A Drop of Patience

by William Melvin Kelley

  “It my feet, from standing on them. I got flat, fat feet.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then giggled. “Oh, you fooling with me.” She was not at all angry. “Flat, fat feet!” She stopped laughing. “You really ain’t eating?”

  “No. I ain’t hungry.” He spoke just a bit more savagely.

  She fell silent once more. “Mister Washington? You ain’t not eating because of me, is you?”

  This surprised him. He could not decide whether or not to show that surprise. He answered with a question. “What’d you do?”

  “Well…maybe I was kinda short with you yesterday.” She stopped. Before he could comment, she went on: “It wasn’t you at all. Mama and me had a fight before you come down. God, I’m almost twenty-two years old! I been away from home four years, off and on, but when I come back she always telling me what to do, like I don’t know nothing.” She came into the room, dragging her slippered feet. “She make me so mad! I don’t want to get told what I got to do and when to do it. Like she said when you was there? That she didn’t want me to go into where you work? Now suppose I just wanted to come and listen and maybe have a beer. For all she know, I’m a bad girl up in Willson City, which I ain’t”—she was embarrassed just then—“but when I come down home, she treats me like some little kid.”

  Ludlow had listened to a particular tone in her voice, his head cocked toward her. This was not the first time a person he did not at all know had told him more than the person should have told, more than Ludlow wanted to know. It had happened several times in Boone’s. The particular tone was that of a person talking to himself, not to Ludlow at all, as if the person were all alone, as if the blindness were not in Ludlow’s eyes at all, did not keep Ludlow from seeing, but from being seen. Even after she stopped talking, he went on thinking. He did not realize she had stopped until she started again.

  “So yesterday, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything by being so short. I was just mad at Mama. So I wish you’d come down and eat if you really ain’t got someplace to go.” Her high voice almost broke under the weight of apology.

  Ludlow’s natural inclination was to forgive her, if indeed he had anything to forgive. But that would only erase the advantage he now held. “You didn’t do nothing to me.” He made it sound as if she had done a great deal and he was still angry at her. “I just ain’t hungry.”

  She remained silent for a moment, then sucked her tongue. “All right.” She scraped toward the door. “I’ll tell Mama.” She was sad. For an instant he wanted to stop and tell her he would eat with them after all, but he was afraid. Never again did he want to put himself in a position where he could so easily be humiliated, hurt or shamed. And that would surely happen if he gave anyone the chance. Her footsteps were cut short by the knock and click of the closing door.

  Not long after that, at seven o’clock, Hardie called for him. Ludlow attacked him as soon as the trombone player stepped into the room. “You messed me up, you bastard.”

  Hardie’s voice was smiling. “How?”

  “With Malveen. You told it all wrong.” With his fingers, he inspected the finished knot of his bow tie.

  “What happened? Didn’t she give you none?”

  He half-lied. “She kicked me out in the hall with all my clothes off. I had to stand there dressing while a bunch of whores stood around giggling.” Thinking of it now, he felt again his pain and embarrassment. This was not in his voice.

  “No fooling? I wish I’da seen that.”

  “I wish it been you!”

  “Me too. I’da risked that for a piece of her.”

  Ludlow did not know what to answer. He clicked his tongue as Hardie sometimes did.

  “So you lost this time. Next time you win. Besides, you won’t never make the same mistake again—whatever mistake you made.” The bedsprings yawned under Hardie’s voice; he was sitting now. “You can’t win them all.”

  “I’m trying to win most of them.” Ludlow was putting on his coat.

  Hardie snorted. “Hell! Who ain’t?”

  Ludlow laughed. He did not really like to play a role with Hardie. Still, the way he felt about Hardie had changed. For the first time he felt himself to be Hardie’s equal, and Hardie did not seem to mind.

  When they arrived at Boone’s, Small-Change ran up to him: “What’d you do to her, little boy?”

  Ludlow went warm. Now they would all know about the night before, how it had really been. “What you mean?”

