by Ann Petry
Old Man John the Barber had turned his back on the street.
Wanted, Link thought. Wanted for what? What goes on here? Why has Old Man John the Barber quit playing his favorite game?
Then he saw that she was standing at the end of the bar, that she had her back turned, facing the street. He walked toward her, moving quickly. In Moscow, he thought, why in Moscow, because of whatever it was Weak Knees was talking about back there in the kitchen, if I walked along a street in Moscow, street filled with kulaks and Commissars and Robesons and whatever else walks the streets of Mr. Stalin’s dream city, and you were standing with your back turned I would know you, and it’s not the coat either, if you had on rags, had a bag tied over your head covering the pale yellow hair, I’d still know you, recognize your back.
He said, “Hello,” softly.
She turned, “Link—I—”
He said, “Camilo,” and held out his hands, both hands, “I—”
As they went out, he was aware of a restless movement, a stir, along the length of the bar, and he looked back. Bill Hod’s face had changed. He was behind the bar, way down, near the door, looking at them, face expressionless now but the eyes were hooded, like the eyes of a snake.
16
* * *
WEAK KNEES was sitting at one of the tables in The Last Chance, reading the weekend edition of a New York tabloid. He had it flat on the table in front of him. As he read he moved a finger back and forth across the printed column. His lips moved, too, forming words.
“Name-a-God, Sonny,” he said suddenly, voice sopranohigh. He turned toward the bar, holding up the tabloid, arms thrust out as though he were handing it, opened out like that, to someone who was taller than he, someone who was standing armlength away from him.
“Lissen to this,” Weak Knees said. His dark supplefingered hands were silhouetted against the pink outside sheets of the feature section. Link thought, That’s a shot Jubine would eat up, Weak with that tall chef’s hat on his head, and only the top part of the white hat visible behind the newspaper, and the dark hands, holding the paper far away.
“Here’s another one of them white boys done robbed a bank, tee-hee-hee.” Weak Knees’ arms and hands moved as he laughed, and the newspaper made a dry, rustling sound.
Link leaned over the bar, staring, frowning at the newspaper. There was a picture of a girl on the front page of the feature section.
“Say,” he said.
“Wassamatter?”
“Let me see that paper for a minute.” It felt brittle, dried out, in his hands.
Sunday feature section. Story on American heiresses, one of a series of stories about young women who owned, controlled, were heir to the great American fortunes—vast, unspendable fortunes. Picture of Camilo Williams, laughing. Only that wasn’t her name. Her name was Camilla Treadway Sheffield. Internationally known heiress. The Treadway fortune was described as being like that of Krupp or Vickers. Young wife of Captain Bunny Sheffield. Blownup picture of Camilo on the front page. Small picture of Camilo and her husband on the first inside page. Bunny and Camilo at Palm Beach, lounging on the sand in bathing suits. “The Treadway Munitions Company is located in Monmouth, Conn.” Yeah, he thought, you can hear the noon whistle blasting all over the place; hear the seven-in-the-morning whistle, every morning, all over Monmouth, everybody says, “She’s up, you get up, too,” because Mrs. John Edward Treadway ran the plant, the Chronicle always carried stories about her, and how she took over the plant when her husband died; and how she’d geared it up, speeding up production, even changing the time when it opened up, used to open at eight o’clock, she changed the time to seven o’clock, “She’s up, you get up, too.”
Why didn’t he know that she was the Treadway girl? How could he? He didn’t even know there was a Treadway girl. They inhabited different worlds, you could tell even from this scissors-and-paste-job feature story, this patched together story that wasn’t news, story that said Camilla went to a boarding school in Virginia, private school, picture of it, could have been somebody’s old Georgian mansion, covered with Virginia creeper; story said she actually worked, had a job on a fashion magazine; story said she had an apartment at Treadway Hall (picture of that, all stone and ivycovered too) but rarely ever used it because she lived in New York and London and Paris; story said her husband was a New York broker, Captain Bunny Sheffield.
