He struck the first chords of "Michigan Water," and began to hum. He wished now he'd picked some other number besides this Morton favorite, because for the life of him he couldn't play it without singing it, and he didn't want to showboat: " 'Michigan Water... hmm... tastes like sherry wine—'"
The boss of this place might be a drip, but he knew the 'kind of piano music he wanted. David could tell that by the numbers he asked for after "Michigan Water." One of the men standing at the bar had been getting ready to leave when David entered. Now he turned back and ordered another drink, and stood, back against the bar, drinking slowly. That would do it, thought David. Any time a musician or a band could hold 'em in the place, keep 'em drinking, they were set. But he wasn't giving this guy an afternoon's bar profit. After ten or fifteen minutes, he stopped playing and waited quietly.
The owner came toward the piano, jerked his head in the direction of a door at the back of the room. "Come into the office." David followed him into a small room that held an unbelievably cluttered desk and two chairs. The wall behind the desk seemed to be almost completely covered with glossy prints of musicians, some of whom David recognized.
"Have a drink?"
David shook his head. "Thanks, no."
"Teetotal?"
"Not quite."
"You'll drink Coke or Seven-Up here if you order during working hours. Too bad you're so young. But you look old enough, so I think we can get away with it. You fixed up with the local?"
"I will be if you need me. At least for part-time work on a transfer."
"O.K. You get scale and half the kitty. I'm taking a chance."
The muscles of David's face stiffened, and he broke the stiffening with a smile. "Scale and the kitty," he said, and wondered at himself. No one had ever tried this on him before; an employer didn't bargain with a punk kid over what he'd get for driving a laundry truck or mowing a lawn or waiting on customers in a neighborhood grocery store. That had been Gramp talking: Mebbe they ain't going to treat you like a man, but don't you never forget you is one. He could
hear Gramp on the phone: I'm sorry, I'm sure sorry, but I can't do no job like that for no money like that. And, another time, exploding to him at dinnertime: Uncle Toms! Hell, it ain't the bigmouths and the poor mouths and the crazy acting fools that's the real Uncle Toms. It's the guys trying to get in good with the whites by selling theirselves cheap, splittin' scale under the table, stuff like that. Man has to do it sometimes. Man has to live. I done it. Don't never think I hasn't. But I never done it jes for Li'l Joe Champlin. And I never done it jes so's some white would think good of me. A man stood alone in a white world, alone in a circle drawn around him by white hands, but if he stood tall enough and firm enough, the time would come when the circle wouldn't hold him. Gramp hadn't known that; Gramp's circle had been forever, but no circle was forever.
Now David, remembering Gramp, waited.
"Scale and all the kitty, eh? That's not the way we do it here, boy."
The "boy" might have been just because he was young, might have been used even if he'd been white; the guy wasn't a Southerner; by his speech he was a New Yorker, but it bolstered David's determination.
"Sorry. That's not the way I do it. Kitty's the musician's."
He could feel the man's eyes on his face, met them squarely with his own, and smiled again. "Nice piano," he said. "Nice place. Sorry we can't get together."
He had crammed his scarf into his pocket when he sat down to play; now he pulled it out and put it around his neck, turning to leave. Suddenly the other man laughed, a short, staccato bark.
"I'll be damned. I'll be Goddamned. O.K. Scale and the kitty, and give me a 'Michigan Water' like that once a night. Get a contract from the union and bring it in Thursday night. You'll play Fridays and Saturdays. You going to get independent about the hours?"
"If they suit the union, they'll suit me."
The owner followed him out, stopped at the bar. "Sure you won't have a drink?"
David shook his head. "Thanks, no," he said again. He couldn't have walked in and up to the bar and ordered a drink even if he'd been older, not without trouble, and he wasn't drinking with the boss, accepting a temporary-customer status as a special favor. The hell with the guy. Just let him get at that piano and then let him alone and they'd get along fine. There was a hollow white-black-yellow ceramic cat crouched on top of the piano, winking one green eye, and as he passed it, David winked back. Suds was standing at the door, waiting for him, his plump face as furrowed as its contours would allow.
