!Click Song

by John A. Williams

  Allis was pensive when she came home. “How’d it go with Ike?”

  “Lousy. He’s in bad shape. How’d it go with your father?”

  “Oh, darling, he looks so old. And at first it was kind of stiff. He kept staring at my big belly.”

  I handed her a drink. She kicked off her shoes and sat down. She looked sad and distracted.

  “He apologized. Said I should make sure to tell you. He wants to meet you, too.”

  “What’d you say?”

  She sighed. “I told him it was a hard thing he’d done—and that you were as hard as he. I think what’s going on these days made him give the situation some thought.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “Oh, Cate.” She looked tired, dejected.

  But I said, “Does he want handsprings? Do you want handsprings?”

  She waved a tired hand. “I know—don’t.”

  Of course she knew. Mr. Greenberg might finally accept us as family. Or, rather, we might accept him. But nothing would make me stop remembering. It would always be there, even when we smiled at each other and patted each other on the back. It would be there, and that I could not help. “Aw,” I said. “Shit.”

  Allis looked anxiously at me, as one might do to calculate just how much weight I could bear. Her eyes were not so much hooded as shaded. She would accept either a yes or no, I realized, just as she knew that the right to demand the meeting was not hers. Still, it would please her. “It wouldn’t be a big thing,” she said. “Just to see him now and again. You know I’m not asking you to like him.”

  “I know. I don’t care.”

  She stirred cautiously. “I told him I’d call and let him know. It doesn’t have to be soon, honey.”

  The elevator was now banging up and down even faster, and once someone got off on our floor, sighing.

  “Any time.”

  “Cate—”

  “Umm?”

  “Nothing. All right. Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “I know you don’t want to do it.”

  “C’mon, honey. It’s all right. I mean, it’s not as if he and I will be slobbering over each other. It’s okay.”

  3

  I had arranged with Catherine and her husband to take Glenn to college and get him settled. We decided to drive and have him see something of the country. He met me in New York so that I could help him shop for clothes and we could have a couple of days of just hanging out. We walked about the city eating hot dogs, stopping for beer, and once we joined Allis for her crisp walk around the Central Park Reservoir. She had taken a leave from her job, and she was not sure about returning.

  I took Glenn back to the Museum of Natural History. He smiled. He looked carefully at the dinosaur skeletons that had frightened him so much, and when we left we stood outside on the stairs that somehow always reminded me of Potemkin, and suddenly we were laughing so hard that we couldn’t talk, laughing at the years that had dashed so quickly by, laughing in amazement that we had survived them and were still more or less together, laughing at the old fears that now seemed so ludicrous. People looked at us and, chuckling themselves, peered around to see what we were laughing at. Perhaps a pigeon shitting on Teddy Roosevelt’s head?

  With the New York wardrobe packed (somehow I could not imagine him out of his dashikis and into a suit) and after a lingering goodbye with Allis, who would be spending the time with her father and Amy, Glenn and I got in the car and drove off. The first stop was Catherine’s to collect the rest of his things. Her husband wasn’t there; she had taken off part of the day to be home and help Glenn finish packing.

  She asked, “How’s your wife?”

  “All right. How’s your husband?”

  We laughed and sat down. “Sounds funny, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure does. Like two other people.” But her eyes were following Glenn as he passed back and forth with books, records, brown bags filled with something or other. “He’s a nice kid, Cat. You did a good job.”

  “I’m grateful. Kids’re into everything these days. That dope scares me.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  She was a little plump, but otherwise the same.

  “We’ll be able to see him often enough,” she said. “But I know he’ll want to spend a part of his holidays with you.”

  “We expect him.”

  “Won’t be too crowded, with the baby coming?”

  “Aw, no.”

  “What do you want, a boy or a girl?”

  “I’ll take a girl this time.”

  “Glenn always tells me how nice your wife is; he likes her.”

  “Well, she likes him, you know. That helps. They do fine, Cat.”

  “How’s the writing?”

  “It keeps coming. I still don’t know anything else I’d rather do.”

  “I’m glad. You seem to have it made. Saw a rerun of your television show. But I still don’t know why you called it ‘The Negro.’”

  I shrugged. “It seemed right.” The rare times we met lacked for me at least some flash of the old times together, some bridge. But the thing was complete; even Glenn now seemed separate and quite apart, an entity we were watching with no small wonder as, long-legged and slender, he passed back and forth before us.

  Catherine rubbed her chin with a forefinger and looked just past me. “I guess the sisters in New York are giving you a fit these days.”

  I grunted. She was not going to join the chorus now, was she? “Yeah. Hot and heavy.”

  “It’s just the times,” she said.

  Glenn came to a stop in front of us. “I guess I’m ready.”

  Catherine stood quickly, her eyes casting a quick appeal toward me. “Jesus, where did the time go?” she said. She fussed at his clothes, made a face at his Afro. “I just can’t stand all that hair, but that’s the style—” She paused. “Cate, you wore your hair long like this, remember?”

  I laughed. There it was, the bridge, the flashing back. “Only because I couldn’t afford a haircut, not for any style.”

