The Man Who Cried I Am (20 page)

“Don, we have to do something. We really can't let that man go up there at that ceremonial or whatever the hell they call it, and take a thousand dollars when we know he should have been a Lykeion Fellow, we can't let him do it!”

Don Kenyon blinked and pushed at his thick, waved hair. “You're fuckin' A right, John, but what the hell do we do? What
can
we do?”

“I'd like to suggest a few things. Okay?”

“Sure, John, anything we can do to help Harry out of this mess, goddamn it, we'll do it!”

Kierzek waited until Kenyon finished cursing the Lyceum. He liked Kenyon all right, but the trouble with the business was that there were too many people in it who should have been elsewhere. Wall Street, for example. And Kenyon liked him or needed him. Well, that was all right. It kept Kierzek in books, and he liked books. He couldn't be glib about them. His rejections were very readable; no fog, none of that overstocked or untimely business for him. That was really creeping into publishing these days. Snot-nosed editors, still jerking off on the sly, or half or whole faggots. Jesus! For two days Kierzek had watched and listened to them in the halls and at the conference tables before the conferences began. No guts in the business anymore. Everyone broke their balls looking for talent, but when they had it right in their semeny hands, it scared the crap out of them. Kierzek couldn't understand it. During the war he had been an overaged navigator on first the B-24's and then the B-29's. He had made many a flight from Tinian to Japan and back. It was strange that in this world of desks and manuscripts, of spry, sexy little girls and homosexuals, of long lunch hours—a world so free of the direct approach of death stalking down the sky—fear ran rampant.

“First,” Kierzek said, “we'll give him a three-thousand-dollar advance on his new book. His plans to go to Europe are made; he's been set to go for months. It'll kill him if he doesn't go. If we can help him, it'll be great for his ego—”

“Yeah, yeah, fuckin' A,” Kenyon said, tapping at his hair.

“It won't hurt us to help him,” Kierzek said. “We back up our authors.”

“Of course, we do,” Kenyon said.

“We'll give him that much of an advance on one condition—”

“—that he won't accept that fuckin' Lyceum money, right, John?”

“Right.”

“Have you see the new book?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Kenyon waved his hand. “Doesn't matter. If it's Harry Ames, it'll be good, right, John?”

“It should sell. Now, Don. It's really very important that you write to the Lyceum and on Harry's behalf, demand an explanation. I mean, the poor bastard's wondering if he's diseased, nuts or a few thousand other things.”

“John, do you think it's because of his wife?”

“Who knows and so what, Don?”

“No, no, you know what I mean. You know how people are. Doesn't make any difference to me—gee, she's a nice-looking doll, isn't she?”

“Yes. No, I don't know why. His Party connections, being Negro, his marriage, I just don't know. It could be just one of those things or all of them, but he should know what he's being charged with or penalized for. Can you get the letter off today, Don?”

“You're fuckin' A. Mabel, baby,” he called to his secretary in an outside office. “C'mon, you gotta go to work, sweetie. Let's hit it. Anything else, John?”

“Yes, we ought to get the publicity department in on this. Let Chris work full time on it. Maybe we can embarrass those bastards half to death; this is 1947, they can't get away with things like this.”

Kenyon's secretary had come in. “Make a note, sweetie. Call Anthony, and tell him I'll be over at three for a haircut, will you? John, you fill Chris in and when she's got things organized, we'll get together. Four-thirty all right?”

Kierzek rose. “All right, Don. Just one more thing. Why don't you give Harry a call? He'd appreciate it.”

“Have you called him?”

“Yes. Yesterday.”

“Yeah, okay. Mabel, after this letter, get me Harry Ames on the phone. Thanks, John. Great thinking. We'll give those bastards hell. C'mon, Mabel.”

Kierzek left and returned to his office. Why in the hell did people have to be told to do the right thing, he wondered. It was all so simple.

