When I drove past the toolshed this time, Barbara and Jerry were nowhere to be seen. I drove up Bull Dog Road and collected the signs from the other kids, and then drove to our shack. Barbara was in the shower and Jerry was on the porch, scrubbing himself with turpentine. He looked as though he were in makeup to play a wounded soldier. “You’re a mess,” I told him, and came up the porch steps and sat down in one of the rocking chairs.
“You’re a mess, too,” he said mildly. “What’s the matter, native son? The theater getting you down?”
“The theater, shit,” I said. “It’s all this fucking running around.”
“Do not despair,” said Jerry. “You will make your mark. I think I got paint on my shoulder. You want to rub it out for me?”
I got up and took the rag and scrubbed his left shoulder blade. “Christ, you stink,” I said.
“Sometimes I can’t stand myself.” Jerry grinned. He took the rag from me and walked into the kitchen. “You want a beer?”
“Yeah. You coming to town to help me with those signs?”
“Hold your horses. I’ll be ready just as soon as Barbara comes out of the shower and I can wash this stink off me.” He came out with a bottle of beer and two glasses. “Here.” He poured beer into my glass and then into his own, and he sat down. “That’s better. First time I’ve sat down this whole fucking day.”
“Yeah. We might as well be working for the railroad.”
“Well. You asked for it,” Jerry said.
“It must be nice to be philosophical.”
“It is. You ought to try it.”
He lit two cigarettes and gave one to me. We listened to Barbara singing.
“Do you want another pail of water?” Jerry yelled.
“I’ve got those mad about him, sad about him, Lord, I can’t be glad without him—what?”
“I asked you if you wanted another pail of water?”
“No, thank you! I’ll be right out.” And she went on singing: “I’m not the first on his list, I’d never be missed, I wish I had a dime for every girl he’s kissed, I swear, I’d be a millionaire—”
Jerry and I looked at each other and smiled. “She’s quite a girl,” said Jerry. Then he blushed. “I don’t think I’m good enough for her.”
“Oh. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“You really think so?”
He asked it so very humbly that I looked over at him as though it were the first time I’d ever seen him.
“Of course I think so. What are you worrying yourself about? She’s happy. Listen to her sing.”
“I don’t think she’s singing because of me,” Jerry said. “She just likes to sing.” He paused. “She says singing will help her in her career.”
“He’s just an ornery sort of guy and yet I’ll love him till I die, poor me!” We heard the water splashing over her. “Jerry! Towel!”
“Coming, princess!” He picked up a bath towel from the porch rail and handed it in to Barbara. He came back and sat down in the rocking chair, and, in a moment, she appeared, covered with the towel. She ran up the porch steps.
“Ah!” she cried, seeing me, “the overseer is back. I’ll be ready in a minute. Jerry, take your shower!”
“Yes, princess,” Jerry said. He winked at me. “You want to fill the bucket for me? Or maybe you want to take a shower first?”
“No. Go ahead. After you. I told you how you stink.” He hesitated. “Go on, idiot. I’ll fill the buckets. Then you can fill them for me.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll start soaping myself. I won’t be long,” and he stepped out of his shorts and stepped into the wooden cubicle. I detached the two buckets from their platform at the top of the cubicle and filled one with fairly hot water and one with fairly cold water and replaced them. “You’re on,” I told him, and went back to the porch.
I heard him yell and heard the water splashing and heard Barbara singing in the room. I lit a cigarette and drank my beer. As soon as the signs were up, our working day would be over and it was not yet five o’clock. “Hey!” I yelled, “why don’t we have dinner in town?”
“I don’t think we have enough money,” Barbara said. She shouted to Jerry, “Jerry, do you have any money? Besides—Leo—we were supposed to work on our scene tonight. You remember?”
“The hell with it. I think we ought to take a night off from that scene. Really. I’ve got six dollars.”
“I think I’ve got about ten dollars,” Jerry shouted. “Look in my pants pockets. How much do you have, princess?”
“I’ve only got five,” she informed him, singing it out like an aria, and arrived at the door, scrubbed and tomboyish, in an old white shirt of Jerry’s and some blue pants of her own. “May I have a cigarette, sir?” she asked, and came over and leaned on my rocking chair.
“Certainly, princess.” I lit one for her and gave it to her. “There you go.”
