“Night Song" handles a much maligned
subject in a remarkably truthful way.
Williams brings a painful rage
and deep sympathy to the study of the
life and death of a jazz musician.
-James Baldwin
a novel by
AMS


$3.50
NIGHT SONG

A Novel by JOHN A. WILLIAMS
th Night Song a new American Negro
ter enters the world of literature.
e Richie Stokes the Eagle-famous
ophonist, one of the book's central
racters, and a landmark in the world
jazz-John Williams has lifted his
voice in a sustained lyric that raises the
language of New York's jazz underworld
to the level of art and poetry. He writes
about “a world of cool, of arrogant mu-
sicians and worrying night club owners,
a world filled with admirers, detractors,
tourists, hipsters, squares, policemen,
and weirdies, a world in which the days
were really nights because you lived
mostly in the dark and sang your song
of life then.”
In this world the author develops the
dramas of Keel and his white gi: : !!!!!
of Richie Stokes ne Ligen. Du
stoned and }, { for dead-of I ll the
white man who lepes +
1*"*
of the world of his ri.
passions of lust, vic.? .
com

(continued on baci
.)


Labadie
Cynllectic
PS
357
.128
NG











NIGHT
SONG





NIGHT
SONG
BY JOHN A. WILLIAMS
FARRAR, STRAUS AND. CUDAHY
NEW YORK


The characters in this book are entirely fictitious, and
any resemblance to actual persons is wholly coincidental.
Copyright © 1961 by John A. Williams
Library of Congress catalog card number 61-16740
First Printing, 1961
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Ambassador Books, Ltd.
Manufactured in the United States of America
American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., New York


NIGHT
SONG





David Hillary, still half-stuporous from the bad whisky he
had had that morning, stepped slowly into the pawnshop.
He was hatless and his coat collar, not yet frayed, was
bunched around his ears. He needed a shave, but what
worried him most was the heat he felt building up inside
him. He closed the door against the five-o'clock Third Ave-
nue traffic and shuffled unsteadily to the worn wooden
counter. A small man who wore a large mangled tweed cap
peered solemnly at him through a heavy screen. Hillary
placed the heavy gold band on the counter and edged it
under the screen. He had spent an hour in his dingy room
getting it off; it had cost five hundred dollars and came
from Italy—one of the right things, which, at the time, had
been precisely right for the Hillary family. He wiped his
eyes quickly while the man picked it up. “How much?”
Hillary asked hoarsely. The man screwed his eyepiece into


LONCU.
place but removed it quickly to stare at the other person
who had just entered. Satisfied, the man replaced the glass.
“Yours?" he asked.
"It cost five hundred dollars,” Hillary mumbled. Five
hundred for his ring and four hundred and fifty for An-
gela's; his parents had made a big point of it.
Hillary and Angela had laughed about it; Italian wed-
ding bands after Hillary's father and mother had opposed,
as they had for years, any traffic between their son and the
traditionless Italian rabble that had moved into, taken
over the town. Small farmers; onion and cabbage. Only
the Hillarys had remained deep-rooted, native American
Protestants; it was a thing to keep alive, if they could.
“Tough,” the man said glancing at the puffy white face.
They all came in with their angles, their pitiful little com-
ments hoping to get a few dollars more. It no longer
worked. The man had spent too many years on Third Ave-
nue.
“A hundred?” Hillary asked softly so the person behind
him couldn't hear.
“Naw,” the pawnbroker said. He took out his eyepiece
and looked at the person behind Hillary. “Thirty." He
waited; there would be a plea for more money.
“Please,” Hillary said. He blinked rapidly because the
tears seemed to want to well back up in his eyes. "Fifty.”
“I said, thirty,” the man said. He slid the ring back.
Hillary returned it.
"All right,” Hillary said. Under his breath he said, “You
sonofabitch.”
“What?” The man stopped counting the soft, worn bills.
“Nothing." Sadly now, Hillary stared around the place
at the watches, cameras, guns, typewriters. Here and there
stood a dented, tarnished trumpet or sax, a trombone. A
row of banjos and guitars gathered dust on a shelf near two


or three worn suitcases. The odor of the place was horribly
neutral.
"That's right, Jimsey, cool it.” Hillary turned bitterly
on the man behind him. He was dark and in a strange way
familiar. The stranger clutched a saxophone in one hand.
“Man, I pawn this thing maybe three, four times a week,
an' that's like giving away my heart for a little while."
Hillary turned from the dark man and took his money
from the pawnbroker.
“Take your ticket, buster," the pawnbroker said, shoving
it after Hillary. Hillary took the ticket and jammed it in
his pocket with the money and went out, plunging through
the traffic downtown. You got more for your money there.
He stumbled past clots of people whose dress made him
think fleetingly that they should not have been down here.
They seemed, these neatly dressed people, like a clutter
of uncertain internes shuffling through a charity ward.
Suddenly he knew he was being followed, and he turned.
The dark man, bloated, empty-handed, hurried after him.
He waved to Hillary. Hillary, seeing him, slowed but did
not stop. For a moment he had a fear of being beaten and
robbed, but now with a burst of speed, the dark man drew
abreast of him and placed an arm across his back. “Jimsey,”
he said, “let's get us a taste.” Before Hillary could protest,
he was guided into a nearby bar, but now he didn't mind.
He had just recognized the dark man as Richie Stokes, The
Eagle.
Sulking in New York on leave rather than going home
to the cloying pride of his parents, Hillary could not have
known the night in 1944, when he entered the “Chicken
in the Basket" that there would be a Richie Stokes sitting
in a corner of the little platform together with a lean,
hawk-nosed young man crouched over a bass; a blocky,
arrogantly handsome kid with a trumpet; a serious, jitter-


ing young man sitting like a god among his drums; and a
chubby, heavy-shouldered man at the piano. They were all
there to complement Richie Stokes and his horn.
Hillary knew sax men: Chu Berry, Hawk, Dash, and
Bascombe, Pres, Harry, Johnny, Benny, Willie-all the
sax men a provincial youth might know through talk,
Down Beat, Metronone, records, and occasional dances.
He had stood by the bar that night, his starched khakis
whispering whenever he moved, drinking beer, trying to
nod to the rhythm of the music; but it had been an impos-
sible thing to do though there had been rhythm. Hillary
had quit trying to nod to the music. He was an outsider as
it was. Why be an awkward one? In his stillness, then, with
another bottle of beer to dull and cool the harsh, New
York summer night, he had watched Richie Stokes and
known his music was in some way–different, possibly a
conglomeration, a consolidation of all that Hillary had
heard before. Hillary could not then know why he felt this.
With a thick tongue he was telling Eagle this in the
second bar they stopped in. Now Hillary was high enough
to look directly in the black, bloated face upon which some
intense evil seemed to have traced its course. The once
even teeth were stained, some of them gone. The hair,
which Hillary recalled, having had the image of Richie
Stokes' neatness impressed somewhere upon his mind,
seemed to have worn off like the fur from some decrepit
animal.
And the man was not yet thirty-five.
They were on the street again, Hillary scurrying along
to keep up with Eagle's crouching, threatening walk. Once,
Eagle pulled up short and said to Hillary, “Wait here, I'm
going to touch this cat. Watch me, Jimsey, an' you'll never
need to starve.”
Eagle did an obscene shuffle toward a well-dressed cou-
10


ple. Hillary saw them recoil, and then the man, after
getting a hasty look from the woman, reached briskly into
his pocket and gave Eagle some money.
"See that?" Eagle growled when he returned. “They're
too weak to tell you to go to hell, or they're too guilty to
tell you to kiss their asses. They pay for their guilt and
their weakness and then tell themselves that they paid to
keep you the hell away.” They started walking again,
Hillary in his half-run and Eagle in that crouch in which
one shoulder seemed pushed around in front of his body
to ward off any blows that might come in his direction.
“Me,” he said, “I take it all; bread, man, that's your only
friend. It don't put you on; it don't lean on you none; it
don't try to make your old lady. If you got it an' need it,
it's there, and it screams when there's enough of it.”
The bitterness rolled out of Richie Stokes like a per-
sistent low bank of fog, and the only way Hillary could
escape it was to continue-drinking. Again on the street,
between bars, Eagle suggested getting a bottle before the
stores closed.
"What will you do about your horn?” Hillary asked, as
they stood beneath the statue of Peter Cooper, passing the
bottle back and forth.
“Worry about it tomorrow,” Eagle answered.
They staggered down the street past the Salvation Army
chapel with its lighted cross. Eagle crossed himself mock-
ingly, and that was all Hillary remembered until the flur-
ries of snow hit him in the face. He tried to ward them
off as if they were blows. Towering over them, for Eagle
was there too, on his behind, his arms draped over his
knees and his head nodding patiently downward, stood a
cop, a black-suited bulk against the snow and gray sky.
The cop kicked at them. Another figure, dark, like Eagle
appeared. The second man, saying he'd take care of Eagle,
II


was arguing with the cop, but as he pulled, Eagle said,
"there's Jimsey too. Got to take care of Jimsey. Been
lookin' out for him all night.”
“Let the mother take care of himself, Eagle,” the man
said.
“C'mon, move," said the cop.
Eagle said, “Jimsey too."
“All right, for crissakes,” the man said, and Hillary felt
a stab of fear. Why didn't this man like him? They strug-
gled up, and as they passed down the street, a weaving,
sodden clump, Hillary looked once at the man who was
glaring back at him.
Hillary had a feeling when he woke that it was late
afternoon. He stared around the unkempt room. The
walls, once white, were now urine yellow and splotched
with dirt and dust. Stiff plastic drapes hung from the small
window. The furniture had seen better times in many
other surroundings. But the bed was clean.
There was a rattling at the door and it flew open as
Eagle burst into the room. Without bothering to shake
the snow from his clothes or remove his hat and coat, he
placed the horn he carried to his lips and began running
up and down the scale. Satisfied, he smiled and removed
his hat. A night in hock hadn't disturbed the tone. Now
ribbons of notes, punctuated by haunting pauses, floated
out of the horn. Hillary heard snatches of familiar tunes,
but they vanished as quickly as they had come. He dozed
then and woke and dozed again. When he woke once more
he saw Eagle, now with his coat off, holding the horn as
though it were the thigh of a beautiful, compliant, golden
girl. Eagle, Hillary thought, must be warm; he was. He
was perspiring and his body had become weightless. At a
distance, he heard Eagle's voice, filled with devious curses,
12


coming from behind a pleased smile and eyes which leaped
with the laughter of a small boy. "Hey, Jimsey, how you
feel? Get up, take you home, Jimsey."
Hillary could not move and, as if in a dream, watched
Eagle approach, saw the forehead knot with sudden con-
cern though the laughter was not quite gone. Eagle thrust
his face close to Hillary's, and Hillary saw again the ugli-
ness of the bloat upon the face, the lines of it, the whiskers
emerging from it. A hand, heavy in appearance but light
in its touch, rested against his cheek. Now, there it was:
the dark face, all concern; and Hillary felt pleased.
“Hey, Keel,” Eagle shouted. “This mother's dyin' a
fever. Call a doctor.”
Hillary thought about the word, but minutes later, with
Keel, the other Negro, at his side too, the harshness of it
was belied by their tenderness, their almost comical impa-
tience with one another to undress and clean him. When
he was settled they stared at a thermometer Keel had
found.
"Where does it go?" Eagle asked, shaking it down with
a professional air.
"Up his ass,” Keel said, and he exchanged glances with
Hillary.
"Is this the ass kind or the mouth kind?”
"What difference does it make? Just give it to him. Any-
where you want."
Hillary reached out with a shaking hand, took the ther-
mometer and placed it under his tongue. He closed his
eyes and allowed the heat to envelop his body.
He was fully awake after the doctor's second visit the
next day and took the soup Eagle fed him. Then he sank
again into a listless sleep, hearing only faintly the horn
Eagle blew softly from time to time. It would have been
nice, Hillary thought, to die; he didn't care anymore about
13


living, but when Eagle was not there, Keel was. “Don't die
here, you sonofabitch," Keel said once, with a shadow of a
smile on his face.
“Go to hell,” Hillary remembered panting. He remem-
bered too that Keel seemed to have smiled more broadly
and patted his shoulder and eased him back down into the
bed.
Another night had passed and a part of a day when Hil-
lary woke again and looked at Keel sitting on the bed.
“Eagle told the doctor your name was Jimsey, but he calls
everyone that and believes that because he does it should
stick. What's your name?”
“Dave Hillary.”
"Hillary,” Keel mused. “Nice. I like that.” He smiled
and Hillary, oddly, found that he liked the smile. "You
been downtown long?" Keel asked.
Hillary paused a moment, and then he knew that in the
context the question of his being there could only mean:
how long had he been a bum? “Not long,” Hillary finally
answered.
"It happens. You either stay downtown or make it out.
Lots of cats make it down here.” Keel took a deep breath
and let it out. “I could tell by your threads that you were
new here. Teacher, aren't you?”
Hillary involuntarily looked at his clothes draped over
the back of a chair. His wallet had been in his pants.
“Had to pay the doctor, man," Keel said. A little smile
played around his mouth. “Went through your billfold
and saw your card there." Keel rose slowly from the bed
and stretched. “You get some more sleep.”
Two days later, when the pneumonia had almost ebbed
away and Eagle sat playing, eyes closed, cheeks puffed, an
open bottle near him, Hillary said, “Play ‘April in Paris'.”
Eagle smiled. “Okay, Jimsey. Feelin' better, eh? Want a


taste?” He stood and poured out a drink. “Good for you.”
He watched Hillary drink it, then poured another and
waited for Hillary to finish that. “You been to Paris, man?”
"Yeah. Twice.”
Eagle was waiting..
“During the war and on my honeymoon.”
“I been there too. It's a crazy place for a colored man.”
Eagle returned to his chair and began to play.
The whisky nudged its way through Hillary's mind as
he lay listening, thinking. Angela had always wanted to be
in Paris in April. Hillary thought how they had been to-
gether on their honeymoon there, hand in hand, walking,
riding, or just standing, and how her eyes had shone and
sparkled when he looked at her. There had been nothing
for them to say: to be was enough, sometimes too much,
because the soft nights with their almost purple skies and
his new wife at his fingertips had caught Hillary foolishly,
almost painfully, in the chest. They had planned to return
to Paris, but it could never happen now. The thought
turned memory sour within him.
What made this man, Richie Stokes, play the music he
did the way he did? Hillary wondered.
"Shit,” Eagle said. He spoke it softly, as a child might
say "nuts” or “shoot,” and unhooked the strap from
around his neck and placed the horn on the table. “That's
enough for old Eagle today,” he said. He poured himself
another drink and with difficulty crossed one leg over his
paunch. “Guess you like music,” he said.
He hadn't remembered the other night, Hillary thought.
He closed his eyes, then opened them. Eagle kept hum-
ming something, repeating it, halting at the same point.
But now he had it and grunted and hummed and stamped
his foot, passing the point he had stopped at before, mov-
ing on into some intricate improvisation and then back
15


An answer, Hillary thought, to what I said. He lay deep
in his pillow and pondered this man Keel.
The memory of their first meeting had never left him.
For there had been real hate in Keel's glance, which in
subsequent meetings and talks had not been there; it had
given place to a cautious reserve, like, Hillary thought,
the left jab of a boxer pawing air, measuring, testing.
“Why aren't you making it, fella?" Keel asked suddenly.
Hillary recoiled. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you a nothin'?”
Hillary wanted to protest. But he was in a bed not his
own, eating food he had not paid for and still barely able
to make his body respond. Besides, he knew instinctively
that what Keel wanted to know was what had brought him
here, what single or collective acts. He would tell him.
“I killed my wife,” he said. He watched Keel for a re-
action, but there was none, which left him mildly dis-
appointed. He wondered why it was that he wanted a
reaction from Keel.
"You hot?”
“No. Car accident.”
"When?"
"Last year.”
“Kids?”
"No."
“You have a job, some place to go?”
“No. But I'll make out.”
Keel nodded to the beat of the music for a couple of
bars, then said, “I don't understand why a white man can't
make it in his society. You know, it bugs me sometimes.”
“That's a pretty narrow view,” Hillary said angrily.
“Maybe.”
“What the hell are you?” Hillary asked wearily. He
thought back through the conversation, checking. This
17


had all begun when Eagle went out; Keel had become up-
set then, though it hadn't shown on his face.
"I'm just a student,” Keel said.
"Must be pretty damned dumb,” Hillary shot back.
“You've got to be thirty-five at least.”
Surprisingly, Keel chuckled.
“He's enjoying this, Hillary thought.
"I'm not that kind of student."
“Don't I know it,” Hillary grated.
Keel waved the remark away. Behind them Eagle fin-
ished a chorus in unison with Yards Brown and moved
into an intricate passage in the upper register. “You want
a job?”
“Doing what?"
Keel frowned and moved suddenly. Hillary had a feeling
that he was controlling his anger. “Look, man. You're on
your ass. What, you too proud to work for me?"
Hillary came out of the bed half-screaming. “I'll take it,
just get the hell outa here and let me rest, goddamn you!”
Keel pushed him back down.
"You got too much spirit to be down here, Professor.
I'm going to let you wait tables in my coffee shop.” He
sighed. “Get some rest. I thought you were going to try
and kick my ass there for a minute.”


The coffee shop was on the east side of Greenwich Village,
or as the more resigned Villagers, conceding that Bohemia
now extended from the Hudson to the East River would
have put it, in the “middle Village.” Some older residents
even called this haphazard extension the “new Village.”
On St. Marks Place, where the shop was, the renovations
which had made this section more than merely habitable,
had come more reluctantly than upon neighboring streets.
A number of tenements there, however, had been re-
modeled with new façades to match their gouged-out, re-
decorated interiors. The untouched buildings were laced
with weather-beaten fire escapes and row upon row of
small-paned windows. Set between the old and half-new
buildings were tiny art galleries whose stark white walls
and well-lit interiors were out of place in an area where
darkness and dimness gave comfort.


sides of fresh meat stood wall to wall; and there were
restaurants, of a dozen different nationalities, which an-
nounced their specialties in their respective languages. Be-
side them, in shops which seemed never to have visitors
were the little travel agencies which arranged trips to Rus-
sia or Poland or, as a saving grace, mailed packages to those
places.
On Saturday nights, above the sound of traffic and the
noise of many people too close together came music from
all over the world played on bongos and congas, on horns
of various sizes and shapes made out of metal, wood, or
plastic. Against the frenetic background of the cha-cha-cha
there came the spirituals of the fearful but devout huddled
in a storefront church, isolated from the main chorus by
122 blocks. And above this the Cantor's tremolo lingered
on, sighing over the clatter of the polka.
In this part of town, it was said that people were more
like people.
The shop was an inverted L-shaped basement; the walls
had been primed and painted white to reflect the meager
daylight and to kill odors from the past which, however,
still passed up in cold little drafts coming through the
gray, cracked floorboards only partially covered by imita-
tion orientals purchased second hand. Candles in cylindri-
cal, colored glasses sat centered on each redchecked table
top, and the chairs, designed for another time, conformed
to one another only because of their uniform coating of
red enamel. Because they cost nothing, travel posters,
whose exotic scenes existed in no mind save that of the
artist and the tourists who would never view the lie, lay
framed neatly against the walls. Above the room which
formed the 90-degree angle at the top of the inverted L, a
modest sign read: “Musicians' Room,” and off this was a
21


"The one Eagle gave you this morning.”
Magnanimously, Eagle had given Hillary an off-brand
bottle of rye the evening before. “Here, mother," he had
said. “Straighten you out.”
Hillary brought out the bottle not knowing whether
Eagle had told Keel or whether Keel had noticed it. He
took a drink before giving it to Keel who tapped the cork
down and placed it in his pocket. He said, “Ordinarily I
don't care too much what a cat takes, but if you work for
me you drink and get drunk on your own time." He
smiled. “I'll drop back about six, Prof. Get some rest. The
bed's clean. Della made it this morning.”
Keel moved away and stopped. He leaned against the
door and said, “Listen, Prof, don't you know how to say
thanks or is it that you don't because you consider this your
goddamn due?”
Hillary flushed. “Sorry," he said.
He sat motionless until the outer door was closed, then,
slowly, he leaned back on the bed and was alone for the
first time in days. One small window, so smeared with dirt
and streaks of paint that it gave only the illusion of light,
was above the bed. The dresser was a small, scarred relic
with its veneer warping and peeling. A sparkling glass and
ashtray sat upon a white hand towel, and Hillary reflected
for a moment on Della: who was she that she could through
magic of a clean and well-made bed, three clean items upon
a battered old dresser hint the presence of hope? He
thought of her briefly, then closed his eyes and relaxed;
the bed creaked beneath him, and his mind moved back
along the road which had brought him here.
The road was an uneasy one and he slept fitfully, waking
at last with a start. His face itched so he scratched it; then
he lighted a cigarette and felt for the bottle he had given
Keel. Remembering, he lay back, drawing deeply upon his
23


cigarette and tightening his eyes against the need of it. He
did not know how long he held himself this way. When he
heard footsteps, he crushed the cigarette quickly under-
foot, and lay still, his eyes closed. He heard Eagle exclaim
as the door was pushed open, “Damn, Keel gave that cat
the bed.”
“Let's go to my place, Richie,” the girl's voice said.
"What the hell do I want to go to your place for," Eagle
growled.
The voices and footsteps faded and the door closed be-
hind them. Hillary retrieved the crushed cigarette, saw
that it was beyond smoking and lit another. Now the sun
was gone, slanting deep over New Jersey, and Hillary, sit-
ting painfully on the edge of his bed, his mind a crater
where thoughts ran sluggishly, responded to the hour and
the peculiar lean of the shadows by remembering the rear
room of the Crimson that was the bar where, at the con-
clusion of the day's classes, he had stopped for a bracer
before going home to Angela. It had been a daily thing,
that stopping for one or two.
The Crimson had even smelled something like this
room, and it had been peopled by perennial graduate stu-
dents who studiously avoided the conformist uniforms of
the undergraduates. There had been too, Hillary recalled,
a wild little Jewish (why did he always remember that the
man was a Jew?) instructor in the Psych department who
stayed at the Crimson bar every afternoon just long enough
to drink three martinis. It was said on the campus that he
had been awarded the Silver Star for bravery in France,
but had ripped it from his tunic as soon as Bradley had
fastened it there and had flung it to the ground. The
rumor, filled with details and so persistent that it had be-
come fact, was vivid even now. Sternberg didn't look like
a hero. That was his name—Sternberg! The name had
24


come leaping from the depths of forgetfulness. He had
been a very pale and small man with black, curly hair. He
talked as though he had once lived in the Bronx or Brook-
lyn. Hillary wondered what he was doing.
Hillary stood and a draft brought the odor of wet, stale
plaster to his nostrils. Then it was gone. He slipped on his
coat and walked through the shop, inhabited now by squat,
dark forms. The door opened suddenly and a wave of cold
air swept in. Without preliminaries Keel said, “I brought
you a drink.”
Hillary stood motionless as a sense of shame, of having
been caught at something, swept over him. Keel took off
his coat and with a grand gesture placed the bottle on a
nearby table. “Here you are. Just one.”
Hillary, still assailed by shame but now supported by
annoyance, approached the table and tapped his fingers on
the top of the bottle. “Eagle was here,” he said. He lifted
the bottle and read the label, conscious that Keel was
watching him with a smile on his face. A superior smile,
Hillary thought.
"And?"
Hillary could barely make out his features in the dusk.
But Keel's body was familiar, tall and lean, graceful-like
Borden's. Borden: he had been a helluva basketball player.
A tremendous second baseman and a whiz in the hundred-
yard dash. A good dancer too. Borden!—a boyhood mem-
ory, made all the more painful by their simultaneous
discovery that they were different. "He left,” Hillary said.
"You got one of his beds, you know," Keel chuckled.
“He's got 'em all over.”
"I gathered.” Hillary replaced the bottle on the table
and slipped out of his coat. Keel picked up the bottle and
twirled it slowly in his hand. "How you feel?” he asked.
“All right.”


