“What made you do that?” Jerry asked. He looked amused.
“I don’t know. I just felt like it.”
Giuliano brought the drinks to their table. I concentrated on my pizza. They looked bewildered for a second. Giuliano pointed to our table, and they turned and looked at us. I raised my glass of wine. Barbara and Jerry and Madeleine raised theirs. We were all smiling. Everything, suddenly, had changed. If we had not broken through to each other, at least we had managed to accept each other’s presence. The boy was still very shy, but very pleased, and the older man glowed; partly because we had helped to please his boy.
“Hello,” I said.
They said, “Hello. Thank you.”
“Let’s have a drink together,” Madeleine said, “after we finish eating?”
The young one said, shyly, after a glance at the older one, “That’s fine with me.”
“Only, it’s got to be on us,” said his mentor.
“We’ll fight about that later,” Jerry said. We all laughed. We raised our glasses again. “Cheers!”
Perhaps my heart shook in my chest like the wings of a small bird, but I was incredibly happy not to have been rejected. I was happy enough, I realized, to be on the point of tears. Barbara and Madeleine began gossiping about the theater. Three tables away, they resumed their talk about women. Giuliano came up to Jerry and they had a quick conversation in Italian. Giuliano went away. Jerry looked at me.
“Baby,” he said, “I have a feeling that we’re all going to be drunk—and broke—by morning.”
“The hell with it,” I said. “It’s Saturday night.”
Bye and bye, it was time for coffee, and our coffee came; and then Giuliano brought up a small table and two chairs. “This is for your friends,” he said.
Jerry turned, smiling, and said, “Come and join us!”
The elder, because his hesitation was the greatest, deepest, rose at once, smiling—like a man accustomed to rise quickly if he were to rise at all; while the younger, because of his eagerness, seemed for a moment unwilling to rise. But here they came. Jerry half stood, holding out his hand. “My name is Jerry. This is Barbara”—and Barbara smiled and held out her hand, and they shook hands—“and this is Madeleine”—“Hi, fellows,” said Madeleine—“and this is Leo.”
We shook hands. “Hello,” I said. “Sit down.”
“My name,” said the older one, “is Fowler. And this is my buddy, Matthew.” And they sat down.
“Do you fellows live in this town?” Madeleine asked. She had the invaluable attribute of a friendliness completely uncorrupted by imagination. It meant that she could ask anything—it also meant, probably, that she could not hear whatever was stammered back.
“I do,” said Fowler. His smile could be read as the precise barometer of his attention; the more he smiled, the more he was watching, the more he saw.
“I don’t,” said Matthew. “I come from Philadelphia.”
“Are you going to be here long?” Barbara asked.
“A few days.”
“And then do you go back to Philadelphia?”
Fowler and Matthew looked at each other with a brief smile. “I’m not sure I know where I’m going from here,” said Matthew.
“None of us do,” I said.
Matthew looked at me. Fowler ceased to smile; I was not a danger. “Where are you from?” he asked me.
“I’m from New York,” I told him. “I mean, from the city—Harlem.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Matthew asked me, with a shy smile.
“I’m studying,” I said, “to be an actor.” He looked a little blank—not hostile, merely blank. I could not imagine what he was thinking. “We’re supposed to do a couple of shows this summer.”
“We’re working with The Actors’ Means Workshop,” said Barbara carefully. “I don’t know if you’ve heard of it—”
“No,” said Fowler, “I haven’t.”
“Well, since you live here,” said Madeleine, “you’ve heard of The Green Barn—the theater up Bull Dog Road?”
“Out Bull Dog Road way? Oh, yes,” he said, “I’ve heard of The Green Barn, all right.”
“Well,” said Barbara, “that’s where we are. We have a play opening there tomorrow night.”
“And I,” said Madeleine, “am opening in a play there five nights from tomorrow night—would you like to come? Just tell me how many tickets you want—”
“And we’ll get them for you,” said Barbara. “You’d be doing us a favor, really. That way, we’ll be sure of having at least two people in the audience.”
“Thanks, sugar,” Madeleine said.
“They mean,” I said, “for you to come as our guests.”
