"We are about to be called to order," Israel announced, coming back into the room with some freshly cut sourdough.
"Something like that, I suppose," I began, surprised to find myself feeling a bit nervous. "All of us around this table are friends, I think. I hope. But we all know that those friendships have been complicated by race—by color. The incident the other day in the office—between Israel and that man named Elmore—brought it all rather sharply into focus, how much dissension there is, how quickly it can flair into violence." I glanced at Israel, but he was calmly spreading butter on a slice of bread. "I thought if we could explore a bit, learn something of what each of us thinks about what is happening or what should be happening, we might . . . I suppose . . . be a little wiser about each other. For instance, I don't really know what 'black power' means—every explanation I hear is so fraught with fear, and I don't know what the goal is. I was hoping you could tell us, Eli, what it means to you. I am hoping you can make us understand."
Eli shifted and put his elbows on the table. He opened his large hands once, showing the pale inner parts of his palm, spreading his fingers as if he might find the answers there. Then he began, his voice at first hesitant, but after a while gathering resolve:
"Black power . . . it starts off sounding violent, or at least I think that's how the white world interprets it . . . as if blacks are going to rise up and put the torch to the white world. But that's not what it means, at least not to me. You don't get power without respect, and you don't get respect without respecting yourself. So to begin with it means accepting what you are and liking it: starting with your black skin, your family, your culture. That means not believing what you've been told all your life—which is that if you're black, you are inferior. I know that sounds pretty simplistic, and I also know the slogans would sound pretty pathetic to most white people, if they were linked to nonviolence. It's the threat— the fear—that makes whites listen. Martin Luther King, Jr., could have marched forever, preaching nonviolence, and some white people would have followed him and sung 'We Shall Overcome' and cried real tears forever, but it wasn't going to make any difference. In the end, blacks are going to have to do it themselves— nobody's going to give them a share of the power because it's the right thing to do. And violence, or the threat of it, is the only thing that seems to move the people who have the power. The white man that put a bullet in Martin may have done more for the civil rights movement than the marching ever did."
"Is integration out, then?" Kit asked.
"I think integration is only acceptable when it is between equals. It's time we quit begging to be allowed to live next door to people who don't want us, and create black neighborhoods we can be proud of. We've tried meekness and it hasn't worked. Now it's time to stand up and demand what should have been ours all along."
"You say integration is only acceptable when it is between equals," May put in. "That sounds good, but I don't believe it ever has worked that way. 'Equal' means too many different things to too many different people. What I do understand is the idea of blacks demanding what should have been theirs all along, by law."
Israel had taken a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and made something of a show of unfolding a piece of paper. "I brought this tonight," he spoke up, looking out at us over the glasses. "I read it back in 1944, when I was in the army, and for a long time I carried it around with me, and I'd recite it whenever I could. It was written by Mr. Gunnar Myrdal, a famous Swedish economist, in a book called An American Dilemma, which I found in the library in a little nothing town in Georgia."
His face took on a pulpit demeanor, he cleared his throat, and in his preacher's voice he read: "America can never more regard its Negroes as a patient, submissive minority. They will continually become less well 'accommodated.' They will organize for defense and offense. They will become more and more vociferous . . . They will have a powerful tool in the caste struggle against white America: the glorious American ideals of democracy, liberty, and equality to which America is pledged not only by its political Constitution but also by the sincere devotion of its citizens. The Negroes are a minority, and they are poor and suppressed, but they have the advantage that they can fight wholeheartedly. The whites have all the power, but they are split in their moral personality. Their better selves are with the insurgents. The Negroes do not need any other allies."
He took off his glasses, folded the paper, and returned it to his shirt pocket. "I submit to you Eli," Israel finished, summing up what he had come to say, "that your Black Power movement will alienate the better selves of those white people who would help us. That young buck you brought up to the office the other day—he wasn't being proud of being black, he was being arrogant, he was doing everything he accuses the white man of doing."
