Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

by James Baldwin

  I don’t know how long I squatted there this way, or what was in my mind—I think there was nothing in my mind, I was as blank as a toothache. I listened to the rain and the rats. Then I was aware of another sound, I had been hearing it for awhile without realizing it. This was a moaning sound, a sighing sound, a sound of strangling, which mingled with the sound of the rain and with a muttering, cursing, human voice. The sounds came from the door which led to the backyard. I wanted to stand, but I crouched lower; wanted to run, but could not move. Sometimes the sounds seemed to come closer and I knew that this meant my death; sometimes diminished or ceased altogether and then I knew that my assailant was looking for me. Oh, how I hated Caleb for bringing my life to an end so soon! How I wished I knew where to find him! I looked toward the backyard door and I seemed to see, silhouetted against the driving rain, a figure, half bent, moaning, leaning against the wall, in indescribable torment; then there seemed to be two figures, sighing and grappling, moving so quickly that it was impossible to tell which was which—if this had been a movie, and I had been holding a gun, I would have been afraid to shoot, for fear of shooting the wrong person; two creatures, each in a dreadful, absolute, silent single-mindedness, attempting to strangle the other! I watched, crouching low. A very powerful and curious excitement mingled itself with my terror and made the terror greater. I could not move. I did not dare to move. The figures were quieter now. It seemed to me that one of them was a woman and she seemed to be crying—pleading for her life. But her sobbing was answered only by a growling sound. The muttered, joyous curses began again, the murderous ferocity began again, more bitterly than ever, and I trembled with fear and joy. The sobbing began to rise in pitch, like a song. The movement sounded like so many dull blows. Then everything was still, all movements ceased—my ears trembled. Then the blows began again and the cursing became a growling, moaning, stretched-out sigh. Then I heard only the rain and the scurrying of the rats. It was over—one of them, or both of them, lay stretched out, dead or dying, in this filthy place. It happened in Harlem every Saturday night. I could not catch my breath to scream. Then I heard a laugh, a low, happy, wicked laugh, and the figure turned in my direction and seemed to start toward me. Then I screamed and stood straight up, bumping my head on the window frame and losing my cap, and scrambled up the cellar steps, into the rain. I ran head down, like a bull, away from that house and out of that block and it was my great good luck that no person and no vehicle were in my path. I ran up the steps of my stoop and bumped into Caleb.

  “Where the hell have you been? Hey! what’s the matter with you?”

  For I had jumped up on him, almost knocking him down, trembling and sobbing.

  “You’re soaked. Leo, what’s the matter with you? Where’s your cap?”

  But I could not say anything. I held him around the neck with all my might, and I could not stop shaking.

  “Come on, Leo,” Caleb said, in a different tone, “tell me what’s the matter. Don’t carry on like this.” He pried my arms loose and held me away from him so that he could look into my face. “Oh, little Leo. Little Leo. What’s the matter, baby?” He looked as though he were about to cry himself and this made me cry harder than ever. He took out his handkerchief and wiped my face and made me blow my nose. My sobs began to lessen, but I could not stop trembling. He thought that I was trembling from cold and he rubbed his hands roughly up and down my back and rubbed my hands between his. “What’s the matter?”

  I did not know how to tell him.

  “Somebody try to beat you up?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “What movie did you see?”

  “I didn’t go. I couldn’t find nobody to take me in.”

  “And you just been wandering around in the rain all night?”

  I shook my head. “Yes.”

  He looked at me and sat down on the hallway steps. “Oh, Leo.” Then, “You mad at me?”

  I said, “No. I was scared.”

  He nodded. “I reckon you were, man,” he said. “I reckon you were.” He wiped my face again. “You ready to go upstairs? It’s getting late.”

  “Okay.”

  “How’d you lose your cap?”

  “I went in a hallway to wring it out—and—I put it on the radiator and I heard some people coming—and—I ran away and I forgot it.”

  “We’ll say you forgot it in the movies.”

  “Okay.”

  We started up the stairs.

