Loving Women

by Pete Hamill

  But most of all I was full of Eden Santana and The Story. My own small tale seemed puny by comparison to her tapestry of history, myth, forgotten languages, old crimes. How could she care for my own small ambitions, my little fairy tales of Paris and art, when she was one of the secret bearers of The Story? A few hundred feet from the base, I sat down in the dark with my back to a tree and started to cry.

  I felt like such a goddamned fool. Why hadn’t I seen it? The clues were there from the moment I met her on that New Year’s Eve bus: the frizzy hair and the dark skin and the way she slurred certain words. I had refused to notice the absent things: pictures of family and children and friends. Drawing from photographs late at night, I arrogantly thought I understood the lives of other men from the evidence of wrinkled snapshots slipped from wallets. But I never clearly saw the woman who was there before me in all her nakedness. She didn’t have the black skin, broad nose or thick lips of a cartoon Negro. But Bobby Bolden must’ve seen what she was that time we picked him up in the rain. Maybe the blacks out by the lake always knew when one of their own kind was trying to pass in the white man’s world, and maybe they liked what they saw, knew she was making me hers as so many black women had done with so many white men across the centuries. But I would never know the answers to such questions and that’s what made me feel such a fool. I had made love to her and she to me; but James Robinson had gone there first. And I remembered Waleski’s maxim: I thought I fucked a colored girl until I saw a colored guy fuck a colored girl.

  My body trembled, I shuddered, felt very hot, then cold. I tried to get angry, to use fury to force out the shame. Why didn’t she tell me? If she loved me, how could she keep such a secret from me? Was she waiting for some moment when she would sit me down and tell me and laugh at me, thus becoming my master, the owner of my broken pride? Did she make me love her as an act of revenge? But wait, I thought: you wanted her to keep some secrets. You told her that her secrets would keep you loving her for the rest of your life. That’s what you kept saying to her, right? So how can you get angry for going along with your desire? You want secrets, and then you learn a big secret and first get sick and then get angry. Come on.

  But then I knew that I wasn’t crying simply because I felt shame or had been fooled. I was sobbing in the empty woods because everything I wanted to do with Eden Santana now seemed impossible. Say it straight, I said. And spoke out loud: How can I ever marry a nigger? Saying the word. The word that I knew had broken Bobby Bolden’s hands and sent the Klan to hang women from trees. I’d thought of myself as the hip New Yorker, who knew all about Charlie Parker and Max Roach and Billie Holiday, and here I was, saying the word. Nigger, I said out loud. You’re a nigger, Eden. And saw myself walking the streets with her nigger kids and our own kids with a touch of nigger in them. And people would stop us in restaurants and say, Hey, no niggers here, pal. And no niggers in this school. And sorry, but ain’t no room in this bus, you’ll have to sit up front, sailor, and put your nigger woman in the back.

  Nigger, I said to the cold woods.

  Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger.

  The word lost all meaning and I stood up, walking slowly now, drying my tears on my jumper. And new pictures formed in my head. I saw myself in New Orleans, sitting in the parlor with Eden’s parents, the two of them looking at me the way that old man had looked at me when I went to cut down Cathy; his eyes cold and his shotgun cradled in his arms. There were photographs of The People on the mantel. The parents were looking at me very hard and saw that I was young. They stared at my Navy uniform and my poorly shined shoes and made their own labels, their own categories, and placed me in the bin for poor white trash. Her children were in the next room, closer to my age than Eden was to mine, the two of them coal black staring at the white boy and wondering how he could ever be their daddy. That vision made me laugh. But then I imagined Harrelson seeing us strolling together down Pala-fox Street on our way to Mass at the Catholic church. I saw him smirking. Heard him say something about pickaninnies. And then suddenly knew: It was Harrelson tipped off the Klan.

  Of course.

  It had to be him.

  He’d seen us that day. Coming up out of the side road from the lake, going to the highway.

  Harrelson.

  You prick.

