Camelot

by Caryl Rivers

  “Jay, those damn kids messed up the catchers’ mitts. I tell ‘em every time, don’t mess with the displays. Juvenile delinquents.”

  Johnny Lujack was quick frozen. Jay counted the mitts. “There’s only seven. There were eight when I counted them last time.”

  “It was the nigger kids, you bet. I’m going to get a nice store in Silver Spring, that’s where the good people are. Washington has gone to hell. Niggers and riffraff.”

  Jay nodded. He was not expected to answer. He owed his presence at AA Blitz Sporting Goods to the fact that Mr. Blitz was his mother’s cousin. He was family, he came cheap and he didn’t steal.

  “I been meaning to ask, Jay, how’s your dad?”

  “He’s been in bed for a couple of days, but he’ll be up soon.”

  “Tell your father I was asking for him. I see some of the drivers down at Haps. They ask for him too. A gentleman, your father. Not like some. Jay, are you going to the game? You can leave early if you are.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “I thought you liked basketball.”

  “I like to play it. I don’t like to watch it.”

  “I’m ordering the trophies for the team, ten dollars each. Nothing but the best for St. Anthony’s. That nigger kid is good. How come these nigger kids get so tall?”

  Jay started arranging the mitts. The one good thing about AA Blitz was that he could slide his hand across wood and leather and be Lujack or Cousy or DiMaggio. At the game, he was no one. He would watch the players, the gym lights glinting on their bare shoulders, and the envy would inflate inside him until he thought he would simply float to the top of the gym, hanging there like a huge balloon. His father had been All-City, and so Jay had the game in his genes. The coach had asked him, more than once, to come out. But Jay was stuck with AA Blitz in the afternoon. His father was out of the cab more days than he was in it now, and he got nothing for the days he did not drive. It was only his father’s lousy kidneys that stood between Jay and a blue-and-crimson All-Star jacket. Scouts from Maryland and Notre Dame would be in the stands to watch him. He would pick Notre Dame. You could Lose Your Faith at those other places. Sister Mary Catherine always said it that way, in Capital Letters, and Jay had visions of himself Losing It and then rooting about in garbage cans to get it back, finding it someplace between the orange peels and the old newspapers.

  “Hey, Jay, you ready?”

  Vincent J. Sheehan presented his shining face across the catchers’ mitts. Vinnie always looked scrubbed. The nuns loved him. He could get away with murder.

  “Nah, Vinnie, I’m not going.”

  Disbelief darkened Vinnie’s face.

  “Not goin! You said you were. I came all the way over here!”

  “I never said for sure.”

  “You said, Jay.”

  “Not for sure.”

  “Yeah you did. If we beat Gonzaga, we got the Catholic League title.” He jabbed Jay with his elbow. “Maybe after, we can get some action.”

  “I dunno.”

  Vinnie was always talking about “action,” but of course he would have run in terror from the prospect of the real thing. By sophomore year, some of the more advanced boys had actually felt female flesh, or at least the outside of a fuzzy sweater at places where it bulged. Jay and Vinnie went to movies and still traded baseball cards. They were not advanced.

  “Claire Ryan is having a party at her house after the game.”

  “Oh, Ryan,” Jay said, dismissively.

  “What’s wrong with Ryan? She’s built.”

  “She hangs around with Phil Mazzarato and those guys from the team. I bet she’ll just ask seniors.”

  “So what? We’ll crash. Seniors. Big deal.”

  He was standing in a corner of Claire Ryan’s house, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. He looked virile and mysterious.

  He had spent a considerable amount of time practicing smoking. He tried Bogart — cool, disdainful puffs. Gable was brisk, in command, the cigarette an afterthought. Alan Ladd was more romantic, a stream of smoke floating through his lips as he eyed some dame who was falling in love with him. Jay often coughed when he inhaled, something Alan Ladd didn’t do much. He’d have to work on that.

  Claire Ryan came up to him, her hair falling in small ringlets against her white throat.

