Five Smooth Stones (33 page)

That night, following the talk in the recreation hall, Suds said in the middle of a Latin session: "You have real strong objections to my going with you tomorrow? I sort of got the idea you didn't want anyone."

David looked across the card table that was now a fixture in the center of his room, and caught something close to wistfulness on Sudsy's plump face.

"Hell, no. Come on. I just didn't want a whole gang." With Suds it so obviously was not an intent to nursemaid him. Which was one of the reasons, he thought, that he was so fond of Suds. No one had warned him before he came out of New Orleans that some of the whites would have an attitude so damned protective it made a man feel like a fool, increased his divisive race consciousness fully as much as any outright or overt insult. It was as though the color of his skin was like the plaster casts he had worn as a child that had made people want to help him up and down steps he'd rather tackle alone. Suds at least didn't make him feel that way.

On the way to Cincinnati the next afternoon he thought that if the owner of the Calico Cat turned out to be a stinker, well, he was a stinker and that would be that, and the only thing to do about it would be to play the hell out of the piano and stay out of his way. It wasn't anything he could talk about with Suds because this was a roadway in his life not even Suds, much less any of the others, could ever walk with him. To these white kids, stinkers didn't come along very often, and when they did, the kids weren't particularly involved. Hate and fear were bad things they read about in books, or apprehended as forces exterior to themselves.

Crow in the North, what David had seen of it, seemed to him more repugnance than anything else, a drawing away, a man saying, "O.K., O.K., so a squid has nice tender meat— but you still can't pay me to eat it." Except in the industrial areas; there, he always thought, the toughest fight would come because in the industrial centers Crow really was fear, a dollar-and-cents fear that made a black skin not only repugnant but menacing, a threat to full bellies and car payments and mortgages. But Gramp had said, "Hell, a man's got to trust someone. Man can't quit living."

A fellow had to accept the friendship of whites like Tom and Suds and Chuck, but holding back a little because sooner or later there would come a time when the ground on which he was walking would not be the ground on which they were walking and between them there would be a bottomless chasm.

He sighed, turned halfway round in his seat beside Suds, and said, "Hey, Stoopid. How about a little review?
Verendus, verenda, verendum—"

"Oh, gosh!" groaned Suds. "They made Simon Legree the wrong color."

***

When he met the owner of the Calico Cat David thought it was too bad you couldn't see the color of his eyes for the dollar signs in them. Small eyes, set close together, a small mouth; a small man, he thought, just a plumb small man in every way. The club, larger than what is usually called a "piano bar," was dim, almost deserted in the hour before cocktail and pre-dinner drink time, with a smell, real or imagined, of last night's smoke and stale drinks. Three men were standing at the bar, drinking; a fourth was sitting on a stool nursing a drink and a protracted hangover. The piano, a baby grand, faced the bar, and small tables lined each wall and were clustered along the center of the room. Suds came in with him but slipped quietly into a chair at a table just inside the entrance.

"You the piano player?" It was the owner's only greeting as he walked toward them from the bar.

What if I'm not? What if I said, "No. I just came in for a drink?" David's hand closed tightly over change in his pocket; he felt the muscles along the back of his shoulders tense and threw his shoulders back, squaring them, easing the tightness.

"Right. You wanted to hear me."

"Yeah. Chick said you were O.K. You know the kind of place this is? If you don't, lemme tell you. We've got a reputation all over the state—all over the Midwest, as far as that's concerned—for barroom piano. Blues, boogie, ragtime. We've had Meade Lux, Johnson, cats like that. Something square now and then for the tourists if they ask for it, but nothing fancy. None of this new stuff. It's O.K., and I like it, but we'd lose our clientele, our regulars. Understand?"

"Yes." David looked at the piano. "Nice instrument."

"See what you can do with it."

David slid along the bench, went through the usual routine motions of a man trying out a piano for the first time, striking A, hitting a B-flat chord, then others. He swung into a boogie, gently at first, muting it, then gradually built it up until he was rocking it, and the man who was sitting at the bar looking like a hung-over mummy began to come to life, and the bartender stopped whatever he had been doing and stood still, listening. Before he went into a blues, David looked down the room at Suds, saw the round face grinning encouragement, and caught the circled thumb and forefinger of approval.

