Loving Women (52 page)

But then I knew that I wasn’t crying simply because I felt shame or had been fooled. I was sobbing in the empty woods because everything I wanted to do with Eden Santana now seemed impossible. Say it straight, I said. And spoke out loud:
How can I ever marry a nigger?
Saying the word. The word that I knew had broken Bobby Bolden’s hands and sent the Klan to hang women from trees. I’d thought of myself as the hip New Yorker, who knew all about Charlie Parker and Max Roach and Billie Holiday, and here I was, saying the word.
Nigger
, I said out loud.
You’re a nigger, Eden
. And saw myself walking the streets with her nigger kids and our own kids with a touch of nigger in them. And people would stop us in restaurants and say,
Hey, no niggers here, pal
. And no niggers in this school. And
sorry, but ain’t no room in this bus, you’ll have to sit up front, sailor
, and put your nigger woman in the back.

Nigger, I said to the cold woods.

Nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger
.

The word lost all meaning and I stood up, walking slowly now, drying my tears on my jumper. And new pictures formed in my head. I saw myself in New Orleans, sitting in the parlor with Eden’s parents, the two of them looking at me the way that old man had
looked at me when I went to cut down Cathy; his eyes cold and his shotgun cradled in his arms. There were photographs of The People on the mantel. The parents were looking at me very hard and saw that I was young. They stared at my Navy uniform and my poorly shined shoes and made their own labels, their own categories, and placed me in the bin for poor white trash. Her children were in the next room, closer to my age than Eden was to mine, the two of them coal black staring at the white boy and wondering how he could ever be their daddy. That vision made me laugh. But then I imagined Harrelson seeing us strolling together down Pala-fox Street on our way to Mass at the Catholic church. I saw him smirking. Heard him say something about pickaninnies. And then suddenly knew:
It was Harrelson tipped off the Klan
.

Of course.

It
had
to be him.

He’d seen us that day. Coming up out of the side road from the lake, going to the highway.

Harrelson.

You prick.

And then I began to hurry, brushing aside branches and pushing through wet shrubs. I found the hole in the back fence and slipped through. It was almost four in the morning. I moved through the emptiness of the landing strip, staying in the dark, then hugged the sides of hangars. I slipped into the barracks and went straight to Harrelson’s bunk.

He wasn’t there.

I felt cheated. I wanted to hurt him. I wasn’t going to waste time in any court of law. I
knew
and I was going to punish the son of a bitch. But goddamnit, he wasn’t there.

I got into bed and lay there trembling for a long time. In one night, my whole world had changed and I didn’t know how I was going to live in it.

Chapter

59

I
never saw Bobby Bolden again. The scuttlebutt came in from Mainside about how they treated him at the hospital, his hands broken, ribs smashed, jaw fractured. The first morning, we heard about his concussion and how the brass came to talk to him about what happened and how Bobby Bolden told them to go away. We heard about how they stationed a Marine guard at his door, who turned away all visitors. Later we saw two MPs come to the Kingdom of Darkness and pack Bobby’s gear, taking everything with them, including the horn. Before the day was over, we heard they had flown him to Norfolk: out of Ellyson, out of Mainside, out of Pensacola, out of the South, and out of our lives.

We heard about Catty too. How they’d cleaned up her wounds and wired her broken shoulder and bandaged her ribs where someone had kicked her; how they’d listened to her as she made official statements; how the Navy brass had secured her hospital room too and then turned their backs as they transferred her to San Diego. They were shipping her as far from Bobby Bolden as they could send her. And as far as possible from anyone who might demand to know what had been done to her that night.

I was still so young that I was shocked when I discovered that there wasn’t a word about it in the Pensacola newspaper. As far as the paper was concerned, it had never happened. I called Maher in the administration building, since yeomen knew what was going on better than the officers did, and asked him why there was nothing in the newspaper. He was busy, but he said he’d try to find out. Twenty minutes later he called me back to say that it was very
simple: the beatings had never been reported to the Pensacola police. And if there was no police report, the newspapers would never know.

“Why don’t
we
call the newspapers?” I said.

“You can,” he said. “But the first thing they would do is call the Navy PIO guys. And they wouldn’t confirm it. They’d just say that all Navy personnel records are confidential, or something like that.… And, of course, the Klan doesn’t give out press releases.”

I went over to see Sal and Max and they were in a fury. They wanted to hunt down Buster and give him the beating of his life, because they were sure that Bobby had been tracked by Buster’s boys after rescuing me that day on the road.

“Set him on fire,” Sal said. “Hang him on a meat hook.”

Max said, “Break
his
hands and ankles.”

But as we stood in the sunlight beside the hangar, we slowly realized that we weren’t sure that it
was
Buster. We didn’t know how many others had come in the night to beat Bobby Bolden and Catty Wolverton and burn their house to the ground. We didn’t even know what had happened to Bobby Bolden’s Mercury. The anger seeped out of us.

“There oughtta be
something
we can do,” Sal said. “There oughtta be
some
ass we could kick.”

Max shook his head: “It’s going after ghosts.”

After the MPs left with the artifacts of Bobby Bolden’s life, I went up to the Kingdom of Darkness. The door was locked. I knocked and Rhode Island Freddie answered. He looked at me and started to close the door without saying a word.

“Hey, man,
wait
!” I said.

“Git outta here, mothafucka.”

