My adventures at Yale were somewhat pale, by comparison, though at that moment the climate at Yale and elsewhere was just progressive enough that I suppose I did not feel penalized by those whose acceptance I craved for hanging out with my roommate. But Aaron was increasingly reminded of everything he wished to forget by the more militant black students, who wanted to claim him as their own.
One lunchtime our second semester, a tall angular young man from the Afro table muttered “Oreo” as he passed our group. The rest of us were indignant and would have leaped to Aaron’s defense if any other issue had been involved—if he’d been called a fag, for instance. But our bookish little confederation was uncertain of the new etiquette, and, with the exception of Aaron, we were white as plucked poultry; half of us had never heard the word used in this context. Aaron himself pretended not to have heard. It seems odd to me now that Aaron and I never talked about any of this. But, then, young men seldom talk among themselves about the things that matter the most to them.
My attempt to accommodate divergent loyalties and ambitions was challenged that March by the arrival of an invitation to Dalton Percy’s birthday party. Our near roommate had become the center of the Brahmin, rakehell set in our class, the boys whose ancestors were Old Blues and who themselves would soon fill the ranks of the secret societies. Dalton owned an old fire engine, and on Friday nights he and his friends would gather at some exclusive location to drink themselves into hilarity, after which they would climb aboard and race around the campus throwing water balloons at passersby. I’m sorry to report that this seemed to me the height of stylish fun at the time.
I’d never manned the fire engine, but Dalton had been in my history class in the first term, and I’d lent him my class notes on one occasion. Our initial encounter was never mentioned, and for some reason I had extended myself to be friendly, as if I were the one who had rejected him as a roommate. He in turn seemed eager to communicate, in his own careless way, that he had nothing against me, and always said hello. But I was still surprised to get the engraved invitation—black tie at Mory’s, the venerable private club on York Street.
I didn’t need to ask Aaron if he’d been invited. And in a momentary flash of lucidity, I wondered if that was why I had been invited, to sharpen the point of my roommate’s exclusion. This anxious thought was immediately suppressed, as anticipation about the party swirled across the Old Campus. Participants were to be picked up in front of their dorms by the fire engine; prostitutes and strippers were forecast.
“Ask Patrick,” Peter Barnholtz said to our table, one day at lunch. “He’s going.”
“I’m not going,” I said, glancing at Aaron’s face and just as quickly turning away, already angry that I’d been made to blurt out a denial when in fact I was still trying to work out a Missouri compromise with my conscience.
“I mean, I was invited,” I added. “Don’t ask me why. I hardly even know the guy.”
“Don’t stay away on my account,” Aaron said coldly, as we got up to walk to class.
“I wouldn’t think of going,” I lied. The salient point, I suppose, was that I hadn’t mentioned the invitation before, hadn’t held it up and laughed in derision when I had opened it a few days before with Aaron standing right beside me at the mailboxes, tearing the wrapper from his latest issue of the fucking Boating News. Obviously, I was considering my response, and by the time Aaron heard that, from Peter, it was already too late.
In fact, I was not among the celebrants. Seldom has an intended good deed, modest though it was, been performed with such tortured reluctance. Then again, the older I get the more I suspect that many genuine heroes have sulked onto the field of glory, that famous stands of principle have often been hunched over with doubt. I wanted to go, was dying to go. But I couldn’t find a place to hide my scruples. Finally, the night before the party, I called Dalton with an elaborate story of a dying grandfather—the classic failure-to-produce-homework story, which sounded no less hackneyed in this case.
“Too bad,” Dalton said. “You’re missing a bash.”
“If it were anything else …,” I croaked.
“Yeah, well, catch you later, guy.”
I returned to our rooms and paced, waiting for Aaron to come back so I could tell him what I had done and thereby alleviate in some small measure the sickening feeling of loss in my chest. I waited until midnight, unable to concentrate on Beowulf or Aristotle or the Dred Scott decision. I went to the library to look for him, then rushed home to silent, empty rooms. I hardly slept that night, imagining all the splendor and bon vivacity I would be deprived of in twenty-four hours.
In the morning, Aaron’s bed had clearly not been slept in, and he was not at lunch. No one knew where he was. Indignant at his disappearance, I began to reconsider. The afternoon was ruined by indecision and the certain knowledge that I would regret either choice. At four I called the formal shop, expecting, and half hoping, to be told that all plausible sizes and types were unavailable due to a major undergraduate party. But in fact they had my very size, available in both shawl and notched lapel; I should have known that most of Dalton’s friends would own tuxedos. At six-thirty I went to dinner, but I was unable to eat or to listen to anything said at table. When I raced back to my room there was still no sign of Aaron.
Finally, the fire engine, preceded by its siren, pulled up on High Street. I watched from our window as the boys in their evening wear climbed onto the side of the truck, holding the rails with one hand and clinking their beer and champagne bottles together as the flashing red lights disappeared into the festive night.
Aaron sauntered in an hour later to change his clothes.
“Where have you been?” I practically shouted.
