The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

by Charles Wright

  Miss Hanover leaned forward on the warped sofa and gestured like Mother Earth. Puckered liver lips. Her dark, aquiline nose quivered.

  “Oh! I feel so bad. Remember how Miss Joan Crawford suffered so in Mildred Pierce? I could just die . . .”

  A sharp intake of breath. A flurry of batting false eyelashes. A guttural sob, and Miss Sandra Hanover tumbled dramatically to the floor, very unladylike.

  Dead she wasn’t. No one like that ever dies. I got up, found a bottle of Chanel No. 5 and bathed Miss Hanover’s forehead and temples with the perfume.

  Counting to ten, I stared at Miss Hanover’s carefully brushed crew cut. I missed her glamorous false wig. It was true; everyone had something working for them.

  Presently, the great actress regained consciousness.

  Sighing erotically, she looked up at me. “I must have fainted. Isn’t that strange? And you look strange too, love juice.”

  Swallowing hard, I backed toward the door. “I’d better be going,” I said.

  “Now, Les,” Miss Hanover chided.

  “I’ll see you later, doll.”

  The Crown Princess rose quickly. “Come here, honey,” she pleaded. “I ain’t gonna bite you. My, my. Those beautiful curls. Naked, you’d look like a Greek statue.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled and bolted out the door and down to my second-floor sanctum. Pleasure, I reflected, was not necessarily progress, and I had a campaign to map out. I had to get my nerves together.

  Three

  WHISTLING “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” I put the night latch on my door. I wanted no one coming in. I lit a cigarette, flopped down on the landlord’s hallelujah prize, a fire-damaged sofa bed, crossed my legs, and exhaled deeply. I smiled lightly, like a young man in a four-color ad. I realized that nothing is perfect, but still, there was a possibility I might now be able to breathe easier. The Wig’s sneak preview could be called successful, provided one knew human nature. Nonnie Swift’s taunts: pure jealousy. Miss Sandra Hanover: simply a case of lust. I grinned and touched my nose.

  Dear Dead Mother and Mother. Why do I have visions of guillotining you? Mother baked lemon pies. Father was a Pullman porter, a heroic man with a cat’s gray eyes. Worthy colored serfs, good dry Methodists—they did not believe I had a future. How could they have possibly known? Otherwise, they’d have done something about my nose. No, it’s not a Bob Hope nose, no one could slide down it, although it might make a plump backrest. If my parents had been farsighted, I would have gone to bed at night with a clothespin on my nose. At breakfast, Father would have peeped from behind the morning paper and lectured me on my bright future (I’ve seen those damn ads and motion pictures. I know how fathers act at the breakfast table).

  Lord—just to think I could have had a sharp nose, a beak. —However, in the morning? Yes, I said in the morning. In the afternoon. Yes, after the sun goes down, and I wanna tell you—at the crack of dawn. In the heat of summer or on a cold rainy day in November, and we all know about those dark days—when the sun refuses to shine. Yes. Sometimes there’s no light in our souls. Yes, I wanna tell you—I can sweat until Judgment Day and no grease will run down my face. No grease will congeal behind my ears. My hair will not go “back home,” back to the hearth of kinks and burrs. Silky Smooth is magnificent! I am no longer afraid. At last, I have a dog’s sense of security. Yes.

  I’ve seen my young Negro comrades downtown. Sharp as a son-of-a-bitch with their slick Silky Smooth hair. Esquire and Gentlemen’s Quarterly have nothing on them. But as they approach Grand Central or 42nd Street or Penn Station or Wall Street—they become as self-conscious as a sinner in church. Looking around the subway car nervously, clutching attaché cases. And just as the train approaches their station, out come the kinky-bur false wigs. And the others? The Buzz, Robin, Keith, Kipp, and Lance boys? The boys who can afford to be silky-smoothed twenty-four hours a day—Jim, you might as well forget it. These young men have “good” connections.

  There is a very select shop in Harlem, on a side street. The building is very old; it emits dust the way a human does when breathing hard. Quite often bricks fall from its façade and clobber pedestrians. Still, matrons of “good” Harlem families call the building Mecca.

