Tales Read online

“Hey, Tom, why you always bothering ol’ Jimmy Wilson. He’s a good man.”

  “Oh, oh, here’s that little light ass Dan sticking up for Ugly again. Why you like him, huh? Cause he’s the only cat uglier than you? Huh?”

  “Tom’s the worst looking cat on campus calling me ugly.”

  “Well, you are. Wait, lemme bring you this mirror so you can see yourself. Now, what you think. You can’t think anything else.”

  “Aww, man, blow, will you?”

  The pork chop is cooked and little charlie is trying to cut a piece off before the leader can stop him. “Ow, goddam.”

  “Well, who told you to try to steal it, jive ass.”

  “Hey, man, I gotta get somea that chop.”

  “Gimme some, Ray.”

  “Why don’t you cats go buy something to eat. I didn’t ask anybody for any of those hot dogs. So get away from my grease. Hungry ass spooks.”

  “Wait a minute, fella. I know you don’t mean Young Rick.”

  “Go ask one of those D.C. babes for something to eat. I know they must have something you could sink your teeth into.”

  Pud and Jimmy Jones are wrestling under Phil’s desk.

  A.B. is playin’ the dozen with Leon and Teddy. “Teddy are your momma’s legs as crooked as yours?”

  “This cat always wants to talk about people’s mothers! Country bastard.”

  Tom is pinching Jimmy Wilson. Dan is laughing at them.

  Enty and Mazique are playing bridge with the farmers. “Uhh! Beat that, jew boy!”

  “What the fuck is trumps?”

  The leader is defending his pork chop from Cholley, Rick, Brady, Brown, Hambrick, Carl, Dick Smith, (S from the City has gone out catting.

  “Who is it?”

  A muffled voice, under the uproar, “It’s Mister Bush.”

  “Bush? Hey, Ray . . . Ray.”

  “Who is it?”

  Plainer. “Mister Bush.” (Each syllable pronounced and correct as a soft southern american can.) Innocent VIII in his bedroom shoes. Gregory at Canossa, raging softly in his dignity and power. “Mister Bush.”

  “Ohh, shit. Get that liquor somewhere. O.K., Mr. Bush, just a second . . . Not there, asshole, in the drawer.”

  “Mr. McGhee, will you kindly open the door.”

  “Ohh, shit, the hot plate. I got it.” The leader turns a wastepaper basket upside-down on top of the chop. Swings open the door. “Oh, hello Mister Bush. How are you this evening?” About 15 boots sit smiling toward the door. Come in, Boniface. What news of Luther? In unison, now.

  “Hi . . . Hello . . . How are you, Mister Bush?”

  “Uh, huh.” He stares around the room, grinding his eyes into their various hearts. An unhealthy atmosphere, this America. “Mr. McGhee, why is it if there’s noise in this dormitory it always comes from this room?” Aww, he knows. He wrote me years later in the air force that he knew, even then.

  “What are you running here, a boys’ club?” (That’s it.) He could narrow his eyes even in that affluence. Put his hands on his hips. Shove that stomach at you as proof he was an authority of the social grace . . . a western man, no matter the color of his skin. How To? He was saying, this is not the way. Don’t act like that word. Don’t fail us. We’ve waited for all you handsome boys too long. Erect a new world, of lies and stocking caps. Silence, and a reluctance of memory. Forget the slow grasses, and flame, flame in the valley. Feet bound, dumb eyes begging for darkness. The bodies moved with the secret movement of the air. Swinging. My beautiful grandmother kneels in the shadow weeping. Flame, flame in the valley. Where is it there is light? Where, this music rakes my talk?

  “Why is it, Mr. McGhee, when there’s some disturbance in this building, it always comes from here?” (Aww, you said that . . .)

  “And what are all you other gentlemen doing in here? Good night, there must be twenty of you here! Really, gentlemen, don’t any of you have anything to do?” He made to smile, Ha, I know some of you who’d better be in your rooms right now hitting those books . . . or you might not be with us next semester. Ha.

