!Click Song

by John A. Williams

  We gorge ourselves, slobbering down this, sucking that, crunching the other, our watering eyes flashing at each other in admiration, gluttony, contentment. In between bites, sucks, slobbers and crunches, we talk.

  The advance Amos finally offers is better than TCFP’s, and he knows it. I can tell by his fleeting self-congratulatory smile. The publishing grapevine is like the gossip in a whorehouse. All the whores know about the Johns—if they are tremendous or tiny, if they are fuckers or suckers, if they are sprinters or long-distance humpers.

  Amos rears back now like a preacher who’s demolished three fried chickens at someone else’s home. Good, he says, good.

  Yeah, it was, I say, sighing, thinking of poor Allis at home with her yogurt and wheat germ.

  Way I figure it, Amos says, I’m gonna see your book through and then quit. Fuck it. I had enough.

  Why quit? There aren’t any other black editors around. So, I think, this is to be a last hurrah.

  I know, but hell, I’m tired.

  Doing what, I wonder. Then I know what. Thinking. I don’t say this, of course. I’m not supposed to know that he just plays with pencils on an empty desk. Besides, I am beginning to feel that there is something out of joint with all this. There is a smoothness that reminds me of a car skidding on ice.

  Maybe I’ll go into teaching too, Amos says. They’re using editors in these writing programs now.

  Yeah.

  Cognac?

  Yeah, why the hell not? The champagne’s all gone.

  I look around at the starched white tablecloths. They are startling in the semidark, dug in by elbows, blobbed by plates, pans and bottles, by glasses and silver. We are in the center of the room, and people have been noticing us. Who are those niggers?

  The plates and pans go and the booze comes.

  Listen, Amos says.

  It’s Miles’s “Solea.” Spanish blues. Moorish blues with muezzins praying out of minarets. Black blues. Tired blues. Amos said he was tired. Allis said Paul had sounded tired. How tired?

  Amos is into the music. His head bobs. We listen as Miles finishes up the intro. The snare drums come in, militantly, aggressively, a thousand lithely marching cats on the move, the Peninsular War. The bass kicks in; the trombones pounce, threatening: doowawdooo, doodooda, doodooda; doowawdooo, doodood, doodooda, and then Miles climbs back on top of all this bad shit. I am moving now, head, feet, shoulders, hands. The cymbals come on shivering, silver, slight, suggesting delicate little clicks carried on the wind. Miles and Gil, I think, Paul and Cate. Do it, Miles. In your solitude. Hey, man, they never liked you. There was always something in your music, in you, that slipped the old image of Louie. They never like that. They won’t name any tennis stadium after you, boy. They made what they did together work, Miles and Gil. Why not us, Paul?

  Problem was we were both players, never arrangers.

  Amos signals for more cognacs. I am feeling better than when I’m on Hank’s pills.

  Miles blowsblues down to the end, here feigning a whining, there leaping sprightly up, and then he starts tonguing on high, busts some notes—the risks you take when you go high without thinking high—and then, as though in a great ellipse around a hidden sun, slows, blows to a stop. On this piece he does not sign off with the old Da-da! (Fuck you!)

  Amos hands over the plastic, signs with a flourish. We drain the last dregs of amber. It’s time to go.

  You going home, man?

  Why does he ask? That’s where I always go.

  Yeah, I say, but I want to walk a bit.

  Hmm, he says. And then he adds, maybe because I’ve hesitated (we give away so many things that we try to conceal through the flick of the eye, the click of the teeth or lips), I’ll go with you, okay?

  Sure, man.

  Has he not just purchased—yes, bought—a book of mine? ACCEPTED. One of those Anglo-Saxon niceties that pretends, like tariff, like fee, like so many others, not to have to do with money. And hasn’t he rescued me, for the present at least, from artistic (Haaaaaaa!) oblivion, into which so many forces, historical, racial, have worked so hard to closet me?

  Yeah, Amos. And thanks for the dinner. Thanks for taking the book.

