“Must be a ugly little bastard.”
“Wait a minute. Let me have a touch.” All hands dropped away except one. “That’s him. I found him first, downstairs. I told you.” It was Ludlow’s master. He was almost happy to recognize even his watery voice. “Ludlow Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, master.” His master twisted his ear. He was about to cry, but decided not to bother. He realized it would do no good, and only nodded.
“Ludlow Washington, you my slave. The rest of you boys hear that? This my slave. Right, slave?” His master’s breath was on his face. “Say it.”
Ludlow shuddered. “I’m your slave.”
Just so he would never forget, his master twisted Ludlow’s ear one last time.
Part Two
INTERVIEW…
It was just like this. I went in the Home. They said, “You taking piano.” Everybody took piano. Then when I got to be nine, they said to all the nine-year-olds, “You playing sax, and you playing trombone and you playing trumpet—” and like that. I didn’t have nothing to do with choosing what instrument. That’s what I was trying to tell you before. But I did practice good, because I could tell music was better than a tin cup on somebody’s corner. And when I was sixteen I got out the Home and went with Bud Rodney’s band which was working at Boone’s Café in New Marsails.
1
LUDLOW BOARDED at a house near Boone’s Café. His room was seven paces long and five paces wide—more space than he had ever in his life had to himself. There was a bed, long, narrow, and hard, and a blistered dresser. There was even a window on the street. Most nights, when the air was heavy, people laughed and joked below the window and music from four or five neighborhood jukeboxes spilled into his room. From a stand at the corner, spicy barbeque sauce opened his nostrils. Both before and after work he would sit by his window, fingering his instrument. He had been out of the Home for three months.
For as long as he could remember, starting when the Warden told him his family could not be found, he had been counting the days to his eighteenth birthday when he would no longer be a ward of the state and could leave the Home. There was to be no formal ceremony—just his eighteenth birthday and a summons to the Warden’s office. The Warden would tell him he could leave, and perhaps that a job had been arranged for him.
But Ludlow’s call had come well before his eighteenth birthday—a month after his sixteenth. The Warden had told him that as of that day, and for the next two years, he would be in the custody of a Mister Bud Rodney, a Negro bandleader in New Marsails. Ludlow was to pack his clothes at once. Rodney would arrive at the Home in two hours to pick him up.
Returning to the room that for the past eleven years he had shared with twenty boys, he tried to figure out, but could not, how all this had happened. He decided to ask Rodney as they rode into New Marsails.
“Might as well get it straight now.” Rodney was a head shorter than Ludlow and his whining voice came from below Ludlow’s ears. “You out the Home because I paid good cash money for you.” He stopped, probably waiting for Ludlow to reply. But Ludlow was too surprised to say anything, though he could not help wondering how much he had been worth. Rodney went on: “I seed you play last year at the State Competition.” There was a yearly contest of all the bands from state-run schools and homes. “I figured someone’d be offering you big money sooner or later, more than I could pay, but I wanted you in my band anyway. So I went to your Warden and paid him a little sum and he signed you over to me.” He was quite proud of himself. “So now get this straight, little boy. You my son now and for two years you don’t play for no one else and you don’t cause no trouble. Because you do and it’s back to the Home.” Ludlow nodded. He had been sold, had a new master, but at least he was out of the Home. He relaxed and enjoyed the ride; he had never before been in a car.
It had not turned out badly. Mister Rodney paid him a better salary than he could have gotten anywhere else, though it did not take him long to discover he was getting only a third as much as anyone else in the band. None of it mattered. From time to time, he wondered about his old master, who, slaveless now, would not leave the Home for still another year.
