“Yes, I am,” Burke said.
The kids gathered at the buffet tried not to stare, but all of them looked covertly at Robinson. He went to them and shook hands carefully, one at a time, speaking to each of them, pausing longest with the birthday boy. He had brought an autographed baseball.
“There’s punch for the kids,” Walt Sewell said to Burke. “But something a lot harder for the grownups.”
“How else you gonna get through it,” Burke said.
“Brother, you got that right,” Walt said. “Care for a taste?”
“Sure,” Burke said. “Whatever you got.”
“Scotch all right?”
“Sure.”
Jackie was apparently talking hitting with the birthday boy and two friends. With an imaginary bat, he was showing them the grip, with the bat handle up into the fingers, not back in the palm.
“Known Jack long?” Walt said.
“Not so long, but quite well,” Burke said and took a drink of scotch.
The room had beige wallpaper with a darker brown vertical stripe. The wall-to-wall carpeting was caramel-colored. The furniture was white and graceful, with none of the thick mahogany heft that Burke was used to in the furnished apartments of his past. There were French doors at the back of the room that let in a lot of light and appeared to open onto some sort of patio.
“Nice house,” Burke said.
“Thanks,” Walt said. “It’s all Joan. My only contribution is to pay for it.”
He put his arm around Joan’s shoulder and she slipped her arm around his waist. Joan’s hair was smooth, and bobbed. Her makeup was good.
“Probably worth the money,” Burke said.
They were there for an hour. Everyone was trying to act at ease about Robinson being there. No one seemed to pay much attention to Burke being there. Chocolate cake appeared. And ice cream. Burke declined. He had a second drink instead. When they left, Joan gave each of them a piece of cake wrapped in a napkin.
In the car Burke said to Robinson, “You want this cake? It doesn’t go good with scotch.”
“I’ll take it home,” Jackie said. “Give it to Rachel.”
“Pretty much like any other birthday party I’ve seen,” Burke said.
“You seen many?”
“Mostly in the movies,” Burke said.
“Where they was white.”
“ ’Cept for the butler.”
Robinson smiled.
“What kind of party you think we might have?” Robinson said.
Burke shrugged.
“You white folks either think we dancing around in leopard skin skivvies,” Jackie said. “Or we sitting around talking how mean all the white folks is to us.”
“ ‘Nobody knows the trouble I seen . . .’ ” Burke sang.
“Yeah. That’s sort of it,” Jackie said. “Actually what we do is eat, and drink, and talk about the kids, and how they doing in school and who oughta be president and how taxes are looking, and did you hear Jack Benny last night? Sometimes, we ain’t married, we flirt a little, and try to get laid, if we can.”
Jackie smiled a little.
“Some folks,” he said, “even if they are married.”
“Sounds pretty USA to me,” Burke said.
“It seems to,” Jackie said.
“So why is it that everybody is bullshit about you playing with the white guys?” Burke said.
“Damned if I know,” Jackie said.
34.
BURKE WAS IN his usual spot at Ebbets Field. In a box just at the other end of the dugout, Lauren Roach sat with Louis Boucicault and three other men. Lauren and Louis were drinking something from a flask which they passed back and forth. Lauren looked over at him. Burke nodded. Lauren looked away. She put her face next to Louis and whispered something. They both giggled. The flask went back and forth between them. Burke looked at the men sitting in the row behind them. Three, Burke thought, his father has upped the guard detail. Lauren glanced over again at Burke. Her face looked flushed. Boucicault took her face in his hand and turned it back toward him, away from Burke. He held it that way for a moment, staring into her eyes. Then he gave her a long kiss. She responded to it visibly, her body arching forward, her arms around Boucicault. From where he sat Burke could see that her skirt was up over her thighs. He knew she was drunk. When the kiss ended they sat for a time watching the game, her head against his chest, his arm around her shoulders. Boucicault took a long pull at the flask, and, without looking back, handed it over his shoulder, apparently empty, to the man behind him who slipped it into his coat pocket and replaced it with another flask, apparently full.