  Hey look, it’s good, he says. Too goddamn good for TCFP. You never shoulda gone there in the first place, Cate.

  We’re outside now, the Spanish smell closed off behind us. I ache with the thought of Alejo; I itch with the thought that we were almost together. The night is soft. The humidity has dropped. It is like old, childhood summer nights, filled with possibilities. I inhale this past, knowing it’s gone, and then I look down the street, imagine Mr. Storto leaning against a light pole, biding his time until he will go to buy his Italian ice.

  We walk. I smile. Amos has lost none of his elegance. Elegance is his truth. He has maintained it. I put an arm around his shoulder.

  You have problems getting Phaeton to take the book? I say.

  Naw, man.

  In some way I cannot explain he acknowledges my touch, appreciates it. His tone is washed with disdain. That makes me suspicious.

  What’re they gonna do for me? I ask.

  We walk several paces without speaking. I wait. It’s a nice night. Allis is home. Mack is safe. My eldest son searches for his brother. I have finished another book, and still another is about to jell in my head. I wait until he speaks.

  You know what it’s like these days. When even the white boys start screaming, you know there’s some bad shit goin’ down. Like Gibson said, Wherever America’s going, Newark’ll get there first. They’ve been kicking black writers out of warehouses to make room for inventories for years. Black writers most don’t get the good advances because some white writer has got hundreds of thousands—

  You know I know all that, I say.

  ’Kay. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. They don’t wanna hear what you got to say. They really don’t wanna hear what any of us have to say, and you ain’t give up no ass, so they don’t even have to pretend. Y’dig?

  Yeah, man. I understand.

  It’s a good book, he mutters. White boy did a book like that—

  He stops. I understand his floundering. It’s all been said before, experienced before, to the point of cliché. The language surrounding it has been eroded, beaten down, and is now incapable of creating ancient angers or even indignation anymore. Repetition so effective in selling (advertising, politics), in this case sounds like, though it cannot ever be, really, bleating.

  Fuck it! Amos shouts, reverting, as we always seem to, to the comfortable, well-used Anglo-Saxon terminology. His hands slash viciously through the night, destroying nothing but air.

  I’m gonna go, he says and turns on his heel in a smart pivot and strides away.

  Strange. When he decided to walk with me, I had the feeling that he thought I needed nursing. Now I feel that he needs it. But he is walking away hard, with long, long strides.

  Thanks! I call out after him. Thanks!

  He waves in response without turning, trailing after him the sound of clicking. The sound matches his stride. Hard heels. But I know he is a clicker. How can he not be?

  I take the subway. I’ve not used it in a long time. Tonight I want to soak in the city. The graffiti are thicker, but less self-centered, like old Roman and Chinese wall posters. Everyone has something to say. But they are afraid to say it in public. Here in this rockbound belly there is anonymity which cushions the perception that signing one’s name can be dangerous. So. Closet pamphleteers. The city must be filled with them. The legends are topical. In the bathrooms, in the stink of shit, piss and their accompanying corruptions, they are sexual and racial. No editor descends to put it all together.

  I imagine an assignment for one of my classes: select a theme sprayed or written in the subway car you rode to class this morning and from it create a five-hundred-word story.

  Subway riders seem older and more genteelly seedier than I remember. They sit stiffly, watchfully, like people being conveye
d with the harshest grace possible to Devil’s Island. There are cops everywhere. They talk to each other, shift about their slackly formed asses all the hardware of their trade. They seem to resent the population they are paid to protect. They cluster and vanish like fireworks thrown into the sky over Disneyland.

  I think of Dutchman as we hurtle under the city. The heat has burrowed in down here. I see West and Hooks sweating. Lula and Clay, breathing this dirty, fart-fractured air. The air is overused. We will inhale it one hot summer day and drop absolutely dead. But Clay and Lula will survive. They always do.

  The shattering, furious noise is suddenly increased a thousand decibels. We all peer from our isolations toward the door that has just been opened. Three huge youths (what are they feeding kids these days?) enter the car, padding like panthers in their Nikes, their Ponys, their Converses, and their eyes sweep the car as quickly and as silently as the most advanced radar.