  “Why are you standing here alone! ”

  “Hike to be alone.”

  “How strange you are. I never met a man like you.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Where!”

  “Away from here.”

  “I can’t go. ” Her eyes met his. “But I must go with you.”

  In actual fact, he had said eleven words to Claire Ryan in his whole life. “Do we have pages 12 to 14 in algebra to do?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Someday he was going to grow up and move to a place where they talked like they did in the movies. Nobody in his neighborhood talked like that. “I must go with you, my love.” Mainly they said, “Marie, I want a fucking beer,” and “What do I look like, your damn maid?” In New York they probably talked the other way.

  In a large bed in a white room, she lay naked beside him. “Jay, I can’t help myself. Be gentle with me, Jay.”

  Picturing Claire naked was a mortal sin, you’d burn in hell for that. The real Claire in the flesh might be worth it, but for a minute’s imagining it wasn’t. So he put one of the naked women he had seen in National Geographic beside him in bed. That was probably only a venial sin, because he didn’t know her, she was colored and she had on a grass skirt and carried a spear. She looked a little weird in his bed under the Notre Dame pennant, especially with the spear, but at least it wasn’t a mortal sin.

  “I haven’t got all day, Jay, you coming or not?”

  “OK, Vinnie, I’ll fucking go. I got to stop at home first, to tell my folks.”

  The rose-colored chair in the living room had been empty for four days. It was a relief not to have to go by that chair and see his father staring out the window. Jay would grip his books and hurry past, guilt trailing him across the hall runner. His father would be OK. People didn’t die from kidneys. All they did was store up piss.

  “Hey, Jay, you know where Ryan lives?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We ought to know, in case we want to crash.”

  “Sure we want to crash. You said you wanted to.”

  “Well, sure I want to. Crash.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do it. I will.”

  “You always chicken out, Vinnie. Big talk, no action.”

  “Not me, man. I won’t chicken out.”

  “Yeah you will.”

  “I wonder if Ryan does it with Mazzarato.”

  Jay frowned. Carnal speculation was OK for most girls, but not for Claire Ryan. He was certain she was pure. A temple of the Holy Ghost. The thought of Claire Doing It with Phil Mazzarato, who had brows that joined in the center of his forehead and who was covered with so much hair he looked like a gorilla — or so Jay thought when he glanced sideways at him in the locker room — made Jay feel queasy. The colored lady with the spear was more Phil’s type. Gorillas wouldn’t faze her, she living in the jungle and all.

  “What’s the matter, Jay, you got a thing for Ryan?”

  “I don’t give a shit for Ryan or any of ‘em.”

  “Sure, we know, Jay.”

  “Don’t be a shithead, Vinnie.”

  “We know.”

  “Vinnie, you are a real pain in the ass.”

  They walked up to the red brick rowhouse where Jay’s family occupied the first two floors. The door was ajar. That was strange. Jay’s mother was afraid of burglars and always kept the door bolted. Jay pushed the door open and walked in. Mrs. Calloway from the third floor was in the living room. His brother’s wife, Irene, a pale, tired-looking young woman, sat on the couch holding her baby. No one said a
word.

  Jay started to run up the stairs, his feet pounding on the faded daisies on the runner. His momentum carried him into the hall and through the open door of his parents’ room. The people in the room turned to stare at him. His mother was there, and his older brother, Frank, and Father Clevinger, the assistant from the parish. His father was lying in bed, very still. His eyes were closed, his face was pale, and his false teeth were not in. His mouth looked all dry and puckered without his teeth, and his breath made a whooshing sound as it came in and out.

  Frank grabbed Jay by the arm and pulled him into the hall.

  “Don’t you know better than to come busting in here like it was a fire? Don’t you have any sense, Jay?”

  “Frank, he’s not going to — he’s going to be OK, isn’t he?”

  “Keep your voice down! We’re saying the Rosary!”

  “Why didn’t you call me? I was at the store.”

  “He’s been like this for hours. There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “She called you. Why didn’t she call me?”

