Just Above My Head Page 23

  Arthur asked Crunch, “All right? do you feel all right?”

  Crunch put Arthur’s head on his chest, ran one long hand up and down Arthur.

  “You’re the most beautiful thing ever happened to me, baby,” he said. “That’s how I feel.” Then, “Thank you, Arthur.”

  “For what?” Arthur asked—teasing, bewildered, triumphant—and safe in Crunch’s arms.

  “For loving me,” Crunch said.

  After a moment, he pulled up the covers. They went to sleep, spoon fashion, Arthur cradling Crunch.

  Nothing can be hidden; secrets do not exist. They were on the road for ten more days. They were called the “lovebirds,” they were called “Romeo and Romeo.” They laughed, with their arms around each other sometimes, far too happy to be afraid. For one thing, they were far too young to be afraid. As far as they knew, and as far as they cared, what was happening between them had never before happened in the entire history of the world. Other people had words for whatever it was, too bad, too sad—they were not to be found in that dictionary. They walked in the light of each other’s eyes, absolutely unaware of white people or black people, waking up, sometimes, in each other’s arms, not knowing what town it was, and not caring: they were called “lovebirds” and “Romeo and Romeo” because they were alone, they were far from other people, they were in danger.

  Peanut and Red were happy simply because Crunch and Arthur were happy. They responded to the outward signs: Arthur laughed and talked more and ate more, and Crunch, before their eyes, seemed to become the lord of a vast and beautiful territory. Arthur was his princedom, or, because of Arthur, he began to stride—Crunch was in love. Yes. That is the only way to put it. And Arthur, my brother, Arthur—he was in love, certainly, as irrepressible as a puppy; if Crunch strode on those long legs of his, Arthur seemed to get from one place to another by unpredictable leaps and lunges; but he was far less vulnerable. He did not know this then, he adored Crunch, but time was to reveal to Arthur, and in an unspeakable anguish, the algebra of his life. When, many years later, Crunch was dragged, howling, away from us, with that dreadful space in his mouth where his teeth had been, the sands in Arthur began to shift into that despair which was to kill him. Arthur was stronger than Crunch: it is as simple, as dreadful, and as mysterious as that. Arthur could bear solitude, had been born to it, and could never be surprised by it, however mightily he might be tormented: Crunch feared solitude, and was easily bewildered, he could not live without love. But Arthur could live on stones—he sought love everywhere, but he could live on stones. He could wring nourishment from the silence of stone. He could surrender to Crunch so eagerly, and give all of himself, because not all of himself was his to give. There was, in him, a secret place which could scarcely be entered—a goddamn echo chamber!—he was to cry to me much later, where Arthur paced, alone.

  He did not know this then. He began to be reconciled to this near the end of his life, with his last lover, Jimmy, who was the only person in Arthur’s life as strong as he, who loved him more than Arthur ever knew; Jimmy, who trusted Arthur’s secret place, who knew he could not live if it were violated, who calculated, coldly, in towns, in planes, in beds, sometimes with Arthur’s arms around him, how to keep his lover alive, how to live if his lover was gone.

  But then—Arthur knew nothing about death, Peanut and Red knew nothing of love or passion. Crunch and Arthur were funny, and there was a light around them—perhaps, in their differing ways, Peanut and Red smelled a certain freedom, the way a horse smells water. They did not think of Crunch and Arthur as lovers, a condition which they could not, yet, really imagine, but as two cats who had something very deep going for each other: in the same way that Red was Peanut’s “heart.” That was really all there was to know. All else was a private matter, and it would never have occurred to them to violate this privacy.

  But Webster was a very different matter.

  “What’s going on between you two?” he demanded of Crunch. This was on a Sunday afternoon, on the steps of a church in a Virginia backwater—from here they went to Washington, D.C., and home.

  “What’s that, sir?” Crunch asked very carefully.

  Arthur and Red and Peanut were somewhere behind them. Crunch walked as slowly as possible.

  “You hard of hearing?”

  “Sometimes, sir. When people don’t speak up. Or when they—shout.”