  “O.K., who is that under that sheet?” (It was Enty, a student dormitory director, hiding under the sheets, flat on the leader’s bed.) “You, sir, whoever you are, come out of there, hiding won’t do you any good. Come out!” (We watched the sheet, and it quivered. Innocent raised his finger.) “Come out, sir!” (The sheet pushed slowly back. Enty’s head appeared. And Bush more embarrassed than he.) “Mr. Enty! My assistant dormitory director, good night. A man of responsibility. Go-od night! Are there any more hiding in here, Mr. McGhee?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Alright, Mr. Enty, you come with me. And the rest of you had better go to your rooms and try to make some better grades. Mr. McGhee, I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning in my office.”

  The leader smiles, “Yes.” (Jive ass.)

  Bush turns to go, Enty following sadly. “My God, what’s that terrible odor . . . something burning.” (The leader’s chop, and the wastepaper, under the basket, starting to smoke.) “Mr. McGhee, what’s that smell?”

  “Uhhh.” (come-on, baby) “Oh, it’s Strothers’ kneepads on the radiator! (Yass) They’re drying.”

  “Well, Jesus, I hope they dry soon. Whew! And don’t forget, tomorrow morning, Mr. McGhee and you other gentlemen had better retire, it’s 2 in the morning!” The door slams. Charlie sits where Enty was. The bottles come out. The basket is turned right-side up. Chop and most of the papers smoking. The leader pours water onto the mess and sinks to his bed.

  “Damn. Now I have to go hungry. Shit.”

  “That was pretty slick, ugly, the kneepads! Why don’t you eat them they look pretty done.”

  The talk is to that. That elegance of performance. The rite of lust, or self-extinction. Preservation. Some leave, and a softer uproar descends. Jimmy Jones and Pud wrestle quietly on the bed. Phil quotes the Post’s sport section on Willie Mays. Hambrick and Brown go for franks. Charlie scrapes the “burn” off the chop and eats it alone. Tom, Dan, Ted and the leader drink and manufacture lives for each person they know. We know. Even you. Tom, the lawyer. Dan, the lawyer. Ted, the high-school teacher. All their proper ways. And the leader, without cause or place. Except talk, feeling, guilt. Again, only those areas of the world make sense. Talk. We are doing that now. Feeling: that too. Guilt. That inch of wisdom, forever. Except he sits reading in green glasses. As, “No, no, the utmost share/Of my desire shall be/Only to kiss that air/That lately kissèd thee.”

  “Uhh! What’s trumps, dammit!”

  As, “Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,/That from the nunnery/Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind/To war and arms I fly.”

  “You talking about a lightweight mammy-tapper, boy, you really king.”

  Oh, Lucasta, find me here on the bed, with hard pecker and dirty feet. Oh, I suffer, in my green glasses, under the canopy of my loves. Oh, I am drunk and vomity in my room, with only Charlie Ventura to understand my grace. As, “Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi/Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert/A shape with lion body and the head of a man/A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,/Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it/Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.”

  Primers for dogs who are learning to read. Tinkle of European teacups. All longing, speed, suffering. All adventure, sadness, stink and wisdom. All feeling, silence, light. As, “Crush, O sea the cities with their catacomb-like corridors/And crush eternally the vile people,/The idiots, and the abstemious, and mow down, mow down/With a single stroke the bent backs of the shrunken harvest!”

  “Damn, Charlie, we brought back a frank for everybody . . . now you want two. Wrong sunafabitch!”

  “Verde que te quiero verde./Verde viento. Verdes ramas./El barco sobre la mar/y el caballo en la montaña.”

  “Hey, man, I saw that ol’ fagit Bobby Hutchens down in the lobby with a real D.C. queer. I mean a real way-type sissy.”

  “Huh, man, he’s jus
t another actor . . . hooo.”

  “That cat still wearing them funny lookin’ pants?”

  “Yeh, and orange glasses. Plus, the cat always needs a haircut, and what not.”

  “Hey, man, you cats better cool it . . . you talkin’ about Ray’s main man. You dig?”

  “Yeh. I see this cat easin’ around corners with the cat all the time. I mean, talkin’ some off-the-wall shit, too, baby.”

  “Yeh. Yeh. Why don’t you cats go fuck yourselves or something hip like that, huh?”

  “O.K., ugly Tom, you better quit inferring that shit about Ray. What you trying to say, ol’ pointy head is funny or something?”

  “Funny . . . how the sound of your voice . . . thri-ills me. Strange . . .” (the last à la King Cole.)

  “Fuck you cats and your funny looking families too.”

