A Drop of Patience

by William Melvin Kelley

  William Melvin Kelley

  A Drop of Patience

  William Melvin Kelley was born in New York City in 1937 and attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of four novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and taught at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017.

  BY WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY

  A Different Drummer

  dem

  Dunfords Travels Everywheres

  Dancers on the Shore (short stories)

  Copyright © 1965 by The Estate of William Melvin Kelley

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1965.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:

  Name: Kelley, William Melvin, 1937–2017.

  Title: A drop of patience / William Melvin Kelley.

  Description: First edition. | Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1965.

  Identifiers: LCCN 65010609

  Subjects: LCSH: African American musicians—Fiction. | Blind musicians—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ4.K285 Dr PS3561.E392

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​65010609

  Anchor Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9781984899316

  Ebook ISBN 9781984899323

  Cover design by The BearMaiden

  www.anchorbooks.com

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by William Melvin Kelley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Five

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Six

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  To Karen, my wife, with love

  Had it pleased heaven

  To try me with affliction; had they rain’d

  All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head,

  Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips,

  Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,

  I should have found in some place of my soul

  A drop of patience; but, alas, to make me

  A fixed figure for the time of scorn

  To point his slow unmoving finger at!

  —OTHELLO, IV, ii

  Part One

  INTERVIEW…

  It didn’t have nothing to do with art—not at all. What do a little kid, five years old, know about art? For that matter, what do I know about art now? I hear these critics talk about art and I say, “That’s nice. But what do it have to do with me?” I can’t figure it. I just play. That’s how I earn my living.

  1

  THE HOUSE WAS too quiet. His little sister should have been running, screeching in the hallway; behind the house his brother should have been batting stones with a stick; his mother should have been singing. At least there should have been the short, heavy hiss of her broom. Instead the house was so still that the dripping of the kitchen pump was as loud as rocks dropping into a pond.

  The house had never before been this quiet—and during the past few days it had been more noisy than ever before. His father had been carrying heavy things out of the house, returning with a lighter step, his load left somewhere behind him. Several times his mother had cried. Earlier this morning he had thought they had all been tiptoeing around him, whispering, then leaving the house and going away. He thought perhaps his mother had kissed him. But he was not certain. He could not always tell if he was awake or dreaming.

  But he was sure he was awake now. He felt awake. He lay on his back, his hands moving over the bare mattress, his fingers squeezing the small cotton balls his mother had told him held the bed together. Once he had crawled under the bed, into a dust-filled space, and gripped the cold springs in his hands. He could not understand how such soft cotton balls could hold the bed together.

  Finally he sat up, swung his feet onto the splintered wooden floor and bent from the waist, searching for his coveralls. Finding them, the downside damp from the night, he pulled them on and stood up. Perhaps they were on the porch.

  He felt his way quickly down the hall. The wall was chipped and scarred in several places, his favorite scar shaped like a hand missing one finger. Under the plaster was a frame of wood.

  The tiny wire squares in the screen door were hot. Pushing against the door, he made the spring pop and whine. On the porch his face and his chest, bare except for the bib and straps of his coveralls, began very quickly to blaze. It was late in the morning; the heat was coming from high up. No one was breathing on the porch.

  He stood in the heat for a long while, waiting for someone to come for him. He could not go with his friends (who seemed to be playing in the cool woods behind his house); he did not want to be away when his parents returned. Finally, feeling his way to the edge of the porch with his bare feet, he sat down, dangling his legs over the edge. Tall, tough grass grew near the porch and tickled his swinging feet.

  Someone came when the heat was on top of his head. He had just put his hand to his hair and found the tiny curls and beads burning when, in the road running past the porch, pebbles began to spray. A man was walking fast. He recognized the footsteps, which stopped at the head of the path. “Papa?”

