Tales Read online
Table of Contents
___________________
A Chase (Alighieri’s Dream)
The Alternative
The Largest Ocean in the World
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Alternate Ending
The Death of Horatio Alger
Going Down Slow
Heroes Are Gang Leaders
The Screamers
Salute
Words
New-Sense
Unfinished
New Spirit
No BodyNo Place
Now and Then
Answers in Progress
Also by Amiri Baraka
Copyright & Credits
About Akashic Books
“For Lanie
whose heard
boo coos”
A Chase
(Alighieri’s Dream)
Place broken: their faces sat and broke each other. As suns, Sons gone tired in the heart and left the south. The North, years later she’d wept for him drunk and a man finally they must have thought. In the dark, he was even darker. Wooden fingers running. Wind so sweet it drank him.
Faces broke. Charts of age. Worn thru, to see black years. Bones in iron faces. Steel bones. Cages of decay. Cobblestones are wet near the army stores. Beer smells, Saturday. To now, they have passed so few lovely things.
Newsreel chickens. Browned in the street. I was carrying groceries back across the manicured past. Back, in a coat. Sunk, screaming at my fingers. Faces broken, hair waved, simple false elegance. I must tell someone I love you. Them. In line near the fence. She sucked my tongue. Red, actual red, but colored hair. Soft thin voice, and red freckles. A servant.
You should be ashamed. Your fingers are trembling. You lied in the garage. You lied yesterday. Get out of the dance, down the back stairs, the street, and across in the car. Run past it, around the high building. Court Street, past the Y, harder, buttoning a cardigan, to Morton Street. Duck down, behind the car. Let Apple pass; a few others. Now take off back down Court, the small guys couldn’t run. Cross High, near Graychun’s, the Alumni House, donald the fag’s, the jews, to Kinney. Up one block, crooked old jews die softly under the moon. Past them. Past them. Their tombs and bones. Wet dollars blown against the fence. Past them, mattie’s Dr., waltine, turn at Quitman. You can slow some, but not too much. Through the Owl Club, Frankie, Dee’s dumb brother, turn, wave at them. Down the back steps, to dirt, then stone. The poolroom, eddie smiles, points at his hat, pats his car keys, phone numbers. Somerset and the projects. To Montgomery and twist at Barclay. Light people stare. Parties, relationships forming to be explained later. Casual strangers’ faces known better than any now. Wood jaws sit open, their halls reek, his fingers tug at yellow cotton pants and slip inside. One finger her eyes open and close—her mouth opens moaning deep agitated darkly.
In the middle of the street, straight at the moon. Don’t get close to the buildings. Too many exits, doors, parks. Straight at the moon, up Barclay. Green tyrolean, gray bells, bucks. The smoking lights at Spruce. Hip charles curtis. But turn before Herman or Wattley. They pace in wool jails, wool chains, years below the earth. Dead cocks crawling, eyes turned up in space. Near diane’s house and the trees cradling her hidden flesh. Her fingers, her mouth, her eyes were all I had. And she screams now through soft wrinkles for me to take her. A Nun.
Wheeling now, back on the sidewalk, Saturday drunks spinning by, fish stores yawned, sprawled niggers dying without matches. Friends, enemies, strangers, fags, screaming louder than all sound. Young boys in hallways touching. Bulldaggers hiding their pussies. Black dead faces slowly ground to dust.
Headlight, Bubbles, Kennie, Rogie, Junie Boy, T. Bone, Rudy (All Hillside Place) or Sess, Ray, Lillian, Ungie, Ginger, Shirley, Cedie Abrams. Past them, displaced, blood seeps on the pavement under marquees. Lynn Hope marches on Belmont Ave. with us all. The Three Musketeers at the National. (Waverly Projects.) Past that. Their arms waving from the stands. Sun and gravel or the 3 hole opens and it’s more beautiful than Satie. A hip, change speeds, head fake, stop, cut back, a hip, head fake . . . then only one man coming from the side . . . it went thru my head a million times, the years it took, seeing him there, with a good angle, shooting in, with 3 yards to the sidelines, about 10 home. I watched him all my life close in, and thot to cut, stop or bear down and pray I had speed. Answers shot up, but my head was full of blood and it moved me without talk. I stopped still the ball held almost like a basketball, wheeled and moved in to score untouched.
