Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  He made himself look at the ugly shadow on the wall, at Miss Jackson who was holding Abbie’s hand, and had begun that soft lowpitched pigeon cooing in which he could not make out the words, could only hear sounds that must have been words, repeated, over and over again, as though she were saying, There, there, there, Yes, yes, yes, I know, I know, I know, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

  He thought, Yes, the two of them together—but what about me?

  Abbie sat up, reaching for Miss Jackson and Miss Jackson put her arms around Abbie, enveloping her in the big dark shawl. Abbie had on the gray bathrobe, dark gray, the one she called a fright and a horror because it was so big and shapeless, because of the color, a muddy gray; but it was warm and it was perfectly good, not a brack or a break in it, so she couldn’t throw it away though it did make her look exactly like Aunt Mehalie.

  The first time he had heard her say this, he had asked her who Aunt Mehalie was and Abbie had laughed, saying, “Nobody, really. It’s just a very old and rather funny way of describing all slovenly black women. When a colored woman looks old and fat and rumpled and not too clean we say she looks like Aunt Mehalie. That’s the way this bathrobe makes me look.”

  He thought, she sounds like Aunt Mehalie too—old and rumpled. She was saying, “Oh, Dory, Dory—” She wasn’t crying but it sounded like crying and her voice was muffled by the shawl. They were both under the shawl now, wrapped up in it. He wanted to push Miss Jackson away, push her out of the house. He blamed her for the way Abbie looked, the way she sounded, the way she acted, the dreadful way she had changed.

  He left the house quickly. He was cold. He was hungry. He was alone. He was afraid. Worst of all, he now distrusted Abbie. Though he did not know it, he was already seeking for something, or someone, to put in the place that Abbie had held in his heart.

  Bill Hod was standing across the street in front of The Last Chance. It no longer mattered that Abbie had always referred to him as that other one, that Mr. Hod, that man, the tone of her voice saying, the horned one, the one with hoofs, the evil one, it didn’t matter at all, because he was the only person in sight on Dumble Street. So he went and stood beside Bill Hod, not saying anything, just standing beside him, in the hope that being near a grownup would help some of the misery, some of the lonesomeness to leak out of him. This man would not say, “Oh, Dory, Dory”; neither would he say, “Run along and play.”

  Bill Hod said, “Hi, Sonny. How’re they runnin’?” and put his hand on Link’s shoulder.

  It was a warm firm hand. Link said, in response to the touch of the hand, to its warmth, its firmness, hand that could grip, could move, you could feel life in it, not meaning to say it, “Mister, have you got anything I could eat?”

  “Eat? Eat? Oh—sure. Come on in the kitchen.”

  So for the first time he went inside The Last Chance. He followed Bill Hod through the big swinging door, almost stepping on his heels, he walked so close to him. The strange yeasty smell, not unpleasant, that he caught a whiff of now and then in summer when he walked past the open door, was stronger inside. He cast a swift side glance at the dark polished wood of the bar, at the brass rail, at the bottles, row on row of them, on shelves on each side of the biggest mirror he had ever seen, looked longest at the man who stood behind the bar, wiping a glass, a man in a white coat. Except for the mirror and the bottles it seemed to Link a barelooking place, disappointing in its bareness. Abbie was wrong. There were no vats anywhere. On the other side of the room, across from the bar, there were chairs and tables. And not very many of them. That was all.

  Then they were in the kitchen, a kitchen almost as big as the barroom, and filled with such delicious smells of food that he was afraid for a moment he would cry, smells like on Franklin Avenue over near the bakery on Saturday morning when they were baking bread, and just the smell of it made him hungry, and baking cakes, and he thought they smelt as though they ought to be a mile high, and covered thick with chocolate frosting; smells like on Sunday on Dumble Street, and he coming home from church with Abbie, getting hungrier and hungrier, one o’clock and he hadn’t had anything to eat since seven-thirty, and his stomach sucking in on itself, and Dumble Street filled with the smell of fried chicken and baked yams, and kale cooked with ham fat, and Abbie going slower and slower, and he trying to hurry her along so he could get something to eat before he died of starvation, starving to death in a street filled with heavenly smells, that came at him out of every doorway and every window.