He struck the first chords of "Michigan Water," and began to hum. He wished now he'd picked some other number besides this Morton favorite, because for the life of him he couldn't play it without singing it, and he didn't want to showboat: " 'Michigan Water... hmm... tastes like sherry wine—'"

The boss of this place might be a drip, but he knew the 'kind of piano music he wanted. David could tell that by the numbers he asked for after "Michigan Water." One of the men standing at the bar had been getting ready to leave when David entered. Now he turned back and ordered another drink, and stood, back against the bar, drinking slowly. That would do it, thought David. Any time a musician or a band could hold 'em in the place, keep 'em drinking, they were set. But he wasn't giving this guy an afternoon's bar profit. After ten or fifteen minutes, he stopped playing and waited quietly.

The owner came toward the piano, jerked his head in the direction of a door at the back of the room. "Come into the office." David followed him into a small room that held an unbelievably cluttered desk and two chairs. The wall behind the desk seemed to be almost completely covered with glossy prints of musicians, some of whom David recognized.

"Have a drink?"

David shook his head. "Thanks, no."

"Teetotal?"

"Not quite."

"You'll drink Coke or Seven-Up here if you order during working hours. Too bad you're so young. But you look old enough, so I think we can get away with it. You fixed up with the local?"

"I will be if you need me. At least for part-time work on a transfer."

"O.K. You get scale and half the kitty. I'm taking a chance."

The muscles of David's face stiffened, and he broke the stiffening with a smile. "Scale and the kitty," he said, and wondered at himself. No one had ever tried this on him before; an employer didn't bargain with a punk kid over what he'd get for driving a laundry truck or mowing a lawn or waiting on customers in a neighborhood grocery store. That had been Gramp talking:
Mebbe they ain't going to treat you like a man, but don't you never forget you is one.
He could

hear Gramp on the phone:
I'm sorry, I'm sure sorry, but I can't do no job like that for no money like that.
And, another time, exploding to him at dinnertime:
Uncle Toms! Hell, it ain't the bigmouths and the poor mouths and the crazy acting fools that's the real Uncle Toms. It's the guys trying to get in good with the whites by selling theirselves cheap, splittin' scale under the table, stuff like that. Man has to do it sometimes. Man has to live. I done it. Don't never think I hasn't. But I never done it jes for Li'l Joe Champlin. And I never done it jes so's some white would think good of me.
A man stood alone in a white world, alone in a circle drawn around him by white hands, but if he stood tall enough and firm enough, the time would come when the circle wouldn't hold him. Gramp hadn't known that; Gramp's circle had been forever, but no circle was forever.

Now David, remembering Gramp, waited.

"Scale and all the kitty, eh? That's not the way we do it here, boy."

The "boy" might have been just because he was young, might have been used even if he'd been white; the guy wasn't a Southerner; by his speech he was a New Yorker, but it bolstered David's determination.

"Sorry. That's not the way I do it. Kitty's the musician's."

He could feel the man's eyes on his face, met them squarely with his own, and smiled again. "Nice piano," he said. "Nice place. Sorry we can't get together."

He had crammed his scarf into his pocket when he sat down to play; now he pulled it out and put it around his neck, turning to leave. Suddenly the other man laughed, a short, staccato bark.

"I'll be damned. I'll be Goddamned. O.K. Scale and the kitty, and give me a 'Michigan Water' like that once a night. Get a contract from the union and bring it in Thursday night. You'll play Fridays and Saturdays. You going to get independent about the hours?"

"If they suit the union, they'll suit me."

The owner followed him out, stopped at the bar. "Sure you won't have a drink?"

David shook his head. "Thanks, no," he said again. He couldn't have walked in and up to the bar and ordered a drink even if he'd been older, not without trouble, and he wasn't drinking with the boss, accepting a temporary-customer status as a special favor. The hell with the guy. Just let him get at that piano and then let him alone and they'd get along fine. There was a hollow white-black-yellow ceramic cat crouched on top of the piano, winking one green eye, and as he passed it, David winked back. Suds was standing at the door, waiting for him, his plump face as furrowed as its contours would allow.

