by Packer, Vin
“Uncle!” she says, and people behind him murmur: “Did you hear that?”
God, God, the bell is louder, louder; God, the bell!
• • •
“Are you going to answer it, Thad?” she says from the other bed. “What?”
“The telephone.”
“Oh!” He sits up dazedly, reaching for the phone’s black neck. “Hello?”
“Hello, Thad? This is Doc Sell. Sorry to bother you so early but — ”
“God, man, what time is it? I was just in the middle of some kind of dream. Can’t even remember what the hell it was about, but what time is it?”
“It’s seven o’clock, Thad … I thought you’d want to know that Ada Pirkle passed. Had a stroke last night.”
“Huh? Say that again.”
“Ada passed. Ada Pirkle’s dead.”
And from the other bed, leaning up with her elbows propping her flimsy-gown-clad, lady body, “What’s the matter?” Vivian Hooper asks. “Is there something wrong, Thad?” At the beginning of this day, hot.
• • •
“Hot!” He hears his Uncle Bryan’s voice from the kitchen of the Post shack in The Toe; lying on the pallet in the other room; waking with the stranger’s early-morning start in some new place on the floor; missing home with the sudden breath-aching shock of nostaglia; lying looking at walls peeling their paint; smelling the grease-strange odor of grits cooking; and listening.
“Never mind hot, you Bryan! Mind trouble! We gone catch hell now.”
“Aw, Biss, law, don’t study it s’mornin. Hot. Gonna be like the devil’s front room over in that spinning room, s’morning.”
“Yeah, and gone be like the devil’s house all over when Mr. Thad catch his hands on you.”
“Aw, Biss, what you want? I ‘spose to slunk around here like a suck-egg hound cause I had myself a little accident in that pickup that ain’t got brakes for stopping ten miles ‘fore it’s time?”
“Corn ain’t got breaks, is all. Pickup stop, but corn don’t, and you had a bellyful.” “Aw, Biss, aw, Bissy — ”
Millard sighs, turns on his side on the hard pallet, and looks into Claus Post’s wide-open eyes. “You wake, Cousin Miller?” “Yes.”
“I’m Claus. I’m your cousin. My brother gone to work, but I’m gone stay wid you t’day, cause you come all the way from up North. Hus said you got three shirts in your suitcase, an’ a jacket wid your name on it an’ a black panther on it!”
“Umm-hmm. What’s your name — Claude?”
“Claus. Cause I was born Christmas day…. Hus said your daddy is de boss of six elevators up in New York City.”
Millard sits up gradually, scratching himself under his pajama top. “Yeah; Dad’s a starter of the elevators.”
“Hus said them elevators can’t go no place lessen your daddy say dey can. Can’t move an inch at all lessen he say dey can.”
“Umm-hmm.” He looks around him at the old poor furnishings, the orange crate table, oil paper thumbtacked to it, smelling in the stickiness of the room; and the grease of the grits frying. Claus is his name, Jesus! Santa Claus Post, Christ! Yesterday’s traveling gnaws at his loneliness — “but our niggers are niggers and our niggers know it”; and a ticket to go back home not until Friday. Three days in Paradise, God!
“I gone stay wid you t’day, Cousin Miller.” The colored boy’s brown round eyes are wide watching Millard Post; wide with wonder and awe and admiration. “All I got to do is take de rubbage out an’ burn it. Don’t got to pick or study books, cause you come from up North!”
“Ummm-hmmm.”
“Boy, wait I sashay round dis town wid you. We sho gonna strut Miz Lucy, Cousin Miller!”
Millard Post smiles wanly at the beginning of this hot day, the fingers of his hands touching the flesh of his cheeks where last night’s tears dried. He’s done with crying now.
• • •
Waking alone in their bed, hearing from down in the bowels of their house the piano and her singing, Storey Bailey knows there is something wrong, but in the sleep-dulled distance of his mind in the early morning, he does not yet recall for those first seconds; just lies on his stomach with his face in the pillow, listening to the symptoms — the sound of the piano and Kate’s voice singing at seven-thirty A.M.