'Who's truth is it, yours or someone else's?' and he answers,
as they always do, 'It's my truth; it's the truth I found.' I
don't let them read. I don't let anybody read, Prof. If
Auden was in town and walked down here the block from
his house, I wouldn't let him read. Poetry, good poetry, is
not like that; it's a private love affair between the guy who
wrote it and the guy who likes to read it or hear it on a
side. I don't have bongos, and I like for people to come
here half-way pressed.” Keel blinked his eyes. “Eagle is an
exception.” He turned and jostled a chair.
"You make a living here?”
“If you mean just getting by, I do. Once I wanted to
make a living—but it didn't agree with me. I think I'm
almost happy now.”
“How can you afford me?"
“That's no problem. Man, you're so beat you didn't
even notice that we hadn't talked salary.”
"I noticed.”
“You did, huh?"
“Yeah.”
Keel changed the subject. “Where'd you teach?”
“Upstate.”
“You haven't cut out for good?”
"I don't know."
"I think this country can use lots of good teachers."
"I don't think I was too good.”
“I'd guess you were all right.”
Hillary stared across the room and tried to remember
whether he had been good or not.
The door opened and he turned. A tall, red-haired girl
came in smiling at Keel, and in that second Hillary knew
that had there been a million people in the room she still
would have smiled in that special way only at Keel. Hil-
lary wanted not to stare at her, but a quality of gentleness
27


was vivid upon her face; she was the kind of woman each
man dreams of having in his bed, in his kitchen, in sum-
mers and autumns, all the days of his life. Neat: that was
the only word to describe her face. It was devoid of that
animal alertness or that coy submissiveness many white
women, knowing a Keel Robinson, would have had. There
was no sign of any neurotic defiance hidden in her eyes,
nothing to suggest that she harbored any deep self-hatred
for this need to see Keel.
Hillary did not avert his face. Instead, he veiled his eyes,
conscious of the frozen, polite grin on his face as he
watched them kiss.
"Della,” Keel said. Hillary said hello.
28


Until the moment Della joined them, Hillary had felt that
no person, no incident, could bring him back to a living
and, finally, a painless remembrance of the dead-his wife,
her head half through a shattered windshield, the mockery
of broken glass falling to the ground seconds after the
crash. But Della's presence that evening had done that.
From time to time over the casual meal, he had looked at
her and thought automatically of Angela alive; it had not
hurt and he was thankful for this woman, whoever she
was. It was no wonder then that he had, half the night
through (it was now two in the morning) recalled how
Keel had looked forward to the moment when Della would
arrive. This had been, Hillary thought in retrospect, subtly
implicit in the way he and Keel had suddenly become in-
volved in the warm conversation just before she came.
Hillary understood. He recalled how he had felt long
29


NCCI,
ago when he waited for Angela on a Fayetteville corner,
crepe shoes shined, his pegged pants creased, his hair duck-
tailed and neatly brilliantined. The feeling of impending
pleasure was always intense, so intense that it passed beyond
self-control and communicated itself to someone else if
they were there—perhaps to a sly watcher. It had been that
way with Keel
But he had gone silent after a time, just short of sullen.
He had become curt and, in a way, sad. It was in the sag
of his shoulders, in the deepening brown of his eyes be-
tween laughs. When the first few hours had passed, Della
too, had become quiet, as though she also had a sadness
she would or could not lose. When they spoke they did it
softly, as if there were a secret between them, or as though
they were refusing to intrude upon each other. It was ob-
vious, though, that they were bound together by some-
thing.
So Hillary found himself thinking, painfully yet clearly,
and wished it had not been so. He moved aimlessly around
the shop. It was a midweek night and there were not many
customers. There were a couple of musicians he did not
recognize in the Musicians' Room, but he paid no atten-
tion to them. Once he wondered where Eagle was but de-
cided that perhaps he had a gig that night and would not
be in.
“Want a taste?” She said it deep in her throat and her
smile mocked him.
Without moving from the wall where he stood, Hillary
turned, looked first at the smile and then at the hand laid
without meaning on his arm. “Keel asked me to ask you."
Hillary had wanted to see something hard about her:
the eyes or even the lines around them; the set of the jaw
perhaps or a characteristic twist of the lips. There was
30


nothing but an elusive softness hidden behind the dancing
eyes.
Hillary nodded and waited for Della to tell him where
it was. “It's in your room,” she said. “Don't kill yourself
with it.”
"I won't,” Hillary said. She seemed to possess the same
knack for satire that everyone else around here did. He
made his way past her, then past Keel and into his room.
He closed the door and listened to the murmur of voices
from outside. Someone in the Musicians' Room played
Coleman Hawkins' “Body and Soul.” The bass vibrated
and Hillary felt it inside his room. He clutched the bottle
and slowly opened it, remembering how he and Angela
liked to ballroom on the first part of that record and then,
laughing at themselves, to break into a smooth Lindy on
the second part where Hawk took it double-tempo. He
drank-slowly and deliberately—thinking first to empty
the bottle; but he stopped and corked it viciously. Some-
one liked that record; it was playing again. Well, it was
a classic of sorts.
He left the room after a half hour. One of the two musi-
cians shouted, “Hey, you, Prof.” Both of them looked like
the old guys Hillary remembered from the small joints in
hick towns, or like off-avenue players in the second-rate
clubs though they might have inhabited Childs, the Metro-
pole or the Stuyvesant Casino at one time or another.
Hillary nodded.
“Keel said to take care of things. He cut out.”
Hillary nodded again and without bothering to look
around knew that Della, too, was gone.
He selected a table near the kitchen, in the shadows, so
that he might watch the door. Somebody played Billie's
“Porgy,” and Hillary, liking it, wanted the person to play
it again. He sat and waited. The voices of the two musi-
31


“Later.” The big man walked out of the shop without
looking back. The hand-holding couple bent together to
whisper, then stared after Tolen.
"Hey,” the boy said to Hillary, "was that Rod Tolen?"
“Yeah.”
“I listen to his program every night. It's great.”
Hillary didn't answer.
He wanted the young couple and the two past-prime
musicians to leave. He wanted to go out. Now one of the
musicians played “Porgy” again, while Hillary went to his
room for another drink. In the darkness he thought about
a woman, perhaps one here on his bed in the quietness of
the last dark hours of the morning. Maybe. When he came
out the musicians were at the door, talking with the
couple. He waited until they passed through, then said,
“Goodnight.” He locked the door behind them and took
the cups and spoons to the kitchen, washed them hurriedly
and put them away. Then he dashed water over his face
and went to his room for his coat.
The cold wind that races from river to river across St.
Mark's Place and 8th Street set the tails of his coat to
flapping. He lowered his head and went to Second Avenue
and then south. He passed a doorway dimly lit from either
side by two small shops, a haberdashery and a bakery. A
little woman stood huddled in the darkness. Hillary passed
her, wondering, got to the corner, turned around and
passed her again. By the time he was abreast of her the
third time she had spotted him and kept her eyes on his.
She inclined her head ever so slightly in the direction of
the hallway, and Hillary, with one more furtive glance,
stepped in.
“Hello,” he said. He had never done this before.
“Hello.” She was Puerto Rican. “You wish to make
love?"
33


Hillary nodded.
“You will come with me, upstairs, then?”
"I live around the corner,” Hillary said. Her eyes were
dark and hard, but her smile was soft.
“Oh, no. Must make the love here. Upstairs."
“Why?”
“My children. They are sleeping, and I do not wish to
go away from them.”
"All right,” Hillary said. He leaned forward to kiss her.
She gave him a dry, hasty peck on the lips and started up-
stairs; Hillary followed. Her legs were thin, but her body
was sturdy from the hips up. He wished she were Della.
The hall, with its worn slate stairs and stamped tin ceiling,
smelled of insect spray. Bags of refuse had been put out to
be picked up in the morning. .
"This one,” the woman said, when they had arrived at a
door on the top floor. She placed a key in the lock and
pushed the door open slowly. "Come.”
Hillary passed inside and waited until she had closed
and locked the door. She took his hand and led him care-
fully through the darkness. He allowed her to pull him
down on a bed. A child whimpered and they tightened
into stillness. “You pay now," she whispered.
“How much?”
“Five.”
There were three singles in his left pocket and a five in
the right. Hillary pulled out the five and felt for her hand
in the darkness. She took it and leaned away from him. A
light went on and then off; she had checked the bill, while
Hillary had had time to see the room with a baby in a
nearby crib, its tiny clothes dangling over.
The bed creaked and there were the sounds of clothes
zippers, snaps, elastic bands—being manipulated. The
woman settled in the bed and Hillary slowly removed his
34


clothes, refusing to let his distaste for the woman, the
place, and himself continue its slow flood through him.
His fingers, a minute later, ached to touch and grasp. Her
breasts were small and limp, though the rest of her body
was firm. She talked to him soothingly at first as she would
have to a child, moving slowly, urging, caressing, kissing
him. But just before it was over, when Della's image-
white skin, copper hair, rose lips, green eyes—sighed in
Hillary's mind and he gave himself in great spasms, the
woman beneath him groaned, “Dios mio! Dios mio!”; and
then, with his body stilled, efficiently extricated herself.
Downstairs once more, Hillary bent into the wind and
returned to the shop, still restless. He sat on his bed and
drained the bottle. He would not have to work until late
the following afternoon. Besides, if Keel-he visualized his
long face, the color of stained oak, his glistening, heavy,
black mustache overhanging chiseled, dark red lips, his
dropped eyelids which still saw everything—could take
the time off with Della, he could take some off himself.





“Get up!"
Hillary felt the covers being pulled off him. Wretchedly,
he tried to pull them back. A strong hand gripped his
wrist. “What, are you drunk, goddamn you! Get up, Prof!"
Now Hillary felt his legs being lifted from the bed and
placed on the floor. The hands gripped his shoulders and
pulled him to a sitting position. Two slaps stung his face,
and blinking his eyes open, he stared angrily at Keel.
“What's the matter?”
“Put your shoes on.” Keel was holding Hillary's jacket
for him. “C'mon, will you man?”
Through the little window the light came in gray-blue;
morning was no more than an hour away.
“What is it?" Hillary asked. Had Keel become suddenly
angry with him? Was he going to put him out now, after
he'd become somewhat used to human comforts? What had
37


he done? He hadn't meant to bother Della— Hillary's
mind snapped back. He hadn't been with Della. But had
Keel read his mind? “I'm drunk,” Hillary said. It was not
a protest, just a statement.
“I can't help that. I need your help.”
The idea penetrated. Hillary was pleased. He was stand-
ing now, weaving back and forth, and Keel was kneeling to
tie his shoes on. “You need my help?”.
“Shut up."
“But you said—”
“Shut up." Keel was up now, pulling on Hillary's coat.
“The cold air will straighten you out.”
Outside the shop, in the quiet morning, Keel came close
to him. “Listen, Prof and listen good.” Keel paused and
shook Hillary by the shoulders. “Understand? Can you un-
derstand?"
Hillary nodded.
“We have to get Eagle"
“Somebody was looking for Eagle tonight—"
“Shut up, Prof. Eagle is strung out. He might be dead.
We have to get him and bring him back and take care of
him, and we have to do it fast before the streets begin
crawling with cops. We're going to take a cab.”
Hillary's eyes had closed.
Goddamn him, Keel thought, and slapped him hard and
watched the eyes open wide, fill with pain and hate and
then go devoid of emotion. "Prof? Prof?”
"Hummm?"
“We have to move fast. If you don't move fast enough
I'll have to leave you: don't you understand that? Fuzz,
Prof, cops.”
At Third Avenue they took a cab. Keel rolled down Hil-
lary's window for the air. They rode uptown along the
almost empty street. Daylight leaned softly across the city
38


from the East River, but there was still that shadow of
night reluctantly drawing away toward the west. Looking
down the broad cross streets, Keel saw the blackness still
thick over the Jersey sky. They had about forty-five min-
utes at the most. Once they hit the street with Eagle be-
tween them up there between Fifth and Madison, the cops
would be on them like white on rice. You didn't see drunk
Negroes in that area at any time.
· Goddamn that Candy anyway, Keel thought. How could
she let something like this happen? Maybe he had the
junk before he got to her place, but even so she'd been
around long enough to know when too much was too
much.
But it wasn't Candy who had called him at Della's. Keel
sat up in his seat and for a second saw the ludicrous empti-
ness of 42nd Street. Della had said it was a man. Keel
leaned against the seat. Yes, maybe that had registered.
Perhaps that's what explained his haste. Something was
wrong. “Goose this mother,” Keel said to the cabby. He
turned to Hillary, “How you doin'?”.
Hillary nodded. His profile was highlighted by the
streetlights outside the cab. He looked young and lost.
“You'll be all right,” Keel assured him.
They swung off Third, across Yorkville, across the quiet,
boundary-like Park Avenue. They eased down the street.
“Go around the block," Keel told the driver. The driver
was a Negro. That was sometimes the nice thing about
operating at night; at that time New York was filled with
Negro cabbies and bus drivers and subway motormen, and
they knew what was happening and rolled with it. They
had no choice. The day spots went to their white fellow
workers.
There were no small, fast-looking, unmarked black cars
pulled up beneath the small trees, only Porsches, Mercedes-
39


Benzes, and ostentatious Cadillacs or Lincolns. “All right,"
Keel said.
"Want me to wait?" the cabbie asked.
“Yeah, and put your light out. I'll straighten you."
“Crazy.”
“C'mon, Prof. We got to go."
They entered the building and walked softly down the
carpeted hall. From out of one of the adjoining passage-
ways, two uniformed men strolled, halting at sight of them.
"Where you boys going?” one of them asked.
"To Miss Matthews,” Keel replied with relief. They
were the elevator operator and the doorman. Their ex-
pressions hardly concealed their disgust. This woman had
an odd assortment of friends.
“Get in,” the elevator operator said.
They stepped into the car, and he followed, closing the
door softly behind. The car cruised upwards and finally
stopped. “You going to be long?" the operator asked.
Keel stopped dead. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll ring when
I need you.”
The operator watched until they had rung Candy's bell,
then he closed the door of the car but did not go down.
Keel leaned on the bell again; it sounded loud in the still-
ness of the building.
“Who's there?”
"Keel, Candy. I've come for Eagle.”
There was the snapping of locks and a latch. The door
opened. Candy Matthews stood in tight pajamas, her honey-
colored hair falling over her sharp, angular face.
“Where is he?” Keel asked.
"In the bedroom." She eyed Hillary as he shambled in.
“Why didn't you call me?"
“I thought he'd come around.” She brushed back her
hair. “Who called you?”
40


angel. The car came and the operator distastefully held the
door for them and they went down. The doorman stayed
in his seat, staring at them as they emerged on the ground
floor. They went out supporting Eagle between them.
The cabby leaped out to help. “Richie Stokes, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but cool it," Keel warned.
"Strung out?”
“Pretty far out.”
“What're you goin' to do?"
“Man, don't worry, just take us back downtown.”
“Just thought I could help. I dig Richie."
"It'll be all right. And if it isn't, the less you know and
do the better off you'll be. Now drive, man.”
Keel slapped Eagle all the way back downtown. Hillary
winced with each blow. Once the cabby asked, "Is he
comin' around?”
“I think so. His eyelashes moved a couple of times.
Hurry up, man."
“We're making it,” the cabby answered.
The sky was light now, and the early morning people,
construction workers, service people, bakers, and laundry-
men, moved hastily along the streets. The downtown
avenues were filling up with cars coming from the Jersey
and Brooklyn tunnels. Beneath them, the subways carried
their first overflow crowds.
The apartment house janitors were carrying out refuse;
some of them, a little ahead of schedule, were already
sweeping the walks.
"Here we go," Keel cautioned the driver. “The next
house.”
The cab slowed and stopped. Keel paid the fare and
said, “Thanks, man.”
“Need any help?”
“No. Thanks, though.”
42


"Take good care of him.”
“We will. Don't worry. If we can't straighten him out,
he can't be straightened.”
Hillary and Keel went up the steps, Eagle dragging be-
tween them. “This mother sure is heavy when he's out,"
Keel muttered as they struggled up the flights with him.
“All this ought to make you sober, man,” he puffed.
Hillary, in fact, had reached a degree of soberness. The
sight of Candy, her face and perhaps her body too-sleek
as a shark's so that one was bludgeoned with the fact that
there was something odd about her, had helped; the under-
standing that Eagle was dying helped also, and finally the
frenzied necessity of staving off that death had worn away
the fuzziness in Hillary's mind. Now he was more ex-
hausted than drunk.
They placed Eagle on the bed. “Open his clothes,” Keel
commanded. “Get his chest exposed.” He went into the
kitchen and returned with a handful of ice cubes. “Got to
shock this cat back,” he muttered, and he placed the cubes
on Eagle's chest above the heart and slid them around.
Nothing happened. “Slap the mother,” Keel said.
Hillary understood the purpose of hitting Eagle, but he
hesitated. “Go on," Keel said softly. “It has to be done.
Got to shock this mother all the way back home, man. We
don't want to lose him. Go on, hit him.”
Hillary swung. Not hard enough. He knew without Keel
telling him. He swung again and watched for a reaction.
"Try again,” Keel said. Keel grunted when there was no
reaction from the next blow either. “Get me some more
ice,” he said.
Day had come, Hillary observed on his way to the
kitchen. Life was jamming through the streets; kids were
on their way to school, workers were heading for their
offices. Cars and busses had piled up, horns blaring. But
43


inside, where they were, there was only silence with death,
unobtrusively near. Suddenly Hillary felt the urgency
Keel had been trying to communicate to him. Now for the
first time he could close with the presence. He hadn't
known it before—with Angela there hadn't been time.
Hillary dropped the ice cubes in the sink and rushed into
the bathroom where he turned on the cold water.
“Keel!” he shouted. He ran back for the ice cubes and
dropped them into the bathtub. “Keel!” Now he rushed
again into the bedroom where the two figures were, one
motionless on the bed, the other motionless in exhaustion.
“Let's get him into the tub. C'mon.”
Keel looked up with bloodshot eyes. He understood.
“Think it'll work?"
Hillary shrugged. Already he was tugging at Eagle's
clothes. They dragged the nude form between them. Keel
stuck his fingers in the water. “Damn,” he said, “it's cold.”
“Let's go,” Hillary said.
They lifted Eagle into the tub. He did not respond and
disappointment clouded their eyes—but a second later,
Eagle emitted a groan. “Good!” Keel shouted. Hillary ran
for the few remaining ice cubes. “Break off some of those
icicles from the window," Keel said, “and throw them
mothers in here. Hurry, man.”
Eagle groaned again and an arm moved, clutching for
salvation. “We gotcha, baby,” Keel said, joyfully. “We got
your ass.”
“Let's get him out,” Hillary said. “Can't keep him too
long."
Eagle was moaning steadily now, and once the word
“Goddamn” slipped through his lips. They dried him and
carried him back to bed. Keel looked at his eyes again;
this time Eagle drew away.
44