  And then I began to hurry, brushing aside branches and pushing through wet shrubs. I found the hole in the back fence and slipped through. It was almost four in the morning. I moved through the emptiness of the landing strip, staying in the dark, then hugged the sides of hangars. I slipped into the barracks and went straight to Harrelson’s bunk.

  He wasn’t there.

  I felt cheated. I wanted to hurt him. I wasn’t going to waste time in any court of law. I knew and I was going to punish the son of a bitch. But goddamnit, he wasn’t there.

  I got into bed and lay there trembling for a long time. In one night, my whole world had changed and I didn’t know how I was going to live in it.

  Chapter

  59

  I never saw Bobby Bolden again. The scuttlebutt came in from Mainside about how they treated him at the hospital, his hands broken, ribs smashed, jaw fractured. The first morning, we heard about his concussion and how the brass came to talk to him about what happened and how Bobby Bolden told them to go away. We heard about how they stationed a Marine guard at his door, who turned away all visitors. Later we saw two MPs come to the Kingdom of Darkness and pack Bobby’s gear, taking everything with them, including the horn. Before the day was over, we heard they had flown him to Norfolk: out of Ellyson, out of Mainside, out of Pensacola, out of the South, and out of our lives.

  We heard about Catty too. How they’d cleaned up her wounds and wired her broken shoulder and bandaged her ribs where someone had kicked her; how they’d listened to her as she made official statements; how the Navy brass had secured her hospital room too and then turned their backs as they transferred her to San Diego. They were shipping her as far from Bobby Bolden as they could send her. And as far as possible from anyone who might demand to know what had been done to her that night.

  I was still so young that I was shocked when I discovered that there wasn’t a word about it in the Pensacola newspaper. As far as the paper was concerned, it had never happened. I called Maher in the administration building, since yeomen knew what was going on better than the officers did, and asked him why there was nothing in the newspaper. He was busy, but he said he’d try to find out. Twenty minutes later he called me back to say that it was very simple: the beatings had never been reported to the Pensacola police. And if there was no police report, the newspapers would never know.

  “Why don’t we call the newspapers?” I said.

  “You can,” he said. “But the first thing they would do is call the Navy PIO guys. And they wouldn’t confirm it. They’d just say that all Navy personnel records are confidential, or something like that.… And, of course, the Klan doesn’t give out press releases.”

  I went over to see Sal and Max and they were in a fury. They wanted to hunt down Buster and give him the beating of his life, because they were sure that Bobby had been tracked by Buster’s boys after rescuing me that day on the road.

  “Set him on fire,” Sal said. “Hang him on a meat hook.”

  Max said, “Break his hands and ankles.”

  But as we stood in the sunlight beside the hangar, we slowly realized that we weren’t sure that it was Buster. We didn’t know how many others had come in the night to beat Bobby Bolden and Catty Wolverton and burn their house to the ground. We didn’t even know what had happened to Bobby Bolden’s Mercury. The anger seeped out of us.

  “There oughtta be something we can do,” Sal said. “There oughtta be some ass we could kick.”

  Max shook his head: “It’s going after ghosts.”

  After the MPs left with the artifacts of Bobby Bolden’s life, I went up to the Kingdom of Darkness. The door was loc
ked. I knocked and Rhode Island Freddie answered. He looked at me and started to close the door without saying a word.

  “Hey, man, wait!” I said.

  “Git outta here, mothafucka.”

  “Hey, I didn’t do it!” I said. “I drove him to Mainside. I cut down Catty. It wasn’t me. I just came up here to say I was sorry and—”

  “You know somethin, boy?” he said. “You dumb. Dumber than shit. And Bobby, he was even more dumb. He take you as a friend. He take the white bitch as a friend. What it get him, huh? Answer me that? What it get him? You seen whut it get him. You seen it. Man never get to play that fuckin horn the rest of his fuckin life, that what it get him. Why? Answer me that. And you know why. White folks!”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You all white. You and the bitch and the Klan and Abe Lincoln and the fuckin president and every fuckin officer in the Navy. All white. And all the fuckin same.”

