Stanley parked the limousine and stood a moment, looking around—the terrace, the gardens with their white-painted furniture, umbrellas all taken down against the wind, the usual weekend crowd of young people, playing shuffleboard or tennis, or just chattering in the front entrance. Heavy tadpole-shaped drops of rain began to fall, then just as abruptly ceased. It would storm before too long.
Stanley went in the screen door marked “Employees.” He looked first in the kitchen—too early; nobody there except the salad girls, thin young bodies and hair carefully bound up under white hairnets. “Hi, sweeties.” They giggled at him, and waved black hands speckled with green parsley. He went down the concrete hall, faintly wet and sea-smelling. He pushed open the door to the employees’ lunchroom. That door was kept closed, the air conditioner always running. Howard, who was in charge of the place, wanted it that way.
The door squeaked, but moved smoothly. And Howard called: “My friend, where you at!”
He was sitting in his usual chair, his extra flesh falling off the sides like frosting from a cake. For years he’d played trombone with the Eureka Brass Band in New Orleans. Until he got too heavy to march. “Man, the backs of my legs would be on fire, them muscles just on fire. And every breath killed me. …” And his last parade: “We was playing ‘Just a Closer Walk’ and the next thing I know I was looking up at a piece of sky and people was looking down at me and blood was running into my collar from where I hit my head. After that I figured there was nothing I could do but head for the pine trees.”
Stanley sat down at the table opposite him. “Howard, I been thinking, why don’t you go back to that trombone?”
Howard grinned his steady broad grin. “My friend, I play nothing but the accordion now. I don’t want death wings that close to me again.”
Stanley stared at the formica table top. “You reckon death wings got feathers?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“Maybe they’d be black feathers?”
“Oh, man, you are talking nonsense. Beer?”
Stanley nodded. Howard got up slowly, the chair creaking as he left it, and went behind the small bar. He got the can and glass, still dripping, and made a mark in his account book. “Charge like always?”
Stanley nodded. “One of the benefits of the job.”
“Is he here?” Howard asked.
“Upstairs.”
“Another blast?” About three weeks before, Mr. Robert had fallen down the stairs leading to the boat landings.
“He’s got to be back at the hospital at eight.”
“That old man going to die?”
Stanley felt a little catch in his stomach. “Why should he die this time when he didn’t all those other times?”
“Death,” Howard said solemnly, “is the final trial.”
“You been going to church again.”
“We are all in need of the Lord’s help.”
“Maybe I better be sure he really went upstairs.”
There were three white-jacketed waiters at the service bar—Stanley nodded to them; he knew them all, the club staff never changed. “He out there?”
One of the men pointed. “This is his order.” A very large tray, eight or ten glasses, and in the middle a plain heavy-footed goblet from the dining room, filled with colorless liquid, with two pieces of ice and two olives side by side at the bottom. “You ought to recognize that, Stanley.”
“I sure do,” Stanley said. His Martinis. A very bad sign.
“His party’s on the terrace.” The waiter lifted the tray.
Beyond the dim wood-paneled bar he could see the terrace, glittering in the yellow light of a stormy October afternoon. The brightest light of the whole year, Stanley thought, when you could see for miles. The sort of light that made hunting difficult, and distances hard to estimate.
Stanley couldn’t actually see Mr. Robert, but could see a crowd of people around one of the tables—young people, all of them. Mr. Robert must be storytelling again, long Cajun dialect stories: the kids liked them. Mr. Robert said once, “The little broads think I’m so cute; I’m the fatherly type. And it’s funny how many of them want to screw their father. …”
And that, Stanley thought, was pretty close to the truth. Mr. Robert never did exaggerate. The Collinsville Yacht Club was his happy hunting ground.