* * *
A long stretch from Waverly to Spruce (going the other way near Hillside). A long stretch, and steeper, straight up Spruce. And that street moved downtown. They all passed by, going down. And I was burning by, up the hill, toward The Foxes and the milk bar. Change clothes on the street to a black suit. Black wool.
4 corners, the entire world visible from there. Even to the lower regions.
The Alternative
This may not seem like much, but it makes a difference. And then there are those who prefer to look their fate in the eyes.
Between Yes and No
—Camus
The leader sits straddling the bed, and the night, tho innocent, blinds him. (Who is our flesh. Our lover, marched here from where we sit now sweating and remembering. Old man. Old man, find me, who am your only blood.)
Sits straddling the bed under a heavy velvet canopy. Homemade. The door opened for a breeze, which will not come through the other heavy velvet hung at the opening. (Each thread a face, or smell, rubbed against himself with yellow glasses and fear at their exposure. Death. Death. They (the younger students) run by screaming. Tho impromptu. Tho dead, themselves.
The leader, at his bed, stuck with 130 lbs. black meat sewed to failing bone. A head with big red eyes turning senselessly. Five toes on each foot. Each foot needing washing. And hands that dangle to the floor, tho the boy himself is thin small washed out, he needs huge bleak hands that drag the floor. And a head full of walls and flowers. Blinking lights. He is speaking.
“Yeh?” The walls are empty, heat at the ceiling. Tho one wall is painted with a lady. (Her name now. In large relief, a faked rag stuck between the chalk marks of her sex. Finley. Teddy’s Doris. There sprawled where the wind fiddled with the drying cloth. Leon came in and laughed. Carl came in and hid his mouth, but he laughed. Teddy said, “Aw, Man.”
“Come on, Hollywood. You can’t beat that. Not with your years. Man, you’re a schoolteacher 10 years after weeping for this old stinking bitch. And hit with a aspirin bottle (myth says).”
The leader is sprawled, dying. His retinue walks into their comfortable cells. “I have duraw-ings,” says Leon, whimpering now in the buses from Chicago. Dead in a bottle. Floats out of sight, until the Africans arrive with love and prestige. “Niggers.” They say. “Niggers.” Be happy your ancestors are recognized in this burg. Martyrs. Dead in an automat, because the boys had left. Lost in New York, frightened of the burned lady, they fled into those streets and sang their homage to the Radio City.
The leader sits watching the window. The dried orange glass etched with the fading wind. (How many there then? 13 rue Madeleine. The Boys Club. They give, what he has given them. Names. And the black cloth hung on the door swings back and forth. One pork chop on the hot plate. And how many there. Here, now. Just the shadow, waving its arms. The eyes tearing or staring blindly at the dead street. These same who loved me all my life. These same I find my senses in. Their flesh a wagon of dust, a mind conceived from all minds. A country, of thought. Where I am, will go, have never left. A love, of love. And the silence the question posed each second. “Is this my mind, my feeling. Is this voice something heavy in the locked streets of the universe. Dead ends. Where their talk (these nouns) is bitter vegetable.”
That is, the suitable question rings against the walls. Higher learning. That is, the moon through the window clearly visible. The leader in seersucker, reading his books. An astronomer of sorts. “Will you look at that? I mean, really, now, fellows. Cats!” (Which was Smitty from the City’s entree. And him the smoothest of you American types. Said, “Cats. Cats. What’s goin’ on?” The debate.
The leader’s job (he keeps it still, above the streets, summers of low smoke, early evening drunk and wobbling thru the world. He keeps it, baby. You dig?) was absolute. “I have the abstract position of watching these halls. Walking up the stairs giggling. Hurt under the cement steps, weeping . . . is my only task. Tho I play hockey with the broom & wine bottles. And am the sole martyr of this cause. A.B., Young Rick, T.P., Carl, Hambrick, Li’l Cholley, Phil. O.K. All their knowledge “Flait! More! Way!” The leader’s job . . . to make attention for the place. Sit along the sides of the water or lay quietly back under his own shooting vomit, happy to die in a new gray suit. Yes. “And what not.”
