Chaneysville Incident (12 page)

“
Jesus
! I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? I want you to tell me what you want to tell me.”

“I do,” I said.

“Yeah. Nothing.” She turned and started to walk again. She crossed her arms in front of her, hugging herself against the wind. I went with her, trailing her slightly.

“John,” she said, clenching her teeth against the cold. “Usually when two people, a man and a woman, spend as much time together as we do, there is some kind of…basis for that. Trust, I guess. Sharing. Something between them. I don’t know what there is between us.”

We stopped at Forty-second Street to let a trolley rattle past. Judith took a deep breath. “John, a man asked me to go out with him today.”

I didn’t say anything. We crossed the street, moved on half a block to the building in which she lived. There was a low wrought-iron gate across the walk that led up from the street. It had come unlatched and swung in the wind, making tiny little metallic screeches, fingernails on a blackboard. She took her arm from around me and turned to face me. I let my arm drop away from her. “You ought to oil that gate,” I said.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“You haven’t said anything yet.”

“I said a man asked me to go out with him. He’s an attractive man. An intelligent man. I like him. I told him no.”

“Look,” I said, “I never asked you to—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I know you didn’t ask, and if you had I would have told you that who I see is my decision, not yours. And that isn’t the point. The point is I tried to tell him about you and it just sounded…silly. Oh, not to him; he just heard what I was saying, that there was a man I had known for six months that I was spending a lot of time with and that I thought maybe I was in love with. And he went away thinking all kinds of things were happening between us that just
aren’t.
And it bothers me that they aren’t. You think I’m talking about sex, but I’m not. Oh, I think it’s pretty damned odd that we haven’t ever gone to bed together, but it’s even odder that I’ve never seen your apartment. After six months I’ve never seen where you
live
.”

She looked at my face, searching it with her eyes, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t have anything to say. Finally she looked away.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, John, is that there are some things I can do without and there are other things I can’t do without. I can do without sex, I guess, but I can’t do without learning about you, and who you are and what you want. I can’t do without love.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, let me tell you something: the things I don’t talk about I don’t talk about because I don’t like to talk about them. I don’t like to think about them. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to wring my guts out to get some blood on the floor so you can feel loved.”

I glared at her. I couldn’t see her eyes, because the wind caught her hair and blew it across them, but I could see her lips tremble for a moment before she turned and went up the walk towards the door. I didn’t move. She pulled it open, stepped into the foyer, and let it swing behind her without looking back. It was a heavy door, and it made a solid bang as it hit the jamb. I stood there looking at it. Then I reached down and pushed the gate open and went up the walk.

She had not gone beyond the foyer. She was huddled in the corner, crying. She looked up when I came in, her eyes wide, saying nothing. I put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her to me, and she came into my arms easily, but stood stiffly, her arms still crossed across her breasts. I turned her and pulled her with me out into the night.

We went silently through deserted streets, my hand on her arm, squeezing, holding her so tightly it would have hurt her had it not been for the thickness of her coat. She stumbled a little from time to time, but I kept her moving. We crossed more streetcar tracks, breasted the wind that whistled up along the wall of the old cemetery on Woodland Avenue. I turned her into my dark street, pulling her along, up the steps of my building. She waited silently, shivering a little, as I fumbled with the keys, then followed me inside and climbed the stairs unaided. Our footfalls sounded in the dark stairwell, sounded but did not echo; the soft, rotting wood of the stairs absorbed the vibrations and hushed them. At the end of the stairway, five flights up, I fumbled with the keys again, and opened my door. I stepped inside and went to the center of my room, my hand reaching up to find the chain. My hand brushed the naked light bulb; I remember thinking how cold it was.

By the time the light was on she was inside, leaning against the wall beside the door, her arms again crossed before her. I went and closed the door, locked the locks. She didn’t move. She had stopped crying.

