The Game of Love and Death

by Martha Brockenbrough

  YOU CAN’T SPELL SINGER WITHOUT SIN.

  MISCEGUNATION: AGAINST GODS PLAN FOR MAN.

  Flora hated walking past them on her way into the club, hated the way they’d block the sidewalk and make her step around them, hated their bad spelling and punctuation. The worst of them hissed and spit at her. As Flora arrived, a car carrying even more pulled up. The passengers, four large white men, reeked of trouble.

  Inside, Doc’s wife, Glo, was painting the window trim.

  “Don’t mind them,” she said when she saw Flora’s expression. “You’d think they’d find something better to do with their days.” She stepped back to inspect her work. “In my opinion, anyone who claims to speak for God is probably talking out of the wrong end, anyway.”

  Flora laughed. “Amen.”

  Glo dipped her brush. “It’s a good problem if it can be fixed with a bit of paint, and even better if I can get it done with a snifter of gin. I’ve been wanting to spruce this place up for years. Thanks to the business you’re bringing in, I can.”

  Flora didn’t have a chance to respond before shadows filled the window. She shoved Glo out of the way. There was a burst of breaking glass as something hard sailed through the window. A car squealed off.

  They lay on the floor a moment, panting. When it felt safe, Flora looked up. A newspaper-wrapped brick lay inches away.

  “Oh, Glo,” she said.

  Glo was on her knees. “My windows, my beautiful windows. And oh, Lord, no. The paint is all over the floor.” A puddle of it spread across the linoleum, mixing with shards of glass.

  Flora fetched rags and mopped up as much paint and glass as she could. “Turpentine might help. Do you have any?”

  “Doc’s got that in the back,” Glo said. “I’ll fetch it.” She knocked back the rest of her gin.

  Flora wiped up the bulk of the paint. She folded the rags over on each other until the mess had been contained inside, and she dropped the bundle in the trash. Then, fingertips sticky, she bent to pick up the brick. She untied the string and unwrapped the paper, a letter to the editor about the music they’d been performing. The writer called their show a crime against humanity, a sign of moral decay, and any number of things that twisted Flora’s insides. The voice of the letter, which had been signed A Concerned Citizen, felt like a living creature in her mind, a sharp-toothed shrew, a gnawing rat.

  She spread the newsprint on the ground and used it to wipe the rest of the paint off of her hands. It was somehow worse that Henry’s own people had published it, that Henry’s hands had been on the press that joined ink and page. Surely he’d seen it. Surely he would lose his job if he continued playing. And then how would he pay his rent — especially if the city shut down the Majestic next?

  “What is it, baby?” Glo returned with Doc, who carried turpentine and more rags.

  “Nothing,” Flora said, wadding the paper.

  “Don’t seem like that.”

  “It’s a letter to the editor. Stupid and vile. Nothing worth thinking about, Glo. Really.”

  As Glo swept the glass, Flora went outside with the brick, halfway wishing whoever had thrown it had stayed around. She wanted to toss it back. See how he liked it. She checked her watch. The set would start in a few hours. But it would have to be without Henry.

  She’d send word, or better, let him know in person. It had been foolish to let down her guard and let him get that close. As if it hadn’t been embarrassing enough in the diner, now Henry’s people and everyone else in town was turning against them. Worse, Glo and Doc were suffering too. Flora knew better. She’d known better. She wouldn’t let herself make that same mistake again.

  ETHAN parked near the stone Inquirer building. The world around him felt sharp, as if someone had cranked up the sun a notch. He noticed everything: cracks in the sidewalk, the missing toes on the pigeon hunting food scraps, the dot of mustard on the leg of the doorman’s pants.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Thorne.” The doorman tipped his hat.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Bowles,” Ethan said, remembering the man’s name just in time.

  In his briefcase, he carried his article on Hooverville. Words that had found the page only because of Henry’s help. Never again. It wasn’t that he wanted the world to know he struggled to write. He no longer had the strength for the charade. With Henry out of the house, with college just a few months away, the strategy that had worked thus far felt like a road that ended in a cliff.