Story said the Treadways were the conservative, credit-to-the-country kind of millionaires, no scandals, no divorces; story contained a description of the library, the museum, the concert hall the late John Edward Treadway gave to the city of Monmouth.
Why didn’t she tell me who she was—probably got a charge out of the setup, rich white girl shacked up with a dinge in Harlem, in The Narrows. Why not? If you were that rich you could have your cake and eat it too, if you were that rich you could keep all the exits covered. I was just another muscle boy in a long line of muscle boys. Tell by this story. She grew up on the nursemaid, governess, private school, Palm Beach, Hot Springs, Paris, London circuit, and that circuit doesn’t normally impinge on Dumble Street—The Last Chance, The Moonbeam, F. K. Jackson Funeral Home, Church of I Am The Master, Get Your Kool-Aid Free—unless you’re out hunting for a new muscle boy.
It’s not true, he thought. But it was. It was the same girl. Same laughing, innocent face. Pale yellow hair, silky hair, with a shimmer. Visible even in the smoky cavelike interior of The Moonbeam. Beautiful body. The skin luminous. (Will you marry me? Yes, come spring. You black bastard.) Captain Sheffield’s young wife.
Dry rustling of the paper, again, as he turned the page. Brittle. Why brittle? Heat did that to paper, dried it out. He looked at the dateline, automatically, looked again, not believing it, last year’s paper, January 1951. There’s a mistake somewhere. No. The boys set this one up for me. Not Weak Knees. Bill Hod had used Weak Knees to convey this information. Bill set this one up. Bill never forgets a face. How do I know he never forgets a face? Never heard him say so. It’s got something to do with a permit for a gun.
In that bedroom of his, front room, full of sunlight, walls painted white, windows always open, no curtains, see the branches of the trees in winter, look down into the greenleaved heart of the trees in summer, hear voices from the street (he’s still mixed up in my mind with sun and wind and trees), in that front room, pile of old tabloids on the table by the bed, a telephone on the table and a gun and a pile of old tabloids, dating back three or four years, and in the kitchen on top of the radiator, radiator big enough to heat all of Grand Central, and what with a coal fire going in that chef’s range, and the steam in that big radiator, could be cold as hell outdoors in winter, and the kitchen like the inside of a boiler room, B. Hod wearing nothing but shorts, torso completely naked, can see him now grabbing up a couple of old newspapers from the radiator, then sitting at the kitchen table, reading them, newspapers dating back three or four years, not reading, looking at the pictures. “He don’t never forget a face.” Careful search through old newspapers until he found this one because Mr. Hod knew he’d seen the face before. How do I know he never forgets a face? Weak Knees said so.
It was about a permit. I was a knowitall, home from Dartmouth for the summer, just finished my sophomore year, so I knew everything, biology, sociology, history, psychology, math, everything, and I could outrun, outjump, outski, outshoot, outswim anything on two legs my own age, and damn near anything any other age, too. I was on the track team. I was right tackle on the football team. So I was always baiting Bill, still scared to tackle him head on, but always baiting him, always hunting for an opening. I tried it head on before the summer was over and he laughed at me, just before he threw me down that long flight of stairs that leads into the kitchen.
Anyway I was always looking for a weak spot, I knew I couldn’t win but I was always giving the thing a whirl, so I said to Weak Knees, “Why does King Hod walk around The Narrows with a
gun strapped under his armpit? He’s got a permit for these premises but he hasn’t any permit that says he can walk through his empire with a gun on him.”
“You wanta bet, Sonny?”
“Sure.”
“How much?”
“Five bucks.”
“Okay. Leave it lay right there on the kitchen table. Because it’s mine.” Weak Knees went out of the kitchen, came back and waved the permit right under my nose. “What’s that?” he said.
“All right. So it’s a permit. How’d he get it?”
“He’s got a friend high up in the police department who give it to him. He’s the one who put all them pansy college boys on the force. They got to pass some kind of tests in Latin now before they can walk a beat in Monmouth.”
“Fine. But how’d he get to be friends with a highranking cop? I thought he was the guy you said could smell a cop a mile away, whether he was in uniform or not, and that every time he got a whiff of that cop smell he had to leave fast because if he stayed around he’d try to kill the cop.”