Burke snapped a wooden match with his thumb and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply while he carefully broke the match in two and dropped it on the concrete beneath his seat. The Dodgers were playing the Cardinals, and, with the game tied and the bases loaded, and two men out, Stan Musial doubled off the right field screen. Everyone was on their feet. Dixie Walker’s throw was pointless, Jackie cut it off at the pitcher’s mound, and all three runners scored. Stan the Man, Burke thought.
When Burke looked back at Lauren she was kissing Boucicault again. Boucicault’s back was to Burke and Burke could see Lauren’s eyes over Boucicault’s shoulder. They were wide open. And looking at Burke. He looked back without expression. They held the look. Burke took a long drag on his cigarette and dropped it and stepped on it and let the smoke out slowly so that it drifted up in front of his face. Boucicault broke off the kiss and turned with his arm still around Lauren’s waist and looked at Burke. Burke lit another cigarette. Boucicault grinned at him. Burke inhaled more smoke. His face didn’t move. Someone yelled, “Down in front.” Boucicault paid no attention. One of the men with him turned and looked back at the shouter. On the field some of the players were looking into the stands.
“Hey, Burke,” Boucicault said loudly.
Burke said nothing. Boucicault turned Lauren so that she faced Burke in the small standing space in front of the seats. Boucicault put his left hand between Lauren’s legs and held her crotch.
“This is mine,” he said.
Lauren leaned against Boucicault as if she enjoyed the display. One of the men seated behind Boucicault leaned forward and said something to him. Boucicault pushed him back into his seat with his free hand. And stood with his hand on Lauren’s crotch and stared at Burke.
“You got anything to say, Burke?”
Burke continued to smoke, his gaze on Lauren. Her face was more flushed than it had been. Her skirt was gathered clumsily where Boucicault’s hand pressed between her legs. She turned and pushed herself in against Boucicault and kissed him again. Boucicault put both hands on her backside. Several people were now yelling for them to sit down, and a number of other people were whistling as they kissed. They held the kiss for a long time, then they broke and Boucicault took her wrist and led her up the aisle, with the three men behind them. Lauren took a long pull on the flask as they left.
Burke watched them go, then he sniped out the cigarette and turned his attention back to the game.
Bobby
Sex was shameful and corrupt. All of us knew it, especially the Catholic kids, who knew it was cause for eternal damnation. And those fires of hell were far more convincing to us than the joys of salvation. We knew that VD was lurking. We knew that pregnancy was nearly unavoidable. The girls knew that if they did it no one would marry them. I knew that my mother would never speak to me again.
These were dire consequences, and we all knew them. But the great unspoken certainty was that any of us, given the chance, would have risked everything for a moment’s penetration. We knew that dirty pictures endangered our souls. But if someone had one we would rush to look. We knew that masturbation was evil. But were not dissuaded. We knew people did it. The movies even hinted at it sometimes. “Howard Hughes presents Jane Russell in The Outlaw.” Every once in a while my parents, especially after cocktails, would be sort of huggy, as if they were more than friends
who loved each other and had a son.
The culture presented premenopausal women to us as girls. In the movies married men and girls slept in separate beds. In the movies men would fight for these girls, die for their girls. In the movies girls would scream for their men, tremble for them, dress their wounds, cry for them, wait for them. Love was everywhere. Passion was everywhere. Devotion was everywhere. Self-sacrifice abounded. Sex was nowhere. Except that the girls were sexy. And they were everywhere, on the radio, in the movies, in the magazines, in the ads. The songs. “To spend one night with you, in our own rendezvous.” The lingerie ads, bathing suit ads, stocking ads, car ads, canned ham ads, beer ads, hair tonic ads, aftershave ads. All of them fresh and clean and sweet and perky and crucifyingly desirable.
In that time we were taught by women, managed by women, admonished by women, brought up by women, punished by women, all through our adolescence. Writhing in the great unacknowledged polarity between culture and biology. Yearning to get laid. Fearing for our souls.