Fowler and Matthew looked at each other. “Look here,” Matthew said to me, “are you going to be in this play?”
“Not this play,” I said.
“We’re just students,” Barbara said. “We won’t be in a play until—oh, about a month from now.”
“I’ll be gone by then,” said Matthew.
“What kind of play you going to be in, boy?” Fowler asked me. He was smiling. There was a shrewd, amused speculation in his eyes.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ve just started.”
“What made you decide you wanted to be an actor?”
“I don’t know that, either. But I guess it’s because I’m crazy.”
They laughed at that—they really laughed. Matthew looked at me, and said, “You all right.”
He reminded me of Caleb.
“You been over to our side of town yet?” Fowler asked me.
“I’ve been over at Lucy’s Place a couple of times.”
“Oh! Lucy’s!” and he laughed.
“I saw you there one night,” I said.
“And I’m going to tell the missus on you,” Matthew said.
“You saw me there? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Well,” I said—lamely—“I didn’t want to bother you.”
He sucked his teeth. “I’m going to take you to my house one of these days and let my wife put some meat on your bones. You need some good down-home cooking. How much do you weigh?”
I told him. “Oh, boy,” he said, “would my wife love to get her hands on you!”
“It appears like,” Matthew said to me, “that you miss your mama’s home cooking.”
“Well,” I said, “I’ve been missing it for awhile.”
“Where is your mama?” Fowler asked.
“She’s in New York—in the city.”
“And your papa?”
They were both watching me with an interest which made me uneasy; and Barbara and Jerry and Madeleine were watching, too.
“He’s with my mother,” I said.
They began to react to my discomfort. They remembered that there were white people at the table. “What are you folks drinking?” Fowler asked.
“We invited you,” said Madeleine.
“Oh, now, don’t you start coming on like that,” said Fowler. “I asked you what you was drinking.”
“I can see you’re a hard man to fight,” Jerry said. “We’ll give you the first round. Madeleine’s drinking bourbon. What do you want, Barbara?”
“Oh—I don’t know—whiskey. With ginger ale.”
“And what’s your chaser, ma’am?” Matthew asked Madeleine.
Madeleine opened her eyes very wide, looked resentfully around the table, and then back to Matthew. “I’ve been called a great many things in my life,” she murmured, “but I didn’t expect to be called ma’am for yet awhile.” Matthew laughed helplessly. “My name,” she informed him, “is Madeleine. Have you got that?”
“All right, Madeleine,” Matthew said. “I’m sorry. What do you want with your bourbon—water or ginger ale or soda—or—or beer?”
“Beer!” Madeleine said. “First he treats me like a schoolteacher and now he treats me like a lush.” We all laughed. She turned to Matthew again. “I’
ll have a little water, please. You better watch your step, Matthew. I’m an extremely vindictive woman.”
Matthew laughed again. “Well, I promise,” he said, “to try not to upset you any more.” And he looked at her with interest, in rather the way Giuliano had looked at her, in fact. He looked very briefly at me, and then, “Where are you from, Madeleine?” he asked.
“I’m from Texas,” she said, “a town you never heard of. I’m sure that’s what makes me so vindictive.”
“Oh, come on,” said Matthew, “I don’t believe you’re vindictive at all. You just like to try and frighten folks.”
Madeleine laughed. “I do pretty well at it, too, let me tell you.” She turned to Barbara. “I scared the living shit out of Rags Roland this afternoon.” She turned to Matthew and Fowler. “Rags Roland is a horrible old woman, built exactly like an army base, and she’s the director—God help us all!—of the play I’m in.”
“The play,” said Barbara, “of which you are the star.”
“That’s right,” said Madeleine. “My first starring role.” Matthew nodded appreciatively. “Out here with the corn and the cows.” Matthew and Fowler laughed. “Anyway,” and Madeleine turned again to Barbara, “Rags was giving me hell this afternoon—in front of the whole company—about that scene near the end when I find out that my lover isn’t ever coming back from that half-assed revolution in Ecuador. Part of my trouble with this play is that I’ve never understood why he went in the first place—but I’m not playing that part, thank God. Anyway, I finally blew my top and I asked Rags how the hell she knew what a woman felt like when she’d lost her lover forever. And I said a few other choice things about my co-star, who could certainly never be my lover, and walked out. I left them all standing there.” She nodded. Our drinks came. Fowler and Matthew looked somewhat bewildered, and also looked amused.