  “Don’t kid me, little boy. I met Malveen today and she say she working out of a better bar, where the fellows buy you more drinks. And I say, ‘That’s good. We can both work there.’ And she say, ‘No, we can’t.’ And I say, ‘How come?’ And she say, ‘We can’t, is all. Don’t bother me.’ But Small-Change is smart and wouldn’t let her off that easy!” She sounded triumphant, almost happy. “So I kept at her. And finally she say she ain’t working out of Boone’s no more because of you. She hates your guts.”

  Ludlow remained calm; it was all he had left. “Why?”

  “She say you treated her mean. What’d you do? She say you cheated her.”

  “I what?” He realized that if he did anything but ask questions he would expose and betray himself.

  “You cheated her. She say you promised her something and then treated her mean.” She was not angry. Curiosity alone excited her. “What’d you promise her?”

  Before he spoke he took a very deep breath. “What’s it to you, baby?”

  “Nothing.” She paused. “You a bad man, Ludlow Washington.” There was admiration in her voice.

  “Well, then you just stay out of my way.” He did not need to breathe deeply this time.

  Part Three

  INTERVIEW…

  So I was with Bud Rodney, but after a while I didn’t like what he was making me play. I mean, I started to really listen to some things Norman Spencer was doing on piano—like breaking up time a little. He wasn’t going boom-boom-boom-boom with both hands. He was going boom-boom-boom-boom with his left, but the right was going boom-da-boom-boom, da-da-boom-da, and like that. Of course, he wasn’t one of us young boys. It was just his way because he was really an old-time player.

  Anyway, Rodney, he didn’t like Norman Spencer’s music at all and I was getting hot under the collar and thinking it was time to go to New York. And finally I did go.

  1

  HE HAD just finished dressing. In the early evening coolness, a breeze blowing through his shirt and chilling his armpits, he sat by the window waiting for Hardie. After seven months he no longer needed Hardie to guide him to work (he knew the way within five steps), but still he looked forward to their walks to Boone’s. He was closer to Hardie than to any person he had ever known.

  The footsteps that stopped at his door were not Hardie’s; they were Etta-Sue Scott’s. She had been away in Willson City for the past four months, but had returned suddenly a few days before. She and Ludlow had not spoken.

  She knocked. Without moving from the window, he told her to come in.

  She did not greet him, simply began: “Your friend called—Hardie? He can’t pick you up. You want me to take you over?”

  “I can make it by myself.” The patronizing tone in her voice annoyed him. He did not turn from the window.

  Without closing the door, she came two steps into the room. “You sure?” He was certain that really she was asking if he could do anything at all by himself.

  He turned on her. “Could you get around this house with your eyes closed? You know how many steps long the hall is?”

  “No.” There was weakness in her voice and he aimed for it.

  “I been walking to Boone’s every day for seven months. How dumb you think I am not to know the way?” The thought that she might think him dumb made him cruel. “Just what is your problem, Miss Scott? Why the hell
you so all-the-time wrong-ways?”

  She sighed and it surprised him. He had expected, had wanted even, an argument. He waited for her answer, but none came.

  He went on: “I met you four months ago—right? I walk into the kitchen and right away you jumping salty like seven oceans. So then next day you come up here and apologize, telling me you wasn’t mad at me; it was your mama. So I said to myself”—he was lying now—“that’s a nice girl and we can be friends. So the next couple times I talk to you, I try to be your friend, but you just as salty. Now, let me ask you, what I done to you?” This time he would wait for an answer, even if it took hours.

  She sighed again. “Nothing.”

  “Well, what? You think I’m trying to get inside your clothes?” Though he had conjured dreams about her, he had never wanted her seriously. But saying it, he discovered that, even though he knew only that she was tall and heavy, he really did want her after all. But that could wait for a moment.

  “No. It ain’t that. It’s—” She stopped.

  “What?”