The house where he lived was owned by a middle-aged woman, Missus Bertha Scott, who clomped across her creaking wood floors as if her feet too were made of wood. She liked Ludlow at once; it was in her voice. Although she was not running an eat-in house, was just renting a room, she would sometimes feed him in her kitchen. Ludlow did not know if he liked her, for he had been around too few women to be able to decide. Sitting in her kitchen, eating her food as she knocked from stove to cupboard to icebox, he would let her do most of the talking. “I don’t got nothing against musicians. Most folks thinks them is ungodly, but I reckon Jesus’d forgive musicians their vices just as soon as he’d forgive the Thief.” This day she had fixed a special stew for him and now she was at the stove tapping a portion onto a plate while he sat, stroking his silverware.
“God must love music too—all kinds. I reckon you can’t help the places you got to play it in, with them hussies in their tight dresses. And even some of them is good girls, just gone wrong. Here you is, boy.” The dish rang as she set it down between his hands. He tilted his head, waiting for her to tell him the location of the food on the plate, but as usual, she forgot.
“Ma’am, you—” He spoke out into the room, not certain where she had gone.
“Beg pardon, son. Now let me see how you do this thing.” Her breath warmed the left side of his face. “The stew’s at from four o’clock to eight o’clock. I give you some peas and they about at nine and ten. Couple pieces of corn bread at twelve, and a boiled potato at one and two. Glass of water off the plate at twelve. You got that?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He picked up his fork, aimed it where the stew would be, and felt it glide into a chunk of meat. He raised it to his mouth and chewed, juices coating his throat. He went for the potato, but it slid away from him, the fork hitting the plate.
Missus Scott had clomped around the table and seated herself across from him. “Oh, I shoulda mashed that a bit. Here.” She pushed the table slightly and took the fork from him, rapping. “There now. How…how long you been afflicted, boy?”
“Ma’am?” His mouth was full.
“How long you been—”
“All my life, ma’am.”
She clicked her tongue. “That’s a shame. What’s it like?” They had never before spoken of it.
He tried to answer, but could not. He had never been able to see and so knew only vaguely what he was missing. He sat silently, his fork moving slightly across his plate. “I don’t know, ma’am.”
She said nothing for a few moments, while he ate. He felt uncomfortable, knowing if he reached out and touched her face at that moment, he would find a frown.
“Don’t you got no idea of what the world’s like?”
He put down his fork. “Oh, yes, ma’am.”
“Like what?”
Once again, her question sent his mind scurrying. “I know all about smells and sounds and shapes and all things like that. But there’s some things I don’t get. I asked the men in the band about some of them, but they just laughed.”
“I won’t laugh at you.” No voice he could remember had ever sounded quite as gentle. And though many times before he had been ridiculed and even beaten for asking questions, he decided to risk asking once more. Still, he was shy and unsure. “Well, ma’am, it’s about the difference between people.”
“Are you asking me to tell you about men and women?” She was stunned and amused.
For an instant, his blood ran hot. He knew next to nothing about sex, but still he did not have this in mind. He had enough sense to realize he would have to find out such things from someone else. “No, ma’am, that ain’t it. I mean, between colored folks and white folks. What ab
out that?” He waited tensely for her reaction.
“Oh.” She was frightened. “Well, I don’t know….”
He retreated. “That’s all right, Missus Scott….”
“Wait now, boy. I’ll try, but I ain’t smart. What you know already?”
He tried to recall the bits and pieces of knowledge he had scraped together. “There was a boy at the Home called Four-Eyes—he wore these really heavy glasses. He could see a little bit, you know. So anyway, we used to ask him. He said the Warden and Mister Gimpy was white. So we’d ask what he meant and he’d say there was two kinds of people, white and colored, who was mostly brown, and that we was all colored because all the blind white boys was in another place because the law wouldn’t let them be together with us because they was better. So we asked why they was better and he said because they was white. So we was back where we started from.” He took a breath. “Well, I did notice that Mister Gimpy and the Warden spoke different from us. So we asked Four-Eyes if it was being white made them talk different. And he’d say, Yes, kinda. Then he’d say white folks most always had straight hair and their noses wasn’t as big. But there was a boy in the next bed and I’d felt him and he had straight hair and a tiny nose where you could feel the sharp bone in it. And we’d ask Four-Eyes if he was white and he’d say, No, he was colored too, but very light in color. So then we was back at the start again.” When he finished he was out of breath and trembling, excited to have said all this.
