Writing to Save a Life

by John Edgar Wideman

  You know youall can’t eat in here, Mamie.

  Louis not a particularly tall man. Seemed real tall to stumpy me, but Louis more what you’d call a big, strapping man. Big enough to be a tall handful if he stared at you in that way of his. Don’t remember whether I put a spoonful of ice cream, banana, whipped cream, nuts and chocolate sauce in my mouth or set the plastic spoon back down in that cardboard bowl. Too scared to taste or swallow anyway when I see how Louis stared at Mr. Kline. Wanted to get up from that booth and run. Run home. Run, run, run to Mama fast as my legs could carry me.

  Louis didn’t say a word and neither did Mr. Kline. Louis just rolled his eyes slowly up the man’s white apron to the man’s red face. I watched those cold eyes of Louis and didn’t see Mr. Kline go away but I knew he was gone. Never took my eyes off Louis and forgot all about running away.

  So long before there was a Dr. King, had my own Dr. Martin Luther King. Before Louis went off to fight the war, had my very own warrior in Argo, Illinois. It was Louis and me that Saturday afternoon integrated Kline’s Deli and Ice Cream Parlor. Sitting in the red window booth, Louis shining on me and I believe me shining on him while we ate those banana splits. Seemed like before long half of colored Argo paraded past peeking in at us to see if what they heard was true. Some of them got brave, start to come in, order a sundae, a soda and sit down, too. Whole place full of colored by the time I finished my very first banana split. Colored taken every seat and some standing around licking ice cream cones or just standing there to be there and be seen, and Kline’s never went back to the way it was.

  * * *

  Mama mad at me. Mad at Louis Till for mixing her little girl up in foolishness that could have got us both killed. But what’s Mama going to say. Louis was right. I think she liked Louis a little more after that. Even though she never would come right out and say it. I sure liked him more. More when I was already too much in love with him for my own good. Thought I had found a man who would never let anything bad happen to me. A man not scared. A big, strong man to protect me. Louis not especially tall, like I said, but he don’t need to be tall. He used to shadowbox. Shadowbox what he called it once when I asked him what in the world was he doing, jump up like a crazy man all the sudden and go to prancing and dancing around Mama’s living room, his big fists balled up, punches a mile a minute popping in the air, his head and shoulders herky-jerky like he’s a puppet and somebody else crazy pulling the strings. Shadowbox, he said. I didn’t understand a thing bout boxing but I knew nobody could stand up to Louis coming after them with both fists flying. Nobody else in the room, just Louis punching with both fists, but I knew Louis knocking down all the other boxers. Bam. Bam. One after another falling. Down they’d go and I’d want to clap and holler. Go on, Louis. Go, man. Me so proud and way too much in love. Shadowboxing he said.

  * * *

  Snow. Snow. Snow. Seems like some winters in Chicago snow every day. Wake up in the morning look out the window, see snow falling and think to myself, Huh-uh, Mamie. Can’t be snowing again. Must be starch blowing over here from Argo Products. Big cloud of cornstarch making everything white. Tried to tell my cousins down in Webb, Mississippi, the summer I was twelve and visiting, about cold and snow up north. Not the little-bitty sprinkle of snow some of them had seen or chilly like it is when people down there talk about how cold it can get in Mississippi. No. No. No. Hey, youall. Listen up. Got a wind in Chicago call it Hawk. Hawk snatch you bald head. Nobody liable to see you ever again. And snow. Ima tell youall something about snow. In Chicago it snow, snow, snow every day. Higher than youall’s house. Cars can’t drive nowhere till snowplows big as a bus come and clean up. So much snow you can make a snowman tall as people. It’s Frosty the snowman. Stones for eyes, stick for a nose. Another stick for a pipe.

  My cousins standing round all google-eyed, hushed up for once till the oldest one, Clarence, cut his eyes at me and said, You lying, Mamie Till.