  It was warm in this big kitchen. There was a lot of light. Weak Knees was standing by a tremendous stove, copper hood over the stove, tasting something, stirring something in a pot and tasting it, and he didn’t turn around until Bill Hod said, “The kid’s hungry.”

  Weak Knees looked at Link and his mouth opened slightly, as though he were surprised. He said, “Hiya, Sonny. Yours out in front?” and turned back to the stove. “Park it anywhere. Just park it anywhere. It’ll be on the table by the time you get it parked.”

  And it was. Weak Knees filled the plates right at the stove. There wasn’t any waiting to pass your plate, he filled them up and put them on the table, a round table, the wood white and smooth. There weren’t any doilies or place mats or tablecloth. No napkins either. Link tried to eat slowly because both of them seemed to be watching him, but he was so hungry, so empty, his stomach felt as though it were empty all the way down to his heels, that he gulped down a plate of fried chicken and rice and gravy and kale and four biscuits and swallowed a glass of milk before the other two had really got started good. And even then didn’t feel quite full.

  Weak Knees said, “You want more cow, Sonny?”

  “Cow, sir?”

  “He means milk,” said Bill Hod.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Now that he was beginning to feel better, he looked around the kitchen. The wall nearest to the stove was almost covered with all sizes and shapes of pots and pans and frying pans, colanders and strainers, longhandled spoons and cake turners, all hung on the wall. Some of them were made of aluminum, some of copper, some were black iron, and they were arranged so that they looked like a design on the wall, a kind of decoration. Abbie kept all her pots and pans stuck away in cupboards and drawers where you couldn’t see them, and he thought this was a much better way, handier, and betterlooking too.

  He heard a sound that startled him, a kind of snoring that came from under the table. He looked a question at Bill Hod.

  “That’s Frankie,” Hod said. “He’s still young but he snores just like Yellow Man Johnson.”

  The white bulldog was on the floor, under the table, asleep. He lifted his head, probably because he heard his name mentioned, got up, sniffed at Link’s legs, wagged his tail, and settled back into sleep. Link drew his legs tight together, remembering Abbie’s stories about strange dogs and how they might bite you, with no warning. The big white bulldog ignored him, went on snoring, and he relaxed a little. He wondered who Yellow Man Johnson was, and why he snored so loudly, and didn’t ask because Abbie was always saying you mustn’t ask questions when you were a guest in someone else’s house.

  Weak Knees put a piled-up plate down in front of him. He said, “There was just this one little lonely piece of chicken settin’ there in the pan, a piece of leg meat, best part of the bird, breast meat’s dry, leg meat’s moist and sweet, breast meat’s only good for samwiches and salat where you can wet it down. And there was this little forkful of rice that was setting there waitin’ for a spoonful of gravy and the gravy was right there in the skillet waitin’ to lay itself over the rice. So there you are, Sonny, there you are. Start layin’ your lip over it.” He said it all on one breath.

  “How they comin’ now?” Weak Knees asked.

  “Fine, sir.”

  “I ain’t no sir. You can just call me Weak Knees.”

  “He’s just a plain man from plain people,” Bill Hod said. “Call him W
eak Knees and call me Bill.”

  Link nodded. It would be easy to say Weak Knees. Not so easy to say Bill. There was something about Mr. Hod that—well, he was quieter than anyone he’d ever been around. He didn’t say much. He seemed to see everything, he had known Link was scared of the dog. Looking at him, close to, he couldn’t understand why Abbie called him “that man,” or “the other one,” just as though she were saying that outcast, the leprous one. Bill Hod’s hair was straight, absolutely straight, and Abbie thought it was wonderful when a colored person had straight hair. His skin was light, and Abbie thought that was good, too, in a colored person, even though she herself wasn’t exactly light, and neither was the Major. Then he remembered that what Abbie thought, or said, no longer counted with him. He could no longer depend on her. So he would form his own opinion about Bill Hod.