  “Leo,” he said, “I’m sorry about tonight. I’m really sorry. I won’t let it happen again. You believe me?”

  “Sure. I believe you.”

  “Give us a smile, then.”

  I smiled up at him. He squatted down.

  “Give us a kiss.”

  I kissed him.

  “Okay. Climb up. I’ll give you a ride—hold on, now.”

  He carried me piggyback up the stairs.

  Thereafter, we evolved a system which did not, in fact, work too badly. When things went wrong and he could not be found, I was to leave a message for him at a certain store on the avenue. This store had a bad reputation—more than candy and hot dogs and soda pop were sold there; Caleb himself had told me this and told me not to hang out there. But he said that he would see to it that they treated me all right. I did not know exactly what this meant then, but I was to find out. I had to wait for him in that store many nights; and for years I was to wish that I had never seen it, never heard of it; and for years I was to avoid the store’s alumni, who also had their reasons for not wishing to face me.

  But this store was not the only place I sometimes waited for, or met, Caleb. I went in the store one Saturday night, and one of the boys who was always there, a boy about Caleb’s age, looked up and smiled and said, “You looking for your brother? Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

  This was not the agreed-on formula. I was to be taken to Caleb only in cases of real emergency, which was not the case this night. I was there because the show had turned loose a little earlier than usual; and so Caleb was not really late yet, and since it was only about a quarter past eleven, I figured I had about half an hour to wait. But I also knew that the boss, a very dour, silent, black man—he spoke only to curse—was made very nervous by my presence in the store, especially at the hours I would be there, and he sometimes sat me alone in the back room. Otherwise, I must say, they were, in their elegantly philosophical fashion (I was simply another element to be dealt with) very nice to me. They didn’t say much to me, since they didn’t consider that there could be very much in the way of common ground between us—or, insofar as a common ground existed, it was far safer not to attempt to describe it—but they bought me Hershey bars, sometimes, and malted milks, and soda pop. They themselves drank wine and gin and beer, and, very rarely, whiskey.

  This particular Saturday night, when the boy made his invitation, I assumed it was because of some prearrangement with the boss—who looked at me from behind his counter, munching on a toothpick, and said nothing. There were only a couple of boys in the store, silently playing cards.

  I said, “Okay,” and the boy, whose name was Arthur, said, “Come on, sonny. I’m going to take you to a party.” He grinned down in my face as he said this, and then waved, more or less at random, to the store: “Be seeing you!” We walked out. He took my hand and led me across the avenue and into a long, dark block. We walked the length of the block in silence, crossed another avenue, Arthur holding tightly to my hand, and passed two white cops, who looked at us sharply. Arthur muttered under his breath, “You white cock-suckers. I wish all of you were dead.” We slowed our pace a little; I had the feeling, I don’t know why, that this was because of the cops; then Arthur said, “Come on, sonny,” and we walked into a big house in the middle of the block. We were in a big vestibule with four locked apartment doors staring away from each other. It was not really clean, but it was fairly clean. We climbed three flights of stairs. Arthur knocked on the door, a very funny knock, not loud.
After a moment, I heard a scraping sound, then the sound of a chain rattling and a bolt being pulled back. The door opened. A lady, very black and rather fat, wearing a blue dress which was very open around the breasts, held the door for us. She said, “Come on in—now, what you doing here with this child?”

  “Had to do it. It’s all right. It’s Caleb’s brother.”

  We started down a long, dark hall, with closed rooms on either side, toward the living room. One of the rooms was the kitchen. A smell of barbecue came out and made me realize that I was hungry. The living room was really two living rooms, one following the other. The farthest one looked out on the street. There were about six or seven people in the room, women and men. They looked exactly like the men and women who frightened me when I saw them standing on the corners, laughing and joking in front of the bars. But they did not seem frightening here. A record player was going, not very loud. They had drinks in their hands and there were empty plates and half-empty plates of food around the room. Caleb was sitting on the sofa with his arm around a girl in a yellow dress. “Here’s your little brother,” said the fat black lady in blue.