  Tattle Tale Tit

  Your tongue shall be split

  Every dog in the town

  Shall have a little bit

  * * *

  Louis Till sits shivering, chest bare, trousers wet, shirt drying over the back of one of Alma Carthan’s kitchen chairs. Mamie scalded him good. He hollered like a stuck pig. Runned out the apartment. Never saw Mamie in the dark. Never saw black boiling water coming till it smack him. All up in the chest, his shoulder, splashes on his cheek. Felt like one side of him blew up all the sudden and blood burns, wet fire pouring down his arm, his chest. He howls. Down the steps, out on the pavement before he sees under a streetlamp it’s not blood. Hot, hot damned water. Boiling, scalding hot. Why she got to do that. Out here burned up and dripping wet in the goddamned street where’s he spozed to go. It’s little Mississippi, she said, and niggers love being up under other niggers sure enough and he runs all soaking black blood, wet black skin falling off to Mother Carthan’s door. Where else he gon go.

  She looks across a chain that keeps the open door locked. Dat you. Dat you dere, Louis Till. Why it take her all that long studying through the cracked-open door to see it’s him. She know good and damn well who. He shakes now. Grits his teeth so they don’t chatter. Nothing to say anyway. What he spozed to say. Say to Mamie’s mama Mamie did it. Scalded him. Skin hurts under the wet shirt maybe the wet is blood after all. Your crazy girl did it, Mother Carthan. Open the goddamn door. Stares at his wet shoes. Waits. Hurts. Waits. Hears the chain slide. That you, Louis Till. My Mamie all right, Louis Till. Don’t she see it’s him standing there at her door bleeding to death. It ain’t Mamie on fire she sees at her door, damnit. It’s him, half his chest blowed off. Ain’t nothing wrong with Mamie except the bitch crazy. She ain’t the one hurt bad, she the one done the scalding.

  Sit down, Louis Till, her mama say. Get out that wet shirt. Easy, easy does it, boy. My, my. What you two been doing. You sit still here. Got to telephone my poor baby.

  Mamie says butter. Margarine if you don’t have butter. Butter cool the burning. Butter help heal, she say. Say tell him stay away from me, Mama. Don’t ever want to see you again, Louis, her mama say Mamie said. Stay away, Mamie says.

  * * *

  He stops Mamie in front of the hardware store. Right down from Kline’s. What she need in the hardware store. What the hell she know how to fix.

  Leave me alone, Louis. You can’t follow me around and bother me like this. Judge said don’t bother me. Don’t even come near me the court paper says and here you are dogging me like a shadow. I know Louis Till doesn’t give a damn what I say or anybody else says. But it’s the law this time telling you to leave me be. You best go on away from me, Louis. Don’t block my way, man.

  ( . . . )

  Don’t you dare touch me. Don’t want your hands on me ever again. And I mean it. You had your chance. Lots and lots of chances, Louis Till. Too many chances. Too late now. It’s over now. Finished. Just leave me alone.

  ( . . . )

  Let me by, Louis. People watching, Louis. Stop before you get yourself in deep trouble.

  ( . . . )

  You just don’t understand do you. And you never will. We have nothing to say to each other. Just step back so I can go about my business.

  ( . . . )

  Please.

  ( . . . )

  Don’t make me hate you. It doesn’t have to be ugly like this. Don’t make trouble, Louis. I’m sorry, Louis. Truly sorry. For you and me. For poor little Emmett. But it’s over now. Let it go, Louis. No more trouble, please.

  ( . . . )

  * * *

  I’m awful weary of seeing you here, Mr. Till. I could cite you for contempt, lock you up, and then I wouldn’t have to see you in my courtroom for a good long while. But given the national emergency, I’m going to offer you an option. Rather than becoming a burden to Illinois taxpayers, you can serve your country, Mr. Till. Go down the hall and enlist in the United States military. Today. Immediately, Till. Or off to jail with you. Which will it be, Mr. Till. Army
or prison.