He stopped and turned in the door frame. “I was with Cameron,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”
“I didn’t go to the party.” I didn’t know what else to say. Angry as I was at him, the ostensible cause and beneficiary of my decision, I wanted him to make me feel better about it.
“What party,” he asked.
“Dalton Percy’s birthday,” I said incredulously.
After a moment he nodded slowly, as if on reflection he dimly recalled hearing something about the event. “Bully for you,” he said jauntily, and disappeared into his room.
X
“You know anything about this nigger girl?”
When Cordell Savage called with the offer of dinner in New Haven, I was flattered that he’d make the detour from New York. It wasn’t until we were tucking into our steaks at Mory’s that he revealed what was clearly the true purpose of his visit.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, hoping the flush I felt rising in my cheeks wouldn’t betray me.
“Hasn’t he talked to you about her?” He paused as if to try to sniff my sincerity. I developed a sudden interest in my plate. “Well, he will sooner or later. And when he does I want you to remember what I’m about to tell you.” He waited until I looked up expectantly. “We’ve heard tell Will’s infatuated with this … girl. I don’t exactly know your sympathies, whether you cotton to all this civil rights business. I don’t expect you share my convictions. But most of our people do. They don’t believe that God intended the races should mix—I’m talking coloreds as well as whites.”
When he took a breather to fill our wineglasses, I conducted a quick reconnaissance of the immediate tables; no one appeared to be listening, but I still felt awkward hearing these sentiments expressed in this privileged outpost of the great institution of liberal education from which Cordell himself had graduated. Lux et Veritas, that was our motto. And yet Cordell was a charismatic man. He sounded reasonable. It was difficult for me to discount his opinions, particularly within the force field of his presence. Those of us with democratic temperaments are handicapped in the face of the autocratic personality.
“It may be up here you think there’s nothing wrong with it,” he continued. “But I’m telling you that do
wn south this is a very grave matter. We have a heritage. We live in the world that was given to us. Even if I wanted to give my blessings, the fact is Will would have to contend with the judgment of an entire society. In fact I cannot give my blessings, and if Will continues on this course he’s going to find himself cut off from his family and his people and his patrimony. And I don’t think I have to tell you, Patrick, it would kill his poor mother.”
“Don’t you think all this is a little premature?” I said. “We don’t even know if he’s dating this girl, let alone—”
“We know he’s seeing her,” Cordell interrupted. “Memphis is a small town and Will is, need I mention, a conspicuous figure. Driving around town in a goddamned cement truck wearing some British officer’s uniform—you think people don’t notice that, don’t tell us what he’s up to? What worries me—we both know that Will is given to bold dramatic gestures.”
I winced at the thought that this might be an allusion to Will’s sacrificial expulsion, though on reflection, I doubted he had ever heard the real story.
“If he is serious about this girl,” I said, “I doubt my opinion is going to make any difference.”
“Of course it would. You’re his best damn friend. And you’re an outsider. Right now he’s not listening to his own people.”
“Will doesn’t listen to anybody.”
“He’ll trust you to be objective.” Having said this, Cordell tried to compromise my alleged neutrality. “Patrick, you’ve broken bread and hunted with us. I think you understand us, and I know you’ll do right by Will.”
This shameless appeal to my vanity did not entirely miss its mark. As we finished the excellent wine, I promised to find out what I could, though it seemed ridiculous, since Will was living in Memphis, right under Cordell’s patrician nose.
Once his hepatitis cleared up, Will established a talent management and production company, Cement Mixer Music, and started cruising the back roads of the Deep South in a two-tone, cream-and-beige ’55 Packard, scouring the dives for talent. In February, he had called me to report, with uncharacteristic pride and exhilaration in his voice, that Lester Holmes had a single on the R-and-B charts.
After Cordell’s visit, I dutifully dialed the number of Will’s office and left a message with someone who sounded too stoned to remember it. I had no home number for Will, and I wasn’t sure where he was living. Shortly after Christmas break I received a package from Memphis. Inside was a record, a 45. The photograph on the sleeve looked familiar, but it was not until I saw the name—Taleesha Johnson—that I realized the singer was the shy, beautiful girl who’d once slapped Will’s face. Examining the label, I found that Will had both production and cowriting credits.
Home for a long weekend, I was sitting at the dinner table with my mother and father, Nana Keane, my aunt Colleen and her son, Jimmy. Aunt Colleen had just said, “How about a little music?” when the phone rang, alleviating the dreadful silence around the table.
“I’ll get it,” I said, jumping up.
“What’d you think of the record,” Will asked, without preamble, once I picked up.
“Hey, it’s great,” I lied, having been far too busy to even think about listening to it. “Of course, you know me,” I hedged, “I’m no expert or anything.”
“It’s not meant for experts, Patrick. It’s for everybody—even you buttoned-down guys. She’s crossed over to the pop charts, and we’re following up with another single next month.”
All he wanted to talk about was Taleesha and her career, and I began to think his father’s suspicions were well founded. He asked me if I could meet them in New York in three days; Taleesha was doing a gig at the Apollo. When I told him I’d try, classes would’ve started up again by then, he said:
“I need you to be there, Patrick.”
