Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (24 page)

“What did they feed you down the way?” our father asked.

“They fed us on what the pigs didn't want,” said Caleb. “One thing I'll never eat no more in life is hominy grits nor beans nor molasses.” He paused. “They just fed us so we could work, you know—like you feed a mule. And they beat us like that, too.” He looked at me. “Yeah,” he said, and sipped his drink.

“What you figure on doing now?” our father asked carefully, “now that you out?”

“Do?” asked Caleb, gently. “Do? What do I figure on
doing?
Is that what you asked me? Why—I might find me a rich white lady and take a trip to Palm Beach with her—as her chauffeur, you understand, a lot of them white ladies suffer from black fever—or I might get a job in a bank—or I might take over a life insurance company—or, let me see now, there's a lot of money in real estate, there's a whole
lot
of money in that, I might take over a few blocks of houses—or, then, again, I might become an aviator, I've always liked to fly. That's what I'll do,” he said decisively, “I'll fly.”

“You've got to walk,” said our mother, “before you can fly. What do you intend to do while you're walking?”

He looked at her. “Walk,” he said. “Just walk.”

“You've got to eat,” she said, “while you're walking.”

“I can steal,” he said. “I can steal. And I'll be stealing a long time before I get back half of what they stole from me.”

“Well, if you can't,” she said, “steal it back, it don't look like to me there's much point in stealing.”

He was silent. And our father was silent.

“You young, Caleb,” our mother said. “Don't let this stop you. You just make up your mind that you can do anything you want to do.”

“Can I?” he asked. “Is that the truth?”

She refused to falter. “If you make up your mind to it.”

“I see.” He stared at the ceiling. He rose. “And you think that's true for other black boys, too?”

“When we make up our minds,” said our father.

“When we make up our minds,” Caleb shouted, “to
what?
”

“When we make up our minds,” said our mother, “that we just as good as they is. Just as good, just as good, just as good!”

Caleb laughed. He mimicked her. “Just as good! Just as good as
who
—them people who beat my ass and called me nigger and made me eat
shit
and wallow in the dirt like a dog? Just as good as
them?
Is that what you want for me? I'd like to see every single one of them in their graves—in their graves, Mama, that's
right.
And I wouldn't be a white man for all the coals in hell.” He sat down. “I don't know what I'm going to do. I've got to figure it out. Don't worry about me. I won't be a burden on you for long.”

“I ain't worried about you being a burden,” said our mother, “and you know it, so don't you talk to me that way.”

Caleb smiled, and looked at our father. Our father looked into his glass. “I know,” said Caleb, after a very long moment. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm sleepy,” I said. “I'm going to go to bed now. Good-night.”

They watched me as I walked out of the room. “I guess,” I heard my mother say, “that that is a good idea.”

“Leo's got good sense,” said Caleb grimly.

I crawled into the bed. I didn't want to cry. I listened to them. They talked for awhile. Then my father went to the bathroom. He was in the bathroom a long time. I began to be afraid that he was sick. Then I heard water flushing, heard water running, heard him come out. My mother went into the kitchen. Our father and Caleb said
good-night and then Caleb went into the bathroom. Our mother finished in the kitchen and turned out the kitchen lights and the lights in the living room. Then she joined our father and I heard their door close. Caleb was running water for a bath. I fell asleep.

I woke to the sound of weeping. Somebody was weeping, all alone, holding his breath, shaking the bed. I listened, extended, so to speak, in a terror unlike any terror I had known. How he wept! How he wept. And it was as though I were weeping; but it was much worse than that. I knew I could not bear it. I turned and I touched his wet face and I whispered, “Caleb. Please, Caleb. Please don't cry. Tell me what's the matter. Please tell me what's the matter.”

But his chest continued to shake and the tears fell and fell. I did not know what to do. I put my arms around him. I kissed his tears. “Caleb. Please, Caleb”—but I might as well have spoken to a storm.

