The Magic Keys

by Albert Murray

  XIII

  At the end of the spring term I had completed all of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree except the thesis, on which (in addition to the other research reports) I had begun working during the Christmas holiday break and which I finished and submitted by the late-summer deadline. So I was eligible to enter the Ph.D. program that next September. But when I went to register and work out my course of study and request my choice of professors, I had already decided that I was going to spend only this consecutive year attending formal classroom lectures and seminars and doing academic research reports in preparation for the dissertation required for the doctorate in the field of humanities in those days.

  One more consecutive year of academic gumshoe, I told Taft Edison the day after I was notified that my thesis had been approved. And when he asked what about the year after that, I told him about Eunice’s plans and also about the letter back in June from the English Department down in central Alabama offering me a temporary position as an instructor of freshman and sophomore composition and introduction to literature.

  You didn’t have to explain that the offer did not imply that anybody down there assumed that I had decided to be a college professor and that it had been made only as a suggested option in the event I needed more cash to supplement my fellowship grant. Taft Edison already knew that because he already knew that the head of the English Department making the offer was Carlton Poindexter, whose junior-year class in the English novel he was enrolled in and who also was his informal extracurricular reading consultant when I was a freshman.

  By that time Taft Edison also knew that I had not yet decided not to become a college teacher, because he knew that I had not yet finally made up my mind not to complete the Ph.D. program. But he did know that I was beginning to question the relevance of the Ph.D. degree to achievement in the arts. Because he was the one to whom I had said what I said about the difference between formal training in the arts and in the sciences and mathematics. I said if my main intellectual orientation had led me into science and mathematics I probably would have been aiming at a Ph.D. since junior high school. Because you had to work your way up to that academic level just to become involved with what had now become an indispensable part of the most elementary terminology, equipment, and procedure.

  In the arts and the humanities, on the other hand, I said, you could actually come by all of the fundamentals by the time you could function on a senior level of an accredited high school. Because by then you would have been initiated into the realm of the great world masterpieces of literature, music, and history, and the ones you had not read as class assignments on your own initiative were part of the same universal context as the ones assigned. After all, it was not as if you had to go on beyond high school and then college and then graduate in order to read other masterworks by the same Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Balzac, or George Eliot, a sample of whose works you had already come to terms with in high school or even as a high school dropout.

  Eunice, who had fulfilled all of the requirements for the M.S. degree in education at Teachers College, was looking forward to spending the next year in New York working as a part-time substitute elementary school teacher. But I knew that she felt that after that she should spend at least several terms working as a teacher, administrator, or supervisor down in central Alabama. She knew very well that the hometown benefactors who had provided the four-year college scholarship to earn her B.S. degree, without which she would not have been in position to win the fellowship for graduate study for the master’s degree at Teachers College, would not feel that she had deserted them.

  She knew as well as I did that their reaction would be exactly the same as when down-home folks have always celebrated local people who succeed elsewhere, especially up north in Philamayork. Who knows? Such down-home celebration of locals who make good elsewhere may have begun all the way back in the era of the fugitive slave, of whom those still down on the plantation most often said not that he or she ran away and left us, but rather if he or she could do that, other folks down here can do it, too.

  I could already hear all sorts of variations on remarks like: Y’all remember little ol’ frizzly-headed Eunice Whatshername that use to pass by here going to and from school? And went on through high school and got that big send-off to college? Well, they say when she finished up her college course she got another big send-off to New York. And when she passed some courses up there they hired her. Everybody always did say that girl was going places. I always liked the way she carried herself on the way to and from school and anywhere else. Always neat as a pin whatever she was wearing and never one to cash in on being that good-looking. You can ask anybody and they’ll tell you. Didn’t go around with her nose in the air neither. That child had her nose in them books every chance she got. I always did say she could make it anywhere doing anything she put her mind to.

  She was as aware of all that as any other scholarship student I ever met. So she also knew that her hometown folks, like mine down in Gasoline Point and Mobile County Training School, wanted her to go wherever her quest for further development led her. And she also knew that their trust of her judgment was such that none of her down-home benefactors had assumed that she had given up on her own professional objectives to get married. After all, it was as if she had gotten married and gone straight off to graduate school as if on an extended honeymoon.

  In any case, if I had said nothing about going back down to central Alabama because I had decided to stay at New York University for a third consecutive year as I had originally anticipated, she would not have said what she said about going back when she did since she already knew that I had begun to question the relevance of my academic research assignments to the way I was beginning to want to come to my own terms with things. When I showed her the letter with the offer from central Alabama she said, Why not? She said, Meanwhile, I have some unfinished business of my own down in those parts.

