Dancers on the Shore

by William Melvin Kelley

  * * *

  —

  AT HER HOUSE, slouching on a sofa, Chig watched Avis, who stood across the room, her back to him, looking at the river. “Avis, what would you say if I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer?” He tried to sound relaxed.

  She did not turn around. “Okay. What do you want to be?”

  He was delighted, wondering why he had expected opposition. “That’s just it. I don’t know. I’m not even sure I don’t want to be a lawyer. But I’m…” He stopped.

  She had turned to him, her lips parted. “You’re actually serious?” She advanced on him.

  Panic heated his body. “Well, I’m sort of serious.”

  She was standing in front of him, over him. He could not look her in the eye. The engagement ring winked on her finger. “How could you be serious?” Her voice was soft and baffled.

  “Wouldn’t it be wrong for me to do something I didn’t really want to do? I mean, wouldn’t it?” He tilted his head back, willed himself to look at her face, but quickly returned to the ring. “I mean, wrong for me?”

  Her hands were knit in front of her. “Sure, it would. But you’ve always wanted to be a lawyer so much, ever since I’ve known you.”

  For an instant, he could not remember if he actually had stepped into her house wanting to be a lawyer. “I know that. But lately I’ve been having doubts. I don’t even know why.” He wished she would sit down beside him. He would feel less uncomfortable, more as if they were solving his problem together.

  She smiled. He did not want her to smile just then. “Well, why all of a sudden, do you—?”

  “Hell, I don’t know!” Her right hand hid her left and he could no longer see the ring. “Well, yes, I do. I was talking to my father a few nights ago and he told me how he felt about medicine—”

  “What does medicine have to do with law?”

  “Let me finish, will you?” His voice was whiny and high; his tone surprised him.

  Her eyes became just the slightest bit cloudy. “All right, Chig.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I just realized how much a profession can mean to a person and that I don’t look forward to being a lawyer nearly as much as he did to being a doctor. He said he doesn’t even need people. He enjoys medicine as a…a body of knowledge. You know what I mean? Kind of in the abstract.”

  “He doesn’t want to make people well?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, that isn’t his only consideration…” He wanted to say something more, but did not know what.

  “I don’t think that’s right.” She scowled. “He should care about them.”

  “He cares about them, Avis.” He was impatient with her lack of understanding. He wanted her very much to understand. “It’s like when you do something well, it gives you a good feeling whether anybody else benefits or not.”

  “That’s a terrible attitude!” She was being huffy. “You can’t just walk all over people.”

  He raised his voice. “He doesn’t walk all over people, for God’s sake. He just doesn’t live or die on everything people say and think! He has private reasons for being a doctor.”

  “He can have them!” She was angry now. Chig was startled to discover he did not care, did not feel the urge to calm her.

  “Look, does it make him any less a doctor? His patients still like and respect him. He still helps them.”

  “I can’t see how—with his attitude.”

  “Avis, don’t be so fucking stupid!”

  She was stunned; when she spoke her voice was wet. “My being stupid doesn’t give you the right to curse at me.”

  “You’re not stupid. I am. I can’t make you understand.” He was not trying to soothe her; he believed it. But realizing that if he did not stop it soon, it would go too far, he lost all taste for the discussion, and sighed. “Look, let’s forget it now.” He reached for her waist.

  She stepped away, her back curled. “We can’t forget it. If you’re having doubts about…things, then we ought to find out…before it’s too late.”

  He knew exactly what she meant, and thought it childish. “Avis, a minor difference between us doesn’t all of a sudden mean I don’t want to marry you. I asked a simple question: How would you feel if I decided not to be a lawyer? I wanted to know what you thought. Now you’re making a big thing out of it.”

  “It is a big thing. It’s important.” She was standing too far from him. He could feel cold distance between them. “If you need time to think things over, I shouldn’t push you into marrying me. Marriage is a big responsibility, Chig. I should give you time. There are things you have to decide a-lone.”

  This was crazy. He had never once said to her or even to himself that he definitely did not want to be a lawyer. It was simply that since the night of the party, when he realized he had lied, thanking the guests for coming, he had thought a great deal about himself, and had questioned many of his long-cherished goals. But now, it was getting out of hand.

  He found himself staring at Avis. “How can I be so God-damned dense!” He started to laugh.

  She was puzzled. She took a step toward him, but said nothing.

  “I was getting set to botch up my whole life.” He was still laughing. “God!”

  “What happened?” She came a bit closer.

  “Nothing. Not a God-damned thing!” He was serious now. “I read too many books. I just realized I want everything in my life to be like Saint Paul’s Conversion.” He started to giggle.

  “What?” She smiled quizzically.