  Weak Knees said, “You got room for a small piece of cake? A man ain’t really full till he’s put a sweet taste in his mouth—that’s the finish line—and you ain’t got there till you had some sweet—”

  He had room for two pieces of chocolate cake. He was finishing the second piece when Bill Hod asked him if he liked to swim. He said that he didn’t know how, that he’d never been swimming.

  Bill said, “You come on down to the dock with me, next Sunday, and I’ll teach you.”

  Link thanked him though he knew that it wasn’t possible because he had to go to Sunday School, and to church, with Abbie because Abbie was superintendent of the Sunday School, and they had to set an example for the other colored people, so even if it rained or snowed, they went just the same.

  But he wasn’t going to live with her any more, he wasn’t going back to that cold house across the street, house of weeping, house of darkness, in which for the last four days he had lived with fear, moving through the rooms as though he were a ghost, not even a ghost, for Abbie would have sensed the presence of a ghost, reacted to it in some way, at least turned the lights on. She walked slowly through the house, she who had always been so erect was now bent over like an old woman, she held one hand in front of her as she walked, feeling her way, like she was blind, didn’t comb her hair, wore a nightgown and that Aunt Mehalie bathrobe all day, and either went barefooted or wore felt slippers. He couldn’t go back to that house.

  He had finished eating. So had Weak Knees. And Bill Hod. He had better tell them now. Tell them? Ask them. Explain.

  It was warm in the kitchen, and there was so much light that there weren’t any ugly shadows on the walls, there was no sound of weeping. The big teakettle boiling on the stove was making a hissing-bubbling sound, and the dog kept up his snorting-snoring, sometimes so loud that it sounded like coughing, sometimes he seemed to clear his throat, and grunt.

  Bill Hod said, “Yellow Man Johnson is a lightweight compared with Frankie when it comes to snorin’. Hey, Frankie, cut out the racket, you’ll put us all to sleep.”

  Weak Knees laughed. The highpitched cackling sound he made was so very different from the bass rumbling, the great roaring, that had been the Major’s laughter, that Link stared at him, verifying the fact that this nervous cackling was really laughter. He decided he liked the sound.

  “Could I live here?” he asked.

  They both looked at him: Weak Knees with gravity, concern in his face, a frown wrinkling his forehead; Bill Hod with no change of expression at all. Neither of them said anything. Weak Knees moved his feet, shuffled them under the table. The dog stopped snoring.

  “He died,” Link explained. “And she cries all the time.”

  They still didn’t say anything and he thought, If he could make them know what it was like, the dark cold house, the being afraid, the not being looked at, or listened to, or talked to, and ended up saying, “She don’t see me and she don’t even hear me when I talk. She don’t seem to know it when I’m there.”

  Bill Hod shrugged, said, “So?” and then to Weak Knees, “He can sleep in the room in the back. Fix it up for him.”

  “Okay, Boss.”

  Weak Knees fixed the room for him by making the bed. Link went to sleep almost immediately. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep, but he woke up, covered with sweat, sobbing, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” At least that’s what he was trying to say, though he didn’t know why, but the words wouldn’t come out, instead there issued from his throat a dreadful groaning, a sound so horrid that it terrified him. He had no control over it, couldn’t stop it, and yet he knew that it was he who made it, and as he lay there groaning, aware of the darkness, aware that he was alone in a strange room in a strange bed, he told himself all over again that the Major was dead, remembered how he looked in the casket, remembered touching his hand, his face, and he began to cry.

  Bill Hod’s hand, firm, warm, patted his shoulder, touched his face, lightly, offering warmth, comfort. He recognized the feel of his hand in the dark.

  “There, there, Sonny,” he said. Then, his voice a little more insistent, “You’re all right,” the pressure of the hand stronger as he said, again, “You’re all right.”

  He kept on shivering and sobbing. It wasn’t just the Major. He had lost Abbie too, and so was lost himself.

