The Last Worthless Evening (5 page)

Willie wanted to hit him. Or his body did; but he does not believe in it, so what Willie wanted to do, wanted to be allowed to do, was tell Percy, loudly and articulately and for a long time, that he was full of shit. Willie wanted to be a civilian, wanted Percy to be one too. Even if, as civilians, Percy were Willie's boss. Willie could tell him what he had to say, and quit his job. Yet there in the club, and aboard ship, or
any
where, in or out of uniform, Percy was not Willie's boss, only a senior officer, and still he constricted Willie as surely as a straitjacket; and Willie had to yield to the constriction, even help it with his own will. He was breathing deeply and his tight blouse showed each breath; the skin of his face was taut over his cheekbones and jaw, and his nostrils widened with his breathing. For his mouth was closed and I knew from his jaw and the muscle in front of his ear that his teeth were tightly pressed together, his tongue heavy and strong behind them, a wild animal he wanted to set free.

“Willie, we weren't allowed to say that word in our home. My big brother did. Just once. Name's Boyd. He was maybe fifteen, sixteen. Big old country boy. My daddy didn't scold him. No sir. And Boyd was a bit too big, too old, for a spanking. My daddy didn't slap him either. Or shake him till his head wanted to come loose, like he did to me once when he thought I lied to him. I did lie, but not as much as he thought. Had to do with some car trouble and getting home late from being out with a girl. No sir, Willie. My daddy didn't say a word to Boyd. We were at supper. He put down his fork and got up from where he was sitting, at the head of the table, there in the kitchen. He went to Boyd's chair. Boyd was sitting at one side of the table, next to me. We had a big family, three boys on one side of the table, I was the youngest, and three girls on the other side. I saw it coming. Boyd didn't. He was working on his supper and maybe thought Daddy was going to piss or something. Daddy took hold of Boyd's chair and pulled it straight back—with one hand—and turned it, so he was looking down at Boyd. All I could see was Boyd's back and Daddy's face and shoulders, but I could feel it in Boyd's spine, coming at me like a radio signal: let me tell you, he knew now. Daddy pulled him up from the chair with his left hand and turned him so his back was to the wall. I guess so Boyd wouldn't fall on me and my plate, waste all that food. Maybe break my nose. Then he hit him. With his fist, Willie. Coming up from way down. Sounded like a bat hitting a softball. Not quite a baseball, but a new hard softball. Old Boyd hit the wall and went down on the floor. He could still see and hear, but not much, and he sure as hell wasn't about to move. ‘Boyd,' Daddy said, ‘we don't say that word in this house. You want to talk like poor white trash, you know where you can find them. Maybe they'll even take you in.' Then he went back to his chair and finished his supper. Old Boyd got up and went on to bed. And that man—my daddy—went to school for seven years. That's it. Seventh-grade education. After that he stayed home and worked with his daddy on the farm.”

Then Percy smiled and, oblivious of Willie's glare, his taut face, held Willie's bicep.

“Willie, I bet anytime old Boyd starts to say that word his jaw shuts him up, it starts hurting so bad.” Maybe then he noticed Willie's face. He withdrew his hand, and looked at me, a friendly look, and at Willie again. “Hell, you know what I'm trying to say. A Southerner—a
real
one, mind you, not one of them no-counts doesn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and doesn't respect anybody or anything because he doesn't even respect himself, but a
real
Southerner—respects the South. Loves the South. And that means”—he looked at me—“Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis,
Mo
bile—” Then he winked at me, smiled, lightly punched my rigid arm, and said: “We don't count Mi
ami
.”

His right hand with the drink swept away from me, past Willie's chest, as though turning Percy's head to face Willie. Willie gazed into his eyes. Gazed, not glared, and I believed (and still do) that Willie was seeing sharply every detail of Percy's face, hearing every inflection of his voice, and was also seeing and feeling too the years he had been carried and shoulder-pushed, then crawled and then walked as a Negro in America, and seeing as well the years beyond these minutes with Percy, the long years ahead of him and Louisa and Jimmy and his children still to come.