  The air inside the building was a warm accumulation of breath and body heat. It smelled of sandwiches, stale coffee, and cigarette smoke, three scents he’d always associated with his destiny. Now, though, he wasn’t so certain. He could not see beyond the present.

  He rode the elevator accompanied only by the operator, aware of his damp palm on the handle of the briefcase. He licked his lips, wishing for a cold glass of water. The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and the sounds of the newsroom burst forth: jangling telephones, shouting men, the clatter of typewriter keys.

  “What’ve you got for me?” The city editor, Roger Gunner, wasn’t much for small talk.

  “The piece on Hooverville.”

  Gunner adjusted his green visor and rubbed his palms together. “Finally. And you found proof they’ve been brewing liquor without paying taxes?”

  “Nothing to that rumor. I found a different angle,” he said, surprised at how smooth and calm his lie sounded. But then, he’d had years to practice.

  “Oh?” Gunner leaned back in his chair, removed his visor, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Let’s have a look.”

  Ethan snapped open his briefcase and removed the sheets of onionskin. He’d charmed a girl in the steno pool into typing up Henry’s handwriting. It was amazing what you could get a person to do with a compliment and a smile. If his father had ever tried the technique, perhaps his mother wouldn’t have turned into such a brittle thing.

  Gunner snatched the pages, and Ethan considered leaving. Going for a malt. He never liked watching someone read his work, not just because he feared their opinion but also because it reminded him how easily other people could make sense of words. Watching someone’s eyes move over a page was like poking a wound.

  Gunner looked up before he made it to the second page. “This is what you want to run with?”

  Ethan knew what he was really asking. Are you sure you want to pick this fight with your father?

  “Yes.” How little this all seemed to matter now.

  “It’s good,” Gunner said. “Your old man will hate it, but it’s good stuff, kid. Important.”

  Gunner’s praise meant everything. “Thank you.”

  The editor had already returned his attention to the pages, scribbling notes in the margins with a red pencil. After a moment, he paused. “Scram, Thorne. Make yourself useful. You’re blocking my light.”

  Ethan smiled as he walked toward the elevator, taking one last good look at the shabby wreck of the place, the men in their rolled-up shirtsleeves, dropping ashes from their cigarettes all over their desks. It was a messy wonder, the most exciting place in the world sometimes. A place where men shouted and pounded the table, and ferreted the truth out from where it liked to hide. A place where history was written on the fly, along with a fair share of heartbreak.

  Ethan had never belonged there, or in the thickly carpeted executive offices upstairs, where his father and other brokers of power nudged the world where they wanted it to go. They’d always made Ethan feel like a chip of glass: small, transparent. He belonged nowhere, to no one. If it hadn’t been for Henry’s loyalty and discretion, Ethan would have been written off by his family long before. He knew it, but he was not ready for the reality of it. He had to get James’s book before anybody else did. He had to find out what was inside, and, if necessary, to destroy it before his sham of a life was laid bare.

  Now that Ethan no l
onger had a professional reason to be at Hooverville, he wanted his visit to be private. The men there wouldn’t judge. They were as far from that sort as he’d ever met, and he and James weren’t the only ones there to have come to an understanding. Even so, he felt watched all the time.

  He stood on the edge of the encampment. A light breeze had its way with the dust, smudging the horizon, giving the angled columns of light that pierced the clouds an otherworldly definition. Something compelled him to turn his head, and there, leaning against the Hooverville chapel, his face half in shadow, was James, as still as a man in a photograph.

  James pushed himself away from the wall and turned toward his shack. He looked back over his shoulder, as if to ensure Ethan was following. The glance was unnecessary. Ethan careered after him.