I went to the sink, put water in the kettle, set it on the hot plate. I got down cups and put instant coffee into one, bourbon and sugar into the other. I heard her moving behind me; slow footsteps as she walked across the floor to the middle and stood beneath the light, scrapings as she turned, looking around at the books. I stood there, waiting for the water to boil. It took forever.

I heard a small clink of metal on glass and the light went out. It was not dark; the moonlight came in through the dormer. I heard her moving again, towards the window. The kettle whistled and I poured the water by the glow of the burner. When I turned she was standing looking out at the cemetery. The waving branches of the tree outside the window cast weird shadows across her face. I held the cup out to her and she took it without looking at me. I sipped the toddy, warming myself with it. She held her cup in both hands, then raised it and drank the coffee down in slow, steady gulps, not lowering the cup until she was done.

I started to speak to her, but I didn’t know what to say. She looked at me then, for a moment, then turned away and went to sit on the cot. I heard the metal frame creak, then the rasp of leather as she slipped out of her coat. I stood for a moment sipping the toddy, then turned to look at her. She was sitting on the edge of the cot, her hands beside her. Her face was pale and white in the moonlight. I swallowed the last of the toddy.

“You want more coffee?” I said.

She shook her head. I went to the hot plate and made another toddy. I made it strong and I made it large. I carried it back and sat beside her, drinking.

“I shouldn’t have done that to you,” she said, “and I shouldn’t
be
doing it. I should take you or let you go, but I shouldn’t threaten you with it.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s all right. Because that’s what you expected. You didn’t trust me, and I just finished proving you were right not to.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What I want to know,” she said, “is why you don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” I said. “I trust you as much as I’ve ever trusted anybody.”

“As much,” she repeated. “Damn it, John, what are you afraid of?”

I tried to think of something to tell her. There wasn’t anything she would understand.

“Oh,” she said suddenly. “Am I dumb,” she said. “Stupid. I was thinking all the time there was something wrong with you. But it’s me, isn’t it? I’ve got this horrible skin disease. I’m white.” She shook her head and gave a short laugh. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s it exactly. Only you don’t understand what it means.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Try,” she said.

“I can’t.”

She moved then, slipping closer to me, reaching out and taking the cup from my hand. She unbuttoned my coat, lowered her head and rested it against my chest. And then I felt her hand moving at the buckle of my belt. I found I could move then, and I tried to stop her, but she slapped my hand away impatiently, then slipped her hand inside my waistband and let it rest there, cupping my belly. Her fingers moved gently, in slow circles.

“I’m listening,” she said.

And then I knew what I would have to tell her. “I want to tell you,” I said, “what I did when my brother died.” I stopped, took a deep breath. “I got the news on the telephone. My mother called. She said, ‘Your brother got himself killed over there. The funeral’s tomorrow.’ Then she hung up.”

Her hand stopped moving. “Just like that?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just like that.”

“But…isn’t that a little quick? I mean, they’d have to fly the body…”

“Oh, she’d known about it for days. She didn’t call until the body was back, until all the arrangements were made.”

Her hand moved again, softly, encouragingly.

“I went in and took a shower.”

She didn’t say anything, but her hand kept moving, slowly, gently. But I felt no warmer.

“I had a date, you see. A special date, with a very special girl. It had taken me months to work up to asking her out, and I was scared to death of her, and I was scared of going out with her.

“So I took a shower and got dressed and went and picked her up. We went downtown for dinner. A place on Sansom Street, called 1907. That was the address. We sat in the first booth on the left. We had drinks. She drank Manhattans. I drank Scotch then, Ambassador Deluxe. She had two, I had four. We talked about politics. She was still upset because McCarthy had folded. We had dinner. Broiled lobster, baked potato, salad. She had bleu cheese, I had oil and vinegar. Then we had dessert: cheesecake and coffee. We talked about her family. Then we had more drinks. She had a Rusty Nail. I had another Scotch. We talked about relationships. I paid the bill; it was fifty dollars, I left a ten-dollar tip. After that I had fifty cents, which was exactly what we needed for the bus.