Outside, David said: "It's all set. I start Friday. Mind if we look up Nehemiah's uncle? So I can get straight with the local? It may take some finagling."
"The guy give you any trouble?"
"They always do. Wanted to split the kitty. My grandfather has a saying, 'You can't fault a man for trying.'"
"Was he—" Suds stopped, embarrassed.
"Sure. Sure, Sudsy. It's standard. But no more so than most. Look, let's eat first, huh?"
Suds was getting close to that ground on the edge of the chasm, and it was ground white feet could not tread safely, ground on which he did not want to linger, not with Sudsy. He liked the guy too well, and the reason he liked him, he guessed, was that Sudsy never seemed to be making a big fat effort to be friends, trying hard, like most of them did. Eventually, thought David, it was their damned trying that got a man down.
CHAPTER 26
The first night they played at the Calico Cat, David drove to Cincinnati with Hunter Travis beside him in Sutherland's car, leaving Suds sniffling morosely in his room with what David called a "fresh cold."
"It's not 'fresh,' " snapped Suds. "It's the same one. It just gets coy and goes into hiding every now and then."
"If it was me and I didn't check in at the infirmary it would be O.K.," said David self-righteously. "But your old man's a doctor, and that makes it stupid."
"I went this afternoon. They gave me a shot and some stuff and told me to come back Monday. I'll wait till I go home Thanksgiving and the old man can check me through the clinic." He blew his nose, said "Aa-ah, hell!" and began coughing. When the spell was over he said: "Maybe I'll get to stay home a few extra days. Anyhow, if I stay on campus I can study tonight and tomorrow. Andrus has been giving me the business. And Beanie called me 'Clifton' after class today, and that's bad."
"It's not right. Gosh, you push me uphill in math and slide down yourself."
"Don't ever make a real good grade for Beanie. Stay mediocre because it's murder if you slip."
David was glad of Hunter's company on the trip. He was always glad of Hunter's company at any time, although he was just beginning to shake off the feeling that Hunter was, somehow, in a class by himself, not above but beyond him. The gradual discovery that Hunter Travis was warmly human, that he was not aloof or withdrawn but merely self-contained, had been one of the most satisfying experiences of his freshman year. "Sure taught me not to jump at conclusions," he told the Prof during summer vacation. "He's a brain, a real brain, but he doesn't make any big thing about it."
On this Friday of David's first night of playing, Hunter was catching a lift to Cincinnati for a night train to New York to meet his mother and father, due the next day from Europe. David wondered if he should envy that. No, it sure as hell was better to have a home to go to that you knew was always there and a family that stayed put, even if that family was only a grandfather.
"Are you jittery?" asked Hunter when they were halfway to Cincinnati.
"You mean about playing tonight? Gosh, no. Hadn't thought about it. Guess I should be. I've been too busy worrying about that phony I.D. card, and afraid of losing out."
"Mind if I write a story about you, chum?"
"Just don't call me by my right name."
"You're an interesting character. Could be you're an anachronism."
"Lay off—"
"Well, you are." Hunter stretched his legs out under the dashboard, plunged his hands in his pockets,
looking, thought David, like a damned ad for college clothes for the modern young man. "For one thing," Hunter went on, "you're all Negro. Or mostly."
David laughed. "Just call me lucky."
"Luckier than I am, anyhow. That's what I mean, though. You were being sarcastic when you said that about being lucky. But you weren't being, well, fed up and bitter."
"And that makes me interesting?"
"Definitely. Guys like Simmons and Dunbar are a dime a dozen among us, David. If you don't know that by now, you'll learn it every year you stay away from home."
"You sound ninety years old."
"Perhaps I am. I guess it's one of the things that happen to you when you're born and grow up with a foot on each side of the fence."
"Suppose I was what you call 'fed up and bitter.' Wouldn't change anything, would it? I'd still be a Negro here and a nigger at home—and here, too, sometimes. You've got the wrong slant, buddy. I don't aim to relax and enjoy it, like the gal who gets raped. I just figure that the good Lord wanted David Champlin in a black skin for some reason. If He hadn't I'd have a white skin. Sooner or later I'll find out the reason."