No-oh lov-li-er place in the dale
No-oh spot is so dear to my child-hood
As the lit-tle brown church in the —
When he remembers, he groans, socks the soft mussed pillow with his fist, fights the unlikely suspicion that she could have seen him last night before she called to him, came, maybe, and seen him kissing Viv. No! Only guilt fabricating punishment! And he believes more in her complaint coming home in the car after the barbecue. Storey, you were certainly gone a long time. I felt a little abandoned.
He had said, “Me abandon you, Katie?” meaning too, in the inference of his tone, that he could never exist apart from Kate, but hiding at the same time the remembered thrill, coupled with the shame he realized when his arms held Thad’s wife. He had said, “Viv was sure in a swivet ‘bout something, though, Katie. Took forever to convince her wasn’t bad as all that.” He felt as he said it the sharp, sensual pulse to his groin; glad for Kate whom he loved, but not sorry for the surprise inconsistencies of life; regretting the deed, while nurturing the secret and tremulous body-memory that was its consequence.
He had said to Kate coming home in the car, “Why, land!” exaggerating his tone, chuckling, “I think you’re jealous, Kate Bailey,” as though she would be out of her mind to be in any way envious of Vivian Hooper; and Kate had not accepted this remark as all the atonement he need give for leaving her so long alone, but hummed the rest of the way back to the house, as she always did when everything was “not quite settled.”
• • •
So this morning, Storey Bailey thinks into his pillow, she persists in sulking, and expects more; and for a horrified half-second he wonders what she would be doing now if she were to know the whole truth about the interval he spent away from her with Thad’s wife. But by no stretch of his imagination can he conjure up any vision of his wife under such a circumstance.
He must get up, fetch his robe, and go to her; talk with her, make it all right, before breakfast and the day’s work. Yet not until he can momentarily relish once more the memory of Viv; enlarge and improve upon it, in the way of the accomplished daydreamer and the impotent aggressor; for it is not likely that such a moment will occur again — he was very high; too high, he decides — though it would spoil Storey Bailey’s fantasies this morning to allow that reality to take precedence over the more delicious unreality of himself and his best friend’s wife’s hungry-trembling body.
Rising afterward, he slips into his robe, pushes his feet into the slippers and goes dutifully down to the sunporch-music room.
“Good morning, Kate,” he says. “How are you, honey?”
“Good morning, Storey.” She keeps on with the piano. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“Now, honey, what’s the trouble?” He walks over to her, placing his arm on her shoulder. “Bad dreams?”
“One doesn’t dream bad things when they’re awake, Storey.”
“Why don’t you stop playing and tell me, Kate?”
“I can play and talk. I prefer to.”
“All right. What is it, now, hmmm?”
“Last night.”
“That old thing! Katie! You still mad at that old thing?” He walks around to the front of the piano, grinning. “I think you’re jealous, Kate. I think my girl’s jealous.” With his finger he reaches down and tilts her chin up. “Huh, Katie? You jealous cause I talk to my best friend’s wife for a bit?”
Kate Bailey lifts her hands from the keys for a brief moment and looks at Storey unsmiling. She says, “I saw you kissing Vivie, Storey. I was on the veranda.” Then, while Storey stands gaping, wordlessly, Kate continues to play; singing along with the melody now.
• • •
That Tuesday morning, like any other, Barbara James joins the slow parade of the colored bound for work, streaming up from The Toe to Brockton Road, before they pass on to the luxury-lawn-carpeted green streets of the whites, on their way in the muggy sun, still new from sleep to become a part of the waking world of scrubbing, toting, picking, and cooking.
Under her arm that morning, like any other, are the blue composition books, corrected, graded, ready to be passed back. Theme for Tuesday: What do you want to be when you grow old? “I want to be a boss” “I am going to be a railroad man so I can make plenty of money.” “I want to be rich and white but I’m going to be poor and black.” “I want to be a baseball player like Willie Mays and drive a big car.”
Coming to Church Street, to cut over to the hill road, Barbara James worries, not like other mornings, remembering her father’s cold and angry-in-grief eyes across the table at breakfast as they ate in screaming silence, neither able to help the other with talking. The problem is understood between them now; there is a white man; she was with him. “Barbara!”
Startled, she turns; then sees the car parked by the curb.