The waiter with Mr. Robert’s tray of drinks approached the group, had trouble entering, circled around, and tried again from the other side. The group broke—Stanley thought of a plate shattering—then closed again. He recognized most of them: the Roussel boy; the two Clark girls; the Boissac girl, who was married and divorced while she was still in high school; the Robinson cousins, as alike as the brothers some people said they were. A few others he didn’t recognize—on weekends there were always a lot of strangers around. A girl stood up, made her way laughing out of the tangle of chairs and people. I’d know that hair anywhere, Stanley thought; we found her and her Sailfish out in the bay. The same blue-black hair, same round untanned face.
She looked back, she waved. Mr. Robert stood up, returning her wave across the seated crowd. He sat down at once; she stood hesitating, her face open and eager, in the blazing-yellow light.
Well, there’s his latest, Stanley thought. Love showing all over her—no wonder he was in such a hurry to get here.
A waiter, tray filled with glasses, said: “Hey, Stanley, Vera’s here.”
Vera was in the lunchroom, drinking a highball—she didn’t like beer—talking to Howard.
“I didn’t expect you.”
“I was coming back from Rachel’s when I saw the car.”
You couldn’t miss it, Stanley thought; only limousine for miles around.
“You look pretty,” he said; “that dress makes you look young.”
“Too young for me,” she said.
Milo Thomas, the night watchman, came through the door, pale blue uniform freshly starched, Sam Browne belt shining with polish. “How you, Miss Vera? What you say, Stanley?” He sat down on one of the red stools at the counter.
It was exactly six o’clock; Milo had punched in and come for his first drink. He would be back and forth all evening, until the bar closed and Howard went home; on Sundays that was two o’clock. The club allowed him four drinks a night, the rest he had to buy himself.
Howard put a sheet of paper on the bar and he and Milo began whispering together. Weekday evenings, they worked on football games, with Howard calling the bookie every now and then to check prices. On Sundays they figured out how they had done.
“You bet this week?” Vera asked.
Stanley shook his head. Sometimes he gave Howard five dollars to bet for him. “I can’t even remember who’s playing this week.”
“You saved five dollars,” Vera said. Howard, for all his work, for all his telephoning around to beat the price, never came out a season ahead.
Stanley watched the two figures hunched together in the corner of the small bar. He liked Howard and he liked Milo and he liked sitting here, in this windowless room with the big color TV always out of focus from all the different hands that tuned it. (The Old Man had given that. “You’re going to spend so much time waiting,” he said to Stanley years ago, “you might as well have a good set to watch.” The set was changed for a new one every year, regularly, on the first of March.)
“Vera.” He reached across the table to touch her arm, to be sure of her attention. “The Old Man just gave me some money, real money.”
She shifted her round wide eyes from the group at the bar.
“We are two rich niggers.”
“That’s not funny, Stanley.”
“They’re putting together a shopping center.” Without intending, he repeated Miss Margaret’s words. “Our share could be worth,” he hesitated, afraid almost to put the numbers in the air, “something like a million dollars.”
“Why?” Vera asked.
“Because he’s senile,” Stanley said with annoyance. “Why
else? He thinks he’s keeping me forever. I’m his messenger and my feathers are full of gold.”
“It’s too much.” Her fingers patted her hair, gently; she was checking her wig, Stanley knew, and she only did that when she was nervous and upset.
Stanley said, “We can go anywhere we want, anywhere. You always talked about going other places.”
She had; she even dreamed about it sometimes. Let’s go, she’d say, where all the faces are black. I get tired sometimes, seeing white faces. …
“We don’t need much money,” she said. “We don’t have kids to worry about.”
“It isn’t only kids.” With a start he discovered finally that having no children hurt her. “Wouldn’t you like to be a real rich nigger? Just think how that would bother some of the damn woolhats around here. …”
Her eyes left the television and turned to him. “I don’t want to do that, do you?”
The reason was buried back in his mind, with vague atavistic pictures of burning crosses and hanging black bodies. An anger he would do anything to vent. An anger that increased steadily as he grew more and more successful in the white world. He felt his whole body shake with it sometimes; he would then rehearse to himself his list of accomplishments: I got a new house better than any white man, a kitchen with every gadget any white man’s wife could want, and I got a better salary than anybody in this little town, I got stocks in my bank box. … All that and I still got a black face … Jesus God.
