The Salt Eaters (12 page)

“Birds,” said the farm boy in the rear, twisting round in his seat to check the sky, his eyebrows up, his shoulders too and the wire basket aslant in his lap. The other passengers shrugging back in answer, satisfied it was just birds, and that they flew their own way, but baffled by the outburst of the woman standing up. Fred eyed her in the mirror, his stomach settled for a moment. Nilda, still lifting from her seat, continued to stare at the ceiling agape as though it were a membrane, a veil to look through at the fabulous apparition flying back from the concealed world in the far side of the mind.

Obie dumped his clothes in the locker and dropped down on the bench by his daybook. It was starting up again, the factions, the intrigue. A replay of all the old ideological splits: the street youth as vanguard, the workers as vanguard; self-determination in the Black Belt, Black rule of U.S.A.; strategic coalitions, independent political action. Camps were forming threatening to tear the Academy apart. He held his gym shoe open but had no mind to lift his foot. He should make the rounds. Somewhere in the building, an on-the-sly gathering was afoot, no doubt. And tomorrow the polarities would have sharpened, the splits widened. He sat staring at the cement floor as if for cracks. He wanted wholeness in his life again.

Several hotheads, angry they had been asleep in the Sixties, or too young to participate, had been galvanized by the arrival in their midst of the legless vet who used to careen around Claybourne fast and loose on a hot garage dolly. The tutorial staff were urging the group to pull up the welcome mat, close
the doors and concentrate on building up the bookstore and tape library. The office staff were charging the executive committee with elitism. The study group leaders said the new crop of recruits were apathetic or stupid. The masseuse, karate master, the language teachers and the resident reggae band feeling more than estranged were asking, Whatever happened to Third World solidarity?

And too, there was the group who came by the house late at night to argue that the Academy, too visible and above ground, had performed its function, pulling folks together for a moment. And now that key people had been identified, it should be abandoned and a select group move off to the back district and organize a self-sufficient community. Velma had rejected it as too aloof a way to make a contribution.

After several tries, they modified the plan: a select few should nab some devalued real estate near the woods and move off for a year and start a brain-trust farm. And finally do what the folks in the nineteenth century had talked about at the Colored People’s Conventions, finally do what the African Brotherhood had formed to do in the twenties, finally do what had been a priority item in the early sixties, then got pushed aside when the movement was redefined from the outside, but was tried anyway by the Lowndes County Freedom Party, by folks within the Peace and Freedom Party, later by the All African People’s Party, what had been discussed in Philly, Little Rock, Gary, and Dayton, Ohio, but yet to be done—to blueprint a sure-fire strategy for mobilizing the people to form and support an independent Black political party before it was too late. There was the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to hook up with, the La Raza Unida groups still functioning to connect with, the American Indian Movement to ally, and a loose, informal network of medicine people throughout the communities of color to be lifted up and formalized. That had captured his and Velma’s
attention. But when was there a moment, much less the material resources, to move off for a year? And so the Spring Festival had been designed as a holding action, way to reconcile the camps, to encourage everyone to work together until the plan could be put to them. But then the hotheads had brought the guns into the place and the splits widened and Obie had not moved quickly enough, been forceful enough, was overcome with ambivalence. Obie felt the image of himself coming apart in Ahiro’s hands.

“Have to be whole to see whole,” Mrs. Heywood had counseled them. He’d tried to stay on top on all diverse plans and keep the groups with the Academy. A deep rift had been developing for centuries, the woman taught, beginning with the move toward the material world and away from nature. Now there was a Babel of paths, of plans. “There is a world to be redeemed,” she warned. “And it’ll take the cooperation of all righteous folks.”

Obie dropped his shoe and rubbed his chest. He was probably exaggerating, but things had seemed more pulled together when Velma had been there, in the house and at the Academy. Not that her talents ran in the peace-making vein. But there’d been fewer opportunities for splinterings with her around, popping up anywhere at any time to raise a question, audit a class, monitor a meeting, confront or cooperate. It was all of a piece with Velma around.

