Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  The fog lifted and Link saw him look toward Dumble Street, turn that inquisitive roving gaze of his down the length of the street.

  “Don’t you ever stop hunting angles, judging distances, measuring light?”

  He shook his head. “You wait, you watch, you listen, and on a Saturday night in Dumble Street, you can catch ’em coming into the world, Sonny, and you can catch ’em going out.”

  They both heard the whine of a siren at the same time. Jubine said, “Ambulance. Franklin Avenue. See you later.”

  And was gone again. Link was fairly certain that the poker game was shot to hell and back but he’d wait a half-hour, and if Jubine didn’t show up he’d go chew the fat with Weak Knees in the kitchen.

  Standing there, leaning against the piling, fog all around him, river lapping under the piling, he could have sworn that the fog touched his face, his hands. He thought about Mamie Powther, hanging up clothes, reaching, bending, a younger shapelier browner edition of China—within hand’s reach. Except, this time, too, except for Bill Hod. He was sixteen when he went in China’s place for the first time. China. Yellow flesh, warm yellow flesh. “You wait,” and he, believing, waited in the hallway.

  China had been pale yellow and fat; her face, and he could see it again, clearly, would never forget it, the mouth and the nose pushed in, somehow flattened, even the eyes flat against the face and the whole face not wrinkled or lined yet giving the impression of great age, an old face, due to the thick quality of the skin itself, a tiredness in the eyes that made the face old. Mamie Powther’s face had a kind of energy about it, due to the firmness of the flesh, a decisiveness that touched all the features, the nose, the mouth, the eyes, the mouth was really lovely, the lips—well, you knew there were lip muscles there, it was a singer’s mouth. The fog lifted, closed in, lifted, closed in. Fog. China and Bill Hod. China said, “You wait right here in the hall.” And he waited there in the hallway, and he, believing, waited there in the hallway. Why did he remember it now? It was the fog, he was enclosed by it, and in that hallway he had suddenly got the same feeling of being enclosed.

  The fog lifted, closed in, lifted, closed in, so thick now it was like smoke from a fire that had had water poured on it, clouds of it, white, thick, visibility zero, ceiling zero.

  He turned and listened. Someone was coming down the dock, running down the dock, running at a headlong reckless pace. There was another sound too, a sound he could not identify, it seemed to accompany, to follow after, the running feet. The footsteps came nearer and nearer, a woman’s footsteps, light, fast on her feet. And then the fog lifted a little and he saw a girl running toward him, a girl in a long full coat, running with a kind of frenzy that suggested she was literally running for her life.

  He still could not identify the other sound, and he could not see what she was running from. She was visible and then invisible. He caught glimpses of her at intervals but he still could not see what was pursuing her.

  As she drew nearer, he could hear the sound of wheels, small wheels moving along the planking of the dock. It meant only one thing. Cat Jimmie—that obscene remnant of a man was chasing a woman under cover of the fog. He wondered how he could follow the girl so closely, guide that flat board on its little wheels with such uncanny accuracy that he never once lost her; true, he knew the dock, he was always hanging around it, but there was always the chance he’d go straight into the road, because he used his arms, the stumps that were left, as though they were oars to propel the wagon. Nobody could see anything in this fog.

  Now that he knew he was to look down, he caught a glimpse of him, the worn leather jacket, the stumps of legs, even the fierce gleam of his eyes. The girl still running, running, apparently so frightened that she could not scream. She was so close that he could hear her breathing, a quick gasping, painful to listen to, obviously too frightened, too exhausted to scream. How long had the damn fool been chasing her? He could hear the grunting sound Cat Jimmie made when he was excited.

  “Hey!” Link shouted. “This way. This way!” The girl could not see him because of the fog but she headed straight toward the sound of his voice, reaching for him, close now, grabbing at him, holding on to him, clutching at his hand, his arm, her hand with a tremor in it, tremor all over her.

  Cat Jimmie stopped right in front of them.