  He slammed the door. On me, on all whites.

  And it didn’t end there.

  At lunch time, the food was disgusting. Greasy, half cooked. The messcooks seemed to be wearing masks as they made their protest. I said hello. Nobody answered. They just looked past me. I gazed at the greasy vegetables and the pink half-boiled chicken on my tray. And then saw Harrelson at a table.

  I went over to him.

  “You prick,” I said.

  He smirked at me.

  “Oh, my,” he said. “We got us an angry nigger lover, don’t we?”

  I reached across the table and grabbed the front of his jumper and lifted him toward me.

  “Say another word and I’ll bite your nose right off your face, shithead.”

  “You touch me, Yankee,” he hissed, “you might git what the nigger got.”

  I let go of him but I wasn’t finished. The mess hall was quiet. I faced him, talking louder.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I said. “You fingered Bobby Bolden for the Klan.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sailor.”

  “You knew he was living down there by the lake.”

  “The whole damn world knew that, boy.”

  “Maybe so. But the rest of the world didn’t care and you did.”

  Harrelson got up and lifted his tray, still covered with uneaten food. He looked at me.

  “You sure lookin to git yore ass whupped, nigger lover.”

  I came around and grabbed his arm.

  “Not by you, prick.”

  I was ready to hammer him, make him eat the tray itself, and then Red Cannon was beside us, and I could see Chief McDaid standing at the door.

  “Ten-shun!” Red barked.

  We both came to attention, Harrelson still holding his tray. The chow hall was absolutely silent now, except for the whistling of a coffee urn.

  “What’s this all about, Mister Harrelson?” Cannon said.

  “The Yankee here’s got a big mouth, that’s whut it’s about.”

  “Ask him about Bobby Bolden,” I said. “Ask him when he called up the Klan.”

  “I wuddint addressin’ you, sailor,” Cannon said.

  “You asked what it’s about. Well, it’s about Bobby Bolden. That’s what it’s about. This prick called down the Klan on him.”

  McDaid came over, smiling in an oily way.

  “At ease, sailors,” he said. He cleared his throat, knowing that others could hear him. “We all feel bad about what happened to Bobby Bolden. But you two aren’t going to help matters by fighting each other. Let’s both of you go back to work.”

  He nodded at Red and then they walked across the chow hall and left. McDaid was clearly washing his hands of the whole matter and letting Red Cannon know it wasn’t his business either. Harrelson smiled thinly at me.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  “Not me,” I said. “Your mother.”

  Harrelson turned his back and walked quickly to the garbage disposal as the room gradually filled with the murmur of conversation. None of the blacks behind the steam tables would look at me.

  That afternoon, Harrelson was transferred to Mainside.

  I had the duty in the Supply Shack that night and for once I was glad. I knew that Eden must have spent the night at Roberta’s. She certainly didn’t go back to the trailer. But even if I could find her, I didn’t know what I would say to her. So when Donnie Ray gave me the duty, I was relieved. I took my pad and chalks with me to the shack and worked on the portrait of Captain Pritchett’s dead wife for a few hours. There wasn’t much business at the front counter; it was as if the base had emptied so that everyone could go somewhere and mourn Bobby Bolden’s murdered hands.

  I kept trying to get Pritchett’s wife right, but her face wouldn’t come off the page. I threw sheet after sheet into the trash basket. And I soon realized what was happening: the long-dead Catherine, the woman the Captain loved, the woman whose memory had been turned by him into banks of flowers, kept coming out looking like Eden Santana.

  Around midnight, Miles came in. His skin looked yellow. His eyeglasses were dirty. He sat down at his desk and stared at his hands and talked about Bobby Bolden.

  “I kept thinking about his hands,” he said. “Kept thinking how he used to play in the afternoon for us. For himself, first, I guess. But for us too. And then I thought of those shitass rednecks and how much they must have enjoyed smashing up the hands of a colored man who had more talent and brains and heart than all of them combined. They must’ve loved it.”

  “You know they loved it.”

  “But I could’ve warned him.”

