basket-ball, and when I’d make a long clean shot she’d clap with the
others, louder than they, I thought. I’d meet her on the street, and
there’d be no difference in the way she said hello. She never took the
trouble to call me by my name. On the days for drill, I’d let my voice
down a tone and call for a complicated maneuver when I saw her coming.
She’d smile appreciation, but it was an impersonal smile, never for me.
It was on a summer excursion down to Riverview that she first seemed to
take me into account. The day had been spent riding merry-go-rounds,
scenic-railways, and shoot-the-chutes. We had been in swimming and we
had danced. I was a crack swimmer then. She didnt know how. I held her
up and showed her how to kick her legs and draw her arms. Of course
she didnt learn in one day, but she thanked me for bothering with her.
I was also somewhat of a dancer. And I had already noticed that love
can start on a dance floor. We danced. But though I held her tightly
in my arms, she was way away. That college feller who lived on the top
floor was somewhere making money for the next year. I imagined that
she was thinking, wishing for him. Ned was along. He treated her until
his money gave out. She went with another feller. Ned got sore. One
by one the boys’ money gave out. She left them. And they got sore.
Every one of them but me got sore. This is the reason, I guess, why I
had her to myself on the top deck of the _Jane Mosely_ that night as
we puffed up the Potomac, coming home. The moon was brilliant. The air
was sweet like clover. And every now and then, a salt tang, a stale
drift of sea-weed. It was not my mind’s fault if it went romancing. I
should have taken her in my arms the minute we were stowed in that old
lifeboat. I dallied, dreaming. She took me in hers. And I could feel by
the touch of it that it wasnt a man-to-woman love. It made me restless.
I felt chagrined. I didnt know what it was, but I did know that I
couldnt handle it. She ran her fingers through my hair and kissed
my forehead. I itched to break through her tenderness to passion.
I wanted her to take me in her arms as I knew she had that college
feller. I wanted her to love me passionately as she did him. I gave her
one burning kiss. Then she laid me in her lap as if I were a child.
Helpless. I got sore when she started to hum a lullaby. She wouldnt
let me go. I talked. I knew damned well that I could beat her at that.
Her eyes were soft and misty, the curves of her lips were wistful, and
her smile seemed indulgent of the irrelevance of my remarks. I gave up
at last and let her love me, silently, in her own way. The moon was
brilliant. The air was sweet like clover, and every now and then, a
salt tang, a stale drift of sea-weed....
• • • • •
The next time I came close to her was the following summer at Harpers
Ferry. We were sitting on a flat projecting rock they give the name of
Lover’s Leap. Some one is supposed to have jumped off it. The river is
about six hundred feet beneath. A railroad track runs up the valley and
curves out of sight where part of the mountain rock had to be blasted
away to make room for it. The engines of this valley have a whistle,
the echoes of which sound like iterated gasps and sobs. I always think
of them as crude music from the soul of Avey. We sat there holding
hands. Our palms were soft and warm against each other. Our fingers
were not tight. She would not let them be. She would not let me twist
them. I wanted to talk. To explain what I meant to her. Avey was as
silent as those great trees whose tops we looked down upon. She has
always been like that. At least, to me. I had the notion that if I
really wanted to, I could do with her just what I pleased. Like one
can strip a tree. I did kiss her. I even let my hands cup her breasts.
When I was through, she’d seek my hand and hold it till my pulse cooled
down. Evening after evening we sat there. I tried to get her to talk
about that college feller. She never would. There was no set time to go
home. None of my family had come down. And as for hers, she didnt give
a hang about them. The general gossips could hardly say more than they
had. The boarding-house porch was always deserted when we returned. No
one saw us enter, so the time was set conveniently for scandal. This
worried me a little, for I thought it might keep Avey from getting an
appointment in the schools. She didnt care. She had finished normal
school. They could give her a job if they wanted to. As time went on,
her indifference to things began to pique me; I was ambitious. I left
the Ferry earlier than she did. I was going off to college. The more
I thought of it, the more I resented, yes, hell, thats what it was,
her downright laziness. Sloppy indolence. There was no excuse for a
healthy girl taking life so easy. Hell! she was no better than a cow.