“Oh, what they did to me. Oh, what they did to me.”

I held him as tightly as I could.

“What did they do to you?”

“Oh. Oh. Oh. Little Leo. Go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep. Then I'll go to sleep.”

He put his arms around me; it was strange to feel that I was
his
big brother now. And he held me so tightly, or, rather, with such an intensity, that I knew, without knowing that I knew it, how empty his arms had been.

“Go to sleep.”

“All right, little brother. You all right?”

“Yes. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

The face against my shoulder was still wet; slowly, it dried. His breathing slowly became calmer—the storm
began to pass. The storm began to pass, that is, out of him; and into me. I could not really see his face in the darkness, but I studied his face in the darkness of my mind. The eyes, the mouth, the nose, the chin, the forehead, the bright, woolly hair; he was much better-looking than I was, he was beautiful; and the world had taken my brother, for no reason at all, and squeezed him like a lemon, taken out his insides and filled him with sawdust, kicked him about as though he were a dirty rag! Never, never, never, I swore it, with Caleb's breath in my face, his tears drying on my neck, my arms around him, would I ever forgive this world. Never. Never. Never. I would find some way to make them pay. I would do something one day to at least one bland, stupid, happy white face which would change that face forever. If they thought that Caleb was black, and if they thought that I was black, I would show them, yes, I would, one day, exactly what blackness was! I swore it. I swore it. I whispered it to Caleb's kinky hair. I cursed God from the bottom of my heart, the very bottom of my balls. I called Him the greatest coward in the universe because He did not dare to show Himself and fight me like a man. I fell into a stormy sleep, and awoke to find myself, like Jacob with the angel, struggling with a very different god, and one yet more tyrannical, the god of the flesh. My brother held me close, and he was terribly excited; his excitement excited me. I was briefly surprised, I was briefly afraid. But there was really nothing very surprising in such an event, and if there was any reason to be afraid, well, then, I hoped that God was watching. He probably was. He never did anything else. I knew, I knew, what my brother wanted, what my brother needed, and I was not at all afraid—more
than I could say for God, who took all and gave nothing: and who paid for nothing, though all His creatures paid. I held my brother very close, I kissed him and caressed him and I felt a pain and wonder I had never felt before. My brother's heart was broken; I knew it from his touch. In all the great, vast, dirty world, he trusted the love of one person only, his brother, his brother, who was in his arms. And I thought, Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll love you, Caleb, I'll love you forever, and in the sight of the Father and the Son and the fucking Holy Ghost and all their filthy hosts, and in the sight of all the world, and I'll sing hallelujahs to my love for you in hell. I stripped both of us naked. He held me and he kissed me and he murmured my name. I was full of attention, I was full of wonder. My brother had never, for me, had a body before. And, in truth, I had never had a body before, either, though I carried it about with me and occasionally experimented with it. We were doing nothing very adventurous, really, we were only using our hands and, of course, I had already done this by myself and I had done it with other boys: but it had not been like this because there had been no agony in it, I had not been trying to give, I had not even been trying to take, and I had not felt myself, as I did now, to be present in the body of the other person, had not felt his breath as mine, his sighs and moans, his quivering and shaking as mine, his journey as mine. More than anything on earth, that night, I wanted Caleb's joy. His joy was mine. When his breathing changed and his tremors began, I trembled, too, with joy, with joy, with joy and pride, and we came together. Caleb held me for a long time. Then he whispered, against my ear, “You all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I'm all right. Are you?”

“Yes. Yes.” Then, “You still love me? You not mad at me?”

“Why should I be mad at you?” Then I said, “Yes, I love you, Caleb, more than anybody in the whole wide world. You believe me?”

After a moment, he said, “Yes. I believe you.”

“Give us a kiss,” I said.

He kissed me.

“Now, go to sleep.”

He kissed me again. “Good-night, little Leo. I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“But you haven't got to do without me,” I said, “that's just what I just told you. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

And we fell asleep.

