Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  Link was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, too. He was waiting for the girl to come back, had been waiting, night after night, for two weeks, in spite of fog and rain and cold winds. He kept telling himself that it was illogical, it was against all reason, because no one would return to a place like this, a place where the night spewed forth creatures like Cat Jimmie.

  Jubine knew that he was waiting for someone, looking for someone, because each night after he got on his motorcycle and adjusted his goggles, he always said the same thing: “Not tonight, eh, hombre? Ah, well, perhaps another night.” And then was gone, putt-putting down Dock Street, going faster and faster, the motor making a sound like a series of gun shots.

  At the end of two weeks, having stared at the river, having been stared at by Jubine, having listened to the foghorn and the hoarse hoot of the barges, having listened to the sound of the river like a mouth sucking against the wood of the pilings, having watched the big door of The Last Chance swing open, swing shut, having been wet, having been cold, he gave it up. On a Saturday night. Late.

  He crossed Dock Street, heading toward the poker game at The Last Chance. At the door he turned, why he did not know, perhaps just habit, perhaps he turned and looked toward the dock whenever he was on Dumble Street, perhaps some sixth sense told him he would see what he had been waiting to see. Her car was parked near the dock. He looked once, made certain that it was the same car, and shoved the door open and went inside.

  Mr. B. Hod and Mr. Weak Knees were getting ready to close up for the night. Jubine was standing at the bar, studying Old Man John the Barber. Bill had evidently booted everybody else home. Old Man John the Barber was nursing a beer, and watching Bill’s every move, his lower lip thrust out, his eyes fierce under the shaggy eyebrows, one foot rested on the polished brass rail, the shoes discolored, worn, dusty. His suit coat, once black, was now gray in color, the back hiked up, the sleeves the exact shape of his arms, especially at the elbows.

  Link said, “Is it safe to come in here?”

  Bill ignored him, ignored Jubine’s delighted grin.

  Jubine said, “Sure. Safe as a convent. The boss threw a big peon out on his can about an hour ago and damn near broke his neck. A big Swede peon. And his neck made a lovely grinding sound as it very nearly separated in two straight clean pieces. So everything’s fine now. Cozy. Homelike.”

  When Bill opened the door, opening it the way he always opened doors, as though he were attacking it, the clock over the bar said ten minutes to two.

  “What you closin’ up so early for, Bill? It ain’t closin’ time,” Old Man John the Barber protested. “I ain’t got a God’s place else to go but here.” He hunched over a little farther, blinking his eyes as he looked out at the dark cold windswept street.

  Bill kept turning out lights. “Okay, Barber,” he said. “You can stay in any of those Saturday night jump joints over on Franklin until three or four o’clock. By that time your wife’ll be asleep and you’ll have some place to go. You can go home. Okay, Barber, out you go.”

  In the kitchen, they waited for Weak Knees to brew the coffee. Bill Hod sat down at the kitchen table, shuffling a deck of cards, brandnew deck. Link and Jubine stayed near the stove, watching Weak Knees. He moved quickly despite his shambling gait. Link thought, They’re all at their favorite occupations. Jubine is measuring the light in here, measuring it with his eyes, eyes half closed as he studies Weak Knees. Mr. W. Knees has the dedicated look of a high priest, performing his rites, stove serves as altar, big copper hood over the stove, gives it the gleam and the apartness of an altar. Mr. B. Hod is listening to the music of the cards, swish-slish, swish-slish, fast motion, too fast, eye cannot follow but ear can hear.

  Kitchen now filled with the fragrance of fresh-brewed coffee. Funny thing, both gentlemen tried hard, did their damndest, to hand their heart’s true love on to me—but I wasn’t built for it. I still can’t make a deck of cards swish-slish like that. And I can’t cook. They worked at it though. I used to polish that copper hood when I was a kid, stand on top of the stove, fire out, pink outside sheets of a tabloid newspaper on the stove for me to stand on, so that I always had pictures of bigbosomed cuties under my feet as I rubbed and rubbed the copper. Had to put a chair on top of the stove to reach the top of the hood. L. Williams, the acrobat-acolyte. Liked the job, too, liked the glow and the gleam of the copper, stood on the chair, way up high, and turned to look down at the pots and pans hanging on the wall, liked the glow of them, too, the glow and the gleam. Acrobat-acolyte standing on a chair polishing the copper hood. But Mr. W. Knees said I’d never make a chef-cook. And I didn’t. Heart not in it. Swish-slish of the new deck. Heart not in that either. Girl with pale blond hair looking for the acolyte at the dock. He grinned. Heart in that though.