Outside, David said: "It's all set. I start Friday. Mind if we look up Nehemiah's uncle? So I can get straight with the local? It may take some finagling."

"The guy give you any trouble?"

"They always do. Wanted to split the kitty. My grandfather has a saying, 'You can't fault a man for trying.'"

"Was he—" Suds stopped, embarrassed.

"Sure. Sure, Sudsy. It's standard. But no more so than most. Look, let's eat first, huh?"

Suds was getting close to that ground on the edge of the chasm, and it was ground white feet could not tread safely, ground on which he did not want to linger, not with Sudsy. He liked the guy too well, and the reason he liked him, he guessed, was that Sudsy never seemed to be making a big fat effort to be friends, trying hard, like most of them did. Eventually, thought David, it was their damned trying that got a man down.

CHAPTER 26

The first night they played at the Calico Cat, David drove to Cincinnati with Hunter Travis beside him in Sutherland's car, leaving Suds sniffling morosely in his room with what David called a "fresh cold."

"It's not 'fresh,' " snapped Suds. "It's the same one. It just gets coy and goes into hiding every now and then."

"If it was me and I didn't check in at the infirmary it would be O.K.," said David self-righteously. "But your old man's a doctor, and that makes it stupid."

"I went this afternoon. They gave me a shot and some stuff and told me to come back Monday. I'll wait till I go home Thanksgiving and the old man can check me through the clinic." He blew his nose, said "Aa-ah, hell!" and began coughing. When the spell was over he said: "Maybe I'll get to stay home a few extra days. Anyhow, if I stay on campus I can study tonight and tomorrow. Andrus has been giving me the business. And Beanie called me 'Clifton' after class today, and that's bad."

"It's not right. Gosh, you push me uphill in math and slide down yourself."

"Don't ever make a real good grade for Beanie. Stay mediocre because it's murder if you slip."

David was glad of Hunter's company on the trip. He was always glad of Hunter's company at any time, although he was just beginning to shake off the feeling that Hunter was, somehow, in a class by himself, not above but beyond him. The gradual discovery that Hunter Travis was warmly human, that he was not aloof or withdrawn but merely self-contained, had been one of the most satisfying experiences of his freshman year. "Sure taught me not to jump at conclusions," he told the Prof during summer vacation. "He's a brain, a real brain, but he doesn't make any big thing about it."

On this Friday of David's first night of playing, Hunter was catching a lift to Cincinnati for a night train to New York to meet his mother and father, due the next day from Europe. David wondered if he should envy that. No, it sure as hell was better to have a home to go to that you knew was always there and a family that stayed put, even if that family was only a grandfather.

"Are you jittery?" asked Hunter when they were halfway to Cincinnati.

"You mean about playing tonight? Gosh, no. Hadn't thought about it. Guess I should be. I've been too busy worrying about that phony I.D. card, and afraid of losing out."

"Mind if I write a story about you, chum?"

"Just don't call me by my right name."

"You're an interesting character. Could be you're an anachronism."

"Lay off—"

"Well, you are." Hunter stretched his legs out under the dashboard, plunged his hands in his pockets, looking, thought David, like a damned ad for college clothes for the modern young man. "For one thing," Hunter went on, "you're all Negro. Or mostly."

David laughed. "Just call me lucky."

"Luckier than I am, anyhow. That's what I mean, though. You were being sarcastic when you said that about being lucky. But you weren't being, well, fed up and bitter."

"And that makes me interesting?"

"Definitely. Guys like Simmons and Dunbar are a dime a dozen among us, David. If you don't know that by now, you'll learn it every year you stay away from home."

"You sound ninety years old."

"Perhaps I am. I guess it's one of the things that happen to you when you're born and grow up with a foot on each side of the fence."

"Suppose I was what you call 'fed up and bitter.' Wouldn't change anything, would it? I'd still be a Negro here and a nigger at home—and here, too, sometimes. You've got the wrong slant, buddy. I don't aim to relax and enjoy it, like the gal who gets raped. I just figure that the good Lord wanted David Champlin in a black skin for some reason. If He hadn't I'd have a white skin. Sooner or later I'll find out the reason."