by Ann Petry
Camilo had the same trait. Never give up. In spite of ridicule and insult and—
She said, “It’s not really the money, is it, Link?”
“What?” he said, voice blank, face blank.
“It’s not just the money,” she said.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said, slowly. “It’s not just the money.”
“I thought so. The money’s just an excuse, isn’t it? It’s that woman.”
“Woman?” Abbie? Did she think that Abbie had ever really had any influence over him. He could see her in his mind’s eye, sitting on that narrow little sofa, wearing a dress of some sort of printed material, a tracery of gray leaves on a darker gray fabric, the white hair piled on top of her head. There was something indestructible and wonderful about Abbie, impossible to live with, impossible to please, starchy, prideful, full of fears, afraid of thunder and lightning, of sounds in the night, of wind. Deeply religious and yet as superstitious as an Irish peasant. The week before the Major died, a hoot owl sat high up in the branches of The Hangman, for three nights straight, his repeated who-o-o-o-o like a moan in falsetto. Years afterwards she told him that she lay in bed listening to the owl, for two nights, and on the third night she got up and turned her right slipper over, leaving it with the sole turned up, and that she was ashamed of what she’d done and said a prayer, had not finished praying when she reached down and turned the left slipper over too, leaving both of them with the soles turned up, to propitiate the powers of darkness. Acting like a heathen while she prayed like a Christian, because the turned-over slippers were a snare, a trap for the evil spirits evoked by the owl.
“Woman?” he repeated. “What woman?”
“Mamie,” she said.
“Mamie?” He threw his head back and laughed.
“I won’t stand for it,” Camilo said. “You’re still in love with me. I know you are. I’ll never let her have you—”
He walked away from her, walked slowly, steadily away, and heard her footsteps behind him, heard the lapping of the river, slow, soft, monotonous, against the piling, against the dock. A clear night. Stars hung low, in the night sky. He was suddenly aware of her loneliness, and of his own, and of something else, a feeling of defeat, his, not hers. He still wanted her, but on his terms—not hers. He stopped, under the street light so he could see her face, and he saw despair in it, and in her eyes, in the down droop of her mouth.
“Don’t follow me, little one,” he said gently. “You get in that pretty red crate and run along home and don’t come back. It’s all over. Finished. Done with. If I thought it would work I’d say let’s start in all over again, clean slate, just as though we’d been reborn. But it wouldn’t work. You know it and I know it.” I, executioner. Why do it this way? I could say I’ve just got back, long train ride, need sleep, have to go to work. See you tomorrow or next week or next month or just, see you later. Why this way? I, executioner.
“I’ll get even,” she said. “I’ll hurt you just like you’ve hurt me.”
“You couldn’t. It was done a long time ago. By professionals. You’re only an amateur.” He leaned over and kissed her, lightly, on the forehead. “Honey,” he said, and he felt something like regret, “you’re drunk. Lay off the stuff. It never solved anything. It doesn’t even fuzz up the edges good. I know because I tried it, too.” You run along now, run along and play, Link.
It may have been the finality with which he spoke, he didn’t know, he never would know, whether it was the actual words or his manner of saying them, but it got through to her. She knew either from the expression on his face or the tone of his voice that it was over, ended.
She slapped him, hard, across the face, an attack so sudden and so unexpected that he didn’t move, he stood looking at her, too surprised to move, and she tried to slap him again, aiming for his eyes, and he grabbed her hands, pinioning them by her sides, saying, “Not even from you, little one,” and shook her and then pushed her away from him, thinking, Defeat? Are they ever really defeated? Don’t all of them when it comes to the end decide to scorch the earth, If I go you will, too, if I go down I will take everything with me. Had Abbie’s rejection of him been all due to shock, couldn’t part of it have been the subconscious urge to destroy everything, the Major gone, she would go too, and she would destroy the eight-year-old Link, as well.
