“Be out front,” Della said to Hillary.
As she and Keel left, she said: “All those people, squares or not, just for Eagle.” She glanced at Keel. “You know, Keel, I liked him only because you did.”
“Oh,” he said. He had taken her affection for Eagle for granted. “Didn’t you like him just a little?”
“Sometimes. But he scared me a little, and sometimes he disgusted me.” She glanced at him again. “I’m being too honest.”
“No,” he said.
They were beneath the marquee now and Keel said, looking at the sky, “It always seems to be night when we do anything, like it isn’t for real, any of it. It’d be nice, just for the hell of it, to see what it’s like to go to a movie on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Honey?”
“What?”
“I didn’t mean anything by that.”
“By wha—oh!” He grinned. “It didn’t upset me.”
“I didn’t want it to.”
“I’ve thought about it half the night. I should be upset, but I’m not.” He moved quickly into the street, sliding out of her arm. “Let’s get this cab.” He looked around for Hillary who was just coming out. The cab cruised up, slowed; the driver threw his arm in disgust at Keel and sped away. “Goddamn them,” Keel said, trembling suddenly because there was nothing there to attack, “they never forget to remind you—”
“Of how frightened they are,” Della said, taking his arm again, thrusting back his lunging emotions by use of that single emphasized pronoun “they.” Hillary came up and Keel waved another cab to the curb.
“I’d better make it to the station,” Hillary said. “50th Street.”
“50th Street?” the cabby asked.
The cab shot forward. The three sat in silence until the car got to the station. “I’ll take care of the tab,” Keel said. Hillary bent to look in on them. “Good-bye.”
Della said: “Good luck.” Keel waved.
Hillary swung the door shut.
The driver turned to Keel.
Keel said, “Move!” and he and Della settled back in their seats. The cab hurtled down Broadway, moved through the nighttime with its perpetually moving people. “I want to stop here,” Keel said, talking easily, “and tell all these squares: that one,” he said, pointing, “with the great big Texas hat, and that one with the pinched face, and that lady over there—see her, baby?—the one with the big buns, and that cat with the derby and the skinny blonde broad, and the cops out there fighting traffic: I want to tell them how much I dig you, and that they’ve got to go, that there’s no place here for them any longer. Together, we’re too much for them. I’ll go up to the Times Tower and press the buttons that’ll spell it out: I dig you and war is declared on squares. Shall I do that?”
“No, baby. Just tell me again.”
“What do you want, a novel?”
“Don’t be funny. Just tell me again.”
He told her again. “Please believe me.”
“I do. But don’t ever stop believing in yourself again, because when you do it all becomes sick.”
“I won’t, I promise you.” He drew her close to him and felt, upon contact with her body, the weight in his loins dropping away. Whatever it was that had oppressed him was far, far away, losing itself somewhere back in the road to be trampled on, walked on by the thousands who crossed the streets every day and every night. Not even the driver’s uneasy stiffness altered the feeling.
They had finally threaded the traffic across that ugly patch of light at Times Square and now they were traveling down the shadows of Seventh Avenue. The cabby’s cigarette glowed like a red nipple in the darkness. Keel felt tears against his cheek. So, he thought, she knew what he was feeling. He stroked her hair. “Baby, baby,” he said.
After a while he said to her: “Let’s go home.” His voice seemed suddenly crisp and clear, as though after years of speaking deep within his throat, he finally learned to use his mouth. He spoke to the driver and then felt Della’s fingers searching with infinite tenderness the innermost reaches of his neck, and her mouth came warm and open upon his; she moved slightly to nestle her body closer to his.
Thirty minutes later the bus moved with a series of jerks and growls down to the 34th Street Station. David Hillary peered through the green-tinted windows and watched the new passengers queue up to get on. In another hour, when the bus emerged from the tunnel, most of the passengers would be nodding in ugly sleep. But he would be awake, staring up at the green moon and at the green-black world outside. He watched the people come aboard, peer quickly up and down the aisle for empty seats, then shuffle forward, sit, and promptly shrink away from the other passengers, indicating by their postures how grateful they would be if the seats next to theirs remained empty.