  Link leaned down, said, “Get off the dock before I kick your face in,” and thought, Even now, not seeing him, I’d know he was there, know exactly where he was, because of that grunting sound, fierce, excited, like his eyes, and because of the stink he gives off.

  Cat Jimmie made a threatening sound in his throat.

  Link said, “You goddamn bastard,” and kicked at the wagon, aiming low, but not too low, thinking, I hope it’s his face, and heard the wheels move away, perhaps a foot away, along the dock, and then stop.

  “It’s Link, ain’t it?” voice hoarse, deep in his throat, then without waiting for an answer, he said, “It’s Link. Thought it was.”

  There was the wheeling sound of the flat little cart crossing the street, and then it was gone. Link thought, Probably the only emotion that Abbie and I share, have ever shared, is complete and absolute revulsion at the sight of Cat Jimmie. I should have kicked his face in.

  The girl was still gasping for breath. He turned toward the sound, impossible to see what she looked like, she could have been a wraith, a figure created by the fog and the river, insubstantial. He was fairly certain she was one of the clinker tops from China’s Place. It’s a strange thing, he thought, but that fat woman with the yellow skin managed to leave such a mark on her profession that all the houses run by all her successors, no matter what their names or what they call themselves, are known as China’s Place, and the girls as China’s girls.

  He said irritably, “For Christ’s sake, haven’t you any sense at all? The dock isn’t any place to be looking for business at this hour in the morning.”

  “I—” she said. “I—”

  “I’m not buying any tonight.”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t move, stood there leaning against the railing, gasping. Her hand still clutched at his arm. The fog lifted and he got a none-too-good look at her, saw that her hair was either bleached or dyed a pale yellow, that it curled about her face. She must be new at China’s. What the hell was a piece of crow bait like this one doing hustling on the dock on a Saturday night.

  “Go on, honey,” he said and moved his arm, not gently, pulling it away from her hand. “Beat it.”

  “I—” she said. “I’m afraid to.”

  “Ah—go on. Beat it!”

  He edged away from her, moving quietly, thinking, This little lonesome gasping female can spread her loneliness around for some other son of a bitch to appraise and decide whether he’d buy and at what price. The girl followed him, not really followed him, followed the edging movement, her hand found his arm, stayed on his arm, clutched at his arm. And he stood still.

  “Look, honey,” he said. “Don’t follow me. There’s nothing that irritates a man faster than to be followed around by a little lonesome female wagging her tail, especially when said tail has a price tag affixed to it.” She didn’t move. “This dock belongs to me,” he went on, “I laid down a claim to it, staked it out, and nailed it down a long time ago. You get off the reservation, honey.” Maybe she didn’t understand English. “There’ll be no strike today.” He took her by the arm and gave her a none-too-gentle push toward Dumble Street. “Back to the mines, honey. Back to those bottomless mines that China owns. When you get there you tell China I said I can still make up my own mind as to when I want it. I’m a big boy now. I can walk right in there all by myself. I don’t need a convoy or a note from teacher.”

  “Don’t—” she said. “Please. I’m afraid. I left my car two blocks away.”

  She was still gasping for breath, and he thought, Oh, what the hell. I can always get h
er under an electric light, get a good look at her, and then take her by the nape of the neck and drop her in the river. “Okay, okay. Where’d you leave this car?”

  They walked in the direction in which she pointed. He walked fast, purposely. Her footsteps, light, quick, kept pace with his though she almost ran to keep up with him, and she was still breathing too fast. She kept looking over her shoulder, peering into the fog. They walked about a block and a half and she said, “Here it is.”

  There actually was a car, parked under the street light on the corner. A long red convertible with New York markers. She quickened her pace as they approached it, and then fumbled with the handle of the door until he opened it for her. He felt the smooth coldness of the upholstery on the inside of the door, and thought, Ha, leather, and a special job, a newer model than the one Bill used to drive. I damn near wrecked his car one night when I was very young. That was the night he used his belt on me while he delivered the Irish cop lecture. Mr. B. Hod on Irish cops. It ought to be on a record.