"All right, Prof. Sit with him while I fix some coffee.
You're a great cat, baby, you know that?”
Hillary smiled. There was so much to learn. “Baby.” It
carried with it some kind of love, not the love of one
homosexual for another, but perhaps the love of one hu-
man being for another. Hillary felt good.
Richie Stokes was coming to. The room blurred, fuzzy
and cold and out of focus. For an instant he wished he
were back in his old room in his Aunt Jessie's house in St.
Louis. It was her presence he wanted. St. Loo was as hard
as this room, and his life there as cold under the kaleido-
scope of Big Jaw Foster's running club, the Magicians.
Those jokers could sure play ball. He had spent many an
afternoon waiting for them to come in from Chicago, ad-
vised by the notices Foster had put up on the fences along
18th Street.
St. Loo. What a dizzying whirligig that town was: the
hincty Negroes in the political machine; the bootlegging
dives along the river section; the “Buffet Flats" all over;
and the sharpies in their box-backed coats and shoes called
“Mississippi Flats.” And what a stink the slaughter houses
gave off with their endless streams of cattle up from the
Panhandle. The mobs controlled everything illegitimate.
Whores and pimps everywhere, bum liquor, marijuana-
everything was cheap and you grew into manhood using
these things. In some towns you grew up to go to college,
but in St. Loo you survived up if you could—and you
had to be bad to do it; you had to find some nigger and
build your reputation on him. Or you could attract a name
like "Stud.”
The most glamorous people in that town were the mu-
sicians, sharp gentlemen whose travels brought them fre-
quently to St. Loo, for the town was loaded with suckers
45


who wanted to spend money on pleasure—and their music
was that. Tippy Dunbar and Roscoe Dykes. They had
taught Richie something special: Tippy how to get the
most out of an alto; Roscoe, how to build chords and the
intricacies of harmony.
How often he had stood in the morning, not having slept
all night because of blowing down in the park, and watched
the cats come and go at the “spook breakfasts” at the club:
Pres, Basie, Lunceford, Mary Lou, Harlan Jackson, Mc-
Shann, Lee Jones—the whole goddamn bunch. And he had
watched the paddy boys who were in town step up to take
a few choruses, how many depended upon how mucy they
swung the group they played with. Then one morning,
Richie Stokes had stepped on line, clutching a new Selmer
with fast action and had tried to double-tempo “Body and
Soul” until Lee Jones had cymballed his ass right out of
the club, and sent him to the woodshed, up in the moun-
tains, to learn some damned music.
There was a marriage too, though even then he knew he
wasn't in love-hell, love was for white folks anyway. It
was just that the girl was big and it was the thing to do,
but that didn't last long. At the same time Shooby died,
and no one knew why or how but Richie Stokes, who had
been with him when they took the heroin. For most musi-
cians, pot, nutmeg, and bennies were enough, but not for
Richie Stokes nor for Shooby.
Disaster didn't rain-it poured. The skies just opened
up and let loose, shit all the way down; he was sixteen. The
mobbers caught his father shortchanging on hooch and cut
him in two along the old country road. And Jennie took
their baby and cut out. He had to leave St. Loo, where
everything seemed to have happened at once.
Richie made it to Chicago, blowing some borrowed horn
and stealing, and then to New York, brushing against
46


Dizzy and a few others before he returned home to play
with Maddon. That lasted a while and was good. Maddon
was like Mingus in a way: he rehearsed you until you could
do what you had to do in your sleep. But Richie left again,
back to New York, staying until he couldn't make it there.
Art Tatum and Willie The Lion Smith were cutting every-
thing in sight, and Benny Carter too. They said he should
try to play like Benny, should get a little vibrato in his
tone, because it was too stark, too damned angry.
He returned to Maddon and they toured the Southwest;
he had ideas now springing out of his mind all day and he
wrote them down. They made the Apple, Chicago, Cleve-
land, and Detroit where they left him for dead, him and
his heroin and his orange-haired baby, Mamie.
It began to go better. Burt Owens stuck a tenor in his
mouth. It was a big horn, but they said he played the hell
out of it, even if he didn't like it. “B” formed his own
group and he went with it. The sounds were new and the
damned band swung like a Seth Thomas. It was the first
band with the new sound, and Richie felt at home.
But there was too much talent there; everyone wanted
his own group and “B” couldn't record because the war
was on. Rigor Mortis. Back in New York, Richie formed
his own combo, fighting against the drivel of Charley
Spivak, Glen Gray, the Dorseys, Kay Kayser, Glenn Miller,
and all the rest. Only Ellington was swinging, but in a
different way, he and that sweet-blowing Johnny Hodges
who mauled an alto.
: 52nd Street on the west side leaped with clubs and small
groups, though Billie said it was a goddamned plantation
where the owners made the money and the musicians
slaved. But for Richie it was work. Sometimes he ate, some-
times he didn't, but he never failed to amaze. Twice he was
left for dead, zonked on junk, but he straightened up in
47


“Give me a cigarette."
Hillary lighted one for him and placed it in his lips.
Eagle drew hard, then let the smoke trickle back out of his
mouth. “Been dreaming," he said.
It was almost night. The room stretched dark and list-
less around them and Eagle knew what had happened.
“Where'd you find me?"
"At Candy's.”
Eagle frowned. “Don't know why it is I always wind up
with that broad. Must be as sick as she is.”
Hillary didn't answer.
"Where's Keel?”
“Should be back in a minute. Went to get some soup for
you.”
“How long I been out?"
"All day.”
Eagle wiggled his lips for another draw on the cigarette;
when he'd inhaled the smoke, snuffling on it like it was pot
for his mind was still fogged, and finally exhaled it, he
said, “Bet you mothers thought I'd been done in.”
“We did,” Hillary said. He placed the cigarette between
Eagle's fingers, watched them tighten on it.
"You don't use anything but whisky, do you?”
"No."
“Don't. No matter how bad it looks. Don't touch that
shit.” Eagle emphasized every word and it tired him. His
arm shook as he raised the cigarette to his mouth and drew
on it; he let the limb flop back on the bed where the ash
toppled on the spread.
Keel came in. "He talkin'?"
“A little.”
Keel approached the bed. “Eagle?”
Eagle opened his eyes and smiled or rather intended to,
49


but what appeared was more like a sneer. “Hey, mother.
How you makin' it?"
"You almost didn't. You was dead, nigger, you know
that?”
Hillary felt uncomfortable.
Eagle laughed softly. “But I ain't now. When I get up,
I'm gonna whip your ass to show you how alive I am-
mother.”
“Ain't you bad,” Keel retorted with a sad smile. Seri-
ous, he said, “You almost had it last night, baby. If it
wasn't for Prof there, we'd be out right now tryin' to dump
you in the river.”
Eagle tried to laugh.
“You too hot to keep around, man. Have to put your
ass in the river,” Keel said, shaking his head for emphasis,
though a little smile played around his mouth. “You die
and half the pushers on the East Coast starve to death.”
Eagle closed his eyes and smiled.
"How about it, Eagle?"
"What?”
“Turkey, man. You know what I'm talkin' about. That
damned cold turkey."
Eagle sighed and began speaking in a soft voice. “Keel,
I told you: that's for the movies and books. I been on for
twenty years, man.” (Twenty years, Hillary noted). “The
stuff is a part of me. I'm nothin' without it. I don't mean
musically. Hell, junk never helped any cat to wail better.
I mean my good health demands it. Any cat'll tell you
that." Eagle smiled from behind his closed eyes. “Cold
turkey—hah!” He opened his eyes now, or rather, peeked
out of them. “Why don't you pray for me, man?".
Keel shot a glance in Hillary's direction, then returned
his gaze to Eagle. He said, “Prof, give this guy some soup.
I got to see about the shop. Della's down there now."
50


“What's wrong with you all?" Eagle drawled as Hillary
reached and took the butt of the cigarette from him.
"Nothing," Keel said.
"You an' Dell ain't actin' right, Keel.”
"We do all right," Keel answered curtly.
Hillary wished Eagle would keep quiet.
Keel was at the door now.
“You're a lyin” mother,” Eagle said. He closed his eyes
and said nothing more until the slammed door announced
Keel's exit.
Hillary roused himself and prepared the soup. He re-
turned to the bedroom and found Eagle sitting dazedly on
the edge of the bed. “You'd better get back in bed, Eagle.”
“Hell, I'm all right.”
"Rod Tolen was looking for you last night. Said he had
gig for you.” Hillary gave Eagle the bowl of soup.
“That mother. A gig, yeah,” Eagle sneered. “Gets four or
five cats together, wants 'em to blow all night, then lays
twenty dollars on 'em and thinks he's swingin'. He's been
pullin' that crap for the past twenty years. Him an' his
goddamn gigs. Ought to go back to sellin' pegs.”
It was all meaningless to Hillary.
"Did you know," Eagle asked when he had finished the
soup, "that Keel was a minister?”
The disclosure did not impress Hillary. He had known
of Negro preachers; they were the butt of jokes among
Negroes themselves. “Oh, yeah?”
“I don't mean an ordinary preacher. He had all that
bullshit behind his name, B.D. and D.D. Went to some
seminary at Harvard. A real heavy cat."
This made it interesting to Hillary, but then, Keel be-
ing what he was, he probably took some money and had
been defrocked for it-or whatever Protestant churches
did with their ministers.
51


"He just quit,” Eagle said, and there was both wonder
and pride in his voice. Hillary knew that Keel, then, had
often puzzled Eagle. "Just quit and converted. Sadik
Jamal,” Eagle said, as if tasting it. “He gave that up too."
He paused and drew on his cigarette. “I'm Mohammedan
myself,” he said. “I always face the East when I sit or stand.
Even now," he said proudly.
Hillary looked around and said dryly, “You're facing
due south, Eagle.”
Eagle chose to continue his meditations in silence, cut-
ting his eyes only once at Hillary.
After Eagle had settled in bed for the night, Hillary left
and went down to the coffee shop, expecting to find Keel,
but Della said he had gone for a walk.
"Why don't we have some coffee?" Hillary suggested.
Della grinned, moved her coppered head in the illusion
of a nod and said, “Like, why not, man?”
Hillary smiled. She had burlesqued the beat and the hip
so briefly, indicating both tolerance and love as well as an
amusement at where she found herself. The voice, calm
and clear, with multiple shadings, had helped create this
many-sided image.
"Is Eagle all right?” she asked when she returned.
"Fine. He's doing fine.”
1459.


Keel Robinson walked slowly along Third Avenue, down
the Bowery until he reached Canal Street. Over the broad
east-west thoroughfare, great trucks and cars bounced
along, their light beams rising and falling, their engines
growling, puffing and snorting. He turned west, then north
again, and plunged into the darkness of the sidestreets
where printing shops and rag and paper mills were lo-
cated. It was quiet along here. In summer families sat in
the streets and the Italian club doors were open. But now
all doors were closed and the people stayed inside, out of
the biting cold.
For the first time in twenty-four hours Keel had time to
think and it was time he didn't want. His concern for
Eagle had equaled his desire to forget the hours he had
spent earlier with Della. He was always forgetting the time
he spent with Della. Had to spend, his mind corrected.
53


Each day he awoke wanting her, but as the day wore on
he forgot her until an hour or two before she was due to
come. It was that period that frightened him most each
day. He would think forward to the evening: each eve-
ning would be the one in which he would conquer it, but
that evening did not come and now he despaired that it
ever would. A year is a long time. How much patience had
she? Why didn't she stop coming? Why didn't he leave?
Keel settled down to a steadier pace, the better to think
it out from the beginning. There had been a beginning so
there had to be an end.
The beginning had been so long ago that Keel seldom
thought about it. Della had come, he always said to him-
self, when he needed her most, almost immediately after
he had left the church, and at a time when he felt his obli-
gations to his parents had been paid. For he had suc-
ceeded completely where they had only half-succeeded.
Success to them meant status, and there was none, really,
without a college background and a professional career.
Money alone, which the Robinsons had acquired, was al-
most but not quite enough.
The swing of the pendulum had carried him to what
might have been considered a second extreme had Keel
not been familiar with it already. It was there, in the
world of cool, that he had met Della, there in that world
of arrogant musicians and worrying night club owners, a
world filled with admirers, detractors, tourists, hipsters,
squares, policemen and weirdies, a world in which the days
were really nights because you lived mostly in the dark
and sang your song of life then. There had been instant
communication between them and no little grappling with
the things both had learned at other extremes in their
lives.
Keel found himself in Sheridan Square and, digging out
54


wrong. Keel knew he could never use as an excuse the fact
that Della was the only woman this had happened with.
Eagle and the others would laugh him right into the river,
though they would expect him to take it with a smile.
Their world, his too now, was a tough one. Even mercy and
kindness were camouflaged in sarcasm, irony, or a bellicose
pessimism. But what Eagle and the others thought or said
worried him only slightly. Most of his being was concen-
trated on finding the solution to the almost nightly hu-
miliation he suffered with Della.
Why? Think!
It had never happened before and until last year hadn't
happened at all. The same pride that had carried Keel
through Harvard Divinity and then caused him to pass his
neatly folded clerical robes to his parents—his thin, aus-
tere father and equally severe mother, both of whom had
tried to run all their lives from what they were—made him
want to solve this problem too by himself. His father, a
bishop, had not been half as much interested in religion
as in the position it brought him. His mother had en-
hanced it through clubs, socials, and charities; all these
allowed her to be a bigger person than she was. His parents
had wanted this for Keel, and he had once assumed he had
a right to it. But somewhere in his studies the very hollow-
ness of the religion practiced by his father and his parish-
ioners—by too many people—became nauseous and super-
ficial; when belief became institutionalized, the seeking
ended. Keel solved that problem by leaving the ministry.
He finished a second beer and started out, passing a
rather popular novelist and his entourage coming in. He
walked east along Christopher Street to Greenwich, then
over to 8th, where he spotted Stanley Crane. Keel tried
to ease by the jazz critic but failed.
“Keel, how are you?" Crane was tall and thin and wore
56


“I hear he was strung out last nightbut good.”
"No."
"At Candy's?"
"No."
Their hardened rubber heels knocked against the walks
of the almost deserted street. A powdery snow had begun
to fall, which, caught up by light gusts of wind, rose from
the streets and rushed and twirled in the air.
"Where's he now?”
"I don't know," Keel lied. He knew Crane knew he was
lying, which was what he wanted. This was the putting-on.
Crane changed the subject. “He hasn't been sounding
good lately, know what I mean?" His look sought confirma-
tion.
“Sounds all right to me,” Keel answered. He could pic-
ture Della rising to meet him when he entered the shop.
“No, no," Crane insisted.
Karl stopped and without comment stared into the win-
dow of a furniture store. Crane was right. Eagle, the last
year, had been sounding plaintive, almost whiny on his
ax. Sometimes the old fire came and he soared, blew
everyone off the stand, but that seldom happened anymore.
The tone was still there, the shape, the echo of it, but it
was hollow. Only Crane didn't need his confirmation to
know that Eagle too was being beaten.
Keel turned from the window and they continued walk-
ing, half-bent before the wind.
“You don't agree?” Crane persisted.
“To what?”
“That Eagle doesn't sound good these days.”
“He sounds all right to me,” Keel insisted again. Keel
knew that whatever critics like Crane felt about Eagle they
could never be sure until they had amassed a variety of
opinion in their favor; and that opinion could only come


“Tired,” Della said with a smile, "again?"
“Look, Dell”
“Darling, don't be so touchy.”
"Sorry. It's a touchy thing.”
“I thought if we could laugh about it a little you
wouldn't worry so.”
Keel sat back in his chair, his eyes on the floor. “What
makes you think I'm worried?”
Della started to speak but changed her mind; she recog-
nized the tone of his voice. The one thing she feared was
his sarcasm; it was like a whip tipped with steel.
They heard Crane drop a coin in the record player. In
the kitchen Hillary dropped a pan. “Baby," Keel said,
reaching for her hand. “I am sorry.”
She squeezed his hand. “Don't let it bug you. It'll be all
right.”
“It does bug me.”
“If you'd only try to relax.”
“I try.”
"Why don't you let Hillary run the place for a week or
so? Go somewhere.”
"Without you?”
She looked at him. “Wouldn't that be best?”
“You think that'll do it?”
“I don't know. I don't want you to be away from me."
Keel gave her a cold smile and stared past her into the
kitchen. “Now there's a good guy when he gets straight-
ened out. Why don't you hit on him?"
Della stopped squeezing his hand. “That won't solve any-
thing for you.” She shook her head. “Besides,” she said,
reaching for a cigarette, “I'm not letting you quit. Not like
this anyway.”
"He could get rid of a lot of headaches for us."
“Dammit,” she said. “We went through this a couple of
60


years ago, baby. We've made progress—now you want to
toss everything up."
Keel didn't answer..
Della stared at the tablecloth. A year. Three hundred
and sixty-five days. Twelve months. An endless succession
of empty nights. “This is an anniversary,” she said.
Keel jerked up. He was startled, not so much by her
comment as by the tone of her voice, that carefully
phrased, social worker's diction that she sometimes slipped
into. “Of what?” he asked.
"Finian's.”
“Finian's,” Keel echoed. He frowned, then smiled. “Oh
yeah, Finian's.”
They both remembered: how could they forget?
They had met Eagle between sets on the street, and all
dashed around the corner to Sixth Avenue for Eagle's
quick drink. The bar was called Finian's. They stood at
one end of the bar, waiting for the bartender to serve them.
He glanced at them several times, but did not move. The
men along the bar eyed the bartender and them and
smirked. Della wanted to leave then, but had known that
neither Eagle nor Keel would. She stood trembling, trying
not to show it.
Eagle walked slowly down the bar until he came to the
bartender. He spoke softly, so softly that Della and Keel
could not hear him, but they did hear the bartender's re-
ply: he did not serve niggers. It hit Della like a slap
what followed seemed to occur in slow motion. Eagle
lunged, putting a knee on the bar, with one arm up to
protect his head from the bartender's bottle, which landed
anyway. The barflies scrambled away from their seats, their
mouths grim, their eyes bright. Suddenly Keel was no
longer beside Della: he was on his way to help Eagle.
The ranks of the barflies opened to let him through, then
61


in his eyes: confusion because she was one of the "whities,”
as the musicians called them with smirking bitterness, but
also because Keel was in love with her. She could not, the
way some white women would have, try to buy escape from
the hatred and confusion by denouncing whites for what
they did to Negroes. That was cheap and childish and only
the women themselves were deluded.
Few such women felt the kind of love for their men that
Della possessed. Their individual sicknesses had catapulted
them into this world. The momentum was in nearly every
case self-supplied and required little effort on the part of
the musicians who had become, with time and repeated
experience, wise and as patient as foxes. They were sharp,
these women with their fine bodies and clothes and, very
often, brains—although there were some dogs who were ob-
viously making it on color alone—and they could turn as
many hip phrases as the men, even if they did sound hol-
low; they could also talk endlessly about the senselessness
of prejudice and discrimination—without once under-
standing their role in its maintainance. Very often their
men laughed at them, just as the women must have, some-
times, chuckled among themselves.
Keel's confusion, Della knew, lay in his painful percep-
tion of how and what things were; everything merged
somehow like a billowing mist upon a darkened landscape,
and made everything seem unreal. But Della, like someone
who has seen the way before the mists descended, intended
to go on. For her it was too late to turn back.
“Don't wait for me tonight,” Keel was saying.
It had to come but Della felt the panic anyway. There
had been so many nights when he lay beside her waiting
for sleep, after complaining earlier that he was tired, wait-
ing for the weight upon his mind and body (that brown,
brown body with the flawless skin, smooth yet hard enough,
63


resilient with its miniature pores) to release him. Della
knew it. Some nights she had cried for him, perhaps for
herself too, while he lay deep on his side, sleepless with
trying too often and too consciously to relax, motionless as
any corpse after a time, or else smoking too much. But she
did not want the night to come when he would quit and
not even pretend to hope: hope was inherent in their being
together.
“I'll ask Prof to take you home.” Keel hoped she
wouldn't take a deep breath and then ask if she could ex-
pect him the next evening. He was relieved when she
didn't.
“I can get home all right, if that's what you want."
“I don't want it, but I don't know what else to do.”
“Can I make that suggestion again?”
Keel looked at her. “If I thought seeing one would help,
I'd do it.”
He was still adamant: no analyst. A white one could only
approach the problem from his own experience, and from
bits and pieces of other people's. Ultimately his advice,
since analysts deal with the reality with which they believe
everyone should be in contact, would have to be to accept
the fact of blackness. But once accepted, as it had been for
a few years now, what then? Do you bare your breast for
the bullet so that your shirt won't scratch the lead as it
goes in? Do you stretch your neck for the guillotine? A
Negro analyst might do better, if he were a Jungian
though, not if he were a Freudian. In any case, what else
could he tell you but the truth, and Keel wasn't sure he
was ready to accept it.
Della was certain Keel would never see a Negro analyst,
that he would not want to appear so weak: it would be like
declaring a weakness to Eagle. The admission of weakness
64


ere
ago, when they were still able to talk holding hands, of
what might happen to them or to their children. It was
some time since they had discussed it. Now Della wavered
between thinking she should end it as Keel wished and face
a life of emptiness without him, or go on waiting.
For some time after they first met, there had been no
involvement; they had seen each other casually here and
there; sometimes Keel was alone or with a musician; Della
was usually with Alice, a glistening, smiling, sleek brunette
who liked jazz and musicians. The only thing Della and
Alice had in common was their work at a social agency.
Della understood soon enough that Alice wanted a com-
panion for the shadow world she moved in after work-
after the endless conferences with children and their es-
tranged parents. Then Alice could discuss the things—at
least with her—she dared not talk of to any of the other
workers. After five o'clock, circulation among the afflicted
minorities was frowned upon—even in an office where
Negroes, whites, and Puerto Ricans worked together.
For her own benefit Alice had urged the relationship
with Keel. Alice herself preferred the more prominent
musicians: Eagle, Yards, and others, and often discussed
her evenings with them with a neurotic breathlessness.
Even so, when Alice had spent herself and had turned to
more acceptable companions who were white and not asso-
ciated with jazz, she started to wonder why Della continued
to see so much of Keel.
Between Della and Keel there had been periods of deep
passion and of love, but there had also been times when
Della withdrew into herself, pondering why she felt no
guilt about Keel. How was it she could look at him ob-
jectively, as a man, and not as a Negro enhanced by three
hundred years of mythology? Their separations had been
rather frequent but so had the reconciliations.
66


The problems had not been Della's alone. Her presence
accelerated prejudice, Keel told her. It was bad enough
without activating more, so how could he live a life with
her? They both recognized the truth in this yet the year
before, all truths measured and laid out like garments
about to be sewn, they had decided that, regardless, they
would have to try it.
Now, in her apartment, Della poured out the cup of
Assam tea that Keel liked and carried it to him in her
living room. He thanked her quietly, sipped it, and placed
the cup and saucer down. He leaned back in the chair, his
favorite chair, he had said, because it allowed him to think,
and began talking softly, looking past her to the giant
rounded rooftop of the 69th Regiment Armory.





