Dreamboat Dad (13 page)

EVEN ON SKID ROW, WAKING
up on park benches, you have moments of
clearer thinking. I knew the year was 1952. In my mind I was the Dodger
Jackie Robinson, hitting homers against the all-white teams. Before I'd
fallen, before the war started, Joe Louis had been the heavyweight boxing
champion knocking out the white men of the world. Told us we could
do it too. Our athlete supreme Jesse Owens had stuck it right up Hitler at
his own Berlin Olympics: Adolf had thought his kind was the master race
till a Negro ran off with four gold medals, one of several Negro athletes
who took gold at those games.

I thought of the musical giants — Duke, Cab, Brownie, Dizzy,
Oscar, Ella, Mahalia, Billie, Charlie, Ray, Nat — the host of musical
giants needing only first names, on the trail blazed by Louis Armstrong
and every nigger with attitude who'd had the guts to stand up.

And where the fuck was this nigger?

Wiping vomit off my face, craving the next drink, wallowing in
self-pity that had descended to unbearable self-loathing. Telling myself
the same bullshit about serving my country only to be treated worse
than a dog. Just another nigger drunk succumbed, convinced the system
was too big to take on, no chance to make something of myself, eyes
scanned for the miracle of a dropped coin, a fluke dollar on the park
grass, someone to beg change from.

Then my eyes happened upon a newspaper page fluttering on a bench,
like a hand beckoning. Under the headline BYE, BABY. FAREWELL,
EMMETT I read of a fourteen-year-old Negro boy, Emmett Till, who
was down from Chicago visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. He had
been showing pictures of his white girlfriend to his astonished Southern
Negro cousins. Someone had dared the boy to say something fresh to a
woman shop-owner.

So this unknowing kid said, bye, baby, to the white woman as he left
her shop. Two days later several white men arrived and hauled Emmett
out of his relatives' cabin to a car. He was found dead with an eye gouged
out, a bullet in his stoved-in head.

Barely able to recognize her son in his horrifically beaten state,
Emmett Till's mother decided on an open-casket funeral,
so the world can
see.

Now I had this newspaper page in my trembling hands, knowing
I had to claim back my life: I owed it my children, to every unjustly
murdered fourteen-year-old.

When I was fourteen myself I had daydreamed of riding around in an
open-top car, blood-red with shiny chrome fittings and white upholstery,
a trunk full of money, wind in my face and the air full of praise for Jess
Hines, success story.

In my nightmares, though, the car wouldn't start, or it would break
down in the middle of a street where crowds were about to call my
name like churchgoers calling hallelujah to God. The beautiful white
upholstery would be covered in shit, or smeared all over with blood
coming inexplicably from my hand, so when I tried to wipe it, it only
got worse.

I'd sense the vehicle being slowed by a dragging weight and
look out back to see a nigger corpse roped to my new car, connected to it
as if by an umbilical cord. Now, well into my adulthood, my eyes cleared and
I saw the corpse was me, roped not to a fantasy car but to a bottle.

Selma, Alabama, couple years later. I'd fallen again, jumped a freight train,
broke and broken again, riding with other nigger losers we all talked
the same self-deluding promises how the next town we'd straighten up,
get our shit together, the perfectly justifiable reasons we were down,
wouldn't any man? We're niggers aren't we, with everything stacked
against us?

Then she came back to me in a dream one night, as I sheltered in an
abandoned building running with rats of feral and human kind.

I saw a little dog drowning in a river and I jumped in to save it. It
stayed just out of my reach and kept disappearing, crying like a baby. We
swept by scenery familiar, of my own growing up, past endless green seas
of corn fields, dogs panting away summer heat beneath magnolia trees,
always someone singing, the cool creek near our cluster of shacks, men
drunk on liquor or the emotion they expressed in music, dusty roads, flies
and meat going off.

Then we rounded a bend to sight of snow-capped mountains and
forest quite unlike anything of my childhood. Ferns and towering trees
with a menacing presence, formations written on the land by massive
forces. Of course: New Zealand. The train journey to and from Two
Lakes on the main trunk line.

Told the dog, we're in New Zealand. I think we'll be okay. Apparently
we were for I managed to get a hold of him and he snuggled into me like
a human and our wet journey seemed as if a new form of flight.

