Three Days Before the Shooting ... (27 page)

“Hey, Barrelhouse,” a man laughed at the bar, “that was the lick that did it!”

“Yeah,” Barrelhouse said, “but that lick was way damn late. My ace had been hunching me all along that something wasn’t right about that fool, but those Jesus clothes fooled me.”

He stood on the bottom step looking indignantly around. “Who the hell
ordained her
, that’s what I want to know!”

“You mean who ordained
him,”
the man said.

“‘Him’ or ‘her,’ I don’t give a damn, from now on I’m barring ‘em all. It makes for too much confusion, bringing religion into a jazz joint—Hey, where you people think you’re going? The session ain’t over, the musicians are still charged up, some others are coming soon,
and
I’m fixing to serve everybody breakfast on the house. Eggs to order and everything. Come on back and sit down!”

He came quickly down the steps, then, noticing me, he stopped, his face suddenly blank. “Hey,” he said in a gruff, deadpan voice, “that was a bitch, wasn’t it? A lo-mo funky row, huh?” He watched me shrewdly.

“It was too much for me,” I said.

He threw back his head and roared. “Yeah, it was for ole Heapachange Hudson too,” he said. “I never seen such action in a tux in all my born days. When I got to the street he was cold sober and long gone. He was probably in the hospital before I could get that flimflamming phoney bastard up to the street. By the way, did you see your girl?”

“No,” I said, “she didn’t come.”

“Well, you never know about a woman. Maybe if you come back tonight she’ll be here. Done mixed up the date, you know. But hell, stay anyway and enjoy the music; have some food. The musicians are bound to come on strong, because there’s nothing like a little extra excitement to get them really jumping.”

I thanked him but declined. When the check girl brought my coat she was as excited as the others. I tipped her and smiled, but I didn’t share her high-pitched
laughter. As I moved away, the musicians had returned to their places, and now deep, rumbling piano chords were sounding beneath the roar. I moved up to the street, feeling a deepening sense of isolation, a growing emptiness.

It was the weird mixture of sacred and profane which provoked the laughter and gave it its character that got me. There was a note sounding through it that was more upsetting than the violent and androgynous figure who had aroused it. It was too inclusive, it hinted at too many unnameable, chaotic, and unpleasant things, of that were beyond my capacity of confrontation, and I was relieved to put them behind me with the closing of the door. But even so, it wasn’t ended, only muted. For I could still hear it behind me, buoyed now by searching minor chords.

Outside it was cold, silent along the avenue. I looked around for the exposed preacher, but no one was in sight. Pellets of ice whistled past in the brisk wind, peppered my face. Drops of blood were splattered at intervals along the walk past the silent buildings. In front, signs of struggle and the trampled tambourine showed in the snow piled along the curb before the club. Looking directly across the avenue through the slowly lifting light, I faced a high sheer wall of gray-hued rock which swept northward on a gradual rise to become, two blocks away, a slanting, tree-strewn park showing white with crystal shrubs and drifted branches, and then arose, silently exalting the drifted snow, to emerge again, metamorphosed—gray rock again, but chiseled now and mortar-bound into a line of college buildings set like battlements, crenelled and merloned, embrasured and bartizaned, yet looming serene and decorous in the first light, high on the hill.

There soon the flags would fly, rippling briskly in the wind, and students clad in winter wool would gather from throughout the city, and girls with snowflaked breath would slowly trudge fresh paths upon the drifted whiteness. And would Laura, with our hidden secret, climb that hill today, rise to the invincible battlements? I turned. How could I have hoped to see her here? The laughter beneath the walk would continue into the middle morning, the horns contending through the day. They were wild there below, laughing at chimeras; locked out of time….

I shook my head, baffled by what I’d seen and by what I couldn’t face. Vague currents of thought swirled up and away as I tried vainly to bind basement and battlement into a skein of meaning, while far up the curving avenue below the colleged hill, the traffic lights were turning green, green.

I turned, preparing to start south for the subway, then high above the street two black cats with crooks in their tails streaked past along the snowy ridge of the rock—just as the basement behind me exploded with an up-roarous version of an old spiritual tune, “Ain’t Gon’ Study War No More,” through which wild accents of laughter sounded.

Going to lay down

     
my sword and shield

          
Down

               
by

                    
the riverside

          
Down

               
by

                    
the riverside

          
Down

               
by

                    
the riverside

Going to lay down

        
my

            
sword and shield

            
Down

                
by

                
the

                    
riverside …

Stud-day-eh

        
War

            
No

                
More!

It was a rowdy farewell fanfare, I later realized, announcing both the end to my relation with Laura and to my efforts at social action. I turned up my collar and hurried away, feeling myself the victim of an impossible and impractical love.

CHAPTER 11

M
Y LOSS, HOWEVER
, had not been easy to accept. Emotionally I did not so soon surrender. I fell into a depression which led to several fruitless consultations with an analyst (who told me little that I was prepared to understand, things about my psyche which seemed ridiculous). Then, as suddenly as one’s hair is said to turn white overnight, I forgot it. Both my concern with the social future and my shame and sorrow were buried beneath a burst of activity brought on by the war. And all that had defeated me had become, it seemed, part of a time out of mind, a life lived and lost. But now as I stood there in the hospital corridor, it was all back and ripping me apart.

A wave of humiliation swept over me, shaking me, and I thought,
So it was that and then that has me now. Two dark women and a piece of lost time bound to a section of a city left long ago which I haven’t seen in years…. Here and now dark things and dark people lost in the dark places of my mind are with me, and no search for peace nor pining for the past released them here, but him, sitting there!
And I looked at Hickman, feeling as though my chest, my throat, were splitting apart.