The shop was empty except for Hillary and Crane. Some-
times the wind buffeted the door, and Hillary was glad he
was inside where it was warm and not out in the street
bent double against the cold, with red eyes and a running
nose. It was too cold to be drunk, he told himself.
Crane sat at a table just outside the Musicians' Room,
stirring sugar into the coffee Hillary had brought him.
Hillary sat near the kitchen and again, as he had the night
before, wondered what Della and Keel were doing. In his
mind Hillary cursed Crane, who was too cheap to play
records and hadn't yet paid for his coffee, the most expen-
sive on the menu, Mocha-Java.
"Yor workin' for Keel?” Crane asked. He looked up over
his coffee.
“Yeah.”
"Musician?”
69


Hillary had always thought that with musicians and
their hangers-on the necessity to pigeonhole would be ab-
sent. “No,” he answered.
Crane grunted, and lifting his cup to his lips sipped the
coffee, then replaced the cup in its saucer. “Like to make
some bread?”
"What doing?” Hillary countered.
"Come on over.” Crane beckoned Hillary to his table.
Hillary had already come to dislike the man, but didn't
know why. “Sit down,” Crane said with a smile.
“I write,” he said. “I'm a jazz critic.” He laughed mod-
estly. Hillary waited. “All the news isn't at Carnegie or the
Open Door or the Vanguard. Do you know them?”
Hillary nodded. He wasn't sure. New clubs sprang up all
the time.
“There's lots of news here, but I can't get it: you know
what I mean?” His eyes took on a wise look.
"I don't think so,” Hillary said. “Tell me.”
“Right. I can't get the news I'd like because I'm white,
like you, y’dig? Right. Now you're here—” Crane broke
off. “You're not a writer are you?”
Hillary shook his head.
Crane said, “Had me bugged for a second. Anyway
you're here where there's lots of action. You know, cats
running in and out, talking and so on. You pick up some
valuable information for me, and I'll straighten you. Bet-
ter than Keel.” Crane sipped his coffee. He asked, “You a
junkie?”
"No."
“Hummm," Crane mused. “Wino?"
"No."
Crane leaned back. “What then?”
There had to be a reason why he was here, Hillary
thought. Why am I here, working for Keel, grateful be-
70


Crane gave Hillary a tight smile, threw a dollar on the
table and got up. “You sound just like them,” he said. He
pulled on his coat and started for the door—which opened
to admit Eagle, his pajamas covered by his coat, thin slip-
pers on his feet. Crane rushed forward with a smile. "My
man, how you makin' it?"
Eagle's smile was brilliant, his two-handed handclasp
warm. “Crazy, crazy," he said, moving toward the kitchen
with Crane still holding on.
“How you feel?” Crane asked.
“I feel good, why?" Eagle asked.
The voices came to Hillary clearly.
"Well—you got on pajamas, so naturally I thought you
were sick.”
“Naw. Just restin' that's all.”
"Sure. You signed with Demetriades yet?"
“Next week, maybe.”
“Nice, man. Bread. How much is he going to lay on
you?"
Eagle laughed. “Ask him.”
The voices went on. Hillary remained seated, wondering
what Eagle was doing up. Was Crane trying to find out
about the evening before? It occurred to Hillary that he
was, but his inquisitiveness was easily blunted by Eagle.
Hillary smiled. Bullshit, he thought. Crane bullshitting
Eagle; Eagle bullshitting him, back and forth, back and
forth. Hillary heaved a sigh when Crane left and Eagle
came out with coffee and a sandwich and sat at the table
with him. “That mother,” Eagle grunted. “Always suckin'
around.”
"You should be in bed,” Hillary said.
“Hell, I'm all right." Eagle's jaws clamped around the
sandwich. “Where's Keel and Della?" he asked with his
mouth filled.
72


"Gone.”
“Gone, huh?" Eagle chewed his food and when he had
swallowed it said, “You like that Della, don't you?”
“Yeah. She's nice.”
“I mean you don't like her like that.”
Hillary said nothing.
“Ah, well,” Eagle said. "She is nice. You hang around in
music for a long time and you see a lot of things. You get
so you wish you could see a mixed couple without either
the broad or the cat being halfway sick about it.” Eagle
bent to his sandwich again and washed it down with a loud
slurp of coffee. “Like Keel and Della,” he said. "I see a
broad and I figure there's only one thing she wants. Matter
of fact there's only one thing she can do for me, and we
make it. It's funny, 'cause I dig I'm the noble, talented
savage-I'm Richie Stokes the Eagle an' there's something
wild and unchained about me. I hate 'em for it; all the
time I'm making it, I'm hating them and I want to hurt
them so they'll never forget me. Never, never.”
Hillary returned to Keel and Della. "Are they going to
get married?"
“Who?"
“Keel,” Hillary said impatiently, “and Della?”
Eagle shrugged. “I don't know. Keel's tore up about
something." He smiled wisely. “Why?”
It was Hillary's turn to shrug.
“Forget it,” Eagle advised. “There ain't nobody like
Keel and Della knows that, black or white. Sure wish that
cat would straighten out, though. He deserves better than
this. Rigor mortis for you. Forget it.”
Eagle lit a cigarette and stared moodily into the empty
Musicians' Room. His face was dull with a sadness which
startled Hillary, but he didn't interrupt the silence. “I
guess I was damned near gone last night,” Eagle said at
73


town. Now they were crouching against the wind which
swept across Washington Square.
“Goddamn!” Eagle said, pulling the hood tighter around
his head.
Hillary didn't bother to answer.
“Cold, Jimsey, cold,” Eagle said, and he ducked his head
and bulled against the wind. Hillary fell in behind him
and used Eagle's body as a windbreaker.
"Slick mother," Eagle shouted once, and Hillary laughed
to himself.
They moved away from the park, empty now except for
a cop who moved across one of the walks under the lights,
big and fat under his long blue coat and his woolen ear-
muffs beneath his cap. They plunged over West 4th Street,
past the tourist traps which were now closed, to the Bo-
hemia.
Eagle smiled at Hillary as they stepped out of the cold.
“Whew,” Hillary said.
Eagle signaled to the bartender. “Wait here,” he said,
when the drinks had come and he had paid for them; and
he entered the sitting area where a small crowd watched
a combo on stage.
The music was not exceptional. The group was young
and its members aped the older musicians rather than
creating something of their own. Still, there was some
rhythm and Hillary moved his head and his feet. The
drink did not go to his head. It warmed him. The drummer
was going off into an intricate solo a direct steal from
Max Roach, though he missed the nuances which were the
basis of Max's creations. There was some polite applause
after the solo. Eagle bustled back in and ordered another
round. He glanced at his watch.
“How you feel?” Hillary asked.
“All right, Jimsey. You? Still cold?”
76


“Naw,” Hillary said. With the second drink he was be-
ginning to loosen. He felt something brushing his thigh
and he looked down. Eagle had a bill folded in his hand,
and was brushing it back and forth. Hillary looked up
questioningly. Eagle smiled enigmatically.
“Take it,” he said.
"Well-1_”
Eagle, tired of brushing, jammed the bill in Hillary's
coat pocket and looked at his watch again. Hillary removed
the bill and looked at it. A hundred dollars.
“What's this for?”.
“Don't you need it?"
Hillary extended the bill toward Eagle. “Man, I can't
take your bread. Not this much.”
Eagle laughed. “Tell you what you do. Keep it. Get
yourself cleaned. Pressed. Make you feel better.” He turned
and clapped his hands loudly together, barking, “Hey, hey,
hey,” to the music. He turned back to Hillary. “They
stink, don't they?" He laughed at his own question, and
bending in two clapped his hands once as if to underline
his remark. Hillary watched him and decided that he
would not drink any more, not even if Eagle insisted.
Eagle saw the sober look in his eyes and said with a
careless nod, “Live, man.”
Hillary was about to reply when he saw, at the window,
the long face of a man, eyes searching the bar inside. Eagle
caught Hillary's eye and said, “Wait here.” He went out.
The music in the back stopped and the musicians drifted
to the bar.
"Eagle was here," the bartender said.
“Junkie," one of the young musicians sneered.
"You should be on junk,” someone passing by said.
“He's had it,” another musician said. “Richie Stokes
77


bar the drummer snapped off a tight, commanding roll and
Eagle raised the ax to his mouth and moved back a step
from the mike. His heavy hands bammed over the keys and
the notes hurtled out. Somewhere along the way-remind-
ing Hillary of a runner with a tight home run who barely
touches the bases—the three syllables of “Salt Peanuts”
echoed again and again. Eagle closed his eyes once while
he chased an idea through the scales and brought it home.
The pianist, head down, raced to keep up, and the drum-
mer, mouth open, beads of sweat beginning to trickle
down his face, dropped bomb after bomb, a rim shot here
and there, and managed to keep up. The bass, a man not
quite half as wide as his instrument, fingered the strings
serenely, filling in for all of them with a solid, thumping
beat.
The trumpeter licked his lips nervously and waited for
his solo.
Even though he waited, he missed the opening notes of
his chorus, and the drummer rapped sharply on the rim,
the bass thumped heavily, and the piano chorded warn-
ingly. Eagle glared at the trumpeter who stepped up now
and raced to catch and keep up. In desperation his mind
formed one idea after another, and he built on them, went
back and reworked them until, feeling confident, he looked
at Eagle and Eagle nodded. The trumpeter went on. Be-
hind him, the rhythm section, sensing what had happened,
lifted and came on with new assurance. When the solo
ended, Eagle clapped his hands and extended his hand
toward the trumpeter. Applause rolled up as large as that
Eagle himself had received.
Now the pianist winged his way up and down the board,
touching lightly here, heavily there, taking the ideas that
both Eagle and the trumpeter had molded and embroider-
ing them in his own style; after ten minutes he gave way
80


to the drummer. Then they all came back on and the
pianist set it up for the finale where Eagle and the trum-
peter would again blow together.
"Eagle," the trumpeter shouted back into the vortex of
sound.
"Crazy," the pianist shouted back. His leg was pumping
like a bicyclist's.
The drummer toned down in order to slip under Eagle's
first notes.
"What'chall doin'?” Eagle asked.
“Mo'," the drummer panted. “Mo'.”
“You niggers must think I'm crazy. Stand up here and
blow all night for freebee,” Eagle said. He slipped off the
horn and walked offstage, smiling, because he was pleased.
The trumpeter and the pianist quickly brought the num-
ber to a close and applause filled the room again.
A young woman stepped into Eagle's path. Eagle sur-
veyed her briefly, said “Hello, baby," and started around.
“I want to sleep with you,” she said.
"Honey, it ain't gonna rub off.”
“But I want to sleep with you.” She was attractive. Her
eyes were fiercely made up, and her body was compact, as
Eagle could see, thanks to her tight clothing. Tonight he
didn't want it, yet he couldn't let it pass: he had to get
something since she was so willing. “Do something for me,
will you, baby?”
"Anything, Eagle.”
“Gimmee twenty-five dollas."
For a moment the girl stared. This was not at all what
she wanted. But if she didn't give it to him ...? She went
into her bag, suddenly conscious of the eyes upon them.
She hadn't minded so much when it was the other thing,
but the money was something else. She handed it to him.
81


Keel walked from Della's apartment in the lower Murray
Hill section crosstown along 23rd Street to his own West
Village place. He didn't mind the cold. In two hours with
Della, utter exhaustion had seized him, an exhaustion of
the mind which had nothing to do with his having been
up the entire day. Now he walked alone between the great
concrete walls of buildings which rose on either side of
the wide street. Here the wind had free play, speeding
from river to river unchecked, swinging signs and throw-
ing small clinkers of debris against windows.
All the store windows had been darkened at this hour-
four in the morning. Even had it been Christmas or Easter,
those seasons when store windows brim with color and
light above 23rd Street, this section would have remained
stark. It was a limbo—until daybreak when busses and
subways loosed their hordes of persons, many of whom
83


worked in the mass of non-profit organizations centered
along this street. But now: nothing.
Keel plodded westward, foolishly conscious of the mech-
anism of his legs and feet. Once he felt he was marching
and broke step with a curse, yet soon resumed it. Once
more flecks of snow spewed down upon the walks, and he
exulted in the clean smell.
Tonight, walking along with the snow stinging his face,
Keel felt lost. Yet he knew New York. He had been born
here, had gone to school here and had explored it damned
near as much as Meyer Berger, or so he liked to think in
more pleasant moments. Unlike many Harlem Negroes he
had learned what was in the city below 125th Street, why it
was and where it was, though they too, more and more,
were striking out beyond the areas where they worked. Keel
knew how the Negro ghetto, which once had been around
the corner from his shop, had moved to the Pennsylvania
Station area and then uptown to Harlem, once the wooded
heights of the well-to-do. Prejudice and discrimination be-
ing what they were-tied inextricably first to economics,
though economics was really the least important—the old
buildings up there still maintained their sometimes ex-
quisite, sometimes cumbersome, rococo frescoes and stone
ornaments, since it would have been too costly, the land-
lords said, to remove them. Now the largest ghetto in the
world was the one place in New York City where vestiges
of the meaningful architectural work of the last century
remained. Elsewhere, the new buildings were sleek, almost
prefabricated structures with window upon window, air
conditioner above air conditioner, unguarded by gargoyle
or angel, untrimmed except by a modest layer of colored
brick.
The buildings Keel was now passing were smutty and
flat-walled; they appeared gutted. They had been built


"You know many colored guys before you came down
here, Prof?” Eagle asked on a hunch.
“No. I grew up with a guy, though. Name was Borden.”
They pulled up their chairs and bent to their meal.
“What was he like?" Eagle asked, mouth filled with bread,
coffee, and eggs.
“A good kid,” Hillary answered briefly.
"What happened?" Eagle insisted. Yes, he wanted to
hear it again. He asked it whenever he had the chance,
hoping that one of those childhood friendships would not
have dissolved at thirteen or fourteen.
"We grew up,” Hillary said.
"He taught you how to box?"
Hillary reddened. “We used to box out in the fields."
Hillary smiled. “He whipped my ass every day.” He knew
it would bring a smile to Eagle's face. It did.
They ate in silence, finishing the eggs and the entire pot
of coffee. Eagle strained back in his chair expansively and
said, “Listen, let me lecture to one of your classes when
you go back. On jazz.”
Hillary looked up at him but didn't reply.
“Ain't you goin' back?” Eagle said.
“I don't know."
“This ain't no life for an intelligent man,” Eagle mused.
"You ain't got to do it. You white.”
“What's that got to do with it?" Hillary asked angrily.
These people based everything on black and white; every
goddamn time they opened their mouths it was "you
white.”
“Everythang,” Eagle said, accentuating the “thang.” “I
spent a whole lot of years telling myself that it didn't mat-
ter, and I was gettin' hung up every other day. Finally I
was able to see it: see the way it was an' I feel better now.
I know where I'm at. Which don't make me not want to
88


get my damned gun sometimes and blow this motherin'
town and every other dump in this country right off the
map. ...
"Tell me about jazz and American art and how us nig-
gers did it. Sheeeeeeeeeet!" Eagle leaned across the table.
“This is my business. This is all I know, man. I ain't
makin' a quota.” He was saying quarter, but he dragged
it out, lingering on the first syllable so that it sounded both
hip and southern. “Ain't no spade critics. All the spade
deejays, they playin' rock 'n' roll, ain't but a few spade
joints that can pay my way—Sheeeeeeeeet! Paddy boys
pick up a horn and go boo-bip, and right away, man they're
playin' jazz. Now ain't that some shit?”
Eagle had spoken rapidly, fiercely, with his eyes sparking
and his shoulders hunched forward, his words coming in
smooth, cleverly enunciated rhythms. Now he nodded his
head to his next words: “Do you dig, frig? Now do you
understand? You white. It's your world. You won't let me
make it in it and you can't. Now ain't that a bitch?”
Eagle climbed heavily to his feet and without another
word retrieved his coat and went out.
In his room, in his bed, Keel dreamed, unmindful that
Eagle had left, and that an hour later, Hillary too had
gone, his face grim, his lips tight, to buy some clothes and
get some stationery and stamps.
In his dream, Keel knocked the woman down. She had
been beating him with a whip. (Alice?) Then he found
some money, a lot of it. It made him feel good and he
slipped it in his pocket. A man and a woman approached
him through the shadows. They asked if he had found any
money. He lied and said he hadn't. He felt good about the
lying. He felt so good he started to run, the way he used
to when he was a kid, loping along in the pace of the half-
89


miler. But he couldn't seem to get up on his toes; he was
running awkwardly, flatfootedly, and he was distressed.
But suddenly he was with someone (a woman?) near an
airfield; then more suddenly still he was in a plane, a plane
like the Corsairs that used to scream between the rows of
cocoanut trees on Tulgai. Another plane was bearing down
on him. A crash was imminent, and it came, the other
plane smashing into his own-doubling him up with a
snap, but by some herculean effort, he braced himself and
pushed all the wreckage away.
The dream had ended. Keel twisted quickly onto one
elbow and lit a cigarette. He stared at the clear, cold day-
light that flooded his room. He thought: All right, Joseph,
you with your sharp-assed coat of many colors, what does
it mean? Tagore, you tell me. Jesus, speak out and say what
it means; or you, Mohammed. Sigmund, with your ratty-
assed couch, how about you?
The silence in the room was deadening. The man and
the woman ... the man and the woman? Why couldn't he
run? And the money. This reminded him that he had to
see about money today.
In disgust he crushed out his cigarette. There was little
doubt that the dream concerned himself and Della. He
glanced at the phone near the bed. Deeply troubled, he
climbed slowly out of bed and made his way through the
kitchen, where he observed the mess Eagle and Hillary
had made, into the bathroom. He turned on the shower
and went out to check the coffee pot. It was empty and he
made some more. He was grateful for the sudden train
noises on the tracks a block away. He was about to step
into the shower when he remembered he had had one
earlier so he shut it off and returned to the kitchen. The
train noises had stopped and the world outside was empty
again, as it was inside too. The deep whistle of a ship's
90


first warning sounded, echoing and re-echoing down the
river.
Where are all my Lords in this hour? a small, hidden
part of him whispered. I face the East and bow, I face the
west and bow and the north and the south, and I hear
nothing but ship's whistles and the echoes of music. Every-
thing else is—is nothing, empty. Except Della. And I can-
not decide, Lords who trod the earth no more (if you ever
did and you didn't, because if you had I know I would
have seen you): no, I cannot decide, Lords, whether I love
her or hate her.
The coffee had started perking now, and Keel waited un-
til the fragrance came. As he rose from his chair, the ship's
whistle sounded again, twice, and Keel paused to listen to
it slam back and forth off the façades of Manhattan and
the Palisades. I am in love with her, I believe—he thought
-but it is also possible that I hate more than love, and if
I hate, how may I love?
The three, final, sonorous blasts of the ship preparing
to leave its berth came some fifteen mniutes later, as Della
walked down the street from the agency on her way to a
lunch she had no appetite for. In her mind was the need
to keep up her strength for the ordeal in which she was
involved.
Though it had been unspoken the evening before, she
knew just as Keel did that the final separation was only a
short time away. She was numbed by the thought, for they
had passed that period of frequent separations and had
gone on to approach marriage. Now this thing was between
them—and it nullified dramatically all the gains they had
made. If what Keel had told her were true, and she had
no reason to doubt him (though it did hurt, his talking
about other women, even with a psychoanalytic preface),
91


C.
straight down Lafayette Street; there were few bars along
the way, apart from a small clutter of them near City Hall
and the other government buildings. Sometimes he had
gone with Eagle, sometimes with Della, and a couple of
times with Keel-carrying on peripatetic discussions or
in silence. Saturday and Sunday mornings were the best
time for there was little traffic then, human or mechanized,
and pedestrians could move easily along the broad streets,
between the buildings, past the empty stores to the sea
where, already, round-the-island cruise ships hove in sight
circling the seven miles of concrete.
Once there, Hillary would stare in fascination at the
Statue of Liberty rising out of the water. Along the pier
was a pack (you could count on it) of Cub Scouts, Boy
Scouts, Campfire Girls, or Girl Scouts, all lined up to take
the boat out. Once there, they would clamber over her,
exclaim about her, miss the meaning of her being there
and never sense, somehow, why she was there. He would
watch the ferries going back and forth from Manhattan to
Staten Island, their decks loaded with cars and people,
hurrying across the strait like squat bugs. Sometimes great
ships came up slowly with their lean-back stacks and upper
decks, with waves leaping outwards from their bows as
they steamed upriver to their berths. There were gulls and
pigeons, of course, walking the rails or tracing flight pat-
terns across the sky. And when the sun was out behind
the glass buildings there, they blazed like the front side of
a burnished shield and the reflection was like a threat.
Hillary, when he stared down over the railing at the sea,
felt as if it were breathing as it kicked up little spittles
of salt and debris and commanded attention. When Eagle
was with him, Hillary could see he was fascinated by it
and had no fear of it. Keel, on the other hand, had a wise
man's respect for its mystery; he feared it and had never
94


sions, all the attitudes congealed into the realization of
horror. But it was a horror he dared not believe, because
it dared not exist. Swift on the heels of understanding,
numbly, that the horror of Keel and Eagle was very real,
as if emerging from a bad dream in which one sighs with
relief at finding the experience is only fantasy, Hillary
realized that he was white: thus better: thus sheltered from
the coldness at the bottom of the world.
At some point, he told himself, I must speak to Della.
He placed another coin in the record player and turned
to see a fat little man enter the shop.
"Hello," the fat man said with a smile. He gestured
toward the phonograph. “That's mine,” he said. “You like
it?"
“Sure,” Hillary said with a frown. “I like it fine, but
that's Eagle.”
"No, no, no," the fat man said, laughing. He punched
himself fiercely in the chest. “My company. I pressed and
released that record. 'Invitation'.”
"Oh,” Hillary said. This had to be Moe Alvin: “The
Thing,” the musicians called him. Alvin had a small record
plant in New Jersey and used the cheapest recording
studios in New York for pressings. He hung around town,
mostly on the corner near the Turf Restaurant, and waited
for impoverished musicians to show up. He then offered
them twenty or thirty dollars to cut sides for him. Since
they almost always needed the money, the musicians did
it, even though they lost all royalties and other benefits
since Alvin did not give them any. It was rumored that
Rod Tolen sometimes worked with him.
"Eagle sounds good on that,” Hillary grunted.
“Eagle, hah!” Alvin exclaimed. “He always sounds
good.” He stopped laughing and looked carefully at Hil-
lary. "You Prof, aren't you?”
97


