Charlotte came in. “So you finally came home. Did you eat out? We saved your dinner.”
“I ate, thanks.”
She went to the refrigerator for ice. “Does it feel good, Max, to be in the Army?”
“Rotten.”
“Are you trying to get out?”
“Too late for that.” He shrugged. “What the hell, it may teach me something.” Max tried to avoid looking at her. God, she was wholesome! Long legs, hips just right, breasts just large enough to get you on the verge of lockjaw, rosy mouth—damn you, Charlotte! Get the hell out of here. She closed the ice box and bumped him in passing, came back, stood close to him. “Harry’s writing well and all? I’ve been here a whole day almost and haven’t said more than three words to him. Out all day, he’s been out, and now the party,” Max said.
“Harry always writes well. He drives himself, but he thinks he’s doing a good job of using the Framework to describe the color conflict instead of the class differences.”
Max nodded and sipped his drink. Inevitably Harry would find that the color conflict contained the class conflict too, even among those of the same color. Hell, maybe he knew it already.
“That suit becomes you, Max. I’ll bet you’re in good shape. Harry’s started to get soft around the edges.”
“Don’t you ride and play tennis anymore?”
“That lasted a month.” Charlotte started out of the kitchen. “Got a girl while you’re on leave?”
“Not at the moment. Have you any suggestions?”
Charlotte smiled. With deliberate casualness, as though she were measuring, she looked down at Max’s pants. “I might.”
Max crossed his arms and eased his pelvis forward. “I’m all ears.”
“Is that all, Max?” she said and left. Max poured another drink. What was that all about? He returned to the main room; perhaps some additional guests had arrived. He looked around the room. There had to be a chick who wanted to give a little something away, or get something, it didn’t matter. Where in the hell was she? Step forward, baby, two paces forward, hut-two! But no one stepped forward, and Max was in a foul mood when Harry came over. Harry looked the same, but his eyes were like hallways with deepening shadows. “You look like hell in that suit, Max. You really didn’t try to fight it, did you?”
Knock it, Harry, Max thought, I expected you to. But I’m away from the stink of police blotters and food joints, whores, pimps, the whole ghetto scene; I’m away from the predictable smell, look and acts of people caught in the perpetration of predictable acts, criminal and otherwise. That’s good, Harry. In the Army, when they give you your suit, the criminals and faggots, all the bad guys, look just like the good guys, Harry. So far, it’s not bad. But Max said aloud, “No, man. I got all my marbles, no syph, and I’m hale and hearty.”
“And you can lift ammunition all day. Go, Max.”
“Screw you, Harry.”
“What do you think you’ll be doing, Jack, leading a charge against the Germans? Uh-uh. Don’t let that little old suit cloud reality for you; you’ll get hurt if you do.”
“Listen, Harry, I’m happy for you. New book, so on. I’m jealous and I’m drunk. I don’t feel tremendous because I’ve got this suit on, it’s a condition, you see, around the world. But right now, I just want to forget it. I want a girl and that is all. Point me where she is, dear friend, just point me and I’m sure I’ll catch the scent and be off and running.”
Harry laughed. “You got a filthy mouth when you’re drunk, Max. You want a little tonight?”
“Please, ol’ Harry. I’m hurting.” Clowning, Max looked frantically around the room. “I’ll take that one and that one and that one and—oh, yes, that one.”
“How about a redhead?”
“I looked already, you jive clown. There aren’t any.”
“When this breaks up, I’m going out to the Island with some of these people. Charlotte’s got some business to take care of in the morning, then you can come out with her or stay, as you like. But I’ll send a girl to your room, one who thinks you have more talent than me. You got to talk about writing first, you know.”
“I don’t care as long as she’s got ‘dat t’ing.’”
“Man, I tell you, she’s got ‘dat t’ing.’”
“Just like that,” Max said, “she’ll be there?”
Harry who had started to move away, stopped at Max’s touch. “Yes, like that. She likes niggers, Max.”
The mock eagerness, the pretended nervousness fled from Max; he felt suddenly drained. “Ah, no, Harry, don’t tell me that shit. I don’t want to hear it.”
Harry took one angry step back toward Max. “You goddamn fool, why do you think she’s here?”
“No, naw, you’re nuts.”
“But you haven’t even seen her yet, Max.”
Max was shaking his head.
“Come off it, Max, you want the girl or you want to be righteous?”
“Let’s do it like this, Harry, forget it, okay? Let’s just forget it, all right?” Max stumbled away to his room. He stripped and piled into bed. You’d like to forget, he thought. Damn them, anyway, the hunted who thought they were the hunters. He thought about the trip to New York.
He was once again on the moving train feeling the sway of the car and, when he stood at the end of the observation car, seeing the twin cold ribbons of steel pouring out swiftly from under his feet, back endlessly back through grades and valleys, around curves. He did not know what time it was when his mind registered too late that someone was in the room. He had a moment of panic, but he remained motionless. There was movement at the foot of the bed, then a weight upon the center of the bed. The fresh sheets slipped and whined. The nude body was cold and hot at the same time. It settled and became motionless also.