  I have memorized the discreet ad in the window of that building.

  We Are At Last Able To Provide You People With A Coat Of Arms! Done entirely by IBM on heavy, rat-proof antique paper. Your family name has been carefully researched from all the proper books in existence. Only good family names are available—400—including African families as well as the common names from the British Isles.

  Bewigged I am. Brave, an idealist. But what can I do without a good family name, a sponsor, a solid connection? There’s Mr. Fishback but I’m not sure about Mr. Fishback. I have a funny feeling that one day, if you let Mr. Fishback help you, you’ll have to pay up. In what way I can’t say. But there’ll be no way out.

  Dammit! The doorbell buzzed, a desperate animal-like clawing, funny little noises, like a half-assed drummer trying to keep time.

  Upset, I went and flung open the door.

  Little Jimmie Wishbone stood there. A dusty felt hat pulled down over his ears. Cracked dark glasses obscured his sultry eyes. The ragged army poncho was dashing and faintly sinister, like a CIA playboy.

  “Brroudder! Ain’t you cracket up yet?” Little Jimmie shouted. “I thought I’d see you over thar.”

  I stiffened but gestured warmly. “Come in, man. When you get out?”

  “Yestiddy, ’bout two o’clock.”

  “Good to see you, man.”

  Grunting like a hot detective, Little Jimmie surveyed the room. He flipped up the newspaper window shade and looked out on the twenty feet of rubbish in the backyard. He jerked open the closet curtains. Satisfied, he pulled a half gallon of Summertime wine and Mr. Charlie’s Lucky Dream Book from under the poncho and put them on the orange-crate coffee table.

  “You’re looking good,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as if I were fishing for a compliment.

  “Am I?” Little Jimmie wanted to know.

  Sadly, I watched him ease down on the sofa bed, like a king in exile.

  Aged twenty-eight, Little Wishbone was a has-been, a former movie star. Adios to fourteen Cadillacs, to an interest in a nationwide cathouse corporation. He had been the silent “fat” owner of seven narcotic nightclubs, had dined at The White House. Honored at a Blue Room homecoming reception after successfully touring the deep South and South Africa. At the cold cornbread and molasses breakfast, Congressmen had sung “He’s a Jolly Good Nigger.” Later, they had presented him with a medal, gold-plated, the size of a silver dollar, carved with the figure of a naked black man swinging from a pecan tree.

  I had to hold back tears. Could that have been only two years ago? I wondered. I got a couple of goblets from under the dripping radiator. Mercy—depression multiplies like cockroaches.

  I couldn’t look at him, so I pretended to polish the goblets with a Kleenex, remembering.

  The NAACP had accused Hollywood of deliberately presenting a false image of the American Negro. After the scandal subsided, Little Jimmie had the privilege of watching his own funeral. The government repossessed his assets. The Attorney General wanted him jailed for subversion but he pleaded insanity. Then his wife left him for a rock ’n’ roll bass-baritone and that really did send him crazy. Little Jimmie had spent the past year commuting between Kings County Hospital and Harlem, but he had endured. The famed lamb’s-wool hair had turned white. Little Jimmie’s gold teeth had turned purple. He was slowly dying. Time and time again the doctors had explained to him that Negroes did not have bleeding ulcers nor did they need sleeping pills. American Negroes, they explained, were free as birds and animals in a rich green forest. Childlike creatures, their minds ran the gamut from Yes Sir to No Sir. There was simply no occasion for ulcers.

  I poured a goblet of Summertime. Little Jimmie drank straight from the bottle.

  “What’s wrong?” h
e growled.

  “Nothing, man.”

  “Something must be wrong,” he insisted.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “’Cause something is wrong. You ain’t never drunk out of no glass like that before.”

  I blushed. “Oh. You mean . . .”

  “No. I don’t mean. Hell. I got eyes. What you trying to prove?”

  “You don’t understand,” I said sharply.

  “Whacha trying to prove?”

  “Whacha see? What’s the impression? Slice the tater, slit the pea?”