“Hey,
I
didn’t do it!” I said. “
I
drove him to Mainside.
I
cut down Catty. It wasn’t
me
. I just came up here to say I was
sorry
and—”

“You know somethin, boy?” he said. “You
dumb
. Dumber than shit. And Bobby, he was even
more
dumb. He take you as a friend. He take the white bitch as a friend. What it
get
him, huh? Answer me that? What it
get
him? You
seen
whut it get him. You
seen
it. Man never get to play that fuckin horn the rest of his fuckin life, that what it get him.
Why?
Answer me that. And you
know
why.
White folks!
”

“Yeah, but—”

“You
all
white. You and the bitch and the Klan and Abe Lincoln and the fuckin president and every fuckin officer in the Navy.
All
white. And all the fuckin same.”

He slammed the door. On me, on all whites.

And it didn’t end there.

At lunch time, the food was disgusting. Greasy, half cooked. The messcooks seemed to be wearing masks as they made their protest. I said hello. Nobody answered. They just looked past me. I gazed at the greasy vegetables and the pink half-boiled chicken on my tray. And then saw Harrelson at a table.

I went over to him.

“You prick,” I said.

He smirked at me.

“Oh,
my
,” he said. “We got us an angry nigger lover, don’t we?”

I reached across the table and grabbed the front of his jumper and lifted him toward me.

“Say another word and I’ll bite your nose right off your face, shithead.”

“You touch
me
, Yankee,” he hissed, “you might git what the nigger got.”

I let go of him but I wasn’t finished. The mess hall was quiet. I faced him, talking louder.

“It
was
you, wasn’t it?” I said. “You fingered Bobby Bolden for the Klan.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sailor.”

“You knew he was living down there by the lake.”

“The whole damn world knew
that
, boy.”

“Maybe so. But the rest of the world didn’t
care
and you did.”

Harrelson got up and lifted his tray, still covered with uneaten food. He looked at me.

“You sure lookin to git yore
ass
whupped, nigger lover.”

I came around and grabbed his arm.

“Not by you, prick.”

I was ready to hammer him, make him eat the tray itself, and then Red Cannon was beside us, and I could see Chief McDaid standing at the door.

“Ten-
shun
!” Red barked.

We both came to attention, Harrelson still holding his tray. The chow hall was absolutely silent now, except for the whistling of a coffee urn.

“What’s this all about, Mister Harrelson?” Cannon said.

“The Yankee here’s got a big mouth,
that’s
whut it’s about.”

“Ask him about Bobby Bolden,” I said. “Ask him when he called up the Klan.”

“I wuddint addressin’ you, sailor,” Cannon said.

“You asked what it’s
about
. Well, it’s about Bobby Bolden. That’s what it’s
about
. This prick called down the
Klan
on him.”

McDaid came over, smiling in an oily way.

“At ease, sailors,” he said. He cleared his throat, knowing that others could hear him. “We all feel bad about what happened to Bobby Bolden. But you two aren’t going to help matters by fighting each other. Let’s both of you go back to work.”

He nodded at Red and then they walked across the chow hall and left. McDaid was clearly washing his hands of the whole matter and letting Red Cannon know it wasn’t his business either. Harrelson smiled thinly at me.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Not me,” I said. “Your mother.”

Harrelson turned his back and walked quickly to the garbage disposal as the room gradually filled with the murmur of conversation. None of the blacks behind the steam tables would look at me.

That afternoon, Harrelson was transferred to Mainside.

I had the duty in the Supply Shack that night and for once I was glad. I knew that Eden must have spent the night at Roberta’s. She certainly didn’t go back to the trailer. But even if I could find her, I didn’t know what I would say to her. So when Donnie Ray gave me the duty, I was relieved. I took my pad and chalks with me to the shack and worked on the portrait of Captain Pritchett’s dead wife for a few hours. There wasn’t much business at the front counter; it was as if the base had emptied so that everyone could go somewhere and mourn Bobby Bolden’s murdered hands.

I kept trying to get Pritchett’s wife right, but her face wouldn’t come off the page. I threw sheet after sheet into the trash basket. And I soon realized what was happening: the long-dead Catherine, the woman the Captain loved, the woman whose memory had been turned by him into banks of flowers, kept coming out looking like Eden Santana.

Around midnight, Miles came in. His skin looked yellow. His eyeglasses were dirty. He sat down at his desk and stared at his hands and talked about Bobby Bolden.

“I kept thinking about his hands,” he said. “Kept thinking how he used to play in the afternoon for us. For himself, first, I guess. But for
us
too. And then I thought of those shitass rednecks and how much they must have enjoyed smashing up the hands of a colored man who had more talent and brains and heart than all of them combined. They must’ve loved it.”

“You
know
they loved it.”

“But I could’ve warned him.”

“Everybody warned him, Miles.”

“Then maybe he wanted it to happen.”

“Don’t be stupid, Miles.”

“Maybe he
did
. Some people are so afraid of their own talent, they’d rather have someone else destroy it than have to do it themselves. They
provoke
. They make death happen.”

“Bobby Bolden wouldn’t have given these dirtbags that satisfaction.”

A mechanic came in and I waited on him and when I was finished, Miles Rayfield was gone. He didn’t know how crucial a part he’d played the night before; in a strange way, his existence might have saved Bobby Bolden’s life; if I hadn’t argued about him with Eden, I wouldn’t have stormed into the night and found Bobby writhing in the bushes. I looked at my drawing. Miles had made a few marks on it, a tuck here, an emphasis there. I saw clearly what I’d done wrong. I started over one final time and finished quickly. And when I was done with Catherine Pritchett, I did a drawing of Eden Santana.