by Ed Bullins
It comes tipping. A white gown covers its moist lines. Its breasts poke out in tips. The white gown falls to the tops of her toes, sweeping the circle of her stride. Above the angular neck floats her narrow black face. High cheekbones and stub nose are planted beneath the wide arching eyes and short black kinky hair tops all.
“I’ve waited so long,” he says. “Can you?”
She nods; her dark eyes tease but she nods. The wicks sputter.
“Now,” he says. “NOW!”
And darkness slides in like a giant gull’s shadow to roost with the last torches’ breath, and she slinks with cat grace to his feet, and with her darting fiery tongue, licks his soles until he pleads to be saved from …
In the Wine Time
She passed the corner in small ballerina slippers, every evening during my last wine time, wearing a light summer dress with big pockets, swinging her head back and to the side all special-like, hearing a private melody singing in her head. I waited for her each dusk, and for this she granted me a smile, but on some days her selfish tune would drift out to me in a hum; we shared the smile and sad tune and met for a moment each day but one of that long-ago summer.
The times I would be late she lingered, in the sweltering twilight, at the corner in the barber shop doorway, ignoring the leers and coughs from within, until she saw me hurrying along the tenement fronts. On these days her yellows and pinks and whites would flash out from the smoked walls, beckoning me to hurry hurry to see the lights in her eyes before they fleeted away above the single smile, which would turn about and then down the street, hidden by the little pretty head. Afterwards, I would stand before the shop refusing to believe the slander from within.
“Stevie … why do you act so stupid?” Liz asked each day I arose to await the rendezvous.
“I don’t know … just do, that’s all,” I always explained.
“Well, if you know you’re being a fool, why do you go on moonin’ out there in the streets for that?”
“She’s a friend of mine, Liz … she’s a friend.”
August dragged in the wake of July in steaming sequence of sun and then hell and finally sweltering night. The nights found me awake with Cliff and Liz and our bottles of port, all waiting for the sun to rise again and then to sleep in dozes during the miserable hours. And then for me to wake hustling my liquor money and later to wait on the corner for my friend to pass.
“What’d the hell you say to her, Steve?” Cliff asked.
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing?”
“Nawh … nothin’.”
“Do you ever try?”
“Nawh,” I said.
“Why? She’s probably just waitin’ for you to …”
“Nawh she’s not. We don’t need to say anything to each other. We know all we want to find out.”
And we would go on like that until we were so loaded our voices would crack and break as fragile as eggs and the subject would escape us, flapping off over the roofs like a fat pigeon.
Summer and Cliff and Liz and me together—all poured from the same brew, all hating each other and loving, and consuming and never forgiving—but not letting go of the circle until the earth swung again into winter, bringing me closer to manhood and the freedom to do all the things that I had done for the past three summers.
We were the group, the gang. Cliff and Liz entangled within their union, soon to have Baby Dan, and Hester, and Skunky, and Dee Dee, and maybe who knows who by now. Summer and me wrapped in our embrace like lovers, accepting each as an inferior, continually finding faults and my weaknesses, pretending to forgive though never forgetting, always at each other’s vitals … My coterie and my friend … She with the swinging head and flat-footed stance and the single smile and private song for me.
She was missing for a day in the last week of summer.
I waited on the corner until the night boiled up from the pavements and the wine time approached too uncomfortably.
Cliff didn’t laugh when he learned of my loss; Liz stole half a glass more than I should have received. The night stewed us as we blocked the stoop fighting for air and more than our shares of the port, while the bandit patrol cruised by as sinister as gods.
She was there waiting the next day, not smiling nor humming but waving me near. I approached and saw my very own smile.
“I love you, little boy,” she said.
I nodded, trying to comprehend.
“You’re my little boy, aren’t you?” She took my hand. “I have to go away but I wanted to tell you this before I left.” She looked into my eyes and over my shaggy uncut hair. “I must be years older than you, but you look so much older than I. In two more years you won’t be able to stop with only wine,” she said. “Do you have to do it?”
“I don’t know … just do, that’s all,” I explained.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “I must go now.”
“Why?”
“I just must.”
“Can I go with you?”
She let go of my hand and smiled for the last time.
“No, not now, but you can come find me when you’re ready.”
“But where?” I asked.
“Out in the world, little boy, out in the world. Remember, when you’re ready, all you have to do is leave this place and come to me; I’ll be waiting. All you’ll need to do is search!”
Her eyes lighted for the last time before hiding behind the pretty head, swinging then away from me, carrying our sorrowful, secret tune.
I stood listening to the barber shop taunts follow her into the darkness, watching her until the wicked city night captured her; then I turned back to meet autumn and Cliff and Liz in our last wine time, meeting the years which had to hurry hurry so I could begin the search that I have not completed.
The Helper
“You the helper?” she asks, peering through the cracked slit between door and frame. He nods.
“Well, come on in.” The door is shut; he hears the chain clatter and the spring of the lock snapping before the hold button’s click, and she is pulling the door open as he walks into the narrow hallway.
Her sandy hair is tied by a bandana and the blue Levi’s are faded dull.