“Charlotte, don’t be a fool,” Max said. “Get out of here.” There were no sounds in the house. It seemed that the party had been over a long time.
“Don’t be silly, Max.”
Without much conviction, Max said, “Suppose Harry came back?”
“Why do you suppose he went? To talk literature? To walk along the beach at night listening to the waves crash? To meditate before the fireplace? He’s got some woman, some woman who was here tonight. Have you ever had to try to guess which one of your guests is shacking up with your girl? That one who seems so shy? Or that handsome one who carries himself so well? Or that creep over there?”
He felt her turn toward him and he turned away. “But I love him and that’s what hurts so. I can’t go. Max, I only want to be held, to be loved now. I’m alone. I’m frightened. What happens to us now, Harry and me? We can’t quit. It’s more than just us, it’s the world. They’d think we quit because we are what we are, nothing more. Oh, Max, I’m so miserable. In friendship, do it, in friendship.”
Max jerked around. “Look, just lie still. Let’s both just lie still and talk and it’ll go away. I want to do it. I want badly to make love to you, but I wouldn’t be able to look you or Harry in the eye again. Want a cigarette?”
“Yes.” Her voice was very small.
He lit a cigarette and passed it to her, then lit one for himself. He visualized his hands touching her. There, there, there, but he remained still. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “At first we just couldn’t get enough of each other, couldn’t be apart. Then—it didn’t take days or weeks or months—just suddenly, he was gone. He was there, you know, but he was gone.”
“And you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you start to go too?”
He turned toward her and saw her cigarette glow brightly, then fade. She exhaled. He took her hand. “You went too, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I went.”
“And still going?”
“Not as much. There seems to be no point in it.”
“Harry know?”
“I don’t know. If he does, so what? He’s doing the same thing.”
>
“You know it doesn’t work that way, Charlotte, not yet.”
“Well, I don’t suppose he knows. He’d have killed me long ago if he had.”
“Feel better now?”
“No, Max, worse. It doesn’t go away. Max?”
“Huh?”
“Please.”
“Charlotte—”
“Harry wouldn’t hesitate one minute if he were in this position with your wife. You know that.”
“That’s not fair, Charlotte. That’s really hitting below the belt.”
“Oh, Max, who do you think you are, Joe Louis?”
“Nuts, Charlotte, I’m going to the Y.” Max got up and reached for his clothes.
“But what would Harry say? He’d think we made love anyway and that you didn’t want to look him in the eye as you so poetically put it.”
“Tell him anything you want, but you know that when we get through fighting each other, he’ll be through with you anyway.”
She touched his arm. Max stopped gathering his clothes. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry. Come back to bed, Max. I’ll behave. Honest I will.”
“But you aren’t doing either of us any good by being here, Charlotte.”
“One more cigarette, then I’ll go.”
“You haven’t finished that one. Give it to me.” Max mashed it out and lit another for her.
“We have to stay together,” Charlotte said.
“Aw, hell no, Charlotte, you said after one more—”
She laughed. “I meant Harry and me. We’re going to have a child.”
“It is Harry’s?”
“Do you think I’m a fool, Max?”
“Harry know?”
“Strange. I should have had my period two weeks ago. He’s been asking me about it. It’s too early for a doctor, but I know, and I think Harry knows. I don’t think he wanted to be with me because of that. You know, he’s a very jealous man, not of me with men, but of my attentions; he wants them, all of them, twenty-four hours a day.”
Charlotte had turned on her stomach, propped herself on her elbows. The first suggestion of day touched the window above them. Max could see her profile. Every line in her neck was clean and fast as she looked up at the sky. Her hair was swept long behind her. Good weather for game birds, Max thought. It would be very chilly outside, perhaps a touch of frost, but that would go with the ascent of the sun. And when that sun came fully out, away would go the birds.
She was looking down at him, smiling, he could tell now, and her face and neck and shoulders were all touched with a fuzzy blue-gray tint. “When Harry and I were first married, we would lie awake like this, after making love, and smoke and talk, and agree that we were going down to the Battery and watch the sun come up. We’ve never done it. All my fault. It always seemed the right thing to do, but somehow, when the alarm went off and Harry jumped up, I’d always tell him that we’d do it the next time. Sometimes he’d go out alone, take a cab somewhere, like 12th Avenue, and walk beneath the highway watching the meat trucks come in and unload. He’d tell me how empty the city was and how the darkness seemed to hang so stubbornly over New Jersey …” She stopped. “God, Max, I love that man.”
Max had been staring at her face, her shoulders, her breasts. Then he closed his eyes and saw Harry lumbering along 12th Avenue at four in the morning. He felt Charlotte drawing near him, felt first the tantalizing stray hairs on her head as they drifted toward him, then felt the mass of it tumble on his chest, and he lifted his mouth to hers. With one hand he pressed her to him as hard as he could. With the other, he searched for her breasts. She raised herself slightly to give him room. He broke from the kiss whispering desperately, “In friendship, Charlotte.” He felt her face melt slowly into a smile and she nodded even as she pressed hard against his mouth.
