Joyce Carol Oates - Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Because It Is Bitter

  hurt and lost looking.

  Pissy little white girl, he's thinking. Neck not worth wringing.

  Jinx keeps the photograph, however. In fact he must treasure it; his mother will discover it in a mess of old yellowing news paper clippings and other high school memorabilia, after Jinx's death.

  That faded, antique picture, dreamlike in its extraneous de tail, of long dead soldiers, horses. Stiffly yet resolutely poised on a bridge in some part of the world unknown to Jinx Fairchild. He never learns where the Chickahominy, creek or river, is. Guesses it must be the South.

  Those men living, then. Like me. Alive and walking around in their skins then, like me.

  Thinking me, me, me. like me.

  Jinx Fairchild doesn't feel any kinship with the black soldiers in the photograph. He sees to his surprise that one or two of them look actually younger than he. just boys. But he doesn't feel any particular kinship. A black man in uniform troubles his soul, for you got to figure, in North America at least, it's the Man's uniform he's wearing; just one other way for the Man to exploit. use up suck dry discard. Jinx doesn't think of ancestors, and he sure doesn't think of freed slaves.

  Slaves!

  No connection between the long dead soldiers on the Chick ahominy bridge and Jinx Fairchild in Hammond, New York, aged eighteen. No connection between Jinx Fairchild and anybody, whatever the color of their goddamn skin.

  Says Jinx aloud, thinking of these things, Fuckers!

  Though he'd be hard put to say, exactly, what he means or why he's so trembling angry.

  Says Sugar Baby Fairchild with an air of one put upon, Ain't nobody said anything about losing any fuckin' game, boy, you readin' me wrong his voice both whining and melodic, reproachful and brotherly warm you just don't play so cool, is all.

  A game is won by two points like it's won by twenty. It's the point spread that's the thing, and Iceman surely got his off nights like anybody else. Shit, there's Ernie Banks hisself, he was a rookie with the Cubs. I bet you Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, all of em. Jinx Fairchild the coolest player these shitheads ever seen, so, comes this night, over at Troy, maybe your team's kind of nerved up, scared, maybe Iceman has got a nasty cough, don't have to do any asshole thing, boy, any actual mistake, you just ain't so cool is all.

  And nobody's going' to know cause who can re ad minds?

  Sugar Baby is shooting baskets with Jinx, cigarette in his mouth: if he sinks one, OK; if he misses doesn't give a shit, ain't nothing but a boys' game anyway.

  Seeing his brother's face so stiff and his eyes hooded and hurt, Sugar Baby continues, laying a hand on Jinx's shoulder that Jinx shrugs off, I was watchin' you once, boy, you's just a kid, in the house; you knocked this glass or something' off the table with your elbow, then, right in midair, before it crash, you catch it.

  Jesus, just reach around and catch it! Like it wasn't anything you thought about cause can't nobody think that fast, just something' you done, like a cat swats a moth. I'm fast too, and I got eyes around the side of my head too, but I ain't like that. that's weird. So what I'm sayin', boy, is you got re flexes you don't even think about, so any time you start thinkin' about them maybe you're going' to be slowed up some, which would make you the speed of any other asshole playin' past his capacity, and in the game, that night, seein' it's the semifinals and Troy ain't that bad and all Hammond's got is mainly you and that big clodhopper guard what's his name. so Iceman naturally going' to be thinkin' more than just some ordinary game, right?

  Tryin' re al hard to win the championship for all them whiteys, right?

  Fuck face Breuer jumpin' up and down like he's comin' in his pants, right?

  Well, maybe, that night, performin' monkey just ain't so cool, is all.

  It's natural. Ain't nobody going' to blame you, you do it smooth.

  And you so smooth anyhow, boy, you can fuck up and look good at the same time. Say there's some asshole gets open, and you know, you pass him the ball, he prob'ly ain't going' to score, but you pass him the ball anyhow maybe bouncin' it sort of wrong and he loses it.

  or you got a free throw and get coughin'. any kind of shit like that.

