Amos is neither home nor at work even by eleven. I leave messages. And I worry. I lie down with the ice pack, but my mind’s racing. I get up and, with the eye closed now, write a letter to Mack, one of those peppy, somewhat gruff letters secretly clinging fathers write to their sons. I affix the stamp and curse. For as it rises endlessly in cost, postal service declines. The situation is everywhere.
I call Amos again, at his office. I’m told that he’s out of town on business. That surprises me. He had not said anything last night.
I ask where.
California.
When did he leave?
This morning.
Do you have a number for him out there?
No.
When will he be back?
Next week.
By which time, I think, everything will have been processed and he will have ready all his answers to my questions. I could say no. I’ve signed no contract yet. (I can imagine Amos calling the office from his hotel room in Beverly Hills, telling Phaeton about the money we agreed on, and the people at Phaeton ripping off, perhaps this afternoon, a standard contract.) Hell, I could tell Maxine to send the contract back.
But I know I won’t. I know it. I stretch out and lie down again.
Allis goes out to shop for food and to mail the letter to Mack. I do not think we need any food, but I say nothing. Motion, habit, are the weapons with which we guard the interiors of our sanity.
But I have to sleep.
It is late afternoon. The heat is oppressive. Street noises leap upward to fly into the apartment with the grit- and water-laden air through the windows.
Allis sits across from me, writing on a pad, her legs crossed. She smiles when I stir and look at her. She’s gorgeous, I think. Look at those legs.
I must be feeling better.
She says, Feel better?
I think so, I say, but as I move, my head bursts with small bangs and clashes. I stop moving.
Want anything? Aspirin, water?
I lie still. Of course I want. I say, No thanks. I listen to the sound of her pen scribbling. How nice, how wonderful a sound it is. I listen to the noises of the street, to the sound of a plane making its final approach to La Guardia. It must be, I think, as hot as this in Barcelona. Hot, humid. At Mack’s camp there are groves of cedars and white firs and maples and oaks; a great cooling lake …
We’ll go to the country ourselves, I think, as soon’s my eye opens and the bangs go out of my bumps. Get the fuck outa here …
There comes the rasp of the doorbell. Allis jumps. I jump, and pain runs an entire track meet through my head. We exchange a questioning look. The mail has already been delivered. Mack’s friends are away at camp, too, and their parents have gone to the Hamptons, Woodstock, the Cape or to Europe. (The city now belongs to the Hispanics and the blacks.) We expect no one.
I get up, waving Allis back to her seat.
Three men stand in the open door. They are the same height. One is wearing a well-cut summer suit, gray with some more vague striping. The other two, stockier, could have got their suits off the rack at Klein’s, if Klein’s were still open. Their shirt collars are flared out upon their jackets. Thank you, Ben-Gurion, Allis would say.
Mr. Cato Douglass? the neat guy in the tie and expensive suit asks.
Yes.
He glances behind him down the hall. Can we please come in?
I move back, although the other two already are pushing inside the door. They have very steady eyes I think I know the crowd they drink with
I close the door behind them. Allis has joined us in the foyer, and there we stand, bunched and questioning. One of the stocky men looks startled to see her and then in clear, pungent disgust looks from her to me. We have seen the look before.
The other stocky one studies the bookshelves he can just see from where we stand. The books seem to be suspicious strangers to him.
The man in the gray suit says, I’m from the New York City Museum Association. These men with me are New York City policemen.
I feel a sudden dryness in my throat.
The neat dresser thrusts in front of my good eye one of our cards. Ecce signum—Cadit quaestio, etc., etc. He says, We traced these to Bergenbein Printers on West Seventy-second Street. They said you ordered them. Did you?
I am staring back at the cop who is staring at me. I hate him, too.
Are these yours?
Neat dresser doesn’t wait for an answer. He digs inside another pocket and produces the order form with my signature.
We don’t want to have you arrested, Mr. Douglass, he says. We just want you to sign a statement admitting that you did leave the cards and that you agree, promise, not to do it again, ever.