  You didn’t have to explain any of that to Taft Edison, and when he said, Speaking of roommates, I’ve been making a few cautious moves in that direction myself, and there is somebody you’ll be meeting soon, I knew that he was changing the subject. And I said, Whenever you say.

  I knew that he had been married for a short time during his second year in New York, and I also knew that former wife’s name and that she was a nightclub entertainer, but he never discussed their relationship except to say that it was a mistake that was soon corrected and that there were no lingering after-effects. That was all he said and I did not ask him anything else about her.

  He said, Her name is Janice and we’ve been seeing each other for a few months now and have just about decided that we’ve got something going that should be continued at a closer range of involvement. So we’re looking for a place. I must say, and as you probably guessed, this was not something I was looking for at this time. It just happened and I must tell you, man, as much as she has going for her, no small part of it is the fact she knows how I feel about this thing I’m tangled up with, this goddamn albatross of a manuscript of a homemade novel—man, talking about mammy made!

  And that was when he also said what he said about what he was trying to do and also said that if he came anywhere close to what he had in mind he did not expect the sales to add up to enough to put it on the bestseller list and that if there were enough sales to encourage the publisher to offer him a contract for another book, he would consider himself as having been successfully launched on a career as a literary professional.

  Man, he said, she knows that I have to try to see if I can do what I think I should be doing with a book.

  And I said, She sounds like she’s the one, all right. And he said, Could be and he said, So far, so good, I must say. So now we’re going to find out if she can put up with the likes of me on a daily basis.

  When he called again several weeks later, he said, Hey, man, looks like we have a change of address on our hands over here, and yes, that means that I’ve given you o
bvious reason to assume it implies. We’ve jumped the broom, tied the knot, and are about to give up my place on St. Nicholas and her place on Convent for a larger place over at 730 Riverside Drive, an eighth-floor place from which you can see directly across the Hudson River to Palisades Park and also a partial view of the George Washington Bridge! So, man, we’re hoping to get it all presentable enough during the next few weeks to have you all and a few other friends over for an old down up plus “up here” New Year’s Eve celebration. With pigs’ feet, black-eyed peas, collard greens, okra, and corn bread, plus down-home bootleg white lightnin’ as well as up-here champagne, and for dessert gingerbread muffins and/or sweet potato pie.

  XIV

  As for the one who was to be the one for the likes of me, when I got to college the main thing during those first two years was the necessity to maintain the grade-point average required for the renewal of my scholarship grant. Then there was also the no less urgent matter of coping with how my roommate was taking all of those college-level course requirements in stride as if they were as routine as current newspaper and magazine articles.

  I was the one who was enrolled in the Department of Liberal Arts. He was in the Department of Architecture. But it was as if the main thing for him was the wide selection of the great books of world history, literature, philosophy, and science that he could check out of the library and read on his own.

  Elementary, my dear Watson, he said when we came back from our first exploration of the card index in the main reading room and the racks and shelves of the periodicals room. Elementary. Name me any human concern that your qualified architect is not expected to know where to find the goods on. Context, my dear fellow, nor do I speak only of material surroundings and time frames.

  Jerome Jefferson, polymath. T. Jerome Jefferson. Better known on campus as Geronimo from Chicago, and also as the Snake, as in snake in the grass, and as snake doctor as in snake-oil doctor. But only partly because the snake oil was actually the chemistry laboratory alcohol cocktail he used to concoct and bootleg from time to time, especially when there were campus socials.

  Taft Edison, who was there only during that first year, now remembered him not only because his chem lab concoction had predance customers in the band cottage, but also because as a freshman he had joined the augmented French horn section that the band took to Chicago along with the football team for the annual game with Wilberforce University at Soldier Field.

  Neither of us became involved in an ongoing relationship with a special on-campus girlfriend during those first two years. With me it was a matter of avoiding encounters that were not mutually casual, because I couldn’t spare the extra money you had to have for regular dates, treats, and ceremonial gifts. But for him, it was a matter of choice. He could afford the extra spending change, but he preferred “freelancing” because it was consistent with the bohemian nature of college life that he had in mind for us when he labeled our room Atelier 359.

  When classes began on the first day of my third fall day on campus, my roommate was no longer there, because he had transferred to the School of Architecture at Yale. And as much as I missed him, I was also pleased that, so far, nobody had been assigned to replace him because I was then twenty-one years old and I had never had a room all to myself before. Now I was twenty-one and also an upperclassman.

  Then it was the first week of that third October, and there she was. I was on my way up the steps of the main entrance of the library and I overtook someone I had not seen on campus before and stopped to hold the door open for her to step past me into the lobby. And in that time frame of less than one bar of music it was as if I had stepped into that enchanted boy blue zone of crepe myrtle yard blossoms and dog fennel meadows again. And I had to say something more than just hello or good morning. So I said, How is freshman orientation coming along this year? And that is how I came to know that she was a sophomore who had transferred after spending her freshman year at State Normal. And I said, I hope you will be glad you did.

