I made it only to the halfway landing when she spoke to me. And this time it wasn’t my mother. It was her.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t come to the party,” she opened, and I turned, stared down, said nothing. She was standing in the middle of the foyer, away from any windows, almost in shadow, but not quite.
“It’s really a wonderful party,” she went on. “And I am sorry you couldn’t come. I asked for you especially.”
“That’s the breaks,” I said.
“Your mother told me you weren’t feeling well.”
“She told you right,” I said. “I’m sick.”
Sadie Griffin started coming up the stairs.
“I’m sick,” I said again. “So you better not come close.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
“You might catch something,” I told her, backing up the rest of the stairs. “You’d have to postpone your wedding.” She kept on. “You wouldn’t want to have to postpone your wedding.”
She got to the halfway landing but by then I was at the top, away from the railing by the wall.
“I’ve told Al about you,” she said. “He was very anxious...”
“I’ll bet,” I cut in.
“You’d like him,” she went on. “He’s”—and she threw her arms out wide—“wonderful.”
“He’d be more wonderful if only he’d use a little grease on his hair. That’d probably make him perfect.”
At which she laughed and started talking softly up to me. “When I was fourteen,” she whispered. “I had an algebra teacher named Mr. Dillon. He was short and not very handsome, but...”
“Can the crap!” I said which, vulgar as it was, did the trick, for right after, she turned to leave.
“I only came over to say hello,” she finished. “And to hope you feel better soon.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Good-by, Euripides.” She waved, and she was gone.
As soon as I heard the front door close I went to my room, switched on the ball game, got under the covers, and lay there sweating until my parents came back. The next week Sadie Griffin got married. Neither Zock nor I ever mentioned her again.
The rest of the summer went fast, me spending most of my days with the gang. Just wasting time, for want of something better to do. And I probably would have gone on like that indefinitely, if Felix Brown hadn’t come to school that rainy fall day which now seems so long ago.
I was standing by the main door of school with some of the others, watching for any new faces that might wander past. All of a sudden “Buttons” Dooley, standing behind me, said: “Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it.” I turned around and when I saw what he was looking at, I just stared.
Because Felix Brown came walking in, big as a mountain.
At the age of sixteen, which is what he was then, Felix Brown stood over six feet five and weighed close to 250 pounds. When he took off his black raincoat you could almost see those muscles rippling under his shirt and I thought that if there was anyone I never wanted to meet in a dark alley, I was looking at him.
He walked over and asked “Buttons” where to go to register. “Buttons” kind of gaped, pointed, and said: “Over there, sir. Through that door.”
“How about that, Rip,” he asked me after Felix had walked away, “did you see the size of that nigger?” I nodded.
“He’s not so damn big,” said Johnny Hunkley, who weighed about the same as Felix but was, as has been pointed out, a slob.
“Then I don’t know who is,” I answered, and I walked away.
I already said how I became a wheel at school by spending one night in jail. Felix didn’t even have to do that. He just strolled around school that day, wearing a dark-red corduroy shirt and Army pants, and by the end of classes, he was a legend. Boys flocked up to him, introducing themselves. Girls followed him with their eyes as he moved along. For Felix was a very handsome boy. With fine features and really beautiful skin, not black, but kind of cocoa-colored. He was built the way everybody wants to be but never is; shoulders a yard wide, slim hips, no waist at all. And he moved with a terrific rhythmic walk, graceful, like a panther.
By the end of his first week in school, Felix was a very popular guy. Those that knew him said he wasn’t dumb at all, like you’d expect, and they almost bragged when they said it. As if it was a gold star for them just because they happened to sit next to him in geometry. Which is understandable, I suppose, for I have noted that people like a chance to show they aren’t prejudiced, even when they are. So that later they can say: “I had a good buddy once in college who was a Catholic,” or “I once went out with a Jewish girl and she was a real lady.” I’m not trying to turn this into a sermon so I won’t say any more, and besides, being a white Protestant, no one has ever said such things of me. Still, I have no doubt but that I am correct in my observation.
Getting back to Felix. Everyone expected him to go out for the football team, which stunk, excepting Johnny Hunkley, who was probably the best tackle in the whole state of Illinois. But Felix didn’t. Until one day in Assembly Coach Haggerty got up and made a big speech about how we needed players as Johnny Hunkley couldn’t do it alone, and anyone who was big enough to play and didn’t was chicken. After that, the pressure was really on, so one afternoon Felix went out for football. But only for one afternoon. Because they put him at fullback and in the course of a single scrimmage he accidentally injured two players and also got into a hassle with the coach, an easy thing to do, for Haggerty was something of a moron.
Before I can explain what happened next, I have to put in a word about Athens High School, which is very small, being made up of people from two grammar schools in the area, Athens itself, and Crystal City. Naturally, these groups stayed mostly to themselves and a rivalry grew up to see which one Felix was going to be a part of. That sounds pretty juvenile, I know, but we were in those days. Anyhow, the bunch from Crystal City was paying a lot of attention to Felix and it looked like he was going to join them. Nobody in our gang was particularly pleased by this, except Zock and me, who didn’t care, and Johnny Hunkley, who disliked Felix anyway for obvious reasons. But “Buttons” and the rest were a little worried as, if anything ever did happen between us and Crystal City, they would be a cinch to mop up, since Felix alone could have done the job. So pressure was put on me to do something, and I gave in to it, for I freely admit I enjoyed being high muckamuck and did whatever I could to maintain my position.