“That’s right. But one time he was hangin’ around New York. And he come through a street and he see a kid being worked over by a couple of cops. It was one of them side streets where the folks strictly minds their own business and they wasn’t a soul in sight because the folks always moves off when a cop comes along. There wasn’t nobody around but Bill and a priest. He’d a moved off too but this priest comes along. The kid’s got blood all over his face and he sees the priest and says, ‘Father, help me!’
“Bill’s always been interested in folks’ religion so he stops to see what the priest is goin’ to do. And the priest he looks at the boy kind of dreamylike and says, ‘Pray, my son, pray!’ And goes on about his business and the biggest cop brings his stick down on top of the boy’s head so hard you can hear a crackin’ noise for damn near a block. The priest don’t even turn his head, he goes shufflin’ on down the street, even his skirts movin’ kind of pious. Well, in those days Bill never give quarter to no cop. So he pours a little somethin’ on the back of the neck of the biggest one, and he starts screamin’ and jumpin’ up and down and he tosses a little of the same thing on the face of the other one and he starts screamin’ and jumpin’ up and down.
“They get all mixed up with each other and forget about the kid. The kid, he couldn’t have been more than seventeen, nothing but a kid, can just about walk and that’s all. Bill takes him to where he’s roomin’ and gets him fixed up. The kid hadn’t had nothin’ to eat since God knows when and he had stole himself something to eat, and these big fat cops caught him at it and Bill said the thing about it that made him sore is that there these cops had worked over this kid for stealin’ a lousy loaf of bread and every brokedown whore on the block is payin’ ’em off, and so are the pimps and the boys who are runnin’ a game in the back of the pool hall and the ones who are makin’ book. When some of the boys cleaned out Izzie’s pawnshop them same fat cops stayed way down at the end of the block where they won’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’ because they’re gettin’ a cut on the deal. Them was the days, Sonny. These book-readin’ cops ain’t in it.
“Anyway this white kid is grateful. He’s a good kid run into a streak of bad luck. He stays with Bill about three weeks, till he’s back on his feet. He writes Bill’s name down real careful in a little notebook he’s got and just before he leaves he says someday he’ll be able to do somep’n for Bill. Well Bill forgets all about it. After he come to Monmouth he was lookin’ through the paper one mornin’ and there was a picture of this same kid, he’s grown bigger, and older, and filled out a lot, but it’s the same face. Bill don’t never forget a face, Sonny.
“This kid is way up in the police here. Bill goes to see him and he remembers Bill and asks him if he don’t need anything, a permit, or anything. That’s how Bill got the permit.”
Link remembered feeling a vague dissatisfaction with this story. He supposed the story was true but Weak’s stories always left him with the feeling that he’d left something out, something important. He remembered asking him what it was Bill had sprinkled on the fat cops, and that he had said, carelessly, “Oh, a little somep’n he used to carry around with him.”
And now he handed the pinksheeted tabloid back to Weak Knees, went behind the bar and poured himself a drink and kept the bottle in his hand.
Bill Hod came out of his office, came and stood behind the bar, too. Link thought, You didn’t have to come out here to check, Father Hod, it worked, I walked right into it.
“How come you’re drinkin’?” Bill asked.
“The weather.”
“The weather?”
Bill glanced out the front window, Link did, too. Bright strong sunlight on the snow outside. The kind of sun that you got in March, on a good day. A couple of weeks ago the thermometers at the back doors, fastened outside the north windows, registered zero, today they registered fifty-two and the sun was warm, the street was filled with women pushing baby buggies; water was dripping from eaves, running down gutters, rivulets of water gurgling down the drains, and small boys were floating bits of wood and paper in the water that collected in pools at the street crossings.
Sun on Dumble Street. Sun shining on the brass knocker at Number Six, sun on the brick of Number Six, turning it pink, sun on the dark gray bark of The Hangman, making it lighter gray, sun on the river.