“Yeah.”
"Sure, you see, I know. I get the word. Hah, hah.” He
turned off his laughter again. “You alone here?”
“Yes.”
Behind them Eagle took off on one of his inspired pas-
sages. It seemed to transfix them. Alvin shook his head
slowly, as if filled with some sad knowledge. He said, “That
man is worth fifty million dollars.”
They did not speak until the record was finished.
"He sign with Demetriades?” Alvin asked. He had pulled
up a chair. Now he sat in it.
“He's been gone for about three weeks,” Hillary said. “I
might meet him upstate.”
Might, he thought, suddenly not listening to Alvin,
whose mouth was moving, making sounds. Might? What
the hell was he thinking about? It had been set up the
morning the letter came from the University.
He remembered Eagle's coming in, on his way home to
sleep for a couple of hours, just as he was ripping Doerffer's
letter open.
“Whatcha got, Jimsey?"
"From the school.”
“What they say?"
“I got an appointment,” Hillary said, reading rapidly,
smiling. “Looks very good.”
“Hell, let's celebrate.” Eagle took out a bottle of scotch.
“Glasses, garçon!”
Laughing, Hillary raced for the kitchen. “Monday,
Wednesday, or Friday, which shall I take?” He had re-
turned and as Eagle poured the glasses half-full he read the
letter again.
“Prosit!" Eagle cried.
“Cheers!”
Eagle poured again.
98


“Ten. Should be through by eleven-thirty. Meet you
there at eleven-thirty, okay?”
“Crazy,” Eagle said. “Let's write it down.”
“Gimme a pencil,” Hillary said, and he wrote down the
time and place for Eagle, also for himself.
"Yeah, I dig them halls of ivy,” Eagle mumbled.
“When you start the tour?”
“Tomorrow, so I'll see you up there. Crazy?”
“Crazy."
Crazy. What do I mean "might"? Hillary wondered.
Alvin was snorting. “On the road. Busses. Texas, Okla-
homa, California, Illinois, Wisconsin. Upstate. Bad for
Eagle. Drafty. Drafty? A hurricane!”
Hillary knew that “drafty” meant the suspected or real
presence of discrimination.
“Sandwiches and one-night stands, blowing before some
hicks who won't even know who it is they're listening to
or how great he is. Shit.”
So why, Hillary wondered, do you rob him, you and all
the rest? Then Alvin answered it for him. He said absently,
“Well, Demetriades got the money”—he smiled at Hillary
—“the bread, and he can afford to pay. Me, I got to be
dirty-like. I got to make it someway too.” More briskly he
said, “So he's gone, huh?"
Hillary nodded again.
“Anybody around at all?” Alvin asked, cloaking des-
peration.
Hillary named some of the musicians who still came into
the shop, who hadn't yet made their spring and summer
connections.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing," Alvin sighed. He stood
disconsolately. Out of his bitterness he asked, “How you
like working for the schvartze?”
100


“What are you brooding about?” Della asked.
“Nothing," he said, but he knew that in another mo-
ment he would begin talking to her about things.
“Della?” he said, clearing his throat.
“Yes?" she answered. In the shop her voice was devoid
of the guilty tones he had known at night in her bedroom.
“I want to talk to you. Moe Alvin was here. . . .” His
voice drifted off and down so that Della had to strain for-
ward to hear him, and he saw her reading his face, thinking
back.
“I don't want to sound like an ass, but have you, like I
confess I sometimes do, felt any—shame for—for-being
here—?” He broke off and looked anxiously at her, uncon-
scious of the fact that he had pulled a shade back from
her.
"Well, man,” she began cautiously, a smile pulling up
the corners of her mouth, the eyes unblinking. “Like, how
do you mean?” Her tone was condescending.
Hillary heaved and clenched his lips. “Alvin asked how
I liked working for Keel.”
“Yes?” she said. Hillary noticed that she was trembling
as she opened her bag. Della lit a cigarette and stared at
him, waiting.
“A lot of guys have said the same thing. And I do feel
uncomfortable, working for Keel.” He couldn't look at her
now. Instead he stared down at the checkered tablecloth.
“I need your help, Della,” he said, without looking up.
“Go on, man.” The eyes were dancing quietly again.
“We're both white-” Hillary said awkwardly. He
looked up again. The eyes had gone cold. “What do you
mean 'we,' white man?" she murmured, anticipating him.
Desperately, Hillary hurried on. “Those guys saved me,
Keel and Eagle—” he fumbled and looked anxiously at
Della. “I guess they're nice guys." He tried to smile at her.
103


01.
"To be truthful, the only thing I dislike about Keel is that
he has you.”
Della looked over her shoulder as though she wished
someone would walk in and interrupt them. A habit, Hil-
lary observed, shared by nearly everyone who came into
the shop.
“I've learned a lot of things down here. I'm doing better
than I was.”
“Yes,” she said, flicking her ash into a tray.
Hillary was nervous but he went on. “In spite of what
I know to be intellectually right—that Keel and Eagle are
in a sense superior to me, I can't accept it. That's why peo-
ple like Moe Alvin make me feel uncomfortable when they
hint that I am inferior."
"You're positive that they're superior to you?”
"I just couldn't take what they have to take every day
and still want to live.” He saw in Della's eyes a hint of her
old tenderness. "I guess Faulkner said it somewhere. They
endure. They endure the Alvins, the Cranes, the Tolens,
the tourists who'll be flocking in here tonight. They en-
dure themselves. I couldn't.” Hillary raised his chin in the
direction of his room. “Sometimes, when I've closed up
and everyone has gone, I lie there, drunk often, but more
and more frequently sober, and thank God that he made
me white.” He dropped his head again. “It's like the army.
The guy next to you gets shot and you're glad as hell it
wasn't you. It's the only way you can go on; you count on
someone else getting the messy end of the stick.” He
watched her inhale carefully on her cigarette.
"I grew up with a colored guy. Name was Borden."
Hillary paused again. “He didn't hate me.”
Della mashed out her cigarette with more force than was
necessary. “Like, man, how do you know?"
104


Her lips were pulled up again in that tolerant smile she
reserved for touring squares.
"I guess I don't know.”
“You've found the hatred then?” She laughed lightly.
Hillary nodded, then knitting his brows slid forward on
his elbows and talked to the ashtray which rested between
Della's thumb and forefinger on the table. “I guess I
thought I was a hip paddy boy, like some of the kids you
see around now in pegs and drapes. I could handle the
language, as much as a country boy could be expected to,
and I went to colored dances and danced with colored
girls. ..." He laughed: it was warm recalling those un-
involved youthful days. “They were the only ones who
knew how to dance—”.
"Like, man, you don't have to explain to me." But she'd
said it with a smile and Hillary knew it was all right. “We
used to hunt down the colored guys, the hipper ones, and
watch them Lindy. We felt special because after a while
if we didn't show up at a dance they asked for us." Hillary
shook his head. “We never felt the things with them that
I feel now.”
“To accept is part of understanding, man,” she said.
She never calls Keel, “man,” he thought, looking at her.
“Agency analysis, huh?" he said.
“Don't run. It's my turn. I listened to you."
Hillary nodded. "Shoot.”
“People hate because they're hated. It's that simple.
Remove the originating hatred and the other goes, but
who's to tell people like my Keel”—Hillary winced—“and
Eagle and all the others, ‘Look, man, the hate is gone!'
They've been told this so often and you can see the result.
We're talking about the result.”
She shook her head. “No, I'm afraid when the hate does
go—and that's what keeps me going—not the fact that
105


someone else is getting the poker all the time—Eagle and
Keel and the others will have to start placing some faith
in that fact. A two-way gig.”
Why, Hillary wondered, does she insist in talking this
way to me? Isn't there anything between us? She was trem-
bling again. The ashtray beat a tattoo against the table.
"You sit there, man, blowing about your crazy times with
Negroes.” She leaned back and simulated a smile. "How
nice,” she said bitingly.
"Now I'm going to tell you how it is with me.” She
plunged again into her purse and came up with another
cigarette. Hillary offered her a match, but she shook it off.
"I didn't have any Negro playmates—man.” She paused
to let the effect hit Hillary. “I knew some Negroes in col-
lege. They seemed people to me, and I avoided saying
Negro the way some people avoid saying Jew because
they've become conveniently vile labels.”
“I don't have any oddball sickness for Keel.” She leaned
back again and nodded at him wisely. “I know what you
think. Sometimes it's been all over your face. I had a special
reason for the gigs with you,
“I know,” Hillary said, his face reddening. “You felt
sorry for me, but hated me after.”
Della paused, her small neat mouth shaped into an 0.
She wanted to tell him that it was he who should have
been sorry for her and for Keel as well, but she allowed his
comment to pass; the attack she had readied had exhausted
itself with his statement.
She said simply, as if repeating again what would not be
believed, “I love Keel. I dig him. For all the reasons a
woman is supposed to feel about a man. I want to hold his
hand when we walk, but I don't; it's like a rule. People
look at us and here's the way it goes: broads spot us—the
106


contrast I suppose—then they dig me, up, down, all
around, then my face.”
Hillary stared straight down; he too had done this, let-
ting his glance come to rest at last upon her face to see if
there were anything readable there.
"Sometimes they look so damned disgusted. Sometimes
there's no expression, and sometimes,” she said, and Hil-
lary was sure she was speaking to herself, “there seems to
be something of encouragement. Very seldom this. Some
women stare like animals; Keel's a goodlooking man."
Mentally Hillary agreed.
“The men look at me too, but they look the longest at
Keel, like his face would be labeled or something.'
“Don't you ever get used to it?”
“Keel hasn't."
"How about you?”
"I notice it. But never let Keel know that I'm digging
this scene as much as he is.” As she inhaled, Della won-
dered if she were becoming maudlin. Somehow, regardless,
it was good to talk about it. “Keel believes—sincerely be-
lieves—that for us to hold hands in the street would be to
invite trouble; he could get killed or he could kill some-
one.”
Hillary remembered the mixed couples he had seen;
some held hands, but most did not. It was almost as if there
were a tangible fence between them.
“Who am I to tell my Keel that he's wrong. I don't know
that he is. Osmosis or something. I feel it too. Once, walk-
ing through Times Square, one of those damned southern
cracker squares spit on him. I didn't know it until days
after, but there you are.” She leaned forward, smiling, but
there was something wrong with the smile. “Here we are,
talking, just talking, and I know that maybe you'd have to
cross the street not to do the same thing—maybe.”
107


“C'mon, Della,” Hillary said crisply, “that's a little too
much.”
“But you've got it in you.”
“I admit one thing and one thing only.”
The smile was gone. Della waited.
“I always think of how much I want you for myself.”
Della slid her chair back and stood, jabbing her ciga.
rette into the tray. She spilled the ash. “I forgot to tell you,
man,” she said—her voice carried the uneven tones—
"about the white cats who see me occasionally with Keel.”
She stood erect and yanked her bag onto her arm. “They
proposition me, mentioning Keel-I'm supposed to be
easy, you dig—and I know they want me only because Keel
has had me. They're sick.” She looked coldly at him. Deep
in her throat, she said, “They make me so mad I could
scream!"
She ran toward the kitchen and slammed the door be-
hind her. Hillary stood and shouted, “Della! Della! That's
not what—" He stopped and listened to her sobs. He
approached the door and started to push it open.
“Come in here,” she gritted, “and I'll kill you!” Hillary
heard her rustling in the silverware and stopped. “Della,
I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry.” He glanced behind
him; what if Keel came now? “I meant it, though not the
way you said.” He paused and listened. To hell with Keel
if he came. Then he paused again and listened to her
sniffing. He thought of what she'd said and he wondered
for the part of a second if that was really why he wanted
her. He became sick with the thought, steadied himself
and asked, “Can I get you anything?"
"No." Her sobs were softer now and her nose was stuffed.
“Della, come on out. Please. I'm sorry.”
“You damned fool, can't you see I'm crying for myself,
108


Sadik's began to fill early that evening. There was a rest-
lessness along the streets that comes only to New York
when its people realize that spring has come again. Down
the street, in the hall of the Polish club, the band for that
evening was running through its polkas. Small groups of
youngsters, already in sandals and shorts, moved along the
walks with their congas and bongos, searching for a place
to come to rest and play. They merely glanced in Sadik's
and passed on. The Puerto Rican men on the block gath-
ered, leaned alternately against a no-parking sign, and
spoke their rapid, flat-toned Spanish. The younger ones
were clad in pegs and the distinctive, vented, brocaded
shirts. When the cross-town bus passed, going west, it was
filled, for the brighter lights of the Village lay on the other
side of town. Returning, it was usually three-quarters
empty. Now along the stoops the old people sat and
III


watched the panorama of the block, while below the kids
romped and fought, made up and fought again. The liquor
store a few doors away from the coffee shop, was already
catering to its Friday evening clientele: winos, tourists who
carried it on the hip thinking to outwit the Village bar-
tenders, young, dapper, Madison Avenue workers who in
preparing for a weekend of partying purchased inexpen-
sive liquors and emptied them into bottles bearing well-
known labels. David Hillary was a client too. Already the
roads were filled with creeping cars bearing out-of-Man-
hattan, out-of-state license plates. Sometimes faces would
peer out of them, interest masked, the understanding there
that one did not show emotion in New York City, that
you, if you were a tourist in one of the passing cars, were
cool too. Somewhere on Third Avenue, fire engines raced,
bass sirens growling malevolently. A few kids ran to the
corner and traced their passage out of sight. A police car,
black, white, and green, its red, car-top-pimple flashing,
roared down the street, took the corner with a scream,
and tooled after the engines.
The noise of machines and people filled the open door
of Sadik's. Every table had its candle already lit, and the
tiny orange flames licked the glass containers which were
white, orange, blue, green, red, purple, or black. The effect
was like that of trembling stained glass. Some musicians
were there already, listening to records, sipping coffee and
liquor out of the pints they had brought with them to take
to their respective jobs. With the coming of spring nearly
all of them were working either in the city or in the sub-
urbs. There was money, and money generally meant the
presence of whisky. A few couples, lost in their explora-
tions of the Village, stopped in and ordered American
coffee and looked politely around, wondering when the
bongo players and the poets would begin. Other couples,
II2


natives, just out because it was a Friday night and lovely,
browsed over the menu carefully, seeking something exotic
to match the feel in the air.
Business was good and would get better later.
Hillary returned Keel's grin. He had just emerged from
his room again, where he had taken another open-throated
swallow of rye. For some reason, Keel seemed in a better
mood. The past weeks he had been sometimes curt, some-
times extremely indrawn; and Della, Hillary recalled, had
not been in every night, and some of the nights when she
had been in Keel had not seen her home. Well, Hillary
thought, he knew about three of those nights.
"You'd better watch it, Prof,” Keel said as he went by.
“It's early yet. You haven't hit it like this in two-three
weeks. Something bugging you?”
Hillary shook his head and picked up the order for two
Cappuccinos with Baclava which Della had filled. She did
not speak and Hillary retreated from the kitchen with the
order.
Crane and Tolen came in and entered the Musicians'
Room where they sat in labored discussion with Kilroy
and with Background, a little man who wore gold-rimmed
glasses. Background played strings: bass, cello, viol, violin.
He got his name because he whistled inverted chord
changes and all the dropped notes which were not obvious
to the layman-background music. The noise of the con-
versation grew until it was difficult to hear the record
player. Keel and Della moved quickly and easily about
among the tables, their faces lit by the wavering candle-
light. Hillary moved jerkily, lifting his legs as though he
were walking in a marsh. Della watched him critically.
So did Keel. For some reason today he didn't mind that
Hillary was drunk and on his way to becoming drunker.
Perhaps because it was spring, or perhaps (and this was
113


closer to the truth), it had to do with whatever was going
on between Della and himself. So much better than it had
been. Now, again, he could feel her love, her concern for
him. The good feeling persisted until he visualized being
with her, but then it drifted away, sadly, like a night mist
carried off by a gust of wind. He walked into the Musi-
cians' Room where Crane was talking with Background.
Background was one of those players who was listed in
practically every page in every edition of Charles Delau-
nay's Discography; he had played with everybody and still
performed competently, rising occasionally to great heights
and confounding everyone with his acumen and dash; once
Feather had tried to prove that Mingus learned from Back-
ground.
Hillary whispered to Kilroy, “That cat still trying to get
the dope on Lester?”
Kilroy smiled. When he wasn't being an out-and-out
clown there was a certain character to his face, which was
old and seamed like cordovan leather. “You better know
it, man. Cat never gives up.” This time Kilroy looked up
and smiled at Crane, who in turn smiled himself, but Keel
saw that the critic was perturbed by the interruption.
“Get some bread, Background, get some bread,” Keel
growled.
Rod Tolen looked up and graveled, “Man, how you
sound? Some things bread can't buy."
“It'll buy what Crane wants,” Background chuckled.
“Damned right,” Keel agreed.
Tolen scoffed. “What you need with bread, Background?
You giggin' steady. You ain't got no steady oſ lady, you
ain't on shit, and you don't drink that much.”
Background exchanged glances with Kilroy. He said to
Tolen, “I want to buy me a couple of burners, man. This
crap is gettin' down to the knitty-gritty here now, and there
114


are two or three cats I wants to burn when the shit hits the
fan.”
There was silence. Keel gave a little smile. He knew
Background well. If there was one thing that bugged the
musician it was white people telling him he didn't need
money. Tolen should have known better.
“That's what I'm gonna do,” Background said into the
silence, “buy some heat. When you gets as old as me and
done as much as me you know that all this talkin' and sig-
nifyin' don't get a goddamn thing.” He smiled and turned
to Crane. “Now, you was sayin'?”
Outside in the main room, Hillary returned to the table
for the third time; he hadn't been able to remember
whether the middle-aged couple (out-of-towners, obviously)
wanted Khave or Viennese; something about those V's that
confused him. He apologized clumsily, sliding the table-
cloth nearly to the floor and just barely catching the can-
dle. The woman recoiled at his breath.
Della, seeing this, went to take the order herself. “GO
to bed, man,” she told him. He moved numbly toward
his room where he emptied his bottle and listened to the
sounds of the conversation grow louder and louder. Only
the vibration of the record player let him know that it was
still going. Once he knew Kilroy was sitting inside, because
he heard his loud voice and rapid speech. Kilroy, Hillary
thought, was the way they all should be. His clothing was
loud too. Kilroy seemed to enjoy being a clown.
Restlessness seemed suddenly to invade the room and
Hillary began fingering the money he'd received from
Keel. He had been doing pretty well. If he went out now,
he wouldn't really get too drunk; all he'd had was a few
drinks to clear away the afternoon with Della. Besides, he
hadn't taken the walk to the Battery as he'd meant to; he
hadn't been out all day.
115


Of course, there was always the chance that Keel would
get angry. He had said “no drinking on the job.” But,
Hillary reasoned, he'd been pretty straight and Keel could
invite him not to work and live here if he wished. And so
what? It was spring.
Hillary lurched up on his feet, shoving the bills down
further so they wouldn't fall out. He crashed into the door
of his room, staggered away from it, opened it and took a
couple of rubbery steps outside. He walked tense and
erect for a few paces, lost his balance and staggered toward
a table, pulled himself in, just missing it, and continued
without the pretense of being sober toward the door.
Della rushed into the Musicians' Room to tell Keel.
“I suppose he's got to have a few, baby."
“But he hasn't been like this in weeks.” There was dis-
gust in her voice.
“Maybe something happened today to set him off. I'll
get him later."
"I hope he doesn't hurt himself too badly,” she said.
"He might. But that's not important to him right now.
Did he hear from the school again today or something?
They tell him no?”
“No, baby. It was I.”
Keel looked squarely at her, his face set. “What do you
mean?”
“We talked.”
Keel's lips simulated a tight smile. "White folk's talk?"
Della nodded. “White folk's talk,” she said bitterly.
"It had to come,” Keel said with a sigh. “What did you
do to him?"
“We just talked. That's all.”
“Okay, baby. Don't worry. I'll get him later.” Keel
watched Della walk back to the kitchen and stared after
her for a long time.
116


Outside, Hillary lurched toward the corner where the
old lady had just reopened her flower shop. The beat cop,
leaning against the corner of the building, saw him stagger
by. The cop, who had just come on, had five minutes be-
fore he had to report in to headquarters on the call box.
As soon as he had done that, he would move off the corner
because, if he stayed, he would have to arrest two out of
every five persons who passed for public intoxication.
Amused, the cop watched Hillary weave on by, hair be-
draggled, mouth open as though he could not quite get
enough air.
Hillary went past a small bar where the sounds of jazz
echoed. He leaned, both hands against the pane of glass,
to see inside. “Bums,” he muttered. The sounds were cute,
clever, but empty. There was a bar across the street with
cracked tile floors and inexpensive bottles of whisky on the
shelves. The Friday-night fights were on and Hillary en-
tered without attracting attention. The young bartender
gave him a double rye. Hillary wiped his mouth and stared
upwards where the set showed the white fighter in the
black trunks pummeling the Negro in the white trunks in
a corner. Sounds of approval rose from the throats of the
watchers. Hillary went out.
Traffic now was a steady series of headlights and whis-
pering tires. Overhead the arms of bright new lights leaned
above the street and here and there were planted a few
skinny trees. Hillary passed the Salvation Army with a
sneer. There were a few men sitting near the corner of
Houston and the Bowery—a street slave market where in
the morning, employers needing a few men for a day's
work would drive up and pick out the healthiest or the
least drunk. Houston Street echoed with the sounds of
bocci and handball.
Walking through Chinatown, Hillary saw the young
117