  Glenn laughed. Catherine smiled smugly. “No. You wore it like Bayard Rustin. Remember when he came to the university? It was in our freshman year. That was when you started to wear your hair long.”

  I remembered Rustin but not the hair, but I said, “Oh, yeah. That’s right.”

  She walked us to the car, her arm around Glenn, his around her.

  “Drive carefully, Cate.” I guess she said it because she had to say something.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll call.”

  We left her plucking her lips, a bewildered expression on her face.

  And because he had to do something, Glenn was scavenging through my camera bag on the seat. He pulled out the gun.

  “What’s this?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “That’s a real one?”

  “Yep.”

  He put it back.

  He directed me to the turnpike and we headed west. I could almost hear him thinking in the silence. I said, “I can’t really believe this. You going off to college. Jesus.”

  “And in another six months I’ll have to register for the draft.”

  Vietnam, the war and Glenn, I thought. I hadn’t wanted them to come together, and as far as I was concerned, they wouldn’t.

  “You’ll be okay as long as you’re in school. You do plan to stay in, don’t you?”

  “As far as I know now,” he said.

  “What does that mean, man? You are going to school and you will stay in school.” He had frightened me. After a while I said, “It’s a good, quiet place. A learning place.”

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t thinking of joining up the way you did.”

  “I hope to hell not.”

  “I had things figured, like, if I get a low draft number and my grades were falling apart and the war got bigger—”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d claim sickle cell anemia.” His look was
so challenging that I almost didn’t laugh.

  “I have a couple of things working. Wanna hear ’em?”

  “Sure.” He squared around to listen.

  “First off, by hook or crook, you are not going. Period. That’s it. I don’t give a damn what it takes. I’m sorry about the other kids. I’ll ship your ass to Canada. Also, I heard that the Israelis were letting people come in, but that if war broke out, you’d be expected to help. Then there’s Sweden.”

  He nodded and in silence watched the countryside flash by.

  “Dad, why did you join up? I mean, can you explain that to me?”

  I thought about it, then said, “Every war seems to be different. I didn’t know anything then. Maybe they’re never different. I didn’t know they were segregating troops and blood. I really thought it was a different kind of war, where everybody mattered. Didn’t take me too long to find out otherwise. And then I didn’t have much to look forward to at home. My life would’ve been shit if I hadn’t gone. I gave ’em war service and they gave me school. I’m not sorry. I lived. My going broke the old pattern of our family. After eight generations we get a look-in. I’m sorry your grandfather—well, you weren’t even born; Cat and I weren’t even married. But I’m sorry he was lost. What can I tell you—for a long time it seemed to have been a different kind of war, one that was right, but I’m no longer sure there’s any such animal as a right war.”

  “Allis lost some people in the camps, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah. A shithouse full. Maybe it was a right war, because if it hadn’t been them, it sure as hell would’ve been us.”

  We were silent, pensive, most of the rest of the way to our motel, and long after we arrived at Antioch and called Catherine and got settled, and on the drive back to New York, I thought about that talk. Somehow, the others did not seem to be quite as important.

  When I returned from the college, embraced Allis (as well as I could) and had gone over the mail with her—books (“We hope you will like —— —— well enough to say something about it”), invitations to give readings or lectures (almost all of which were apologetic about the size of the honoraria, which, compared to the present, were actually quite large), probes to see if I would be interested in teaching, this time from Boston University, the University of California at both Irvine and Santa Barbara, Brooklyn College and Case Western Reserve, and bills, which we stacked to one side—Allis said, “Oh, you must call Maxine tonight. At home. The phone was ringing when I walked in. Said she’d been calling for two days.”

  “Ah,” I said, “developments.”

  I had had Alex return the chapters of the new novel. Maxine had carried them over to Smythe and Simkin to ask for considerably more money than they’d paid for previous advances. Developments.

  I fixed some drinks. “How was the visit?”

  Allis said, “All right. Nothing special. How was your trip? Glenn? The school?”

  We talked until we were hungry, then decided to walk out for dinner. I quickly changed my shirt, transferred my gun to my belt and pulled on my dashiki. When winter came I would have to carry the weapon in my pocket. It was almost good to be back.

  4

  She strode between the tables of La Grenouille like one who secretly expected to determine the fates of the literary types sitting in the restaurant.

  Why was I guessing that?

  Perhaps it was her alert youthfulness. She did not move, for example, the way Sandra Queensbury moved, lacking in body as she must have the postures demanded by Sandra’s multiplicity of experiences. Sandra knew books, people and things, and so moved with the assurance of that tradition, which is to say that surprises were events she no longer expected to experience. Nor did this young woman possess that superior serenity sometimes displayed in public places that had been a distinguishing mark of Rupert Hemmings. Donald Jopoco, who had succeeded him as my editor, himself had a certain absent-minded air in public places; he could be there and yet, like Robert Lowell, a universe away. Jopoco made the waiters smile, for he gave them a second’s superiority while he whirled slowly looking for the table they patiently pointed out to him. But what he knew, he knew very well. And there were other editors one recognized in such places, men and women then at middle age, this one having edited J. D. Salinger and that one Delmore Schwartz; another having worked with the early Mailer and still another with Steinbeck. Who could doubt that each had precise portraits of himself tacked in the closet of his mind?