  They were forced to continue descending the steps.

  “”The boys,” said Webster. “I hear them call you lovebirds. And you and little Arthur, you and him always running off together.” He looked at Crunch, who walked slowly, looking at the ground.

  “I wouldn’t let what the boys say worry me none,” Crunch said. “They just fooling around—boys will be boys,” he added, and looked into Webster’s face.

  “I’ll ask you again,” said Webster. They were now at the bottom of the steps. They were forced to keep moving because of the people behind them, and because they could not afford to seem to be quarreling.

  They walked for a few seconds. Crunch did not look behind him, for he knew that Arthur could see him: nevertheless, he walked very slowly.

  “What was your question, sir?”

  Webster looked at Crunch, and Crunch looked at Webster.

  “I’m a very understanding guy,” Webster said, slowly. “You don’t know me.”

  Crunch said nothing.

  “Shall I ask you the question again?”

  “Yes. Maybe you better.”

  “You two”—they stopped, and looked at each other— “what you doing?”

  Crunch looked behind him. He signaled Arthur. Arthur signaled back, and started toward him.

  Crunch, with his hands in his pockets, turned and looked at Webster, and grinned.

  “What do you mean? What do you think we doing?”

  They kept walking, in the chilly air, and Crunch allowed his guitar to bounce, lightly, on his back.

  “I told you—I’m a very understanding guy.”

  “You so understanding, you want to know what we doing. Why?”

  “I might want to do it, too.”

  Crunch stared at Webster, then said, in a shaking voice, “You don’t know what we doing, but you might want to do it, too.”

  “Why not? Or—I can always make you change rooms.”

  Crunch stopped. He and Webster looked at each other. Crunch threw back his head and laughed. Carefully, he fingered the shoulder strap of his guitar.

  “You ain’t going to make no changes, you slimy motherfucker,” he said, cheerfully. “I’ll beat your brains out if you try. And I’ll tell everybody what you doing—you don’t know what I’m doing. Anyway, we going home, faggot, and we don’t need you no more.” He kept his voice low and cheerful, with a slight smile on his face, for the benefit of the people. “Tell you something else—you say a word to a living ass, or you try to lay a hand on Arthur, you won’t have no tongue, no hands, and no asshole—you’ll find yourself in a mighty sorry condition. We going to finish up down here, real sweet and easy, and then we going home and we don’t need you no more, ever. You going to pay us, and we going home. And I know—you know—that I know you going to pay us.”

  Arthur came loping up, and Crunch laughed and threw one arm around him, the guitar rang, lightly, in the chilly wind.

  “Anyway, you can’t do what we do, brother. You can’t sing.”

  Webster certainly could not imagine what Arthur and Crunch would find themselves doing, an hour or so before they had to jump in the shower and put on their clothes and rush out and face the people—wrestling all around the room, laughing, knowing that the clock was ticking, but so happy that they knew that, somehow, they would be dressed and ready and go out and do their number—so that they could come home, and fall out, and make love again. They were beginning to know each other; the biblical phrase unlocked itself and held them together in a joy as sharp as terror. Crunch lay on his belly for Arthur and pulled Arthur into him, and Arthur la
y on his belly for Crunch, and Crunch entered Arthur—it was incredible that it hurt so much, and yet, hurt so little, that so profound an anguish, thrusting so hard, so deep, accomplished such a transformation, I looked at my hands and they looked new, I looked at my feet and they did, too! But that is how they sang, really, something like fifteen minutes later, out of the joy of their surrender and deliverance, out of their secret knowledge that each contained the other.

  Webster paid the boys, in Washington, ironically meticulous, and with a hostility covered no more effectively—though certainly as vividly—than Adam and Eve imagined themselves to be covered by the poor fig leaves when God came stalking through the garden. He did not, and he clearly regretted this, have anything resembling a flaming sword; and, furthermore, unlike God, he had no way of knowing what the boys might have whispered among themselves concerning his performance as the serpent. He not only lacked the flaming sword, but, what was worse, he had no apple.