  “Stop behaving like a child. Mom has enough sorrow now. Don’t you go adding to it.” Frank always talked that way, as if he had read a book that had sentences in it that grown-ups were supposed to say. Jay thought he was a pain in the butt.

  “Why didn’t you put his teeth in, Frank?”

  His brother looked disgusted and turned and walked back into the bedroom. Jay followed him and went down to kneel at the end of the bed, as the rhythmic chant of the Rosary hummed along. He joined in. He hated the Rosary because he could only get through three Hail Marys when his mind would start to drift off, sometimes, horror of horrors, to the lady with the spear. Surely it was a mortal sin to be saying “Hail Mary” at the same time you were thinking of the big brown bazungas of a lady from National Geographic.

  “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  Jay looked at his father’s face, pale as the bellies of the fish his mother cooked on Fridays. Now, his father’s breath had begun to come out in little puffs through his lips. It sounded like he was breathing the letter P.

  Jay stared, unbelieving. This wasn’t happening. People didn’t die when they were forty-eight years old. Any minute all this weird stuff would stop and his father would put on a clean shirt and go downstairs to supper; he always wore a clean shirt to supper.

  “Now and at the hour of our death. Amen,” his mother said. She was a small, thin woman who always seemed drained of energy. He thought he remembered a time when she had been wiry and laughing, but he was not sure if he had simply imagined it. His father was tired all the time, too, but under the weariness was an anger that curled the long hands into a fist that clenched and unclenched.

  Jay was afraid of his father’s anger, not that it would be used against him, but that it could be there at all. Jay looked at his father’s hands, and a memory flashed into his mind. He thought he remembered the back of a green car as it sped away from where he lay in the street. He was bruised, nothing more, but his father held him at the edge of the street, and Jay felt he would crack in the desperate embrace of those hands.

  “World without end. Amen.”

  They did not talk much. Words were a chore to both of them. In the past few months there were times when Jay had felt his father’s eyes on him. In a flicker of a second he met his father’s eyes, and they were filled with an anguish that terrified him. What was there in the world that could hurt a man so strong? He did not want to know, so he grabbed up his books and called out, “Bye, Pop,” as he hurried out the door.

  The prayers flowed on, and Jay’s knees began to hurt where they pressed against the floor. He tried to concentrate on the words, seeing each one in his mind, but it didn’t work. It never did.

  He walked into the living room of the Ryan house. The music stopped. Everyone turned to stare. Phil Mazzarato, his one long eyebrow furrowed, glared at him.

  “You don’t belong here.”

  Jay gave him a cold look, part Brando, part Bogart, then ignored him. He walked over to Claire Ryan, to lead her to the floor where the couples were dancing. Phil Mazzarato grabbed his shoulder, fay shook the hand away, contemptuously, like Monty Clift had done to John Ireland in Red River. Phil Mazzarato swung, Jay blocked the blow and sent Mazzarato to the floor with one punch, like John Wayne did in The Quiet Man. The rest of the seniors jumped him. He knocked two of them down before they got him, but there were too many, even for him. He lay on the floor in a (small) pool of blood, and Claire screamed and ran to him. She lifted his bruised head, gently, like Natalie Wood did to Tab Hunter in (what was the name of that movie!). She did not care that his blood was staining her black velvet dress.

  “Cowards!” She sobbed. “He has more courage than any of you. ” Later, when they had gone, he recovered and she lay in bed beside him and there she was again, the naked lady with the spear…

  “World without end. Amen.”

  Claire and the lady with the spear vanished, and the green pyramid of his father’s foot beneath the blanket rebuked him silently. Remorse rattled through him. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. Please, God, I’m sorry.”

  “May perpetual light shine upon him and upon the souls of all the faithful departed. Amen.”

  Jay had heard that prayer as long as he could remember. He always thought of a huge railroad station, bigger even than Union Station, where the souls of all the faithful departed were standing around, holding suitcases. Waiting. His father would be there soon. He looked at his father and thought, I love you, and tried to project the thought inside his father’s head. It would not go in.