  “Saint Paul’s Conversion, Avis. Saint Paul was on his way to Damascus to suppress the Christians and God knocked him off his horse and made him see the light.” Giggling overwhelmed him now.

  Avis began to laugh too and collapsed beside him on the sofa. “Chig, you’re so silly sometimes.”

  “I know. But most of the time I’m not even here.” He hit his head to straighten out his brains. “Most of the time I’m not in real life. I’m living in a dream world of Saint Pauls and baby monkeys.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.” He waved it all away. “Just remember I love you more than anything in the world.” He put his arm around her shoulder. She turned to him and let him kiss her.

  * * *

  —

  IN JANUARY, Chig began to wonder again whether he actually wanted to be a lawyer, but he convinced himself that he was only doubting because he missed Avis so much. If he could see her, everything would be all right. He had not seen her since she returned to school after the holidays, a week or so after their discussion, which he had not been able to forget.

  Early in March, Chig went up the Hudson River to visit Avis at school. On the train, he passed Sing Sing Prison. He wondered about prison life.

  Avis had a single room and a key to her door. Chig was allowed in her room from twelve-thirty until seven in the evening. Behind the locked door, they made love.

  She lived on the top floor of the tallest building on campus; they did not have to draw the blinds for privacy. The early afternoon sun warmed their bare feet and legs. She lay beside him, perfume mingling with sweat. They talked aimlessly about their marriage. Both were tired and happy.

  “I found the nicest silverware.” Avis babbled, whispering. “It’s so simple and light and beautiful.” She kissed him.

  “Pull up the sheet. You’ll catch cold.” He reached down, untangled the bedclothes, and covered both of them. He smoothed her hair, which sweat had made kinky. “You’ll have to do something about that.”

  “Does it look horrible?” She sounded worried.

  “It looks beautiful. Don’t get upset.” He kissed the short baby hair that fringed her forehead.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” He rolled onto his stomach.

  On a bookcase beside the bed, was a
secondhand copy of Huckleberry Finn. Just to see it there made him feel good. He had read it five times since first discovering it. Reaching out, he took it in his hand and smiled to himself.

  She felt him move. “What are you doing?” She rolled over and put her arm around his waist.

  “I didn’t know you had this.” There was admiration for her in his voice.

  “I had to read it for school.” Her eyes closed lazily. “I wrote a paper on it.”

  “This is the greatest book ever—American anyway.” He leafed through it, turning to his favorite chapter, and started to read aloud:

  …So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:

  Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.

  Hunk Finn.

  I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind.

  Beside him, Avis yawned and stretched. He tried to ignore, forgive what she had done, and continued reading:

  …and then I happened to look around and see that paper.

  It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

  “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

  Chig closed his eyes. It had always made him feel slightly melancholy, and warm. “That’s great!” he sighed.

  Avis was silent for a second. “It’s nice how Twain spells out his own moral dilemma. Did you know he ran away to the West so as not to decide which side to fight on in the Civil War?”

  “I don’t mean it that way, Avis. I…” He did not know how to go on. He closed the book.

  “Oh, you mean the way he sets up the conflict by having Huck do something he’s been taught is wrong—the irony of it.” She had propped herself on her elbows and her small breasts hung down between her arms.

  He let his head fall on the pillow, turning away. “I mean, how does it make you feel?” He tried not to sound earnest.

  “Okay, I guess. Chig, let’s not talk about school anymore. Not now.”

  He turned suddenly toward her and kissed her desperately, trying to chase away his own evil thoughts.

  * * *

  —

  LATER, THEY CAME OUT into the sun, onto mud-spongy ground. In shadowed corners, there was still snow crusted in dirty mounds. Other couples, holding mittened hands, ambled across the campus.

  Avis was skipping. “Come on. I want to show you the lake.”

  There was still thin ice floating in the black water. Near the edges, dead leaves were frozen into the ice.

  “Avis, I’m not going to law school.”

  “Oh, Chig, not again. I thought we had that settled.”

  “Does it really matter so much?”

  “Of course it does.” She stared at him. “You should want to be something. God, why do you have to be so melodramatic all the time?”

  “I’m not being melodramatic, Avis. I just want to—”

  “What’s wrong with you anyway?” Tears popped into her eyes. She clenched her fists; her voice, louder now, bounced across the lake and back. There was no one else in sight. “What do you expect me to do?”

  “I don’t expect you to do anything but have some faith in me.” He was pleading with her and did not mind.

  “Chig, I’ll have faith in you. You tell me you don’t want to be a lawyer. All right! But what do you want to be?”

  He felt foolish, put his hands in his pockets, and stared at the muddy toes of his shoes. “I don’t know.”