  The arrival of new people in publishing (like Maureen Gullian, still approaching, now with a wave and a lengthening of stride) seemed to coincide with the sudden corporate interest in books. And now and again one heard or read of staggering sums of money being paid to writers—two or three, perhaps. So there arose a quiet new concern at this time. How could so much money be paid to two or three writers without other writers having to make do with less for their own advances? One could not expect to give both France and, say, Senegal fifty billion dollars each, though French is spoken in the two countries.

  Maxine had waved back. “There she is,” she said, a smile climbing carefully upon her face. “Now we’re gonna deal.” This said while she studied the approaching woman. “Fuck Donald.”

  “Ah—hi—hello,” Maureen said. I couldn’t tell whether she was really breathless or faking it; perhaps she was learning fast. I half-rose and took her hand.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve loved your books, loved them.” She sat down, still talking. She said to Maxine, “I can’t believe this.” She smiled at me.

  Maxine said tolerantly, “Maureen, calm down. He’s real. He’s here to talk to you.” She waved to the waiter. “We’re here to talk to you.”

  Gullian ordered a Bloody Mary then propped her chin on her hand and just studied me.

  (Who is this nigger?)

  “I’m sorry,” Gullian said. “I won’t tell you how hard I’ve tried to get to talk to you. Everyone was so discouraging. Alex said you were happy, very happy at Smythe and Simkin—no sense bothering you. So when Maxine called—wow!”

  She would fit into, I thought, the enclaves at the Hamptons, Province-town, the Cape, St. Vincent, Aix-en-Provence, Ibiza; it wouldn’t be hard for her to join the switch from the Rive Gauche to the Rive Droite. But, two things: Did she know that Areopagitica was not a Latin airplane, and could she get the bucks?

  The bucks turned out not to be a problem. They were not staggering in number, but, on the other hand they were not, by ordinary writers’ standards, what chickens ate either, and so I trotted into the stable of Maureen Gullian at Twentieth Century Forum Publishers.

  By now, demonstrations against the war were occurring throughout the country. They were, somehow, as if by some secret twelfth-century Albigensian design, occurring at approximately the same time that black people were setting the torch to America. The disruptions were diffused and therefore far less potent than they might have been if combined.

  However, together with Paul and some other writers, I journeyed to Washington for the Writers’ March to protest the war, sardonically aware that there had not been a writers’ march to protest racism. Still, one hoped that these meandering streams would find a common channel and form a mighty river. There was by now every assurance that Paul’s novel would be a success. I believed he made this trip mainly to acquaint himself with the rigors of being in the public eye.

  It was Friday, early afternoon, when we arrived, our group having purposely planned to skip the activities at the Ambassador the night before and the earlier functions that were scheduled at first one church and then another. We were sure that Mailer would hog it all up, and try to cast Goodman, Macdonald, Coffin and Lowell and whoever else was there into shadow.

  Perhaps it is always so when artists gather; maybe that is why we are more effective as individuals. We don’t trust each other’s motives.

  As we approached the Department of Justice Building, our ranks soggy and drooping first this way and then that, joking, cal
ling out to acquaintances, promising to meet for drinks after, a horde of men, in suits, splattered out along the line of march with cameras. They could not have been news photographers, for writers made news only when they have fucked the system, like Clifford Irving, or have won the Nobel Prize. No, these photographs would be in the files by dusk. I hoped fervently that my gun would not fall to the ground.

  We sauntered up before the JD Building, bunching up, waiting for the speeches. I saw one other black man there. “Whaddya say, Blood?” he said to me.

  People had recognized Paul, and while he was talking with them, I stood a little aside to allow myself to feel as I always did when I came to Washington. Here was the heart of the American paradox right smack dab in the middle of a black population; here was Washington with its acres of marble and grand domes and shafts; here was Jefferson’s memorial—how could one detect in its quiet splendor Jefferson romping in the old hay with Sally Hemings and then keeping his own children by her in slavery? He who feared God was just. Here was the brooding Lincoln, all questions of his origin chiseled away in white marble, he who feared to unleash “Ethiopia” upon those gentlemen rebels of the South; and lancing into the sky, Washington’s monument, sleeker than Cleopatra’s needle, visible to all descendants of slaves, of whom he had many. Behind us, the House and the Senate, where so many national crimes, masquerading as laws, were routinely devised and passed. Washington.

  Up behind the milling small mob of writers, sitting at a window with bars on it, was Robert Lowell, there and not, apart but with, smoking, his great underslung jaw and rimmed glasses thrust toward this still dream-fed group.

  People started making speeches, and young men, the masculine pitches of their voices not quite yet settled, blurted out that they were destroying their draft cards, and did indeed rip their cards. Paul, moved, I suppose, by these declarations, went up to the speaker’s stand to say that since he had no draft card, he was tearing up his honorable discharge instead as a symbol of protest against the war.