Hillary felt like a spy. Could one of these people have been the killer the musicians discussed, half-believingly? That man? Or that? Perhaps the woman who was now settling in the seat beside Hillary resembled the club owner’s wife. If there had been a killer, a man who killed smoothly, perfectly, leaving no cause for investigation, then Hillary could only feel a cold, chilling sorrow for him. If he did exist the musicians would find him; they would talk and smile and watch and whisper. They would find him, if he were to be found, and later someone would find him, dead and alone, like Eagle. The battle would be joined again; but it was never really unjoined, this quiet warfare that raged in the clubs and bedrooms, in smiles and language. If there were a killer, yes, he would be found; the musicians would measure out their revenge; that was as sure as the night through which the bus was now rolling, tires singing on the pavement. Keel would approve and so would his wife—she would become his wife—Della. All other courses being exhausted, violence or the approval of it, had its virtues, its dignity-giving graces. Love had grown out of it for Keel and Della, like daisies out of soil putrefied by death.
Hillary rejected this thought: he could not understand it. If he had, he might also have had to understand how Eagle might have rejoiced at a man’s thinking so much of his wife that he would calculatingly kill for her. That kind of love was better than none.
But then no one was sure a killer existed, not in the sense of a single man creeping up the stairs to enter Eagle’s apartment, to administer the overdose. What none of them had ever discussed was, had Eagle done it himself? Hillary could not help thinking it now and neither could he return the idea to the limbo where it had lain. If Eagle had, there was no need to ask why; Hillary knew why, and knew also that the second killer was worse, far worse, than the mere presence of a single man intent upon destroying another. This killer was formless. Hillary looked down the aisle and felt its presence; he looked at the woman beside him and saw its vague shape. He felt the killer inside himself and grew frightened. He had been, if Eagle had done it, as one with the killer.
Someday Hillary would understand. Maybe. The bus edged through the tollbooths, down the bricked road into the gaping mouth of the tunnel.
About the Author
John A. Williams (1925–2015) was born near Jackson, Mississippi, and raised in Syracuse, New York. The author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including the groundbreaking and critically acclaimed novels The Man Who Cried I Am and Captain Blackman, he has been heralded by the critic James L. de Jongh as “arguably the finest Afro-American novelist of his generation.” A contributor to the Chicago Defender, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other publications, Williams edited the periodic anthology Amistad and served as the African correspondent for Newsweek and the European correspondent for Ebony and Jet. A longtime professor of English and journalism, Williams retired from Rutgers University as the Paul Robeson Distinguished Professor of English in 1994. His numerous honors include two American Book Awards, the Syracuse University Centennial Medal for Outstanding Achievement, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any port
ion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Portions of the general introduction first appeared as “Author vs. Editor” in the February/March 1972 issue of the Author Guild Bulletin.
“The New York State Fair” first appeared in the Syracuse Post-Standard in 1953.
“Sex in Black and White” first appeared in the September 1963 issue of Cavalier.
“This Is My Country Too,” Parts I and II, first appeared in the August and September 1964 issues of Holiday.
“Three Negro Families” first appeared as “The Negro: Three Families” in the March 1967 issue of Holiday.
“The Great White Whore” first appeared in Nickel Review in 1969.
“An Afro-American Looks at South Africa” first appeared in Vista in 1969.
“Subject: Charles Parker” and “Kick Gregory: Desegregated Comic” first appeared in Swank in 1961.
“Smalls Paradise” first appeared in the November 1963 issue of Cavalier.
“Never Before or Since” first appeared in the April 25, 1965 issue of New York, the Sunday Herald Tribune magazine.
Copyright © 1972, 1973 by John A. Williams
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2572-0
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
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JOHN A. WILLIAMS
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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