  Jubine said, “Now what canary have you just eaten, Sonny?”

  He grinned again because he couldn’t help it. “I haven’t yet. But I will, Bud. I have only just got the lovely creature within gunsight.”

  “Come on, let’s get the game started,” Bill said. “You guys mess around too much. We haven’t had a decent game for two weeks. Sonny’s got to watch the river, hunting canaries. Jubine’s got to run to a fire or a wake or a suicide.”

  “I’m always right here, Boss. Ready, willin’ and able,” Weak Knees said. “I ain’t never cut the heart outta the game by not showin’ up.”

  Bill said, “Yeah, you’re here when you’re not cuttin’ the heart out of the game by trying out a new kind of spaghetti.”

  “That last one was good,” Weak Knees’ voice, normally high-pitched, dropped a whole register, it had a note of reverence in it. “Best spaghetti I ever laid my lip over. Had salt pork and mushrooms in it. I never done it like that before. And about a peck of parsley. Some American white lady brought that receipt over from Brussels. She got it from a Eyetalian chef-cook. Say, where is Brussels?”

  “In Belgium,” Jubine said. “When you going to make it again?”

  “If I’da been that Eyetalian chef-cook I never woulda give that receipt away. Never tasted nothing like it before. Make it again? Let’s see. I’ll be makin’ that Belgium Eyetalian spaghetti again on Saturday. This Saturday comin’ up. I’ll make it for after the poker game. Sonny, you goin’ to be here for the game or are you goin’ to be chasin’ canaries around on the dock?”

  Link said, “I’ll let you know.”

  Weak Knees frowned. “I never knew they had no canaries around the dock. I ain’t never seen none.”

  Jubine laughed. “You’re too old to see ’em. You got to be about twenty-six, like Link. You got to have a build straight from the Greek, like Link. And you got to have one of those Pied Piper speaking voices, like Link. Even at that he only sees ’em when there’s one of those London fogs blowing in from the river.” He laid his hand on Weak Knees’ arm. “Listen, Weak Knees,” he said, “make the spaghetti this coming Saturday. Game or no game. And save some for me. I’ll stop by for it.”

  “Okay, Jubie. I’ll save half the pot for you. I don’t know how that Eyetalian could have give that receipt away.”

  “If he hadn’t given it away you wouldn’t know about it,” Jubine said.

  “Yah-yah—yah. I know that. But he coulda made himself a multonmillionaire just with that one receipt.”

  Jubine made a sound of derision, “Then he’d of had to come to the United States, that is if he was going to be a spaghetti millionaire. And he’d of spent so much time worrying about his income tax, and his labor problems, and the shortage of salt pork and the shortage of mushrooms and the high cost of everything that he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night for worrying. And all that worry would give him little sore places in his stomach and he wouldn’t even be able to eat his own spaghetti any more. But he passes the receipt along and a lot of people eat his good spaghetti and they’re grateful to him and he can eat anything he wants to, and he ge
ts in his big soft bed every night and goes straight to sleep, because there’s nothing in his life to give him nightmares—no CIO, no shortages—”

  Weak Knees said stubbornly, “There ain’t no shortage of salt pork. There never is because most chef-cooks don’t know nothin’ about usin’ it.”

  Jubine said, “Sure, sure. But if some scientist should find out it’s got some big important vitamin in it like in liver then everybody in America would start using it and then there’d be a shortage. Besides if everybody in this country started buy­in’ this new spaghetti dish made with salt pork in it why then there’d surely be a shortage—”

  Bill said, “For the love of God, will you guys stop that yak-yak and cut for the deal?”