  Like I say, two points can win a game like twenty. or whatever.

  Long as you win. Ain't that so, baby?

  It's a cool sunny wind whisked April morning, Jinx Fairchild bareheaded in soiled work pants and T shirt, Sugar Baby Fairchild a sight for the eyes in new maroon cord trousers with a wide leather brass buckled belt initials SBF in script , antelope hide jacket, two inch heeled square toed kidskin boots, four inch brimmed ve lour hat pushed to the side back of his head. meticulously trimmed sideburns, mustache. the whites of his eyes eerily white as he speaks, as if for emphasis. The quieter Jinx Fairchild is, the more Sugar Baby Fairchild talks. It's like singing, hs talk, like humming: the same words used again and again till they almost aren't words but just sounds, a comfort to them.

  No secret in the neighborhood that Sugar Baby Fairchild is Poppa D. s newest young man; even Minnie Fairchild must know her boy has got some tight connection with Leo Lyman over in Buffalo. Leo Lyman who's so legendary a name among local blacks. And there's the 1956 Eldorado, gleaming pink and gold, chrome like bared grinning teeth, and all the accessories, and the fancy apartment on Genesee Street where he's living with this good looking high yalla woman who's an old friend too of PoppaD. s.

  Seem like everybody, in a certain circle, is tight friends of everybody else.

  These days, Sugar Baby Fairchild isn't welcome in the house on East Avenue; Minnie won't have him. Won't even accept money from him, or presents. The few times he has offered.

  Sugar Baby Fairchild has told his family it's privileged work he does for Poppa D whole lot better than janitor work or shoveling gravel or cleaning up white folks' shit at the hospital or some hotel uptown or hauling away their garbage, which is what his friends from high school do, mostly. He doesn't see Jinx very often, runs into him on the street sometimes; this is the first time he has actually sought Jinx out, approaching him in the playground where Jinx is practicing baskets, and at first it isn't clear to Jinx what Sugar Baby wants, why he's so friendly, so interested in Jinx's plans for the future. this is the brother who hadn't troubled to attend one of Jinx Fairchild's games this year.

  And in those clothes, tight pants and high heeled shoes, and smoking a cigarette, Sugar Baby surely isn't interested in fooling around with a basketball.

  Now Jinx knows what it is, Jinx isn't saying anything. His legs stiff like a zombie or robot in a movie and he's missing half his shots.

  and Sugar Baby's getting impatient, working up a little sweat. Shit, you actin' like some gal thinks her pussy's so special can't nobody touch it. What you care about them white mothas?

  You think they care about you? You think they give a shit about you?

  All you is, boy, is a performin' monkey for them, same as I was, and if you don't perform, you on your ass. and they turn their attention to the next monkey. You think they give a shit about you?

  Truth is, asshole, they don't even know you. never heard of you.

  He makes a contemptuous spitting gesture.

  It happens like this: Sugar Baby's penny shiny face is screwed up like he's in pain, and with no warning Jinx rushes at him, and easy as the blink of an eye Sugar Baby sidesteps him raises his right knee so fast, so unerring, and so hard, into Jinx's testicles, the move so exquisitely timed, it's clear the move can t have been performed for the first time.

  Could be, there is a God.

  Could be, He's got punishment on His mind.

  Kneeling, Jinx Fairchild prays Help me, God, help me to be good, his mind drifting off even as he prays thinking of pumping himself deep in one of his girls or in Graice Courtney or in that white cunt missis Dunphy who's always smiling at him. thinking of bringing that rock down on Little Red Garlock's head Help me, God, I'm waiting.

  Thinking, God, what you going to do about it? I'm waiting.

  Slow at first, then fast, l
ike a rock slide gaining momentum as it falls, accelerating as it gets heavier, Jinx Fairchild's life starts to unravel.