She screamed, suddenly. He looked at her in astonishment, not believing that that fullbodied sound, born of terror, came from her throat, unrehearsed, that it had always been there, waiting to be called forth, terror, outrage, fury, all there in the throat, emerging when needed. He winced, listening to her, thinking, Now I understand all of them, this Dumble Street sound is in all their throats, the potential is there, and when the need arises they emit this high horrible screaming. When the candles bee out, all cats bee gray.
I know so much about them now, he thought, I believe I could convince Wormsley that I was right. They used to argue about women when they were at Dartmouth, started doing it when they were freshmen, and by the time they reached their junior year they regarded themselves as experts, because of their vast knowledge of biology, therefore they always said the same thing:
Wormsley: Aves. The human female has the nesting instinct of the bird.
L. Williams: Felis. The human female has all the characteristics of the cat. The claw technique is congenital, it’s there at birth, perfected, ready to use. The human female is a predatory animal like the cat, because the hunting instinct is congenital too. Treacherous, too. Like the panther, the leopard. She always attacks from the rear, without warning, for the sheer pleasure of it.
Wormsley: Aves. The nesting instinct is the strongest instinct in the female. They build nests, first, last and always. The other, the claws, the chase, the immorality—none of that is important. The female is always immoral. Nature makes her that way to assure the propagation of the species. Man is the moral animal. That’s what makes the endless trouble between the male and the female. But above all, the human female builds nests.
L. Williams: Felis. Once the cubs, the kittens, are weaned the catleopardpanthertigerhumanfemale rejects them, tries to destroy them. Felis.
Wormsley: Aves. They build nests. It transcends the cat in them. They built nests in caves, in slave quarters, in covered wagons, on barges, in shanties. They will always be builders of nests.
Camilo screamed and screamed. He heard the thud of feet, on the sidewalk, feet running toward them, coming down Dumble Street. He stood, not moving, watching her open the expensive mink coat, watched her wrench at the front of her dress, give it up, reach inside, wrench at her slip, the lovely delicatelooking hands strong from tennis, golf, badminton, trying to tear the fabric, and the fabric not giving, the fabric used in the clothes made for a multonmillionairess not easy to tear, impossible to tear. The hands gave it up, the hands were now rumpling the pale yellow hair. Hair disordered, disarranged, but the clothes intact.
Felis, he thought. And drunk.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” It was Rudolph, the cop, the colored cop, and Mickey, the cop, the white cop. Not safe for one cop, all alone, all by himself on Dumble Street after midnight. Two of ’em assigned to this beat. A fat white one and a thin colored one. Rudolph and Mickey. Straight from Mack Sennett, except that both of ’em belonged body and soul to Mr. B. Hod. He wondered what the soul of a cop who belonged to Mr. B. Hod would look like in a photograph. Scrambled like an omelet, no visible design, just scrambled.
“Wassmatter here?” Mickey, the fat, white cop asked.
Camilo was panting. Could pass for fright, he supposed, and not a mixture of spoiled rich girl who lost her mechanical toy, and found John Barleycorn no substitute.
“He—he—” she said, panting, pointing at L. Williams. “He tried—”
Rudolph looked at Link. Mickey looked at Link. “Him?” they said together, staring at Camilo, staring
at Link, looking at Link for confirmation or denial, for direction. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Never around when needed. Always around when not needed, not wanted.
“Arrest him,” Camilo said. “I want him—locked—up.”
Link still said nothing. Rudolph and Mickey looked confused, embarrassed. Situation impossible. Situation implausible, incredible. How take Mr. B. Hod’s boy? How take Mr. B. Hod’s right-hand man? How take the junior Mr. Hod to the lockup?
Ah, what the hell, he thought, let’s play it all the way out. I, executioner. You, executioner.
He said, “If it will give the white lady any pleasure, boys, and it seems that it would, leave us retire to the Franklin Avenue jailhouse.”