  Peanut and Red were bewildered. They thought that Webster’s manner might have been caused by the fact—the news—that Crunch and Arthur were not coming to New York with them. Crunch had “business,” in Washington, some people he had to see: he and Arthur were going to stay in Washington for a day or two, and would be coming home by train.

  Webster protested that he had to say something to the child’s parents. But Crunch said that he and Arthur had already got our parents’ permission, which was true. It had been Crunch’s idea, and he was risking a lot: for he was, after all, more than three years older than Arthur, and he could not really know what Webster might say, once in New York. But he knew that Paul and Florence trusted him—he gambled on his love. He felt that no one who loved Arthur could doubt how much Crunch loved him. And he was right about that, I would know.

  The shadow of their separation, so soon, the shadow of the army, of Korea, fell more heavily every day, on him and on Arthur. They would have taken almost any risk in order to be alone with each other, for a few more hours.

  They would not be alone in New York, not in the same way. Arthur would be with his mother and his father. Crunch had a furnished room, downtown, on Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue, but he would really be with his family, and he had, furthermore, another problem: he had to have money for his mother.

  But he had to be with Arthur, too, and Arthur did not have to have money for his mother. Arthur was expected to have made some money for himself. This came, in a way, to the same thing, but Arthur’s margin was wider, it was a bridge he could cross when he got to it.

  The shadow of the army was heavy, also, on Peanut and Red, but, in a way, they looked forward to it. Peanut would not be sorry to leave his grandmother, and Red would not be sorry to leave the streets. And Crunch might have looked forward to it, too, had there not been so much holding him—his mother, his brothers, and sisters. And he could quickly have been reconciled even to that, since his mother would have an allotment and the children would not starve—but: there was Arthur. He was in love, for the first time consciously, and as perhaps only the very young can be in love. He fell deeper in love with every hour, he loved Arthur more every day. If he had felt a certain panic, bewilderment, at the realization that he had fallen in love with a male, this panic was as nothing compared to his private apprehension that he was more in love with Arthur than Arthur was with him. Arthur was younger, blazed with wonder, as elusive and unpredictable as a kitten. He would be a full-grown cat when Crunch came back—what they might have longed to endure together each would have been forced to endure alone. They would be changed. Red and Peanut dreaded, and anticipated, the end of their youth, in unimaginable conditions, far from home, but Crunch’s youth was ending here, now, where he stood.

  The ground floor of the hotel was a drugstore, which seemed to be open around the clock, never empty, never still. It seemed to function as black community headquarters. Later, Arthur was to discover it, at five o’clock in the morning, still open, with a lone black lady, wearing a hat, sitting at the counter, staring down into her coffee, belching her wine, or with a black boy, sitting, stoned, at one of the tables.

  Webster, after he had paid the boys, decided to double-check with Paul and Florence, and went into a phone booth. Arthur opened the door of the phone booth, and stood there while Webster talked. He did not ask to speak to his parents. Webster said his good-byes, and hung up.

  “Didn’t they say it was all right?” Arthur asked.

  “Yeah,” said Webster irritably. “They said it was all right. I just had to double-check, that’s all.”

  “I understand, sir,” Arthur said. “I was just double-checking, myself.”

  Webster looked at him sharply, but Arthur did not look at Webster, and they walked through the drugstore, onto the sidewalk, where Peanut, Crunch, and Red stood talking, next to the station wagon.

  “Is everything all right, then, sir?” Crunch asked cheerfully, of Webster—but the question was directed at Arthur.

  Both Arthur and Webster understood this, but only Webster was compelled to reply.

  “Everything’s all right,” said Webster, and got into the car. He leaned out of the window. “Come on now, we ready to roll.”

  The boys shook hands and held each other’s shoulders a moment, all four of them terrified now. Crunch was the first to move—he leaned in the window, saying to Webster, “Drive carefully, man, you got a precious cargo, you hear?”

  Red and Peanut got into the station wagon, Red in front, Peanut in back.

  “See you in a couple of days!” cried Arthur.

  The station wagon moved out into the traffic, the hands of the boys waving outside the windows. Peanut turned all the way around, his face against the back window, his long hand waving in the air.