“Princess is something Jerry picked up from you and now I think you’ve picked it up from Jerry. I don’t really like it. Why do you call me princess?”
“It’s in tribute to your birth.” She blew a great cloud of smoke into my face. “Why don’t you like it?”
“I think you’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you. Jerry’s not making fun of you—God knows. Don’t think like that.” I watched her. “We’re just teasing you a little bit.” Then I said, “It’s only because we love you.”
“Ah!” She moved away and sat down in the other rocking chair. “Can I have a sip of your beer, please?”
I gave her my glass. I asked, “Shall we have dinner in town?”
“Okay. I don’t think Jerry feels like cooking tonight—and I can’t cook at all—and you’re not much better.” She sipped my beer. “But I want to get back here early, so I can get up early.”
“Okay. I’ve got to get up, too.”
“Hey!” Jerry yelled, “throw me a towel!”
“Just a minute,” Barbara said, and gave me back my beer and rushed into their room. In a moment she reappeared, laughing helplessly, leaning against the door. She waved a small face towel in front of her. I began to laugh. “Jerry,” Barbara called, “we only have one towel left. And it’s—Jerry—it’s pretty small.”
“Will you two stop fucking around and bring me a towel? Leo, you got a towel upstairs? I’m wet!”
“I’ll get you a towel. But you can come on out now. Barbara won’t look.” I got out of the chair and started up the stairs. “I’ll bring it to you inside.” I ran up the stairs to my room. I heard the cubicle door open and slam and I heard Jerry yell, “Geronimo!” as he ran up the porch steps. I came back down the stairs with two towels, and tossed one towel into their room where they both were, Barbara still laughing. I cried, “Hurry up! I need a couple of pails of water.” And, to show that I meant business, I took off my T-shirt. “We’ve still got to hang up those signs, children.”
“Okay,” Jerry yelled, “okay. Go on in, I’ll fill up the buckets.” And he threw a towel around him and went into the kitchen. I heard him running water and I took off my shoes and socks, took off my pants and walked into the cubicle. I took off my shorts and hung them on the nail and hung my towel on the nail and picked up the soap. “You’re on,” yelled Jerry, and then I was alone with the water and the soap and my body.
We drove into town at exactly six o’clock—so the courthouse clock informed us—and by seven we had placed our last sign in the window of the pizza joint which we had virtually taken over. The people who ran this joint weren’t natives of the town—thank God; in fact, they weren’t natives of the country. They came from Sicily, I think, they hadn’t been in America long, and they were beginning to be gravely confused. They—the old mother and father, the sons and daughters and in-laws—still considered, in their barbaric, possessive, and affectionate fashion, that they were responsible for each other, that what happened to one affected all. This showed in their manner with each other and this manner mark
ed them as foreign. This meant, of course, that they were disreputable and so we naturally gravitated there—it was our oasis. Neither had this Sicilian family yet arrived at anything resembling a perfect comprehension of what color meant in America, and so it was the only place in town where Negroes sometimes ate and drank, or, rather, it was the only place in town where Negroes and whites sometimes ate and drank together. Only the younger members of the family, and of these mainly the women, were beginning to suspect what this meant for their status and might mean for the material future of their children. One sensed this in their worried frowns, in their occasional hesitations, above all in their steadily developing realization that the respectable people never ate their pizzas at the brightly colored tables, but always took them out. They were not yet materially menaced, for soldiers came, and sailors, and frequent travelers, and laborers; and these all had money to spend. But the soldiers and the sailors often brought their girls—rather dubious, rather dangerous girls—and so did the travelers, and the laborers were loud. It was inevitable that some of the town Negroes would also appear, inevitable that the Sicilians would not have the sense to turn them away—it was against the law to turn them away, though this was not their reason—and inevitable, immediately thereafter, that the guardians of the law should descend to deepen the Sicilian confusion. They began to stare at the Negro laborers, who, after all, were often there with white laborers, eating and drinking and laughing and cursing, exactly like the laborers they still remembered, with the definite and desperate intention of discovering what was wrong with them. It began to occur to the women that there might be something wrong with being a laborer, since it meant, apparently—they were indeed confused—that one had to be friends with Negroes. They had seen where the Negroes lived by now, and how they lived. But they had yet to ascend high enough in the American scale to become reconciled to the American confusion; they had not yet learned to despise Negroes, because they were still bemused by life. They liked Barbara and Jerry and me. They didn’t know how to hide it. They didn’t yet know that there was any reason to hide it. Of course, they particularly liked Jerry because they could speak Italian with him, and they gave each other tremendous joy because Jerry could put them down for being Sicilian and they could put Jerry down because his family came from Naples. I didn’t speak a word of Italian in those days, but I used to love to watch them and to listen. For Jerry’s relationship with these Sicilians was very unlike my relationship with the Negroes in the town. I envied Jerry. Perhaps I hated him a little bit, too.