Harry wrote to the Lyceum, refusing to accept the consolation award. He turned in his novel, as far as he had gone, when he received the advance from Kenyon; a deal was a deal, and it was an all right deal as far as he was concerned. The publicity director, Chris Lumpkin, had worked overtime preparing a dossier on the case, for letters continued to flow. One judge on the panel who had selected Ames now wrote and asked him to accept the consolation money. Another judge who had been out of town wrote asking Ames to forgive them all. For the rest, there was silence. If ever in his weakest moments Harry had thought artists to be a tightly knit group, ever ready to back each other up in times of trouble, he knew now that it was a dream. Why in the hell did he keep giving people credit for things that never even crossed their minds.
That
kind of shit was for someone else, not Harry Ames.

When Chris Lumpkin's fact sheet on the Lyceum case turned up on Kermit Shea's desk, he put his head in his hands, smoked two cigarettes and wished to hell that the paper had a book section. Then he called over a reporter and turned the sheet over to him. At his favorite bar he ordered a hot roast beef sandwich, his usual double of bourbon and two glasses of beer. He was worried. Suppose this sort of thing happened to every black man, woman and child in America every day? Suppose it had been happening, suppose it would continue to happen? There would be a reckoning; there always was, as history proved. That awful balancing out of things. Nature.
But what did one do?
Kermit Shea ordered another double of bourbon, drank it neat and caught a taxi. When he got out he hunted up a telephone book. Clutching the address in his hand, he walked swiftly until he came to the house, Harry Ames' house. He rang the bell. When the door opened he took off his hat and moved slowly up the stairs. “My name's Kermit Shea,” he said to the man at the head of the stairs he took to be Ames. Photographs were funny. “You're Mr. Ames? We've spoken on the phone.”

“Yes, you're from the
Telegram?
”

“Yes.” Shea had gained the top of the stairs. He stood puffing and he didn't know whether it was from walking so fast, climbing the steps, emotion, or all three. They shook hands. Ames showed him in and offered him a drink which Shea refused. “I just came to say something, Mr. Ames. This morning we got some news from your publisher—about the Lyceum. I came to say that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for myself, I'm sorry for white people, I'm sorry for black people. I don't want to be your enemy, and I sure don't want you to be mine. I want peace for us, Mr. Ames, I want peace. I want to help make that peace, but I'll be goddamned if I know how. I don't know what to do or say, except what I've just done and said.” Shea put his hat back on. “I guess there are a lot of people like me. They just haven't had four bourbons.” Shea turned. “Give Max Reddick my regards, will you?” He started out of the room and down the stairs. Harry rocked back on his heels and came forward. He watched Shea go down the stairs. “Mr. Shea,” he called softly. Shea turned around without stopping. “Thanks,” Harry said.

Harry returned to his dressing; he was going to lunch with Zutkin. He thought of Shea. What a strange, exhilarating and at the same time depressing land, he thought. Only in America. C'mon, Harry, he told himself. Put the Stars and Stripes back in the locker; you can always count on some of the bourgeoisie to join you, always.

Harry Ames and Bernard Zutkin were lunching on the East Side, of course. What they should have planned was lunch at the Algonquin in the center of the front dining room. The lunch was to be nothing special. Zutkin had already called the five judges who had not broken silence, since he knew each one personally, and asked if they were aware of what had happened to Ames. Yes, they had heard something. Didn't it make them angry that Kittings had overridden their choice? Well, of course. What were they going to do? Nothing. Zutkin had suggested that the panel be reconvened and that the judges demand that Ames be sent to Athens, or resign. The suggestion fell on deaf ears. Now Ames was going to Paris instead of Athens and Zutkin was going to give him some names. And during lunch Zutkin would pick up some quotes to use in an article he was doing. It was, really, an observation of how an author's private life seemed more important to the world at large than his craft. Ames fit very well into that observation. Zutkin did not think the piece would attract a great amount of attention, but he wanted to do it anyway.

A couple of days later badly written stories on the rejection began to appear in the New York papers. Three reporters from the
Criterion
called Ames at different times for his side of the contretemps, but no copy ever appeared. Well, the Russians had their iron curtain, the Americans had one that was velvet; you couldn't hear it when it came down and you didn't believe it was there when you brushed up against it. The outlandish stories began to filter through to him.

He was a pimp for his wife.

He was drug addict.

He was a pusher.

He was a cockhound, and all his bitches were white.

He was part of a Communist-inspired plot to create a web of interracial affairs and marriages along the Eastern seaboard.