Then an amused voice like that of McGowan drawled to me sotto voce but with the penetrating clarity of a mosquito’s drone:
“Now take it easy, McIntyre; don’t go letting a thing like
that
get you down. Not with that Hickman watching you. Sit down, man, or he’ll see you. And don’t forget, we’ve all got something to hide; we wouldn’t be men if we hadn’t. Besides, whoever heard of a bastard born out of a plasma bottle, or a nigra bred of a transfusion of blood through a hollow needle!”

As the outrageous joke exploded in my head I heard a wild burst of laughter rip from my lips and quickly stifled it, looking behind me for McGowan.

Emptiness!

The elevator droned, dropping past with a blur of slitted light. Things seemed suddenly darker. Then completely without warning I was bounding down the corridor through a hot thickness of light and shadow, heading toward Hickman and shouting within myself,
How dare you force your way into my secret mind, intrude on memories!

I was standing over him then, with the eerie sounds of collapsing structures, the blaring of an automobile horn, echoing through my head. I stared at him, still sitting with closed eyes, unaware and yet seeming to judge me. And still unaware as my arm moved. Then I could feel the fierce swing of it, starting from my right thigh and scything upward. And even as my hand snaked out palmwise, I was listening with savage expectation for the sound, the impact against the smooth dark face.
Now we’ll test that moral superiority of yours
, I thought.
Now—

But there was no sound, only a dream-like floating moment, during which it was as though my frenzied anticipation had short-circuited my hearing, destroying time and sequence. I seemed to see the start of my hand’s flight again, yet even as it streaked toward its target I was aware of a flash of movement beneath me, felt a crunch of pain—“Oh!”—and, looking down, found my wrist clamped in old Hickman’s huge fingers.

I winced, seeing a ripple pass over his features as I spun sideways and tilted toward him—finding myself held by the eruptive throbbing of a single vein in the middle of his forehead, then staring into his questioning eyes.

Someone called my name from far away now, and I turned to see Tolliver moving across the corridor through a pink mist. He yelled, “McIntyre!” clearly now, coming on.

“What the hell’s happening here?” I heard, trying vainly to free my wrist.

I looked at Hickman silently. The pressure in my wrist was building rapidly, pounding. I could hear quick footsteps hurrying up the corridor as Tolliver moved around me, facing Hickman.

“What’re you doing?” he said. “What’s going on?”

Hickman shook his head, and I could feel his grip suddenly tighten.

“Mister, you’re asking the wrong man.”

The footsteps had ceased. It was Bates, his face looming close to mine, his eyes bright.

“Damn it, don’t we have enough trouble without this?”

“We certainly have,” Tolliver said, “and I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

I watched Hickman, waiting tensely. Then his eyes met mine and I returned his gaze with mixed feelings of anger and defiance, expecting him to denounce me as his great chest rose and fell. Then—
hazzzzzzz
—he sighed softly, a slow emission of breath, pursed his lips, and his eyes were on Tolliver.

All right
, I thought,
why’re you holding back? Get on with it—
wondering what my next move would be.

From somewhere in the building a rapid thudding, like that of a dental chair being elevated, began—ceased. Outside, an approaching siren sounded
surprisingly near, whirred lazily to a dying fall, quickly revived, rising to a hysterical screaming as it sped away, fading.

“I’m talking to you and I want an answer,” Tolliver said. “Who started this ruckus?”

Hickman’s head tilted alertly, his face a brown pattern of dark highlights above a grotesque shadow which Tolliver cast across his chest. I felt a pain knife through my wrist as he watched Tolliver, then I was free and he shifted his position, grasping the arms of the chair as I took a step backwards.
Now
, I thought,
now he’ll spill it
.

“Take it easy, Marv,” Bates said. “I saw part of it. McIntyre swung on the old guy. That much I saw. Didn’t you see him?”

“Yes,” Tolliver said, “but can’t you see there’s more to it than that? I want to know what caused him to do it!”

Hickman’s voice seemed to resonate the floor. “Maybe,” he said, “he wanted to see if I believed in turning the other cheek.”

I flushed, searching his face for signs of mockery.
He knows
, I thought with growing conviction.
Somehow he knows more than I know he knows…. But why is he waiting? To tease?

“Now you listen to me,” Tolliver said. “If you think this is a kidding matter you’re mistaken. Answer the question!”

The pressure of Hickman’s grip seemed to have passed from my wrist to my eyes, demanding that I speak, and I opened my mouth, inhaled sharply, feeling a furious pounding in my throat, closed it immediately. An urge to confess was upon me, a compulsion to explain myself and to—Hickman. But I was embarrassed and afraid that, once begun, I’d lose all control and speak not only of Laura but of other forgotten and perhaps compromising things. I dropped my eyes.

“You’ll still have to ask him,” Hickman said, “because I actually don’t know. Now, you saw me sitting here, and if you still want to know what I was doing, I was thinking. I’ve got a heap on my mind, and I don’t mean Mister McIntyre. I’ve got that shot-up boy in there to worry about. I’ve got those old folks to worry about. I’ve got tomorrow to worry about. I’ve got enough on my mind without thinking about Mister McIntyre…. Though now that I’ve come to think about it, he could go and find out what happened to my people and get me a lawyer for them. That is, if he had the charity of heart—”

His voice broke off as though he were awaiting a reply.
“Charity of heart!”I
thought.
What kind of talk is that here?