  A wall. With light at the top, perhaps. No, there is light. Seen from both sides, a gesture of life. But always more than is given. An abstract infinitive. To love. To lie. To want. And that always . . . to want. Always, more than is given. The dead scramble up each side . . . words or drunkenness. Praise, to the flesh. Rousseau, Hobbes, and their betters. All move, from flesh to love. From love to flesh. At that point under the static light. It could be Shostakovich in Charleston, South Carolina. Or in the dull windows of Chicago, an unread volume of Joyce. Some black woman who will never hear the word Negress or remember your name. Or a thin preacher who thinks your name is Stephen. A wall. Oh, Lucasta.

  “Man, you cats don’t know anything about Hutchens. I don’t see why you talk about the cat and don’t know the first thing about him.”

  “Shit. If he ain’t funny . . . Skippy’s a punk.”

  “How come you don’t say that to Skippy?”

  “Our Own Boy, Skippy Weatherson. All-coon fullback for 12 years.”

  “You tell him that!”

  “Man, don’t try to change the subject. This cat’s trying to keep us from talking about his boy, Hutchens.”

  “Yeh, mammy-rammer. What’s happenin’ McGhee, ol’ man?”

  “Hooo. Yeh. They call this cat Dick Brown. Hoooo!”

  Rick moves to the offensive. The leader in his book, or laughs, “Aww, man, that cat ain’t my boy. I just don’t think you cats ought to talk about people you don’t know anything about! Plus, that cat probably gets more ass than any of you silly-ass mother fuckers.”

  “Hee. That Ray sure can pronounce that word. I mean he don’t say mutha like most folks . . . he always pronounces the mother and the fucker, so proper. And it sure makes it sound nasty.” (A texas millionaire talking.)

  “Hutchens teachin’ the cat how to talk . . . that’s what’s happening. Ha. In exchange for services rendered!”

  “Wait, Tom. Is it you saying that Hutchens and my man here are into some funny shit?”

  “No, man. It’s you saying that. It was me just inferring, you dig?”

  “Hey, why don’t you cats just get drunk in silence, huh?”

  “Hey, Bricks, what was Hutchens doin’ downstairs with that cat?”

  “Well, they were just coming in the dormitory, I guess. Hutchens was signing in that’s all.”

  “Hey, you dig . . . I bet he’s takin’ that cat up to his crib.”

  “Yeh, I wonder what they into by now. Huh! Probably suckin’ the shit out of each other.”

  “Aww, man, cool it, willya . . . Damn!”

  “What’s the matter, Ray, you don’t dig love?”

  “Hey, it’s Young Rick saying that we oughta go up and dig what’s happenin’ up there?”

  “Square mother fucker!”

  “Votre mere!”

  “Votre mere noir!”

  “Boy, these cats in French One think they hip!”

  “Yeh, let’s go up and see what those cats are doing.”

  “Tecch, aww, shit. Damn, you some square cats, wow! Cats got nothing better to do than fuck with people. Damn!”

  Wall. Even to move, impossible. I sit, now, forever where I am. No further. No farther. Father, who am I to hide myself? And brew a world of soft lies.

  Again. “Verde que te quiero verde.” Green. Read it again, Il Duce. Make it build some light here . . . where there is only darkness. Tell them “Verde, que te quiero verde.” I want you Green. Leader, the paratroopers will come for you at noon. A helicopter low over the monastery. To get you out.

  But my country. My people. These dead souls, I call my people. Flesh of my flesh.

  At noon, Il Duce. Make them all etceteras. Extras. The soft strings behind the final horns.

  “Hey, Ray, you comin’ with us?”

  “Fuck you cats. I got other things to do.”

  “Damn, now the cat’s trying to pretend he can read Spanish.”

  “Yeh . . . well let’s go see what’s happening cats.”

  “Cats, Cats, Cats . . . What’s happenin’?”

  “Hey, Smitty! We going upstairs to peep that ol’ sissy Hutchens. He’s got some big time D.C. faggot in there with him. You know, we figured it’d be better than 3-D.”

  “Yeh? That’s pretty hip. You not coming, Ray?”

  “No, man . . . I’m sure you cats can peep in a keyhole without me.”

  “Bobby’s his main man, that’s all.”

  “Yeh, mine and your daddy’s.”

  Noise. Shouts, and Rick begs them to be softer. For the circus. Up the creaking stairs, except Carl and Leon who go to the freshman dorm to play ping-pong . . . and Ted who is behind in his math.