Next, the dog talked to me about how amazing the mountains were
and was that snow we were seeing? I said, sure is. This is another country,
kid, and we're in it.

For the next stretch I lost the talking dog, saw his frantic form swept
swiftly toward rapids. Certain death. But in a moment the river turned to
steaming waters boiling with heat, not current. Waiwera, I said. For some
reason the boiling took away my fear for the dog. You'll be all right, boy.
You'll see.

Sure enough, the dog changed to a child of about five, a cute little
boy; we were high and dry on crusty white ground streaked yellow and
smelling of sulphur.

The boy smiled at me. He looked like a quadroon. I said, what's your
name? He said some Maori word. Asked did I know Lena? No, I don't
know a Lena. Wait — of course I do. My memory, kid, what my drinking
has done to it.

Looked where the boy pointed. A woman, completely naked,
emerging from a warm pool. Smiling — at me? Lena?

Hello, Jess. Been a long time.

At first I wanted to explain why I'd fallen down the drinking mine-shaft,
to tell of my anger at being humiliated, how I could not face a life
of always being at the bottom hardly better off than my slave ancestors.
Then she put finger to her lips to tell me don't say anything. Beckoned
me to her and we kissed and I started to run fingers most gentle over her
shoulders, her neck—

I woke up. A rat running over my legs.

But I'm thinking: this really is the last time, Jess, or you'll die. Or
worse, a white cop will put false charges on you and a white judge will
throw you in the pen. The starting rate is five years for niggers. See if
you survive that, dwelling on how Whitey got you even as you ran from
him.

And that dream wouldn't leave me. Took a bit to remember Lena's
surname as it was Maori and from years ago. Might be I'd shut it out
because it was her married name. Takahe, that's right.

I would write her a letter. Even if full of lies on what I'd
done with my life since the war.

To get a reply from New Zealand was unbelievable. She remembered me!
Inside the envelope two letters. The second from
a son
. His photograph
— what a fine-looking boy he was. All this time, a son. I broke down
and cried. With added guilt that my self-despair had cost me my two
daughters.

Lena wrote in a very neat hand, her tone restrained.

The marriage survived the birth of my son, she told me. She spoke
mostly about the boy — my son too! — how well he did at school, how
musical he was, and what a special air he had about him.

I attribute it to you. In fact my life has stayed quite dull since our unforgettable
two weeks together. Though bringing up children has been a joy, and not least our
— she said it: our —
son. The village gave him the name Yank. In the early days
it meant something and of course felt like a knife in the heart to Henry. But we got
used to it and it became just another name.

Your letter arrived as if from the grave. My God, Jess, I still can't believe I'm
writing to you.

Nor me reading her words.

My son wrote a good letter, quite articulate for a youth. He must be
getting a good education, I thought: I knew many whites and Maoris went
to the same schools, that segregation there was largely economic.

I read both letters over and over till I could have recited them. Studied
every aspect of my boy's features in the two photographs he sent, tried to
get inside the mind behind those dark eyes. My heart sang and sang. My
sober heart: I'd not touched a drink since I left Selma.

My God, I have a son. A New Zealand, part Maori son.

Lena did not say what her husband did when he found out. Not
something any soldier would like of course. But if ever I got to meet and
talk with the man, I'd tell him it's not as bad as white people denying your
contribution to the war, their humiliation of your race. Tell him it was war
and did any soldier not sleep with prostitutes, local women in the different
European countries? New Zealand, for that matter.

But it would have been bad a married man coming home to another's
child, no denying that. And sure I would have apologized, if just to respect
his manhood.

She asked me not to send photos of myself as she had never raised
the subject of his true fatherhood with the boy, not one word. He had
been called Yank — an irony when, in the Civil War, Southerners called
northerners damned Yankees. (In the Second World War, every American
got the tag, as a compliment without the
damned
.) Lena said Yank had this
romantic notion his father was a white John Wayne or Elvis Presley, and
Negro was the last notion in his mind. Let him mature first, Lena asked.

John Wayne, the Hollywood star we coloreds laughed at for the movie
stereotype he was, of superior white hero. Elvis, well he was a Southern
boy and his musical roots were greatly inspired by black musicians. We
loved him. But I sure as hell don't bear a resemblance to Mister Presley.