  In exactly one minute and three seconds, Little Jimmie had swallowed half of the wine. “Split the pea—I is with thee. What’s the haps? Come clean. I is Little Jimmie Wishbone from Aukin-saw.”

  Brotherly love engulfed us. I drank from the bottle.

  * * *

  We had killed Summertime. Little Jimmie kept his eyes fastened on the empty wine bottle. He looked like an angelic little boy who had been kicked out of his orphanage for failing to take part in group masturbation.

  “You look down,” I said. “You need some nooky.”

  Little Jimmie sighed. He looked very tired. “Nooky? Dem white folk messed wit yo boy. Shot all dem currents through me. Y’all took way my libin’, I said. And they jest kept shooting electricity. It was even popping out my ears. I took it like a champ. Kinda scared dem, too. I heard one of dem say: ‘He’s immune. It’s the result of perpetual broilization. Nothing will ever kill a Nigger like this.’ I did my buck dance and the doctor said, ‘They got magic in their feet.’ Man, I danced into the village. Now they can’t figure out why those currents and saltpeter make me so restless. They puzzled. I’m amused. But it’s not like my Hollywood days. All my fans and those lights and twenty-seven Cadillacs.”

  “Fourteen Cadillacs,” I corrected.

  “Fourteen,” Little Jimmie agreed. “But I traded them in every year. Les, I just don’t feel right. I just ain’t me.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “What am I gonna do?”

  “You need another drink.”

  “Yeah. Some juice. Out there . . .”

  “You didn’t escape, did you?”

  “Where could I escape to?” Little Jimmie exclaimed.

  “Nowhere, man,” I said, averting my eyes.

  “I can’t even get unemployment, though I was honorary president of the Screen Guild.”

  “You could always pick cotton in Jersey,” I said.

  “Pick cotton?” Little Jimmie sneered. “What would my fans think? I think I’ll appeal to the Supreme Court. I figure they owe me an apology. I worked for the government, man. I kept one hundred million colored people contented for years. And in turn, I made the white people happy. Safe. Now I’m no longer useful in the scheme of things. Nobody’s got time for Little Jimmie Wishbone.”

  “What did you expect? Another medal? It’s not profitable to have you Tom . . . It’s a very different scene.”

  “Well, what are you gonna do? Why the hell don’t you pick cotton?”

  “What the tell do you think I was doing last summer? Where do you think I got the money for the fried chicken I brought you on Sundays?”

  War between friends is deadly. I mustered up a breathless laugh. “I’m gonna try something I never tried before. Dig The Wig.”

  Little Jimmie grunted scornfully. “Look at all those curly-haired Mexicans they import to pick berries and cabbage.”

  “But I’m an American,” I protested.

  “And I’ve got a million dollars.”

  “I am an American. That’s an established fact. America’s the land of elbow grease and hard work. Then—you’ve got it made. Little Jimmie, I’m gonna work like a son of a bitch. Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah. I heard you. Now let’s make it to the streets. My throat’s dry.”

  Four

  LITTLE JIMMIE AND I moved out into the street under a volcanic gray sky. A cold wind made a contradictory hissing like an overheated radiator, crept under heavy clothing with a shy but determined hand. Nothing could stifle our sense of adventure; Little Jimmie was home again, and I always feel cocksure, Nazi-proud, stepping smartly toward the heart of Harlem—125th Street.

  125th Street has grandeur if you know how to look at it. Harlem, the very name a part of New World History, is a ghetto nuovo on the Hudson; it reeks with frustrations and an ounce of job. Lonely, I often leave my airless room on Saturday night, wander up and down 125th Street, dreaming of making it, dreaming of love. This is the magical hour. The desperate daytime has, for a time, disappeared. The bitter saliva puddles of the poor are covered with sperm, dropped by slumming whites and their dark friends who wallow in the nightclubs that go on to early morning. These are people who can afford to escape the daytime fear of the city. Envious, I watch their entrances and exits from the clubs. I especially watch the Negroes, who pretend that the black-faced poor do not exist.