  “It all right if I sit down?” She did not wait for an answer; bedsprings wheezed under her weight. For an instant he felt himself lying on top of her, above wheezing springs. “It just this, Ludlow.” Always before, she had called him Mister Washington. “I—don’t know how to talk to you. I mean, you—blind and all and—and I don’t want to say nothing that’d make you feel bad.” She sighed. “But then I always do anyway.”

  “My being blind ain’t no secret, Etta-Sue.” He tried her first name. “You think I ain’t noticed it?”

  “It still hard.” She whined a little.

  “So now we both know I’m blind. What about the rest of it?” He was thinking about the contempt he was sure she felt for him, the place he worked and the people he worked with.

  But she seemed genuinely puzzled. “What rest of it?”

  “Okay. Maybe there ain’t no rest.” He realized that if he was to get her into his bed, he would have to change his tactics a bit, ease up on her. “All right, Etta-Sue. I understand. It could be real tough for someone like you, normal and all, being around me.” He made himself smile. “So now we got it straight and we can be friends. All right?”

  “All right, Ludlow.” Her voice was the warmest he could remember. She got up, the bedsprings rattling, and again he imagined himself on top of her. “You sure you can make it to work by yourself?” The question came out differently.

  “Sure, I can. You don’t need to bother, thanks.” He paused. “Remember when I asked you to come over to Boone’s? Why don’t you do that one of these nights before you go back. I’ll get them to play your favorite song.”

  She answered flatly. “I ain’t going back. I quit my job. You know how Mister-Charlie is. He think when you work for him, he owns you. My boss tried to…you know…touch me in the pantry.” She was embarrassed. “So I had to quit.”

  Ludlow was amazed, though he concealed it. How different she was from the girls he knew. Malveen or Small-Change would have given Mister-Charlie what he wanted—then charged him dearly for it. Ludlow did not really understand Etta-Sue’s kind of girl. But that was not important. He knew now she would be in New Marsails for a good while. It would be a luxury to have a girl in the house where he lived.

  “Well…” He got up and walked to the bed for his coat, wondering if she was looking at him. “Got to get moving. It was nice talking to you, Etta-Sue.”

  “Nice talking to you, Ludlow.” She was near the door. “I’ll run on downstairs.” For some reason she was embarrassed, but said no more, simply closed the door behind her.

  For a moment before he left for Boone’s he stood thinking, his arm in one sleeve, the coat hanging at one side. He thought about coming home and Etta-Sue sneaking into his room, into his bed and them making love quietly so her mother would not wake up. He thought how nice it would be simply to pack his instrument and come home to his own girl.

  Hardie, very excited, arrived at Boone’s a few minutes after Ludlow. “Look, man, I got these two girls at a table over here. I was standing in the grocery store, opening a pack of cigarettes. So in they come and the one, Minnie, she sees the bread in cellophane and gets knocked out because she ain’t never seen storebought bread before. I knew they had to be country, real country! And they’s both them big girls, with high asses and high little titties. So anyway I got them to come over with me.”

  Ludlow wanted to laugh, but deadpanned. “Which one you want to stick me with?”

  “The smart one. I mean, neither of them all that smart. They real country! But one’s just a little bit smarter. I think maybe she been outa the cotton field a little longer. Now you take her and be real Buster Brown and it’ll be easy for you. Anyways, I bet she got the juicy box.”

  “Okay, man.” They went through the smoke and talk and sat at a table. The smell of powder and perfume was very strong. Hardie introduced him. Ludlow’s girl had a voice like a bugle: high, hard and straight. “I ain’t never talked to no blind man before.” She was too blunt to be true.

  He would have to be gentle, humble and polite to disarm her. “I hope it don’t make you feel funny, miss.”

  “Why should it? How’d it happen?”

  “I was just born that way. Just God’s will.” He lowered his head. “God’s will, is all.”

  “Maybe it was just something your mama ate.”

  Now Ludlow knew why Hardie had pushed her off on him. “I guess so.” She was not going for the usual nonsense. He would have to find out more about her. “Why’d you come to New Marsails?”

  “Did I got to have a reason to come?” She was the least bit defensive.