I had moved back to a Negro settlement called Piney Woods, on land
granted to a Negro slave by his admiring white owner, title locked up in a
trust so no one could take it from whomever of Negro descent wished to
live there and pay rent. Lived right beside my mother who naturally was
glad to see her son seemed to have conquered his booze demon.

Working on highway construction raised one of the same old Southern
problems: Niggers just didn't get paid well.

But I wanted to send my boy money. Maybe because in this country
money speaks the loudest. Niggers kill for it. And certainly die from a lack
of it. I wanted to impress the boy, so he'd think about one day coming
over to meet — his daddy? His daddy.

While I was at it, I decided I should send some dollars off to my
daughters in Biloxi . . . if I could track them down. Their mother had
made less and less contact with the children's grandmother — my mother
— and was sure to have moved several times. No choice. We're renters,
usually. And desperate dollar-chasers.

How would I find some money?

Desperate people learn inventive ways to acquire the almighty
greenback. And they don't have to be illegal, just a little shady. Got enough
cash together to send to my daughters and to the son in New Zealand. Felt
proud of myself, remembering the person not so far back in the past whose
every dime went on his drinking habit.

HADN'T SEEN HIM FOR THREE
years, heard he'd been sentenced to prison.
Then he turned up on my doorstep. Chud, the con.

Came home from work each evening to him sitting there, like some
alien brute with his size, pumped up muscles in tight-fitting tee-shirt even
in autumn. Tattoos on his face, neck, arms. Worst of all, attitude as if inked
permanently into him: my place was his place. Like we were bonded for
life and didn't owe any standards to each other.

He filled his day waking late, doing press-ups and stomach exercises
and shadow-boxing for a good hour. Have to stay in shape, Yank, or
they'll get me. They being members of his world, certainly not mine. He
walked the streets, sussed out burg possies, his prison language for burglary
possibilities. The Chud I'd known had never been a thief. Sometimes he
got greedy with food from living where there wasn't certainty the kids
would have any. But a thief? Never.

Found we had virtually nothing to talk about, from a lifetime of
knowing each other's very souls. Chud didn't take hints about looking for
a job; he had no notion of paying rent. His upbringing no excuse — he
owed me more than this Chud I did not know.

When he started messing around with my guitar, the expensive
equipment, he was on dicey territory. He was incapable of taking even the
most obvious hint. And I noticed he looked more like his father, lapsed
easily into the same mannerisms as Ted. How ironic, to grow into a man
like the one you most hate.

Chud spent his unemployment money on beer and cigarettes, bought
not one crumb of food. I had started to resent his presence, even dislike
him. But how could I be like this with my best friend?

Came home one evening to hearing his amplified voice and discordant
notes — Chud on
my
microphone and a stranger violating
my
guitar.
They'd been drinking.

No, I don't want a drink. And please don't use that equipment again,
it cost a lot of money and if you don't know what you're doing, you can
wreck it.

Who are you? the stranger asked, tattooed snake slithering around
his neck. The guy had triple blue dots under his right eye, a practised
intimidating sneer.

Who the hell are you? I shot back.

Don't talk to my mates like that.

This was Chud. With his own tone at me. I told Chud, this is me,
Yank.

Chud said, yeah, but you can't talk like that to my pal.

I said, it's my flat. And my music equipment.

He said, Yank? You better say sorry.

My best friend a picture of naked threat and menace. I could smell the
booze on his breath. He could have been his father. His mother.

Now his pal sidled up, acted all hurt. He might even throw the first
punch.

Physical coward that I am, I told them my father had sent money.
How about I give you fifty quid to get your own flat?

Chud: How much did he send you?

A hundred.

They looked at each other, maybe weighing it up in booze. Fucken
lowlifes.

Had to put up with them one more night, taking over my small pad
drinking and getting more and more incoherent. Just like Chud's parents,
the other guy's too no doubt. Sleepless hours listening to their snoring;
Chud slumped in the armchair fully dressed, his pal on the arm.

Arranged to meet them in my lunch break, after I withdrew my
coward's levy. No sooner the cash in Chud's hand when he said, count
yourself lucky. It's a bad thing to insult a con. With a look that said, you'll
keep.

Came home to missing records and they'd even emptied the fridge of
food and two bottles of beer. My closest friend like a figure in a dream:
walking further and further into the distance.