This, I have been told, is what they do with supermarket shoplifters. I clear my throat. It doesn’t feel quite so dry. Allis is still and poised. But I know she’s nervous, too.
What would be the charge, I ask.
Littering.
Lit-ter-ing? Allis lilts out the word. She is almost laughing.
The cop who stares is studying her. It is an insolent study, slow, suggestive, proprietary.
I’ll sign, I say, reaching for the paper. I take his pen, a gold Cross pen, and write my name and return pen and paper.
Did it hurt? It’s the insolent cop.
I ignore him and open the door.
Only the neat dresser moves, then stops, waiting for the others.
Don’t he look suspicious? The insolent cop is all up in my face, looking at my eye, my lumps.
Yeah. Look at that face. The other cop. They sound alike. Tried to mug somebody, I bet, he says. Lotta muggings in this neighborhood.
Cops pronounce the g’s properly when it comes to “mugging.”
Please, let’s go, the neat dresser says, one foot in the hall. He does not know that he never, in his most magnificent dream, had any control over those who he thought were available at his bidding.
We wanna talk to him about some muggings.
Neat dresser says, We’d better go. He’s signed. We know who he is. Now, let’s go.
The insolent cop comes closer to me. Our chests bump. He’s staring at my closed eye with a smile that says, We don’t care who this nigger is. He is a sudden blur before me; his thumb is pressed into my closed eye. It feels as if a million hot spears have been jammed into it at the same, precise time. I scream and push him off.
Striking an officer! he bellows, hardly able to conceal the glee in his voice.
Allis screams.
Neat dresser, frowning, understanding at last, cries, I won’t be a party to this! (As if he had not been a party before.)
Insolent’s partner, his legs suddenly spread, his back just as suddenly bent, his torso thrown forward, awaits my next move. I think, Something’s wrong with all this.
My next move is a leap to the couch. Fuck it. Let’s do it here. Now. Right now. From under the cushions I whip out the .32 and, whirling, holding the gun out from my body with both hands, aim right for Insolent’s gut. I have no fear of hitting Allis. I hate this bastard too much to miss. I feel the gun to be precisely in the groove.
Allis’ screaming rises in pitch. Neat dresser is frozen. Insolent’s partner is incredulous. How, he seems to be thinking, did it get this far so fucking fast?
Only Insolent is in action, flipping back his jacket, his fingers together as though in salute, dipping toward his holster. I pull the trigger.
!CLICK !CLICK !CLICK!CLICK !CLICK !CLICK
Allis’ expression swims into view. Her screaming ricochets through the apartment. She’s removed the bullets! Removed them, I see in her sad, panic-stricken eyes, because she wanted to humor me by not hiding the gun, but, believing better days were here, removed the bullets to prevent the accidents she believed could happen.
Insolent has leveled his own, huge, illegal gun at me. Blinking in anticipation of its noise, he snaps his finger against the trigger.
CLACKGH!
His gun is
jammed.
For one blindingly bright moment in the immense darkness of an ending about to be, I see him cocking the gun, anticipate the offending dumdums flying out across the room to thud against the books in the shelves, and hear Allis’ voice echoing through a very long dark chamber:
Wracked, soul in traction and
sprawled, a wind-downed scarecrow
among bound words heaped as though
for burning, bound words blown of
meaning, his sons absent, his love of
them leaking redly in tiny tunnels
crafted by an ancient, awful alchemy,
is my husband, snared by their hate,
my love. He speaks in clicks. I know
his tongue. I !click back to him.
I know the language. It is ours.
I pull up out of the dream guided by the scratchings of Allis’ pen. Yes, wake, get out! I did not like it in there. Things burned without burning, and anyway, God, I didn’t bring my cue stick. The sound of Allis’ pen is louder, quicker. I take a long, deep breath of air. It is strangely sharp and wonderfully sweet.
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 portion 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.
General acknowledgement is made to the New York Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts for financial assistance with the publication of this work. Thanks to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for its 1985 grant.
Copyright © 1982, 1987 by John A. Williams
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3304-6
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
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