Only the Strong

by Jabari Asim

  But as evening fell they apparently had other appointments, promises to keep or break. She stood, stretched, rubbed her eyes, and sat back down. Finally she gave up and left the park, taking one last look around as dusk dissolved into the surrounding black.

  TROUBLE

  CHARLOTTE SKIPPED THE FESTIVITIES IN THE PARK, having had enough of celebrations of black pride for a while, maybe forever. Instead, she spent most of the day at the riverfront, listening to Mozart and dreaming of boats. Artinces had recently abducted her favorite jacket, a lightweight men’s houndstooth, and personally escorted it to Kirkwood Cleaners. Undaunted, Charlotte rescued a pale-blue seersucker from a veterans’ thrift store. She wore it at the riverfront with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and her linen plaid cap pulled low over her brow. She sat directly on the cobblestones with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins.

  Gateway was more of a barge city than a boat city. Charlotte made do with a mud-splattered tug patrolling the muck just off the wharf. Behind it, in the near distance, a paddle steamer decorated to look like Mark Twain’s plaything made slow circuits, stopping now and then to discard its cargo of tourists and pick up another group. When it neared the Gateway City shore, the pilot-host’s booming voice blared over a tinny PA, interrupting Charlotte’s reverie. But it was only a temporary annoyance, one she quickly overwhelmed with the Queen of the Night’s piercing aria from The Magic Flute. The soprano sang in German, but Dr. Harrison, Charlotte’s music appreciation teacher, had provided the class with an English translation.

  On the steamer, the tourists, once animated, were now still. Shadowy stick figures, they clutched the rails as the boat wheeled around a final time. The vengeance of hell boils in my heart, the Queen declared, her crystalline voice ringing above the cobblestones, death and despair flame about me!

  Charlotte had been listening to the same song all day on an eight-track player she’d bought from the man known as Playfair. Artinces couldn’t hide her puzzlement on the day Charlotte brought it home.

  “Why would you buy that? It’s probably stolen.”

  “Probably,” Charlotte said in response. The tape player sat on the kitchen table while she made tea. She’d noticed that Artinces was freshly bathed and powdered and a little jumpy, as if she was in a rush to get out of the house. She smelled faintly of flowers.

  “How can you be so casual about it?”

  “Didn’t you casually bring home that bird in the hall? Where do you think it came from?”

  “I bought it for you, to keep you company. Anyway—I don’t have time to argue with you.” Artinces stood in front of a glass-front cabinet and checked her face in the reflection.

  “I know,” Charlotte said.

  “What do you mean, you know?”

  “I mean I know you don’t have time. It’s Wednesday.”

  Artinces stopped primping. But she didn’t turn around. “What about Wednesday?”

  Charlotte got up and grabbed the teakettle before it started whistling. “You tell me. You’re the one who’s always running off.”

  “You know, there was a time when young people addressed their elders with respect. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with my hi-fi in there.”

  “Except it’s stationary,” Charlotte said, remembering Playfair’s sales pitch. “With eight D batteries, you can take this baby anywhere. Plus it’s got an AM radio.”

  As it turned out, her exchanges with Artinces, sometimes warm and sometimes cool, left her more than prepared for her first encounters with Dr. Leonora Harrison.

  “One might ask about the proper role of music in life,” Dr. Harrison had said on the first day of class. “Or one might ask if life without music is even possible.” Tall and stylish, Dr. Harrison had imperious features that were completely out of harmony with her joyful approach to her life’s work. “In this class, you will learn how to progress beyond mere hearing,” she promised. “By semester’s end, you will know how to listen.” Fond of waving a conductor’s baton as she played recordings and lectured, Dr. Harrison was just the first of a number of instructors at River Valley A&M who made a lasting impression on Charlotte. They were smart, confident, and dedicated. Willing to urge students past their preconceived limitations, they never concealed their desire to see them succeed.

  Charlotte enrolled as a pre-med major in the College of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, one of four colleges serving 3,000 students on the 170-acre campus. Colored Union soldiers had founded River Valley right after the Civil War. Until the turn of the twentieth century, its curriculum focused on farming and trades, a reflection of Booker T. Washington’s then-dominant influence. Over time, the faculty members and trustees who favored the W.E.B. Du Bois approach to self-improvement won a hard-fought majority. Their victory eventually led to an expansion beyond River Valley’s industrial-education roots and the recruitment of students like Charlotte.

  “I will play a song and you will identify it,” Dr. Harrison commanded one day. She marched to her desk, lifted the tone arm on her portable record player, and touched the needle to the record.

  Propulsive drumbeats filled the room, followed by the eager blare of a clarinet. “‘Maple Leaf Rag’!” someone hollered. Charlotte turned and spotted a slim, well-dressed young man whose appearance seemed out of step with the times. A sharp part was razored into the left temple of his short hair, and a thin, impeccable mustache lined his upper lip. His short-sleeve shirt and tie made him look less like a like a super-bad soul brother than a refugee from the Montgomery bus boycott.

