A Drop of Patience

by William Melvin Kelley

  There was a tightness in his throat and the back of his jaws were knotted. His brain broke loose from his skull, banged against the top of his head. Then he felt tears tickling his cheeks, tasted the make-up mixed with the tears. He gripped the microphone with his right hand, his left still in his pocket. “Please! Please! I tried. I ain’t dangerous. I’m blind. How could I be dangerous? Can’t she come back now? Please send her back….”

  As soon as his left hand touched the cold stem of the microphone, Hardie grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back. Ludlow could no longer stand up, collapsed onto his knees, still begging. Hardie, breathing heavily on his neck, kept a good grip on Ludlow’s arms.

  Later, they told him he had cried for three days.

  Part Six

  INTERVIEW…

  I ain’t at all ashamed of it. I cracked up. In fact, I cracked up a couple times. But that’s about all I really know. One of the doctors tried to tell me what went bad, but I couldn’t follow him. Anyway, it didn’t matter to me, just as long as I wasn’t running around hurting nobody….So when I got out the last time, I was an old man, thirty-four God damn years old, but I’d go into a club and some kid musician’d say, “He Ludlow Washington. He was in on the start, but he couldn’t keep up.” Hell, I’d been thinking about a lot of things in the hospitals, and I’d been practicing. I was still out front. Only nobody knew it yet. Anyway, I couldn’t get much work. No one’d hire any group I’d got together. They was all afraid I’d put on another minstrel show.

  1

  ANOTHER CHRISTMAS.

  He could not even remember the first five Christmases of his life. The next eleven had been at the Home; on the first one he may have cried the entire day. The remaining were undistinguished, except for the fourth; his master had given him a present. He had never understood why. His first Christmas out of the Home, he was living at Missus Scott’s and was still single. He and Hardie had worked, gotten drunk, found two girls. By the next Christmas, he was married, but Etta-Sue was already pregnant. The next three were with Inez Cunningham. The first of those had been the best; he had been eighteen years old, up North for only six months, playing with the best singer in the country. Inez always arranged her bookings to spend Christmas in New York. That first year, after the show, she had taken the group for drinks. She never did it again. Five band Christmases followed—hot dogs instead of turkey, in the back seats of cars or buses. The Christmas after the war ended he had spent with Hardie, Juanita and Otie. The next was Ragan’s Christmas, though he had been traveling. It had not mattered much; he had been in love. There had been seven since Ragan’s Christmas, some in, some out of the hospital.

  Somewhere down the hall a radio was playing a loud, commercial Christmas song. Footsteps passed his door, humming. He rolled onto his side and went through his Christmases once more. He shook his head, his hair crackling against the pillow. None of them had been very good. Then he laughed. “Hell, why you lying here feeling sorry for yourself?” He pushed down the covers and sat up. The radiator was popping and hissing.

  When he finished dressing, had made his bed, he left the hotel and walked a half block to a small diner. The cooks were Chinese, but they prepared the best collard greens and black-eyed peas he had eaten since he left the South. Besides, it was cheap, and, not working very often now, he had to make his money last.

  After he had eaten, he took a short walk to listen to Harlem on Christmas. From time to time, when the wind died, the sun was warm on his face. It was quiet; the parties and toasting had all been the night before. Today people stayed home and slept. In the late afternoon he thought he might walk up to a dance hall and find out if the band had any empty chair. After an hour of walking, he went back to his hotel to practice.

  Hardie had been waiting for him in the lobby. “How you been, Ludlow?” He was nervous, embarrassed.

  “Can’t complain, I guess.” He thought, then added, “Don’t do no good.”

  Hardie laughed politely. They did not meet very often now. Hardie was doing too well, Ludlow too badly. Hardie felt guilty about this and, to spare him anguish, Ludlow turned down Hardie’s dinner invitations, ignored his phone calls. He still liked Hardie a great deal.

  They went to Ludlow’s room and sat down. On the bed, Ludlow smiled, trying to put Hardie at ease. “How’s everybody?” Besides Otie, Hardie now had a little girl.

  “Fine, fine. Girl’s in school now. Smart.” His chair squeaked. “Ludlow…I feel funny coming down here…well, look, I got some work for you.”

  Ludlow did not answer. He would not turn it down, whatever it was, but the less gratitude he displayed the better.

  “I don’t like doing you favors, but I know you need all the work you can get. How things been—really?”

  Ludlow told the truth. “You know, man. Little dances, rock bands, a couple records. But I’m living and I’m out.” Hardie and Juanita had been the only people to visit him the several times he had been in the hospital.

  “Well, this is pretty good. You know about the concert?”

  Ludlow nodded. That evening there was a big jazz concert downtown.

  “All I got you was a spot in the jam session. But you oughta get fifty. I wish—” He slapped his thigh. “I wish you had a group and could show them what it’s about. Remember that night—” He faltered, went on: “Remember I said you couldn’t die because then I wouldn’t know what to play?”

  Ludlow nodded. He had gone over that night many times with the doctors.

  “It was true. It always been true and it’ll be true for the next twenty years. It true for me and anybody else playing today.”

  “What time should I get there tonight?”