Marriage was our hope. The happiest condition. Loving wife. Children. Contentment. Better to marry than burn.
35.
IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Burke walked down Forty-sixth Street and into a bar called Freddy’s on Eighth Avenue. It was not very busy. A Negro with a touch like Teddy Wilson was playing piano. Paglia was sitting in a big round booth near the front with Cash. There were three bottles of red wine open on the table, in front of him, and three glasses. Paglia was drinking from one of the glasses. Burke sat down in the booth.
“Trying some new wines,” Paglia said. “Want some?”
Burke shook his head. He nodded at Cash, who nodded back.
“Want something else?” Paglia said.
“I’ll take Vat 69,” Burke said. “On the rocks.”
Paglia glanced at the bar and a waiter hurried over.
“Give him Vat 69 on the rocks,” Paglia said. “Make it a double.”
The waiter hurried off.
“You been talking with Wendell Jackson,” Paglia said.
Burke shrugged. The waiter appeared, put Burke’s scotch on the table and hurried away.
“This your place?” Burke said.
“Yeah. I got a lotta places.”
Burke nodded and sipped his scotch.
“I been talking with Wendell, too,” Paglia said.
“Everybody’s talking,” Burke said aimlessly.
“I do a lot of business in Harlem,” Paglia said.
Burke held his glass up, and looked at the light through the scotch, and took another swallow.
“Me and Wendell get along.”
“Good,” Burke said.
“Need to get along with Wendell if you do business in Harlem.”
“I heard that,” Burke said.
Paglia poured some wine and drank it and poured some more.
“I like Harlem,” Paglia said. “You can buy stuff cheap and charge high. The jigs got noplace else to go.”
The Negro who played like Teddy Wilson was doing variations on “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
Burke listened to the music while he waited.
“Wendell wants a favor from me,” Paglia said.
He drank some more wine.
“He wants me to give Robinson a break.”
“Stick together, don’t they,” Burke said.
“Jigaboos? Yeah, I guess they gotta. Anyway, we had a good chat, Wendell’s one of the smart ones, and I said I’d talk to you, see what we could work out.”
“White of you,” Burke said.
Cash smiled. Paglia paid no attention.
“So what do you want?” Paglia said.
“Lay off,” Burke said.
“Lay off what?”
“Lay off Robinson,” Burke said. “No shooters, nothing. Leave him alone.”
“Who told you I was botherin’ him?”
“You can probably figure that out,” Burke said.
Paglia stared at him for a time, silently, then poured some more wine, this time from a different bottle, into the same glass.
“That sonova bitch,” Paglia said. “You shoulda killed him, too.”
“Probably shoulda,” Burke said. “We got a deal?”
“That boy can play, can’t he,” Paglia said.
“Yep.”
“Hell, I’ll give him a pass,” Paglia said.
“Spell it out,” Burke said.
Paglia smiled. He was feeling the wine.
“I’ll lay off Robinson,” he said. “No shooters, nothing. I’ll leave him alone.”
“Fine,” Burke said.
Paglia smiled some more.
“You’re covered by the deal too,” he said. “Wendell likes you.”
“That’s swell,” Burke said. “I have your word?”
“You got my word, soldier,” Paglia said.
Burke finished his scotch.
“Thanks for the drink,” he said.
Paglia was drinking wine again, nodding his head in time to the piano music.
“Show him out, Cash,” Paglia said.
Cash got up and Burke followed him. They went out onto Eighth Avenue together.
“His word good?” Burke said to Cash.
“No,” Cash said. “But he’ll stick by this. As long as Wendell can squeeze him out of Harlem, if he don’t. It would cost him too much money.”
“So I can trust the money,” Burke said.
Cash grinned.
“You can always trust the money,” he said.
36.