“What did Rags say?” Barbara asked.
“She didn’t say anything. She just stood there, like—”
“An army base,” said Fowler.
Madeleine raised her glass. “Exactly! It was a terrible thing to say. But the old dyke got my goat.”
Jerry said, “You shouldn’t call her names like that. You don’t know if she’s a dyke or not. Anyway, it’s nobody’s business what a person does—”
“That’s right,” said Matthew, staring at Jerry: he looked rather as though he had stumbled into a seminar. “What a grown person does with his life is that person’s business.” And he looked at Fowler.
“Especially,” I said, “since it’s the person who pays for it. For what he does, I mean.”
“That’s right,” said Fowler. He sipped his drink. “Of course, I do think that we can use each other’s advice from time to time—we human beings.” And he looked at Matthew.
“Are you sure,” asked Barbara, smiling, “that we can—use the advice we get? We get so much advice. You know. I’m not sure that I can use—any of the advice I get.”
I looked at her. “Do you get so much advice?”
“Oh! All the time. By phone, by wire, by pony express. Oh, yes, my dear. Everyone’s anxious to give me advice.” She looked back to Fowler. “But I can’t use it.”
“She’s like me,” said Matthew.
“Why can’t you use it?” Fowler asked.
“Well, it’s wonderful advice—for somebody else. And it’s well meant. I mean, I know that. But it doesn’t”—she stared helplessly at Matthew—“seem to have anything to do with—me.”
“What do you mean,” asked Fowler, “to do with you?”
“Well,” Barbara said—there was a silence—“for example, I’m from Kentucky. Well, if I’d taken all the advice I was given, Leo and I couldn’t be friends and I wouldn’t be able to sit at this table. I’d be just another dried out—or drying out—Southern belle, looking for a rich husband.” Belatedly, she laughed. “Do you see what I mean?” she asked Fowler.
“Yeah,” said Fowler—he was very thoughtful—“I see what you mean, all right.”
“That terrible round of parties and bridge,” said Barbara. “Really terrible. And the necking in the woods or in the car or on the porch. Really. Awful! And you’re really expected to marry one of them. After you’ve done just about everything that can be done, short”—she coughed—“of actually going to bed with”—she laughed —“a kind of muscular bowl of rice pudding. God! Who can take that advice?”
“You’re quite a girl,” Fowler said.
“Oh!” said Barbara. “I just want to live!”
“Tell me,” said Matthew quickly, “do you find it hard to live? I mean”—he was very earnest; Fowler watched him with a smile—“really to live? Not just”—he waved his big hands nervously—“to go to the job and come home and go to sleep and get up and eat and go back to the job—but—to live.” His hands reached out, his fingers clutched the air. His hands fell to the table, flat, palms downward; and he looked, for a moment, at his hands. Then he looked at Barbara. “You know?”
“Yes,” she said.
“And it don’t have nothing to do, do it,” Fowler asked—“pardon me, young lady—but it don’t have nothing to do, do it, with being white or black?”
“No,” said Barbara. Then, after a moment, “Not really.”
Fowler gestured toward Matthew. “You hear her,” he said.
“Oh,” said Barbara quickly, “I can’t speak for him. I can barely speak for myself.” She stirred her drink, looking down again. “I don’t know enough,” she said, “about anything.”
“Well,” said Fowler, “you seem to be learning pretty fast.”
“You’ve got to learn fast,” said Matthew, “this day and age, if you going to learn at all.”
“Well, that’s true,” said Fowler. “That’s what I been trying to tell you.”
Matthew sighed. He looked at me. “Look here,” he said, “are you in the Army?”
“No,” I said. “They haven’t got around to me yet.”
“You want to go?”
I finished my drink. “Hell, no. You must be joking. I’d rather drop dead than fight for this miserable country. What have I got to fight for?”