  So much pressure on the boy with the state tournament games coming up, all the publicity of Hammond Central's first undefeated basketball season in fourteen years, and these scholarships he's being offered or the rumor is, he's being offered from Cornell, Syracuse, Penn State, Ohio State, Indiana. no wonder Jinx Fair child is becoming nervous, edgy, short tempered, strange, not like himself.

  If not like himself, then like who?

  Ceci, who saw the movie with her girlfriends, says, Jinx getting' like three faces of Eve' nobody ever know which face is comin' up.

  * *

  He's partying, too. Which he'd never had time for, before.

  Drinking, trying a little reefer

  A late night party one weekend, at somebody's house on Peach Tree Street where there's no adult to interfere, music turned up so high you couldn't hardly hear what it is Jerry Lee Lewis, maybe, singing Great Balls of Fire, closest thing to black any white music can get and suddenly Sissy Weaver who's so crazy for Jinx Fair child, and crazy drunk tonight, throws herself on Louise Thornton who's been hanging on Jinx, and the two girls fight over him while Jinx stares stricken in embarrassment.

  You get your fuckin' hands off him cunt!

  You stand off, girl you crazy!

  Sissy Weaver with her smoky skin and hot eyes and Louise Thornton with the re d haired glamour wig, the black sequined jersey dress: two good looking girls fighting over Jinx Fairchild, there's screaming, there's fists, there's kicking. the red haired wig flying!. glasses and chairs crashing!. the two girls rolling on the floor cursing and punching trying to kill each other while Jinx Fairchild scrambles over them trying to pull them apart but fearful of touching them, not knowing what in hell to do.

  Jerry Lee Lewis bawling Great Balls of Fire so it's coming out of your ears, not going in.

  Next day, and the next, when the story of the Fight Over Jinx Fairchild goes around the neighborhood, it's generally said that Sissy Weaver won. Leastways, she's the girl Jinx Fairchild went home with.

  These weeks, the end of basketball season and the start of the state tournament, Minnie Fairchild understands that things are drifting out of her control but doesn't know why or how to stop them.

  She's frightened at the change in her boy, the way his natural sweetness is going sour, she hears the neighborhood stories, she knows, but her fearfulness gets twisted around and comes out loud and accusing and mock enraged. like she's a TV mother saying her words bright and sassy and exaggerated, hoping to make light of the very fearfulness behind them. Saying to Jinx, storming after im while he shields his head, Some slutty little gal's going to catch you sure enough, smart ass, and, Don't pay your momma any mind, huh? Don't think I know what's going oncan smell it on you? and, Who you think you are, boy, the King of Siam?

  King Farouk?

  One day, Minnie traps Jinx in his bedroom, confronting him with things she's heard things her women friends delight in telling her and Jinx hunches up like a little boy, his face suddenly crinkling, his eyes wet with tears, and he says, You tell me, Momma; you know all the answers, and it isn't even sass as he says it, but straight from the heart.

  And Minnie Fairchild just stands there, blinking.

  Performing monkey.

  S'pose you decide to stop performing.

  Jinx Fairchild has cut the morning's classes, probably he'll cut the afternoon's too but show up at three fifteen for practice. if mister Breuer knows he's been truant, mister Breuer won't say a word.

  Clapping his hand on Jinx Fairchild's back as he did Friday night after he Lebanon game, giving off his brassy sweaty smell that's the smell of pride.

  Take your hand off a me, white mothafucker, Jinx Fairchild doesn't think, cause Jinx Fairchild's not the kind of black boy to think such thoughts.

  Naw. Jinx Fairchild the kind of black boy, anybody wanted to be integrated they'd want to be integrated with him.

  Jinx is leaning out over the railing of the Main Street bridge, drops a glob of phlegmy spit twenty feet down into the river. The current's rough, flecked with white; the color of the water is steely thousands of thinnesses of steel wire. There's a harsh metallic smell too, a harshness to the April air that goes directly to the bone and the marrow inside the bone.

  He shivers, feels something rough and fiery at the back of his throat.