  “Come on, Luddy. Come on, son.” His father approached him, dragging his heavy shoes. Ludlow smelled dust in the air. Then his father’s hand lifted his own and Ludlow hopped to his feet. His father led him to the road. They went to the right. The dirt on the road was so powdery and dry it felt like hot water. Ludlow complained and his father lifted him up, his arm under Ludlow’s thighs like a seat. Ludlow put his arm around his father’s neck. Whiskers pricked his fingertips. He wondered where he was being carried, whether or not his
brother, sister, and mother would meet him there. The ground under his father’s feet turned hard; Ludlow felt the shock all the way through his father’s body. They were on pavement now. A car chugged by, blowing warm air against his face. They were on a highway, but it must be different from the one to which his brother had always led him; he and his father had turned the opposite way.

  His father was marching now, his steps regular and heavy. Ludlow bounced on his arm. Small stones crunched beneath his father’s feet. Cars came toward them, bubbling, and blew past.

  They turned off the highway. Not far away, birds whistled and clattered in the trees. There was pavement again, and steps. His father leaned against a heavy door and carried him out of the heat. Ludlow’s bare arms grew cold. Away, in a long, echoing space, children were talking.

  His father put him down, but held his hand. The smooth stone floor sent a shiver through him. A chair skidded and squeaked, and footsteps went away, limping. A moment later, the limping footsteps returned, accompanied by another set.

  Ludlow smelled cigar smoke. “This him?”

  “Yes, Warden. This him. Luddy. Ludlow Washington, sir.” His father squeezed his hand.

  “Looks older’n five.” The cigar smoke jammed into Ludlow’s nose.

  “He five, sir.” His father was frightened, the first time ever. “Honest to God.”

  “Don’t matter.” He paused. “You can write your name, can’t you?”

  His father let go his hand. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then tell him to sit down. My assistant’ll look after him. We got papers to sign.” The Warden turned away. “Watch him.” The cigar smoke faded with his father’s footsteps. The Warden’s assistant limped toward him, clutched his arm and snatched him forward. “Sit there and don’t make no squawk.” Ludlow was spun around and pushed back onto a wooden seat. Running his hands over it, he discovered it was a bench, with arms at either end.

  “What you doing there?” The assistant was now some distance away. “I told you not to move!”

  Ludlow sat rigid, his palms flat against the bench. After a few moments the assistant’s chair scraped and the man’s step disappeared behind the far-off sound of the children. Ludlow remained rooted. It could be a trick, the kind his brother sometimes played when he told Ludlow to wait for him because he was going away for a moment. Ludlow would follow his brother’s steps away until he was certain his brother was gone. Then he would move and his brother would yell, close again, having sneaked back. They would laugh at his brother’s trick. But Ludlow knew the Warden’s assistant was not playing.

  He sat quietly, trying to decide where he might be and why he and his father had come. Something in the air of the place stung the inside of his nose. Though it was summer outside, inside it was cool and damp. It must be a big place because of the echo that surrounded everyone’s words. Far away, the children still talked. He knew he had never been there before. He wanted to leave.

  A bit frightened now, he attempted to make himself feel better by sucking his thumb and humming a song his mother had taught him.

  “Who that humming?” The voice was hoarse and wet-sounding, like his brother trying to whisper through a mouthful of water. Before he could answer, two hands skittered over his face, the fingers poking in and out of his nose, eye sockets, and mouth, then around to his ears and the sides of his head. They brushed over his hair, then paused. “I don’t know you.” The watery voice was bewildered. “What you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” Ludlow too was bewildered. Never before had he met anyone who did the same thing he would have done had he encountered a strange object or person.

  “You don’t know? Well, I guess I do. You got any money?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your name?” The hands moved to his shoulders and down his sides.

  “Ludlow Washington.”

  The hands were searching his pockets now. “How old?”

  He hesitated. “Five.”

  “I’m six.” The hands left him. “You’ll be on my floor, the third. You remember voices good?” Ludlow nodded. “You remember mines because I’m claiming you for my slave. I’m your master.”

  “What?” He did not understand what the boy was talking about.

  The boy’s hand touched his nose, slid across his face, grasped and twisted his ear so it burned. “I said I’m your master.”

  “Master?” Tears tickled Ludlow’s cheeks, but he tried not to make the sounds of crying.

  “I’m your master. That mean I own you and when someone ask you something, you tell them to ask me because I’m your master, and I do your answering. That’s everybody excepting the Warden and Mister Gimpy. All the boys here.”