I suppose we were both utterly worn out, drained dry, for we did not wake up until the early afternoon. I peeked out of the window, which faced the wall of the house next door. It was both sunny and cold. It looked like a nice day, and it felt like a nice day. The radios were going, a church service here, a jazz band there, and the irrepressible voices, and the sound and smell of cooking. It was familiar, it was safe, and both Caleb and I were reluctant to move.

“It's cold out,” I said.

“And how you know that?”

“I looked,” I said. “You'll know it, too, you put your butt out of this bed.”

“What you want to do today?”

“I don't know. Anything you want to do.”

We listened to the voices of our parents in the living room.

“I just feel lazy,” Caleb said. He lit a cigarette. “I just feel like turning over and going back to sleep.”

“Then you won't be able to sleep tonight. But suit yourself. Can I have a puff off your cigarette?”

He made a brief, astonished movement, then handed me the cigarette, watching me. “You smoking?”

I gave him back the cigarette. “Just sometimes. With the other guys.”

“No wonder you don't grow,” he said.

“I don't think I'll ever grow very big. But if you don't want me to smoke, I'll stop.”

“Well, I don't think smoking will do you any good.”

“All right.”

Caleb smoked in silence for awhile. I watched his profile and I watched the smoke. I put my head, so to speak, under his wing, and he held me. Then he put out his cigarette, and moved, slapping me on the behind. “Come on. Let's get up. I'll take you to the show.” And he found his shorts, and mine, and put his on, and walked into the bathroom. When he came out, he pulled the covers off me and we fought over the covers, holding our breath, and laughing. We wrestled each other around the room, and our mother yelled, “Are you two finally getting out of bed? You ought to be ashamed of your big, black, lazy selves!”

“Big, black, lazy selves,” laughed Caleb to himself; I laughed, too. Caleb yelled, “It ain't
me,
Mama. It's Leo.
I'm
up. I
been
up!”

“I'll bet. You two just better make yourselves presentable and come on out here, if you want to eat today.”

Since Caleb was tickling me with one hand and sparring
with the other, I was forced to my feet, and spun out of the door and down the hall. “He's out of bed, Mama,” Caleb cried jubilantly. “I don't know if
he's
hungry, but
I
am.”

“Declare,” our mother grumbled, “you both too old to be carrying on like this. It's your father you take after, it surely can't be me.” She was in the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee, Caleb? It ain't good to eat just as soon as you get out of bed. And do you know what time it is?”

“I'd like some coffee, Mama, please. What time is it?”

“It's past two o'clock in the afternoon, that's what time it is. Leo, don't you come out of that bathroom until you take your bath.”

“Is it two o'clock in the afternoon?” Caleb cried. “My! We sure must have had ourselves a time last night.”

“Keep it up,” she grunted. “Keep it up.”

“Didn't you have a time, old lady?” asked Caleb, in the kitchen now.

“You stop aggravating your mother,” our father cried, “and come on out here.”

“Why here I am,” Caleb said, and I heard him walk into the living room.

“Yes. To aggravate
me
now, I suppose.”

“Why, there's just no pleasing nobody in this house this morning,” said Caleb pleasantly, and turned on the radio.

By the time I got dressed and joined them, he had found a station which was playing Calypso, and had one arm around our mother and was waltzing her, half laughing, half protesting, across the floor. “Lord,” she said, “now why do I have to be the mother of the
one
nigger in the whole world ain't got no sense of rhythm—now, look, Caleb”—and they both broke up, laughing, and they tried
it again. Across the floor, a proud, hincty, mocking prance; then they had to turn together and meet each other and then they had to part; and then they had to meet each other again, and come across the floor, again. “Lord, Caleb,” and they both laughed; and the number ended, and they both bent double with laughter. Our father laughed, too. “That ain't the way,” he said, “we did it in the islands.” Another number started.

“Come on,” said Caleb, “and show us how you did it in the islands, man.”