  Oh, shit, I say to myself. I knew I should’ve cabbed. Soak in the city indeed. This may just be too much soak.

  They seem to be laughing, from the grimaces of their faces, but the sound is ground under the horrendous clatter of the train.

  I curse myself. Dumb. Stupid, like, when playing pool, I always miss my second choice of shot, leaving the first, a pigeon, that I can always come back to. Maybe there is some superspade in me.

  Like a sweeper without sound the kids fill the center of the car as they move along, slapping people, pulling up the dresses of the old cleaning ladies, exposing varicose veins and flabby thighs, tightening knots in the ties of aged elevator operators and doormen trying to pass as late-working executives.

  They quickly punch out three or four single young men sitting in the car. One tries to battle back. He is demolished. The big kids work their way toward me, pocketing wallets, chains, watches.

  I sit with a sinking, pounding feeling in my gut.

  Now, bopping in their peer sneakers like nether gods, the frenzy of blood lust casting terrible auras about them, they approach me. I jump up, and just as quickly, as though they had read me, find myself back in my seat, the rear of my head ringing and clanging. I think I hit the back of the seat going down. One of them stands directly in front of me, the others on each side. They rock with the movement of the train. The one in front of me has a nice face. I would be attracted to him in a classroom. I would urge him on, convince him that I was really there during my office hours, take his phone calls to my home, grease his grades, because there is that something in his face. But now I want them all to go fuck with someone else. My head hurts. I am afraid. I feel a warming wetness slide down the back of my neck. I gather my feet to stand again and the boy in front, with a fearful swiftness, snares my chin in his hand and in the same motion forces my head farther upward. I look directly into his cold, black eyes. There is half a millenium, maybe all of history, resting as calmly, as plainly as a landmark that sailors know, right there. The war, I think, has indeed already begun.

  I grab his wrist in one of those sudden, mad convulsions that is rooted in the action of hero movies, rooted, too, in my generational refusal to be raped of even material goods, and try to force him away. The others wait on him. I cannot move his hand. It is like steel welded to my chin. The expression on his face suggests a small smile, and I think, This kid’s strong’s a bitch!

  People are slipping out of the car.

  I grab the kid’s wrist, this time with both hands, and carry him backward with his weight. His smile slips. He’s coming. Motherfuck! He’s coming! And I give him all the knee I can muster, exult in the feel of it smashing clear through his softness and gristles to the hardness of his pelvic bone, and a great satisfaction fills me, even as he yowls, even as lights and pain explode on both sides of my head, even as, holding back the darkness that’s trying to wash over me in great surging waves, the lights of a station strobe into view, then slow and become focused. Cursing and moaning and running in soft thumps. The train stops.

  I remain in my seat. This is not my stop. I couldn’t move anyway. I breathe the dirty air, take my handkerchief and touch it to the places of pain. It comes away bloody. But there is more pain than blood. My left eye wants to close. Something big and round weighs it down.

  New riders come on, looking curiously at me. A cop looks into the car; up and down he looks and takes a deep drag on the cigarette cupped in his hand. He has done his job. He withdraws, his radio squawking, and the doors close.

  Helloooooo, Allis sings out when I get home.

  Hi. I go directly to the bathroom and peel off my shirt and jacket.

  You should call Maxine tomorrow for sure, Allis says.

  Okay.

  She has been working well. I can tell by the sound of her voice. I suppose I am the same way.

  I draw cold water and splash it over my face and neck.

  I raise to look at myself in the mirror. Allis is there, stunned.

  What happened? Her voice rising to the next thing to a scream. It’s true. I look as if I’ve gone fifty-five rounds with Jake La Motta.

  But already she is rummaging for compresses, touching the bumps and lumps, running more cold water, digging out the ice bag.

  Got beat on the train.

  Mugged?

  No. Just beat.

  I can see she does not understand that. For most people, they’re one and the same.

  What happened to your eye?