  Bill Hod said, “Come on. Get out of this.” He pushed him into a sitting position, helped him walk across the bare unfamiliar room, across a hall, into Bill’s room, into Bill’s bed, where he fell asleep.

  When he woke up the next morning, warm and relaxed, the room was full of sunlight. No curtains at the windows, no pictures on the walls, walls painted white, and so there was sunlight or reflected light everywhere. As he looked around, Bill Hod came into the room, naked, nothing on his feet. He stared at him, surprised, a little shocked, because he had never seen a grownup without any clothes on.

  Once he’d seen the Major soaking his feet in a big foot tub in the kitchen. Abbie hadn’t liked it because Link had squatted down, nose practically in the tub, staring, pointing at the bunions and the corns, asking the Major what they were, and how they got on his feet. Abbie had said, “Dory, I told you not to do that here in the kitchen. It’s the kind of thing sharecroppers do.”

  He supposed he ought not to look at this man who was walking about the room barefooted. But he couldn’t help it. He had no corns on his feet, no bunions. His stomach didn’t stick out, it was flat, absolutely flat; his waist was narrow and his shoulders were wide. The skin on his body was almost white, the forearms, and his face, tan by contrast. He made no sound as he walked, and Link thought, He’s air-borne, light as air.

  The windows were wide open so that the room was not only full of sunlight but full of air—cold air; and he could see the branches of the trees outside. As long as he lived that picture of Bill Hod, naked, moving about as though he enjoyed having no clothes on, lingered in his memory, inextricably mixed up with sunlight, and fresh, cool air.

  Bill Hod stopped collecting his clothes, and lit a cigarette. He glanced at the bed, saw that Link was looking at him, said, “Hungry?”

  He said, “Yes—Bill.”

  It would have been impossible for him to describe the way he felt about Bill Hod at that moment. He had been living in dark, heavily curtained rooms, always within hearing of Abbie’s weeping, and it had been like living alone, trying to live alone, deep down in the earth where no light could enter, with the sound of mourning always in his ears; this man, Bill Hod, had taken him out of the dark and put him in the sun. He had loved Abbie but in a different way, a quieter, less violent way. There was something of worship as well as passion in his feeling for Bill Hod.

  That time he lived at The Last Chance for three months. For three solid months Abbie Crunch forgot that he existed.

  He learned to swim, to cook, to hit a target with a rifle, to love a dog, a dog who really and truly had a gold tooth. He took showers instead of baths. He answered to the name of Sonny instead of Link.

  And, on Saturdays they didn�
�t have baked beans.

  Early, on a Saturday afternoon, he went in the kitchen, and found Weak Knees stirring something in a tremendous frying pan, on the back of the stove. It smelled so good that he could have eaten some of it right then, even though he wasn’t really hungry. He asked Weak Knees what he was making.

  “Meat sauce for the spaghetti.”

  “Is it for tonight?” he asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  “We always had baked beans on Saturday nights,” he said, surprised. Eight years old, and he thought everybody ate baked beans on Saturdays.

  “Baked beans? Saturday nights?” Weak Knees stopped stirring the sauce, turned away from the stove, and looked at him with something very like horror. “Name-a-God, Sonny, what kind of eatin’ is that? Make a man fart all night.”

  When Old Man John the Barber stalked in through the open door, Link was putting on one of the starched white monkey jackets that the bartenders wore in The Last Chance; thinking, My idea, it pleases me that Mr. Hod’s barkeep boys should be done up all proper and elegant.

  Barber smacked a dollar bill down on the bar, said, “Beer,” and glared at Link, glared at the monkey jacket, as usual.

  Link drew a glass of beer, placed it on the bar in front of the old man, then put a copy of the Chronicle right beside the glass. “There,” he said, “that should take care of you almost indefinitely. Now—if any gentlemen with unquenchable thirsts should enter through yonder door and should inquire as to the whereabouts of the bartender, will you be so kind as to tell them that he is in the kitchen laying his lip over a cup of honest-to-God coffee while he talks with his friend and mentor, Mr. Weak Knees. Kindly call me, Mr. Barber, if any customers should arrive.”