Missus Scott sat across the table, breathing, but nothing more. Behind her, water boiled, and behind that a car, many blocks away, blew its horn in the afternoon street. Finally she cleared her throat. “I ain’t smart, like I said, but it seems like all the things your friend told you was true, even if some was opposite to others. There’s colored and white folks. I reckon you can tell that most of them is colored because they is kinda brown and because they most all got something like big lips or bad hair or flat noses.”
“What about the white colored ones?”
“I reckon they colored because they say they is. And some of them say they ain’t and fool everybody.” She sounded bitter and added quickly, “I ain’t condemning them like some do. It so hard being colored that, quiet as it kept, maybe I’d say I wasn’t colored if God give me the chance. But I ain’t exactly no snowball.”
“It bad to be colored, Missus Scott?” He did not feel bad and wondered if he was just stupid.
“White folks say it is and I reckon most colored folks believe it.”
“Why?”
“I reckon they been told it often enough to believe it.”
“No. I didn’t mean that. I mean why does white folks say it?”
She hesitated before answering. “Boy, I can’t tell you nothing at all about how white folks think, just what they does!”
They fell silent and Ludlow tried to sort out all she had told him. At the end, he knew no more than he had known before. But he was grateful. She had tried. She was simply not smart enough to know any more than he did. He wanted to know one more thing. “Missus Scott?”
“Yes, Ludlow.” Her voice was hoarse.
“Missus Scott, can I touch your face?”
She sighed; her chair scraped around the table and came bumping to rest next to him. “Go on, boy.”
He rested his fingertips where the tired, hoarse voice had started. The lips were as thick as two fingers, soft and fleshy. Above, two huge holes breathed warm air. Not far above that, the bridge of the nose was flat, separating two bulging balls. The forehead was broad and greasy, and the hair was as coarse as broomstraws.
He had an idea of the answer to what he was going to ask her, and sensed he might hurt her, but he had never been able to ask it before and might never again. He knew he must. “Missus Scott, white folks think you ugly?” He kept his fingers near her mouth so he could feel the answer.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m ugly too.”
“Yes, you ugly too.” She stopped, then chuckled, but her mouth was drawn tight. “Sometimes I think even the best-looking of us is ugly to white folks.”
He nodded and took his hand away. He did not know what to do with it, and so found his fork and began to eat his stew.
2
BOONE’S CAFÉ was a long, barnlike building with a high roof that swallowed the band’s music and much of the chatter of the drinkers. People came to Boone’s to talk, sometimes to dance, but very seldom to listen to music.
Several prostitutes worked out of Boone’s. They would stand at the bar, to the right of the bandstand as Ludlow played, drinking and waiting. Two of the girls, Malveen and Small-Change, had adopted Ludlow soon after he came to work. When he finished a set or a solo, they would shriek and applaud him; they would pat his head when Otis Hardie, the trombone player, led him from the bandstand.
“Here he is, ladies.” Hardie waited until Ludlow put his hands on the smooth wooden bar before he let go his elbow.
“He so good tonight! He such a swinging little boy!” Malveen was the taller of the two, her high bubbly voice almost level with Ludlow’s ears. She had hugged him a few times and he knew she was plump and soft, her breasts held loosely in her bra. He was too shy to ask to stroke her face and did not know if she was as pretty as her voice made her seem. “When you paying me a visit, Ludlow? You don’t need to bring no money, sweetness.”
“You bitch! If he visiting anybody, he visiting me. You don’t know how to treat no young boy. Young boys got to be taught. You’d smother the child.” Small-Change was short, her voice dry. She always seemed angry.
“Lying on you got to be like lying on razor blades. Young boys don’t want no bag of sharp bones. Ain’t that right, Ludlow?”
Having had no experience, Ludlow did not answer. The two women bewildered and embarrassed him.
“See there?” Malveen mistook his silence for support. “He visiting me!”