On a Wednesday afternoon, I met Will under the clock at the Biltmore. My idea: I liked to picture myself as the kind of guy who hopped on the train from New Haven after classes and casually met his friends under the famous clock, like a character in an O’Hara story. My train was late and Will was waiting when I arrived—the only time he’s ever waited on me. Normally he was at least half an hour late for any rendezvous, and often never turned up at his appointed destination. Days or weeks might go by before he called again. Drugs had something to do with this, but the condition was chronic—an unconscious function, I think, of the inherited sense of entitlement. Moreover, he was utterly convinced of the importance of his mission, of the work he needed to perform in the world, and immune to the fear of inconveniencing his fellow creatures, that nervous lower-middle-class anxiety which plagued me as I pushed through the throng of Grand Central beneath the dirty blue zodiacal dome on my way to meet him.
“I feel like a fucking cliché,” he complained when I ran up, breathless, “waiting under the damn clock at the Biltmore. It doesn’t get any more Dink Stover than this.”
“Well, you look like a freak.” He was gaunt, almost spectral. His hair was longer, draped thickly around his shoulders, and he was further shrouded in a long black cape over a lush paisley shirt.
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said the young black woman who rose from an armchair, bathed in the spotlight of Will’s rapturous gaze.
“Taleesha Johnson, may I present Patrick Keane.”
She took my hand. “So you’re my big rival.”
More than faintly pleased to hear this, I smiled. “And you’re the owner of that amazing voice. I’ll never forget the first time I heard you sing in that little church in the Delta.”
“Wait till you hear the shit we just recorded,” said Will, squeezing her to his chest. “She’s even hotter singing the devil’s music.”
“Will, you know I don’t like when you say that,” she said, pushing away from him.
“She’s a believer,” Will said fondly. “Lord knows what she’s doing with this heathen.”
“You know I’m only interested in your money,” she said. “Anyhow, you’re no heathen.”
She was right. Will was actually the most religious person I knew, though his belief in a submerged and spiritual order in the universe was neither readily apparent nor easily comprehended.
Cordell was also right. Things were pretty far advanced between them. And I could feel the logic of it. They made a potent couple. An inch or two taller than me, Taleesha seemed even taller, the verticality of her long limbs and regal carriage crowned with a sharp chin and a rich swell of lips and flared nostrils beneath the horizontal slash of her cheekbones. You simply had to look at her.
We took a cab to the Village and walked around, past Sheridan Square. “A barbaric Yankee general,” Will said, pointing at the statue at one end of the park. “And in this corner—my people.” He gestured toward the longhairs and the low-lifes congregated around the benches.
He was exuberant. The furtive mournfulness he carried like a hump on his back seemed to have lifted away. He was in love and the scent of marijuana was in the air. The slaves were growing their hair out and marching on Washington. The Pentagon would shortly be levitated. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jimi Hendrix were still among us.
We wandered the downtown streets for hours, pausing in front of various nightclubs which Will considered hallowed, until he finally suggested an early dinner at the Cedar Tavern, which he commended as the watering hole of artists and hipsters.
“They look pretty down and out to me,” Taleesha said, observing the clientele. Over the course of the afternoon I’d been impressed with the way Taleesha managed Will and teased him, cheerfully squelching his wilder fantasies without mocking his hopes. She’d been considerate enough to annotate the music-biz talk for my benefit. Even by my conventional standards she was accomplished. At one point, when Taleesha ducked into a store on Bleecker to look at shoes, Will informed me that she’d been a National Merit scholar at Booker T. Washington High and that she’d received scholarship offers from all over the country. Except when she gigg
led at Will, a high, birdlike sound, it was hard to believe she was our age, so canny and self-assured was she. Her voice was rich and authoritative. At times her grammar was almost stiltedly correct, her diction chiseled. And then suddenly she would sound both southern and black—the slang, the melting elision of consonants and the lazy vowels. She tended toward the latter when deflating Will’s pretensions.
A look passed between them and she excused herself from the table. Whatever was coming I saw they’d agreed that this was the moment for it to start.
“What do you think,” he asked foolishly—not a question a man can ever answer honestly, when his best friend asks it about the woman he loves.
“What can I say? She’s beautiful.” This was one of the rare moments since I’d known Will that the balance of power had shifted to the point that he needed my approval; love had made him vulnerable.
He leaned forward, fixing me with those unnaturally blue eyes. “We’re making it official.”
I can’t say I was entirely unprepared, but I was still surprised to hear him say it. And I suppose I felt a twinge of loss, a jealous fear that I was losing him.
“We’re going to city hall tomorrow and I’d like you to be my best man.”
“Honored,” I said, once I’d regained some portion of my composure.
“But what?”
“No buts …”
“Come on, goddamnit!”
Whether out of pique or good sense, I felt irresistibly compelled to play superego, or at least to test his resolve. I had, after all, accepted his father’s commission. And so I reminded Will that he was only nineteen, that they’d known each other just a few months, that on many occasions he’d proclaimed marriage an outmoded bourgeois convention.
The Last of the Savages Page 12