Chinese looking at him without expression; the white
dinner-goers gazed through him as if he weren't there, and
Hillary sensed they were ashamed here, in this section,
because of him. He emerged from Chinatown and entered
the area of darkened buildings courthouses, municipal,
state and federal buildings. He headed across the street to
a lone bar, took a double rye-handed distastefully to him
by the bartender—and sat down on one of the Foley Square
benches. He dozed for an hour.
When he woke he was wet from urine and he had to
defecate at once. He returned to the bar, walking (he noted
with surprise) without much staggering. He washed and
brushed back his hair in the bathroom and left, walking
back uptown. Hillary was in mild shock. He had wet his
pants and almost ruined them. To have seen this happen
to someone else would have been horrible enough, but to
have it happen to him was a nightmare come true. He
hurried, almost at a dog trot, along the empty streets,
sniffing at himself, feeling the clammy wetness of his
trousers slopping around his thighs. Not even Eagle did
this. Where, he wondered, could he go? Back to the shop
and pass through wet and stinking to his room for all to
see, Della too?
He slowed. No. More to drink? He toyed with this
thought, but remembering the moment when he had al-
most surrendered control of his body, he rejected it. Eagle's
place? He could change into Eagle's pants—if he had an-
other pair. They would be big, though. He felt better now
and moved more quickly along the street and did not
notice Keel coming from the opposite direction until he
spoke.
“How you making it, Prof?”
Hillary jumped. Goddamn, he thought, this cat, trying
118


to play God, popping up—he broke off to mumble some-
thing.
“What'd you say?" Keel had turned now and was walk-
ing beside him. He noticed the wet pants but said nothing.
Hillary shambled along in his rapid pace.
“You surprise me,” Keel said. “I figured you'd be stoned
by now.”
Hillary jogged along without answering.
“I wanted to talk to you anyway," Keel said. “I figured
I'd have to sober you up to do it. I don't have anything
but time."
Hillary didn't answer.
“Della was worried about you.”
Hillary glanced at him.
"She doesn't usually worry." Hillary didn't answer that
either and Keel was overwhelmed with the urge to smash
him.
“She doesn't have to worry,” Hillary finally said.
"That's the way she is. Wait for the light.”
They stood on the curb without speaking until the light
flashed green. They continued on. They had walked a good
ten blocks when Keel asked, “How you feel now?"
Perhaps it was the way the question was asked or maybe
something within Hillary which at the precise moment the
question was asked screamed for help. It could even have
been one of those rare times occurring within the lives of
humans, when understanding strikes with the cleanness
and power of a thunderbolt.
“I feel,” Hillary said, “very, very tired, and I'm glad
you're here and glad Della's worried, though she shouldn't
have been."
Keel didn't answer. He was thinking about the urge he
had had a moment or two ago.
ΙΙ9


lo
Keel sat patiently while Hillary stumbled around, first
in the bathroom, then in the closet looking for a pair of
Eagle's pants. The small flat seemed somehow vast without
Eagle in it. Then Keel thought how empty almost every-
thing would be without him.
Hillary had found a pair of pants. They were striped;
Eagle favored stripes and plaids, the louder the better. The
pants sagged at the waist and at the seat and Hillary, as he
approached to take a seat near Keel, smiled down at them
ruefully. “Kind of big," he said.
"Yeah, he's bigger than he looks sometimes,” Keel com-
mented.
There was a silence while they both lit cigarettes.
"Where do we go from here?” Keel asked.
“I don't know.”
121


“You were in pretty bad shape tonight.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“A real running drunk.”
Hillary looked at him.
Keel was rubbing his face. “I can't put you out, you
know.”
Hillary didn't answer.
“Did you know that?”
“I figured you could anytime you wanted to.”
“That's what I thought, too."
“I guess I was pretty stoned.”
“Anything happen today?” Keel's eyes revealed nothing,
but Hillary sensed that deep within them there stood a
veil.
Hillary was the first to mash out his cigarette. "No."
"I was surprised,” Keel said. “You'd been doing pretty
well. I figured something had to get you off.”
“I've never lived like this before,” Hillary confessed.
“Sometimes it throws me—the people, the things that
happen, the hatred, the desperation—the love. I haven't
quite got it into focus."
“You see,” Keel said, “you don't belong here. What's
there to focus? You live, you don't try to figure out why."
Hillary thought: Why is he trying to frighten me?
Keel thought himself: I'm trying to scare this cat. Why?
Then a slow fright worked loose inside him and he had
the answer. He sensed something between Hillary and
Della which had somehow gotten out of his control, some-
thing which passed—Damn it! Why was he thinking like
that?-only between whites.
Hillary said, “Funny, your saying that, because I've had
mixed feelings. First that I don't belong here,” (And maybe
you're thinking, Keel thought, that Della doesn't either.)
I 22


"and second, that only by being here can I learn to begin
to live again.”
"Like an immersion,” Keel said, "a baptism.”
“Of fire.”
“Life,” Keel retorted.
Hillary lit a second cigarette and stared at the floor. “I
had a long talk with Della today,” he said, without look-
ing up.
"She told me,” Keel said, without looking at him.
"Oh,” Hillary said. The disclosure startled him. So, he
was not making any headway with her. If he had been, she
would have not have told Keel. Of course, she could not
have told Keel everything. Or had she? But no man could
be that tolerant if he were in love.
Actually, Keel only knew that they had talked; he had
not asked Della the subject of their conversation, nor
would he ever. If she wished to tell him, all right, if not,
all right. But he did, at the moment, want to know some-
thing of what they'd discussed. Not all. He had a fear of
knowing all of it; he was afraid it might confirm something
he'd felt the past few hours that had given him a sense of
uneasiness. He looked at Hillary and the restless way he
jabbed his cigarette toward the filthy ashtray.
Hillary was settling in his mind what Della, knowing
her as he did, might have been likely to tell Keel. He con-
cluded that it would have been nothing intimately harm-
ful to Keel-or to himself. Now he shrugged. “It was about
some things that had been bugging me—and things I'd
been bugged about.”
“Ummm,” Keel said. He jabbed in the dark. “So, how
does it feel, working for me?”
Hillary looked up with a smile. He had to remind him-
self that this man was sharp. "Sometimes,” he admitted, “it
doesn't feel as good as it should.”
123


ul.
“That's natural, I think.”
"Is it? Is it natural that I should feel bad about working
for another human being who happens not to be the color
I am?”
“That's not the scene," Keel said.
Hillary didn't answer. The probing that afternoon from
Della had been enough. He might admit to Della that he
did indeed feel superior to Keel, but now, with the man in
his presence, he was finding it difficult to make the state-
ment again. He ground out his second cigarette, and noted
that Keel hadn't smoked one this trip around.
"I guess,” Keel said without moving, “that I should get
back and tell Della that you're all right.” Suddenly there
seemed nothing to talk about.
“She shouldn't have worried,” Hillary said. He noticed
that he hadn't smoked his second cigarette down as far as
the first.
"She worries about most lost people," Keel said, ab-
sently. “It's from working with all those damned kids."
“Eagle,” Hillary said, softly, "told me that you and
Della were thinking about getting married.”
“Yeah,” Keel said, looking Hillary full in the face.
“We've talked about it pretty often. Why?”
"Nothing. I think she's nice. Devoted.”
"You didn't find her too sick, did you?" Keel asked with
a smile.
“How do you mean?"
“Prof, you know damned well what I mean.”
“I thought it a couple of times. I don't think it now.”
“Shit.”
“What?"
“Never mind.”
Hillary reached for a third cigarette and changed his
124


mind. Perhaps Keel was right. Maybe he did think she was
sick.
“What brought you around, man?” Keel asked with a
smile. Now he slowly pulled out a cigarette and flashed his
eyes at Hillary above the lighted match.
“I don't know. Maybe the walks to the Battery. Maybe
getting to know you and Della, Eagle, and the rest. All
these or perhaps nothing. I don't know what brought me
around. Maybe I feel here a strength I've never known. I
don't know.”
"Stop saying you don't know.”
"Well, I don't.”
“Who in the hell does?”
As had become habit with them, they fell into another
silence until Keel, heaving up to change positions in his
chair said, “Sometimes it all seems as foreign to me as it
must to you. I have to leave sometime too. I have a feeling
that it won't be long now.”
Hillary looked up quickly. "Where'll you go?”
Keel, without looking at him, said, “Oh, I'll worry about
it when the time comes."
“You said soon."
“Time's relative in the final sense, you know. Once you
consign yourself to being an infinitesimal speck in the uni-
verse, which you are, you don't worry too much about it.”
He sat erect suddenly and said: “Damn! I wish I could
believe that.”
“It's nice that you can be human.” Hillary looked at
Keel. “I remember the first time we met, that night with
Eagle. You hated my guts.”
“Know why?"
"No."
“Everybody uses Eagle. Everybody. And for my money,
that night you were just another one of those shysters out
125


destroying Eagle, who is—believe it or not—so much a
part of us. We dig the NAACP, even when we laugh at it.
But it's impersonal. Some people preserve statues and old
drawings on cave walls, but we have to have Eagle. He's
us. He's fire and brain; he's stubborn and shabby; proud
and without pride; kind and evil. His music is our record:
blues, why goddamnmit, his best music always came from
blues. Isn't that terribly like all of us? Building on the
blues, building with such speed and intricacy that we don't
even know it's blues right on? We don't understand it, but
we have short patience with cats who try to imitate him.
Eagle is our aggressiveness, our sickness, our self-hate, but
also our will to live in spite of everything. He symbolizes
the rebel in us. No organization can do that.
"That night I thought you'd taken another chunk out
of his hide and I did hate you. The cat's going sometime
soon. You look in his eyes and you can see it; every morn-
ing you see it a little nearer. ..."
"I think I've seen this.”
“I believe you have.”
So again they sat in silence, each of them with his
thoughts on Eagle and some incident they had shared with
him. Hillary could not visualize Eagle at that moment, but
Keel could see him on the bus, almost anywhere in the
land, alone in that dust-covered vehicle while the rest of
the band, craftsmen surely, but geniuses, not, sat in an air-
conditioned diner and had a leisurely dinner. When they
were through, filing out dutifully and apologetically, they
would bring Eagle a sandwich or two, or the dinner,
slopped together and dripping on a paper plate. Still they
would expect him to inspire them—to swing the whole
damned band at the next town.
And he would.
126


“Feel okay?" Keel asked.
Hillary nodded.
"Why don't you go back and give Della a hand? I'll be
along in a minute. The joint ought to be filling up by
now."
Hillary rose without a word, paused at the door, turning
to look back at Keel, then passed out, wordless.
Keel sat and looked down upon the darkened street. He
wondered what it would be like to live and move about in
daylight, as he once had done: to get up in the morning
when everyone else did and go about his tasks, whatever
they might be at that time, returning home with the sun
still up. Yet everything happened at night: most people
died and most babies were born then, a nurse had once
told him.
Eagle, now, he seldom blew in public during the day-
at an occasional Sunday afternoon session, perhaps, or,
more likely, at the Studio on 57th Street, or in someone's
home, if he could round up the musicians he wanted to
play with at, say, nine or ten in the morning, after they
had been gigging all night in some pissy-smelling club.
You had to like your music to do what Eagle and the rest
did, or you had to like where it took you, or what it did
for you.
Why do I sit here and insist that the clue to my life is
the music of some beatup bean-picker named Richie
Stokes? thought Keel.
A bus passed, a slow sliver of light from Keel's angle.
Down in the street music echoed from the juke box of the
coffee shop. The Polish band across the way had taken a
break and the young polka dancers had come out into the
street to talk.
Yards' muted horn carried insistently into the night,
127


taken another job instead of waiting to get cleared through
the University again. The living here, Keel understood,
was an experience from which Hillary had derived much
and could derive more, but only a fool could fail to see
that the reason the instructor stayed was Della. Had she
been—“kind” to him? Probably, Keel reasoned. Shame-
fully, he admitted to himself that he preferred Hillary to
Eagle (who would, despite the sense of honor in which he
held their relationship, allow himself to weaken) or to
Kilroy or any of the others.
All right, if Hillary was the cause of so many problems,
he should be sent away.
Keel lingered on the steps of the shop and listened to
the sound of soft voices and to the music which had been
turned down. Why the hell did they always turn up the
sound when Yards played?
Hillary stays, Keel thought, because he is important to
me also. He smiled. I need Della as well as he does to
prove that I, too, am a man-a man superior to him. If he
takes Della, and he won't the bastard, then he proves him-
self in his eyes, as I do in mine, superior to me.
He stepped inside the shop.
Della moved through the flickering shadows and the
forms of sitting people. As Keel came through the door she
studied his face quickly and decided that it had gone all
right. She had said nothing to Hillary when he came and
went silently into the kitchen to clean up. He had sense
enough at least, Della thought, to not endanger the cups
and saucers, the furniture, or patrons with his occasional
stumbles. Keel came to her.
"Hi,” she said.
“Hello," he said.
I 29


“Come with me into the kitchen."
“Why?"
"I want to kiss you.”
"Where's Prof?”
“In the kitchen.”
"No."
“But I want to kiss you."
Sometimes she could be like this and Keel remembered
that it was always nice; it gave him a fine feeling. Yet now
he asked, “What's the matter?”
“Darling, why does anything have to be the matter?"
“I don't know. Feels like this has been a long time.”
They walked toward the kitchen. Keel waved as they
passed the Musicians' Room and was answered by a chorus
of voices. He greeted some of the regulars.
Then they stepped inside the kitchen. Hillary plunged
his hands deep in the dishwater, and heard behind him the
silence of their embrace.
Keel, holding Della so that he could see Hillary's back,
watched it tense, as though Hillary were holding his
breath. Della, in Keel's arms, her back to Hillary, sensed
the watchfulness of Keel, his satisfaction at kissing her in
the room with Hillary. Now it was done, the kiss over.
Would it suffice, for Della, to show Hillary how she
really wanted things? Would he leave now since Keel was
not going to send him away? That would help her. Since
the afternoon, all evening, she had been thinking of possi-
ble solutions—even the one where Hillary, drunk, would
tell Keel, when he found him, about their times together.
Let it explode, she had thought; and if it didn't, she would
take things into her own hands as she had just done.
Let Hillary, sorry as she was for him, get out of their
lives! He was too easy to have and too resentful of Keel-
130





Hillary and Keel mopped the floors of the shop in silence;
they hadn't said much to each other in the past two days.
The door was open, as usual, and the sunlight that came
in begged for cheerfulness. Both turned at the sound of
Kilroy's voice; he was accompanied by his perennial com-
panion, Background. They came down the steps, walked
into the shop without any greetings and sat grandly at one
of the tables. Hillary and Keel exchanged glances.
“You know,” Kilroy was saying to Background, "there's
an awful lot of fine square broads hitting the scene these
days.”
"I'm hip,” Background said.
It was only ten in the morning, but they were both still
glowing from a night of drinking. They continued their
conversation as though Keel and Hillary were not there,
and Hillary and Keel kept exchanging looks and small
133


“He back, is he?” Background asked.
Keel and Hillary divided the stack of fresh tablecloths
and began placing them on the tables. Both moved slowly
as though swift movement would jar the conversation of
the two musicians.
"Yeah, he back.” Kilroy suffered the interruption. “Any-
how, soon's he hit the scene he calls me up and says, 'Look
man, I got to make it over to Yordan's and pick up my
bread: make it with me.' So I goes. This cat got his paper
with all his figures on it—y' know, the bread Yordan owes
him for three months on the damn road? We get some
coffee and Ruppert goes to a phone and calls the man and
tells him he's back and that he will be in the office in one
hour, please to have his bread ready!
"Then we dribbles on up to the office and Ruppert takes
off his coat.”—Kilroy interjected hastily, “We done stopped
at the bank now and picked up some money bags, y' dig?”
Background bent over the table and laughed. Hillary
turned swiftly, and Keel, grinning broadly, shook his head.
“Anyway, soon's we make the scene, all them broads up
there is: 'Here comes Mister (!) Ruppert, Mister (!) Rup-
pert,' and they openin' books and stackin' bread up on the
tables—” Kilroy paused for breath and to allow the three
other men to break in with laughter. Hillary wondered
why so much emphasis on “Mister Ruppert.” “That's a
tough cat, that Ruppert,” Kilroy added. “Then he takes
out his paper and starts count-ing that bread. Me, I'm
sittin' over in a corner, blowin' a Chesterfield, an' this cat
ain't sayin' shit to nobody, baby, he's just counting that
bread!
"Now listen. Some damned body was a nickel short:
man, you shoulda heard that mother take off! He had Yor-
dan out there, counting that bread until he got it straight-
ened out, you hear me?"
135


"Yeah, Minneapolis. All tore up, but they could talk, y'
dig? Demetriades just before they left added some more
cities to the tour-cat sure likes to make his bread. The
cats was on a two-day layoff.”
“What's added?” Background asked.
“Lessee—Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Onondaga
Falls, Utica, Albany—”.
“Damn,” Background said. “That's a whole new tour.”
There was a momentary silence. Background and Kilroy
thought of the towns; they knew them and had spent years
traveling through them, playing in them on tortuous one-
nighters.
"That's my town,” Hillary said. "I used to teach there.”
“Which?” Kilroy asked, prepared to talk about any town
Hillary named.
“Onondaga Falls.” He paused. “I'm waiting to go back
now."
“That's a raggedy-assed town,” Background said sourly.
“How's Eagle blowin'?” Keel asked. He gave one reas-
suring glance at Hillary.
Kilroy said, "Ruppert didn't say."
If Eagle had been playing well, Ruppert would have
mentioned it.
Voicing his thoughts Background said, “Poor Eagle. He
looks damned near as old as me.”
And Background was over fifty. Background remem
bered Eagle from the old days at The Woodside and at
Minton's. This memory gave him a sad sense of perma-
nence; he was still around, doing a lot of studio work and
sometimes helping out when Chico came to town without a
cellist, or sitting in with Mingus when the bassist felt he
had an audience appreciative enough to enjoy some of his
string pieces. Eagle, on the other hand, was already on the
way out.
137


“Place looks good,” Hillary commented, lighting up a
cigarette now that most of the work was done.
"Sure does,” Keel agreed. Kilroy and Background had
leaned their heads together and were already involved in
another discussion about Eagle. “Those guys are somethin'
else, aren't they?” Keel said, nodding toward the two musi-
cians.
Hillary started to laugh softly again.
“Oh, hell, he's doin' it to hisself,” Kilroy boomed.
Hillary and Keel turned to listen to the raised voices.
“Naw," Background said.
“Ain't nobody doin' it for him," Kilroy said.
“Eagle got brains. That man is gifted. He'll talk about
anything you want and score on you. I talked with the man
night and day for almost two years," Background said in-
dignantly. “If I told you some of the things he talked
about the F.B.I. would be right in here”.
“If they ain't been already,” Kilroy said.
"I don't want to hear that shit,” Keel said, knowing that
Kilroy was teasing him, but pleased to join in the game.
Kilroy took it up again. “You can't tell about them cats,
Keel. I remember they was on Eagle for nine months one
year."
“Hell, Eagle too slick for them squares,” Background
said.
A sudden clicking of heels down the two stone stairs
made them turn. Candy came walking rapidly, her face
whiter than usual and more drawn. Dark splotches hung
downward from her eyes; she had gotten up early. Instinc-
tively Keel knew this and moved toward her. Ordinarily
Candy would not have been up until two or three in the
afternoon.
“Keel,” she said, then, seeing Kilroy, stopped. “Oh.”
There was something about her agitated movements that
138


dissipated Keel's contempt for her. Candy pulled out a
chair and sat with the two musicians. “Coffee?” Keel asked.
He turned toward the kitchen and saw that Hillary was
already on his way there. He sat down at the table.
"Ruppert is in town," she said.
Kilroy said, “Is he? I'll be damned.” He turned to Back-
ground. “You hear that, man? Ruppert is in town.”
“Goddamn you, Kilroy, don't put me on.”
“What the hell is it?” Keel said.
"Minneapolis. Just got a call from a chick out there.
Eagle goofed.”
Keel wondered: Could this woman really be worried
about Eagle? “What do you mean?"
“He shacked up with this guy's wife—” she broke off.
"If I could talk to Ruppert he might tell me where Eagle
is now.”
“Isn't he with
“No, he didn't leave Minnie with the band and the
guy's hired someone to do him in."
“Shoot, Eagle can take care of himself better than five
men,” Background said, dismissing it.
Frantically Candy said, “The guy who's going to do it is
a pro!” She made her right hand up into a pistol and bent
the thumb several times.
“Does Eagle know?” Keel asked. He took the coffee Hil-
lary had just brought and placed it before the blonde.
She shook her head. “No. Nobody knows where he is.”
She searched the eyes of the men around her. Hillary, who
had pulled a chair to the table, felt a sudden flash of sym-
pathy for her.
“Can't we get in touch with Ruppert?” he asked. He
fought hard to suppress a smile. Ruppert, he thought,
what a name.
“You call Ruppert and tell him I want to see him,” Keel
139


said, rising from the table, snapping off his apron. “Tell
him if he can't make it down here, I'll go up there, but I
want to see him right away."
Kilroy shot to his feet and left the shop with Background
trailing behind him. There had once been a phone in the
shop, but there had been too much traffic, too many un-
usual people who showed up, shortly after a call had been
made, only long enough to shake hands with the musicians.
Then the women were always calling, and if it was not
women it was other musicians looking for someone. Keel
had had the phone removed.
"You look beat," Keel said to Candy. "Finish the coffee
and run home. I'll keep in touch with you."
"I knew it would happen some day,” she said between
gulps of the hot coffee. “I only hope it isn't now."
It was in Keel's mind to say: I didn't know you cared;
but he didn't. Instead he spoke gently. "I'll call you soon's
I get some word from Ruppert."
Candy rose, clutched her light coat about her and said,
“Thanks, Keel.” The way she said it made Keel think that
some re-evaluation of her would be necessary. Hillary too
felt different about her as he watched her go out.
Kilroy and Background trailed back in. “Candy gone?"
Kilroy asked. Background, still dazed, followed his friend's
gaze.
“Yeah," Keel said. “What's he say?"
“He say for you to come to his crib, man.”
"I knew it.” Keel gazed around the shop and his eyes fell
on Hillary. “Like to go?”
“Yes,” Hillary said.
"You cats want to sleep it off until we get back, or split?”
“We gonna split,” Kilroy said. “Too much traffic here."
“Damn right,” Background agreed. The two friends,
140


