Just Above My Head Read online

  “Well—it’s hard—to know what to do when somebody drinking a lot—and you can’t talk to him. But I can’t just keep staying out. I’ve got to get out.”

  “You don’t want to go downtown? I’ll ride down with you.”

  “I’m starting to be afraid of Blanche. That girl is evil. She likely to set everything on fire, she know I’m down there.”

  He sighed. “I still don’t know why you can’t come to our house. You could stay there until you figure how to do what you want to do—you want to get to New Orleans—well, Mama could help you find a way to do that.”

  “Arthur. I can’t go to New Orleans like this. My grandmama don’t need another mouth to feed. I don’t want Jimmy to see me like this.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong with you the way you are?”

  She looked down. She said stubbornly, “I got to find a way.”

  He said nothing—there was nothing he could find to say to her stubborn privacy. Something in her had moved far beyond him. But she had always been beyond him, even as a tiny preacher with those eyes as old as Egypt and that voice which had nothing to do with the time she had spent on earth. It was strange to feel, suddenly, sitting in front of her, that in spite of everything—her manner, her voice, her trouble—Julia had not changed. It was mightily disquieting, a mystery, not a pleasant one, and, while his mind could not turn away from this mystery, neither could his mind grasp it. But he had heard in her voice, when she said, I got to find a way, the same inexorable acceptance of the unnameable that he had heard in her voice from the pulpit.

  “Hell,” he said, mysteriously irritated. “You ain’t got to find a way tonight.”

  “How do you know? There is a night coming which won’t have no tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Lord,” he said, disguising his tension with a laugh. “You talk like you still in the pulpit.”

  She said nothing for a long while, and he listened to the sounds from the jukebox. He watched the boys and girls, about their age, older, laughing, talking, seeming to quarrel, moving with and against each other as though they were all bound together by invisible strings, strings which they were both testing and longing to break. Though they were young, they were old, older than he, older than Julia—they seemed to have made their discoveries already. It was this, though, paradoxically, which made them innocent and vulnerable: that they seemed to imagine that there was nothing to discover. They clung to each other, and the jukebox, as though time could never take these away; or as though they had already seen what time could take away and moved and talked and danced now with a kind of belligerent, doomed defiance.

  He looked at Julia, who was watching this scene from far away, or who was, perhaps, not watching this scene at all Her eyes, now, told him nothing.

  “We might as well go,” she said.

  She rose, and he rose with her. He paid the man at the counter, and they walked past the jukebox and the kids at the jukebox, into the streets.

  “Which way do you want to go?” he asked.

  “I think I better go home,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come stay at your house tomorrow.”

  “I’ll walk you,” he said.

  They walked in silence for a while. Then Julia said, “Sometimes, now that I’m out of the pulpit, I feel more in the pulpit than I did when I was preaching.”

  “How come?” he asked.

  The streets were dark and very quiet, people standing in pools of light on street corners and on the stoops.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I see the people better than I did. Maybe I see myself. When I was preaching, I don’t think I knew what I was saying. I didn’t know what it meant.”

  They walked in silence for a while. He did not know what to say.

  “But now it comes back to me. I hear myself again—but really, for the first time.” She was walking with her hands in her pockets. She said, “I didn’t know it was true.”

  “How could you preach it—if you didn’t know it was true?”

  “Oh, I believed it—but I didn’t know. And now, maybe, I don’t believe it but I’m beginning to know.” She looked at him and smiled. “I know that sounds crazy.”

  “Maybe,” he said, after a moment. “Maybe not.”.

  “When I preached about how the Lord, He can cause your soul to tremble,” she said, “I didn’t know that it was true.”

  “Julia. How did you—?” He did not know how to phrase his question. He had been about to ask, What made you change?—but he no longer believed, as he had only a short time ago, that she had changed. This wonder tongue-tied him. It frightened him. And he could not ask What happened to you? He was not sure that he could bear the answer even if she could bear to utter it

  The question hung between them in the soft, dark silence.

  “Maybe it was the funeral you sang at for me,” she said. “What we had to go through to get that poor woman in the ground—or into the kingdom, I don’t know. It came to me that she was true, even if the rest of us were liars. I don’t know.”

  She was silent for a long time. They crossed a street, approaching her house. She took one hand out of her pocket, holding her keys.

  “And then,” she said, “my mother”—and she stopped. He said nothing. Her house came closer. “Mama Monta—your mama—says that my mother was a real sweet, pretty, laughing young thing—I never knew her like that. She was just—my mother.”

  They paused at the bottom of her steps.

  “I’ve kept you out so long,” she said. “You want to step in and have a little refreshment for your long walk home? Don’t want you dropping by the wayside.”

  He did not really want to go in, and he was aware that she, too, was double-minded concerning his possible effect on her father. But he remembered his promise to Crunch; perhaps his presence could help, if only for a moment.

  “Just for a minute,” he said. “I’d like to use the bathroom, please.”

  “No trouble at all.” They climbed the steps, she opened the street door, they walked the dark hall to the Miller apartment.

  She unlocked the apartment door, very quietly, switched on the light, and they stepped inside.

