Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (53 page)

Bennett looked at me, but I said nothing. Christopher winked broadly at me, and I suppose they all saw it, but they didn't—nor did I—know how to react. Barbara
began passing around the drinks. Ken looked at Barbara for a moment, shrewdly. Barbara brought a drink to me.

“Well, it just seems to me,” said Ken, finally, “that that's maybe putting it too simply—like you're blaming the white man for everything.”

“I'm not blaming you,” Christopher said. “You had a good thing going for you. You'd done already killed off most of the Indians and you'd robbed them of their land and now you had all these blacks working for you for nothing and you didn't want no black cat from Walla Walla being able to talk to no black cat from Boola Boola. If they could have talked to each other, they might have figured out a way of chopping off
your
heads, and getting rid of
you.
” He smiled. “Dig it.” He took a swallow of his drink. “So you gave us Jesus. And told us it was the
Lord's
will that we should be toting the barges and lifting the bales while you all sat on your big, fat, white behinds and got rich.” He took another sip of his drink, and squatted on his heels in the middle of the floor. “That's what happened, and you all is still the same. You ain't changed at all, except to get worse. You want to tell me different?”

“I don't think I want to tell you anything,” said Bennett, and turned back to the window. “I don't think you can listen.”

“Try me,” Christopher said, and he winked at me again.

“My,” said Barbara's mother, and patted her husband's knee, “you don't have to talk to
us
this way. You don't know how many colored friends we
have
down where we come from. If you ever get down that way, why we'd be happy to make you welcome. Why, Barbie can tell you. We don't care about the color of a person's
skin—we never have done! My daddy would have skinned me alive had he ever heard of me mistreating a colored person, or calling them out of their name. And I never have. I loved my daddy too much. My daddy used to say, God made us
all.
We're
all
here for some reason. Barbie can tell you. Tell him, Barbie.” She had been leaning forward, toward Christopher; now, she leaned back. “Why, Barbie grew up with colored folks. She'll tell you that herself. She looked at me and smiled and sipped her drink. “He'll learn,” she assured me. “He's young.” She looked at her husband, looked at Ken, glanced at Barbara, who was now in the kitchen, on the other side of the bar. “Now, let's just talk about something else. Mr. Proudhammer—where did you go to school?”

Christopher snorted, but delicately, and rose from the floor and joined Barbara in the kitchen. His laugh rang out across the room, then hers. Ken and Bennett and Barbara's father looked toward the kitchen; but they did not move.

“I went to high school,” I said, “here in New York.”

“You didn't go to college? My!”

“And you made it, all right, didn't you?” Bennett asked. “Why, I bet you make more money than I do—I
know
you make more money than I do,” and he chuckled. “And I bet you didn't do it sitting around, feeling sorry for yourself, did you?”

“Hell, no,” Ken said. “He just made his own way. And
anybody
can make his way in this country, no matter
what
color he is.”

I thought, Great God, I'm not going to be able to take this much longer, even if it
is
Barbara's family. And, in a minute, Christopher's going to throw everything in the
kitchen out here on these defenseless heads, and we're all going to end up in jail.

Barbara said, “That's pure bullshit, Ken, and you know it. None of those boys who work for you are going to make their own way, you've seen to that—you've
helped
to see to that—they can't even join a union. So, don't you sit here and talk to Leo as though you had something to do with the fact that Leo's still alive. You didn't have a damn thing to do with it. Leo's tough. That's all. And you're a no-good bastard. I've told you that before.”

“And I've told
you
before,” he said, turning red and wet, “to hold your tongue—to
mind
your tongue in front of your mother.”

“The way,” said Barbara, “that you've always minded yours in front of
me?
Don't give me any of your shit, Ken, I
know
you.”

“Hush, children,” said Mrs. King, “we didn't come here to fight. Why, we're embarrassing Mr. Proudhammer.” And she finished her drink, and set it down; the old girl could drink. I rose to give her a refill. I said, “You're not embarrassing me. But there's no point in pretending that Negroes are treated like white people in this country because they're not, and we all know that.”

“But look at you,” said Ken. “I don't know what you make a year, but I can make a pretty shrewd guess. What have you got to complain about? It seems to me that this country's treated you pretty well. I know a whole lot of white people couldn't afford to live in this apartment, for example—”

“Of course you do,” said Barbara dryly, “and they work for you, too.”

He threw an exasperated look toward the kitchen, but
held his peace, and looked at me. I realized that I was beginning to be angry, but I also realized that it was a perfectly futile anger. I had not been surprised by Christopher, nor had I been in the least surprised by this family. But I was a little surprised by Barbara, who seemed to be paying off old scores. I didn't care at all what these people felt, or thought. Talking to them was a total waste of time. I just wanted them to get loaded on their Bloody Marys and get out of my house. I was a little angry at Barbara for having brought them here at all. And yet, I was aware, with another part of my mind, that Barbara was showing me something—showing me, perhaps, part of the price she had had to pay for me?—and she was, at the same time, exhibiting her credentials to Christopher. This argued an uneasiness on Barbara's part which, again, after all these years, surprised me.

The question had been addressed to me, and so I was compelled to answer it, praying that, then, we could let the matter drop. I said, “You can't imagine my life, and I won't discuss it. I don't make as much money as you think I do, and I don't work as often as I would if I were white. Those are just facts. The point is that the Negroes of this country are treated as none of you would dream of treating a dog or a cat. What Christopher's trying to tell you is perfectly true. If you don't want to believe it, well, that's your problem. And I don't feel like talking about it anymore, and I won't.” I looked at Ken. “This
is
my house.”

