do som
ething about me.”

  “Grant’s money made the difference, didn’t it?”

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Like a kid, I had to put her to the test. Always testing for truth and lie, fact and fantasy.

  “I won’t lie, Steve. It did.”

  “Before it was no and now it’s come on.”

  “Yes. I can’t lie about that either.”

  “Maybe I’ll be up Christmas,” I said.

  I left her just as the conductors were beginning to shout their warnings. I waited beside her window until the train slid out, then I returned home. The place was empty, so empty. I thought of both Grace and Lois until my head hurt and I really didn’t feel like going in to the office.

  While I lay there on the bed trying to recall what Grace had felt like, the phone rang. It was Sarah, wanting to know if I felt well enough to come in because there was a lot of work. I told her I was still sick, and I was—sick of her. Her voice was filled with vague threats and I began to feel very uneasy, but I told her I just couldn’t make it and that was that.

  As I had promised, I called Lois, and because I was lonely and because I did want to see her, I talked her into having dinner with me. She agreed and I met her downtown. When she saw me, she broke into a smile and came running. We ate at a Chinese restaurant and while we were there, people watching us, she touched my wrist tenderly. I didn’t try to hide from myself the fact that I enjoyed it, that inside I was gloating.

  I had planned, some nights before, to spend the night looking for Obie and skip the party at Lint’s he’d told Grace and me about. But now, with Lois’ fingers soft on my skin, I had to admit it did something to me every time she’d run out of the lobby of her building to meet me; that I got a bang out of the way she skipped through heavy traffic to get to the other side of the street where I was. I liked the way she smiled suddenly if we met on the bus and I enjoyed the way she was when it was time for us to part. I decided to forget about Obie just then.

  We started to get high. It was sort of a celebration, Lois said, what with not seeing each other for such a long time and with Christmas coming on. I got off to a flying start, perhaps because I hadn’t really shaken the thought of parting. I was about half-stoned when I realized I had been doing a lot of drinking recently.