  Her father’s voice came from the living room. “Hey, Julia? Where’ve you been?”

  Arthur felt Julia suck her breath in sharply and, before she could answer and before they could reach the living room, Joel appeared. He was wearing pajamas, carelessly, appallingly open, he was drunk, and he rushed toward Julia.

  “I came home early, especially for you! I don’t never see you no more, where’ve you been?”

  “Daddy,” Julia said, “just to the movies. With Arthur. Arthur brought me home.”

  He had seen only Julia. He had not seen Arthur. Julia’s words checked him.

  He stopped, and looked at Arthur. Arthur had wanted to get to the bathroom, and pee: Joel’s look froze his pee inside him, froze everything inside him. He could not have peed, he could not have moved, not if life itself had depended on it. Joel’s face was wet, his pretty hair was standing all over his head. When he looked at Arthur, his hair seemed to stand up, a muscle in his jaw throbbed, his mouth fell open, and there seemed to rush into his eyes all the wonder and pain and hatred of a lifetime: Joel’s wet lips hanging, his teeth gleaming, the wonder and pain and hatred in his eyes, hatred so powerful that it caused him to shake at the same time that it held him up. His hands shook with anguish to tear out Arthur’s throat.

  “Who are you? What you doing here with my daughter?” He turned to Julia. “You dragging them in off the streets now?”

  “Daddy,” said Julia, “this is Arthur. You know him, you know him from when he was little.”

  “The hell you say! He damn sure ain’t little now. What you doing, coming in here this time of night, with my daughter? I don’t want her fooling around with black scum like you! She got her daddy to look out for her!”

  Arthur said, “You know me, Brother Miller. You know my whole family—my father and my mother and my b
rother, Hall. I’m Paul Montana’s son.”

  These credentials, as Joel stood leaning in the passage way, seemed slowly to penetrate his brain. He said, “Paul Montana? The piano player?”

  “That’s right. I’m his youngest son. Julia and me, we just went to the movies, and I walked her home. That’s all.”

  Joel’s lips slowly came together. His eyes changed, cleared, focused—and he saw Arthur. When he saw Arthur, he saw something else—his nakedness. He straightened, tried to close his pajamas. He said to Julia, “You should have said something, daughter.”

  “You didn’t give me time, Daddy.”

  She was looking at him with pity, and from very far away.

  Joel looked at Arthur again, and what Arthur now saw in the eyes was harder to bear than the hatred of a short time before. A short time before—seconds before—the eyes had been alive with hatred, as brilliant and black as coal; now they were lifeless and dead with terror. Seconds before, his voice had shaken the walls and menaced the neighborhood sleep; now his voice was a cracked, dry whisper.

  “How’s your father?” he managed. “Ain’t seen him in a long while—guess that’s why I didn’t recognize you.” He tried to smile. “You have to forgive me, son. These have been some trying days since my wife passed. I ain’t over it yet.” He looked at Julia, and, strangely, life flickered again in the eyes, and, incredibly, for that second, Arthur was very moved by the man. He looked again at Arthur. “I been almost crazy worrying about my daughter, now that she ain’t got no mother.” He tried to smile, tried to put it all behind them. “Can’t blame a man for trying to protect his only daughter. She’s all I got.” He turned to Julia. “Take Arthur in the living room, daughter, give him something to drink. I was just getting ready to go to bed.” He smiled at Arthur. “No sense in me trying to keep up with you young folks.” Astoundingly, abruptly sober, he extended his hand to Arthur. “Forgive me, son. I was just trying to protect my daughter. No hard feelings?”

  Arthur shook his hand. “No, sir. No hard feelings.”

  Joel started up the staircase. “Good night, daughter. See you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Daddy. Sleep well.”

  “Good night, Arthur. Say hello to your family for me. Me and Julia be coming to see you soon.”

  “Good night, Brother Miller.”

  Joel disappeared up the stairs. They remained where he had left them, like two frightened children—Arthur fighting back a terrifying impulse to crack up with laughter.

  “Can I go pee now?” he asked Julia.

  They looked at each other a moment and then Julia laughed. They laughed together, low, bewildered, frightened laughter, like children not wishing to be heard laughing. They heard Joel upstairs. Julia said, “You better, before you cause a real scandal,” and they laughed again, until Arthur was afraid he might really pee in his pants. “Hurry up,” said Julia. “Go on. I’ll see what we got to drink.”

  By the time he came back, Julia had poured him a beer, and he no longer felt like laughing.

  “Girl,” he said, sitting beside her on the sofa, and picking up his beer, “what you going to do?”

  She said, not looking at him, “Can’t say. I mean, I really can’t say.” Then, still not looking at him, her arms folded, “Don’t talk to nobody about my daddy, what you saw and heard tonight—I know you won’t—I’m going to find a way to do what I have to do.” Then she looked at him with a look so candid that he wondered what she knew. “You going to have to do the same thing, one way or another—you know? We all do. Sometimes I think, maybe my daddy, he never found that out—but one thing I can tell you”—and she turned away from him, leaning forward, her hands on her knees, he saw again the great difference—the distance—between her eyes and her father’s eyes—”Julia ain’t dead. Julia far from dead.”