Kilroy in front and Background behind, walked unsteadily
into the street.
“Drop you off?” Keel asked.
The two musicians hadn't heard. Rubbing shoulders to-
gether, they walked away, involved in another conversa-
tion.
Ruppert lived in the West Eighties behind the facade of
Central Park West. Up here the side streets pulsed with
people and music just as the streets downtown did.
“One more time,” Hillary said, referring to the hunt for
information on Eagle.
"Yeah,” Keel said. “It's gettin' there.”
The cab jolted to a stop along the side street to wait for
the kids to clear out of the way. "Little bastards,” said the
hackman.
“No hurry,” Keel said. “They gotta play somewhere.”
The cabby slammed his vehicle into gear without a word.
“This house," Keel said.
They climbed out of the cab and stood for a moment on
the curb.
“Another ten years," Keel said, “this'll be just another
part of Harlem. They won't let it happen on the east
side.”
They climbed the steps of the brownstone and rang Rup-
pert's bell. While they waited Keel said, “Three other mu-
sicians live here with their wives and families. All mixed
marriages.” He had said it to warn Hillary so that he
would not show surprise or uneasiness. Hillary smiled.
Keel thought of the wives in the building, all white, who
spent their time, when their husbands were on the road or
in Europe, visiting one another, baby-sitting for one an-
other, going shopping or forever cleaning house. By them-
selves, they fought the loneliness imposed upon them by
their marriages, yet they were, the husbands and the wives,
141


Ruppert raised his hand and snapped his fingers three
times.
Toot looked puzzled. “That means three beers?”
“Three beers.” He looked at Keel and Hillary and ex-
plained. “I'm trying to train her.”
“And I,” Toot said when she returned with the beer,
"am trying to indulge him for a few days. It's over now,”
she said, and if you want anymore beer, get it your damned
self.”
“Yes, love,” Ruppert said, pretending to be cowed.
“Can't I stay?” Toot asked, all playfulness gone.
“No, baby,” her husband said. She closed the door be-
hind her.
“Kilroy tell you what Candy said?”
“Yep," Ruppert said. He was a big, dark man with a
round face and a comfortable manner. Behind him on the
wall of the room were pictures of himself with various
musicians. In such company, Keel thought, Ruppert could
afford to be comfortable in the knowledge that he was a
musicians' musician. “The cat goofed,” Ruppert said. “He
hit on this broad and she dug him. Nice-lookin' babe; I
saw her first. I knew she was the owner's wife, but I dug
she knew how to work her way around. Guess I was
wrong.”
"What's her old man like?”
"He's the kinda cat who'd do just what Candy said. He
don't have to take no crap. He is the mob out there. And
he's got a temper. How does that go—?”.
“'There but for the grace-'” Hillary started.
Ruppert grinned. “Whooooeee, yeah.” More seriously
he said. “And it would have killed Toot.”
"Where in the hell would he be now—” Keel pondered
aloud, “if he wasn't with the band when it left Minnie?”
143


12
Richie Stokes sat in the first window seat, left, behind the
bus driver. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he
stared from beneath it at the medium-size town they were
pulling into. “Onondaga Falls," someone muttered. The
bus moved slowly in the night traffic. The glare of the
street lights and neon signs was suddenly almost too bright
to bear after the last, long stretch of road. The silence
among the musicians was beginning to wear off; there was
murmuring from the rear and the sound of cases being
shifted one against the other. Fortunately there was no
concert scheduled until the next evening. The musicians
could get all the rest they wanted, though many of them
wouldn't. Eagle, for one, was thinking of the people he
knew in the town and where they might be on this week
night.
His weariness cut deeply to the bone, and he thought
145


refunded because the star of the concert hadn't bothered
to put in an appearance.
"A bill.”
"All right.” Demetriades gave him the one hundred
dollars, making a mental note that it was to be deducted
from Eagle's money. For Demetriades a mental note was
like chipping a date in granite; he didn't forget. “Look,
take it easy tonight, will you? After all, what can you do in
this country town? Get yourself some rest.” Demetriades
said it, but he knew that wherever Richie Stokes went,
some part of the town he was in lit up.
Eagle didn't answer. He pocketed the money and went
into the hotel, glad to be out of the bus where, for the
last eight hours, the musicians had vied with one another
to see who could break wind the loudest. Eagle had won;
he usually did. Going up to the room he had been assigned,
Eagle wondered who Demetriades had designated to watch
him until concert time. It didn't matter; Eagle would turn
him on too.
The view from the window, Eagle saw, as he was dress-
ing after his shower, was drab and flat, extending to a lake
which reflected the light of the full moon. He wouldn't be
going that way in any case. Miserable view, lousy city, but
all of them were. It would be good to be back in New
York—depending on many things though, for it could be
a pretty ratty town itself.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come on in,” Eagle said.
The door opened and Al Fox came in. He was a tenor-
man with the group.
“Hey, Al, what's happenin', baby?” Eagle said. He knew
that Al had drawn the assignment or maybe he had asked
Demetriades for it. It was no secret that Al worshiped
Eagle. In the past couple of years he had become cool
147


about it, but it was there. Eagle had always allowed him to
sit in if the tenorman was in the club with his ax. And they
had talked many times, teacher and pupil.
"How about dinner, Richie?"
“Crazy. I know a spot.”
"Good. You almost ready?"
“I stay ready, baby. Anybody readier got to go by me.”
"I'm hip they do, Richie.”
With a flourish, Eagle finished knotting his wide, flow-
ery tie and slipped on the plaid jacket which matched his
trousers. He glowered into the mirror, then smiled into it.
He dipped both index fingers into his mouth and smoothed
his brows with the saliva. “Ready," he announced.
Down on the street, Al walked beside Eagle without
knowing where they were bound.
“Where to?"
“Little place down the way here," Eagle answered. His
eyes swept slowly up and down the street, seeking land-
marks and people he might have known. He would have
preferred it if Al had not been with him. He didn't know
if Al was on or not-probably not, and he didn't want
these young musicians to see him the way he sometimes
was when he'd had it. Well, maybe after they had had
something to eat he could send Al back. Al would mind
him quicker than he'd mind Demetriades.
“Listen, Al,” Eagle said, “I been meanin' to talk to you
about your changes. I think if you play with 'em on the
piano they'll come better for you, you know?”
“How about my chords?”
“They all right. Tell you a secret."
“What?”
“Get next to a good guitar man an' you'll learn some
cute things about chords and harmony progressions, dig?"
“You ever play with Charlie Christian?” Al asked.
148


"Shit, I played with everybody who blew anything
good.” Eagle stopped suddenly. “Man, this might cut you,
but stop trying to sound like Pres. You got to have a style
that suits you, that says what you think and feel. You don't
know what Pres was thinking or tryin' to do when he came
on with his scene. You can't know.”
When Eagle was kind, Al thought, he could let you
know in the nicest way that what the Negro musician and
the white musician thought were worlds apart. “But I
don't try to sound like Pres.”
“All right, baby, all right.”
They walked a dark street in silence, then halted on a
corner.
“What's wrong?” Al asked.
Eagle turned slowly around, grinning. “Nothing. Just
gettin' my bearin'."
"Man, we've passed three or four restaurants,” Al com-
plained.
“Oh, that's right. You're hungry.”
"I thought we were going to eat, Richie.”
“Yeah, man. You right. You better get something to eat.
Tell you what—" He took Al by the arm and guided him
a couple of feet down the street. “You run in there and
order for both of us. I got to make a little run and I'll be
right back. Order me something good now, baby." Eagle
turned and walked quickly into the shadows. Al returned
to the last restaurant they'd passed. He didn't want to see
Eagle with it either. No one else in the group could stay up
with Richie; Demetriades couldn't hold him responsible.
David Hillary glanced up at the new arrival, then bent
again to his dinner. Hillary had arrived that afternoon by
Greyhound to keep the appointment with the chairman of
the English Department. There was a chance for a spot
149


during the summer session. He would know for sure to-
morrow. Both Della and Keel, though it had been a few
days since he had spoken to Della, had wished him luck on
the interview. Lately, they seemed to be getting on better,
but still Hillary harbored the thought that if he did secure
the position he might ask Della to come with him.
He had left New York that afternoon, riding up in fine
weather over the network of thruways. His arrival within
the limits of the town had set him thinking again about
Angela and he had taken a few drinks to obliterate her.
Impossible. Tomorrow when he sat with Doerffer, who
knew, she would be back-everything would be back. He
would have to fight it or live with it.
The young man who had just come in sat facing the win-
dow. Between bites of his food—there was another plate
beside him with the food growing cold on it, Hillary
noted—he strained to see out of the window.
Some broad, Hillary thought, has stood him up. Hillary
finished his beer and paid his check. He walked out,
glancing back once at Al Fox's pale face which peered
anxiously into the darkness outside. Must be, Hillary
thought, quite some broad. He toyed more times than he
should have with the idea of going up to the Crimson but
finally decided against it. He might run into someone from
the department before he had even had his talk with
Doerffer. The thought, however, reminded him of his
thirst and he bought a pint and a paper on the way back
to his hotel.
Rid of Al Fox, Eagle proceeded to the Negro section. At
first the thought that he and Al would eat and talk to-
gether had seemed pleasant enough, even if Al was red-
dogging him. But then a powerful sense of hopelessness
came: what the hell had he and Al in common anyway?
150


hundreds of records, another. On the long, red couch a girl
in tights lay watching television. A speaker, fixed in a
corner, emitted the soft sounds of a record.
"I saw the papers, man," the stranger said, “and I figured
you'd make it to the crib.” He turned to the girl. “Baby,
this's Eagle. You've heard me talk about him.”
The girl hung her head over the side of the couch and
looked up.
“Hullo, Eagle,” she said.
“Ummm-mummm!" Eagle said. “I know you got a sis-
ter! Ain't she, Brindle?”
“Better than that,” Brindle said. To the girl he said,
“Call Shirley."
"Now?"
“Get off your ass and call Shirley. Tell her to get down
here.”
“Can't I wait for the commercial?”
“Do it now.” Brindle turned his back, opened a cabinet
and brought out a whisky tray. “Help yourself.”
The girl got up and left the room. They heard her talk-
ing to Shirley.
"Tighten me,” Eagle said after he had downed a half-
glass of scotch.
Brindle, a slim, wide-eyed man of indeterminate age
said, “C'mon," and he led the way into the bathroom.
"Wait there." Eagle took off his jacket and rolled up his
sleeve. Brindle came back, the hypodermic held high as he
pushed out the air bubble. “You 'bout used up, baby," he
said.
Eagle said, “That one. Lower. All right.”
Brindle was deft with it.
Eagle reached in his pocket.
Brindle smiled. “Have I ever taken bread from you?”
"No."
152


“What makes you think I'll take it now?”
Eagle stuffed the money back in his pocket. “Cool,” he
said.
"I heard you was tryin' to get off,” Brindle said.
"First I heard.”
They returned to the room. The girl was back on the
couch.
“Suzy, is she on the way?”
“Yes.”
Aside Brindle said, "These broads're a couple of gradu-
ate students. Dumb! Don't know nothin' but television,
eatin' and makin' love!"
Eagle looked at the girl on the couch. She was quite
handsome. Her hair was cut short and wild on her head,
falling down to where her two arched brows rose slowly
from above her nose. Now she touched a marijuana ciga-
rette to her lips, her slim hand cupped around it to trap
the smoke. She snuffled quietly.
"A fine, brown frame," Eagle said, settling in a chair,
suddenly tired, strangely sad. “How's business?”
“Could always be better.” Brindle turned to pass Eagle
the whisky; his guest sometimes—after he'd had his—be-
came moral about the business.
"Shirley got titties like that?"
“Bigger,” Brindle said.
The girl on the couch hadn't heard them.
Eagle leaned his head back on the chair, allowing him-
self to relax, letting the stuff run its lean journey through
his body until he felt loose, there, and yet apart from
Brindle and the girl. The sounds of television came in
louder than the music on the speaker. The piquant odor
of the girl's cigarette filled the room. Brindle was smoking
one too now, smoking carelessly, the cigarette dangling
from between his full lips. Eagle held out his hand for
153


"We got a little run to make. Make yourself at home.
We'll be gone for a little while.”
“Crazy.”
“Bye, Shirley,” the girl in tights said with a pout as they
went out.
“S’long,” Shirley said.
When they'd gone Eagle said, “C'mere, Shirley."
The girl put her drink on the floor, put a smile on her
face and came, making a motion to sit on Eagle's lap.
“Don't,” he said. “Sit there.” He pointed to the arm of the
chair. “You work for Brindle?”
"No," she said, quickly. “Just a friend of Edith's.”
“Stop lyin'. You really go to college, you and that girl?"
Shirley nodded.
"I bet you didn't have to study anatomy. Why do you
hustle? Do you like it? I mean, you're goin' to school to
try to make somethin' of yourself, but Jesus, I guess you
can give it away and learn too. Don't seem right though.
Why don't you get a job?"
“There aren't many jobs around that pay.”
“Why not? You got some education."
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?"
“Just yes.”
"We lookin' to people like you to help lead us an' here
you are”
“I like it, Eagle,” she said with a queer smile. "Just like
you can't help certain things.”
“You don't have to like a thing because you can't help
it,” Eagle said. He snorted. “All you folks’re filled with
psychology, aren't you, you new Negroes?” The room
seemed to bulge with the sounds of music; everything came
at Eagle, big, lunging, all-enveloping. Wearily he leaned
forward and wrapped an arm around Shirley's waist; he
155


tace to a minuta
neither
bent her backwards, watched her respond as one might an
overturned insect. The survey lasted but a minute before
he pressed his sweating, bloated face to hers. They hit the
floor with a soft thud; neither of them minded the impact.
Already her face had gone blank, like smooth clay about
to be inscribed upon. Eagle wanted to smash her; why was
there always a closing that made a circle when there should
have been a way out? Something far more naked than de-
sire propelled him to the floor where she lay not in sub-
mission but in something akin to tolerance or greed. Eagle
didn't make love; he mounted an attack.
She was a memory by noon the next day.
When it was time, he left her without a word, and pull-
ing the soiled notation of appointment from his pocket,
proceeded to the corner of Drake and Hammond; Hillary
was late. Eagle planted himself stolidly on the corner,
dully amazed that he was allowing Hillary so much leeway.
He smoked furiously and took pleasure in his anonymity;
then he cursed it. But he continued to smoke and he con-
tinued to wait.
Patrolman Howard Procopio saw Eagle planted on the
corner smoking. In this section the few Negroes seen were
students, definitely students, with cashmere sweaters and
white buck shoes. But this one was bloated, black and
Procopio was both repelled and infuriated by him. The
Negro's clothes, his loud plaid suit, flapped loosely in the
light wind, like a threat. Procopio, after patting down his
jacket, took the first step toward him, still wondering who
he was. The officer had worked the beat in the Negro sec-
tion for two years and knew most of the right underworld
people by sight. This Negro was not familiar. For some
reason, Procopio hesitated a moment, then, that moment
156


past, moved to intercept the Negro who had suddenly be-
gun walking away at a crisp pace.
Eagle had seen the cop move and dumped the cigarettes
on his blind side as he passed a row of hedges. He would
intercept the cop, but without fear.
"Just a minute, mac,” Procopio said, throwing one leg
out to the side and rocking on it. Eagle stopped and looked,
careful not to show the indignation the officer expected.
But Procopio, expecting that look and not receiving it, was
positive he'd done the right thing in stopping the Negro.
Before the police court judge Procopio could only have
said that the Negro looked suspicious.
"What's happenin'?” Eagle asked, leaning his body for-
ward to indicate that he was in a hurry.
"Live around here?” Procopio asked, knowing the an-
swer, but using the words as a preface.
"No."
“Work around here?” Some of them were cooks in the
frat houses.
"No."
Procopio paused, baffled at the Eagle's short answers and
his unabashed delivery. Ordinarily the response would've
been, “No, but—".
Procopio frowned. “What's your name?"
"Why?" Eagle asked, wanting to get out of it but with
some remnant of dignity.
Procopio asked belligerently, “Didn't I ask you your
name? Now, what's your name?" He had stopped rocking.
Eagle, having made his decision, sighed. “The point is,
why do you want my name?"
“What's"
"Richie Stokes,” Eagle said quickly—reversing his de-
cision, he told himself, just once more, but drawing up
nevertheless.
157


prisoner accepted limply. Eagle counted their steps: one,
two, three. He tested the officer's grip, found it lasting and
gave it up. They stood before the call box. It had taken
five minutes.
David Hillary breathed deeply of the spring air and
walked luxuriously from Doerffer's office. From the build-
ing he could see the city lying below in a soft, purple haze;
from here the city looked attractive. He paused and turned
to look east, toward his home out among the drumlins.
When he got settled in a couple of weeks or so, he'd run
out sometime and visit. It would be all right then; a col-
lege instructor always manages to appear respectable. He'd
tell his folks this first; that would take the edge off.
“David's back at the university,” he could imagine them
saying with that old pride of people used to having just
the right things, or doing them.
He had been hopeful, of course, of getting an appoint-
ment, but it had gone better than expected: he had been
offered survey courses for both summer and fall. The
appointments were good for a new beginning. Doerffer
had asked about the drinking, and Hillary had been able
to say that it was no longer a problem. Then Doerffer had
spoken gently of Angela—what a lovely girl she'd been
and how, surely, Hillary must have been very much in love
with her; Doerffer was glad to see he hadn't ruined him-
self with grief, i.e., drink, and on and on, Hillary wanting
to sigh with relief, but not daring to until Doerffer had
spoken the words, “Welcome back to the family.” Then
suddenly it was all behind him as though it had never
existed; he was back among the softly rolling hills, the
bellow from the stadium in the fall, the Gothic edifices,
the long, bisecting walks.
He began to walk again, slowly, frowning when he
160


because he was Eagle, Hillary thought, but because the
cops had beat him up and jailed him. They were against
cops especially when they molested the public's jesters.
Eagle's lips moved and Hillary imagined him saying,
“Hello, you stupid mothers—” Eagle laughed with his
head thrown back, and said something to the young guy
with the tenor, whom Hillary recognized with a start; they
both laughed as the drummer and the bass headed into the
introduction of the first number, to the accompaniment of
soft whistles and more cheers.
163


Keel swallowed and it made a harsh, wet sound in the
dark. He felt himself struggling upwards, upwards, but
unsure of his progress; he was tense with it and he felt his
forehead grow moist, his armpits wet. And then he knew
he was going to make it, that he could make it, and he
swallowed, easier this time, with relief. His body sighed
and he withdrew his hand, trembling; some doubt re-
mained but he would not test it. Let it take its time.
"What's wrong?" Della asked, sadly, having felt his
struggle, sensed his uncertain triumph, his unwillingness
to push it faster than it could be consolidated.
“I—” he began, then sagged into stillness.
“Keel?” She stroked him as though life, coming from her
body, radiating down her shoulder and arm to her finger-
tips, could be inserted into his, to help him retain that
indecisive triumph.
He whispered as though overcome by a great human
feat, “What, baby?”.
Then she began to sob, politely, quietly—apologetically.
In the same voice Keel said, “I think it's almost over."
She nodded and when the lump had begun to ease down
her throat of its own painful accord she whispered as if to
match his mood, “I know."
"C'mon, girl, stop it.”
Della nodded into the pillow again. Peace began to come
to her, and a scent of happiness, a taste, a flash of it. Now
she wanted to spring up and fill the room with flowers
while he fixed potent cocktails and put the records on.
She wanted to comb her hair the way he liked it and do
her face and wear his favorite dress; she wanted to ask:
What may I give you to make you as happy as I? He would
tell her and they'd rise like giants above the curve of the
earth and she'd reach in among skyscrapers and people,
over all the forests and oceans, and get what he wanted
166


and hand it to him and watch the expression on his face.
She knew what that expression would be, a look that made
a verbal “thank you” foul, a look she felt she alone knew,
when his eyes softened and the lines around his mouth
relaxed gently. She would stare into his eyes which were
so keen that he sometimes seemed to hear with them as
well as see.
Keel lay in the reflective position of a lover who won-
ders, ponders, and finally muses thankfully over his mate.
The long valley of gloom was beginning to billow like
smoke in a sudden jet of wind. He too imagined himself
a giant, with the moon at arm's length, the stars fretful
fireflies waiting to be caught, bottled and given to her to
highlight her hair and to illuminate the dark flecks of
blue which had come into her eyes, stuck there like pieces
of basalt in shallow water.
"I feel so good,” she said with her ingenuous honesty;
and he thought: not even the British have ever matched a
lover's understatement.
“And I,” he said, reaching for cigarettes.
Both cast themselves ahead to the time when it would
be all right, when they would marry. Della said softly,
"Now I'm ready to be disowned.”
"Stop,” he said, warm nonetheless because she had com-
municated her continuing “Yes” to him, which excluded
her parents if it had to, as she suspected it would have to.
She continued talking, half into her pillow, half not, but
totally to him, in a gentle manner. "I don't feel alone any-
more."
Keel touched her reassuringly but briefly, marveling
that those few moments they both had felt had opened on
this wondrous, good feeling, which, after luxuriating in
it, you turned outside yourself, concerned genuinely, for a
time at least, with the affairs of others.
167