I was certain that she was a cow when I felt an udder in a Wisconsin
stock-judging class. Among those energetic Swedes, or whatever they
are, I decided to forget her. For two years I thought I did. When I’d
come home for the summer she’d be away. And before she returned, I’d
be gone. We never wrote; she was too damned lazy for that. But what a
bluff I put up about forgetting her. The girls up that way, at least
the ones I knew, havent got the stuff: they dont know how to love.
Giving themselves completely was tame beside just the holding of Avey’s
hand. One day I received a note from her. The writing, I decided, was
slovenly. She wrote on a torn bit of note-book paper. The envelope had
a faint perfume that I remembered. A single line told me she had lost
her school and was going away. I comforted myself with the reflection
that shame held no pain for one so indolent as she. Nevertheless, I
left Wisconsin that year for good. Washington had seemingly forgotten
her. I hunted Ned. Between curses, I caught his opinion of her. She
was no better than a whore. I saw her mother on the street. The same
old pinch-beck, jerky-gaited creature that I’d always known.
• • • • •
Perhaps five years passed. The business of hunting a job or something
or other had bruised my vanity so that I could recognize it. I felt
old. Avey and my real relation to her, I thought I came to know. I
wanted to see her. I had been told that she was in New York. As I had
no money, I hiked and bummed my way there. I got work in a ship-yard
and walked the streets at night, hoping to meet her. Failing in this,
I saved enough to pay my fare back home. One evening in early June,
just at the time when dusk is most lovely on the eastern horizon, I saw
Avey, indolent as ever, leaning on the arm of a man, strolling under
the recently lit arc-lights of U Street. She had almost passed before
she recognized me. She showed no surprise. The puff over her eyes
had grown heavier. The eyes themselves were still sleepy-large, and
beautiful. I had almost concluded—indifferent. “You look older,” was
what she said. I wanted to convince her that I was, so I asked her to
walk with me. The man whom she was with, and whom she never took the
trouble to introduce, at a nod from her, hailed a taxi, and drove away.
That gave me a notion of what she had been used to. Her dress was of
some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the
grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it
came from there are others.
• • • • •
I have a spot in Soldier’s Home to which I always go when I want the
simple beauty of another’s soul. Robins spring about the lawn all
day. They leave their footprints in the grass. I imagine that the
grass at night smells sweet and fresh because of them. The ground is
high. Washington lies below. Its light spreads like a blush against
the darkened sky. Against the soft dusk sky of Washington. And when
the wind is from the South, soil of my homeland falls like a fertile
shower upon the lean streets of the city. Upon my hill in Soldier’s
Home. I know the policeman who watches the place of nights. When I go
there alone, I talk to him. I tell him I come there to find the truth
that people bury in their hearts. I tell him that I do not come there
with a girl to do the thing he’s paid to watch out for. I look deep
in his eyes when I say these things, and he believes me. He comes
over to see who it is on the grass. I say hello to him. He greets me
in the same way and goes off searching for other black splotches upon
the lawn. Avey and I went there. A band in one of the buildings a fair
distance off was playing a march. I wished they would stop. Their
playing was like a tin spoon in one’s mouth. I wanted the Howard Glee
Club to sing “Deep River,” from the road. To sing “Deep River, Deep
River,” from the road... Other than the first comments, Avey had been
silent. I started to hum a folk-tune. She slipped her hand in mine.
Pillowed her head as best she could upon my arm. Kissed the hand that
she was holding and listened, or so I thought, to what I had to say. I
traced my development from the early days up to the present time, the
phase in which I could understand her. I described her own nature and
temperament. Told how they needed a larger life for their expression.
How incapable Washington was of understanding that need. How it
could not meet it. I pointed out that in lieu of proper channels, her
emotions had overflowed into paths that dissipated them. I talked,
beautifully I thought, about an art that would be born, an art that
would open the way for women the likes of her. I asked her to hope, and
build up an inner life against the coming of that day. I recited some
of my own things to her. I sang, with a strange quiver in my voice,
a promise-song. And then I began to wonder why her hand had not once
returned a single pressure. My old-time feeling about her laziness came
back. I spoke sharply. My policeman friend passed by. I said hello to
him. As he went away, I began to visualize certain possibilities. An
immediate and urgent passion swept over me. Then I looked at Avey.
