The Man Who Cried I Am (7 page)

A fine silver mist hung low over the level, neat green fields. You could say that for the Netherlands; their neatness was blatant, as blatant as New York's high risers. Going back toward the city were two highway policemen with their helmets and sunglasses and white shoulder belts. They roared along in a Porsche. Max settled back in the seat. It was a nice day. Why was he messing it up with Harry Ames, now dead and gone, sprinkled somewhere over the Seine? Once he and Harry had planned to drive through Holland, but like so many things they'd talked about doing, it hadn't come off. But there had been other things, a hundred thousand other things, he thought, driving along at a steady clip under a rapidly warming sun …

5

NEW YORK

… and he started to feel a little too warm. He rolled down the windows of the beetle-backed Ford he had borrowed. He felt good. A part of things. Bigger than the things he was a part of. It was about time. He bounced over the Long Island roads that F. Scott Fitzgerald had made famous, and thought of Tom and Daisy Buchanan, of Gatsby. Hell, he was going to write Fitzgerald out of existence. Most of the reviews of his first book, published only two weeks ago, made him think so, although not one failed to compare him with Harry Ames. He was not going to let that bother him just yet. He would meet Ames that day, at Wading River, at the summer home of Bernard Zutkin, the literary critic. Of course, Max had read Ames, had liked the very hell out of his big book, the one that had made him. He wondered what kind of man Ames was. There were always stories around the newspaper, the
Harlem Democrat
, which, after the acceptance of his novel for publication, had finally moved him from hustling ads from the owners of bars and barbecue joints to editorial. Now Max wrote about shootings and stabbings and cases of discrimination. And the scandals. Especially the ones involving chicken-eating ministers caught with someone else's wife in a fleabag hotel. Ames got a lot of attention in the paper, along with Bolton Warren. So there were always stories. Max knew that Ames was thirty, six years older than he; that Ames had been born in Mississippi, but had traveled around the country, to Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington. Max knew Chicago, had been born there, and he had lived in Cleveland for a while before coming to New York to settle down. New York, the Big Apple.

Max looked forward to the weekend. Perhaps the people at Zutkin's would be groovy. Going in for the beach scenes and all, lots of whiskey and dancing. He wondered if Ames could swim. Yes, it would be an absolute groove, if Harry Ames hadn't sewed it up already. He pictured Ames (on the basis of the love scenes Ames had written) as being pretty great with the chicks. He'd see.

And he'd have to feel his way with Zutkin who'd already asked him to write articles for his magazine. Zutkin, a loner, so the talk went, was a highly regarded critic. His criticism seemed to have roots in the struggles taking place within the society. In Harlem, where no one cared, it was said that Zutkin once had been a big man in the Party. No one knew for sure. He was a small, bald, retiring man with a slow, deep smile. He was the only Jew in Wading River and once the Ku Klux Klan had burned a cross on his lawn. Max had covered the story and it appeared on the front page of the
Democrat
.

Max had met one other critic at a party in Manhattan, Granville Bryant, the “Great White Father.” Bryant was a tall and extremely thin, pale man who wore his hair in a long, luxuriant brown mane. He was never seen without a velvet jacket or a silk scarf looped casually around his neck. Bryant singlehandedly had undertaken to open publishing doors for Negro writers and was the inspiration and guide for what was now called the “Black Reawakening.” Aspiring young black writers sweated and clamored for an invitation to Bryant's Fifth Avenue duplex, and over the years, just to be invited to one of his affairs came to be a mark of artistic status. Max, however, had kept his distance, for one was either in the Bryant camp or the Zutkin camp and he preferred the latter.

There were a number of cars already parked near Zutkin's large, dark-shingled house. As he was parking, Max heard the slopping beat of boogie-woogie and a number of voices and, punctuating these, the soft, deceptive spit of a .22. Shorts, he guessed, were being fired. As he approached the house, the music and voices began to come low and flat. Zutkin's house was near the ocean. Max circled the house, saw dancers moving to the music, but he wanted to look at the water. He knew people who cared nothing at all for oceans and lakes and streams, and he found that strange. He could not pass a body of water without looking at it and wondering how it was that he and the millions of others had started in places like that. He marveled at it.