“Dixon! What are you doing here?” She runs over to the car, looking around her first; yes, people see; colored see, ignore, go on. “Dixon!”
“My mother’s dead, Barbara.”
“Aw, naw, baby!”
“We’ll have to cancel our plans for this afternoon. I’ll be tied up most of the day.”
“Sure, baby, sure. Aw, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know whether I am or not, but listen … Can you meet me tonight? Late! Midnight, out at the Hag.”
“Dixon, I don’t know. My dad’s angry. He knows … Not who it is, of course — but he knows what it is. Midnight’s late, and — ”
“Please, honey. I can’t make it earlier. People will be at the house. I got to stay by my dad.” “Dixon, I don’t know, honestly.”
“Please. You got to, darling. If I can’t see you tonight I’ll go out of my mind.”
“Dixon, we shouldn’t be here like this.” “Will you?”
“Lord, let me think — how will I — ” “Barbara, say you will.”
She hesitates; then, “All right, baby. I’ll be there. Somehow” “At midnight!” “At the Hag.”
21
IF YOU’RE not special, act special! That’s all special is.” Al had told Millard that; had said just make it so, boy, and suddenly you know you are special. You’re somebody and you feel that you are special, and that’s all special is.
Like Millard Post is now, knows it, feels it, coming up from The Toe with Claus, his cousin.
It feels good to Millard. He has made it something big; created it that morning at breakfast as he sat at the kitchen table while his Aunt Bissy gave him grits — god-awful mush in a cracked pink bowl — and told him he’d be pretty much on his own; told him he’d come at a bad time — like f’Chrissake he’d wanted to come — and his grandmother sat in a chair rocking and smoking a pipe like some kind of back-woods hillbilly and made some tart remark about his clothes: All dress up like you had a purpose. Then and there he’d remembered what Al had said, and in his mind he’d started to make it happen, to feel it, until now he does. It feels nearly real.
It is a gift, this feeling he has made; a reward, maybe — maybe a kind of reward for yesterday; for last night’s gutless agony, the child-lost loneliness that visited those hours when others slept and gave no name to Millard he could curse; and the morning that began to ignore him, until he could counter and sass it back.
It is a gift and Millard basks in it; walks straight and tall and cool because of it; sets his face in the sullen and sure expression of the special, that same expression all the Panthers acquire when they “fall in” at a dance. They make their entrance en masse, all of them glancing around at the surroundings with stony indifference, cool style, fine and clean. He holds his shoulders back and lets his eyes meet the sun directly. Over his arm he carries his leather gang jacket, and his left hand, sunk into the pocket of his sweet-tapered slacks, plays with change, making a jingle … A little behind him, at his heels, his cousin follows him; wide-eyed, idolizing, servile, like a punk pushing after a big man, hoping some of it will rub off.
It is nearly noon; they are on their way to the Black Patch across from the county courthouse. There they will meet Major Post and eat lunch with him out of the brown paper sack Millard’s aunt made up for the three of them….
Back home, the kids would be heading for the cafeteria …
Back home, it’d be cool, jacket-wearing weather …
Back home — but what the Christ! This is Paradise, and Millard Post is special. Say it, act it, that’s all special is — even a million miles from nowhere. Like Al said, just make it so!
• • •
It’s lunch hour out behind the Paradise Feed Company. Jack Rowan wads up the wax paper his sandwiches were wrapped in, and leans his head back against the wooden beam by the loading platform. He says to Pit Raleigh, “Boy, he’s working us today, nigger.”
Raleigh swigs from the neck of a Coke bottle. “Ain’t that the truth!” He spits and wipes his mouth off on the back of his strong dark wrist, scratches his head under his cap, and sighs. Staring out at the dust-dry road behind Main Street, leading out of The Toe, he moans, “Yeah, yeah,” while he squints ahead of him. Then he leans forward. “Hey, lookit, Jack.”
“Huh?”
“Lookit what’s paradin’ our way wid Major Post’s brother.”
Rowan moves his head to see, studies the tall, neatly dressed light-colored Negro boy walking with Claus; Claus jumping up and down beside him like a yo-yo as they come along; the boy placid-looking, his countenance keen-eyed, confident. He’s wearing a white shirt, navy blue pants, a gold watch chain by Gawd, loafers and good-looking store-bought red socks. “Shh-eet! Who de hell’s dat?”