He’d thought he was relieving her of distraction, suggesting she pare her schedule down. But most often she was either huddled in the Chesterfield, her head dropped to her chest, preoccupied, or out of town keeping company with consoles and terminals with cutesy names like Big Blue. And the two major camps, the ones she’d held together, urging each to teach the other its language, had sprung apart. The one argued relentlessly now for the Academy to change its name from
7 Arts to Spirithood Arts and to revamp the program, strip it of material and mundane concerns like race, class and struggle. The other wanted “the flowing ones” thrown out and more posters of Lenin, Malcom, Bessie Smith and Coltrane put up.

Obie bent down and worked his foot into the shoe. He felt the strain in his midriff and wondered if he shouldn’t once again invite Women for Action to join them, to move from his sister-in-law’s studio to the Academy. There was more resistance to this idea within the Academy than he’d anticipated. It made no sense. The work was the same: to develop, to de-mystify, to build, to consolidate and escalate. And they shared key people: Jan, who ran the ceramics and sculpture division; Ruby, who coordinated the newsletter staff; Bertha, who ran the nutrition program. Velma had run the office, done the books, handled payroll, supervised the office staff and saw to it that they were not overlooked as resource people for seminars, conferences and trips, wrote the major proposals and did most of the fund raising. It took him, Jan, Marcus (when he was in town), Daisy Moultrie and her mother (when they could afford to pay them), the treasurer of the board, and two student interns to replace Velma at the Academy.

Obie lingered over the laces, the pull in his midsection masking the pain in his chest. Maybe she had come home, cut the job short, quit. She would have come home to an empty house. He should have left a note—“We’re staying a few days with Cleotus,” or “The Hermit,” as Velma had tagged him. But he hadn’t. She rarely did anymore either. She just hopped a plane to Wisconsin or wherever the computer job was. Or took off to Palma’s saying nothing. Although no one over there had summoned her or was sick. Obie was pulling the laces too tight and wagging his head. What simple-ass shit was that, not leaving her a note because she hadn’t left him a note. “Fuck a note anyhow.”

He swung up, stretched and then slumped, a sack of stones swaying in his chest. And what did he call himself doing now? Hiding out. Stalling. His whole johnson was getting raggedy—his home, his work. And he was sitting on a bench in a basement talking to a locker. The fissures at home had yawned wide and something fine had dropped through. He was not taking care of business. And the one thing in the world he had always been about was taking care of business, he turned to explain to the staircase, a more organic, therefore more reasonable listener, he figured, measuring quickly wood versus metal. And then he saw the envelope sticking out of his appointment book. He did not want to read the letter again, or check over his schedule for the day again, or go into the gym either. But he’d held out the reward of the sauna and a massage to get him through it all. He couldn’t just sit there. Things coming apart and he was sitting it out on the bench. The major parade to begin at midnight and he was having difficulty getting his shoes on. He didn’t recognize himself.

He didn’t recognize her either. Restless, lips swollen, circles under her eyes, spellbound. And didn’t recognize the versions of her whispered in the halls by people who’d worked with her, knew her—“crackpot.” Ever since he’d demanded more of a home life, she’d been in a stew, threatening to boil over and crack the pot all right. Or maybe the cracking had begun years earlier when the womb had bled, when the walls had dropped away and the baby was flushed out. How long would it take to know the woman, his woman? Two years living with her before he learned to identify the particular spasm as her coming? He would enter her throbbing, and she would close around him. And somewhere, as their hips swung, the bottoms of her feet stroking the fat of his calves, her thunderous buns rocking in the seat of his palms, a muscle would clutch at him, and he’d feel the tremor begin at the tip of his joint. Two years it took
to distinguish her tremor from his pleasure, her orgasm from the vibration in his hands, in his calves, the quivering in his tightened balls. Two years before her calling out his name in that way would not catch him by surprise. How much longer would it take to learn all of Velma?