  James kicked the door closed. Light and shadow merged into the half darkness. The men embraced, and Ethan felt the outline of the book. He helped James out of his jacket, making note of where it landed. And then both their shirts were off, and Ethan wished he could melt into the muscles of James’s chest, to be pummeled by the beating heart beneath.

  “Slow down,” James whispered in his ear. “We have time.”

  Ethan couldn’t. What time they had was nearly out. Or it would be, as soon as he could find the courage to break it off.

  “You hungry?” James said, gently easing back.

  The question struck him as funny, and soon, they were both laughing until their eyes watered.

  “I handed in the story,” Ethan said.

  “And?”

  “My editor liked it all right. My father’s going to hate it.”

  “What do you think?” James turned up the wick on the lantern.

  “What do I think?” Ethan never considered his own opinion. It was everyone else’s that mattered.

  “What we create must be something that we love. That’s how we know it’s true.” James moved the lantern aside. The way they were together was everything Ethan wanted and needed, everything that terrified and grieved him. Afterward, James held him on his makeshift bed, whispering soothing words that made Ethan’s eyelids grow heavy. He fought sleep in vain.

  When Ethan woke, he was alone. He pulled his bare legs to his heart, trying to persuade himself that he was the same person he’d been before any of this happened, before he had faced the truth.

  He stepped into his pants, pulled his shirt on, found his socks, his shoes. He smoothed his hair as well as he could. James’s coat lay in the corner. Ethan closed his fingers around the book. He hesitated. Then he pulled it out, marveling at the intricate detail on the leather cover. He did not open it, as he had no hope he’d be able to read it. It was enough to prevent anyone else from seeing it. He wished he could discover what James had written, to know whether James had felt the same things, or if even in this, he was alone.

  Ethan stole away from Hooverville. It occurred to him later that he might just have asked James what was in the book. But, as with everything else, that realization came too late.

  FROM the peak of the cross on the Hooverville chapel, Love watched Ethan leave. His sparrow guise felt cramped and limited after all the time he’d spent as James Booth, despite the ease of flight, despite the sharpness of his vision.

  There are deeper ways to see than with eyes.

  He’d forgotten the truth of this.

  Love had felt the human’s desire for the book when they were with each other. The agony of it made Love wish for death. Ethan’s every nerve ending had been set alight with pleasure and recapped in pain. That he was able to breathe, to stand, to walk, to converse with others despite this … perhaps mortals weren’t as fragile as he’d thought.

  It was good that Ethan had not asked for the book. Now, whatever happened was not Love’s responsibility. He would have read the stories to him, of course. Stories of love, held like handfuls of water, for the shortest and sweetest of moments. He might not have stopped when he came to the part about Henry and Flora. Of all the stories, theirs was his favorite. He could have shared this with Ethan. But if Ethan told the players, Love could not protect him. And Ethan would tell them. The knowledge could be useful to Henry and Flora, and Ethan was a loyal friend.

  Regret seeped into Love’s heart. It rose and swelled and became birdsong. Below, the men of Hooverville stopped their conversations, their cooking. They listened, and they stood, mesmerized, as the planet spun them from lightness to darkness. These men understood that melody. Afterward, the men returned to their activities, their misery softened only by the knowledge they were not alone in the world.

  HENRY had been looking for Ethan’s article. He knew every word, but he still hoped to see the story in print with Ethan’s byline. Maybe they were holding it for the big Sunday edition. Ethan hadn’t stopped by in a couple of days; Henry would ask the next time he did.

  He noticed a letter on the editorial page as he sat at the table in the break room eating a thin sandwich of mustard and bread. Unable to swallow the bit of sandwich in his mouth, he forced himself to slow down as he read. The letter was about him. Him and Flora.

  “Amen to that.”

  Henry looked up. His supervisor sat next to him, tucking into his lunch. Henry forced himself to swallow. “Excuse me, Mr. Watters?”

  “Someone finally taking on those dirty colored jazz clubs. They’re nothing but bad news. Wheels on the handbasket that’s rolling straight to hell.”