After a minute Hunter said, "You really still believe all that stuff, don't you? God and all."
"Oh, gosh—here we go again. I keep saying to you how the hell can you help believing?"
"That's no problem. I suppose your grandfather instilled—"
"Crap! What I keep trying to pound into that thick skull of yours is that Gramp wouldn't believe if there wasn't something to believe in that it's God that makes faith, comes first, not after. Even primitive people who hadn't had a damned thing instilled in 'em had it."
"So we have to stay primitive?"
David's face was somber; then suddenly he broke into a wide smile and took his eyes from the road to look over at Hunter. "You ought to start being all nigger and do a little believing yourself."
Hunter shook his head slowly. "Can't," he said. "Just can't make Godsville."
What David later described to Suds as "jitters, minor type" caught up with him when he started to play that night. At first he wisely paid no attention to requests, concentrating on numbers he knew best and had worked over the most, mixing them up nicely, rags, blues, stomps, and finally a little boogie. When he felt that he was easy and relaxed, he began playing requests.
The whole evening shook down to normal when he saw a party of four couples come in, and recognized two of them as habitues of a club in New Orleans where Gramp often played and where he himself had sometimes played during intermission. They greeted him with loud and slightly alcoholic shouts of delight. He gave a quick, sideways glance at Al Savoldi, standing at the bar, and could tell that the owner was definitely impressed. Nothing like a following, thought David, with an inner grin, even if it was only eight people. They stayed most of the night, drank copiously, and fed the kitty generously. At the end of the job David was dog-tired, and acknowledged then that he must have had more inner tension than he had realized, but he was reasonably certain the job was secure.
He had arranged to keep a small room to sleep in at the home of Nehemiah's uncle, a man named Zack Charles, in case he couldn't make it back to Laurel at night. He knew he would be staying in town some Saturday nights because he had promised the Charles family he would go to church with them and sing, if there was a special occasion.
On Saturday night the two New Orleans couples showed up again, and there were several other repeaters, and he remembered some of their requests and played them. He wouldn't admit to anyone that he got real pleasure out of playing numbers people obviously liked. A lot of guys he knew would call it Uncle Tom, but he couldn't see it that way. He played his own way, and if they liked it, that was a pleasant feeling.
But it was more than a surface pleasure when, waiting for Al to pay him after the place closed Sunday morning, he sat at the keyboard, tired and relaxed, running through blues chords, and heard from close at hand a low voice. "I hear you, man. I hear you—" He looked up to see the Negro janitor and clean-up man standing quietly beside the piano, leaning on a mop, old eyes bright with understanding. What he felt now was not the simple satisfaction of pleasing customers; the sound of that voice, the light in the old eyes, were the reasons for music, the source of the only real joy to be found in making music; they were the evidence of communication, the certain proof that the feeling within yourself had broken its bonds of flesh and reached out and found and awakened the same feeling in another, as two people will talk in darkness, understanding.
David smiled. "What you want to hear, old man?" he asked softly.
" 'Yellow Dog'? That other fellow, he never played it Heered Bessie sing it once, long time ago, back home. You know who I mean?"
"Sure I do. Got every record. 'Yellow Dog'—" and started it slow and easy, singing it low and rough, did not stop until he had played it out even though Al, the owner, was standing, money in hand, waiting at the far edge of the piano.
***
Talking to Suds, Tom, and Chuck on Sunday, he said, "Only one gruesome incident last night. Clevenger showed up for a while."
"Yeah?" said Suds.
"He would," said Tom. "I suppose we have to give the bastard credit for something. He likes the music. And knows jazz. He's got a keen collection of records, all kinds."
"You think I don't know!" said David. "That cat's been bugging me to come and listen all year so far. And last year, too."
Suds laughed. "Wonder he doesn't invite you to take a run up to dear old Richmond on vacation. He's got a sister going to have a coming-out party. You could play, special added attraction."
"Sure could," said Chuck. "I reckon they'd have a nice room over the garage for you."
"With bath," said David. "Gotta be with bath."