Matthew smiled faintly, though he also looked a little shocked. “You got a point, boy. I can’t deny it.”
Fowler was indignant. “You both too young to know what you talking about,” he said, with finality. “If you’d been around as long as I’ve been around, you’d know what you got to fight for.” He turned to Barbara, as though he had decided that she was the most sensible one. “Matthew’s got a great opportunity to go in the Army, and they’ll send him to school so he can make something of himself when he comes out—but he don’t want to go. He wants to join the Merchant Marine instead.” He looked at Matthew with a furious exasperation. “Ain’t no future in the Merchant Marine.”
“Matthew’s got to do what Matthew thinks is best,” Barbara said gently.
“We all do,” I said. And Matthew and I looked at each other a moment, as though we were really brothers.
“I just don’t see myself in the Army,” Matthew said stubbornly. “Get sent to some damn base in the Deep South—you know I ain’t for that. I ain’t about to take no crap off them rednecks. No, I can’t do it.”
“I think I know how you feel,” said Madeleine.
“I think I do,” said Barbara. “I don’t think I could stand it if I was a man.”
“Young lady,” said Fowler—Jerry signaled to Giuliano to bring us another round—“sometimes a man have to stand a whole lot of things he don’t want to stand. Take me. I got three children. I ain’t in love with my boss, believe me, and I ain’t crazy about my job. Sometime that man get on my back like white on rice and call me all out of my name, and everything—now, what am I going to do? I got to feed my kids. They don’t want to hear nothing about me being a man. They want some food in their little stomachs.” He looked at Matthew again. “And Matthew, he got a chance to make something of himself so he won’t have to work on
the kind of jobs I have to work—and he too dumb to take it. I declare.” And he picked up his drink and finished it.
“Look here,” Matthew said, “you keep talking about this fine job I’m going to get when I come out the Army. How many—how many colored folks you know got fine jobs, huh? Tell me.” He waited.
“Oh, come on,” Fowler said, “things is changing, you know that. And the man promised you. I heard him.”
“Fowler,” said Matthew, “I don’t believe the white man’s promises no more, you hear me? I don’t believe them.” He spoke very quickly and nervously, almost stammering. Then he looked up. “Excuse me, folks. I ain’t talking about none of you, you understand. But I’m sure, you being intelligent people and all, you know pretty well what the score is, right?”
“Hell, yes,” said Jerry, looking down, looking sad and sullen, “we know the score, all right.”
Giuliano arrived with a new round of drinks. We watched him pick up empty glasses and put full ones down, in a sudden, unhappy silence. Madeleine reached for my hand, and held it for a moment.
“Hell,” said Barbara suddenly, raising her glass, “let’s drink to the glorious land of the free.”
“And the former home,” I said, “of the brave.”
We drank. “You’re going to freeze your ass off,” Fowler said, “on that North Atlantic.”
“Well, I’d a hell of a lot rather do that,” said Matthew, “than get it burned off in Georgia.”
We laughed. “I’m with you,” I said to Matthew.
“And that’s all right with me,” he said, and grinned.
We had a couple more rounds, and we all exchanged addresses, earnestly scribbling on scraps of paper brought to us by Giuliano. I think we all really wished to see each other again, but I think we also wondered if we really would—wondered, dimly, if there could really be any point to it. Furthermore, I was aware that I had not really given any address. I had no address. Paradise Alley was not my address, Bull Dog Road was not my address, and where my mother and father were living wasn’t my address, either, and I hadn’t even written it down. I very much doubted whether Fowler’s wife, when confronted with the opportunity of putting flesh on my bones, would react with a positive glee. I suspected that Fowler and I might prove to have very little to say to each other. Matthew and I might have been another matter, but Matthew was leaving within the week. As for the others, Barbara, Jerry, and Madeleine, they were white. They really could not hang out with Fowler, and Fowler could not hang out with them. It was not that the price was high. I don’t think they thought of the price, though, indeed, the price would have been highest for Fowler: but connections willed into existence can never become organic. Yet—we all liked each other well enough. We felt dimly lost and baffled as we finally rose to take our leave.
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