THERE WERE ALWAYS people hanging around the players’ exit at every ballpark, many of them women. They were there when Burke and Jackie came out of Ebbets Field after a night game with the Pirates. A number of the women were Negroes, and they shrieked and giggled like bobby soxers as Jackie walked past. Burke always disliked these moments. Some women reached out toward Robinson, trying to touch him. Burke always tried to keep himself between Jackie and everyone else. No one paid him any attention. He was an invisible man in the glare of Jackie’s visibility.
Some of the women offered themselves.
“You come on down to my house, Jackie. . . . You want some lovin’, Jackie, you come right here to me. . . . You looking for a home run, honey. . . . Jackie, you get your sweet self over here to momma. . . .”
A lot of men and boys pushed things at Jackie to sign. Some tried to shake his hand. Some tried to talk with him.
“That Kirby Higbe ain’t got no chance with you, Jackie. . . . Dixie Howell can’t never throw you out. . . . We with you, Jackie, we with you. . . .”
As they moved through the crowd a light-skinned well-built Negro man in a good suit, wearing sunglasses, stepped in front of them.
“Evenin’, Mr. Burke,” he said. “Mr. Robinson.”
Burke said, “Ellis.”
“Wendell want to know everything working out copacetic with Mr. Paglia.”
“Fine,” Burke said.
Jackie looked at Burke and back at Ellis.
“Excellent,” Ellis said. “Wendell say in that case he like to meet Mr. Robinson.”
“Who’s Wendell?” Jackie said.
“Wendell Jackson,” Ellis said. “He done you a big favor. Your boy here ain’t telling you?”
Jackie looked at Burke. Burke shook his head.
“Guess he didn’t,” Jackie said. “What’s the favor?”
“Took Gennaro Paglia off your back.”
“Tell him thanks,” Jackie said.
“You don’t seem to get the idea,” Ellis said. “Wendell Jackson wants to meet you, you say where and for how long. Dig?”
Jackie looked at Burke.
“Whaddya think,” he said.
“He did us a favor,” Burke said. “Easiest thing is to meet him and say thank you.”
Ellis nodded toward the street.
“This way,” Ellis said.
“Sure,” Jackie said.
He and Burke walked behind Ellis to the street wh
ere a black four-door Chrysler sedan was parked at the curb. Ellis opened the back door. Burke got in first and Robinson followed. Ellis closed the door behind them and leaned on the car fender again. In front there was a thick-necked black driver, who didn’t turn around, and Wendell Jackson, who did. He sat sideways and rested his left arm on the seat back.
“I’m Wendell,” he said.
“Nice to meet you,” Jackie said. “Understand you did me a favor.”
“Understand?” Wendell said. “He didn’t tell you.”
“Burke don’t talk much,” Jackie said.
The street was empty now. Two cops who had been on duty outside the park headed for their squad car, parked across the street. They paused and looked at Wendell’s Chrysler, with Ellis leaning on the fender. One cop went on to stand beside his car, the other one took his nightstick out and walked across the street slapping the nightstick gently against his thigh. He had a round face and very small eyes.
Burke heard Ellis say, “Evenin’, Officer.”
“What are you doing here, boy?” the cop said. “You looking for trouble?”
Ellis murmured something Burke couldn’t hear and stepped away from the car. The officer stepped away with him.
“I do,” Wendell said. “I like to talk.”
Jackie nodded.
“While ago,” Wendell said, “you embarrassed Gennaro Paglia in one of his joints uptown.”
“Didn’t set out to,” Jackie said.
“No, don’t suppose you did. But Paglia pushed you kinda hard and you pushed back and White Hope Burke here, he pushed back too, and Gennaro got kind of showed up in his own joint. He don’t like to be embarrassed.”
“Most people don’t,” Jackie said.
“Gennaro don’t like it even more if he gets embarrassed by colored folks.”
Robinson was silent.
Outside the car, the cop said to Ellis, “Okay, just watch your step. You’re in Brooklyn now, boy, you ain’t struttin’ with some high yellow on Lenox Ave.”
“Yassah, Officer,” Ellis said.
As the cop walked back to his partner, he put the nightstick away and folded something and put it in his pocket.
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