“And Rome and Lafayette,” Percy said. “All the little towns Yankees like to poke fun at, little towns with decent people making do. And the farms and hills and swamps and, by God, mountains. But Willie—” Again he raised his glass, pointed the forefinger at Willie's nose or mouth or between his eyes. “What the Southerner respects most, and that's why we took on the Yankees in a war, is the individual. The individual as part of a whole way of life. We respect a man's right to work for his family, put a roof over their heads, whether it's a Goddamn mansion or a little old shotgun house on a patch of ground wouldn't make a decent-size parking lot. And to raise his kids as he sees fit. Believe it or not, and by God I hope I'm helping you believe it, the Southerner most of all wants to leave people alone. And be left alone. Hell, that's why my family and everybody I know down there's always voted Republican. Tell you something else too, since we've gone this far. Slavery was a bad thing. Everybody knows that. But there's something not many Yankees know. Your slave was not mistreated. Why in hell would a man whip or starve the people that kept him rich? Hell, those old boys sent their sons to the War Between the States, but not their slaves. No sir. The slave was a valuable piece of
prop
erty. You see what I mean?”

“Yes sir,” Willie said. He had not spoken in so long that I was surprised, and expectant, and I watched his mouth and waited. His voice was soft and respectful, and still was when he said: “We Americans have always placed a high value on property.”

Percy was confused. The words themselves were sarcastic, and Percy's lips straightened and were tight and thin. But Willie's voice must have changed the meaning of the words in Percy's sour-mashed brain. His lips eased into their drooping pucker, then spread to a smile.

“There you go,” he said. “Then they were free and that was an awful mess.
Awful
. Lynchings,
bull
ying. I'll tolerate the opinion of nearly any man, and even the action he takes to back it up. Depending on the action. But I can't stand a man who has to join with others, get help with his dirty work. I would personally shoot any KKK son of a bitch showed up with his gang of walking bedsheets. Shoot him dead center in his Goddamn hood and not even read the newspaper next day to see who the son of a bitch was. But we got past Black Reconstruction. And into a new century. Now we're over halfway through it. And it'll be good in the South. For your people. I can promise you that. Make bet on it. Because people like me and Gerry here
know
the Negrahs. You can't send them up North—I know, I know, they had damn good reason to leave home. But it doesn't work. Negrahs in a Northern urban environment. It hasn't worked, and it won't. What did they get? No money, and raising their children in Goddamn ghettos. Bad as it still is down home, a Negrah man can work for a little house to live in, have him a little yard for his children. And how many times, Gerry”—he only glanced at me—“you seen a Negrah daddy taking his boy down a country road, going fishing? Bamboo poles. Or going hunting? I don't think a Negrah man can walk down a city street up North, him and his boy carrying shotguns. It's going to work, Goddammit. Gradual integration. Starting with the little kids, the first-graders. Because those little white kids' daddies, like me and Gerry, and
our
daddies, we
know
the Negrahs. We've worked with them, we've
played
with them—”

He paused. He had not finished the sentence. It hung there in the middle of our triangle, its pitch still raised for more words, but they did not come; we stood suspended in silence, in a sense of incompletion, as though none of us could speak or even move until Percy finished the sentence, lowered his pitch to lead to the period that would allow us to do more than simply breathe. I did not know where to look. My eyes settled on Percy's ribbons: he had a Distinguished Flying Cross. I looked at the two and a half gold bars on his shoulder boards. We all lit cigarettes, Percy holding his Zippo for us, an old one with raised flier's wings on its worn surface, the color of a dime from the first march of them.

“Well,” he said. His smile to Willie was tentative. He held the smile, looking at Willie's face; but his eyes now were like those of a man studying a statue, trying to know from the bronze eyes and mouth and nose and jaw what sort of man the artist had sculpted: to know if he was wise, courageous in battle, a lover of women; to know whether or not he would be a good man to drink with; to know what voices were most constant in his mind.

“Well, gentlemen. Willie—” He nodded to Willie. “Gerry—” He turned his face and nodded to me. “I'm confronted with a glass has more ice than Jack Daniel's in it. I've enjoyed our talk. Now I'll go see the real highest-ranking man at the party. That portly bartender.”

He put his glass in his left hand and extended the right to Willie. Who took it. I watched Willie's knuckles and fingers. He firmly shook Percy's hand. Then the hand came to me and I did too.

“I hope we'll chat again,” Percy said. “All it takes. More talks like this one.”