“My husband ain’t here now; he’s gone to rent a trailer and car. My daddy and him will be back directly and they can help us.”
The dining room is crowded with boxes, filled and tied, and chairs are stacked in corners, around tables and stands, and among piles of movables. It is a threeroom apartment; one bedroom, a living room, a dining area and kitchen behind, with the bathroom off the hallway. In the front room, a television chassis sits empty, gaping and hollow, as the tube lies upon the floor, beside the shell, a squat cyclops. At the end of the hallway, opposite the living room doorway, is the bedroom.
“Have a seat, won’t you?” she says, leading him into the front room.
Sunshine upon the curtainless panes gleams through the clearness, flashing over the floor, reflecting down the hallway and back to the front, in the bedroom, and outside along the ivied sides of the building to burn over the leaves until reaching farther, the rays trace out the pattern of the kitchen window and scorch through. The curtains are stacked atop a clothes hamper which bulges with top ajar. A calendar of a cowgirl, in only holsters and spurs, her crimson nails clashing with the flash of her silver pistols, takes aim, hanging from the wall above the television. The helper’s eyes cross to where the cowgirl’s gun barrels point toward the bridge of his nose.
The room he and the girl sit in is done in pink, with white baseboards slicing the pastel blocks of the walls into rectangles, the woodwork leading around corners and up the halls and framing the bedroom and kitchen, to stream flooding in a pool of glare, sun-dashed and stark, striking out like the sun’s mirror from the painted white bathroom. Rolled and tied upon the bathroom floor is a scruffy white rug.
“Would you like some coffee?” she asks.
“Yes, black, please.”
&n
bsp; Chubby hands smooth down the girl’s sides, smoothing themselves against the bulges of her sides and pants as she steps into the kitchen.
“You sure you don’t want anything in your coffee?” she calls from the kitchen.
He doesn’t reply. From his seat on the couch, the man is trapped in the net of morning sunlight. A trickle of sweat starts down his back, but he sits moving his back against the pillows, not allowing his fingers to scratch, pressing the crawling sensation away.
“Here you go,” the girl returns with his cup and saucer. “You sure you don’t want anything in it?”
“No, thank you.”
She goes to the kitchen and returns clicking the cup upon her saucer. She takes a seat across from him and smiles from a hassock. He sips from his cup, the steam and sun keeping his face moist.
“Are you in school?” the girl asks.
“No, not now.”
“Oh … I thought the Employment Office would send us a college boy.”
The helper takes another sip.
“We asked for a college boy who needed some extra work,” she says.
Her cup is filled with a creamy mixture and she quaffs it down in gulps, then stands looking at his nearly filled cup.
“We’re going back up north,” she says. “My husband and me … we’re going back to college in Oregon.”
“That’s nice.”
She walks past the couch, her floppy workshirt brushing his chin, and peers out the window, looking each way up the one-way street.
“You don’t have ta …” she begins and steps back to the center of the room as he rises.
“That’s okay. I’m a slow coffee drinker and I might as well begin,” he says, picking up one of the nearer cardboard boxes.
She scurries to the hall door, her tennis shoes squealing upon the hardwood surface.
“Well, if you want to start now I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she says, opening the door. “Here, let me show you where to put those things until my husband comes.”
Her topknot bobs and springs across the rag tying her head as she flounces down the stairs leading him to the wide entrance hall. Two wooden chairs sit on each side of a table in the hall. Mirrors line each side of the walls leading to the outside door.
As the helper lowers the box he looks at his reflection in the mirror, watching the trail of sweat trickle to the end of his nose. From beyond his shoulder he sees her eyes in the glass.
“Well, I’ll open this outside door and get things ready for my dad and husband when they come,” she says when he turns.
Upstairs, the items wait. The boxes lining the walls of the room, the pieces wrapped or tied or turned upon their sides. In a corner, beside a basket of newspaperwrapped dishes, lies an upturned campaign sign, stick pointed at the ceiling, the upside-down candidate smiling lipless out of a dark blue background. The helper bends for another box and turns toward the hall doorway for his trip below, leaving the poster grinning at his back.
“Ah … here’s our little helper,” a stout woman says when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. The woman is wearing a crimson silk Chinese coolie outfit; large brass bracelets swing from her wrists, smaller loops pull her earlobes low; tied about one puffed ankle is a golden chain with a knotted heart, and grass thongs upon her feet make shuffling sounds.
“This is my mother,” the girl says.
“Here, young man,” the woman points, “you can put that box down here.” She steps out of the helper’s path. “That’s darling of you,” she says to his bending rear.
“My husband and dad are out front hitching up the trailer,” the girl says.
The helper starts up the stairs for another load.
“Sister, it looks like you’ve got a good start,” the woman tells the girl.
Upstairs, the helper sees many of the boxes gone, moved by his successive trips; only several piles of the smaller items remain to be moved; the last to go are the large and vital goods.
“YOO HOO UP THERE!” the woman downstairs yells. “SOMEONE WILL BE UP TO GIVE YOU A HAND WITH THE REST OF THOSE THINGS!”
As he finishes his morning coffee, heavy steps bound up the stairs. A gangling man with glasses tilting on the edge of his nose enters, wearing white coveralls with the insignia of an international airline.