  Crunch and Arthur stood on the sidewalk until the wagon stopped at the first red light. The light changed, and the wagon disappeared.

  Crunch turned and looked at Arthur, his hands in his pockets.

  “Hey. Little fellow.”

  “Hey, yourself.”

  They had a room on the top floor, just under the roof, in this unknown and really somewhat terrifying hotel; it was the end of summer.

  “Let’s go on up and change,” Crunch said, “and maybe try to see this town?”

  With his hands in his pockets and that eyebrow raised, and leaning toward the kid, like a tower leans.

  “Okay.”

  They walked back into the drugstore. At the end of the length of the drugstore were doors opening onto the hotel lobby, and the elevator. A jukebox was playing. The counter sold ice cream sodas, Arthur noted, sandwiches, tea, milk, and hot dogs—the counter was too busy, and Crunch and Arthur were moving too fast for Arthur to be able to register it all.

  “Hey!” he told Crunch. “We can eat here!”

  Crunch was striding to the doors which led to the hotel lobby. He slowed his pace.

  “You hungry?”

  “No. Not yet. I just wonder how long it stays open.”

  They walked through the doors, into the hotel lobby. Crunch had kept the hotel key in his pocket, and so they walked straight to the elevators. Crunch had stayed in one or two hotels before this, on his own, but Arthur never had. He was fascinated by everything, and terrified—fascinated by what he took to be space, and splendor, terrified by the noise. All of the faces they passed were black. The sound was black. Dimly, swiftly, from far away, a white face might move into the light, then out of it. The white face might gleam in a distant corridor, opening or closing a door, or be discerned, briefly, behind the wire mesh of a cage. Otherwise the faces were black.

  The elevator operator, who took his time arriving, was black.

  “How you boys doing?” he asked, with a fine and friendly indifference and Crunch said, “Just fine, sir,” and gave him the number of their floor.

  “Ah,” said the old black man, “you going to the penthouse. I know how you boys doing.”

  The elevator groaned upward, and, eventually, he stopped it, and o
pened the doors. “Watch your step,” he said. “Good night.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Crunch said. He pushed Arthur out before him. “Could you tell me, sir, how long the drugstore downstairs stays open?”

  “It don’t never really close. But, if you want to eat, hit it before two o’clock in the morning. Later than that, you taking a chance—and not just on the food—”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Crunch, after a moment. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” said the old one. “Don’t let the noise up here bother you.” He closed the elevator doors, and the elevator groaned on down.

  But now, it was the early afternoon, and there was no noise at all. They walked the silence to their room, and Crunch unlocked the door. They entered the room, the low and stifling room, just under the roof, a room with two short, narrow beds, one window, a small sink with a naked light bulb over it, the only light in the room.

  Crunch locked the door behind them, and leaned against the door. He looked at the room.

  “I reckon we going be sleeping on the floor,” he said.

  Then he looked at Arthur. Then he laughed—leaned his head against the door, opened his arms, and laughed out loud. Then he stopped laughing, pulled Arthur into his arms, stroked that face, and kissed it, looking into Arthur’s eyes.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I know. I know I’m crazy. I’m crazy about you, I’m where I want to be—okay?”

  Arthur murmured, “You sure ask some crazy questions, man. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

  Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent. Whereas other cities flaunt their history—their presumed glory—in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx. There are some exceedingly vivid monuments along Riverside Drive, but Riverside Drive, alas for history, is on the western edge of Harlem. No plaque indicates that Harlem was once a Dutch province, with two a’s to its name, or that the movie house, on 42nd Street, the New Amsterdam, bears the name the city was given when, again by means of the Dutch, it entered recorded, or acceptable, history. The Dutch lost the city to the English, who, being passionately devoted to a city on their island named York, decided that this was NewYork. The name of the island, an Indian name, Manhattan, was never changed. The conquerors had overlooked something. I always like to think that the spirit of the violated land had whispered, thus far, but no farther. Manhattan, the island on which the city rests, is stronger than New York. As time has begun to indicate; as we shall see.