  Caleb looked at me and then, immediately, to Arthur. Arthur said, “It was just better for him not to have to wait there tonight. You know.” To the lady in blue, he said, “The train is in the station, everything’s okay. I’m going to get myself a taste.”

  Caleb smiled at me. I was tremendously relieved that he was not angry. I was delighted by this party, even though it made me shy. I wished I had come sooner.

  “How you doing?” Caleb said. “Come on over here.” I went to the sofa. “This is my kid brother,” Caleb said. “His name is Leo. Leo, this is Dolores. Say hello to Dolores.”

  Dolores smiled at me—I thought she was very pretty; she had a big mouth and blue gums and a lot of shining hair—and shook my hand and said, “I’m very happy to meet you, Leo. How’ve you been?”

  “Just fine,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to know how she’s been?” Caleb grinned.

  “No,” said the fat black lady, and laughed, “I’m sure he don’t want to know that.” She had a very loud, good-natured laugh and Caleb and Dolores laughed with her. “They’re not being very nice to me, are they, Leo?” Dolores asked. “I don’t think you ought to let them laugh at me this way.”

  I did not know what to say. I just stared at her red lips and her shining eyes and her shining hair. She had a bright, round, red pin at the center of her dress, where her breasts met. I could not keep my eyes away from it; and Arthur and Caleb laughed. Dolores said to Caleb, “I guess you come by it naturally, honey. I guess it runs in the family,” and Caleb said, “Lord. Let me get him out of here before he steals my girl.”

  The lady in blue came to my rescue. “Don’t just go rushing him off like that. I bet he’s hungry. You been stuffing yourself all night, Caleb, let me give him a little bit of my barbecue and a glass of ginger ale.”

  She already had one hand on my back and was beginning to propel me out of the room. I looked at Caleb. Caleb said, “Just remember we ain’t got all night. Leo, this is Miss Mildred. She cooked everything, and she’s a mighty good friend of mine. What do you say to Miss Mildred, Leo?”

  “Dig Caleb being the big brother,” Arthur muttered, and laughed.

  “Thank you, Miss Mildred,” I said.

  “Come on in the kitchen,” she said, “and let me try to put some flesh on them bones. Caleb, you ought to be ashamed with your great, big, fat self, and letting your brother be so puny.” She walked me into the kitchen. “Now, you sit right over there,” she said. “Won’t take me but a minute to warm this up.” She sat me at the kitchen table and gave me a napkin and poured the ginger ale. “What grade you in at school, Leo?” I told her. “You must be a right smart boy, then,” she said with a pleased smile. “Do you like school, Leo?”

  I told her what I liked best was Spanish and History and English Composition. This caused her to look more pleased than ever. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Somehow, I could not tell her what I had told the man—my friend—on the train. I said I wasn’t sure, that maybe I would be a schoolteacher.

  “That’s just what I wanted to be,” she said proudly, “and I studied right hard for it, too, and I believe I would have made it, but then I had to go and get myself mixed up with some no-count nigger. I didn’t have no sense. I didn’t have no better sense but to marry him. Can you beat that?” and she laughed and set my plate in front of me. “Go on, now, eat. Foolish me. You know I had a little boy like you? And I don’t know where he’s gone to. He had the same big eyes like you and a dimple right here”—she touched the corner of her lip—“when he smiled. But I give him to my sister, she lives in Philadelphia, because I couldn’t raise him by myself, and my sister she was married to a undertaker and they was right well off—of course my sister and I never did get along too well, she was too dicty for me, you know how some folks are—and they said they’d raise him just like their own. And I reckon they tried. But he walked off from them one day—I reckon he was about sixteen—and don’t nobody know where he went. I keep expecting him to come through this door. Now, your brother,” she said suddenly, “he’s a right fine boy. He wants to make something of himself. He’s got ambition. That’s what I like—ambition. Don’t you let him be foolish. Like me. You like my barbecue?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. “It’s good.”