“I don’t know, Jack, but he certainly do recommen’ hisself mos’ high!”
“I know who dat is, nigger, S’that up-North cousin they was spectin. Sheet, yeah; dat’s who!” “Oh yeah?”
“Sure, sheet. Dat’s who.” “Comin’ our way.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rowan and Raleigh sit up and watch, wearing their wash-worn, faded blue denim coveralls, their shoulders and arms naked where the coveralls end, dust from the sacks they’ve wielded on their backs through the morning clinging to the sweat of their bodies, their ankle-high shoes stuck on their naked feet and laced loosely to let in air. They watch, waiting for the pair to get closer.
Claus says, “Hi, fellers. We on our way to meet Major.”
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Claus grins widely, tugging on Millard Post’s sleeve. “This is my cousin Miller.” Millard jerks his sleeve free and looks calmly at the two boys sitting on the ground, while Claus adds brightly, “From up North in New York City.”
Millard says, “How’s it hanging?”
“Heavy,” Rowan says.
Raleigh says, “Could be lighter.”
Millard stands there, one hand sunk into his trousers pocket tinkling the change there. Rowan and Raleigh regard him head to toe. Millard feels their eyes on him; let ‘em look!
“He sleeps in pajamas,” Claus says. “Top and bottom.”
Millard growls, “What else is new?” turning his head nonchalantly, pretending to regard the back of the stores along the street; an eyebrow raised for effect.
“Now, do tell!” Jack Rowan cackles, “You hear dat, Pit?”
“Sho! I hear up North dey don’t even take dem off to fug; jest fug right through dem.”
Millard looks down at them coolly, takes his hand out of his pocket, folds his arms across his chest, smoothing out his jacket, and stands spread-legged looking down at them.
“Is dat de truth, Yankee boy?” Rowan says.
“They only ribbin’ you, Miller.” Claus grins.
“I got eyes,” Millard answers. He says to Ro
wan: “Sometimes they screw with ‘em on, sometimes with ‘em off.”
“They only ribbin’ you, Miller.”
“Can it, Claude!”
“He call me Claude and not Claus.” Claus Post giggles. “He says Claus ain’t no name at all.”
“You gonna be around long?” Rowan asks. Millard shrugs. “Couple days.”
“Up North where he come from his daddy bosses the yelevators!” Claus Post announces. “Dey cain’t go up and dey cain’t go down, lessen his daddy say it.” “Aw, Claude, can it!”
“Yeah, Claus,” Rowan says. “Let him talk his own self … Yeah, tell us more about up North, nigger. So dey hump wid ‘em on sometimes, and sometimes wid ‘em off, hah?”
“A piece of ass is a piece of ass,” Millard says.
Claus Post puts in, “Some are oven-belly bitches, I’m sure to tell you.”
“G’wan, Santa Claus,” Raleigh laughs. “Whata you know, you little inch.”
Rowan doesn’t take his eyes off Millard Post. “Tell me, Yankee,” he says. “You ever humped with a white girl?”
“If the mood hit me, yeah.”
“You kiddin’? You had white meat?” Raleigh asks. Millard Post puts a hand to his mouth, feigning a yawn. “That news?”
“He belong to a club,” Claus Post says. “He’s got a black panther on the back of dat jacket he carryin’, wid his name on it in solid gold.”
“Let’s see,” Rowan says.
Millard takes his time unfolding the jacket and showing them the back. He says, “We all got jackets like this. What the hell!” He folds it back and shifts his weight to his other foot.
“We don’t got no jackets wid our names in gold, have we, nigger?”
“Ain’t that the truth!”
“He come down here by air-o-plane,” Claus says. “An he’s got stickers to prove it too.” “Yeah? That right, Yankee?” “Sure.”
“Sheet, I didn’t believe him. Do you, Pit?” “Not a word, Jack; not a word.”
“I don’t believe he knocked up any white gal neither, do you, Pit?”
“Naw, Jack. Uh-uh. He be scared.”
Millard smirks. “You guys flipping your lids? White girls dime a dozen up home.”