For quite a while now he had stopped being surprised at the casual, almost unthinking way he could join in with this type of kidding with whites; until his first day at Pengard, he had never discussed race with any white except the Professor All through his freshman year, and so far in his sophomore year he had shied away from ALEC meetings, knowing how hard it was for him to participate in biracial discussions of a gut issue. The few meetings he did attend only confirmed his attitude; he got so damned sick of talk, and so more than damned sick of the well-meaning, well-intentioned, but utterly uncomprehending minds of the whites. Only Sara Kent's, repeated urgings and, he admitted, the knowledge he would be near her for a whole evening, got him out to a meeting occasionally. But the kidding of a Suds or a Tom or a Chuck was far different; it was an open hand of fellowship, instinctive and sincere, far different from the self-conscious intellectual approach of the white ALEC-ites. Excluding Sara, he thought; always excluding Sara.
Sudsy's voice broke into his thoughts: "I don't dig that guy. I just don't dig him. The first day David's here, way back last year, he goes out of his way to be obnoxious—"
"He didn't need to go far," said David.
"O.K., so he was just doing what comes naturally. Then after that he starts getting in your hair, being nice."
"Not nice," said David. "You don't understand. Helpful. Friendly. Kind."
"He's a southern gentleman," said Tom. "Not same like Chuck."
"Gave him fits the other day, young Champlin did," said Chuck. "Pool."
"Aw, shucks," said David. "That wa'n't nothin'. Jes a li'l ol' practice game."
"Lawd, lawd," said Chuck, "deliver us from evil. I saw it. You guys haven't heard about it?"
Tom and Suds shook their heads.
"Champlin here wanted a little solitude. Said he had to do some thinking on the multiplication table—"
"Liar," said David.
"Mebbe it was subtraction. Anyhow, he moseyed along to the billiard room in the rec hall and starting knocking some balls around, easy like. Randy saw him go and waited a few minutes; then he moseys along too, and me, I get curious and go and stand in the doorway. Randy watches David, then he ups and suggests playing. I could tell David was riled
, but he just said, 'O.K.'" Chuck began to laugh, until at last David joined in. Tom said, "Well, you baboons, what happened?"
"The slaughter of the whites, that's what happened," said Chuck. He shuddered. "It was right-down pathetic, it was."
"We got some of the best pool players in the country down my way," said David. "You gotta be good or stay home."
"I thought you'd tell him to get lost when he asked for a game."
"When I knew I could lick the damned pants off him? You think I'm nuts or something?"
"And young Champlin was so-o-o kind," said Chuck. "Yessir, he was real kind. 'You're just off today, Randy,' he says. 'Better luck next time.' And Clevenger, he doesn't say anything. Just crawls out, thinkin' black thoughts about white supremacy."
It was Chuck Martin who talked David into an ALEC meeting the week after he started work at the Calico Cat, although in all fairness he couldn't say he'd been "talked into it," because Chuck didn't operate that way. There was something compelling about Chuck's sincerity, and if he caught a guy in a weak moment there was no resisting.
Martin puzzled him: Why had a guy whose roots were so deep in the soil of southern thinking turned his back on a way of life that must have been damned close to a religion for his family? There was a concrete reason, and Chuck had told him about it one Sunday afternoon, sitting on the small beach beside the lake. Yet it had not entirely satisfied him. Revulsion against that way of life—yes, it would have brought that. But would it have brought dedication to the cause of fighting it?
The story had been a simple one. David knew what the outcome would be before Chuck was well into it. Chuck's best friend as a child had been a Negro boy, Jimmie Thornton. They had played together when they were very small, and Jimmie's father had brought his son along when he did gardening work for the Martins. Later, when they were old enough, Jimmie's father had taken them hunting and fishing. "He was the most wonderful guy with kids I've ever known," Chuck said. "Patient—Lord, I never heard him raise his voice or say an unkind word, and I never saw a little kid come up to him he didn't have a smile. But he got results. I couldn't get Jimmie to do anything hardly, unless his daddy said it was O.K. But he was strict. Really strict, rock-ribbed Baptist strict. Heck, I got more moral lectures from Jimmie's daddy in a year than I ever heard from my own in all my life."