"I wonder how Prof is making out,” Keel said aloud, the
hurt coming only after the thought, voiced in purest hon-
esty, had gone past his lips. He sensed, as the words made
their way into comprehension, that Della flew quickly from
him, paused and returned and simulated normality.
"I wonder,” she said, clearing her throat, the way she did
when she was nervous. “I guess all right.” Her manner told
him she wanted to be done with any discussion of Hillary;
her manner warned him by its absence of any emotion at
all. Keel thought about them, imagined them, grew angry,
understanding, and sad. Then all of these went and he was
again the giant taking the world's moon into his palm like
a silver pearl and handing it to her, closing her hand upon
it.
Talking down from this great height he said, “I hated
Prof from the first minute I saw him. Then I got to like
him, and afterward hated him again.” He waited for her
to say something. She didn't and he went on. “You can
cope with guys like Crane because you understand from
the start that they've always felt so inferior to people
they've known in their pasts, that in order to feel whole
they need people to feel superior to. It's easy with all the
Negroes in jazz.”
“Yes,” she said. His hand lay on her hip like the touch
of a judge upon an adjudged toward whom he felt kindly.
"He needed us in the beginning, just for a little while,
to make him feel better, but it didn't work out. As soon
as he started to feel better he began to revert; he thought
too much and in the end might have rejected the idea of
his racial superiority; it had to be man-to-man. Me against
him—” Keel paused and Della felt his hand tighten im-
perceptibly. “—with you as the prize." Keel removed his
hand. Della searched for it, found it, replaced it on her
hip, covered his hand with hers.
168


light on. “Even at this hour when the cops on the beats
and in the cars might stop us on every block and ask a lot
of silly questions.”
Della burrowed into her pillow.
“Tell me goodbye,” he said, slipping his jacket on. “Tell
me goodbye and know that I wish I didn't have to go.”
“Good bye,” she said, adding quickly as if suddenly
frightened by some obscure thought, "See you tomorrow?"
“Yes, dear. Of course,” he said, bewildered by her atti-
tude. “All tomorrows,” he said, going out.
SU
Hillary arrived in New York in a state of extreme depres-
sion. He sat in the 34th Street Station for an hour before
he rose to catch a bus downtown. He knew the reason
he'd returned was to make a full confession. To Della?
Keel? Yes, oh, yes, but it was Eagle to whom he'd have to
make his most complete confession. He took the bus auto-
matically, transferred in a daze and debarked in a stupor,
overwhelmingly grateful for darkness. He shuffled toward
the shop. As he felt his way down the steps like an old
man afraid to lose his balance, a movement in a car parked
near the curb made Hillary spin around. A figure bent
quickly down behind the door window. Slowly, Hillary let
himself into the shop and locked the door behind him.
He remained still in the darkness and watched the car
outside. The odors of coffee and stale ciragette smoke hung
in the air. He would have to air the place first thing in the
morning.
No, he thought, he might not even be here in the morn-
ing; he didn't have to be here. Why he might only sit in
the shop an hour or two and all the answers would come
to him, answers which would not require him to stand
before Eagle, Della, or Keel; then he would leave and they
would never know he'd been here.
170


The figure in the car sat up. A match flared and Hillary
saw a patch of face: the ear, the jaw, nothing more; dark-
ness left only an outline. A cop? Hillary wondered. Would
he want to come in? Could something be going on which
would jeopardize the appointment?
Upstairs someone walked across the floor and seconds
later there came the dull explosion of water flushing down
a toilet, and while the drain hissed, the footsteps came
back, ceased. I should be in bed too, Hillary thought.
But he wasn't sleepy, he told himself, just impatient
waiting for morning to come so he could tell someone and
get the hell out of town. Dully, it occurred to him that,
however much he wished to leave before morning, he
planned to stay.
The motor of the car outside kicked over sharply and
settled into a rich hum. The headlights came on and the
car eased away from the curb and rushed quietly down the
street; silence closed once again on the front of the shop.
Hillary retreated to his room and put the light on. He
emptied the drawers, placed everything on the top of the
dresser, stripped to his underwear and got into bed.
The morning came clear, blue-white, rising suddenly in
the east. Della woke early to the massed flutter of pigeons
heading downward from the ledge of her roof to the streets.
She did not have the feeling of early morning depression
which had hung about her waking hours like the after-
effects of a sleeping pill for several months. Instead, she
bounded out of bed and fixed herself a huge breakfast.
This would be the beginning of a day, a series of days, she
wanted to absorb completely. For the first time in many
weeks now, she turned from the secular music of WNYC
to the chatter-and-music station, WRCA. She forgot that
171


in the past she had found the same show dull: this morning
she found it witty and the music good enough.
On her lunch hour, she thought, as she moved about,
even making up the bed, she would look at furniture again.
She paused, and found she was looking directly at the
phone. She thought: Keel.
Southwest of Della, in that section which seems merely
an appendage to the rest of Manhattan, Keel smoked in
bed. He was not furious that he found himself awake so
early. Traffic on the nearby highway was already heavy,
and it sounded like the rush of water through a narrow
channel. Downstairs, a block away, trains were already
being hooked up and he heard the bang of the hard-forged
iron couplings. The trains would sneak north along Man-
hattan's Hudson shore, would burrow beneath Riverside
Park and emerge far up in the Bronx, where they would be
switched onto the main lines. Keel brought his mind away
from the flight of the trains and thought of Della.
And cursed himself. He didn't much like being out of
the shell he'd built around himself. It was just a thought,
without much conviction behind it. But now, he thought,
again without much conviction, he was becoming vulnera-
ble again.
He inhaled deeply and said aloud-he had a vision of
himself making his declaration before a horde of people-
“I love her.” Because it's spring, he thought next. But
shit—I do. I just left the broad and I can't wait to see her
again. Keel drifted off thinking of the feel of her, her
movements anywhere, the sound of her voice and the lift
of her eyes, the way she walked, padding in her bare feet
to the bathroom and back, the sheets as they sighed up over
her again. ... A lifetime of this!
The other things, the painful things, didn't enter his
172





"Naw.” They started into the restaurant, but at the door
Eagle placed his hand on Yard's arm. “Seems like we
should get together again, Yards. Gettin' kind of late.”
"I dig that.”
“Y' do?"
“Always did. Just got too far out to come back in.”
“But you been wailin', baby.”
They shuffled around the table, took seats and ordered.
"Somethin's missin',” Yards said. “It ain't like it used
to be."
“Nuthin' is. Shit."
"You got a gig goin'?”
“Not right off. You?”
Yards nodded. He didn't have too much time off between
jobs. Even if he had wanted to he wouldn't have been able
to play with Eagle for the next year and a half. “Yeah, I
got a couple of things.”
"Cool.”
"How you fixed for bread?”
“You know how it is when you work for Demetriades;
the bread is nice enough.”
“Can't stand that cat."
“Know what I'd like to do man, after breakfast?"
“Jam."
"Sure would."
"Seldom, Eagle, you know. Everybody's so cool now, y'
dig?"
"Sure." Eagle stared across the table at Yards. Handsome.
No, cute, and still that did not really describe him. But he
didn't take any crap. The jazz writers called it arrogance,
but Eagle knew. Whatever it was Yards did or said, he had
his right to it.
“What're you goin' to do about them people?”
“What people?"
178


Eagle began talking in a torrent. “I called Rod Tolen”—
he interrupted himself with laughter, wobbled to a dresser,
got a pair of shorts that were ripped up the front and put
them on—"and you know what I asked him?"
"What?” Hillary asked, stunned by this disintegration
which remained neatly interred within the form of the
body.
Eagle laughed again. “I asked him, 'How in the eff are
the pegs sellin', you mother'!” Eagle tossed his bulk
through the air onto the bed, still laughing.
“Eagle,” Hillary said, not moving.
Eagle got up and put on an undershirt. “Hey,” he said,
suddenly recalling, “where were you!” He spun around so
quickly that he almost fell. He stepped heavily toward
Hillary. “Where were you? Look. Look!” He touched the
scar along his temple. “I waited for you and a cop beat my
ass. Where were you, man?”.
“That's what I wanted to talk about.”
“Beat my ass good.” Eagle mumbled. “I coulda had him,
though. I coulda stomped him, but they'da put me under
the jail then.” He turned away. “Talk, baby.” He stag-
gered, grabbed the corner of the dresser and steadied him-
self. He struggled into a fresh shirt. “Talk, but don't tell
me about nopegs.” At the last word the pitch of his voice
rose until it cracked into laughter.
"The appointment,” Hillary said, "well, it lasted longer
than,"
“I don't even want to hear about that pig pen,” Eagle
growled. His mood had run quickly to the other extreme;
his head seemed bent into a wind he would weather some-
how; his clumsy, tentative movements carried a threat of
unlimited power. Hillary, noticing, went on. “I was late,
but-”
“Yeah, baby?"
185


“Didn't you want to help me?" Eagle asked suddenly.
“Or were you really glad?”
“I wanted to help.”
Fiercely Eagle said, “I felt like the whole world was
cheering, laughing, clapping: 'Eagle's gettin' his ass beat!
Eagle's gettin' his ass beat'!” He stomped his feet on the
floor of the cab in time to his words, then stopped. There
was no sound in the cab now, and it moved north into the
heavy traffic and then into Fifth Avenue.
“Gaw-awdamn,” Eagle said, and Hillary couldn't tell
whether he was burlesquing or not, "you mean to tell me
all these people are outa work?” The Avenue churned with
people and cars and gaudy shop windows.
“This'll do, this'll do,” Eagle said, jabbing the cabby in
the back. “Pay the man,” Eagle said to Hillary when the
taxi lurched to a stop. He stood on the curb while Hillary
paid the fare and they started toward Rockefeller Plaza,
Eagle swaggering recklessly with his umbrella. He re-
peated, as if he couldn't believe it, “It's nice out. It's nice.”
But Hillary, trying to keep up and still stay apart, was
growing angry. Why was Eagle doing this, strutting
through the Plaza in his ridiculous shorts and stockings,
with his knobby legs and pot-belly, making himself—and
Hillary, Hillary supposed—the laughing stock of the mid-
town masses? And what, Hillary continued to think with
speeding horror, was he doing here, actually trying to keep
up with Eagle? Penance? Expiation? Or like Eagle said,
had he, sensing decay begin its reek beneath the feathers,
come to see the end, to know the certainty of that end and
to take some satisfaction in it? Eagle, he knew, knew that
whatever the reason, Hillary would stay, had to stay. He
had not once looked behind to see if Hillary was there.
Now Eagle tapped an elderly lady gently on the behind
with the umbrella in order to get by. “Please excuse me,
188


madam,” he said, slashing himself into a crude bow as he
moved around her when she stopped to see who had
touched her, and having seen, scrambled back on stiff,
ancient feet. Eagle laughed in her face. He brought his
great, sweating, black face flush with hers and laughed,
bellowed, and beneath it there was a flood of anguish
bolted up, but starting to leak.
At the west end of the Plaza, where the flags fly, Eagle
paused, trembled and aimed his umbrella like a rifle at the
first flag. “Blam!” he said, then strolled to the next and
took aim, then the next. “Blam!” People turned to look at
him with mixed smiles, cold stares, outraged looks. The
chauffeurs waiting by the limousines of the NBC execu-
tives gathered into a blue uniformed wall and nodded at
Eagle as Hillary melted into the watching crowd.
His face glistening with sweat, his body twirling like an
out-of-balance top, Eagle shouted, 'Eff you all! Eff you all!”
He banged the umbrella against the flag poles and tugged
at his walking shorts. “Here, here!” he said. “The Eagle
flies high.” Then, laughing, he plunged into the crowd,
which knifed apart of its own accord at his lunging ap-
proach.
Hillary stood alone for some moments, feeling an uneasy
relief. Then he boarded a bus and headed back downtown
again.
1.
189


Once Della's eyes closed, not in horror, but in a great wave
of disgust. Hillary, fascinated, paused to watch her. A slow
flush came to Della's face, and when she opened her eyes
they burned into his.
Keel's form crossed her vision. He moved deliberately,
pausing a moment before Hillary to draw himself up to
his full height, and then, like a father disgusted with a
half-grown child, slapped him with the palm and then the
back of his hand. The blows drew red to Hillary's face.
He wanted to touch both hands to his jaw, hold his head
in his hands, but he stood and let a little smile come to
his face. He said to Della, just as she was rising, “I guess
you're next.”
Della swung. Hillary was surprised at the power of the
blow and flinched as the next one landed, but held steady
for the next and the next. The next, Keel stopped. “Don't,”
he said, and they both turned from him. “He did what he
had to do, Della," he said to her, as if Hillary were not
present. He turned and looked at Hillary and repeated it.
“He did what he had to do."
Why don't I sit down? Hillary asked himself. His face
burned. He watched them sit down again, before him,
like judges.
“A guy like you has to spend his life dying," Keel said.
Studying him, Keel thought: This is an example of a good
white person, the kind who do nothing when it counts for
everyone. “You owed Eagle nothing, I guess. Even if he
did give you money, his bed, his food, and yes, love. Eagle
has love. You could never understand: you still look in
the sky—yes, you do—for God, when God is people, has
always been people and that's where Eagle looks; where
else would a man with sense look?”
Della got up and went to the kitchen; there was some-
193


Hillary noticed for the first time that records were not
being played. “It's odd,” he said, “without the music.”
Neither Keel nor Della answered.
"I'd better go,” Hillary said. “But where?” he mumbled
to himself. Neither person looked at him.
“Out of here,” Keel said, not harshly, but softly, wearily.
“Things could've been better.” He rapped the table. “But
you learned nothing here!"
"And there were things to learn,” Hillary said.
“Yes, there were things to be learned.”
“But for all that,” Della said impatiently, "you feel
better now, don't you?"
"Hush, Del. Let him be.”
“Keel,” she said, "why do you keep trying to be kind to
him?"
Keel rose. “I'm going to the bus with Prof, then see if I
can find Eagle. Please stay and keep the shop."
As Hillary and Keel started out, Della said suddenly:
"Hillary, I wanted you to make it—".
They stopped. Keel looked obliquely at Hillary, listen-
ing for his answer. “I guess I couldn't.” He gestured to-
ward Keel. “A man like Keel doesn't have the choice. He
can't be a coward; he's got to make it.”
“Let's go,” Keel said.
"Goodbye,” Della said.
Hillary paused on the walk and looked up and down
the street. “Ahhh,” he said, ignoring Keel's inquiring
glance.
“I'm glad you're going,” Keel said.
“And I'm glad."
They walked slowly to the bus stop and waited.
“It's funny standing here," Keel said. “Waiting as usual,
always waiting for something to come or be over, good or
bad, but waiting. Maybe waiting for someone like you to
195


16
Eagle sat astride midnight in the small New Jersey club,
The dull red and green lights beckoned to him; the shad-
ows of the combo loomed large against the wall behind.
The music was soothing. In his mind Eagle fashioned a
solo, and he hummed and patted his huge foot to the beat.
"Please, baby,” Candy said. She kept starting, looking
behind her. “Don't cause any commotion.”
Eagle continued. Then he said: "I want to blow, blow,
blow.”
"No."
"I gotta. Y dig, I got to."
Her pale face moved before him; above it the white hair
shimmered. The small red lips moved and an hour later
the voice, it seemed, came to him. "No."
Eagle sensed that he was moving. A slim white hand
wrapped itself tightly around his black wrist. Bewildered,
201


There seemed to have been three or four wives, each of
them with the proper credentials, each extremely attrac-
tive, so that if you had seen any one of them walking down
the street with Eagle, you would have had to look twice,
and each of them wanting the body for burial. But it was
returned to St. Louis accompanied by Aunt Jessie and one
of the wives, the one whose credentials had the earliest
date on them.
Signs cropped up on the walls of buildings which read:
“Eagle Lives” or “The Eagle Still Soars.” The exposé
magazines tore open their files on Eagle and some of the
women he'd known, and as a result two or three big names
went to Rome to await assignments in films or clubwork.
But the magazines didn't know of all the women; no one
did.
Friendly columnists recalled the quips Eagle had made
209


SO
“Eff you, man,” Yards said.
Later Kilroy got on and tried to do twenty choruses of
“Eagle's Nest” with lyrics he'd written himself just for
the benefit. Background and Rod managed to get him off.
Down in the first row Della said to Keel, “They all
sound the same.” Keel glanced at Hillary on the other side
of Della, and at Candy next to him.
“Even the damned guitar,” Keel grunted. Paul Moss, the
blind guitarist who had once asked Eagle and Keel why
they called one another “niggers,” but got angry when a
white person called them that, was playing. “He should
drop dead," Keel said. Della laughed; Keel had told her
about it.
Up on the stage the artists came on, all very cool, very
sure, very cold on the stand, acting not at all the way Keel
remembered colored musicians behaving ten, fifteen years
before. Maybe that too was something from Eagle. No
teeth, no sambo smiles. That might have been his biggest
contribution.
Applause and another group. Applause and another
group, endlessly. People appeared who had not been sched-
uled on the program and demanded to be allowed to go
on. The hall was stilling now and four hours had saturated
the rows of uplifted white faces with, here and there, like
foreign matter, a brown or black face accepted, anachro-
nistic. To even his own Eagle was an enigma, thought Keel,
claimed by them, deified by them and often avoided by
them; they preferred steel drums and Fats Domino. The
others, the whites, were dilettantes, understanding little
some of them, but building nevertheless an adequate foun-
dation for jazz. They paid its way.
"Suddenly I feel like drinking,” Keel said.
“Why?” Della asked, startled.
“I don't know.”
211


"The union gets shit,” Background added. Hillary,
watching him, suddenly could not recall ever seeing the
musician sober. He smiled at Background's demeanor.
"I'll report the gate myself,” Moss said.
Rod Tolen stuck his head in long enough to say, “Shut
your damned mouths you dumb mothers. We tryin' to put
on a show out here.”
Why, Hillary wondered, did Tolen emulate the speech
of Kilroy? that ragged jargon meant to amuse, to relax, to
throw one off guard with its simplicity and crudeness? Did
Tolen require a smoke screen too?
Yards had shifted his horn to his left hand and had
moved close to Moss. Ignoring Tolen, he said angrily,
“Background, turn out these damned lights, then me and
this goddamn Moss'll be even and I'll kick the shit outa
him. I'll outen him everything's gotta be by the book, by
the book, the paddy cat's book. This man is dead and left
his kids nuthin'!” Yards jostled Moss with his shoulder.
Della gasped. Candy said, “Oh, Yards—”.
"Kids, man,” Yards bellowed, trying to get above the
sound of music from onstage. “Let the kids live. I'll blow
all damn night myself to pay the damned union, and I
won't need none of you mothers to help me. Gotdamn!”
Yards turned away from Moss, his anger was so intense,
and Keel noted with satisfaction that Yards was aware of
it. “Gotdamn,” Yards said again, then quietly, bitterly,
“Eagle ain't even cold yet and you cats are effin' over him
already.” He turned back to Moss. “Gotdamn you, Moss.”
Moss had stood with his sightless eyes, his body braced
against the attack. Now he said, “Don't talk to me that
way, Yards. I'm not one of your boys, y' dig.”
Yards flipped the trumpet back into his right hand and
his words were cold and hard. “You goddamn right you
ain't one of my boys, you with your ricky-tick-ass guitar
214


"Sometimes. But he scared me a little, and sometimes
he disgusted me." She glanced at him again. “I'm being
too honest.”
“No,” he said.
They were beneath the marquee now and Keel said,
looking at the sky, “It always seems to be night when we
do anything, like it isn't for real, any of it. It'd be nice,
just for the hell of it, to see what it's like to go to a movie
on a Saturday afternoon."
“Honey?"
"What?"
"I didn't mean anything by that.”
“By wha-oh!” He grinned. “It didn't upset me.”
“I didn't want it to."
“I've thought about it half the night. I should be upset,
but I'm not.” He moved quickly into the street, sliding
out of her arm. “Let's get this cab.” He looked around for
Hillary who was just coming out. The cab cruised up,
slowed; the driver threw his arm in disgust at Keel and
sped away. “Goddamn them," Keel said, trembling sud-
denly because there was nothing there to attack, “they
never forget to remind you—”
"Of how frightened they are,” Della said, taking his arm
again, thrusting back his lunging emotions by use of that
single emphasized pronoun “they.” Hillary came up and
Keel waved another cab to the curb.
“I'd better make it to the station,” Hillary said. “50th
Street.”
“50th Street?” the cabby asked.
“Right.”
The cab shot forward. The three sat in silence until the
car got to the station. “I'll take care of the tab," Keel said.
Hillary bent to look in on them. “Goodbye.”
Della said: "Good luck." Keel waved.
216


Hillary swung the door shut.
The driver turned to Keel.
Keel said, “Move!” and he and Della settled back in
their seats. The cab hurtled down Broadway, moved
through the nighttime with its perpetually moving people.
“I want to stop here,” Keel said, talking easily, “and tell
all these squares: that one,” he said, pointing, "with the
great big Texas hat, and that one with the pinched face,
and that lady over there-see her, baby?—the one with the
big buns, and that cat with the derby and the skinny
blonde broad, and the cops out there fighting traffic: I
want to tell them how much I dig you, and that they've
got to go, that there's no place here for them any longer.
Together, we're too much for them. I'll go up to the Times
Tower and press the buttons that'll spell it out: I dig you
and war is declared on squares. Shall I do that?”
“No, baby. Just tell me again.”
“What do you want, a novel?”
“Don't be funny. Just tell me again.”
He told her again. "Please believe me.”
"I do. But don't ever stop believing in yourself again,
because when you do it all becomes sick.”
“I won't, I promise you.” He drew her close to him and
felt, upon contact with her body, the weight in his loins
dropping away. Whatever it was that had oppressed him
was far, far away, losing itself somewhere back in the road
to be trampled on, walked on by the thousands who
crossed the streets every day and every night. Not even the
driver's uneasy stiffness altered the feeling.
They had finally threaded the traffic across that ugly
patch of light at Times Square and now they were travel-
ing down the shadows of Seventh Avenue. The cabby's
cigarette glowed like a red nipple in the darkness. Keel
felt tears against his cheek. So, he thought, she knew what
217


he was feeling. He stroked her hair. “Baby, baby,” he said.
After a while he said to her: “Let's go home.” His voice
seemed suddenly crisp and clear, as though after years of
speaking deep within his throat, he finally learned to use
his mouth. He spoke to the driver and then felt Della's
fingers searching with infinite tenderness the innermost
reaches of his neck, and her mouth came warm and open
upon his; she moved slightly to nestle her body closer to
his.
Thirty minutes later the bus moved with a series of
jerks and growls down to the 34th Street Station. David
Hillary peered through the green-tinted windows and
watched the new passengers queue up to get on. In another
hour, when the bus emerged from the tunnel, most of the
passengers would be nodding in ugly sleep. But he would
be awake, staring up at the green moon and at the green-
black world outside. He watched the people come aboard,
peer quickly up and down the aisle for empty seats, then
shuffle forward, sit, and promptly shrink away from the
other passengers, indicating by their postures how grateful
they would be if the seats next to theirs remained empty.
Hillary felt like a spy. Could one of these people have
been the killer the musicians discussed, half-believingly?
That man? Or that? Perhaps the woman who was now
settling in the seat beside Hillary resembled the club own-
er's wife. If there had been a killer, a man who killed
smoothly, perfectly, leaving no cause for investigation, then
Hillary could only feel a cold, chilling sorrow for him. If
he did exist the musicians would find him; they would talk
and smile and watch and whisper. They would find him, if
he were to be found, and later someone would find him,
dead and alone, like Eagle. The battle would be joined
again; but it was never really unjoined, this quiet warfare
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