I talked it over with Zock and he agreed to come along that night as we took the walk from my place to where Felix lived. Which was on the college grounds, as his old man was a new janitor there and also, I later found out, something of a lush. Anyhow, we walked over on that beautiful October night, not saying much since I was rehearsing in my mind what I was going to tell Felix. I rang the bell and his old man answered, reeking as usual, and said that Felix was in the back room, lying down.
He was. Wearing only underwear shorts. That being the first time I had ever seen him in the flesh, it shook me, for the room was small, the ceiling low, and he seemed to fill it as he lay there on the bed. He sat up when we came in, the muscles rippling under his cocoa skin, and I remember thinking that he just had to end up as heavyweight champion of the world or as king of some South Sea island.
He looked at us and said: “Well?”
Zock nodded to me but I couldn’t say much, having forgotten all I’d rehearsed. We sort of stammered around for a while, not getting anywhere, and then I said that it was such a beautiful night Zock and I decided to take a walk. Felix Brown’s answer is something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
He said: “ ‘Pale amber sunlight falls across the reddening October trees.’ ”
Zock right away replied: “ ‘That hardly sway before breeze as soft as Summer.’ ”
Which might sound like gibberish to the general public, but I knew what they were talking about. Those were the first lines of a poem by Ernest Dowson, a rummy English p
oet and Zock’s favorite at the time. I liked him too, although to my mind, he could never hold a candle to Kipling.
Well, Zock followed it up with more Dowson. “ ‘You would have understood me had you waited.’ ” And Felix said: “ ‘I could have loved you dear as well as he.’ ”
Which started things off.
They went all through Dowson, me throwing in my favorite lines from “I have been faithful to you, Cynara, in my fashion.”
I have forgot much, Cynara. Gone with the wind.
Flung roses, roses, riotously with the throng.
After Dowson came William Butler Yeats: “But I being poor have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread soft, for you tread on my dreams.” Then Eliot with his hollow men, and I put forth the first paragraph of “Danny Deever.” Followed by “I weep for Adonaïs, he is dead,” and even, “Jenny kissed me.”
After about an hour, Felix went to the icebox, got some beer, and we took it out in back, sitting on the grass, drinking. We did some more poetry, me listening and swilling down the beer as I was just then acquiring the taste. I was pretty looped before too much longer and so was Zock. But not Felix.
And when the poetry wore thin, we started talking. I couldn’t possibly explain what happened out there on the grass that night. I think it had a lot to do maybe with the weather, which was perfect, for you almost had the feeling you were floating, so that when you turned your head you could feel the air shifting around you, making a new place for you in the scheme of things. Or maybe again it had to do with the fact that we were getting drunk. But that still doesn’t come close to explaining it.
For we talked about ourselves, free and open, like a Catholic at confession, not hiding anything but just speaking our minds. I found out some things about Zock that night, such as that he wasn’t too pleased with the way he looked, being ugly and all. And I suppose he found out some things about me he’d never known before. And we both learned a lot about Felix Brown. Such as that, like Zock, he too wanted to be a poet; he had written poetry that I never saw but Zock did and said it was much better than anything he had written, which must have ranked Felix pretty high up on the list. And how he hated being a Negro. And how he wished he were smaller, normal-sized, so that people wouldn’t always be staring at him like a freak. Plus a lot more.
And the upshot of it all was that Felix didn’t join the gang from Crystal City. Or my own. Because, after that night, Zock and me left the gang ourselves, left it to Johnny Hunkley for whatever he could make of it. So we walked together for a while then, the three of us, probably a funny sight when you think about it. Big Felix and little Zock and me, with me in the middle and a poet on either side.
I don’t want to give the impression that all we ever did was sit around, telling each other our innermost thoughts. It’s just that it never made any real difference what we were doing. There was always so much to talk about, our coming from different backgrounds, Zock’s being sort of sickly and Fee’s just the opposite, on account of his having been brought up in one of the worst slum areas in the entire city of Chicago. Fee was very smart though, not quite as good as Zock, who was tops in the school, but close, and my grades picked up considerable, what with having two people to help me instead of Zock alone. But I have to admit that even school work wasn’t bad when we did it together. Such as the Saturday afternoon over at Fee’s house when we were boning up for a big Monday test on Hamlet, a play I didn’t like, though it is sacrilege to say so, mainly because it is so damn long.
“The way I see it,” I said that afternoon, “Hamlet had the hots for his mother.”
Fee, lying on his bed, began singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” in his deep bass voice. Zock just shook his head. “What makes you think that?” he asked.
“I read it some place,” I admitted. “Or maybe somebody told me.” And I took a swig from a can of beer, one of many we had taken from Felix’s old man’s icebox.
“Well, forget it,” Zock said.
“Then give me something to remember,” I said right back.