Her heavy eyes were closed. Her breathing was as faint and regular as
a child’s in slumber. My passion died. I was afraid to move lest I
disturb her. Hours and hours, I guess it was, she lay there. My body
grew numb. I shivered. I coughed. I wanted to get up and whittle at
the boxes of young trees. I withdrew my hand. I raised her head to
waken her. She did not stir. I got up and walked around. I found my
policeman friend and talked to him. We both came up, and bent over her.
He said it would be all right for her to stay there just so long as she
got away before the workmen came at dawn. A blanket was borrowed from
a neighbor house. I sat beside her through the night. I saw the dawn
steal over Washington. The Capitol dome looked like a gray ghost ship
drifting in from sea. Avey’s face was pale, and her eyes were heavy.
She did not have the gray crimson-splashed beauty of the dawn. I hated
to wake her. Orphan-woman...
BEEHIVE
Within this black hive to-night
There swarm a million bees;
Bees passing in and out the moon,
Bees escaping out the moon,
Bees returning through the moon,
Silver bees intently buzzing,
Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees
Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb,
And I, a drone,
Lying on my back,
Lipping honey,
Getting drunk with silver honey,
Wish that I might fly out past the moon
And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.
STORM ENDING
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears ..
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.
THEATER
Life of nigger alleys, of pool rooms and restaurants and near-beer
saloons soaks into the walls of Howard Theater and sets them throbbing
jazz songs. Black-skinned, they dance and shout above the tick and
trill of white-walled buildings. At night, they open doors to people
who come in to stamp their feet and shout. At night, road-shows volley
songs into the mass-heart of black people. Songs soak the walls and
seep out to the nigger life of alleys and near-beer saloons, of the
Poodle Dog and Black Bear cabarets. Afternoons, the house is dark, and
the walls are sleeping singers until rehearsal begins. Or until John
comes within them. Then they start throbbing to a subtle syncopation.
And the space-dark air grows softly luminous.
John is the manager’s brother. He is seated at the center of the
theater, just before rehearsal. Light streaks down upon him from a
window high above. One half his face is orange in it. One half his
face is in shadow. The soft glow of the house rushes to, and compacts
about, the shaft of light. John’s mind coincides with the shaft of
light. Thoughts rush to, and compact about it. Life of the house and of
the slowly awakening stage swirls to the body of John, and thrills it.
John’s body is separate from the thoughts that pack his mind.
Stage-lights, soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers.
Beneath them, hid by the shadow of a set, Dorris. Other chorus girls
drift in. John feels them in the mass. And as if his own body were the
mass-heart of a black audience listening to them singing, he wants
to stamp his feet and shout. His mind, contained above desires of
his body, singles the girls out, and tries to trace origins and plot
destinies.
A pianist slips into the pit and improvises jazz. The walls awake. Arms
of the girls, and their limbs, which .. jazz, jazz .. by lifting up
their tight street skirts they set free, jab the air and clog the floor
in rhythm to the music. (Lift your skirts, Baby, and talk t papa!)
Crude, individualized, and yet .. monotonous...
John: Soon the director will herd you, my full-lipped, distant
beauties, and tame you, and blunt your sharp thrusts in loosely
suggestive movements, appropriate to Broadway. (O dance!) Soon the
audience will paint your dusk faces white, and call you beautiful. (O
dance!) Soon I... (O dance!) I’d like...
Girls laugh and shout. Sing discordant snatches of other jazz songs.
Whirl with loose passion into the arms of passing show-men.
John: Too thick. Too easy. Too monotonous. Her whom I’d love I’d leave
before she knew that I was with her. Her? Which? (O dance!) I’d like
to...
Girls dance and sing. Men clap. The walls sing and press inward. They
press the men and girls, they press John towards a center of physical
ecstasy. Go to it, Baby! Fan yourself, and feed your papa! Put ..
nobody lied .. and take .. when they said I cried over you. No lie!
The glitter and color of stacked scenes, the gilt and brass and crimson
of the house, converge towards a center of physical ecstasy. John’s
feet and torso and his blood press in. He wills thought to rid his mind
of passion.