“You’ve really got this place cleaned out,” the tall man says, looking through the room. “Well, we might as well get the table tennis equipment this trip.” He lifts one end of the green table.
“Ohhh … be careful, fellows,” the woman says as the edge of the broad table is twisted around the last stairwell. “Be careful, Buddy.” She addresses the tall man. “You remember the awful jar that boy gave the piano last summer in Hawaii?”
“Yes, I remember, Mother,” the man says.
She smiles at the helper and pats him on the shoulder when he crosses the last step; her jewelry gives her a jangle.
“Oh, you both must be so tired to bring that thing down,” she says. “Your sweating brings out such gorgeous tones in your skin.” She peers at the helper’s face. “I had this houseboy in Kingston …” The woman talks as the two men tramp through the hall. “Buddy,” she calls as they reach the door, sweeping the swishing sleeves of her suit in a swirl toward the street, “take it right out to the trailer.”
“Yes, that’s where we’re going,” the man says.
The girl and a middle-aged man are loading the last of the boxes into the largest trailer made for autos. The trailer is painted orange and twin doors in the rear are fastened back along the sides. Chairs and hassocks and picture frames crowd the loading zone. The trailer is hitched to a new Dodge.
“Here, Buddy, bring that table here,” the middleaged man says. His neck is freckled red and brown and his paunch is solid. He is dressed in grey industrial trousers, green plaid woodsman shirt, and brown crepesoled shoes. He squints incessantly and there are the indentations of glasses straddling his nose.
The tall man and the helper swing the large table around in back of the trailer; the table legs are folded in and under; the net and paddles have been stowed in some box.
“Slide it along the side, Buddy,” the girl says. “Daddy, don’t you think he should put it up against the side?”
“Yeah, slide it up that side next to them boxes, Buddy.” The man points out the slot where the table tennis table is to go.
“Oh, the little precious babies … don’t you dare frighten them,” the mother says upstairs, to Buddy and the helper when they reach to take the fish tank.
Sliding along the top of the glass, the water reaches the edge and spills a puddle over the side before they balance the container.
“Ohhh, dear, oh Buddy, please be careful with the poor darlings,” the mother says. “Remember, I got that aquarium in Hong Kong.”
“Damn, where are we going to put that thing?” the old man says, as he sees little room in the trailer.
“We can’t leave them, Dad,” the girl says.
A grey sky breeze splashes the surface of the water and the girl’s hair blows over her eyes. Through a cloudslit, the sun heats the fronts of buildings on the far side of the street, but the wind fusses with the skirts of the awnings, as if they were petticoats.
“Here”—the father leads them to the car in front—“put it on the seat.” They grope with the glass container until it rests firmly upon the cushions; they wedge boxes and bags against its sides.
The three men walk back to the trailer and look in; it seems as though nothing else can fit.
“Go on up and get the rest,” the old man says. “Sister and me will move some of these things around.”
“Now, take special care with Augustus’s cage,” the mother warns the helper as he lifts the parrot’s cage. A black leather cover shrouds the large square prison, but the bird flutters within the dark. “Don’t let him see your fingers or he’ll bite; I warn you.”
With caution, the helper traces his way downstairs to the outside. Buddy
follows with the dart board and darts, and he carries one of the bowling balls in its special fabric carrier.
“But, we can’t get any more in,” the girl says.
“Just a minute now,” the father says, pulling at the center of the mass.
“Let me help you, Dad.” The tall man assists.
“Herbert, if you shove that crate I got in Delhi down to …” The mother shoves her way to the front.
Ten minutes later the helper comes out the door holding a rubber plant. “You’re going along marvelously, fellows,” the mother says.
“Gee, I never knew we had so much,” the girl says. “We’re the Beverly Hillbillies … Jesus, we’re the Beverly Hillbillies,” she mutters several times.
After the center is cleared once more, the chairs are stacked in the very front instead of the sides and rear. The side opposite the table tennis table is left empty for the bed.
The sun is gone and chill waits in the shade. The breeze flutters the loose spreads and papers in the boxes and corners of the project, and a yellow painted Volkswagen parks at one of the buildings across the street. In its window is a sign in red. SCABS MUST GO! A leather-jacketed man gets out and enters the building.
“Weee … that wind’s almost as bad as the one we got last time in Fairbanks,” the woman says to her husband, daughter and son-in-law.
“Now, after these card tables, I want you to get the rest of the potted plants, and then the encyclopedias and golf bags,” the girl says as Buddy and the helper clear the last of the items from the apartment. “Then there’s only the mattress and the bed springs left, and the T.V. and chassis … and don’t forget the bathroom rug, the clothes in the closets and my bowling ball.”
The father comes into the room and looks about the empty walls; he stoops and lifts the upturned campaign poster, wedging it under his arm, making his arm a banner and blindfold across the eyes of the candidate. Written at the bottom of the still wrongway picture are the words: IN YOUR HEART YOU KNOW HE’S RIGHT!
The helper is busy finding a grip on the chassis.
“There won’t be room for the chassis,” the old man says to the tall one.