Bill turned away from the window. Link supposed he had confirmed whatever his original impression of the weather had been, couldn’t see that it had changed in any way.
“Are you broke?” he asked.
“Broke?” Link said. “Oh, Christ, no! I own custombuilt Cadillacs and yachts. I have them in pinks and blues and yellows and purples. Purple Cadillacs in the morning. Yellow yachts at night. Any time you want to take a cushioned ride from here to hell and back, I’ll be glad to loan you one.”
What to do now, Uncle George? he thought. Where’d I get that from? One of those kids next door, years back, when the Finns lived next door, before the colored folk, the dark folk, engulfed Dumble Street, in the days when the drunken riotous Finns jumped out of the windows every night, good way to live, from oblivion in the morning to oblivion at night. Money on the table. No complications. One of those kids that belonged to the Finns, weaving back and forth in the strip of driveway next door to Abbie’s house, looking for new worlds to conquer, demanding adult direction, adult inspiration, as to the nature of the world to take on next, said, “What to do now, Uncle George?” Yes, indeed, what to do now, Uncle Link? What to do now? How gracefully and tactfully withdraw, retreat, because the position is no longer tenable, it is untenable and ruinous.
Don’t ever leave me, come spring and the singing of birds, you black bastard, wait here in the hall.
Why hadn’t she told him that she had a husband. The hell with the husband. It was the money. The hell with the money. This was just another variation on the theme. You wait here in the hall. Variation on the theme. Bill Hod and China.
Before I went in China’s place he thought, remembering, I used to walk by and sometimes the door opened and it seemed to me that light and laughter and music came out of the door, spilled out into the street, yes and the smell of incense. Incense. China burned incense in the hall, burned it in a bowl under an imitation Buddha, a plaster of paris reproduction, hideous, evil, not peaceful, contemplative, but evil, as though the nature of China’s business was summed up there in the hall, summed up in the Buddha. It was the first thing you saw going in and the last thing you saw coming out. The smell of the incense was everywhere in the hall. There was a heavy curtain over the door that led from the hall to what he supposed was the parlor, velvet-surfaced stuff, and while he stood there, waiting, he touched the curtain, inadvertently, and his pants leg must have brushed against it, because when he left he could still smell incense, it seemed to be in his hair, his clothes, and the Buddha became in his mind a s
ymbol of evil, of treachery, indelibly marked in his memory along with the smell of incense. “You wait right here in the hall.”
He was sixteen when China told him that. Sixteen, and school was out, and there was a whole long glorious stretch of hot sunny days and hot nights, and the river sparkling in the sun, and the trees in leaf, The Hangman so full of leaves it was like a green roof over the sidewalk, and girls in thin summer dresses everywhere he looked.
He didn’t know when he first noticed that Bill was riding herd on him. But he never had a chance to linger in the street, never had time to lounge around the dock, to watch, and listen to the girls who went by, walking in twos and threes, arms linked together. Bill always had something for him to do, he sent him on errands in other parts of town, or else he discovered some back-breaking piece of drudgery that needed to be done inside The Last Chance. He was forever saying to do this, or stop doing that, quit brawling in the street, stop hanging out on the corner, get the lead out.
He never had time for anything but work, work, work. And so at night, it was still daylight at eight o’clock, he’d stop in The Moonbeam, the beer parlor on Franklin Avenue; at first he only stopped in there to talk to some of the guys he knew, and to crack jokes with them about the girls who came in without escorts. But two nights running he had some beer and it seemed to him he had never felt quite so adult, nor quite so sick, as when he drank half the beer at one swallow and then laughed too loud with the rest of the guys because one of them said something funny and obscene about a fat girl in a short thin dress who sat at one of the tables with her legs crossed.
Two nights straight he drank beer in The Moonbeam and sneaked in Abbie’s house afterwards, the taste of the stuff still in his mouth, bitter, nauseous; sneaked home and called down the hall to Abbie that he was tired and going to bed early, not feeling tired, but sleepy, relaxed, getting in bed early just as he said and lying there drowsing and thinking about girls and wondering what they were really like and if he’d ever have one.