“O.K.,” Zock began. “How about this? Why don’t we say that in this play we have Man coming to grips...” stopped then, because Fee had snuck behind him and lifted him high into the air, so that his nose was almost rubbing against the ceiling.
“Must you do this?” Zock asked Felix.
“Somehow it satisfies me,” Fee answered.
Zock sighed. “All right,” he said down to me. “Where was I?”
“Man was just coming to grips,” I told him.
“Quite right,” Zock said. “Yes. We have Man coming to grips with the one force he is unable to combat.”
“What force is that?” Fee asked.
“The Air Force,” I butted in, slapping my knee. “Get it? The...”
They ignored me. “You see,” Zock went on, “Hamlet is equipped to handle almost any situation. He is brave; he is strong; he is brilliant. But then, whammo, comes this one problem he can’t handle, and he’s done for. How’s that?”
“Great,” I said. “Marvelous. It stinks.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Jesus Christ,” I told him. “If you believe that, who do you put the blame on?”
“Set me down,” Zock said. Fee did. “Now,” he continued. “Why do you have to blame somebody?”
“Forty people are murdered in this play, for chrissakes. That’s why.”
“No, you don’t,” Fee cut in. “Here. How about this,” and he closed his eyes a second, thinking. “Let’s say that when somebody was a kid, his father beat him. And this guy goes to jail for beating somebody else. But this guy’s father only beat him because his old man whaled him when he was a kid. Who do you blame?”
“The grandfather,” I said.
“But what if the grandfather only beat the father because his father beat him. And the grandfather’s father was brought up by an old biddy of an aunt who was cruel to him. And she was cruel because she never got married. You can’t blame the world because nobody ever married the aunt.”
“Why didn’t they marry her?” I asked.
“Because she was ugly. Now, whose fault is that?”
I was about to answer when Fee’s father staggered by. “Don’t mind me, boys,” he said as he went past the door.
“Afternoon, Mr. Brown,” Zock and I both said.
“Afternoon, is it?” he answered, and then he was out of sight but we could still hear him staggering along. Then we heard the icebox door opening. Then a bellow. Then he was back.
“Someone’s been stealing me blind,” he said.
“ ’Afternoon, Pa,” Fee said.
“Someone’s been stealing me blind,” Mr. Brown said again.
“You mean about the beer?” Fee asked. Mr. Brown nodded. Fee looked very serious. “A bunch of beggars came by a little earlier on their way to Kankakee for a convention. They asked for a beer so I gave them one each. Plus one more for the road.”
“A beggars’ convention in Kankakee,” Mr. Brown muttered, letting it sink in. “Well, I’m damned. Didn’t know they had them.”
“Every year,” Fee told him.” In a big vacant lot just outside of Kankakee.”
“Well, I’m damned,” Mr. Brown said again. Then he smiled, turned, heading back for bed. “Don’t mind me, boys,” he called as he disappeared.
“All right, Euripides,” Fee said when we were alone again. “Now. Whose fault is it? Who’s to blame?”
“Hamlet,” I answered.
“Why?” they both asked at once.
“Because the way I see it,” I told them, swilling down my beer, “he had the hots for his mother...”
We began, the three of us, on that wonderful October night, and we went right through the winter, always together, into early spring. When things started going wrong.
The first indication was that Zock’s father, Old Crowe, which I thought up and have never been ashamed for doing so, found that business at his clothing
store was dropping off. Something I still believe was his own fault, since he was never what you might term a J. P. Morgan. But naturally he said it was on account of the company Zock was keeping.
And then one night after supper, my father called me into his study for a talk. “Scuddahoo, Scuddahay,” he began, an old Greek proverb he never bothered translating but which I knew went something like this: “Don’t pal around with niggers because I am America’s leading expert on Euripides and I don’t like it.” He said some more Greek, threw in a little English, all of it going over my head. He never got to the point. Teachers and politicians never do. They just say some crap that doesn’t mean much, but you know what they’re really talking about. And I knew what my father meant so I said: “Yes sir, you bet.” He smiled, did you-know-what to his lips and forehead, muttered, “Indeed? Fine,” and told me to run along.
I did. Over to Fee’s where we talked all about it. So after that the three of us started meeting secretly. Or staying late around school. Or lying about where we were. I suppose we saw each other almost as much as before.
But it wasn’t the same. And we all knew it. What happened next was obvious: we drifted apart. Or rather Fee did, away from us. We hated seeing him go, but there just wasn’t much we could do about it.
So when we saw each other in school we smiled and chatted a bit, but that was all. Before we knew it, Fee had taken up with the gang from Crystal City. They weren’t a bad bunch of people, when you got to know them. Except that right then, they weren’t people at all, but just so many flies, buzzing around Felix Brown. They worshipped him. And what they worshipped him for was not his mind, and not the fact that maybe he was going to be a fine poet. But his strength. I suppose you can’t really blame them for that, since it is a natural thing to do. Besides, if you wanted to pray at the font of the mighty, you couldn’t have picked anyone better than Fee. He was so strong it was frightening. He could lift me with one hand, hold me out at arm’s length without the least sign of strain. And he wasn’t brute power either; Fee was controlled, coordinated, catlike.