The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones

by Amiri Baraka

  But I think I was quieter and silenter than I had been on the outside. That’s my recollection. I would joke and make fun and advance the sardonic perception I’d grown up with to punctuate our collective perception of the joint, but I was quieter, more internal now. I don’t think I was quite as loose-lipped as at HU, though I still had an acid tongue. Maybe because it was a different crowd, with reality mashed down on us like an elephant big as the sky. Our illusions were different — they could not be the hysterical yellow-feather brand the Capstone gave out. They were more cautious, less advertised (by us). I cannot say we were illusion-free, otherwise we would not have been there in the fourth motherfucking place.

  We were orphans in the storm, come from our various other illusions to this nowheresville way up in the north woods. They called it the Finger Lakes region. The closest big city was Rochester and we couldn’t go there until much later in our basic training. It was very cool when we got there and in a couple of weeks it was cold as hell. Thanksgiving Day 1954 I sat huddled in front of a fake airplane in the middle of a storm, practicing guard duty. As I sat there, completely invisible under the blinding torrents of snow, I thought I had reached the absolute bottom, the nadir, of my life. I thought I was being tortured. In this freezing dismal place I stood freezing for what reason? Why? It was a payback for my stupidity and lack of seriousness. I’ve never felt sorrier for myself.

  We were out on bivouac during the storm, so when I was relieved of guard duty to eat I came back into the general bivouac area and hundreds of us squatted in the snowstorm and ate cold turkey under congealed gravy. Happy Thanksgiving, you dumb motherfuckers, everything seemed to be saying!

  We lived in open-bay barracks and slept in double-decker bunks with our footlockers, in which we had all our earthly possessions, at either end of the bunks. Henry and I bunked together, Roy right next door and Humphrey on top of him. We had a little ghetto right in the barracks, though there were other bloods sprinkled around as well.

  Those first weeks we rose at 03:27 when it was jet black outside and the wind raged. We staggered into the latrines to wash up — some dudes never changed their underwear — then made up our beds and lined up for the first quick inspection. Then marched off toward the mess hall (certainly an accurate name) to grin at the catastrophe of breakfast.

  I developed a funny kind of reputation. I’m not sure what it was in toto but among the black troops I hung closest with, since I could always come up with some answer to the strangest phenomena which we encountered, they felt that was positive. I could understand certain terms and relationships, certain procedures, and would in turn translate the bureaucratese into direct black language. And the general obscurity, at a certain level, necessary to disguise the fact that the American Nightmare is what really exists, not no Dream, I could penetrate these dull surfaces because of my lightweight education and brown training up off the common streets. Roy said one day, “It’s like having a goddam dictionary or encyclopedia with you.” And I took that as my greatest compliment.

  The other half of that was problematic. I was cordial with most of the white troops around us. Basic was fairly transient, so some of the deeper conflicts I later experienced when I got to where I finally was going did not quite surface. But there was some square-head, bland-faced, sky-blue-eyed white boy from Mississippi who was describing something and said, “Nigger.” His name was Hall. But he apologized and said he was used to talking like that but was sorry. I didn’t even answer and he put out his hand. I walked away. And whenever he saw me he would color, turn red, and try to grin.

  One of the dudes who came up with us, a tall husky blond Polish dude, was made an assistant flight commander of our training flight and he took it just the way he was supposed to. He became part of the structure and chugged along calling cadence when the TI’s let him, like he was high up in the shit. We just looked at him and then at each other and grimaced. There was some kind of disorder around something, somebody going in other people’s footlockers or a stinking white boy who was thrown in the shower with all his clothes on and scrubbed with scrub brushes and Octagon soap and Henry figured in it some way. In fact, the white boy, Stenkowski, had probably never liked the way Henry and Roy and I acted in the joint, we were so openly hostile to the system itself. From almost the moment we got in it we were trying to beat it any fucking way we could. And it was very obvious now that Stenkowski liked the shit, even more so now that he had been raised up in it.

  So he said something to Henry and Henry told him he would cut his fucking head off and stuff it in the motherfucking toilet! He left Henry alone. He said something to Roy and Roy did not even answer, he cocked his eye up at him and slid his hand very slowly into his pocket. So the dude acted like he hadn’t said shit to Roy neither. He walked away.