Also, in the pizza joint, since we were in the theater, we were special, we were gentry. It didn’t seem at all odd to them that I should be in the theater—it was not only logical, it was, so to speak, my inheritance, my destiny. The only Negroes they had ever heard of had been in the theater, or in the ring. They were in awe of Paul Robeson—I must say that they really were. They loved Joe Louis. They loved Marian Anderson. They loved Josephine Baker. They made me tell them everything I knew about Father Divine. He had helped to feed the hungry, I told them, and they agreed with me that this meant that he was a good man; even though, as I later realized, their nods and thoughtful frowns referred not to Father Divine, but to Mussolini; who had also, perhaps, helped to feed the hungry, but who had turned out, after all, not to be a good man.
Angelo, the youngest son, seventeen or so, much taken and bewildered by Barbara, had helped us place our sign in the window, just so; long before this operation was concluded, his entire family had become involved in it, coming out on the sidewalk to judge the effect, and leaving customers waiting for their dinner. When it was finally judged an artistic success—which meant rearranging the window—Angelo returned to his function as dishwasher, the others returned to their functions, and we sat down at our table. We had decided that we needed a drink, but before we could order anything, Giuliano, the second son, brought us three dry martinis.
“For us,” he said, and smiled and winked. “I hope your play will be a success.”
“We aren’t in the play,” said Barbara.
“Oh, but you will be in another play,” he said. He looked at Jerry and laughed. “Of course you know,” he said, “this one is of no use. He will never be in a play.”
Jerry said something in Italian and they both laughed again. “I hope you do not understand Italian,” Giuliano said to Barbara, “he is a pig, your friend here.”
Jerry said something else in Italian, and they both, as it were, vanished in a hurricane of laughter, into Italy. Barbara and I helplessly laughed, too. She lifted her glass. I lifted mine. We turned toward Jerry and Giuliano. Jerry lifted his glass.
“Cheers,” I said. “And thank you, Giuliano.”
He smiled and bowed. “It’s a little pleasure.” He looked at Barbara, then at Jerry. “Do you want a menu, or do you want a pizza?”
“We want a pizza,” Barbara said. “The biggest you have, with everything on it.”
They very nearly, in their brief glance at each other, vanished into Italy again, but Giuliano restrained himself while Jerry choked slightly on his martini. “Very well,” said Giuliano, “a pleasure,” and he inclined his head slightly and walked away.
“What were you two laughing about?” Barbara asked.
“Family jokes,” said Jerry. He put one arm around her. They were together on one side of the booth, I was alone on the other. He lit a cigarette for her, and kissed her lightly on her restless forehead. “And family jokes can’t be translated.”
She looked at him, but said nothing. I sipped my martini, and I said, “This drink is on the house, isn’t it? Well, that means that we can have another one. I mean, we were going to have a drink, anyway.”
“That means you want to get drunk,” Barbara said. “Leo—we really should try to work tonight.”
“Barbara, I’m tired of working in the dark. I know that goddamn scene ass-backward. I dream about it. And I don’t know if I know what I’m doing and you don’t, either. It’s like—jerking off.”
“I didn’t know acting was that much fun,” said Jerry, and grinned. Barbara hit him lightly on the head. “Maybe I’ll try it.” Barbara raised her hand again, but he caught it and held it.
“Have you said any more to Saul,” she asked me, “about when he’s going to start working with us?”
“No. But I talked to Lola this afternoon.”
“And what did her Highness say?”
“She said that as soon as this grueling week was over, we would begin serious work. She said we had her word for that, and Saul’s word.” I stared at Barbara. “If she breaks her word, I’m going back to the city.” At that moment, I really meant it. “It’s not going to be any good, hanging around here all summer, if I’m not learning anything.”
Barbara opened her mouth, but Jerry spoke first. “You wouldn’t just go away and leave us? We’d miss you, baby.”