  Phlegm in hot coin sided globs keeps wanting to come up, rack him in coughing.

  He's facing east. To his left is the raggedy shore bordering

  Diamond Chemicals; to his right, the railroad yards, the ware houses, the wharfs, docked freighters and trucks loading and un loading, and the waterfront saloons and the crazy steep hills of Gowanda, Pitt.

  Coming straight at him, bound for the lake, is a freighter, head on, slicing the choppy waves, appearing foreshortened like a bulldog.

  Jinx is just staring out, not thinking. If he were thinking.

  if he goes to the police now, this morning, and confesses his crime, his life will be interrupted yet it will be complete. There's a pleasure in that. There's a satisfaction.

  He tries to re call how old he'll be, his next birthday. The date falls on the far side of an abyss wide as the Cassadaga.

  At the police station, they'll take him into an interrogation room.

  They'll ask questions; he'll answer. His voice slow and hollow sounding as it has been lately, in school. As if his voice isn't inside him but being thrown across a distance. As if he's a ventriloquist 's dummy.

  But he isn't thinking these things, exactly. His eyes are misting over in the wind. He's flexing and straining his arm muscles, leaning out over the railing. Jinx Fairchild has got good, solid muscles.

  maybe a little tight. the kind of muscles that can tear

  Muscles, tendons, bones. He's re ad that the perfect athlete is a machine made of flesh. Doesn't need to think cause his body thinks for him.

  Jinx Fairchild has been taping his ankles carelessly these days, preparing for games.

  Doesn't like to be touched, these days.

  I would like to confess to.

  That boy who was found in the river, two years ago.

  My name is Verlyn Fairchild and I am the killer of Then he won't be playing with the team this Saturday in the semifinal game of the New York State High School Basketball Tournament, won't ever be playing basketball again. Won't hear the cheers and whistles and stamping like a Niagara Falls of happiness washing over him. Rising up to drown him.

  Performing monkey.

  Jinx squints at the river. So much winking, glittering, like chips of mica or flashes of thought. More powerfully than Peach Tree Creek this river forces the mind to unmoor itself and rush forward, a sick helpless feeling rising from his toes. My name is. I am the killer of. Twenty feet below, his re flection is dark and shimmering; beneath it, pushing through, is the face of the other: the broad cheeks, the close set malicious eyes, the teeth bared in a wide white smile.

  Jinx stares in horror: hair lifting from the head in tufts like clumps of baby snakes.

  Jinx is paralyzed in horror: feeling the fingers close around his ankle. Tugging down, down, down.

  How long he's there, leaning precariously out, his fingers slipping on the rusted railing and his eyes dilated as if the pupils have begun to bleed into the iraicees, Jinx Fairchild doesn't know. He has very nearly lost his balance. He has forgotten where he is and why. The river is no longer the Cassadaga River but a churning rushing living thing, a region of spirits; the me, me, me in Jinx Fairchild's brain has been drowned out by their deafening murmur.

  But he doesn't fall. Doesn't drown.

  He wakes from his trance to see to his shame that someone has been watching him. waiting for him to fall? to jump? It's a pasty faced man squatting below the bridge on a slab of concrete amid a jagged peninsula of similar slabs of concrete near shore, fishermen's perches, though the man peering up at him, amused, wai
ting, is not a fisherman.

  A man Jinx has never seen before, in a railroad cap, soiled trousers.

  Not young, not old, a stranger, grin rung and gaping up at Jinx Fairchild in expectation of seeing him plunge into the river.

  Jinx feels his face pound with sudden heat as if he'd been slapped.

  The man below isn't embarrassed in the slightest; he cups his hands to his mouth and calls out, Hey boy, whatcha doin' up there? in mock solicitude, and Jinx backs off, giving him an obscene gesture: Go fuck yourself, whitey.

  Jinx re treats. The spell is broken. Below the bridge, idiot laughter echoes and reverberates amid the rusted girders.