“Yea,” Stanley said. “I’d like to have a lot of money.”
VERA HAD another drink and they played poker with Howard and Milo. After an hour, Stanley had won a dollar and a half.
Milo said: “I’ll be right back.” It was seven-thirty. Time for his round. He would go out the service door, circle the building, walk down to the harbor master’s office, have a word with him, and come back. It would take about ten minutes.
The evening supply of ice arrived and Howard began dumping the bags into his coolers.
“It’s time for me to get him,” Stanley said.
“All right,” Vera said. “I’m going home.”
Milo came back, raincoat dripping around his shoulders. “God damn rain and me without boots all night.”
“Rain?” Vera’s fingers went to her wig, automatically patting it, protecting it.
“Well,” Stanley got to his feet slowly, “at least that means I don’t have to hunt all over the terraces for him.”
“Raining and blowing,” Milo said. “You know, some damn fool just put out. I could see his lights. And me with wet feet all night long.”
Stanley kissed Vera on the cheek. “See you in a little while, honey.”
“You’ll be late?”
“How can I be late? I’m sure Mr. Robert’s got a date tonight. I just have to take him to see the Old Man and then turn him loose.”
Vera smiled, her square teeth gleaming softly.
She was sad tonight, Stanley thought, and it was a shame about the children. Maybe they ought to look around for one to raise. They could afford it, they could sure afford it.
The windowless corridor already smelled of the rain outside, and there were muddy tracks down the center.
Vera pushed open the door and disappeared toward her car. He heard the rattle of rain on gravel, and the sighing swish of wind. He climbed the stairs slowly, feeling his beers in the weight of his legs. Two bus boys trundled carts of dirty dishes through the pantry—they had begun serving in the dining room. That would thin out the bar crowd, Stanley thought, and make it easier to get to Mr. Robert. People were annoyed when he had to elbow a way through them, but Mr. Robert was never one to answer a discreet signal. Stanley actually had to tap his shoulder to get him moving.
The bar was almost empty. There were only four drinkers, each one sitting in an island of empty stools. Mr. Robert was not one of them. Automatically Stanley glanced out on the terrace. It was rain-swept and empty, with only an occasional shred of paper napkin fluttering from cracks in the flagging, and a few chairs blown over by the force of the squall.
Stanley checked the dining room. No. Then all the men’s rooms; he’d sometimes found him asleep there. Not this time. Maybe the billiards room; he sometimes played if the stakes were high enough. Glancing at his watch, feeling a rising impatience, Stanley hurried down the hall. He passed a young couple, rain pouring off their slickers, umbrella blown inside out.
“Wet out there, Stanley,” the boy said.
Stanley nodded politely. He had not recognized them, though they knew him—sure, sure, he was as much a character as Mr. Robert or the Old Man.
Me, the perfect old retainer, Stanley thought as his heels clacked on the parquetry floors. Perfect. The Old Black Butler, the Old Friend of the Family Who Knows His Place. … He changed his walk, shuffling just slightly, leaning a bit to one side, neck bent a little, deferentially. … How about that? Faithful Old What’s-His-Name going about his duties. …
Stanley was so sure Mr. Robert would be in the billiard room that for a moment he thought he was there. … Leaning against the table, cue raised. …
He isn’t here, Stanley thought slowly, so where is he? Is he playing a trick?
Stanley called the hospital. “Miss Margaret, is Mr. Robert there?”
“Did you lose him?”
A vague flutter of annoyance. “He doesn’t seem to be here anywhere.”
“Wait a minute.” Her voice moved away from the phone. “Anna, Stanley has lost Robert; you have any idea where he could be?”
“I did not lose him,” Stanley said petulantly.