He called Bill Hod at three in the morning, and listened to him curse, and held the receiver of the jailhouse telephone away from his ear, far, far away, and said into the mouthpiece, “Okay, Boss. I’m all those things but I’m also in the jailhouse. Come on down and get me out of here. What?” He laughed. “A white lady says I tried to rape her,” and he laughed again. “Oh, they did, finally, and with great reluctance, write it down in the book as attempted attack,” he said, and banged the receiver down on the hook, still laughing.
It was four in the morning when he and Bill got back to The Last Chance. Bill followed him to the foot of that long flight of stairs that led from the kitchen to the second floor.
“What happened?” he demanded.
“Just as I told you, pal. A white lady said I tried to rape her.” He started up the stairs.
“You dumb son of a bitch,” Bill said. “The next time you decide to cat around on the dock, and get caught, don’t call me up at three o’clock in the morning to get you out of jail.”
“Okay, Poppa,” he said, over his shoulder.
He was halfway up the stairs and Bill yelled, “Go take a shower. Quit stinkin’ the place up with that white woman’s stink—with that jailhouse stink.”
He looked down at him, at the white shirt visible under the loose tweed coat, at the black hair, at the young-old face. He thought, This is as good a time as any to find out if I can really knock your teeth down your goddamn throat.
“White woman’s stink?” he said softly, and came back down the stairs. “Is Mrs. Powther’s any sweeter, friend?”
Bill looked at him with murder in his eyes, on his face, in the thinlipped mouth, and then turned away, went out of the kitchen, toward the bar.
He waited at the foot of the stairs, waited for him to come back with an appropriate weapon, meat axe, or jagged end of bottle, and heard the front door close, and then nothing but silence. Mr. Hod had gone out. He obviously did not intend to come back with knife or gun. Come to think of it, he didn’t have to hunt for a gun, he’s got one on him. Maybe Wertham was right. Weak’s been tampering with Mr. Hod’s food.
He sat down on the side of his bed, upstairs, in that big bare-looking bedroom in the back, took off his shoes, held one of them in his hand, thinking suddenly of the Italian shoemaker who used to chalk “Negre” on the soles of his shoes when he took them to be repaired. “Negre” chalked on the old worn leather. He was ten years old then. And he’d go back for the shoes, with reluctance, never mentioning that chalked word to anyone, rubbing it off, once he got outside the shoemaker’s shop, hating Abbie for insisting that shoes be resoled when the soles were worn.
Once he took a brandnew pair of shoes to the Italian, to have rubber heels put on them, because Abbie said the rubber heels wore better and when he went to get them, there was the word “Negre” chalked this time on the new yellowbrown soles. He remembered the smell of wax, of shoe polish, remembered the dusty look of the big old machine that the shoemaker used, remembered his bent back, the curve of his back, the lined face, the calloused brown hands, the heavy accent, remembered wondering by what right that bentover man had labeled his shoes, like that, remembered thinking, Even my shoes, separated from the others, clearly marked: shoes of a black.
Not too long after that Mr. B. Hod and Mr. W. Knees started re-educating him on the subject of The Race. Part of the education of L. Williams.
He finished undressing and got in bed, and lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, thinking, Maybe there’s something wrong with me. What did she say? “There’s something wrong with you.” Something wrong with me. Why wouldn’t I take her on her terms? Why did it have to be all or nothing? Muscle boy. Shack job. Mechanical toy. Stud. Fine. Keep saying all those words over and over. Keep saying, Everything she does she does too hard. Keep saying, Total involvement, Swallowed up, Suffocated, Strangled. Keep saying, Would have ended anyway, eventually. Say all of it, over and over. Fine.
Yeah, I can keep on saying all those words and yet I will never be able to forget her, will never get her out of my mind. Any more than I ever was able, wholly, to forget China, so too, I will never forget Camilo. I will be haunted by her. The ghost never laid. Not waiting for midnight. Any hour will do. Not haunting any special place. Any place will do.