And they grew progressively sillier, the stories. To hell with them. All he wanted now was out, to Paris, France, for who with good sense would go to Paris, Texas? The time was coming. Ten days after what the Lyceum called its ceremonial, and they'd be gone, gone, man. One incident occurred that seemed to offer a restoration back into the good graces of whatever person or persons had first cast him into the shadows. It began with a phone call as Ames was packing the trunks, following a lunch in Harlem at Big Ola Mae's with Max.

“Me, Chris.”

“Oh, hello, baby.” He liked Chris, her husband Jerry. They didn't sweat over anything. A life was a life and they lived it the best way they knew how.

“News.” Chris could be so goddamn businesslike.

“You've noticed that the
Criterion
hasn't run anything?”

“Yes, after talking to all those reporters.”

“The gal at the Lyceum said not to wait, because they wouldn't print anything whatsoever about the Lykeion.”

“I'm not surprised.”

“Something else. Arthur Lawrence called.” Lawrence was a books columnist for the
Criterion
. “He wanted to know if you were homosexual.”

“I see,” Ames said. How could a man feel sad and angry at the same time?

“What did you tell him, Chris?”

“I told him I didn't know, because I hadn't slept with you. It's still wide open, you see.”

“Chris, you're precious. What am I supposed to do, call him and lisp that I am
one
, and he'll pass the word along and I'll have it made, Athens and all the rest?”

“Is that what it smells like to you?”

“You're goddamn right, that's what it smells like. What right does that dried-up old sonofabitch have to ask about my personal life?”

“Down, boy, just laying out the terrain for you. Bumpy, isn't it?”

“Thanks, Chris. We're ready to go. This can go to hell.”

“Y'know, Harry, they really are rotten people. When I think of them sitting in their cold clubs or at their teas or cocktail parties, I get so goddamn mad. That bastard Kittings has gone back to Athens so nobody can get close to him.”

“What could he say?”

“I goofed. How's Charlotte? The kid?”

“They're holding up.”

“Great. Gotta go, sweetie. See yuh. Lunch one day? Call? Love to the gang,” and she was gone. Harry Ames hung up slowly. Is Harry Ames a faggot? Is Harry Ames a faggot? He sat down. He felt as though a great many people had defecated on him. He wanted to strike out, but he knew if he did, he would not stop until he had killed. God, let us get out of here before it's too late. I don't want to have to kill someone. I don't want to kill. Well, Paris would be different. Paris and, if everything went all right, Africa. His friend Jaja Enzkwu from Nigeria had sent him a note of consolation on the Lykeion incident. “In our new, bright world, Africa, brother, we will have to ask them for nothing. It is a prospect that pleases me immensely. The Black Mother will forever beckon to her sons in the West. It is good that you plan to come home.”

It was good to know that there was, after all, somewhere to go if times got that hard. For Harry, times were pressingly hard. He would admit it to no one, but he hated to leave America, he hated being driven out No, they would never admit that they did that.
But Harry Ames no longer believed, as they had taught him and his father and his father's father, that he was a nigger
. Once he had believed that he was everything the books had said; worse even than what they said with their mouths, with their magazines and newspapers, with their radios, and he assumed that with this new thing, television, they'd continue. For example, Amos 'n Andy would go over big. And Negroes themselves would laugh and fall out in the confines of their homes, but get extremely angry about it (Amos 'n Andy) in public. Because they were still niggers.

The worst stories about Harry and the Lykeion were written by the Negro press. The
Democrat
, for example, had not bothered to check out other Negroes who had been at the Lykeion. Sloppy, all of them, as if, that being the way the white man saw them, they would then be that way. But in the process, Harry knew, and he and Max had talked about it often, the Negro press deprived the Negro community of worthwhile newspapers. At least the Negroes were getting smart enough to buy the downtown papers; they merely lied, they weren't just plain slovenly. Perhaps by the time he returned from Europe and Africa (he didn't know when that would be), things would be different. He knew that Charlotte also felt ambivalent about going. A kind of surcease, yes, but at such a cost in money, energy and emotion. How did one go about learning quickly to speak French, for example? They'd just have to do it, a few necessary phrases first, and then others. Harry was confident that it would come; they'd be talking that shit up a breeze.