“Sorry,” Miss Margaret said. “Do you have the car keys?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then he’s around there somewhere. The damn fool. Papa is here, feeling fine and waiting for him.” Stanley heard the hollow heartiness of her voice. “Ask around. See if somebody knows.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Papa wants to see him. Now wait just a minute—What did you say, Papa?” More murmuring and whistling of voices on the line. “Tell him Papa particularly wants to see him tonight.”
As she was hanging up, Stanley heard her say, “Wouldn’t you expect some—” And then the empty line buzzed.
He’d start asking around.
He walked quickly across the long hall, passing the entrance again. The big front doors were washed with a solid sheet of water, as if a fire hose were playing on them.
He did not notice the girl—Mr. Robert’s dark-haired girl—until she called to him: “Stanley!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Well, he thought, at least I know Mr. Robert isn’t with her.
“Stanley, did you see him leave? I mean I almost died when he walked right out into the rain. You could see the water gush out his shoes before he’d gone six feet, it was coming down that hard.”
Stanley looked at her, blinking. Be polite, he thought. You are a worthless nigger, be polite. … “Who?” … Now the afterthought. Always good, let the kid know you don’t mean it; who the hell is she? “Ma’am.”
“He didn’t tell you?” She pushed her hair back with both hands, quickly, from her forehead, pulling it back behind her ears. To see better, Stanley thought, or to hear better? “He invited us, you know, all of us talking out there on the terrace, over to his house tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stanley said. “Who?”
“Mr. Caillet.”
And there it was. “Mr. Robert invited you tonight?”
“He was telling us about his Party House; then he said come over tonight and we’ll have a party. He wasn’t joking, was he?”
“No,” Stanley said. The Party House was in the pinewoods, not far from the entrance gates, a Swiss chalet on a small lake. “He often entertains friends there. It’s his special place.”
“When we told him we didn’t have enough cars, he said you’d drive some of us over.” The girl smiled, the gentle frightening slow smile of a child. “He even bet me a dollar he’d be there first
.”
“How was he going?” The words stuck on his tongue, hanging like burrs.
“Why, he said with this wind, his boat was the quickest way. …”
Stanley remembered Milo’s words: Some damn fool just put out. …
“Well,” Stanley said, “well …”
“Is that wrong? He said it was perfectly safe, just blowing a little.”
“I don’t know whether it’s safe or not,” Stanley said. He went to the phone in the manager’s office. “Miss Anna,” he said, “Mr. Robert is on his way home by boat.”
“Tonight?”
“I suppose he forgot about the hospital. He invited some people to the Party House and he’s racing them over.”
Without moving from the phone, Miss Anna said, “Papa, it seems Robert has gone for a sail.”
A pause; then, sound shrunken and hollowed by the distance from the receiver, Margaret said: “Son of a bitch.”
And Anna said, “Stanley will you come back here, please?”
“Will he be all right?” The girl was waiting.
Look at all that love, Stanley thought. All that for Mr. Robert. “I don’t know,” he said.
He didn’t have a raincoat; he’d have to run. His leather soles slipped on the wet pavement and the wind sucked at his breath. He felt cold almost at once, in a kind of flush, as if the rain had struck through his clothes.
He jumped inside the car, banging his thigh against the steering wheel. He sat for a couple of minutes rubbing at it, cursing without words, leaving the door open—the soft suède lining turned brown, then black, as the rain soaked into it.
The parking lot was blocked by two cars with hooked bumpers. The drivers argued in the rain for a few minutes, then staggered back inside.
For another drink, Stanley thought.
He swung the limousine sideways, across the curb, through the flower beds, into the street. Ten minutes later he parked at the emergency entrance.
In the Old Man’s room, Miss Anna was smiling patiently; Miss Margaret was angry; the Old Man’s doctor, whose name was Doyle, looked confused; the nurse (it was Miss Hollisher, she’d changed her shift, Stanley thought) was trying to make herself invisible against the corner wall.
The Condor Passes Page 33