“All right, girls. Alaska. Miss Reynolds, please.”
The director wants to get the rehearsal through with.
The girls line up. John sees the front row: dancing ponies. The rest
are in shadow. The leading lady fits loosely in the front. Lack-life,
monotonous. “One, two, three—” Music starts. The song is somewhere
where it will not strain the leading lady’s throat. The dance is
somewhere where it will not strain the girls. Above the staleness,
one dancer throws herself into it. Dorris. John sees her. Her
hair, crisp-curled, is bobbed. Bushy, black hair bobbing about her
lemon-colored face. Her lips are curiously full, and very red. Her
limbs in silk purple stockings are lovely. John feels them. Desires
her. Holds off.
John: Stage-door johnny; chorus-girl. No, that would be all right.
Dictie, educated, stuck-up; show-girl. Yep. Her suspicion would be
stronger than her passion. It wouldnt work. Keep her loveliness. Let
her go.
Dorris sees John and knows that he is looking at her. Her own glowing
is too rich a thing to let her feel the slimness of his diluted
passion.
“Who’s that?” she asks her dancing partner.
“Th manager’s brother. Dictie. Nothin doin, hon.”
Dorris tosses her head and dances for him until she feels she has him.
Then, withdrawing disdainfully, she flirts with the director.
Dorris: Nothin doin? How come? Aint I as good as him? Couldnt I have
got an education if I’d wanted one? Dont I know respectable folks, lots
of em, in Philadelphia and New York and Chicago? Aint I had men as good
as him? Better. Doctors an lawyers. Whats a manager’s brother, anyhow?
Two steps back, and two steps front.
“Say, Mame, where do you get that stuff?”
“Whatshmean, Dorris?”
“If you two girls cant listen to what I’m telling you, I know where I
can get some who can. Now listen.”
Mame: Go to hell, you black bastard.
Dorris: Whats eatin at him, anyway?
“Now follow me in this, you girls. Its three counts to the right,
three counts to the left, and then you shimmy—”
John: —and then you shimmy. I’ll bet she can. Some good cabaret, with
rooms upstairs. And what in hell do you think you’d get from it? Youre
going wrong. Here’s right: get her to herself—(Christ, but how she’d
bore you after the first five minutes)—not if you get her right she
wouldnt. Touch her, I mean. To herself—in some room perhaps. Some
cheap, dingy bedroom. Hell no. Cant be done. But the point is, brother
John, it can be done. Get her to herself somewhere, anywhere. Go down
in yourself—and she’d be calling you all sorts of asses while you were
in the process of going down. Hold em, bud. Cant be done. Let her go.
(Dance and I’ll love you!) And keep her loveliness.
“All right now, Chicken Chaser. Dorris and girls. Where’s Dorris? I
told you to stay on the stage, didnt I? Well? Now thats enough. All
right. All right there, Professor? All right. One, two, three—”
Dorris swings to the front. The line of girls, four deep, blurs within
the shadow of suspended scenes. Dorris wants to dance. The director
feels that and steps to one side. He smiles, and picks her for a
leading lady, one of these days. Odd ends of stage-men emerge from the
wings, and stare and clap. A crap game in the alley suddenly ends.
Black faces crowd the rear stage doors. The girls, catching joy from
Dorris, whip up within the footlights’ glow. They forget set steps;
they find their own. The director forgets to bawl them out. Dorris
dances.
John: Her head bobs to Broadway. Dance from yourself. Dance! O just a
little more.
Dorris’ eyes burn across the space of seats to him.
Dorris: I bet he can love. Hell, he cant love. He’s too skinny. His
lips are too skinny. He wouldnt love me anyway, only for that. But I’d
get a pair of silk stockings out of it. Red silk. I got purple. Cut
it, kid. You cant win him to respect you that away. He wouldnt anyway.
Maybe he would. Maybe he’d love. I’ve heard em say that men who look
like him (what does he look like?) will marry if they love. O will you
love me? And give me kids, and a home, and everything? (I’d like to
make your nest, and honest, hon, I wouldnt run out on you.) You will if
I make you. Just watch me.
Dorris dances. She forgets her tricks. She dances.
Glorious songs are the muscles of her limbs.