A group of people were standing on the sandy ledge overlooking the ocean, clustered around a crouching, broad-shouldered Negro man who was firing a pump rifle. The man lowered the weapon, raised it again and sighted. About seventy-five feet away, down on the shelf of the beach, a can bounded in the air and fell back. The man (Ames! Max had thought) lowered the rifle and looked around triumphantly. His eyes had just locked with Max's when Zutkin approached.

“Hello, Max,” Zutkin said, holding out a Scotch highball. “Saw you come in. How've you been? Glad you could come.”

“Thanks, Bernard. I'm all right, thanks.” His eyes swung back to Ames.

“I'm glad he's not angry with me,” Zutkin said loudly.

“Don't count on it, man,” Ames said, pulling out of his crouch. The people around him now turned to Zutkin and Max.

“Max Reddick,” Zutkin said, and proceeded to introduce Max around. Now Max and Ames stood face to face. They were about the same height, Max noticed with satisfaction. Ames had big hands, but they weren't hard.

“Hello, brother,” Ames said. “How's your shooting eye?” He turned back to the beach and fired at the can once more. They could hear sand spray with sharp tinny sounds from the near miss. Ames spun around and thrust the rifle, barrel straight up, to Max.

Max recognized the challenge. The people would be sympathetic if he missed. Even Ames. The comparison would be obvious. It might even carry to the writing of novels. “I'll give it a try,” Max said, handing Ames his drink and taking the rifle. It had a bead sight and was light, almost too light, even for a .22.

“I'll bet he's like one of those guys who hang around the pool-halls and pretends he's a sucker can't shoot a lick, but he's really a hustler,” Ames said.

“Exactly,” Max said, as he aimed, and he knew that Ames had him at both ends; if he missed, well, Ames was a better shot and perhaps all the rest. If he didn't miss, well, he was a hustler, jiving them. Max stood at the lip of the ledge. He moved his elbows and glanced back at Ames. Ames had braced on one of his thighs. Max was showing him that he needed no brace. There was a flicker of Ames's eyes; he understood. A polite silence fell. Max took a breath, let it out part way and held it. He squeezed. The can jumped. He squeezed again. The can bounded in the opposite direction. A murmur ran through the onlookers. Not quite like shooting squirrel or rabbit in Wisconsin, just to show the old man that you could get something, Max thought, but it would do. He pumped and fired again and while the can was still in motion, drilled it twice. He pumped, sighted and the trigger snapped, flatly. Empty. Max was grinning when he turned and handed the gun back to Ames.

“Told you, didn't I?” Ames said, taking the rifle.

“Squirrels and rabbits,” Max explained.

“And pigeons,” Ames said sarcastically. He smiled. “I don't like nobody who can do things better than me. Ask Bernard. Hey, how's your drinking?”

“Tolerable,” Max said, smiling.

“Tolerable? Where the hell you from?”

Max knew then that Ames hadn't read his book and he was disappointed. The dust jacket would have told Ames where he was from.

“Chicago—and Cleveland.”

“Ah, now I see. Lots of Mississippi folks in Chicago.”

“Yes, over on Indiana, Calumet …”

“But you said your drinking is tolerable, that means you got a hollow leg. We'll find out. Got all weekend, hey Bernard?”

“You won't need the whole weekend, Harry.”

Right then, Max noticed the edge in Zutkin's voice, although the critic's smile told him that he hadn't meant to let it slip through. A sidelong glance at Ames told Max that he had made a mental note of it.

“Ease up, Bernard, I brought my own hooch.”

With an excess of gesture and voice, Zutkin said, “Harry, you know you didn't have to do that.”

Max stared out over the water at what he supposed was Connecticut.

Ames laughed. “Sure, I know it, Bernard. Take it easy, greasy, you got a long way to slide.”

Zutkin laughed then and gripped Ames's arm. Ames slapped him on the back and snapped a wink at Max.

Oh, oh, Max thought and grinned at both of them.