  She fished the keys out of her pocket, and then couldn’t find the ignition switch, and kept fumbling for it. So he opened the door on the other side, got in, took the keys away from her, shoved the key in place.

  “Can you start it now?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Suppose you wait a minute. Here—smoke a cigarette.” Let’s know the worst before we get down to first names. He struck a match and held it after he’d lighted her cigarette, and kept on holding it, staring, thinking, What the hell kind of game is this, what is a younger fairerskinned thinner more beautifully put together edition of Mamie Powther doing on the loose on Dumble Street, at this hour. Her hair was pale yellow, soft, silky, curling about her face. Mother of God, he thought, what a lovely lovely face, a lovely frightened face.

  “What brought you to this end of town at this hour?”

  “I was driving past and I thought I’d see what it was like down here. I’d been reading about it.”

  “Well, you did,” he said dryly.

  “Not really. Nothing happened until—”

  “Until you started running for your life.”

  “I thought I was. It was horrible. I couldn’t see because of the fog but I kept hearing something moving behind me. It kept getting closer and I started to run, and the fog lifted and I looked back and I saw that cart, and it looked like an animal and I could hear it breathing and grunting and—”

  “You need a drink,” he said. “Come on.” And got out of the car. Any woman who thought about Cat Jimmie long enough would end up with hysterics, and this girl was much too pretty to slap. Even Abbie, who usually managed to retain her composure, lost it completely when she saw Cat Jimmie wheeling himself along the street. He knew better than Abbie what probably went on inside Cat Jimmie’s mind, could realize more fully the horror of being a fullgrown male, with all the instincts and urges of the male left, and no way in the world of satisfying them. Besides, he saw him oftener than Abbie did, saw him days and nights too, lurking on the sidewalk, near the bottom of the high-stooped houses, near doorways, at curbs and street crossings, had seen him lie flat on his homemade cart and moan like an animal as he looked up under a woman’s skirts, had seen women turn away and cross over on the other side of the street when they saw him sitting on the cart, his back against the wall of a building. Everything about him was repulsive—the flesh on the stumps that once had been arms was red, angry, covered with scar tissue, purposely revealed, because he covered them with leather pads when he propelled himself along on his homemade cart; his shoulders were tremendous, overdeveloped. He was legless from the thighs down, and the same rawlooking angrylooking flesh was exposed to view on the stumps that were his legs. This red rawlooking flesh of the arms and legs formed a shocking contrast to the dark brown skin of his face and neck. His eyes were straight out of a nightmare—there was a red glare in them, there was excitement in them, and hate. Women who caught him in the act of looking under their skirts, moved away from him, horror on their faces, as though they had been violated, just by his eyes.

  He could understand why this girl, walking beside him, through Dumble Street, past The Last Chance, still had a catch in her breath. The redorange neon sign was still on. It would be a couple of hours before Weak Knees put it out. He seemed to get a special satisfaction from turning out that sign, as though in doing it he extinguished the public side of the building and turned it into a home, private, comfortable, completely his.

  They passed Abbie’s house. He turned and looked back through The Hangman’s branches, peering through the fog, and thought, No lights. Yes, there was. A pinkish light, dim, upstairs, in the back. He wondered if Mr. B. Hod was paying a cousinly visit on Mamie Powther, wondered how Bill and Mamie placated Powther, that neat precise little man. Maybe they didn’t bother. Perhaps Bill stalked into Number Six, jerking the door of Powther’s apartment open with that explosive suddenness that suggested a physical attack on the door, tied Powther in a chair, and then paid his respects to Mamie. He grinned at the thought of Powther in his neat black clothes, so decent and so proper, being forced to witness a scene that would be indecent and improper. Something about the size or the shape or the maliciousness of the grin must have reached through to the girl, disturbing her, because she said, “Did you say something?”