Someone was on the landing calling him. He straightened up but did not get up. He had no reason not to answer but he didn’t. It felt right to sit there, his palms now cupping his kneecaps, his feet flat on the floor, one shoe off and one shoe on, his eyes skimming over the envelope toward the stairs. And it drew him together to hear his name called like that, the caller throwing it off the walls, tossing it in the upper hall. It focused him. The calling and then the going absolutely still, listening for an answer, the whole body and mind absorbed in it even as Obie sat there stopping his stomach and chest in midbreath. The caller sighing now, muttering, scraping his shoes against the threshold, then jiggling the doorknob. The way Velma did of late, checking and rechecking the knob, the latch, the catch, not trusting the mechanism to mesh on its own with whatever ratchet caused it to function and keep her exits possible. The house was no longer a comfortable place for her. She veered sharply to avoid things he did not see. Would slap her hand over her mouth and press her whole face shut as if to stifle a scream. And the night the bedroom knob came off in his hands, she’d backed down the hall and left the house without a coat.

Whoever it was calling him left the door ajar and Obie followed the footfalls overhead going toward the kiln. Any minute he expected other steps to sound, the caller to be joined, voices, some confirmation of a clandestine meeting. And when the time came for the procession, he’d discover a palace coup had been effected while he’d sat in the basement with one shoe on.

The caller was back at the basement end of the hall, alone, opening doors, and the sudden blast of an electric guitar made Obie start. He found himself clutching the daybook, the envelope crushed in his grip. He bent and put his other shoe on before he recognized the soloist overhead. He could see young Bobby, his blue embroidered strap across his chest like a banderillo; young Bobby taking his Jimi stance, his hands flying across the strings releasing the music, holding music in his mouth, holding the next few lines he’d play in his mouth in that pretty way that never resembled an upchuck, no matter how much Velma teased. His brother Bobby flooding the halls, the basement, playing the feedback, his main man on the amp fiddling with the dials, and letting the audience know just when something extra hip was coming up. And then the door was closed, before he could hear what he always heard from his younger brother’s music: Come join me here; come join me here.

Obie moved the book and envelope away from him and breathed deeply.
They got me up here in Rikers, man
. He planted a foot on the bench and rolled his sock down, remembering that Rikers, like so many joints where the family is caged, had been built on top of a garbage dump. They had his brother Roland in prison for rape this time, and Obie knew it was no bum rap. He let his foot fall to the floor.

They got me up here mopping floors, bro
. She’d been mopping up her own blood with the mop Roland had threatened her with, taken from her, and hit her with, surprising her from the garage window. Mopping up her own blood when the police arrived. A Black woman, forty-six years old, four children, her husband in the reserves for nine days. Roland climbing in the window, stepping over bikes, skateboards, stacks of comics, a burnt-out TV. She’d been in the kitchen mopping the floor. Roland had sent him the newspaper clippings.

Awwwww shit, man, ain’t like she was a virgin
. Obie had flown up for the trial.
Shit, she was probably on the pill
. And he had studied them both. Roland, hard mouth and surly, his head dropped to the side bobbing like the hydrophobic patient he’d helped Doc Serge get to the hospital three summers before.
Don’t cry, bitch, or I’ll really hurt you
. The woman huddled on the stand, pinched, nasal, but determined to get justice.
Be good to me, ain’t nobody been good to me
. She might have been their Aunt Frances, an older sister. She was.
Be sweet now and I’ll be gone fore your children get back
.

They got me in a box, man. When you going to get me out?
Obie’d gone to see him in the Tombs, hand grabbing at his clothes, mildew rotting the shirt off his back. “This is fucked up, Roland,” he had started to say, but Roland was talking about the money, the debt. “We’re richer than the land, Roland.” But he didn’t get a chance to say what he meant, Roland cutting through with a sneer and talking not about the land their father had tried to give them, after nearly fifteen years of absence, but about the fact that Obie had rejected his share too and the portion of their dead mother’s rights. And maybe that had been a big mistake, he wanted to say, but Roland was calling him Big Man, Revolutionary Man, Straight Up and Down Got It All Together Man and there was no room for talking.

Be good to me, bitch, cause no one else has so you take the weight
. The cramped and scribbly writing though was saying other things, about the lame lawyer, the racist judge, the kangeroo court, the vengeful bitch, the rough-off artists in the joint, the lead-pipe shakedowns, the lousy food, the lousy break. No cigarettes, no money, no visitors, no luck, no pussy. He’d actually written that he was so horny he’d fuck a rat if it stood still.
Don’t scream, bitch. Clench those muscles down there and be good to me
. The woman had held herself together on the
stand, to get it all said, trembling for justice.