Come Destroy Me (18 page)

But it was nice of Lofton, now it was nice. Nice. His mother had said it was not nice, it was
wonderful.
What was? For crying out loud, he couldn’t even think what was nice or wonderful. He could think only that it was a very big room and there were people there, and once he had heard a woman sob and known that it was his mother crying out. Why did she have to embarrass him that way? What had he ever done? Oh, he had been a good boy. A good, good boy. Listen, it was all wrong what was happening. It was not happening at all.

He knew that Jill was dead. He knew that, all right, and he was thinking now of something completely divorced from this great room with the people all ears and eyes and the sweat on the palms of his hands. He was thinking now of the movie of his life that she was probably watching. Miss Jill Latham. She’d find out lots of things. All about that creepy letter he had written to himself, and about him kissing his wrist and talking to it as though it were her, and all the jazzy stuff he had thought when he was with her. She’d find out what he thought of rain on tin roofs and that silly record she played. She’d sure as hell be confused about one Charlie Wright. She’d sure as hell know he was one complicated fellow. Let her ask the angels for answers. Let her float around in a white robe and peck at a harp for answers. She wouldn’t find them.

Another thing he was thinking. Something the kids did in school for a joke. If they were embarrassed or didn’t like the situation they were in, they reached up and pushed an imaginary button and made a noise like
bzzzzzz
and stooped down and pretended they went through a trap door in the floor and weren’t there at all. Charlie felt that way about the world. It had stopped and he had simply stepped off.

They had ignored all the facts he had presented in his fine, articulate, well-written goddamn autobiography. They were talking all about his childhood and his old man, who had been dead as long as Moses, and his mom (aw, poor Mom) and Evie. He wondered if Evie still wanted to start acting like brother and sister, or if she was scared he’d knife her now. That would be just like Evie, to be scared he’d knife her.

What was it his mother had said? Evie was going back to college in a few weeks and Jim Prince was driving her there. What the hell did he care? Why was it so important what Evie did? Let her drive around in cars with Prince and park under bushes and do things, let her! Let her, for the love of heaven! Why make nutsy conversation in strange anterooms about stuff that was dirty and unimportant? Maybe that was anteroom etiquette, maybe that was what it was polite to talk about in all the little rooms near jails and courtrooms where there were chairs and four walls and a silence you had to cut with a cleaver.

Everything he thought about happened. He thought about anterooms, and wham, he was in an anteroom. There was a couch and he sat on it and he thought that he never saw such a pack of cretins as that pack that was the jury that was deciding his fate now. Deciding his fate when he was just a kid and he’d never had a chance.

He was alone. Well, thank the good Lord. He looked at his hands and he still had ten fingers, and he wiggled his toes in his shoes. No, he wasn’t dead. She was.

It was eerie to know that somewhere his mother was, that he had a mother at all, that he was her son and this was all very important. Somewhere his mother was with Lofton, and he was cradling her elbow with his hand, guiding her, patting her shoulder, and calling her Em in that piteous soft tone that said he was sorry, and for what? And for what reason did his mother, the woman who was supposed to be his mom, say, “Lofton has been such a help”? How had he helped? Jill was dead.

Charlie socked the leather of the couch and said, “That’s all — dead!” and he wanted to grin, but he shouldn’t grin. If Russel large-appetite Lofton was such a fat help, let his mother spend the rest of her days cooking up palatable dishes for his goddamn palate.

He sat there tired with his thoughts, tracing a circle with the toe of his shoe, his tongue examining a hole near his molars. He had a hell of a cavity. One hell of a cavity, and where were all the dentists in this hole of a jail? But he wasn’t in jail. He was in an anteroom. Naturally there were no dentists in anterooms, only defendants. He was a defendant. Someday he would write a textbook on how to be a defendant in sixteen years. God, he was going to cry or something. They were treating him like some kind of a gangster who’d shot his way out of a bank with a sawed-off shotgun. Next thing he’d be fitted for a nice striped suit and put on the rock pile. God, he was going to cry.

When they came for him he was done with crying. He had cried in a strange way that fascinated him. There were no tears. Big sobs had boomed up in his belly and shaken his shoulders and made him gasp as if he had the dry heaves, but his eyes were dry. It was a damn strange way to cry. They couldn’t tell, either, and he was glad. He wished he had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and he could grind it out with his shoe and say, “Why not?” when they said, “O.K., fellow, ready?”

Back in the big room he watched the cretins file in somberly and say their piece and he didn’t even listen, because they were cretins. Every last one of them.

Someone was poking him in the side.

“Stand up, son,” Dr. Jewitt said.

Old Daddy Lofton looked like he’d have kittens any time now.

A man in the jury box was saying something. Charlie looked at the man. He had a wart on his nose and one on his neck. He looked at the man’s hands. More warts.

The man said, “We find the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, as charged.” The man looked at Charlie, then at the judge. “Your Honor, in view of the boy’s — that is, the defendant’s youth, we would like to recommend a sentence of imprisonment, rather than death.”

Charlie wondered if he had a wart you know where.

There was a lot of noise. You’d think it was the Fourth of July. Charlie was being led away. In a flashing vision he saw his mother’s face and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. The rest of the face was blurred.

You going to cry again, Charlie boy? You ought to. Real tears. Look at Mom. Poor Mom.

My buddy. You going with me to prison?

How do you know you’re going to prison? Maybe you’ll get the chair anyway.

Nuts. You heard what the man said. If the jury says life, then it’s life. Catch that judge bothering to think for himself if he doesn’t have to! How you going to like prison, old buddy?

I don’t think I’ll like it. Listen, I think I’m a little scared.

Aw, it won’t be so bad.