And her singing is of canebrake loves and mangrove feastings.
The walls press in, singing. Flesh of a throbbing body, they press
close to John and Dorris. They close them in. John’s heart beats
tensely against her dancing body. Walls press his mind within his
heart. And then, the shaft of light goes out the window high above him.
John’s mind sweeps up to follow it. Mind pulls him upward into dream.
Dorris dances...
John dreams:
Dorris is dressed in a loose black gown splashed with lemon
ribbons. Her feet taper long and slim from trim ankles. She
waits for him just inside the stage door. John, collar and tie
colorful and flaring, walks towards the stage door. There are
no trees in the alley. But his feet feel as though they step
on autumn leaves whose rustle has been pressed out of them by
the passing of a million satin slippers. The air is sweet with
roasting chestnuts, sweet with bonfires of old leaves. John’s
melancholy is a deep thing that seals all senses but his eyes,
and makes him whole.
Dorris knows that he is coming. Just at the right moment she
steps from the door, as if there were no door. Her face is
tinted like the autumn alley. Of old flowers, or of a southern
canefield, her perfume. “Glorious Dorris.” So his eyes speak.
And their sadness is too deep for sweet untruth. She barely
touches his arm. They glide off with footfalls softened on the
leaves, the old leaves powdered by a million satin slippers.
They are in a room. John knows nothing of it. Only, that the
flesh and blood of Dorris are its walls. Singing walls. Lights,
soft, as if they shine through clear pink fingers. Soft lights,
and warm.
John reaches for a manuscript of his, and reads. Dorris, who
has no eyes, has eyes to understand him. He comes to a dancing
scene. The scene is Dorris. She dances. Dorris dances. Glorious
Dorris. Dorris whirls, whirls, dances...
Dorris dances.
The pianist crashes a bumper chord. The whole stage claps. Dorris,
flushed, looks quick at John. His whole face is in shadow. She seeks
for her dance in it. She finds it a dead thing in the shadow which is
his dream. She rushes from the stage. Falls down the steps into her
dressing-room. Pulls her hair. Her eyes, over a floor of tears, stare
at the whitewashed ceiling. (Smell of dry paste, and paint, and soiled
clothing.) Her pal comes in. Dorris flings herself into the old safe
arms, and cries bitterly.
“I told you nothin doin,” is what Mame says to comfort her.
HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE
whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp-posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play softly up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent
CALLING JESUS
Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog that follows her,
whimpering. She is large enough, I know, to find a warm spot for it.
But each night when she comes home and closes the big outside storm
door, the little dog is left in the vestibule, filled with chills till
morning. Some one ... eoho Jesus ... soft as a cotton boll brushed
against the milk-pod cheek of Christ, will steal in and cover it that
it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps upon clean hay
cut in her dreams.
• • • • •
When you meet her in the daytime on the streets, the little dog keeps
coming. Nothing happens at first, and then, when she has forgotten
the streets and alleys, and the large house where she goes to bed of
nights, a soft thing like fur begins to rub your limbs, and you hear a
low, scared voice, lonely, calling, and you know that a cool something
nozzles moisture in your palms. Sensitive things like nostrils, quiver.
Her breath comes sweet as honeysuckle whose pistils bear the life of
coming song. And her eyes carry to where builders find no need for
vestibules, for swinging on iron hinges, storm doors.
• • • • •
Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog, that follows her,
whimpering. I’ve seen it tagging on behind her, up streets where
chestnut trees flowered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly sprinkled
with clean water. Up alleys where niggers sat on low door-steps before
tumbled shanties and sang and loved. At night, when she comes home, the
little dog is left in the vestibule, nosing the crack beneath the big
storm door, filled with chills till morning. Some one ... eoho Jesus
... soft as the bare feet of Christ moving across bales of southern
cotton, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry
it to her where she sleeps: cradled in dream-fluted cane.
BOX SEAT
1
Houses are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of
the street. Upon the gleaming limbs and asphalt torso of a dreaming
nigger. Shake your curled wool-blossoms, nigger. Open your liver lips
to the lean, white spring. Stir the root-life of a withered people.
Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.
Dark swaying forms of Negroes are street songs that woo virginal houses.