“We went back to her place. She made coffee, put on a record, Simon and Garfunkel. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters.’ We talked some more, and then we started to make out. It got heavy. Then she said she really liked me and she wanted to see me again, but it was too soon for her. So I went home and took a shower and then hitched home to my brother’s funeral.

“It was a great funeral. The mayor was there. The town council. The lieutenant governor. All the boys who had played on the football team with him were there, arguing about who were going to be pallbearers. The TV people came from everywhere. Newspapers. They had speeches and then they made more speeches. They had ten different eulogies. And then they left. We got to bury him in private. You see”—I looked at her—“in my home town, white people and black people aren’t buried together. It isn’t anything official, like down South. It’s just the way things are done. I expect that if somebody black wanted to be put away in a white cemetery, nobody would say a thing. But the practice is we have our place and they have their places. And our place is a little shabby. No gardener, no graveled walks. And none of those big people wanted to go over to Mount Ross and get their shoes muddy. So we got to bury him in private. After that I borrowed some money and caught a bus back. I went to see the girl. And I raped her.” I lay there then, in the darkness, listening to her breathing. It was ragged. “You’re probably wondering why I wanted to tell you all that,” I said finally.

“Yes,” she said.

“It was because of the girl,” I said. “Something about her. She was white.”

She didn’t say anything.

“It was wrong, what I did,” I said. “I don’t know how badly I hurt her; I don’t mean physically. I still feel guilty about it. But deep down inside I understand what happened; I looked at her and saw white….”

“I think that’s sick,” she said.

“I don’t care what you think,” I said.

“And you think it makes sense to blame white people, just because they’re white….”

“Yes,” I said. “I do. Things have happened and it’s somebody’s fault, and it sure as hell wasn’t ours.” I had waited for her to move, to get up and leave, or at least to say something, but she had not. She had just stayed like that, holding me.

Night was falling with the snow, and a cold, wet wind came whipping out of the south. I could not see the snow very well in the growing darkness, but I could hear it crunch beneath my feet when I moved. In an hour, perhaps two, the path up the slope would be a sheet of cold, gritty snow. The tree branches beside it would be coated with slick. I might be able to make the climb. He would not. And I would not be able to make it with him. There was a way to keep the path open; each winter—until this one—he had strung ropes along the path at the spots where the incline became too precipitous for easy passage. I could go up and do that now, and perhaps then we could make it out if we had to; if I could find the eyebolts in the darkness, if the snow did not get too deep, if the air did not get so cold that it would sear his wounded lungs beyond bearing. Or I could prepare for a siege: chop more wood, fill the buckets, wet down the dirt floor around the stove, close the damper, and pray that the night would not get as cold as I feared, that the fire would not burn through the aged grate, and most fervently of all, that he would not get worse. Logic gave a clear answer—go up at once—and a sensible alternative—rope the path and try again to convince him. But logic had nothing to do with it. And so I went back inside and got the buckets and filled them; got the sledge and the wedges and split logs and carried the wood inside and stacked it carefully along the wall, hoping that would keep the wind out; opened the last jars of venison and built another stew and set it to simmer. When I was finished I put the kettle on and mixed two more toddies. He watched me, his eyes steady and unblinking. He said nothing; the only sounds he made came from the wheezing in his lungs. I took him his toddy. “You rope the path?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He nodded, accepted the cup, settled back. “You don’t understand, do you?”

“I understand,” I said.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT, WHEN
the fire was roaring in the chimney and the cold came slicing through the cabin’s walls, Old Jack taught me another lesson: if you would bend a man, abandon all the usual means. Do not bother with psychology or diplomacy or even war; if you would bend a man, not just influence him or sway him or even convince him but
bend
him, do it with ritual. For even if he claims to have no belief, no religion, no adherence to any formal or informal order of service, there is, somewhere within him, a hidden agenda. And he will respond to it without hesitation, without thought, almost without knowledge, certainly without will. All you need to do is to guess the beginning of it. With me, Old Jack did not even have to guess—he knew. He had created it.