Then he was gone. And you know what? Not only had he drunk enough to be forgiven his babble, but it didn't matter anyway. Not to Percy. For he would have no remorse next morning.
This
morning, ten hours ago. I know he did not wake, as I have so many times, as you have a few times, and lie in his bunk while the party's sounds and images were first blurred, then distinct, chronological even, until he remembered Willie and thought:
Oh my God I can't believe I
— No. He woke and remembered Willie and he was glad, even grateful to himself or God, that finally he had talked to Willie. He had been an officer and a (Southern) gentleman. He had given much of his evening to a young Negro officer from the ship's company. (Had the flight surgeon and the personnel officer in the Air Group had their share of him too, on other, earlier evenings?) He was a Navy pilot. He had distinguished himself in the air over Korea. He was proudly ready at any moment to climb into his cockpit and be catapulted into his final flight to Moscow. Last night he had left his jet-pilot friends, their unity so true and deep that, to an observer, it resembles love. He had left them to talk to the colored officer, the Negro, the Negrah, and to say that Willie was not as singular as he appeared, among the Caucasian faces and white uniforms. To say that he, Percy, with his Georgian speech, was not an enemy. That no Southerner, simply because he was a Southerner, was convicted. That all the evidence was not in; that the color of a man's flesh did not touch Percy's heart; and the place of a man's birth and childhood should not touch Willie's. He had done his best. Perhaps he woke this morning with a headache, and phlegm from too many Camels.

Willie woke to his alarm and turned it off. I imagine its ringing shot through his brain and blood and heart, and returned him to the last hours of the night. So he shut his eyes and, only because he was blessed with a hangover, he was able within minutes to return to the unconscious state those last hours earned for him; to retreat into the morning of sleep he deserved.

When Percy left us, I said to Willie: “Let's get a fucking drink.”

He did not look at me. I stood at the point of the triangle Percy's leaving had abolished, and Willie stared at the space where, seconds ago, Percy's flesh and voice had been.

“I'm going outside,” he said. Still he looked at that air in front of him, as though it held Percy's shape. Then he walked through it.

“I'll bring them out,” I said to his back.

I could not see his face. His back was erect, his shoulders squared, his strides long, purposeful, like a man on his way to settle a score, to confront someone who may badly hurt him, or take away his livelihood, even kill him, but the risk was nothing to him now, for he could no longer tolerate or even bear himself until he faced with the purity and freedom of just anger that man whose presence on the earth fouled his every breath. I hurried around people toward the bar, but watching Willie, so I grazed some men and bumped others and begged their pardons and continued on, guided by peripheral vision and a strange instinct that warned me of men in my path, and saw Willie taking his cap and gloves from the hat-check girl and, without looking back at the party, or to his left or right, walking to the door, pushing the crash bar, and going out. The door was slowly closing behind him when I reached the bar and waved to the bartender (probably a chief, a man in his late thirties; he was large but I would not have called him portly), and I nodded and even answered when friends spoke to me. I ordered two double gin-and-tonics. Watching the door, watching the bartender pouring gin on ice in the large glasses, I replied to people and saw Percy at the right end of the bar, standing with other pilots, grinning at a laughing lieutenant whose hand climbed at a low angle, as though from a flight deck, and sharply rose into the air. Then the bartender was in front of me, sweating, working fast, and I told him to keep the change from my five, not generosity but hurry (the bill was two dollars), and, sweating, he smiled and thumped the bar with his knuckles.

At the coat-check booth I overtipped for the same reason, gave to the young kimonoed Japanese girl two dollars that came out of my pocket in my plunging and grabbing hand, broke the club rules by putting on my cap indoors, then held my gloves between my left arm and ribs and, with a glass in each hand, pushed the crash bar and door with my side, turned through the opening, and was out before the door could close on my right hand holding Willie's drink that seemed so precious. Willie had not gone far. He was to my left, walking parallel to the long room whose walls and windows gave a muted immediacy to the loud and unharnessed voices of men drinking together. He walked slowly now, his steps short, his posture settling toward the pull of the earth, his white-capped head lowered. I could see the gloves in his left hand. I called his name. He nearly stopped: he was about thirty yards away, and I could see his back hesitate, an instant's motion as though not his ears but his back heard me, and it almost straightened, almost halted his legs. But he did not stop, and he did not turn to look over his shoulder, and he did not lift his face from its gaze at the ground, or whatever he saw there.