They sat in silence, angry themselves now, uneasy, and trapped, and I put on a Billie Holiday record, “Strange Fruit.” Yes, I was being vindictive. I poured myself a refill, and sat down. Mrs. King gave me a reproachful look, but I avoided her eye and lit a cigarette.
Christopher, holding a carton of eggs in his hand, leaned over the bar and smiled and said, “What the man just told you is that you're stuck with your criminal record and he's not going to be an accomplice to it, or let you feel good about it. How do you all like your eggs?”

And yet, surprisingly enough, it turned out not to be such an awful afternoon, after all. Christopher's insolence had released him, and, in a curious way, it had released them. Bennett's pale, vindictive eyes and his busy wet lips conveyed but too vividly what he would have done with Christopher, had he encountered Christopher in his own bailiwick; this not being the case, and since he was now, morally, at least, encircled, he relaxed and proceeded to enjoy the afternoon as though it were a species of vaudeville show and something he would not soon be doing again. Ken, no match for Barbara anyway, contributed anecdotes from their childhood, which Barbara took with wry good grace, and the old lady, knocking back Bloody Marys as though there were no tomorrow, told stories about presidents and governors who had visited her home when she was young. She confessed how upset she had been by Barbara's choice of a career, and said that Barbara got her stubbornness from her father—which transparent fiction seemed to delight the faceless old man. I watched Christopher watching them from the heights of an unassailable contempt, as they became more and more themselves, more and more human, and less and less attractive. They could not know how much they revealed, how pathetic and tawdry they were—this master race. But they were dangerous, too, unutterably so. They knew nothing about themselves at all. I wondered—but idly—how they had got that way; wondered, but from a great distance, as the sun grew paler in my living
room; as Ken grew blander, more shapeless, and by now he was clenching a pipe between his teeth with the energy of the dying; his wife grew more flirtatious, though not with him, exactly; the old lady grew drunker and madder, her husband appeared to be waiting for God knows what dreadful event; and Bennett, licking his nervous lips each time he looked at Christopher, could not have realized that he was a study in lust and bloodlust. But they were not my concern. Christopher was my concern. The problem was how to prevent these Christians from once again destroying this pagan. Barbara sat among her kin, dry and cold, looking very young, and putting me in mind of a living sacrifice. When, at last, they rose to go, and bags and hats and various appurtenances were collected, and the last male left the “little boys' room,” and we stood chatting in the foyer, I had a splitting headache. Barbara now kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Thanks, Leo. I'll talk to you later.” Then, very deliberately, she thanked Christopher, and kissed him, too. I kissed the old lady, because she wanted me to, and shook hands with Elena and the men, said I would be happy to be their guest when I came to Kentucky—“Give us a chance!” the old lady cried. “You'll see we ain't nearly so bad down there as people up North
say
we are!”—and allowed Christopher to walk them to the elevator. I closed the door behind them, and walked back into the living room and stretched out on the floor.

Soon, the door slammed behind Christopher, and he came padding in. He stretched out on the floor beside me, and rubbed his hand over the back of my neck. “Wow! Baby, are they for
real?
” He sat up, clasping his knees. “Damn. They really fucked up. That old lady should be in an asylum some place.” He laughed. “No
wonder Barbara split—she took one look at
them
people and she started making it—she
hauled
ass, baby!” He laughed again, and stretched out on the floor again. “Wow!” Then, “Barbara's tough. I didn't know a white chick could be so tough.”

I said, “She's tough, all right.”

He said, “She's really for real. She's something.” He looked over at me. “You must be tired, Big Daddy. You want to take a nap?”

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

“If they hadn't stayed so long, I was thinking about maybe going to a movie. There's a couple of movies in town I wanted you to see. But, now, I don't think I feel up to it, and I
know
you don't.”

“No,” I said. “I guess I don't.”

He put his head on my chest. I held it there.

“Christopher—something I've been meaning to ask you—what do you want to do?—with your life, I mean.”

He laughed, his head bouncing up and down against my chest.

“I already told you. I want to be an astronaut.”

“Come on. Be serious.”

“I
am
serious. I think I might dig going to the moon—or Mars—you know—”

“Come on. You know that's not about to happen soon. You're going to be earth-bound for awhile. So, what do you want to do on earth while they're figuring out whether or not they're going to let you on the moon?”

“Well”—thoughtfully—“I guess I don't want to spend the rest of my life in that shoe store.” He had a job in a shoe store in Spanish Harlem. “I don't know. I'm a high school dropout, Leo—
you've
heard of cats like me,
who drop out of school? And I've got a record, baby. It's not so easy for me to tell you what I want to do.”

“Well, I think we can fix all the legal shit. But what do you
think
you want to do?”

He was silent. “I could learn a lot just working for you.”

“That's cool. But that's not enough.”

Silence again. His breath came and went against my chest. “Why not? You don't want me to work for you?”

“Come on, now, don't be coy—”

He leaned up, smiling. “What does that word mean—coy?”

“It means that you know damn well that I'll be glad to have you with me all the time, and you just want to hear me say so. That's being coy.”

He grinned. “Oh. Thanks.” He put his head on my chest again. “I don't know, Leo. I want to learn—everything I can. That might sound funny, coming from me, but I really do. But”—he leaned up, looking at me very earnestly—“this is no cop-out, believe me, but—what I really want to learn—it doesn't look like it's being taught. I mean—I don't want to learn all that shit they teach you here. That's not where it's at. I don't want to be like these people. I know kids in the street who know a hell of a lot more than—all those people in school. I don't know—I always feel like they trying to cut my balls off. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.” I put my hand over my forehead.

“You got a headache?”

“A little. It'll go away.”

“Should I get you some aspirin?”

“No. Finish what you were saying.”

“Well. That's it. I like the people in the streets, there's a whole lot of beauty in the streets, Leo, and I'd like to help, I'd like to teach, but somebody's got to teach
me.
”