  The 3rd floor of Park Hall, an old 19th-century philanthropy, gone to seed. The missionaries’ words dead & hung useless in the air. “Be clean, thrifty, and responsible. Show the anti-Christs you’re ready for freedom and God’s true word.” Peasants among the mulattoes, and the postman’s son squats in his glasses shivering at his crimes.

  “Hey, which room is his?”

  “Three Oh Five.”

  “Hey, Tom, how you know the cat’s room so good? This cat must be sneaking too.”

  “Huhh, yeh!”

  “O.K. Rick, just keep walking.”

  “Here it is.”

  “Be cool, bastard. Shut up.”

  They stood and grinned. And punched each other. Two bulbs in the hall. A window at each end. One facing the reservoir, the other, the fine-arts building where Professor Gorsun sits angry at jazz. “Goddamnit, none of that nigger music in my new building. Culture. Goddamnit, ladies and gentlemen, line up and be baptized. This pose will take the hurt away. We are white and featureless under this roof. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!”

  “Bobby. Bobby, baby.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t go blank on me like that, baby. I was saying something.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry . . . I guess I’m just tired or something.”

  “I was saying, how can you live in a place like this. I mean, really, baby, this place is nowhere. Whew. It’s like a jail or something eviler.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, why don’t you leave it then. You’re much too sensitive for a place like this. I don’t see why you stay in this damn school. You know, you’re really talented.”

  “Yeh, well, I figured I have to get a degree, you know. Teach or something, I suppose. There’s not really much work around for spliv actors.”

  “Oh, Bobby, you ought to stop being so conscious of being colored. It really is not fashionable. Ummm. You know you have beautiful eyes.”

  “You want another drink, Lyle?”

  “Ugg. Oh, that cheap bourbon. You know I have some beautiful wines at home. You should try drinking some good stuff for a change. Damn, Bob, why don’t you just leave this dump and move into my place? There’s certainly enough room. And we certainly get along. Ummm. Such beautiful eyes and hair too.”

  “Hah. How much rent would I have to pay out there? I don’t have penny the first!”

  “Rent? No, no . . . you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll take care of all that. I’ve got one of t
hose gooood jobs, honey. US guvment.”

  “Oh? Where do you work?”

  “The P.O. with the rest of the fellas. But it’s enough for what I want to do. And you wouldn’t be an expense. Hmmp. Or would you? You know you have the kind of strong masculine hands I love. Like you could crush anything you wanted. Lucky I’m on your good side. Hmmp.”

  “Well, maybe at the end of this semester I could leave. If the offer still holds then.”

  “Still holds? Well why not? We’ll still be friends then, I’m certain. Ummm. Say, why don’t we shut off that light.”

  “Umm. Let me do it. There . . . You know I loved you in Jimmy’s play, but the rest of those people are really just kids. You were the only person who really understood what was going on. You have a strong maturity that comes through right away. How old are you, Bobby?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “O baby . . . that’s why your skin is so soft. Yes. Say, why wait until the end of the semester . . . that’s two months away. I might be dead before that, you know. Umm.”

  The wind moves thru the leader’s room, and he sits alone, under the drooping velvet, repeating words he does not understand. The yellow light burns. He turns it off. Smokes. Masturbates. Turns it on. Verde, verde. Te quiero. Smokes. And then to his other source. “Yma’s brother,” Tom said when he saw it. “Yma Sumac, Albert Camus. Man, nobody wants to go by their right names no more. And a cat told me that chick ain’t really from Peru. She was born in Brooklyn, man, and her name’s Camus too. Amy Camus. This cat’s name is probably Trebla Sumac, and he ain’t French he’s from Brooklyn too. Yeh. Ha!”

  In the dark the words are anything. “If it is true that the only paradise is that which one has lost, I know what name to give that something tender and inhuman which dwells within me today.”

  “Oh, shit, fuck it. Fuck it.” He slams the book against the wall, and empties Hambrick’s bottle. “I mean, why?” Empties bottle. “Shiiit.”

  When he swings the door open the hall above is screams. Screams. All their voices, even now right here. The yellow glasses falling on the stairs, and broken. In his bare feet. “Shiit. Dumb ass cats!”

  “Rick, Rick, what’s the cat doing now?”