  We came up the wide staircase side by side and step by step, but I didn’t say anything else until we stepped onto the second floor landing and then all I said before she turned left to go into the main reading room was, Well, good luck, and I hope you like it here enough to stick around.

  And she said she already liked it very much and when I said, So we’ll be seeing you around, meanwhile, best wishes, she said, Thank you again. So far everybody has been very understanding and very helpful, especially when they find out that I’m not a freshman.

  That was all that happened. And I came on into the reference room and checked out the books I wanted from the special reserve list shelf and it was not until I sat down to open the first book that I realized that I had not asked her name and I had not given her mine. That was how it all began for me, because even as I realized that I could go into the main reading room and find her, I also realized that all I could do was just sit there with my fingers crossed and hope that she had not been on her way to join somebody. Maybe even somebody she had transferred from State Normal to join—or even more probably, someone she had met since arriving on the campus.

  Which is why for the next week every time I went into the dining hall I crossed my fingers hoping that I would not see what I did not want to see. I came through the same side entrance that I always used because it was the one you came to first when you came along Campus Avenue from the dormitories on the upper end of the campus or across from the quadrangle, which included the library, the main academic building in those days, and the gymnasium, which included the main entertainment auditorium, beyond which were the tennis courts and the campus bowl. But instead of scanning the tables to locate who was already there and sitting with whom and where, I headed straight to and through the serving line and onto an empty table all the way at the back of the hall near a window through which you could look down the slope to the campus power plant and campus laundry area. And when I finished I left through the exit nearest that part of the building, which was also the shortest route back to Atelier 359.

  So I didn’t see what I didn’t want to see and after four days I realized I hadn’t seen what I really wanted to see either. And then I also realized that I was crossing my fingers again, not only because I wanted to see her all by herself again, but also because I was hoping that she had not decided to go back to State Normal or had transferred to Talladega or Fisk or Spelman. Or maybe she didn’t eat in the cafeteria because she didn’t live on campus. Maybe she had relatives or family friends with whom she was boarding on or off campus. Or maybe she was living off campus because she was married to somebody who already lived off campus and that was why she had transferred from State Normal in the first place!

  Not that I was any more able to begin a steady on-campus relationship than I had been during my freshman or sophomore years. I could spare enough cash for an off-campus caper now and then, and I could also manage to keep enough petty cash on hand to go out to listen to the best of the topflight dance and variety orchestras when they included a one-night stand at the Dolomite on their annual coast-to-coast and border-to-border bus tour schedules.

  So far this had happened only several times each year. But it was something I didn’t intend to miss. Because although I never had any urge to become a musician myself, old Luzana Cholly and his twelve-string guitar, and old Stagolee Dupas fils and his honky-tonk gut bucket and patent leather avenue stride time piano and the sound of Bessie, Mamie, and Trixie Smith and also old Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and Louis Armstrong on Miss Blue Eula Bacoat’s gramophone over in Gin’s Alley were already indispensable parts of what having a good time was all about that many years before I was to become the schoolboy that Miss Lexine Metcalf and Mr. B. Franklin Fisher wanted me to be.

  So I felt the way I felt about the Dolomite because out there not only could you finally hear the actual bands playing the music they had made famous on recordings and radio, you could also get into personal contact with the musicians themsel
ves.

  So far, so good, I remember thinking as I moved along in the registration line for junior-year students that third September. So far, so very good. So far, so very, very good. I had not been able to go back home since I arrived on campus, but by taking a full-time on-campus job during the Christmas holidays and the summer vacation months I had been able to supplement my scholarship grant budget and provide myself with basic incidentals with just enough left over to get by on if you pinch pennies.

  Indeed so far, better than ever because not only was I halfway to graduation but I was also enjoying the highest standard of living I had ever had access to. Nothing was hand-me-down or makeshift. On the contrary, dormitories were inspected daily and there were also summer entertainment features and campus recreational facilities plus the library and all that freedom from class assignment time for the extracurricular reading I had come to realize I needed to do. And besides, what would I do back in Gasoline Point, anyway? I had never had a job in Gasoline Point or in downtown Mobile either, and unskilled jobs were as scarce as ever.

  So far, so good, yea verily. And after all, when I got on that Greyhound bus with my new gladstone bag and my scholarship award voucher and my one-way ticket, my intention was to be long gone and farther, and when I arrived on campus my question was not When do I return to Gasoline Point and Mobile? but Where do I go on to from here? Philamayork, Philamayork, the also and also of Philamayork, to be sure, which even before junior high school was already a fireside, tell-me-tale code name for the best of all possible places.