  But the next day at the morning inspection he comes over to me and I’m standing half asleep as usual and he says to me out in front of everybody, “Jones, why don’t you stand up and be a man?” He goes in my foot-locker next and uncovers from under the regulation bullshit Eliot’s Selected Poetry, Dylan Thomas, some other stuff. He holds the stuff up, the TI and his assistant are walking with him this morning. He says, “You like this stuff?” Holding the books up like his own dirty drawers.

  I said simply, “Yes.” The TIs, a long thin-nosed Polish sergeant named Konuz and a short blond drunk whose name I never remembered, stepped over to look, grin, then toss the books back. Stenkowski meant to embarrass me or show the flakiness of one of the hated little trio — maybe disrupting the little defense group we’d hooked up. But those dudes knew I read “way out” shit. That’s all they had to say about it when I was reading it. But it was my business, and how otherwise could you be a dictionary or encyclopedia? Henry balled up his fist and showed it to Stenkowski and Stenkowski tried to let Konuz see it but Henry wasn’t no fool. Stenkowski had to move up into the special part of the barracks where the TI’s had their office. But I set a new base record for KP, pulling it some twenty times before we got out of there.

  It was almost twenty-four hours of stinking labor. Report at two in the morning to the mess hall. Work till almost two the next morning. Throwing slop in the trays, washing the trays, moving the garbage cans, cleaning out the grease pit (a particularly nasty task reserved for the troublemakers), mopping and sweeping the floor, stopping only to eat and drink the coffee or Kool-Aid. All the time in that mess hall the jukebox is playing. In those days the country and western tune “I’m in the Jailhouse Now” kept playing; I almost wept. Or what about Patty Paige singing “We’ll Be Together Again”? It was deadly. And at the end of your day, completely covered with foul-smelling grease, dead tired, you’d wander back toward your barracks and fall out completely exhausted.

  Before I got out of basic training I caught the crabs and didn’t even know it until I went on the one leave I got, going alone to Rochester and staying in a hotel, and they itched me so bad I took off my clothes and looked closely and was horrified — really my blood ran cold, I’d never been exposed to shit like that. Though most of the troops took it lightly.

  I had smuggled a grey flannel suit and red belt and corduroy vest up in basic training. You weren’t supposed to have civilian clothes there. But somebody found my hiding place, I think it was the short, drunken assistant TI, and they got ripped off. I never went to town again because I’d have to wear the uniform. There was nothing in my life before or since like the feeling of hopelessness as I watched Staff Sergeant Konuz turn and step or teach us how to march or salute. In his nasal dead voice and water-blue sightless eyes. His starched pants and cap. His policeman’s coldness and casual racism and ignorance. He was my leader. I had to do what he said, what he ordered. But the days did pass, not fast enough, but they passed, they did pass. And I found myself going back home just before Christmas, with one stripe on my arm, having successfully completed basic training.

  I was sent for some reason to Chanute Air Field in Rantoul, Illinois. I was to be enrolled in
weather school. Their aptitude tests said I was supposed to be a weatherman. A radiosonde operator or rawinsonde operator to be exact. Which meant I was trained to send helium-filled balloons aloft and, looking through an instrument like the surveyor’s transit, chart the airspeed and direction, air temperature and pressure. I was supposed to work at a weather station or at an airport, going out to check the little white weather shack with its latticed sides and slanted roof. (You can see these little white shacks at airports out near the runway.) I didn’t mind this idea really. Weathermen in the air force had weird kinds of hours. You usually worked three days on, two days off, or something like that, so it was not the normal nine-to-five day. The three days you worked you stayed out at the airport or at the weather station and didn’t go home and sometimes you would be at out of the way places, Greenland or the Azores or somewhere wild. It seemed OK to me. Even the isolation, though I did not want to go to Greenland. Thule, Greenland! But then, that was so legendary that I wouldn’t even have minded that. But that did not happen.