  I glanced at my misbegotten friend, a silent but bright-eyed Little Jimmie Wishbone. In his heyday, he’d been unique: a real person, an offbeat hero. Now he was only a confused shadow.

  “Look where we are,” I cried out as we swung onto East 125th Street.

  Little Jimmie grunted. “What’s playing at the Apollo? I once had a one-night stand at the Apollo and they held me over for six weeks.”

  “I remember. You were great. Man, listen to that wind!”

  “The Apollo is show biz uptown.”

  “Yeah,” I said quickly. “Man. The wind is a mother grabber. I really need some joy-juice.”

  “The Apollo is the last outpost. No other place like it in Manhattan.”

  I began whistling “Them There Eyes”—a nervous habit of mine. Diplomatic phrases refused to slide off my tongue. Presently, Little Jimmie would see the legendary Apollo Theater, its lobby a bower of plastic out-of-season flowers, shuttered and forlorn, due to the management’s judgment (bad) in booking a string quartet from South Africa. This had shocked the entire city. The Mayor held a press conference. Harlemites stayed home in their photogenic tenements and watched television travelogues of Southern hospitality, while a group of near-naked white liberals picketed the Apollo. They mourned the loss of Negro music—so powerful that one felt it in the soles of one’s feet (if one did not truly feel it, then one visited a chiropodist). The liberals prayed for a soul-shaking orgy. After three days, they marched back downtown, bewailing the Negroes’ torpid attitude.

  Gradually an aura of commerce, peace, splendor returned to 125th Street. Blumstein’s Department Store announced in the Amsterdam News that polar-bear rugs were obsolete. Human-hair rugs were the latest rage. These rugs, clipped from live Negro traitors, had a lifetime guarantee. Blumstein’s reported a remarkable sale. The Society of American Interior Decorators declared human-hair rugs “in.” And the Du Pont Empire closely watched the proceedings. If human-hair rugs became a truly basic part of the American Home, perhaps they’d produce them in synthetics.

  Strolling briskly with my friend, I felt pride seep into my pores. I was part of this world. The Great White Father had spoken. His white sons were carrying out his word. His black flunkies were falling in line. The opportunity for Negroes to progress was truly coming. I could hear a tinkling fountain sing: “I’ll wash away your black misery—tum-tiddy-diddy-tum-tee-tee.” Yes. Wigged and very much aware of the happenings, I knew my ship was just around the bend, even as I had informed Miss Nonnie Swift.

  125th Street, with its residential parks, its quaint stinking alleys is a sea of music, Georgian chants, German lieder, Italian arias, Elizabethan ballads. Arabic lullabies, lusty hillbilly tunes. Negro music is banned except for progaganda purposes. “We’ll let them borrow our music,” a Negro politician remarked recently. “We’ll see what it does for them. We’ll see if they ride to glory on our music.” I remember the Negro politician sailed a week later on a yacht, a sparkling-white yacht, complete with sauna, wine cellar, and a stereo record collection of Negro music second only
to the Library of Congress’s.

  No one’s perfect, I was thinking, when Little Jimmie elbowed me.

  “I see they’re still here,” he said angrily.

  “Of course, Little Jimmie,” I said softly, mindful of his mental condition, his swift descent from Fame.

  “You’re nuts.”

  “Don’t get yourself worked up,” I said. “No one’s gonna bother you.”

  “But they’re still here,” Little Jimmie protested.

  “Naturally.” I knew all along what had him bugged. It was the police.

  New York’s finest were on the scene, wearing custom-made Chipp uniforms, 1818 Brooks Brothers shirts, Doctor U space shoes (bought wholesale from a straw basket in Herald Square). A pacifistic honor guard, twelve policemen per block, ambitious nightsticks trimmed with lilies of the valley, WE ARE OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER buttons illuminating sharp-brimmed Fascist helmets—they bow to each fast-moving Harlemite from crummy Lenox to jet-bound Eighth Avenue.

  Little Jimmie’s fear was disgusting. The policemen were our protectors, knights of the Manhattan world. I wasn’t afraid. I was goddam grateful.

  “Are you ready?” I asked cheerfully.