Eli shifted defensively. "I don't necessarily agree with all the brothers' actions," he began, "but I do agree it's time to take some action that shows we mean business. And I know that nonviolence is never going to work, not in any lifetime."
"Where does that leave you, Eli?" I asked.
He didn't answer for a while; then he looked up and surprised us all by grinning sheepishly. "Damned if I know," he said, breaking the tension, instantly transformed to the black kid who grew up in the white suburbs of Minnesota and felt most at ease with his white friends. "My problem is I've got these pale-faced pals I can't seem to shake off."
He gave Hayes a playful poke. Hayes caught Eli's fist and held it for an instant in a gesture that signaled his own seriousness: "I guess I have to say I'm with Israel and Gunnar," he began. "The laws are on the books, now what we have to do is make people obey them. There are white people who know what is right—some of them might not like it, but they'll go with the law if it comes down to it. I hear myself saying this, and I can almost hear you thinking, 'another jive-ass white boy telling me to wait another generation or two . . .' I don't really have any answer, Eli."
Israel spoke up, all thought of vocabulary abandoned in his passion: "Eli's the one's jiving. Talk about black people respecting themselves. Talk about that boy Elmore you brought up to the office the other day. He don't respect nothing. You think I'm ever going to respect that? No way, not ever. Eli, you going to be in big trouble if you don't stay away from that black trash."
A flash of anger flared in Eli's eyes: "Don't talk to me about 'black trash'—that's not something I need to hear from a black man."
"Isn't it strange," I stepped in quickly, "how epithets have a way of triggering anger." (Black Tom nigger faggot Israel had been called.) "They seem to short-circuit any rational feelings, all that verbal violence rolled into a couple of words and flung at a person."
Israel, brushing away my interruption, answered Eli: "Maybe not, but there are some things you and your militaristic Black Panther friends could learn from the black men of my age, those of us who've actually been off to war. And maybe from the black kids who are coming back now from Vietnam. That's not playacting, that's not strutting around with guns spouting out slogans. We've already proved ourselves . . . as men and as black men. We've gone out and fought for this country by God, and some of us never did come home . . . and some black boys aren't going to come home from this war either. And what I want to know is, how the devil you and your Black Panthers friends think you can teach those boys and their folks pride?"
"You're right there, Israel," Eli said, backing off. "Nobody's trying to put you down."
"Yes they are!" Israel raised his voice. "Your friend Elmore, didn't you hear what he called me? What do you mean, nobody's trying to put me down? That prison bait, that lowlife nogood. . . ."
Hayes broke in: "Eli, do you remember that time we were with a local CORE guy named Slim out in the backroads of Mississippi, I think it was near a little town called Pawtonville, or something like that? We met this grizzled white man wobbling down the road with the help of a cane. Slim told us he'd been wounded in the war. We were downwind of the guy, and he smelled like he hadn't had a ba
th since the Battle of the Bulge. Anyway, we could see a black guy coining down the road in an old wagon pulled by a mule, and when he gets up with the other guy he stops. Neither one of them said anything, but the white guy climbs up into the wagon and off they go. Slim said they'd been doing that twice a week for twenty years. Just outside of town the black guy would stop and let off the white man, so he wouldn't be seen riding in a mule cart with a Negro. I asked Slim why the black guy bothered, and Slim said he asked him once."
Hayes paused, remembering.
"And?" May prompted.
"And the black guy said he felt sorry for him."
Israel, calmed, said: "That's right, that's exactly right."
"Maybe so," Eli added, draping his arm loosely over Israel's shoulder, a gesture of reconciliation. Suddenly he looked at his watch and said, "Christ! It's after eleven—I'm supposed to be meeting somebody in the Fillmore right now." Turning to Hayes he added, "Think you could hitch a ride home with Magnificent May here?"
"Magnificent May," Hayes said, turning to her, "what are the chances?"