  He waited on the dock again Monday night. The air was crisp, cool, clear. He could see the whole length of Dumble Street, and he looked at it and found it good, thinking of it as the street in which he grew up, the street in which he had gone through the seesaw process of reaching manhood, let go of something, hold on to something else, learning, growing, until finally he grew all the way up. Or had he? Or did anybody? Ever?

  It was midnight when he saw her car, coming slowly along Dock Street. He watched her as she got out of the car and crossed the road. She walked as though she had always owned the world, and always would own it and knew it. This time she was wearing a suit, a gray flannel suit. She had a striped scarf, vivid green stripes, knotted around her throat. Her footsteps were quick, light. Brown shoes on her feet. And the legs—legs like Dietrich, only better. Actually.

  “Hello,” she said. There was a sparkle in her eyes, animation in her face, in her voice, a smile kept coming and going around her mouth.

  Well, he thought, this is what you wanted to know. This is what she looks like when she’s not been frightened half to death.

  “Hello, yourself,” he said.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  She was standing quite close to him now. He thought, again, the perfume she uses smells like stock on a hot night in August, when there’s a full moon—only not as direct and uncomplicated as stock, sweet, yes, but more elusive so that you want to get closer and closer, so that you can keep on smelling it.

  “Yeah, I know. I saw you.”

  “You saw me? You—well—why didn’t you let me know that you saw me?”

  “Because every night for the last two weeks I waited for you. Right here. On the dock. And some nights it rained, and some nights there was fog, and some nights it was cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey. So—” he patted her arm, “I decided it was your turn to wait.”

  “Oh.”

  She was almost pouting, the way a spoiled and arrogant child pouts when you tell him he can’t have the fifteenth lollipop. He wondered how she would express her displeasure.

  To his surprise she said, “Would you like to go for a ride?”

  “No.” Pause. “Thank you.”

  “Well, is there some place where we can go and talk? Perhaps that place where we went before?”

  “The Moonbeam?”

  “Is that what it’s called? It doesn’t exactly suit it, does it?”

  He let that one go. The Moonbeam Café. Where else would he take a white girl, in Monmouth, at midnight? They would not be stared at, but looked over, carefully, covertly, in The Moonbeam. He took her there before. But he had taken it for granted that she was a high yaller. He couldn’t half see in the fog, couldn’t half see in The Moonbeam. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that the girl was white, not then, anyway, if it hadn’t been for the way Bug Eyes looked at her. If he had known she was white, would he have taken her there, anyway? Where else? What kind of race discrimination was he practising here in his thinking? Why was he reluctant to take her there now? He would be reluctant to take any girl there, white or colored, if he wanted to talk to her, to listen to her talk, wanted to go dancing with her, to— He simply did not want to sit in the smoky cave-like interior of The Moonbeam, to try to talk over or under the noise, to be surrounded by a lot of people, all talking, all looking at them, all conjecturing about them, while the jukebox bleated out a song about old lost loves and undying hates and my man gone.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll go to The Moonbeam and drink beer. If we drink enough of it we’ll begin to believe we’re somewhere else.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Well?” She didn’t say anything, and he said, “Go on. What is it?”

  “That night,” she started and then stopped, began again. “That night when I was on the dock, well, I couldn’t see anything because of the fog. But once, when it lifted, I caught a glimpse of that creature propelling himself along on that little wagon. I thought I’d never get my breath back. I ran and ran and ran and the thing on the wagon kept getting nearer and there was a smell, an odor, like in the zoo. Or at the circus. And I knew it came from that thing chasing me—on the cart—”

  “Wait a minute. What’re you going all over this for?”

  “I have to. I have to explain something to you.”

  “You sound as though you were getting ready to explain yourself into a fancy case of hysterics. Or do you enjoy scaring yourself?”

  “I’m not scared any more. I have to tell you this. Keep quiet and listen until I’ve finished.”