I will hear the asthmatic wheezing of an old elevator, or catch a glimpse of a young woman with pale yellow hair, or walk too close to Abbie’s border some night in August when the night-blooming stock is perfuming the air, or smell a perfume like it, and the ghost will walk again.
The trouble with me is—he thought, and grinned, remembering the summer he hauled ice for Old Trimble. Old Trimble hauled ice in summer, and hauled junk in winter, and summer or winter, growled and grumbled all day long, sucked on a toothpick, all day long. The summer I worked for him he kept saying, “The trouble with boys is they fathers don’t break enough sticks over they backsides—” and I kept thinking, The trouble with me is a man who isn’t my father tried to kill me. Because that was the summer I was sixteen, the summer I stole F. K. Jackson’s gun because I was going to kill King Hod because he caught me in China’s place again, and, justifiably, from his point of view, and, justifiably, according to his theory of educating a young male, damn near beat me to death.
All part of the education of one Link Williams. A longdrawn-out affair. Can now include Camilla Treadway Sheffield as part of the process, the finishingoff process. Can now say that I have taken the advanced course in the graduate school.
No one in the USA free-from—free from what? Leave it lie. No one in the USA free (period period).
Weak and Mr. Hod? Hardly. Hod hardly. Mr. B. Hod in loco parentis. Parents: blank space. In loco parentis write Mr. B. Hod. Preliminary course in The Race: under Miss Abbie. I failed that one but got an “A” under Mr. Hod and Mr. W. Knees.
Advanced courses: had had various advanced courses. One of the best under old Bob White, Robert Watson White who taught history in Monmouth High School. He had an absolute passion for history. Passion like a transmitter, always some kind of response to it. Even the dimwits had responded to Bob White.
Even a dimwit would respond to Mrs. Bunny Sheffield.
Bob White had a lowpitched voice, and knew how to use it, and so could make you feel as though you had been there when the Stars and Stripes went up over Fort Sumter, because he read an eyewitness account of it: “And then we gave a queer cry, between a cheer and a yell; nobody started it and nobody led it; I never heard anything like it before or since, but I can hear it now.”
I felt as though I had been running and couldn’t get my breath back when Bob White read those words, one afternoon, in the history class, last class of the day.
“But I can hear it now.” Can hear the voice of the gun heiress now, light voice, sweet voice, musical voice, “Don’t ever leave me—don’t ever leave me.” Time passes. The year turns. And the same voice says, “I want him locked up—”
Write it off as part of the education of Link Williams.
L. Williams took the graduate course on the subject of The Race, under Bob White, not meaning to, not wanting to.
I was fifteen then, a junior in High School, Mo
nmouth High School, and one afternoon Bob White stopped me as I was about to leave the classroom, said, “I want to talk to you, Williams,” then said, “Pull up a chair,” then said, “I’ve noticed that you wince, fidget, get upset, every time I mention the subject of slavery.” Said it suddenly, bluntly, with no warning.
Then he handed me three large books and one small one, and a notebook. He said, “Once a man knows who he is, knows something of his own history, he can rid himself of selfdoubt, of belittling comparisons. This is a special assignment. You have three months in which to complete it. At the end of that time I shall expect a monograph from you on the subject of slavery in the United States.”
I picked up the books and they were heavy as all hell and I walked out of the room, and the sound of his voice followed me. He said, “This assignment should cure you of any further embarrassment on the subject.”
I walked along the street, carrying those damn books, swearing that I’d never open them, never return them. Instead of going straight to Abbie’s house, I stopped in the kitchen of The Last Chance. Weak was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. Bill was reading a newspaper and Weak said, “Name-a-God, Sonny, what’s in them big books? You’ll be gradiated from the high schools and finished from the colleges, before you finish ’em.”
I said I’d be through in three months and Bill stared at me and said, “Three months?”
Education of one Link Williams rested at that moment on chance, on fate, on the turn of the wheel. And the wheel turned, because I said, “Sure,” boasting, trying to impress Bill with my ability, my superior knowledge.