  He made his voice gentle. “Of course you do. We all came for something—else we woulda stayed where we was.” He waited. Her next answer would be important.

  For an instant she was silent. Ice knocked in her glass. Then she laughed. “I wasn’t about sitting up there waiting for my daddy to give me to some dirty sharecropping friend of his.”

  That was what had happened, what she had run from. He added to it. “And you ain’t about to get taken in by the first smooth-talking city nigger you meet, thinking you just a dumb country girl.”

  She laughed. “That’s right.” She was not quite as hard now.

  “Yeah. I understand what you saying. My daddy was a preacher and didn’t think I could be nothing but a beggar or something. I had to get out his house and show him.” He shook his head. “I guess blind folks and girls got something in common—people don’t give us much credit. Blind folks is only good for sitting on a corner with a tin cup. Girls is only good for filling a bed.” He paused for effect. “But we human too and want all the things strong men want.”

  There was silence, but Ludlow felt sure he had reached her. He could sit back and wait now. Taking her home would be her idea.

  “Say, Ludlow?” Hardie was leaning forward, his voice low and close. “Rodney giving us the sign.”

  He nodded, turned back to the girl. “Well, I hope you be around. It really nice talking to you.”

  “We be sitting right here.” She tried to sound seductive.

  Rodney called for a ballad that had been very popular thirteen years before. They had never played it as a group, though all the men knew it. Ludlow stated the theme and took the first solo. For some reason, he felt happy and warm, and was puzzled by the feelings. Then he understood them. He felt himself sitting on the old porch, a little boy. In the house behind him the radio played the song. His mother’s footsteps came out of the house and then her hand rested on his head. The heat was going down and in the back yard his sister, with friends, was giggling.

  He finished his solo and backed to the piano.

  “What the hell that supposed to be?”

  “What was what supposed to be, Mister Rodney?”

  “You call that mus
ic?” He said nothing more.

  Ludlow did not understand what Rodney was talking about. When the set was finished and he and Hardie were coming off stage, he asked.

  “The ballad?” Hardie sucked his tongue. “I don’t know. I heard it, man, but I couldn’t tell you what you was doing. You wasn’t even in time sometimes, you know, like Norman Spencer? Hell, man, I can’t tell you.” Hardie was perplexed. “Let’s get back to the table.”

  Ludlow shook his head. “She won’t take no pushing. Leave me at the bar. Come get me in about five minutes.”

  “You cut me into pieces!” Hardie guided him to the bar.

  “I don’t want to cut into you at all.” The bar pressed against his stomach.

  Hardie’s laughter blended with the other laughter in the café.

  All at once he felt empty and sad. He realized he did not want to go back to the table, to that girl. But he had no idea what he would rather do. Perhaps it was the song they had played. He had very little memory of his life before the Home and it bothered him that from time to time, when he did remember something, it was not when he wanted to remember, but only when he was reminded of those times. And afterward it always made him sad, because he could never hold onto the feeling of the memory.

  He began to think about Etta-Sue Scott. Not that she made him feel any better, but at least with her—and he did not doubt he would have her—it would be something different, maybe something steady, at least as steady as he wanted it to be. He tried to imagine how she would be, but could not. She was too different from the other girls to whom he had made love. She might not even be very good. But at least she would not be the same old thing, like the girl at the table.

  “Ready?” Hardie was at his shoulder. “She been asking for you about twice a minute.”

  Ludlow shrugged, then chuckled. “Well, lead me to the hole and let’s see if I can plug it.”

  2

  HE COULD NOT bring himself to stay with the girl more than a few hours. He had known he would feel this way even before she suggested the four of them go to her room for a drink, and so he had taken care to remember the number of steps and turns from Boone’s to her house. After Hardie and his girl left them, Ludlow did his duty—he felt it to be just that—and left as soon as possible, making some excuse when she asked him from bed to spend the day with her. He got home at nine in the morning, tried to sleep but could not, and finally at eleven, sadness making him restless, got up and dressed.