  “But I bet you like your mama’s better,” she said.

  I said, “My mama’s barbecue is different. But I like yours, too.”

  “Let me give you some more ginger ale,” she said, and poured it. I was beginning to be full. But I didn’t want to go, although. I knew that, now, it was really beginning to be late. While Miss Mildred talked and moved about the kitchen, I listened to the voices coming from the other rooms, the voices and the music. They were playing a kind of purple lazy dance music, a music which was already in my bones, along with the wilder music from which the purple music sprang. The voices were not like the music, though they corroborated it. I listened to a girl’s voice, gravelly and low, indignant, and full of laughter. The room was full of laughter. It exploded, at intervals, and rolled through the living room and hammered at the walls of the kitchen. But it traveled no further. No doubt, lying in bed, in one of the rooms off the hall, one would have heard it, but heard it dimly, from very far away, and with a certain anger—anger that the laughter could not travel down the hall and could not enter one’s dark, solitary room. Every once in a while, I heard Caleb, booming like a trumpet, drowning out the music, and I could almost see him, bouncing his head off Dolores’ shoulder, rising like a spring from the sofa and jack-knifing himself across the room. Now, someone was telling a story: it concerned some fool he worked with in the post office. Only this voice and the music were heard. The voice began to be hoarse with anticipation and liquid with exuberance. Then his laugh rang out, and all the others laughed, rocking. “He said—he said—I don’t know what’s the matter with you niggers. You ain’t got good sense. I’m working for my pension. And Shorty say, he say, Yeah, baby, and that pension’s going to buy you enough beans for you to fart your life away! Ho-ho! Ho-ho! Ha-ha!” Then, by and by, the voices sputtered out, the voices dropped, and the music took over again. I wondered how often Caleb came here and how he had met these people who were so different, at least as it seemed to me, from any of the people who ever came to our house.

  Then Caleb’s hand was on my neck. Dolores stood in the doorway, smiling. “You stuffed yourself enough, little brother? Because we got to get out of here now.” I stood up. “Wipe your mouth,” said Caleb, “you ain’t civilized at all.”

  “Don’t you pay him no mind,” said Miss Mildred. “He’s just evil because Dolores thinks you got prettier eyes than him.”

  “That’s the truth,” said Dolores. “I was just thinking what a pity I didn’t see your little brother first.”

  I knew that she was teas
ing me, but I fell in love with her anyway.

  “Keep on talking,” said Caleb, “and I’ll give him to you. Ain’t neither one of you noticed how much he can eat. Come on, Leo, put on your coat. One of these mad chicks is liable to kidnap you and then I don’t know what I’ll say to your mama.”

  We walked slowly down the hall, Miss Mildred, Dolores, and Caleb and me. I wanted to say good-night to all the others but I knew I couldn’t suggest this. We reached the door, which had a metal pole built into it in such a way as to prevent its being opened from the outside, and a heavy piece of chain around the top of the three locks. Miss Mildred began, patiently, to open the door. “Leo,” she said, “don’t you be no stranger. You make your brother bring you back to see me, you hear?” She got the pole out of the way, then she undid the chain. She had not turned on the hall light; I wondered how she could see. To Caleb she said, “Bring him by some afternoon. I ain’t got nothing to do. I’ll be glad to look after him—let your mama and daddy have a day off, go to the movies or something.” I thought this was a splendid suggestion and wondered how I could persuade Caleb of this. There was no question of ever being able to persuade our parents. The last lock yielded and Miss Mildred opened the door. We were facing the bright hall lights; no, the building was not very clean. “Good-night, Leo,” Miss Mildred said, and then she said good-night to Dolores and Caleb. She closed the door. I heard the scraping sound again, and we walked down the stairs. “She’s nice,” I said, and Caleb said, yawning, “Yeah, she’s a very nice lady.” Then he said, “Now, I don’t want you telling nobody at home about this, you hear?” I swore I wouldn’t tell. “It’s our secret,” Caleb said.