  Ludlow was certain he would soon be leaving, but he decided he would play along with the boy. “Do you—”

  The boy slapped him across the face. “When you talking to me call me Master.”

  Ludlow sighed. “Master, you got a master too?”

  The boy twisted his ear before he answered. “Stupid slave! Of course I does. We all got masters. You got a master as long as you live.” His hand left Ludlow’s ear. “I’ll talk to you upstairs. Remember I’m your master.”

  “What you doing there?” The Warden’s assistant yelled at them from a great echoing distance. When his shout faded, his limping footsteps were running toward them.

  “Wasn’t doing nothing, sir. Just making friends with the new boy.” The boy was very polite now.

  “Just get away from him.”

  “Yes, sir. I just leaving, sir. Good-bye, Ludlow. Nice to meet you.” The boy’s step was soft and quick.

  “Didn’t I tell you to sit still?” The assistant’s voice was over him now. “After them papers is signed, I’ll teach you to listen better.” Not even his father had ever sounded as angry. He wondered what would happen after the papers were signed.

  The assistant backed away. It was quiet now and Ludlow listened for the children. Their voices were shrill. He began to feel lonely. His stomach was upset. He wished his father would return soon and take him into the heat, outside to the call of birds, to the smell of hot tar and grass.

  The Warden’s voice was coming toward him. “Remember you give up your right to complain. You signed him over to us and we’ll teach him to earn his way. But this ain’t no nursery; it’s a school.”

  “I don’t cause no trouble, sir. I’m just grateful you took him.” His father was happier now.

  Ludlow did not know whether or not to stand up. He remained in his place. The two men stood over him. His father’s voice was higher up, farther away from his ears than the Warden’s. “I’ll tell him if you want me to.”

  “Surely, go on. It’ll save us the trouble.”

  The bench sagged as his father sat beside him. “Luddy, I got to tell you something.” There was a long silence. Ludlow reached out and found his father’s arm; the man was sweating. “You ain’t the same like most kids…you special…yeah, that’s it, you special. And I got to leave you here to learn special things….”

  He did not really know what else his father said to him. He turned up toward his father’s voice, realizing that the boy and the Warden’s assistant had known all along. He was staying. He even knew he was staying for a long time. He did not know where he was or how far he had come, and could not get home alone. He began to cry.

  Then his father was standing, his hand on Ludlow’s head, making his brittle hair sizzle. “Good luck, Luddy.” The hand was gone.

  The Warden and his cigar were near again. “We can handle it now.” The assistant’s chair strained and in a few seconds, he had grabbed Ludlow’s arms. Ludlow struggled to get free, but could not.

  “You better get out now.” The Warden was angry.

  “Yes, sir.” His father’s voice came at him. “Good luck, Luddy.” Heavy shoes
echoed away, meeting the sigh of an opening, closing door. Ludlow started to kick his bare feet at the assistant and received a burning, ringing slap on his ear.

  “Third floor,” the Warden shouted.

  Recovering from the slap, Ludlow began to scream for his father.

  “And for Christ’s sake, get him quiet!”

  Ludlow was lifted into the air, still kicking and yelling. He was carried across the stone floor, above the clicking of the assistant’s limping step, was put down, and, without warning, was slapped across the face more times than he could count. He stopped crying and began to moan. “Is that better now, you little bastard?”

  The Warden’s assistant grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him up three flights of wooden stairs. When they reached the final landing, Ludlow’s hand was numb. A doorknob rattled and he was pushed over a doorsill into a room filled with children. The assistant was behind him, holding his neck tightly. “Hey!” The voices stopped. “This is Ludlow Washington.” His voice went to the right. “You! Four-Eyes! You’re to see his bed gets aired if he pisses in it. If it ain’t aired, you sleep in it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ludlow did not recognize the voice.

  The assistant let him go and slammed the door. Ludlow stood very still, waiting for the voices to start again. A great many scraping steps circled in on him, whispering. Then they began to paw him. Their hands moved over every part of him, especially his face and head.

  “His ears is like bowls.”

  “He surely got a big head!”