  “Have you ever been inside one?” Henry moved his hands beneath the table so his boss wouldn’t see his fists.

  “Don’t need to. Not in a handbasket, not in a colored club,” the man said, taking the waxed paper off of a thick corned beef sandwich that smelled so good Henry’s mouth watered.

  “How do you know they’re trouble, then?”

  The man sank his teeth into the sandwich. Then he shifted the bite to the side of his mouth. “How can you not know? That sort of music is bad enough. But to have the different colors onstage at the same time? It’s not what God intended. He meant for there to be separation, which is why the Negro races are in Africa. I’m telling you, this sort of thing will spell the end of society as we know it. They need to nip it in the bud.” He ate more sandwich, glancing at Henry’s lunch. “Ha! Looks like you forgot to put anything between the bread, son.”

  A year earlier, Henry might have considered this argument. Now that he knew Flora, he couldn’t understand how something that felt so normal, so essential, could be wrong. But he couldn’t live in both worlds. He pushed his plate away, brushing a few crumbs from his apron as he stood.

  He stood and tossed his napkin on the counter. “Mr. Watters,” he said, “I’ve found employment elsewhere. I quit.”

  Mr. Watters held up a finger. He took another bite of sandwich. He wiped a bit of mustard from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t quit,” Mr. Watters said. “Direct orders from Bernie Thorne. Son of a gun was right about you trying.” He laughed and finished his sandwich.

  Henry tore off his apron, surprised at how much lighter he felt without it. Not allowed to quit, was he? He wasn’t making much playing music, but it was enough to pay his room and board. He burst out laughing. Why had it taken him so long to realize he didn’t have to do everything Ethan’s father said?

  “Bishop!” Mr. Watters yelled his name. “Mr. Thorne isn’t going to like this.”

  Henry kept walking.

  “I could lose my job if you walk.”

  Henry paused. He hated to think he might be responsible for someone else’s hard times. There was only one way around that. Much as he didn’t want to face Mr. Thorne, he knew he had to, to limit the damage the man could do to everyone around him. He chose the stairs over the elevator, knowing he’d be less likely to run into anyone on that route. At the sixth floor, he looked out the window to the stree
t below, wishing he didn’t feel that rush of fear. He took a deep breath and pushed through the double doors that separated the hallway and the carpeted antechamber where Ethan’s father’s secretary sat sentry.

  “You can’t be in here,” she said, before giving Henry a double take. “Oh, I’m sorry, Henry. I didn’t realize it was you. Mr. Thorne is on the telephone. Shall I tell him you stopped in?”

  Henry walked past her and into Mr. Thorne’s office. She followed, protesting that this interruption was not her fault. Mr. Thorne’s padded leather chair faced the bank of windows that looked out over the city. He was in the midst of what sounded like a serious conversation — something involving a raid and arrests and how the newspaper might cover it.

  “Mr. Thorne,” Henry said. “Bernard.”

  Ethan’s father spun in his chair, annoyed at the interruption. He pointed at the telephone.

  Henry walked to the desk and pressed the button that would end the call.

  “Henry!”

  “I told him not to disturb you, Mr. Thorne,” the secretary said. “He just barged in.”

  “I’m here to let you know that I quit,” Henry said.

  “You can’t.”

  “I already have,” he said. “It’s a matter of conscience. I can’t agree with your decision to print that letter to the editor.”

  “It’s time you come to your senses.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back into his chair, which squeaked in protest. “Look at everything you’re throwing away on her account. First, your education and home. Now, your job. I don’t even want to hear that girl’s name. And we print all manner of letters, not just ones we happen to agree with.”

  “Do you agree with that letter?”

  Mr. Thorne paused. “Wholeheartedly. It’s not in your job description to judge editorial calls. You’re in the pressroom. You look after the ink and paper and the machinery. That’s it.” He reached for his phone again. “Now if you will excuse me.”

  “I quit,” Henry said. “I don’t want to be associated with this newspaper.”