  “Everybody warned him, Miles.”

  “Then maybe he wanted it to happen.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Miles.”

  “Maybe he did. Some people are so afraid of their own talent, they’d rather have someone else destroy it than have to do it themselves. They provoke. They make death happen.”

  “Bobby Bolden wouldn’t have given these dirtbags that satisfaction.”

  A mechanic came in and I waited on him and when I was finished, Miles Rayfield was gone. He didn’t know how crucial a part he’d played the night before; in a strange way, his existence might have saved Bobby Bolden’s life; if I hadn’t argued about him with Eden, I wouldn’t have stormed into the night and found Bobby writhing in the bushes. I looked at my drawing. Miles had made a few marks on it, a tuck here, an emphasis there. I saw clearly what I’d done wrong. I started over one final time and finished quickly. And when I was done with Catherine Pritchett, I did a drawing of Eden Santana.

  In chalk on paper. She was sitting on a chair in the trailer, with one leg up over the arm. The hair had grown back between her legs, frizzy and thick. The hair on her head was more clearly the hair of a black woman, and so were her features, the nose slightly wider, the lips fuller. She was looking at me in a cool direct way, wearing the high-heeled shoes. And she was more beautiful than ever.

  I closed the Supply Shack at twenty minutes after midnight. I walked slowly to the barracks and sat on my bunk for a long while before I knew what I had to do.

  I had to go to Eden Santana.

  Right away.

  If I didn’t, I would lose her.

  Chapter

  60

  There was no moon. I avoided the road, because it went past Billy’s where Red Cannon did his drinking, and past the boat shop where Buster’s presence hung like an evil smell, and past too many gas stations where the lights of pickup trucks could snap on suddenly and find me in the darkness. I chose the woods instead, and I was almost immediately lost, slowly moving forward, going around thickets and tangles of wet brush. I had never gone this way before; until this night, all I needed to know was the trail to the highway. But now I was alone, going the other way, into the unknown.

  After a while my body ached and my shoes were soaked. But I plunged on. I wanted Eden and I wanted her tonight. I was going to tell her I was with her forever. I didn’t care if she was black, colored, Negro, nigger. I didn’t fall in lo
ve with her because she was black and I wasn’t going to stop loving her because she was black. I didn’t care what anybody else thought. Not her mother or her father or my friends back home; not old blacks with shotguns or whites with whips. On the subject of Eden Santana, the opinions of others didn’t interest me.

  Speeches rolled around in my head, as I pushed through the brush and the thickets and bumped into trees, my arms and face scratched now, the words a kind of fuel, driving me on. We can’t quit, baby. They’ll win, the Klan will win. The rednecks will win. Harrelson will win. We gotta be together against all of them. Me, you, your kids, our kids. Wherever we go. Paris. New York. We gotta do it. We got to fight this out together.

  Until at last I saw the lake. Black and sullen and silent.

  I walked along the shore and found a flat-bottomed boat tied to a dock. The oars were leaning against a piling. I picked up the oars and untied the boat and began to row across the lake. I knew that I’d just committed the crime of stealing a boat. But I didn’t care. On the far shore was Eden Santana.

  There were no lights anywhere, and no stars. But I was still afraid of being watched as I came across the lake: watched by the Klan or the blacks. Waiting there for me in the dark. I rowed softly on, trying to stay low. If they were waiting for me, I didn’t want to give them a good target. The oars seemed to make a sound that said Eden. Eden. Dip and pull and Eden.

  And then I was at the far shore. The boat made a squashing sound as it drove into weeds and mud. I stepped into a foot of water and then pulled the boat up another foot into the mud until it was firmly wedged. I was about a half mile from the trailer, closer to where Bobby Bolden lived with Catty than to the place where Eden and I had played our games. I started walking through the woods in my soaked shoes. I saw the tree where Catty had been whipped into unconsciousness. I looked at the bushes where the old man had aimed his shotgun at me. It all seemed part of a dream I’d had a hundred years before. I paused, listened, heard nothing. And then moved ahead.