10
ITALY
Being in the Army was to be an experience. How much worse could life be? Hadn’t you seen it all, all the bad life in Harlem, prowling the alleys and avenues? One must have the confirmation, Max told himself. Armies are like the societies that produce them. Max knew that. But the confrontation with that fact, logically, had to be harsher than the suspicion. The society expected, nay, demanded, that every black soldier within its ranks die as he had lived—segregated, deprived, discriminated against. That is, to die if ever permitted to be in a situation where that was possible. The honor of dying, on the whole, was reserved for white soldiers. And it was clear, as far as Max could see, that the Army was not going to make the mistake it had made during War I: detaching Negro soldiers to fight with the French and accumulate all those Croix de Guerre. It had become necessary for the War Department, with help from the French military mission, to issue a paper on 7 August 1918: Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops. The usual, official, vicious stuff. Max had seen copies of the report in the homes of Negroes who were veterans of the 369th.
And in one of their homes he had read the history of the division in which he was now a squad leader:
The colors of the regiment first came under fire on August 2, 1867, about 40 miles northeast of Fort Hays, near the Saline River. Company F, patrolling the railroad, was attacked by a band of 300 Indians. The troop comprised two officers and 34 men. The fight lasted six hours. The Troop, badly outnumbered, was in the end forced to retire, after inflicting heavy losses on the hostiles. Captain Armes was wounded, and Sergeant William Christy killed.
The old Tenth Cavalry, the Buffaloes, the 92nd Division. But the echoes of the Indian fighters who never made the history books and were smoothed out in the War Department records, no longer drifted through the hills at Fort Huachuca. While the Division had its beginnings as a Regiment made up of freed slaves docile and fiercely proud of their uniforms, horses and ability to track, it was now composed of bitter, questioning men on the one hand, and on the other, men who never had it so good.
Ten point six percent.
In Army Ground Forces jargon that meant that the number of black men—and officers (how did they handle that in Washington?)—had to reflect the Negro population in America. No more because, after the war, they might disturb the peace (can’t let them learn too much about guns) and no less because the Urban League and the National Association wouldn’t hear of it.
He was in Louisiana running hot after a Creole redhead when Charlotte and Harry’s baby was born, and it was in Louisiana that he chose to write to Harry about Harry’s fourth novel, a “Negro novel” the critics had said. Perhaps it was being in the Army, sheltered, that made Max do it. Where else would he have gotten the nerve to discuss Harry Ames’s work? The hero of Harry’s book was a black Jean Valjean and his loaf of bread which had caused all his troubles was his skin; it was that which would cause him to be hunted down all his life, in the sewers of his existence, and his Javert would be every man who lived within a white skin.
But for all that, the novel wouldn’t peel, wouldn’t work, and he told Harry so. To his surprise, Harry was not offended and a regular exchange of letters commenced. How did Max like the South? Did being a soldier make the crackers in the nearby towns angrier? Max did not like the South and, yes, the crackers were angry. Beneath all the questions Max suspected that however much he belittled it, Harry envied Max the experience. It was true there was no moral equivalent for war. Max wondered if such an equivalent came to America, would Americans recognize it. At the moment, however, being a man was still tied to being at war.
In the old days you had to walk up to the man you were going to kill, look him in the eye and then spit him upon your sword or spear, if he did not spit you first. Now you took your man out with a call to the Air Force, if the weather was good, or the tanks or Division Artillery. Failing that, you took cover, hoisted your M1 and took your man out at a hundred, a hundred and fifty yards. You only saw his dead face if you were winning and obliged to go forward, past him.
They boarded the transport on a gray, muggy day. They boarded silently, cold eyes mocking the commands of white a
nd Negro officers. And soon the ship, with a gentle rumble, backed from the pier, gulls wheeling and squawking, and the haphazard skyline of Newport News, Virginia, rose up through the mist. Newport News, which had been as bad as Louisiana, and Louisiana as bad as Arizona, and Arizona as bad as any place in America.
The ship, now in deep waters, began to rumble and wallow, and Max, standing at the fantail, felt the salt water spray blowing in his face. There was not much back there, he thought, and nothing at all where we’re going. How in the hell did we get like this? In a time when we fight for the things we can’t have. Well, maybe, like Harry said, we’ll do the war unloading ships and trucks. That, Max thought, would be survival, but would that be enough?
The 92nd was called a division, but it was not—only elements of a division; thus, from the beginning it was set that its failures would be divisional and its successes regimental. Even as the Buffaloes were making their way inland from the coast of northwest Italy, forcing through the bulwark of the Apennines, word came that the brass were already planning the invasion of France. This war, Max thought when he heard the rumor, was forgotten even before they really got into it. But if the brass had pulled out, the worst was over.
They plodded through the mountains upon which perched sentries of tall black cypress trees, slender, graceful. Then the rains came, drifting steadily down from the gray skies. Mud seemed to grow underfoot. Skirmishes grew in size until they became battles, and ahead, tucked among the mountains and behind the stark, beaten little villages with their somber people, lay the Gustav Line, or what remained of it.
The Man Who Cried I Am Page 9