"Call me pretty names and I'll take you anywhere," she answered, laughing. When she bent to kiss me goodnight, I felt her cheek burning warm against mine.
May eased the Jaguar slowly onto Broadway, glad for the tangle of traffic in front of the striptease and topless joints. A barker with a top hat and an English accent called out to Hayes: "Come on in, mate, there's things in here—great galloping balloons you'll bloody well never see again in this lifetime."
"Great galloping balloons," Hayes repeated as they picked up speed, and he rolled up the windows. They slipped easily onto the freeway that curved along the edge of the Bay. May was glad to be alone with him, glad to be in the car sealed off from the rest of the world. The air seemed to expand; she held the Jaguar back, wanting to make the ride last.
She took a deep breath. "I've missed you," she said, exhaling.
"You've missed me?" he repeated. "Funny. I haven't missed you till that much. I never think of you."
"Never?" she came back, ready to play.
"Not in the morning when I'm drinking my Ovaltine and eating my crunchy granola. And you never pop into my mind when I'm circling the campus looking for a parking place and I see a tall, willowy, dark-haired female person walking by."
"Not even then?" she sounded the refrain.
"Not even when I was in the Lowie Museum the other day, looking at some terrific masks from New Guinea. I didn't wish you were around to see them with me."
"Nope?"
"Nope. Never think about you at all. Not in the shower. Not even in bed at night."
"Wait a minute," she laughed, "or I'm likely to run us off the bridge."
They entered the tunnel, the lights flickered through the car and she felt, suddenly, lightheaded and happy. Then they were in the dark again and the lights of the Oakland waterfront blazed bright against the night sky. She slid the car easily into the lanes marked for Berkeley and felt a strange elation. She considered kicking hard on the gas and going on, driving up highway 80 to Sacramento and on to Lake Tahoe, driving on and on through the Nevada desert to Salt Lake.
"Whoa—University Avenue coming up," Hayes warned as she picked up speed.
"You've passed the bar," she said as they moved up the wide street.
"What next?"
"I'm not sure," he answered. "I have an offer to go to Washington, play penny ante with the power brokers . . . Don't laugh, I might just do that. I'm also thinking of getting out of the country for a while, see if that helps."
She pulled up in front of his place on Benvenue.
"Are you going back to Hawaii next summer?"
"June and July," she told him. "I have to be back here for a project in August."
"You like it there?"
"I love it. The Big Island, especially. I can't quite explain what there is about it—there is just this clarity. It's such lovely big empty land, so gentle, floating out there in the middle of the ocean. And the volcanoes are so accessible . . . they all but invite you to study them."
"Sounds civilized."
"It is. Why don't you come out while I'm there?"
He looked at her. "You and me and the sea and the sand?"
She nodded.
"Christ," he said, leaning to touch his lips lightly to hers as he opened the door.
She put her hand on his arm to stop him. "Wait. Hayes. Please." She was searching for the words, and they were coming in short bursts. "I can't pretend anymore . . . I think it's time . . . we need to talk . . . about us . . ."
He put his head back and closed his eyes. The silence settled on them, May felt herself sinking under the weight of it. She pulled herself up, grasped the steering wheel firmly, and waited.
"I'm sorry," he said, his eyes still closed.
"You keep saying that," she told him, a sting in her voice.
"What I'm sorry about," he said slowly, the words were hard in coming, "is that we had to meet now . . . in the middle of all this . . . what I'm sorry about is that our timing has been so lousy."
The taste of bile rose in her throat. "What are you trying to say . . . right girl, wrong time . . . something like that?"
He didn't answer, but grasped the door handle as if he were about to leave. She could not let him go, not yet. She knew she shouldn't do it, shouldn't say it, shouldn't cling but she could not help herself. Panic rising, she pleaded. "Does that mean forever?"
He touched her face. "God, I hope not," was his answer.