  OVERSEAS

  * * *

  My father, who served in the United States Army same years Louis Till served, told me that some Sunday mornings before dawn they’d blow a bugle inside the colored soldiers’ barracks. Roust our bad, no-sleep heads. Bugle call and everybody still stinking drunk, still asleep, half-destroyed, half-dressed, guys throw up, guys knock each other out the way to get in line and get out of line, scramble back inside the barracks to piss a quick piss, quick runny shit. All us mad, lined-up and bleary-eyed, clothes slept in, fought in, danced in, bled in, punch-ups, vomit in the street outside the club last night. Shit. A sure enough sorry bunch of colored GIs, lemme tell you, he said. My father said, talkative a minute about his army days. Sunday morning, he said, and you might think the bugle call a damned go to church call, but not church on those Georgia crackers’ minds. Slaves on their mind. They say you guilty of some bullshit or another they slave your ass. Slave you to a peckerwood farmer for a week or put you on the road gang. And this ain’t 1844. It’s damn 1944. Damn Savannah, Georgia, in the good ole U.S. of A. and we’re in Uncle Sam’s uniform fighting Uncle Sam’s war, but believe it or not, sonny boy, that’s how they did us down there.

  * * *

  If Louis Till had been around to school his son Emmett about the south, about black boys and white men up north and down south, would Emmett have returned safely from his trip to Money, Mississippi, started up public high in Chicago that fall of 1955, earned good grades like I did, eluded the fate of his father, maybe even become successful and rich. President of the United States. But the flame of his father’s fate draws Emmett like a moth. Son flies backward and forward simultaneously like the sankofa bird because part of the father’s fate is never to be around to protect, advise, and supervise his son, the fate of father and son to orphan each other always. Fathers and sons. Sons and fathers. An eternal cycle of missing and absence. Bright wings flutter like a dark room lit suddenly by a match.

  * * *

  In the nursing home, the veteran, my father, also said—his speech a surprise each time he speaks, always in his street voice, his polite waiter’s voice long gone—losing something, not the worst thing in the world. Losing something means you had something to lose. Means some fool get up in your face and say, you ain’t nothing, nigger, you can frown at the fool or smile or smack the fool upside the head if he persists in his foolishness. Pay him no mind my father said cause you got the memory of the good thing and nothing nobody says till the day you die can take that away.

  * * *

  I traced Till’s outfit, Company 177 of the 379th Battalion, Transportation Command, from Casablanca to Civitavecchia to Naples. Beyond the bare facts of their deployments, I couldn’t discover much concerning their activities or whereabouts. Probably about as much as colored soldiers of the 379th knew in 1944. Transport Command troops pack up and ship out when officers bark commands. Private Louis Till winds up in the rubble of another town he’s never heard of, never imagined, orphan again, and he will stay there as long as officers say stay.

  * * *

  Sometimes, Private Louis NMI (no middle initial) Till, 36392273, of 177 Port Company, 379th Battalion, T.C., must know he’s in Italy. Knows it don’t make no fucking difference but he knows sometimes. Knows it well as he knows his own name, Louis Till. As well as he knows the number 2 plus the number 0 equals his age—20—when he enlisted. And knows he’s not going to get much older. And so what. Age ain’t nothing but a number. Don’t mean a thing. Nothing. Not a got-damned thing. Knows he’s Louis Till and grown, been grown, and he’s in one place today, tomorrow another place maybe, another city or town, another no place in the middle of no where and so what. He’s Louis Till. Him. Everything he always is. He knows his name, age, color, a nigger, a orphan so why he got to say it out loud every day. No need to be walking around like he’s afraid he might forget name, rank, serial number and what belongs to him in the ditty bag up under his goddamn bunk in the goddamn camp in this goddamn country. Why he need to go around saying shit if he knows shit. He knows he’s a grown man and been grown since way back as long as he can remember, since back in New Madrid, Missouri, that day he sees a black boy on a fold-up, pissy cot crying like a baby and he’s a grown man in the doorway, Louis Till grown up already, eight years old watching hisself cry and he hollers, Why don’t you shut the fuck up. Hush your sorry-ass mouth, nigger, nobody listening to you, nobody care nothing bout you crybaby motherfucker why don’t you just shut the fuck up. Why you sitting there in broad daylight, a grown-ass man in short pants sitting on a rock with his big head in his hands crying funny, crying like a baby pissed his bed. You ain’t no child, you a damn grown man, fool. Why don’t you shut up, sitting alongside the road everybody goes up to get that vino man you lucky I ain’t crossed-over and smacked you off that rock, nigger, in them raggedy pieces of uniform they all wear creeping through here now the United States Army finished kicking they dago asses good. Sneaking home and crying funny like a bitch. Who the fuck he think he is with his funny little cap about to fall off his big grown man head. Crying funny just like they talk funny and got that funny money over here ain’t worth shit, a wheelbarrow full ain’t worth nothing don’t make no sense and so what, Private Till thinks, long as he can talky-talky him up some vino and talky-talk him up some pussy him talking funny like them and they talking funny like niggers when they wants something niggers got and that’s how Private Till knows it’s Italy.