“Well—you two have each other.” I said this a little awkwardly.
“Oh, Leo,” Barbara said. “Really!” Wrathfully, she put out her cigarette. Then she looked up at me with a smile. I could never resist her, never, when she looked at me that way, she could make me do anything. “Nothing would be the same without you, Leo. Really not.” She put her hand, gently, on mine. “Let’s wait out the week. They’ll keep their word. You have my word for that.” And she nodded her head firmly, humorously pulling down the corners of her lips, and took her hand away.
“If you’re lonely,” Jerry said, winking, “there are a couple of girls in the Life class who are very hot for your fine brown frame.” He laughed and told Barbara, “They sit there drooling all over their sketch pads. They’re supposed to be working in charcoal but they’re really doing water colors, believe me.” He looked at me. “How about it? Just to while away the long summer evenings?”
“Those fat old bags? You must be out of your mind.”
“They’re not so old. They’re at the right age, baby.” The earnest, quizzical expression on his face made me l
augh. “They’re not worried about having babies anymore, you see, so—well, you know. Anything goes.”
“Jerry,” Barbara said, “those women are awful. Especially Mrs. Jenkins. She must weigh more than two hundred pounds—just in the behind.”
“But Leo likes that,” Jerry said. “Little men always like big women.”
“Jesus,” I said, “I wish you’d keep your cotton picking hands off my sex life.”
“Hey, I’m glad you put it that way,” Jerry said. “A couple of the guys in the class are pretty hot for you, too, and they told me—” I dipped my paper napkin in my water glass and wadded it up and threw it at him. It hit him on the shoulder; he dropped it on the floor. “Gosh, Leo. I was only trying to help.”
“Shit. I’m going to have another drink.” I grinned at Barbara. “Sex-starved actor takes to drink.”
“But I really feel for you, baby, sometimes, when I know you’re going to be up there on that stand,” Jerry said. “In front of those harpies. Christ. They make my skin crinkle. You know what I mean?”
“Hell, yes.” The patriarch of the tribe, Salvatore, came across my line of vision, and I signaled for more drinks. “I know what you mean, all right.”
The Life class was pretty depressing. It was made up mainly of aging, idle women, and not one of them, as far as I could judge, had the remotest hint of talent. They usually placed me somewhere in Africa and I was often invested with a spear. But their concept of the African savage was fatally indebted to, and entangled with, their concept of the American Indian; the results on paper were stunning indeed. I found it disquieting that anyone could look at me and see what they saw; it was not less disquieting to realize that their bland, dumpling exteriors concealed so much of fantasy, helpless, lonely, and vindictive. These ladies gave me my first glimpse of a species of psychology which I eventually summed up—or dismissed—as the fig leaf complex; they were all working members of the fig leaf division. It did indeed, as Jerry said, cause my skin to “crinkle” when I stood before them naked. At first, I was most intimidated by my color—all of me naked seemed a vast quantity of color to bear; but it was not long before I began to be intimidated, far more grievously, by the fact of my sex. I wore the regulation jockstrap, though this seemed silly to me. Female models wore nothing at all. But then I began to feel that the jockstrap actually functioned—and perhaps was meant to function—as a kind of incitement, both for them and for me. I began to resent the jockstrap, for it seemed a kind of insult to my body. I couldn’t help but become terribly conscious of what the jockstrap concealed and this made my penis nervous. I was always frightened of having an erection: all of me could be seen except that most private and definitive part of me, which was on no account to announce its presence. Well, it was agony. With all of my anxiety centered below my waist, I always, inexorably, felt the vengeful organ begin to stretch and swell—with anxiety, I suppose, certainly not with lust—pulling the jockstrap down. But I kept my eyes straight ahead of me, and held my pose, expecting at any moment to hear the women scream and faint, while sweat poured from my armpits and over my pubic hair and down my legs. Holding a five-minute pose before my ladies was harder than working in the mines. But the ladies worked steadily with their pads and pencils and brushes, sometimes holding a pencil up before them to dissect me, while I felt my rebellious black prick pounding against the walls of its dungeon, and threatening, as it seemed to my unhappy imagination, to destroy it. When it was over and I stepped down, they had achieved a noble savage who was carrying a spear and adorned with a loincloth as bland and as shapeless as their faces—a harmless savage, suitable for a pet, and one who could certainly never have any children.