  “Eight oughta be all right. I don’t know how many numbers you’ll play, but the fifty’s good, don’t you think?”

  Ludlow sighed. “Listen, Hardie, you ain’t got to feel bad because you making money and I ain’t. You deserve to make money. You understand me?”

  Hardie was silent for a full minute, probably recovering from his surprise. “I don’t deserve it more than you do.”

  “Yes, you do. That’s what I want you to understand.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t know what it was—not having no family, or not having no eyes, or something else—but I didn’t grow up learning all the things I should. I mean, the blind home taught me how to eat my food and cross the street, but they left out some things. Maybe it was just that the teachers didn’t know, or even that they knew it but didn’t want to teach it. Or maybe it was just me. But you know what it taken me all this time to learn? To know what people to trust. And if you think that ain’t important for a blind Negro to know, you crazy.” He paused. “Remember what you told me before I married Etta-Sue?”

  “Man, that was a long—”

  “I do. You told me to make sure the girl was with me. I made the same God damn mistake two times. Two times! Well, I don’t need no more lessons.” He paused. “How many girls you went with before you married Juanita?”

  Hardie answered with a laugh.

  “How come you knew to pick the right one outa that mob?”

  “I never did expect to get married. I figured all women for con artists.”

  Ludlow nodded. “Yeah. And I always wanted to get married, to have a family and somebody to care about me. Why?” He smiled. “Go ask my doctors. They got files on the shit in my head.” He laughed, put his hands on his knees and stood up. “You got to go now. I want to practice.”

  Hardie took a deep breath. “Listen, Ludlow, why don’t you ride up home and have dinner?”

  “It’s your Christmas, man.” He shook his head. “It ain’t mine.” He smiled. “But thanks anyways.” He went to the door and opened it.

  Hardie sighed and got up, coming to Ludlow’s side. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  He closed the door, went to the dresser and
put together his instrument. In the bell was a dent and the finish was grainy. Before he began his warm-up scales he thought again about the things he had said to Hardie and smiled. They had sounded as good in the air as they had in his head.

  * * *

  —

  THAT EVENING after the concert, as he waited backstage for Hardie, who was going to drive him uptown, a girl introduced herself as Harriet Lewis and asked if she could interview him for her college newspaper. Surprised and a little flattered that someone, even a college girl, should still want to interview him, he submitted to her questioning. It was five minutes before he realized she was a Negro, and then it was not her accent (Midwestern and faintly Jewish) which told him, but instead her knowledge of the Southside of Chicago. After that he attempted to answer her too-serious questions much more seriously—and to ask some questions himself. He found out she was twenty-one and decided that she probably had more problems than he wanted to bother with, even though it would have been nice to make love to someone on Christmas. They talked ten minutes more, until Hardie came for him, and when she had finished questioning him about his creative processes and the true nature of improvisation, she took his address and promised to send him a copy of her article.

  Ludlow and Hardie did not speak until they left the northern end of the park. “That little girl is how old? Seventeen?”

  “You ever hear from Etta-Sue, Ludlow?” Hardie had known he was thinking about New Marsails.

  Ludlow shook his head. “Why should I?”

  “No reason.”

  “Sometimes I do wonder what the little girl is doing. Sometimes I almost send her a card or a present. Then I say—hell, you dropped that behind you, and ain’t no running back to pick it up.”

  Sometimes too he wondered what had happened to Ragan, where she had gone, whether or not she had actually given birth to a child, what it had been and what she had done with it. He wondered if she had married, and what kind of man her husband might be. In the beginning, it had been painful to think about Ragan because he had still loved her. Finally he had not loved her anymore and could not even understand how he had ever loved her at all. Now this was what puzzled him most. He knew if ever he understood why he had fallen in love with Ragan, he would have discovered something important about himself.

  Hardie made a turn and stopped. “Ludlow?…”

  “Forget it, man. It ain’t Christmas every day. They all ain’t this bad.” He laughed, noticing a bitter edge to it, and left the car quickly.

  That night, hating himself as he did it, he dictated, to a sleepy and slightly drunk desk clerk, a short note to his daughter. The day after Christmas he woke up and dressed early enough to retrieve and destroy it before it had been mailed.

  2

  ONE AFTERNOON a month later, Miss Harriet Lewis knocked at his door, interrupting his practice. Instead of asking her inside, he put on his coat and took her to his diner for a cup of coffee. Walking beside her, he wondered why he had not wanted to be alone with her.

  They sat at the end of the counter nearest the kitchen and she read what she had written about him. It was strange to listen to his words being spoken by someone else. When she finished, she asked him if he approved.

  “I really sound like that?”

  “I hope so.” She paused, then asked, “How’ve you been?”

  He remembered she had asked this earlier. “All right.” He sipped his coffee. In the kitchen, the cooks argued in Chinese, more like singing than shouting.

  “I didn’t interrupt you, did I?” She sounded guilty.

  “From what?”

  “Practicing.”

  He shook his head. “I was almost finished.” One of the Chinese had stomped by them, heading down the counter. The other screamed after him.

  “How you been since Christmas?” He could not understand why he found it so hard to talk to her.