  “Composed by Scott Joplin, of course,” he continued, “but performed in this case by…Sidney Bechet.”

  “You are correct, Mr. Conway,” Dr. Harrison said. “Next time, please do us the courtesy of raising your hand.”

  “Sorry, Professor,” he replied. It was clear that he wasn’t apologizing at all. “I lost control of myself.”

  Four notes into the next song, he interrupted again. “‘Für Elise,’ Beethoven. How about something challenging, like his Fifth Symphony?” He chuckled, amused with himself.

  Dr. Harrison lifted the tone arm from the record. With one hand on the hip of her tailored skirt, she raised her baton and aimed it at the impudent student. “Really, Mr. Conway. I warn you not to push me. Especially on the first day of class.”

  Conway, whom Charlotte would soon learn was better known as Percy, stuck out his bottom lip in a bold parody of pouting. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. Charlotte snuck another glimpse. He looked sharp, almost jittery with intelligence, and he was the color of lightly toasted bread. Percy caught Charlotte looking at him and winked at her. She grinned and looked away.

  A saucy clamor of horns introduced the next song, and a bold brassy voice followed them.

  I can’t sleep at night

  I can’t eat a bite

  ’Cause the man I love

  He don’t treat me right…

  “Bessie Smith?” a voice offered.

  Dr. Harrison frowned. “Remember, we raise our hands in this class. But you were close. Anybody?” She scanned the neat rows of desks, ignoring Percy’s raised hand. He stretched, leaned, and gestured wildly, eliciting giggles from his classmates.

  Dr. Harrison sighed. “Mr. Conway.”

  “The singer would be Mamie Smith. The song would be ‘Crazy Blues.’”

  “You are correct, Mr. Conway, very good. Now, no more from you. Let someone else have a chance.”

  “Fine,” he said. “My work here is done.” He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms.

  Dr. Harrison’s next selection made Charlotte sit up straight in her chair. A woman’s voice, crisp, lilting, and nearly startling in its beauty, leapt from a cushion of fluttering strings. As it rose, Charlotte heard flights of fluty warbling that she could hardly believe came from a woman’s throat. Riding on waves of horns, the voice seemed everywhere at once, a covey of songbirds flushed from their grassy enclave and sent soaring into the sky.

&n
bsp; So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.

  Verstoßen sei auf ewig,

  Verlassen sei auf ewig,

  Zertrümmert sei’n auf ewig…

  Charlotte couldn’t understand the words but she recognized that hearts and lives were at stake. Orders were being given, oaths sworn. The song ended long before she realized it.

  A nudging in her ribs made her jump. It was Percy. “It’s okay,” he whispered, “you can breathe now.”

  Dr. Harrison broke down the aria for the class. She explained that the Queen of the Night, much like the blues queens with whom the students were far more familiar, was venting her frustration through song. In this case, her daughter had been on the receiving end. Charlotte had never known a mother’s wrath or passion, but had never imagined it could sound like that. She knew it would be impossible to get those notes out of her head. She didn’t want to. After the last class of the day, she headed to the campus library and checked out everything it had on Mozart and The Magic Flute.

  At the checkout counter, she was amused to find Percy’s signature confidently scrawled on the checkout slip at the back of each book. Evidently he had a thing for Mozart. On a whim, she left her findings on the counter and returned to the stacks. She grabbed a book at random off the shelf: Physics and You. Only a single individual had checked it out: one Percy Conway. She crossed the room and pulled another title. An Oral History of Appalachia. Flipping to the checkout slip, she found it again: Percy Conway. In a far corner, she slid a good half-dozen volumes, each of them more obscure than the last, and each weighed down by a thick layer of dust. Percy’s signature was in all of them.

  Shaking her head, she went back to the counter. The clerk, a heavy-chested girl wearing Afro puffs, chewed her gum like she was mad at it. “You’re a freshman, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Charlotte replied. “That obvious?”

  The girl smiled. “Well, I saw you playing Percy Patrol.”

  “Playing what?”

  “Percy Patrol. It’s fun on a slow night.”

  “What exactly is it?”

  “You go around the library trying to find a book that doesn’t have his name in it. Last year a fraternity sent its pledges on patrol. It took them until closing time.”

  “You mean to say he’s read every book in here?”

  “No, but damn near.”

  “How do you know he’s not just signing his name?”

  The clerk finished stamping due dates in Charlotte’s books. She slid the stack toward her. “Have you ever talked to him? Asked him a question? He remembers everything he sees, maybe everything he hears.”

  Charlotte sighed. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “What makes you think he wants to? Can you imagine carrying all that around in your head?”

  “Poor baby.”

  “Yeah, be careful. He gets that a lot. If you’re looking for him, he’ll be with the Soldiers.”

  In commemoration of the River Valley founders, a life-size sculpture of three black Union soldiers stood in a plaza surrounded by a circle of benches. At one of them, Percy sat with his eyes closed.

  Charlotte waited several long moments in hopes he would stir or open his eyes. No luck. Finally, gathering her wits, she approached.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  He opened his eyes, saw her, and pretended to be alarmed. “Uh-oh, here comes Trouble.”