  * * *

  “Night in Tunisia.” Did Louis Till know the tune. Could Till hear it as his ship approached North Africa. The song floats in the air, plays itself to be heard, passed on. Did Louis Till smile, whistle the music, though the tune was not written down, not playing on records or radio at the time. Does he smile at the fact he lands in a North African city full of brown people and black people that goes by the name Casablanca, white house.

  * * *

  A guidebook would inform Louis Till if he cared to consult one, that in 1468 the Portuguese attacked Anfa, a Berber settlement dating back to the seventh century, captured the town and later developed it to serve as a port, Casablanca, in a rapidly expanding network of imperial commerce founded upon, then flourishing through the buying and selling of African bodies. Today Anfa is a shopping center in sprawling Casablanca. Louis Till could read this in another book and read in yet another that when approached by ship, the city’s an idea, whitewashed ramparts and white mazes of low square dwellings, row after row terraced on piggybacked hills that slope gently to the water. He could read how the gleaming whiteness creates mirages, dreams, phantoms on the horizon and when the sky is clear, the city is doubled in the water like blue sky’s doubled by the deep blue ocean upon which you sail, gliding, skimming over the waves, bobbing in the chop, then glide again, slower, slowly as sea flattens and the ship draws closer to what appears to be a single immense dwelling that sprawls on the hills, Casablanca, a white house built of sun-bleached, sun-polished bones from which dark flesh has vanished.

  Louis Till leafs through invisible pages, listens to invisible words to find what he needs to know (for instance, women in Casablanca are divided by color, not necessarily by the color of their skins but by the color of the troops they hang with, the ones who go with colored boys and the ones who don’t, a color line policed here absolutely, brutally, ruthlessly as the color line at home, so beware, my man, of white helmets, white armbands, white puttees, flying squads of white MPs in jeeps who enforce the local color code, and punish unmercifully, gleefully, with lead-lined batons, white-gloved fists, steel-toed boots, with cocked 45s and barbed-wire stockades all colored offenders who dare cross the line), a guidebook of stories Louis Till and his colored buddies knew well, stories told by guys who have been to Casablanca or guys repeating lore passed down a thousand years by successive waves of colored soldiers, slaves, seamen, passing through, awaiting cargoes, repairs, provisions or stationed here or stalled like Odysseus before the walls of Troy in The Golden Book of
Greek Myths my mother read to me.

  * * *

  War is mostly rumor and myth for men in the Transportation Command, colored men like Louis Till and just about every other colored soldier because with very few exceptions, I learn, colored are assigned to Transport Command service units and seldom see with their own eyes war like in the movies. No firefights, bayonet duels, no huddling in a foxhole, no comrades falling, blown up beside you as you charge across a field, everybody shooting and shouting like in a colored director’s movie I had rented recently about colored combat troops in Italy in World War II. No. The Transport Command’s war a rumble of distant guns, distant cities burning at night on the horizon. War most real for colored soldiers when they bury white guys, young guys far from home like them.

  * * *

  On rare days, rare nights war lets Louis Till get fucked up. Get his head bad, punch niggers, buy pussy, fuck up good if he’s listened to stories passed down from colored soldier to colored soldier, learned to follow maps drawn in air of invisible cities, deeper cities within cities where war lands him. Second cities he’ll know by their touch, smell, sound. You see them only if you know how to look. In this white house Casablanca a market hides, nigger market blacker than the white folks’ blackest market is what Louis Till hears and in that market he can sell cartons of Camels he steals from truckloads he steals for white officers. American cigarettes colored guys say he can trade for a silver ring with his initials on it and Casablanca, 1943. I watch Louis Till scratch letters in the sand. He watches an Arab whose face under a brown hood is darker than his, pound L.T. into the ring with quick, precise strokes.