“He didn’t say nothing, you bitch.” Small-Change swallowed and clicked down her glass. “Besides, we too old for him. He need a young, churchgoing girl. Not all bent and bruised like you—and me too.” Her hand was on his cheek. “We be looking out for you, child. I got a sister upstate about your age. She go to church regular.”
Hardie spoke from beyond Malveen. “I ain’t too young for you, is I, Small-Change?”
Louder now, her answer traveled along the bar, in front of Ludlow. “For you it five dollars extra, for linen.”
“Look, Small-Change, here come Mister Heavyballs. His girl wouldn’t get up off it.” The warmth went out of Malveen’s voice; a potential client had wandered into the bar.
“Well, see you now, Ludlow,” Malveen bubbled. “Take care of yourself.”
“You brung a coat, didn’t you, honey?” Small-Change patted his back. “Look like rain.”
Both girls sighed and left. Hardie came to Ludlow’s side, his glass scraping along the bar toward him. “They fun, ain’t they.”
“Yes.” He had not taken his hands off the bar. “Say, Hardie, can I ask you something?”
Hardie gurgled, then answered. “Sure, go on.”
“Well…” he hesitated, knowing Hardie would laugh at him. He decided to brave the laughter. “Well, Hardie, it about…you know…screwing?”
“What?” Hardie shouted, then howled. Ludlow felt sweat tickling his brow. “What you want to know about it?”
He felt sure many people had turned toward him, astonished at his stupidity. He wished he had some liquor in his fist, but his guardian, protecting his investment, had forbidden Ludlow to drink. He whispered toward Hardie’s laughter. “I got raised in the Home and there wasn’t no girls out there. All I know is talk. And that ain’t nothing.”
“Sure. I get you.” Hardie’s tone had changed. “I’ll tell you everything, only Rodney’s signaling us. I’ll tell you on the way home.” Hardie took hi
s arm, pulled him gently away from the bar, and started him up the steps to the bandstand.
“You take the first two choruses, Hardie. Ludlow, you take three—and make them good, a little honking at the end.” Rodney’s voice whined above piano chords. “We got big folks here tonight and I don’t want to be made a fool.”
“Who, man?” Hardie placed Ludlow’s hands on his instrument, which was atop the piano, then dropped his arm. Ludlow knew the stand perfectly if first he located the piano.
“Never you mind! Just big folks, is all.” Rodney played several more chords. “Make it Rent for Rodney.”
Altogether there were six men in the band. With the exceptions of Ludlow and Hardie, they were all at least forty years old. Hardie was twenty-two. He was a good trombone player; like Ludlow, he should not have been in Bud Rodney’s band of tired old men.
His back pressed against the piano, Ludlow listened to Hardie’s solo and thought over all he already knew about women and making love to them. Most of his information had been gleaned from the bragging of other, older boys, some of whom had not lost their sight until their teens. “First thing, you grab a titty and hang on. Then you stick your hand up her dress and when she starts to breathe heavy and steady, man, you know she ready!” Ludlow was certain such advice was not at all reliable. He finally decided, somewhat ashamedly, he knew nothing about women. He would just have to hope Hardie could explain things to him. But Hardie could only instruct; he could not make love for him. Ludlow would have to find the girl himself—perhaps Malveen if she was not just fooling about his going to visit her. And besides, she would know so much and might laugh at his lack of knowledge. For an instant he was embarrassed in advance, but then angry with himself; he resolved he would not worry about being embarrassed. Every man had made love for the first time.
Hardie finished his solo. Ludlow stepped forward and began to play. He felt good now, having made a decision, as if he had grown years in the last few minutes. At the end of his solo, Hardie whispered in his ear. “Rodney say take two more.” He did, the bass line steady under him. He tried to play so fast that his fingers ached. When he finished and lowered his instrument, there was some applause, a rarity in Boone’s Café. He bowed and stepped back. They applauded through a good half of Rodney’s solo.
A Drop of Patience Page 2