When everyone had left the cottage that night and I lay in bed, phrases flew about the room, bombarding me, but the one that stuck in my mind was: You know how those things go, which Kit had said when I asked about Philip Ward. There was something, I knew, some small detail tucked away in a dusty little unused room of my memory: And then I got it. Of course.
I climbed back out of bed, pulled on my robe, and cursed my old bones for taking so long to move. It took awhile to find the right file and longer to find the right letter.
June 4, 1944, Lena Kerr to Porter Reade in Burma.
I scanned the fragile onionskin page covered with Lena's feathery script . . . news of a cousin in Los Angeles . . . an almost tangible feeling that the war in the Pacific is winding down, will soon be over . . . And then: "Kit has not yet been able to resolve her dilemma over Philip Ward. I can only wonder what has made her so cautious, so suspicious of passion . . .
TWELVE
DON'T EXPECT TOO much," Philip said, "from Daniel, I mean. He's not very articulate, and his social graces are just short of nonexistent."
"Just short of?" she smiled.
"He might say 'hullo.' Then again, he might not."
The two-lane blacktop shot straight down the empty valley floor, the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevadas looming on one side, the White Mountains on the other. There was no color, only shades of black and white and a dark, dark green. It was a strangely menacing landscape, desolate and beautiful in the January cold. Karin shivered.
"More heat?" he asked, reaching for the control.
"No, no. It just looks so cold out there. And I guess I'm a little nervous. About Daniel. I want him to like me."
He reached for her hand. "The kid may not be swift, but he's sure as hell not stupid. The way I figure it, he'll take one look at you and figure there must be more to the old man than he thought. My ratings should go up considerably."
She pressed his hand to her cheek and said, "I'm very serious. Daniel has to accept me if this is going to work."
"This?"
"Us."
"Don't do that, Karin. Don't make us contingent on Daniel. That's too much for me to handle—Daniel's produced more than his share of disappointments already. And it's too much to lay on the kid."
She looked out the window, focused on a tall stand of alders in the half-distance. The sun glinted off a frosting of snow that lay on the open land, creating a surreal brilliance that made the mountains stand out sharp against t
he hard blue of the sky.
"Dear God this is violent country," she said, breathing out.
"I've always thought of Owens Valley as the True West," he answered, glad to move away from the subject of his son. "It has the scope and the geographic terror . . . Can you imagine the Sierras here being heaved up out of the earth? Think of the magnitude of the earthquakes, the volcanoes. Mind boggling."
"I was just thinking about volcanoes, and May. She's been here several times on field trips . . . and always said this was magnificent country. It really is. But it's . . . well, what you said. Terrifying too. At least to me."
"To me, too. Given the choice, I'll take Manhattan. But Daniel likes the out of doors, the rugged life, and this is the first school he hasn't run from, which is something." He glanced at the odometer. "The school should be coming up just . . . about . . . now."
He swung open the gate while she drove the car through, over a cattle guard. They could see the school in the distance: a cluster of low buildings grouped around a stand of barren trees. "Looks like a prison camp left over from World War II, doesn't it? Now that I think of it, one of the Japanese internment camps was near here—Manzanar."
"It seems very Spartan," she answered, "But that's the idea, isn't it?"
Daniel was waiting for them in the cafeteria. He was sitting on a table, wrapping the red cellophane strip from a packet of crackers around his little finger. He looked up when they walked in; his glance flickered but could not meet his father's, so he looked at Karin instead.
"I'm Karin," she said, before Philip could introduce her.
"Dan," the boy mumbled.
"I'm glad it's 'Dan.' I thought maybe you wanted to be called 'Daniel.' The problem with Karin is that you can't have a nickname, and I've always envied people who have them."
"Is that right?" Philip said, amused.
Karin was looking at Daniel when she said, "Sure is."
A slow, half smile played around his lips. He stood, put out his hand, and said, "Hello, sir."
Gift of the Golden Mountain Page 18