  I got punched in it.

  Should I call Hank?

  No.

  She goes for ice cubes. I check myself again in the mirror. Jesus.

  She’s back with the ice. We dig out some aspirins, which I wash down with 80-proof vodka. With me in such a sad state, how could she have refused to get it for me? Allis keeps making that affricative click as she washes the cuts with hydrogen peroxide !tsk !tsk !tsk

  Are you all right, honey? Sure you don’t want me to call Hank? Should we go to the hospital?

  I say, Only my ego’s destroyed, honey. The eye will go down, the pain will stop, but my ego is in shreds.

  I am ashamed for her to see me this way. I’m glad my sons aren’t here to see how badly their old man’s ass has been beat.

  We are sitting now. Allis insists on holding the ice bag. There’s nothing wrong with my hands, but she must do it. It’s really time to get out the gun, I think. The place abounds with people attacking your body, your soul. Words slide like shit down a thousand-year-old latrine. Lord, deliver Halley’s comet in 1985–86. Right down the middle. Fast ball. Between the knees and the dick. Wipe it out. Destroy it. What right does it have to exist any longer?

  A third vodka. It makes me feel better, I tell Allis.

  It’s later than hell and Allis will not go to bed. I know I can’t sleep because I’m thinking of every movement on the train, every expression. Allis sits there, waiting, wanting to share what no woman can ever share with a man who has just got his ass kicked.

  Amos is taking Graves, I say.

  She nods. I thought he might.

  Relief has replaced the commonplace celebration that accompanied other acceptances.

  Who, I ask, was that guy who did a novel in which half the last page was filled with the word mercy?

  Ah, she says, Bellow. No! Malamud. She looks at me. What a strange thing to remember, honey.

  No it isn’t. Listen, is it my turn to write Mack tomorrow?

  Yes, but I’ll do it.

  No, no. I can do it.

  We get up, walk arm in arm into the bedroom. I feel that I am somewhere near, watching us, overhearing our small, hushed talk, and I become frightened. My anchors seem to have slipped their ties. I had expected when I came home to have loved my wife with all the frenzy permissible when the kid is gone. Instead, she is my nurse. And where are my sons?

  Groaning now, I make it to the bed, roll over and slip quickly down through several layers of sleep. I see Paul at a phone and I startle myself back to my living wife snoring softly beside me. Tomorrow, I think, will be bett
er; it must be better.

  16

  It isn’t.

  Maxine has never before sounded so incredulous, so very indignant.

  So Phaeton’s publishing Unmarked Graves.

  I have a fresh ice bag and a cup of fresh coffee.

  Did Amos tell you?

  No.

  She waits while I wonder. My eye is closed now. Burls have blown up out of my head. I phoned in response to her call. I don’t need the theatrics, not this morning.

  Well, who told you, Maxine?

  One of my spies at Phaeton.

  Anyway, you’ll handle the contract for me?

  That was the deal, if you still want me to.

  Sure.

  But there’s another deal you ought to know about.

  I hurt too much for all this heavy shit.

  What, I say. I know Allis is on the extension. They’ll pay and not print?

  No, babes. They’ll print. They’ll even do a respectable run. The deal—

  I flinch at her emphasis.

  The deal is that your friend Amos resigns if they publish your book. They’ve wanted him gone, you know.

  Cate?

  My silence makes her nervous.

  Shit, I say finally. He agreed to that?

  Yes, he did. It was going to be sooner or later. He knew what he was doing. And he wanted to help. So …

  I hang up and dial Amos at home. No answer. Silently, Allis takes and refills the ice bag. There are spaces in her movements, as though she’s stopping to think or to cry. I make another pot of coffee.

  I won’t let them do it, I say.

  They’ll let him go anyway. You heard Maxine. Her voice catches. Amos would want to leave with—honor—the honor of publishing you.

  Her eyes and voice are flat.

  But the book, honey. They don’t care about the book. They’re just using it to get rid of him. I don’t think anyone’s seen it but Amos. It could be a roll of toilet paper.