  There were only whites in my training squadron now. And some of the others, maybe all of them, had some college. I guess that’s why they’d chosen us for weather school. And I guess that’s why there were no other blacks in that squadron. And in some ways it felt like Barringer again. And, Jim, that part of Illinois is a crime in itself. Flat and hostile, like the real South crept up on you. Southern Illinois: towns like Kankakee, Champaign-Urbana, Decatur. Stuck halfway between Chicago and St. Louis. (When I could I started to go to Chicago every weekend and stay at Kurt’s house and roam around the South Side near the University of Chicago.)

  But that was a strange place altogether, and for me especially. The dead of winter, in little wooden barracks heated by coal furnaces. (It turned out later, in a heavy scandal, that the brother of the commanding general owned the coal company, which is why the base heating system had never been converted. Meanwhile they had one of us per barracks each week keeping the coal furnaces stoked, and if we let them go out we’d get court martialed.)

  The same disconnection and isolation characterized my stay at Chanute. And the first days were even worse, certainly now that I was just among white dudes again. As isolated and lonely as I might feel among bloods, to be the lone spot in the buttermilk is totally a drag. You have to assume a whole other character, just to communicate! You must speak a different language, adjust culturally, stay at a point of tension in which there can be no real relaxation.

  Before our first test I went into the latrine and studied the materials. The next day I got a perfect paper, 100. It was pronounced with such weightiness the entire class looked around at me; I was surprised, but better, it made me feel somewhat restored after my heavy defeat in school. Maybe I was not totally stupid.

  After that there were a few white guys who’d come around the bunk to check up on why I’d gotten that perfect paper. A blond jock with a perfect German crew cut, a good-natured All American named Van Allison. Two ex-college dudes, one the hypertypical Ivy specimen, University of Maine, named Kreeger, and a short swarthy guy from the University of Maryland named Voster. (Hey, were all these guys German or something?) Kreeger, Voster, and I did some running close by the base. A few bars. We kept up a more or less steady conversation, though as I said, my conversational form had retreated somewhat. Kreeger had the classic “Princeton cut” and wore plain toes, grey flannel slacks, and blue button-down oxford shirts with the sleeves rolled up. He had a real Maine accent and was really a nice guy. He’d gotten tossed out for something and his obsession seemed to be to get back into the Ivy. Voster was a self-proclaimed intellectual, wanted to be a science major of some kind. I don’t know how he ever got into the air force. (But then I don’t know how I got in either, now!) It was a funny trio when engaged. Kreeger, off-the-top Ivyisms; Voster, deep mock-probing philosophical; and whatever the fuck I was then. That was a college-type intellectual hookup, but bright enough and interesting in that context.

  Later, I ran into a guy named Strassbaugh (another German?) who was in another squadron. He was the first hip white boy I met. Strass liked jazz and talked like a blood. He wanted to play saxophone and always talked about it. He was always looking for someplace to practice. And the “squares” and “farmers” that made up a large part of our companions in arms constantly drove Strass to distraction. He was always cussing out some “farmer” or “square” and I was one of the only dudes I ever saw him with. Strass couldn’t stand Voster. “Little square cat!” But Kreeger was all right though Strass was always raising one eyebrow at some of Kreeg’s Ivyisms. Strass and I went into Champaign-Urbana looking for music one night, like trying to ice skate in Death Valley.

  There were two bloods I knew fairly well. One, a guy from one of the maintenance squadrons, was in the mold of my running buddies in basic and Hillside Place. But he got further advanced in training and was gone in a minute. The other guy was really out. I met him one time at the University of Illinois library, where I started going from time to time. I even started taking a couple of courses, General Psychology 1 and 2, and got good grades. We walked back to the base talking. He was carrying a thick Dostoyevsky under his arm, The Brothers Karamazov. I never saw him without that.

  John Karamazov (I’m lying about his last name) saw me coming toward the library a few days later and the maintenance brother was with me, Jerry, in his civvies, which were bright as tomorrow. Karamazov and I, of course, were dressed in less color — in honor of our training. We were headed for the university’s weekly movie showing which some of the base intellectuals would make and John leans over and whispers in my ear, “Who is that person?” referring to Jerry. He was lucky I didn’t tell Jerry or he would’ve found out. But that’s the kind of guy John was. He was slender and stiff, he wore sweaters then but later he was always in a suit.