  “Jay, go and get Father Clevinger a glass of water,” Frank ordered.

  Jay walked down the hall to the bedroom. He picked up a clean glass and filled it with water, and then he saw, sitting on the back of the tank, the glass with his father’s teeth in it. He had seen them only a few times before; his father had hardly ever let anyone see him without his teeth since the gum disease had cost him his natural ones years ago. The few times he had seen them, they’d seemed to Jay to be a separate creature. He would not have been surprised if they had hopped out of the glass, clattered over to the rim of the sink and started chatting with him. They were repulsive and interesting at the same time.

  It occurred to him that there was still something he could do for his father. He picked up the glass with the fizzy cleaning stuff in it. The teeth seemed to smile at him. He put the glass down. He would never have the nerve to do it, just like he would never have crashed Claire Ryan’s party.

  He picked up the glass again, hesitated, then plunged his fingers into the liquid and gently pulled he teeth out of the glass. They were cool and wet, like he imagined a snake would feel.

  Then he picked up a washcloth, spread it on his palm, and put the teeth in the center of the washcloth. He walked carefully into the hall, where he nearly ran into Frank coming towards the bathroom.

  “Jay, I asked you —” He stopped, looking at the teeth, resting like crown jewels on the washcloth. “What in the name of God are you doing?”

  “He ought to have them in. It’s not right that he doesn’t.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “He doesn’t like people to see him without them in.”

  “He’s dying, you stupid little jerk. Don’t you know that!”

  “You’re the jerk, Frank.”

  Frank made a grab for the teeth, and Jay pulled them away. The teeth slid off the washcloth and bounced when they hit the carpet, coming to rest in the center of a faded yellow daisy. They grinned up at them.

  There was a sound from the bedroom; his mother’s voice, half a choke, half a cry. Jay picked up the teeth and ran to the bedroom behind Frank. His mother was bending over the bed, her face against her father’s hand. There were no more P’s coming from his father’s throat.

  “Lord, receive the soul of thy servant, Frank Broderick. May perpetual l
ight shine upon him and upon the souls of all the faithful departed. Amen.”

  Jay walked out of the room, into the hall and down the stairs, past the empty rose-colored chair and out the door. The sun had set, and the perfection of the night stabbed at him. From a radio somewhere on the block Eddie Fisher sang “Lady of Spain.”

  He looked down at his father’s teeth in his hands. The undertaker would need them for the wake. They shone in the starry night, accusers. He walked into the alley beside the building, kicking away the litter. He looked up at the sky and saw his father, suitcase in hand, walking towards the train station.

  “I love you,” he said.

  His father did not turn around.

  Journal: Donald A. Johnson

  I am the only Negro in the creative writing class. It’s a situation that seems strange to me now, since I’ve been working in the South with so many black people around me. I have to be careful again. Everybody will be looking at me to see if I belong.

  But I’m tired of being careful. I’m not going to write what white folks want to hear, but I’m not going to hide things from them either. My father is always worried about how colored people behave when white people are looking. It’s like we can be ourselves, with all our faults, only among our own. It seems we go to two extremes. Either we try to be perfect imitation whites, or we do the Big, Black and Bad number, shoving it right up whitey’s ass. Either way, we’re dancing to white people’s tunes, reacting to them. I want to write honestly about who I am, where I come from and what I’ve seen.

  Our professor has published three books of short stories. I’ve read some of them, and I think they are very good, very honest. I think I can learn a lot from her. I talked with her the other day, and she said she liked my writing samples a lot. She suggested I think about writing a book about my life. I was sort of stunned, and I said, “I’m only twenty-four years old, isn’t that sort of presumptuous?” But she said I had a wonderful story about growing up Negro in America and taking part in the civil rights movement, something that will be a huge part of our history. That it’s not only the leaders or the elected officials who are history, but people like me, ordinary people, who get swept up into its flow. Our lives are history too.