  She pounced on that. “You don’t know! And you’re giving up…? Chig, you’re acting crazy. This isn’t a movie. You have to know where you’re going. You have to have some ambition and direction. Nobody gets anywhere without a goal, and ambition. Not my father…or even yours.”

  “But they love what they’re doing. I wouldn’t like being a lawyer.”

  “Suppose you wait and nothing hits you like your precious saint?” She had stopped crying now.

  “I…I don’t know.” He realized he was defending an impossible position. He would defend it anyway.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t know anything. You’re like a girl who can’t decide what dress to wear to a party and so she goes naked!”

  Perhaps what she said was true. He hated the thought of it being true. “But, Avis, I have a right to want something to hit me like that. I’m asking you to have some faith in me. That’s all.”

  “It’s too much to ask.” Her right hand covered her left. The fingers of her left hand were very straight as she slid off the engagement ring and held it in her right palm.

  “Please, Avis, don’t take it off.” He stared at the ring. “Give me some space to breathe in.”

  “You mean, some space to be a bum in.” She held out the ring.

  He heard his voice crying. “I don’t want to be a bum. I just want to be something I love being.”

  “Be a lawyer.” Her arm, her hand holding the ring looked stiff and grotesque.

  “I can’t, Avis.” He plucked up the ring. It was warm.

  He had never actually seen a person faint before. His first impulse, not a cruel one, was to laugh—at the fluttering eyelids, at the sudden blue paleness that rushed into her baby’s lips, at the buckling knees, at the comic, floating way she crumbled at his feet. She lay on her back, her arms spread wide, her feet twisted under her awkwardly.

  Then he was angry. She was faking. People did not faint. She had threatened him, and now she was trying to keep him in line, using his own pity as a weapon.

  “Come on, Avis. Get up.” He looked down, furious at her. “Get up.” If she was awake and listening, she would know he was not being moved by her performance.

  Still she remained, sprawled, mud in her hair. Avis would never have allowed mud to get in her hair.

  He knelt beside her, frightened, not knowing what to do. He wanted now to gather her, like a dead child, into his arms. But if he touched her, he would kiss her. He knew that. And if he kissed her, he would slide the ring on her finger, and would go to law school.

  He sat a short distance away from her, mud seeping through his wool pants, waiting patiently for her large brown eyes to open, hoping that when they did, he would have enough strength not to touch her when he walked her back to the dormitory.

  What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor?

  “SAY, BUDDY, can you tell me where I am?”

  Peter Dunford had seen the old sailor too late to avoid him. He looked now into drunken gray eyes, which twinkled behind plain brown plastic-rimmed spectacles. A short, pudgy man, the sailor wore a khaki uniform, which was not of the Navy, though it had brass fishes and black stripes on the sleeves; he might have been Coast Guard or Merchant Marine.

  Peter told him his location and tried to excuse himself by, but the sailor had already pulled several scraps of paper from his pocket: the flap of an envelope, the margin of a newspaper, and a postcard. He shuffled through them and paused over the postcard, which was badly dog-eared. He put that back in his hip pocket and continued to squint down at the scraps. “Listen, I want a—” h
e looked up, found Peter smiling, and went on: “—a piece of ass.” Although he became angry almost immediately, Peter’s first reaction was surprise. The sailor was close to sixty. Fleshy, pink skin sagged below his chin.

  The sailor staggered around to Peter’s side; they looked together at the addresses scrawled on the slips of paper. “I met this girl, you see, buddy? But she wasn’t a hooker herself, just a barmaid, but she was nice, you know, colored. That’s the kind I want; they’re the best. You know, sort of honey-colored with brown eyes. You know.” He was shaping her with his hands as he talked. “I got plenty money. Look!” He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wallet. The postcard fluttered to the pavement. He did not notice it, and even though Peter was quite angry now, and waiting to say something to squash the sailor, natural politeness overcame him for an instant and he bent to retrieve it. The postcard pictured a gravestone-square hotel in Las Vegas. Peter handed it to him. “Oh. Yeah. Thanks, buddy.” He jammed it into his jacket pocket and thumbed through his wallet. “See? I got about seventy dollars. I’d pay it all if I could find that girl…honey-colored…brown eyes…with long legs like a dancer…and class. But you’re colored yourself. I guess you know colored girls are best.” He poked Peter in the ribs.

  “Let me ask you one question.” Peter began slowly, calmly. “Do you think every Negro in the whole world is a God-damn pimp?”

  For a moment the sailor did not understand. When he did, he looked guilty and apologetic. “Hey, I hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to do that. Hey, buddy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He reached out and grabbed Peter’s elbow.

  Peter shook himself free. “Just don’t go around asking every Negro you see to pimp for you.”

  “Awh, come on, buddy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I love colored people. They’re my kind of people. Look, let me buy you a drink.”