  John became very wealthy later in New York, after an early fling at a respectable bohemianism. I think he married four different white women and was last heard of (by me) living in a penthouse on Park Avenue (he’d made money in advertising, one of the first black advertising agencies), but rumor had it at last hearing that he’d lost his bux. But then he was roaming around in southern Illinois in the error farce too. I never found out why.

  The weather squadron I was in had a strange collection of types. But, thinking about it, I’m wondering why so many Germans? Aside from the friendly dudes I mentioned, there was also a straight-out Nazi. Not just philosophically, this guy had been a glider operator in the goddam German army, the goddam Luftwaffe. Now he was becoming an American citizen. I guess, if you can’t beat ’em, etc. His name was Helmut Meisler and he sat on his bed, mostly, shining his boots and writing letters. He came on like he was intelligent, but with no real evidence except what came out of his mouth as assertion. And that was just irritating. Stiff and blond, be looked and sounded like a fucking Nazi, though he never said any out of the way shit, to me.

  But he did get people up in arms about some anti-Jewish shit he’d said, in his usual “I can smile it’s so obvious” manner, to this guy named Lewis Felzer, a thin spider-skinny blond Jewish boy. Meisler had said that yes, Jews were inferior, he believed it, and Germans superior. I didn’t hear this directly, but they were all ranged around the barrack when Strassbaugh and John and I come in from somewhere. Meisler had just said this and he’s continuing to polish his fucking boots. People are standing around him, not quite menacing but very very interested in the statement. A Dutch guy, an ex-pilot in the Netherlands air force, is sitting watching, his pipe in his mouth. He wore Dutch pilot’s wings. Meisler wore glider operator’s wings. A wild set. Kreeger and Voster were also there standing. Voster, it turns out, was indeed Jewish, a German Jew. And he’s working himself up, like wringing his hands. And Felzer is wide-legged, agitated around the mouth, his eyes like spinning around in his skull. But Meisler’s talking normally, matter-of-factly. “I told you what I think is the truth. There’s no reason for anyone to have to believe it.”

>   Voster was trying to agitate, but he really didn’t know how. Kreeger tells me what’s happening. John makes a noise, blowing air out his mouth with his tittering little laughter. (John didn’t really like white people, or I should say white men, though he emulated the shit out of them. But to him it was funny!)

  But I sure as hell knew how to agitate, that was my trade, it turns out. “Well, how come if you superior, everybody kicked y’all’s ass?” says I from the back of the almost crowd. The light laughter broke the spell. Meisler turns and looks at me, smiling.

  “That’s a good question,” he says. “But how do you know you have?”

  “You in the goddam American army. You surrendered and then joined the conquerors.” Felzer hadn’t said anything. He just stared at Meisler like he couldn’t understand what was being said.

  “But I was not making a speech.” Meisler still did not look irritated. He was smooth. In wartime I would have killed him immediately. “And certainly I was not talking to you.” That was as aggressive as he wanted to make it. But it was OK with me if he took it even further out, but I knew he wouldn’t.

  At this point Strassbaugh says in the loose singsong of the white bebopper, “Say, man, why don’t you carry that square-ass shit back to the Third Reich or whatever that shit was called. We got enough problems over here as it is without no goddam Nazis. Shit!” Strass had said it like he was talking to an annoying security guard who was stopping him from getting into Bop City or something. Squares and farmers were always doing something to Strass.

  The crowd had indeed formed, thickened would be the word. Our words had drawn the others together and they stood glaring a little at Meisler, who now returned to polishing his shoes. After a while he said, “I’m not going to say anything else.”

  Later we tried to get Felzer to bounce one of those metal bunk legs off Meisler’s head but Louie was still quiet and just generally drugged that the shit had even come up. Voster told us the guy was sick. Kreeger agreed but also agreed Felzer should bounce something off his head. It was discussed briefly that maybe somebody else should. Strass said he’d be glad to but we thought it wasn’t a cool idea. Meisler never said anything else I heard, not even good morning, the whole time we were there.