How many here now? Danny. (brilliant dirty curly Dan, the m.d.) Later, now, where you off to, my man. The tall skinny farmers, lucky to find sales and shiny white shoes. Now made it socially against the temples. This “hotspot” Darien drunk teacher blues . . . “and she tried to come on like she didn’t even like to fuck. I mean, you know the kind . . .” The hand extended, palm upward. I place my own in yours. That cross, of feeling. Willie, in his grinning grave, has it all. The place, of all souls, in their greasy significance. An armor, like the smells drifting slowly up Georgia. The bridge players change clothes, and descend. Carrying home the rolls.
Jimmy Lassiter, first looie. A vector. What is the angle made if a straight line is drawn from the chapel, across to Jimmy, and connected there, to me, and back up the hill again? The angle of progress. “I was talkin’ to ol’ Mordecai yesterday in a dream, and it’s me sayin’ ‘dig baby, why don’t you come off it?’ You know.”
The line, for Jimmy’s sad and useless horn. And they tell me (via phone, letter, accidental meetings in the Village. “Oh he’s in med school and married and lost to you, hombre.” Ha. They don’t dig completely where I’m at. I have him now, complete. Though it is a vicious sadness cripples my fingers. Those blue and empty afternoons I saw him walking at my side. Criminals in that world. Complete heroes of our time. (add Allen to complete an early splinter group. Muslim heroes with flapping pants. Raincoats. Trolley car romances.)
And it’s me making a portrait of them all. That was the leader’s job. Alone with them. (Without them. Except beautiful faces shoved out the window, sunny days, I ran to meet my darkest girl. Ol’ Doll. “Man, that bitch got a goddamn new car.” And what not. And it’s me sayin’ to her, Baby, knock me a kiss.
Tonight the leader is faced with decision. Brown had found him drunk and weeping among the dirty clothes. Some guy with a crippled arm had reported to the farmers (a boppin’ gang gone social. Sociologists, artistic arbiters of our times). This one an athlete of mouselike proportions. “You know,” he said, his withered arm hung stupidly in the rayon suit, “that cat’s nuts. He was sittin’ up in that room last night with dark glasses on . . . with a yellow bulb . . . pretendin’ to read some abstract shit.” (Damn, even the color wrong. Where are you now, hippy, under this abstract shit. Not even defense. That you remain forever in that world. No light. Under my fingers. That you exist alone, as I make you. Your sin, a final ugliness to you. For the leopards, all thumbs jerked toward the sand.) “Man, we do not need cats like that in the frat.” (Agreed.)
Tom comes in with two big bottles of wine. For the contest. An outing. “Hugh Herbert and W.C. Fields will now indian wrestle for ownership of this here country!” (Agreed.) The leader loses . . . but is still the leader because he said some words no one had heard of before. (That was after the loss.)
Yng Rick has fucked someone else. Let’s listen. “Oh, man, you cats don’t know what’s happenin’.” (You’re too much, Rick. Much too much. Like Larry Darnell in them ol’ italian schools. Much too much.) “Babes” he called them (a poor project across from the convents. Baxter Terrace. Home of the enemy. We stood them off. We Cavaliers. And then, even tho Johnny Boy was his hero. Another midget placed on the purple. Early leader, like myself. The fight of gigantic proportions to settle all those ancient property disputes would have been between us. Both weighing close to 125. But I avoided that like the plague, and managed three times to drive past him with good hooks without incident. Whew, I said to Love, Whew. And Rick, had gone away from them, to school. Like myself. And now, strangely, for the Gods are white our teachers said, he found himself with me. And all the gold and diamonds of the crown I wore he hated. Though, the new wine settled, and his social graces kept him far enough away to ease the hurt of serving a hated master. Hence “babes,” and the constant reference to his wiggling flesh. Listen.
“Yeh. Me and Chris had these D.C. babes at their cribs.” (Does a dance step with the suggestive flair.) “Oooooo, that was some good box.”
Tom knew immediately where that bit was at. And he pulled Rick into virtual madness . . . lies at least. “Yeh, Rick. Yeh? You mean you got a little Jones, huh? Was it good?” (Tom pulls on Rick’s sleeve like Laurel and Rick swings.)
“Man, Tom, you don’t have to believe it, baby. It’s in here now!” (points to his stomach.)
The leader stirs. “Hmm, that’s a funny way to fuck.” Rick will give a boxing demonstration in a second.