  “I’ve been studying for my finals.”

  He smiled. “They on the creative process? You sure that don’t got nothing to do with hair?”

  “No.” She laughed at the joke. “I think maybe I should’ve mailed you the article.” Her voice was flat.

  “Why?” He knew the answer already.

  “Because you obviously don’t want to be bothered with me.” She was not angry; she had stated a fact.

  “It ain’t that, Miss Lewis. I just don’t know what the hell to say to you. It been a long time since I was twenty-one—and I ain’t never been to college.”

  “Oh.”

  He could tell nothing from the one word. “You know I got a girl, a daughter almost your age—seventeen?”

  “Oh?” He knew she was merely pretending interest. “Where is she?”

  He shrugged. “Probably down South. I left her mama when she was a baby.” He wondered why he had blurted this. He waited for her reply, but there was none. “Your tests, they hard?”

  “Do you want me to go back to school now?”

  He was surprised to discover he could not answer.

  “Can you get back to your hotel?”

  “Listen, Miss Lewis—”

  Suddenly she was very angry. “I know very well how old you are—exactly thirty-five years, ten months! So I don’t have to be warned.”

  “All right, Miss Lewis. I was—”

  “And I’m not begging you to sleep with me either. So what are you frightened of?”

  “All right, Miss Lewis.” He put down his cup.

  “And for Christ’s sake, don’t call me Miss Lewis!” She turned away. “Can I have another cup of coffee please?” She was speaking to one of the Chinese, who a moment later slid the saucer across the counter.

  For what seemed like a long while they sat in silence, the cooks squabbling behind the counter. At first Ludlow tried in vain to think of something to say to her. Finally he decided he would say nothing at all. He had enough problems without getting involved with a twenty-one-year-old college girl.

  Her cup clinked into its saucer one last time and she got up, rustled into her overcoat, opened and snapped her purse. “I have to catch a train.”

  He tilted his head. “Thanks for bringing the newspaper.”

  “I better catch my train.” Then before he realized she was not moving away, a clear, clean scent came close and a kiss popped lightly on his cheek. Her heels faded into the shouting of the Chinese, who was at the other end of the counter.

  Ludlow shook his head, wondering why the wrong girls always fell in love with him.

  3

  SHE RETURNED two days later, a Saturday, saying that she had been in the neighborhood visiting her uncle, had dropped by simply to say hello. He was suspicious of her, but she seemed so calm, so relaxed that he soon put aside his suspicions. She sat in a chair in his hotel room talking about her schoolwork as if he were interested. Just as he was relaxing, she got up and left.

  The following Friday she knocked at his door again. She had been given two tickets to a concert of West African music, and she had thought he might want to go. He was not working that evening; they ate at his diner, and went to the concert. Afterward she brought him to his hotel, shook his hand and hailed a taxi.

  Not long after that he was afflicted with some kind of stomach ailment which made him vomit, gave him diarrhea and kept him in bed for several days. As if she somehow knew or had even poisoned his system herself, she happened to be visiting her uncle and dropped by. Finding him sick, she was out of his room and back in a matter of minutes with medicine and magazines, which she read aloud to him the entire afternoon.

  In the next two months she visited too often for him to think her visits were at all coincidental. But he did not know how to stop her. Somehow he sensed that if he told her not to come, she would agree, but that a few days later she would be knocking on his door, apologizing for bothering him and giving some good
excuse for being there. The only thing for him to do would be to remain cold and distant until her infatuation subsided. This he did, but it did not work. She seemed not at all disheartened; if anything, she was more buoyant than ever.

  Finally, one day just as spring was taking full possession of the air, and she had visited him, happening to have been to a dentist in the neighborhood, he decided to end the game.

  They had stopped in an air-conditioned bar for beer. He sipped his, the foam tickling his upper lip, then put it down. “Okay. How come you doing all this?”

  “All what?” She had been humming with the jukebox.

  “How come all this visiting?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No.” He may have, but wanted her to say it.

  She sipped her beer. “I decided to be in love with you. What about you?”

  “No, ma’am! I don’t love you. I don’t even want to love you.”

  “All right. Can I have another beer?”

  He reached out, found and gripped her arm. “What you want from me?” And then, before she could even answer: “I ain’t got nothing for you.”

  “That doesn’t matter, though it’d be very nice if you loved me. But it doesn’t matter. I have something to give you.”

  He let go her arm. “But why me?”

  “You’re the only man I feel like loving at the moment.”

  His face must have shown that he was bewildered by her. She went on: “Four years ago, when I came east to college, I was pretty sure I’d go back home this June and marry some dentist my parents’d picked out for me. You know, dentists are very big in the middle class this year—they make such a steady income. But when I got here, I met a few of those potential dentists, and now, if I know anything, it’s that I don’t want to marry some respectable little colored boy who went to an Ivy League school and hopes if he makes straight A’s and enough money pulling teeth, his skin’ll be white one morning when he wakes up.” She stopped, laughed. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for a girl to go around not loving anyone at all. It gets her out of practice.” She sighed. “So when I met you last Christmas, I thought about it for a month and then decided I’d love you since you obviously need to be loved by someone.”