  He lifted an eyebrow and whistled. Then he said, softly, in a singsong voice:

  Come when you’re called

  Do as you’re bid

  Close the door gently

  Never be chid.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But if you keep interrupting, I’ll never finish. And I have to tell it this way or you won’t understand.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “I—I couldn’t see where I was going. Not in the fog. It was like a nightmare, trying to run away from something horrible, having to run, knowing that unless I ran and kept running that evilsmelling thing would finally overtake me. It was like running blindfolded, run and run, and not be able to see where you’re going—”

  “So you ran,” he said dryly.

  “Yes!” she said, anger in her voice. “I ran. You don’t know what it was like so you can stand there safe and superior because you’ve never been afraid of anything in your life.”

  “Afraid of anything? Never been afraid of anything? But of course I have. Go on. I won’t say anything until you’ve finished.” She was silent and he prompted her. “You ran and then what?”

  “Then you said, ‘Hey!’ I ran toward you, head on at you, not you, but your voice. I knew if I could reach the spot where your voice came from I’d be safe. The fog lifted a little and I could see that you were big enough and strong enough and young enough to fight off that thing, whatever it was, on the cart.”

  Then she said, her voice slowing, “I couldn’t see very well because I was so frightened and because of the fog. I wanted to keep holding on to your hand and your arm, stay within hearing of your voice, and there was a clean good smell about you. I knew that you were trying to make me go away from you. I don’t know what you said. It didn’t make sense. But I knew, no matter what you said to me, that I wasn’t going to walk through that fog, alone, to reach my car. The foghorn kept blowing, blowing. For all I knew that thing on the cart might be waiting for me, waiting in the fog. The foghorn said so, the river said so, over and over, ‘Get you, get you, get you.’ It wasn’t until I sat down in that place, in The Moonbeam—” She stopped, started again. “You see, I didn’t know you were colored. When we got inside The Moonbeam, when we sat down and I looked around and saw all those colored people I was—I began to get frightened, all over again. Then I saw that you were colored too. I couldn’t get the confusion out of my mind. I don’t know what I thought—”

  “But you came back here, anyway?”
<
br />   “Wait,” she said. “You asked me again, there in that place, how I came to be on the dock, and it was the same voice. The voice that I had refused to leave, couldn’t have been pried loose from there on the dock. And I kept telling myself, You didn’t know he was a Negro and you clung to him, clung to him, because his voice said, You’re safe with me, safe, safe, safe, safe. Not in words. You didn’t put it in words. I couldn’t understand what you were talking about, something about China, but I could understand the clean clear enunciation, the resonance, the timbre— It was a perfectly beautiful speaking voice and it belonged to a colored man. I had to try to match that voice that meant safety with your being colored and I couldn’t. In the fog, when I couldn’t see, I clutched at you, because all I had to go on was the sound of your voice and the feel of your arm, the long smooth muscle in the forearm, a man’s arm, hardfleshed, a man’s hand, strong, warm, the skin smooth. Yet the hand and arm belonged to a colored man.

  “Then the waiter, the one you called Bug Eyes, stared at me, a long hard stare. His face had been friendly, laughing, a simple peasant face, when you spoke to him about finding us a place to sit. I thought he looked like a South European peasant except that his skin was so dark. When we were sitting at that little table he looked at me and his face changed right before my eyes. It became a closed hostile face, complex and dangerous. I looked around and all of them were staring at me, all their faces were like the waiter’s face, closed, hostile.

  “I tried to get up, to get out of there, and I couldn’t move. My knees wouldn’t work, my legs wouldn’t function. I knew that even had I been able to stand up I couldn’t have walked through that noisy smoke-filled room. And your face had changed, too. It wasn’t hostile, but there was something there, something that hadn’t been there before, a kind of disdain and a puzzlement.

  “When we left there was the fog outside, waiting. It was worse than before. I knew I couldn’t drive alone through that fog because I would imagine that wagon was just behind me, always getting a little nearer. I thought that if you got in the car with me, rode around with me for half an hour or so I’d be able to get myself back together. Yes, you were colored but you were the only normal, clean, known creature anywhere in that fog—and you see—you cling to, hang on to, whatever represents safety—security—and—”