  “Hardly. Unless you’ve done something wrong.”

  “If I had, I sure wouldn’t tell you. For all I know, you could be FBI. Or worse: an FBI informant. COINTELPRO, don’tcha know.”

  “Right, I’m a fed. What are you doing?”

  “If you must know, I’m dreaming of boats.”

  “Boats? Here on the plaza.”

  “Closest thing to water we got.”

  “Are you a music major?”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you know all those songs?”

  He chuckled. “Two songs and suddenly I know them all.”

  “Three,” Charlotte corrected. “It was three. And you obviously knew more but Dr. Harrison made you quit.”

  He shrugged. “Talk about a killjoy. Do you mean how do I know all those songs or how do I know so much about so many things?”

  “I don’t know that you know all that. I’m talking about the songs.”

  “Then this is one case in which my reputation has failed to precede me. It would take far less time to ask me what I don’t know than to ask me how I know what I know.”

  “Okay, what don’t you know?”

  “For starters, your name.”

  Shortly after Artinces had taken Charlotte under her wing, she began to impress upon her young protégée the centrality in medicine of what she called the Hippocratic principle. The essence of it, according to Artinces, was that physicians must do good, and must do no harm. Charlotte found that the principle also served as a useful gauge when evaluating potential boyfriends. For her the bottom line became, Will this boy do me harm? The less likely he was to hurt her, she reasoned, the more likely he was to do good. The better the boy, the better his chances. Of the boys who approached her in high school, Ed Jones’s deep-rooted, unassailable kindness elevated him above his peers, and she ultimately granted him full access to her charms. She believed she detected similar qualities in Percy Conway.

  “I should walk you home, lest you catch the vapors,” he said to her that first night, after she’d cornered him at the Soldiers. In his language and mannerisms, she found no hint of the forced swagger that most young men hid behind. In its place, an unabashed gentleness flourished, a willingness to regard the world and himself with a healthy sense of humor. His conversation unfolded in a rough music of complete paragraphs and compact, ornate nuggets as he strolled with her books tucked under his arm. Every breath and motion suggested to her a celebration of the life of the mind.

  “You talk funny,” she said. “I mean, a little bit.”

  “I won’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.”

  “I like it, though. It’s nice.”

  “I’m glad someone thinks so, especially someone as lovely as you. However, I have to confess an abiding fear of our fair state’s statutory laws. Therefore, although my intentions are completely honorable, I must ask, exactly how old are you?”

  “I’m 18.”

  “Aha. Sounds like trouble.”

  “I may be young and I might even be trouble. But I’m not illegal. I’m not even a vir—”

  “Whoa. Cease and desist. A few facts at a time, please. That’s so much better, don’t you think? Speaking for myself, once I know a thing it’s stuck with me.”

  “Okay, then, how old are you?”

  “I’m 23.”

  Charlotte eyed him carefully. “Really?”

  “Boyish demeanor aside, don’t the gray temples give me away?”

  Charlotte laughed. His hair was completely brown. “How come you’re so old? Why haven’t you graduated?”

  “I took a couple years off to take care of a loved one.”

  As the semester unfolded, they each became what the other needed. For her, a wise guide to the rudiments of college life; for him, an affectionate witness who could listen tirelessly and without judgment. While other coeds had proved themselves unequal to the task, Charlotte found joy in her service. She stood in the windy plaza while he performed monologues for an audience of one. She was certain that his luminous speech made the bronze faces of the Union soldiers glow with enlightenment. She was convinced that everyone, even inanimate objects, could detect Percy’s incandescence; she just appreciated it more. His intelligence burned so brightly that he gave off sparks.

  That first nighttime stroll went way too quickly for Charlotte. She’d hardly taken a breath between the Soldiers and Taplin Hall, an all-freshman girls’ dorm that horny young male students referred to as the Virgin Vault. At a lamppost adjacent to the entrance, he paused and handed over her books.

  “What’s your major?”
he asked.

  “Pre-med. And you?”

  “Philosophy and religion.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you trying to find something to believe in?”

  “Not exactly,” he replied. “I believe that I don’t believe. I’m at peace with that. But I am interested to find out what makes others believe. Stepping out on faith, I think they call it.”

  Charlotte scratched the side of her nose. “So you read a lot of books, the Bible and other books like it, and you think that will tell you? Why not just ask people?”

  “The reading’s for background. In grad school, I’ll do real fieldwork, like Du Bois. When he did The Philadelphia Negro, he knocked on dozens of doors. Can you imagine that?”

  “Good thing he did that in Philly,” Charlotte said with a smile. “If he’d done that in my hometown, somebody would’ve gone upside his head.”

  Without warning, Percy swooped in on her, gently cupping her head in his hands. He pressed his lips against hers, then pulled away. “Power to the people!” he said.

  “You’re crazy,” she said, grinning.

  He whirled around the lamppost, a brown Gene Kelly revving up for a song. “Ah,” he said, “crazy like Mamie Smith.”