  “No. I was thinking about a friend of mine who has a macabre sense of humor.” A macabre sense of humor and no moral scruples. No scruples, moral or otherwise. No scruples and a strong right arm.

  “What had you been reading about the dock that made you want to see it?”

  “It wasn’t just the dock. It was this whole section.”

  “The Narrows. The Bottom. Little Harlem. The Hollow. Eye of the Needle. Sometimes they just say Dumble Street. It all means the same thing. Where were you reading about it?”

  “In the Chronicle. They’ve been running a series of articles on the relationship between bad housing and crime in this section. They used some wonderful pictures—”

  Jubine’s pictures. Cesar the Writing Man. Old Man John the Barber. The river. Franklin Avenue. Ah, well, he thought, it was nice to have known you and your yellow hair and your light sweet-sounding voice for these few minutes. But a female who talks about the relationship between bad housing and crime ain’t for me. Abigail Crunch and F. K. Jackson have, for the last two years, been trying to tie me in the same room with one of those Vassar-Wellesley housing-crime experts. Most of them were put together all right but they talked and talked and talked about housing and crime, about Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt and housing and crime and Churchill and Roose­velt and Stalin. And they all had names like Betty and Karen.

  He had at various times lolled in F. K. Jackson’s living room, upstairs over the funeral chapel, and said, Ah, yes, politely, or You don’t say, No, I didn’t know that, and he could tell by the expression on F. K. Jackson’s face that she would like to kick him in the behind and couldn’t and therefore her face kept freezing up and she kept thrusting out her jaw, and kept trying to lead the conversation around to dancing or Canasta and the little item from Vassar-Wellesley would keep right on talking about housing and crime.

  There had been one who went to Bennington, too. The one from Bennington was a doctor’s daughter from Washington, D.C., who most mysteriously and most illogically came to spend the weekend with F. K. Jackson. The doctor’s daughter was one of those young brown editions of Marlene, the brown making for a little more voluptuousness, brown skin, smooth skin, lovely skin, and the doctor’s daughter had long lovely legs, they undoubtedly started feeding her orange juice and Vitamin D at the proper age of six weeks, long lovely legs and a sweet little behind and we went swimming in the river, diving off the dock, and she could swim and dive and dance and sing and had a face like an angel. She was going to be a dancer, so she talked about the Czar and the Russian Ballet, about Stalin and the Russian Ballet and the Sadler’s
Wells and Bach and Beethoven. Dedicated. All of them were dedicated. They were so goddam grim about it he could only sit back and try to kid their pants off. The ballet one, when he kissed her, merely shook her head, and said, “I haven’t got time for that sort of thing, Link,” and she sounded just like a schoolteacher, gentle reprobation in her voice.

  The most beautiful one of all was going to be an engineer. Why would the good God take the time and the trouble to put together a female in such a careful beautiful lovely way and then give her the idea of being an engineer? This one walking through Dumble Street with him, this one walking beside him, the one with the silky hair, was probably going to be a doctor or a dentist, maybe a veterinarian. A dentist with that hair would be something extra, “Hey, Doc, move your head, your hair’s fallin’ in my face.”

  This one was probably a doctor’s daughter, too. The new aristocracy, the new black aristocracy, had been spawned by medical schools. “My father is a doctor,” they loved to say it. Ha! Some day he would stare at one of the prideful little females who said that, and ask if her daddy made his pile peddling dope or peddling abortions.

  “Do you go there very often? Down on the dock?” the girl asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Silence again. Then she said, “It’s foggy, isn’t it?”

  “It is foggy,” he said solemnly. And now I will pay you back, you littlelonesome female stranger, I will pay you back for being interested in bad housing and crime—what was it you said—the relationship between bad housing and crime. Good God. “Yeah, it’s foggy. It’s a night for murder, a night for rape, or any other dark midnight deed that needs concealment.”