Dick Smith smiles, “Wow, Rick you’re way,” extending his hand, palm upward. “And what not,” Dick adds, for us to laugh. “O.K., you’re bad.” (At R’s crooked jab.) “Huh, this cat always wants to bust somebody up, and what not. Hey, baby, you must be frustrated or something. How come you don’t use up all that energy on your babes . . . and what not?”
The rest there, floating empty nouns. Under the sheets. The same death as the crippled fag. Lost with no defense. Except they sit now, for this portrait . . . in which they will be portrayed as losers. Only the leader wins. Tell him that.
Some guys playing cards. Some talking about culture, i.e., the leader had a new side. (Modesty denies. They sit around, in real light. The leader in his green glasses, fidgeting with his joint. Carl, in a brown fedora, trims his toes and nails. Spars with Rick. Smells his foot and smiles. Brady reads, in his silence, a crumpled black dispatch. Shorter’s liver smells the hall and Leon slams the door, waiting for the single chop, the leader might have to share. The door opens, two farmers come in, sharp in orange suits. The hippies laugh, and hide their youthful lies. “Man, I was always hip. I mean, I knew about Brooks Brothers when I was 10.” (So sad we never know the truth. About that world, until the bones dry in our heads. Young blond governors with their “dads” hip at the age of 2. That way. Which, now, I sit in judgment of. What I wanted those days with the covers of books turned toward the audience. The first nighters. Or dragging my two forward to the Music Box to see Elliot Nugent. They would say, these dead men, laughing at us, “The natives are restless,” stroking their gouty feet. Gimme culture, culture, culture, and Romeo and Juliet over the emerson.
How many there now? Make it 9. Phil’s cracking the books. Jimmy Jones and Pud, two D.C. boys, famous and funny, study “zo” at the top of their voices. “Hemiptera,” says Pud. “Homoptera,” says Jimmy. “Weak as a bitch,” says Phil, “both your knowledges are flait.”
More than 9. Mazique, Enty, operating now in silence. Right hands flashing down the cards. “Uhh!” In love with someone, and money from home. Both perfect, with curly hair. “Uhh! Shit, Enty, hearts is trumps.”
“What? Ohh, shit!”
“Uhh!”, their beautiful hands flashing under the single bulb.
Hambrick comes with liquor. (A box of fifths, purchased with the fantastic wealth of his father’s six shrimp shops.) “You cats caint have all this goddam booze. Brown and I got dates, that’s why and we need some for the babes.”
Brown has hot dogs for five. Franks, he says
. “Damn, Cholley, you only get a half of frank . . . and you take the whole motherfucking thing.”
“Aww, man, I’ll pay you back.” And the room, each inch, is packed with lives. Make it 12 . . . all heroes, or dead. Indian chiefs, the ones not waging their wars, like Clark, in the legal mist of Baltimore. A judge. Old Clark. You remember when we got drunk together and you fell down the stairs? Or that time you fell in the punch bowl puking, and let that sweet yellow ass get away? Boy, I’ll never forget that, as long as I live. (Having died seconds later, he talks thru his rot.) Yeh, boy, you were always a card. (White man talk. A card. Who the hell says that, except that branch office with no culture. Piles of bullion, and casual violence. To the mind. Nights they kick you against the buildings. Communist homosexual nigger. “Aw, man, I’m married and got two kids.”
What could be happening? Some uproar. “FUCK YOU, YOU FUNNY LOOKING SUNAFABITCH.”
“Me? Funnylooking? Oh, wow. Will you listen to this little pointy head bastard calling me funny looking. Hey, Everett. Hey Everett! Who’s the funniest looking . . . me or Keyes?”
“Aww, both you cats need some work. Man, I’m trying to read.”
“Read? What? You gettin’ into them books, huh? Barnes is whippin’ your ass, huh? I told you not to take Organic . . . as light as you are.”
“Shit. I’m not even thinking about Barnes. Barnes can kiss my ass.”
“Shit. You better start thinking about him, or you’ll punch right out. They don’t need lightweights down in the valley. Ask Ugly Wilson.”
“Look, Tom, I wasn’t bothering you.”
“Bothering me? Wha’s the matter with you ol’ Jimmy. Commere boy, lemme rub your head.”
“Man, you better get the hell outta here.”
“What? . . . Why? What you gonna do? You can’t fight, you little funny looking buzzard.”