The afternoon sun began its run toward Manhattan. Record followed record: Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, Jimmy Lunceford, a new group called the Cats 'n the Fiddle. There was talk about the Germans, the Japanese plowing through China, the impending selective service peacetime act. Couples danced on the porch, in the house, in the yard. Some people had slid down to the shelf and were running toward the water, thermos jugs in hand. By now Max had met Charlotte, a rangy woman with long blond hair and full body. But everything she did was precise, and she had had many drinks. They seemed not to affect her at all. It finally dawned on Max that Charlotte was interested only in Ames. Ah, well, what the hell. And later he was still sitting on the ledge, looking at the changing colors of the sea. A redhead was talking to him. She wore a bathing suit. Her legs were very hairy. He could see her breasts bubbling at the top of the suit “I just love you for that book,” she said. “Jesus, it was great.”

“Well, thanks,” Max said. He turned up his glass, eyes rolling down once more to her legs. The glass was empty. He started to rise to get another drink.

“Let me get it for you,” the redhead said, very close to him. “You're a celebrity.”

With a show of embarrassed nonchalance, Max gave her the glass. What the hell was her name? Had she told him? He caught Ames's eye. Ames was lying with his head in Charlotte's lap. Ames winked and Max thought: This party is going to be groo-vy! His voice thick with insinuation, Ames drawled, “How are you doing, brother?”

“You tell me,” Max said.

“Fine, fine, fine like wine, jack.”

“But you the best,” Max said.

“Man, I know it, just don't show it,” Ames said, laughing.

“Streevus mone on the reevus cone,” Max said, enjoying the poolhall, jitterbug, nonsensical word game, a game whose meaning was conveyed not by the words, because they had no meaning, but by the tone of voice, the inflection.

“Until sleptis joon cut out from the moon,” Ames countered.

The redhead returned. Ames closed his eyes and said, “Weeby on the streeby and a dit-dit-datty-dit.”

“If it's not strong enough, I'll put more in,” she said, sitting down on the sand again. “You're not high, are you?”

“High? I'm flying,” Max said. What would this night bring, he thought, and really, with so little effort. He was going to like being a novelist; he was going to love the
hell
out of it.

“You don't look high,” she said.

“No? Anyway, I got rhythm …”

“That's a damned silly thing to say,” the redhead cried, getting up.

“Hey,” Max called, seeing his night suddenly vanishing, “that was a joke, don't you …”

“There are some things,” she said, “that you don't joke about.”

Max stared at his glass, puzzled. He had the feeling that, although he was lying perfectly still, Ames had heard everything—and was laughing to himself.

The next day, after mumbling his apologies to Zutkin, Max prepared to leave. He was backing out when he heard a voice. He stopped. Harry Ames.

“Heard you were leaving. I think you're smart. Be independent in your own way. They'd love you to stay and pick up another chick, maybe one that hasn't heard that you have a sense of humor. I heard that crack about you got rhythm. I haven't read your book yet, Max. I'm sure it's good. Zutkin's no fool.”

The music had started up again. There were voices already raised in tribute to the first round of drinks that day. Ames was leaning in the car window now. “I know there's no future in that paper of yours but you're young. There are in this business,” he said, with a heavy air, “people who would like you to be serious, even angry, twenty-four hours a day. If you can't, then you're a renegade Negro, and they won't have too much to do with you. This world is very, very greasy, and it's going to slide a long way. They've been so used to putting it on a certain set of skids that they are quite sure that any way they set it—and at least they're thinking now about where the world should be set—it's the right way. Man, they want you to whip them, whip the shit out of them. But then, will you have energy for anything else? Look, I don't know you very well at all, but we're colored, we write, we talk that streevus mone shit and—thing is—thing is, somewhere in this business we got something together besides being colored and being writers. You're doing all right. Just don't never worry about a little pussy. I tell you this, knowing you can say it fifty billion times. But when you get a chick who can put it on you right with the right combination of other things, that's it, you're locked in and all the talkin' ain't going to help one bit.” Ames laughed. “Listen to me. And I ain't even
had
my first one today. I'll call you at the paper, okay?”

“Yes, Harry, and thanks.”

Ames started away. He returned as Max started the car. “And I'll bet you that redhead wishes you two had been alone so no one could have heard, then it wouldn't have mattered.”