Charlie believed that. He walked from the room between the two big men believing that. At least they couldn’t prove he was a goddamn lunatic. Lofton would have liked that. Old Daddy Lofton would have done a hornpipe to that kind of tune.

Stone walls do not a prison make.

Right, pal, Charlie thought to himself. Nor iron bars a cage. Who said that? After all, he was the knower. He was the knower…. He remembered who said that. Lovelace.

He was the knower, and he was leaving Azrael to be the knower in another place.

THE END

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Dark Don't Catch Me

Soft long-looking white hands give him gum. Good legs, sweet voice asks solicitously how are you. And smell the perfume! Like lilacs? Like jasmine? Naw, hell, Russian Leather, man! Arpege! Chanel! Something big! Know your brands! Big men order by brands, like Al saying, “Gimme Vat 69 and soda!” Not just scotch and soda. That's nowhere. You ever gonna be a big man? Aw, yeah….

“Are you comfortable?”

“Would you like more gum?”

“Is this your first flight?”

Ummm, living! How did you get so big so quick?

Millard Post grins and wishes to weeping Jesus H. everyone he knows; and all the creeps he used to know (little pukes he could do rings around these days); and sweet money men he was going to know (were going to know him); dames and broads and millionaires, could see him right now. Man, they'd flip!

“Yes to all three,” says Millard Post.

And thank you, baby, all dressed in blue….

He leans back in the deep soft seat after fumbling to fasten the belt. Careful not to brush the arm of the lady seated beside you there, man, but naw, there ain't going to be no trouble at all! He tries very hard to keep the smile from playing on his lips. Simper like someone gone soft in the head just for this? You screw; this is nothing! If there were only someone to see you though, fellow — someone you know from the Panthers, 121st Street, or North Trades High.

To say, “That's not Millard Post, is it?”

On the ramp coming out to the plane he had not been able to resist turning around as he got to the silver slide-Steps and waving up at the observation platform where there were people gathered.

— So long, suckers!

— Bye, bye, Baby-O!

— Man, I'm cuttin' out now in a sweet, sweet style! One other time he'd done something big and there was no one to witness it. That was the day Dandruff Laquales, War Counselor for the Diamonds, rival gang to the Panthers (lousy spie! Always beating on Negroes half his height and weight!), cornered him in a vacant lot up on 127th. Even though Laquales was six inches taller; two years older, and twice as tough — with a switch-blade in the deal, Millard had won out over him, using only his fists and his knee. But no one had seen him do it. That soured it some.

This is different. Bigger! Traveling on a goddam DC-6 like some kind of smart money man in Endsville! So nobody waves good-by … Who needs it? Millard shrugs, a fifteen-year old Negro, lighter than most, and taller than other boys his age. Better build too. Sharp. Knows the score. Speaks the jargon. Walks cool with the cool. He never punked out yet; not on anything; not on
any
one; no deal ever made him chicken.

Before this morning he had never been quite so much on his own. He had some misgivings — Keep your place, Millard, his father had warned, from the moment you leave this house, you're going south of Harlem. I said, south — but what the hell was going to happen, f'Chrissake.

He knew he was the only Negro on the plane. The few Negroes he had seen at the terminal, and later inside the airlines building, were hauling baggage. (All right; so what?) Still, nothing was any different than it is up in Harlem; except it's better. Really better.

At the ticket counter the man had called him “sir.” Coming aboard the plane, the same hostess who had given him the gum and smiled at him, had greeted him warmly (could melt asphalt with that voice!) “Good morning. How are you today?”

Millard settles comfortably. This is a trip he's going on; not a goddam war he's going to.

He reaches into the pocket of his blue serge suit for the letter.

His hands shake some; gotta admit he's scared to fly
—
a little.

Unfolding the letter he reads Bryan Post's scrawled words with the same remote twinge of disgust which he felt the first time he ever read it. A feeling striped with some vague shame at the fact Bryan Post and he are blood relations.

His father handed him the letter two days ago.

“It's from your uncle,” he said. “I can't go. I can't see how I can go.”

With considerable difficulty, Millard had made out the writing:

“Goddam!” Millard had said. “He can hardly write English!”

“You hang around your Cousin Al and learn words like that. And you'll get a swat for saying them!” “I'm hip Al writes better than this, man!” “Dad's what you call me!”

“Dad, then. But I never saw writing like this before.” “There's a whole lot you never saw, boy.” “Is his lid flipped?”

“Thank your stars, Millard, you're getting an education. That's all!”

“No punctuation even — not a lousy comma even!” “Millard, listen to me … I want you to go.” “Me go!”

“It's your grandmother dying, boy.” “Man, I don't even know her, Dad!”

“It's my mother going to pass away and one of us is going!” “I got school … Education, you know?” “I can't take off from my job, boy — your sister can't take off from hers. But you can get excused from school.” “Naw, naw.”

“You'll fly down so as not to waste time. You can come back by Greyhound Bus. We'll use the money I've been saving for the Hide-a-Bed. Couch is good enough to sleep on another year”

“What about the backache you say it gives you?”

“Backache's better than a soul-ache, Millard. Hussie Post was a good mother to me, good as your own mother to you before she passed”

“Naw, Dad, I don't want to”

“It's out of the realm of what you want now, boy. You're going!”

Then slowly the reluctance Millard had transformed itself into a heady kind of enthusiasm. He had never been farther from Harlem than Rockaway Beach. Most of the members of the Panthers hadn't either, and when he announced his news of the journey to the gang, it was met with a certain awe on their part.

“You going to fly all the way down, Mil?”

“Man, Mil, you're going to travel!”

“You're cuttin' classes, huh, Mil? Crazy!”

His sister Pearl had actually ironed his handkerchiefs, instead of just folding them over once they came out of the Laundromat; and she'd bought shoe polish and done his loafers. See his face in the shine!