  BOOK FOUR

  Stepchild

  Lead me to the rock

  That is higher than I.

  SONG

  I CAME home in the fall of the year that Arthur turned eighteen. I think I came home on a Sunday. Arthur met me at the pier. I remember this long, long shed, thousands of people shouting and crying and laughing around me—and the ugly, pinched white faces of the officials at the pier, who didn’t seem at all happy to see so many uniformed black cats home—and then, a kind of space cleared and, from very far away, I saw Arthur kind of loping in my direction. I could tell that he hadn’t seen me yet, hadn’t picked me out of the khaki-colored tumult. He was taller, and so it seemed to me he’d lost weight. The sun was behind him, throwing his face in shadow. I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but I could feel his apprehension and anticipation. I watched him, maneuvering myself into his path. Something I did, some telltale gesture of mine, no doubt, snagged the corner of his eye, made him turn his head and look directly at me. His whole face opened, he suddenly looked about two years old, and he started running toward me. I dropped my bags, and grabbed him, lifted him off his feet and held him above my head.

  “Hey, young lion! How you been?”

  I set him down, and we hugged each other. I pulled away, held him by the shoulders to look into his face. He looked like he couldn’t stop grinning—I guess I looked the same way.

  “Hall. Goddamn, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too, baby. You all right? You look kind of skinny.”

  “Oh, come on, you just don’t remember how I look. You really look skinny—you lost some weight, man.”

  “A little. I’ll get it back.”

  “You damn sure will, soon as Mama sees you.”

  “How is Mama? And Daddy?”

  “They fine. Mama’s been cooking for the last twenty-four hours and ain’t satisfied with nothing yet.”

  We laughed and we picked up my bags and started for the street.

  “How was it over there?”

  “Just a small police action, son. Had to put them gooks in their places. They worse than the niggers, thinking they got a right to a whole country. Why, even the worst niggers here don’t want but a little piece of the country. But we showed them. We put them in their places—six feet under.”

  He had been watching my face. “It was bad?”

  “Oh, yeah, baby, it was filthy. Thought I was going crazy, don’t know if I’ll ever get clean.”

  We came into the sunlight, into the street. I had not seen these streets in so long, and I had seen so many other things, that they hit me like a hammer. People adjust to the scale of things around them—cottages, streams, bridges, wells, narrow winding roads—and now I was in a howling wilderness, where everything was out of scale. For a second I wondered how I could ever have lived here, how anyone could live here. I had not heard this noise in so long—incessant, meaningless, reducing everyone to a reflex, just as the towering walls of the buildings forced everyone to look down, into the dogshit at their feet. No one ever looked up, that was certain, except to watch some maddened creature leap from the walls, or to calculate their own leap—yet people lived here, and so had I, and I would: what a wonder. What a marvel.

  I was repelled, but fascinated: embittered, but home.

  I watched the press of cars and cops around the place. I asked Arthur, “How the fuck we ever going to get out of here?”

  “I got a car, man, don’t worry. You just stand right there.”

  He looked from right to left, looking for someone, started across the street, turned back, to stand in front of me.

  “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Hall. I missed you. You don’t know.” Then he started across the street again. Stay there. I’ll be right back.”

  And he disappeared.

  Staying there was not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. People kept pushing past me as though I were not there, and the cops kept shouting, “Keep moving, please, keep moving!” I moved back a little from the curb, but I really couldn’t move very far without being swept back into the building. Women, young and not so youn
g, glowed past me with their loved ones, home safe from the wars; women were there with small children, even with babies in their arms. Yes, papas and mamas and sons were there, and sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins, all of them celebrating their miracle which is homecoming. Out of the jaws of death—and, for the moment, it did not matter that they had passed through one danger only to enter another. Keep moving. Keep moving—I looked at the cop, he looked at me: something in my look made him look around him, and look away. Cars and cabs piled—parked—three deep, picked up the heroes and their loved ones, and crawled agonizingly into the furious city. Arthur suddenly reappeared, and picked up two of my bags.

  “Come on.” I picked up my duffel bag and followed him into the chaos of automobiles and people. Arthur opened the trunk of a fairly old blue Pontiac, put the two bags in, took my duffel bag and threw it in, and closed the trunk. He opened the doors.

  “You ride in front, so you can see the city—I’m sure you want to see our fair city. Look who I got to be your chauffeur.”

  He got in back, I got in front. I slammed my door shut, and, for a minute, I didn’t recognize my driver—who stared at me with a big grin on his face.

  “Goddamn,” I said finally, “Peanut!”

  “That’s right, man. I changed that much?”

  We laughed, and hugged each other as best we could, with the steering wheel between us.

  I said, “Yes—no, I can’t tell, man—yeah, you’ve changed a little. You put on some weight.”

  “A little. You didn’t, though. Look like you lost weight.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. I’ll get it back.”

  We started moving. “Lord,” said Peanut, “let us get out of this shit and get on home where you can start putting on some weight”—he grinned at me—”and get out of that funky uniform and Arthur can pour us a little taste and we can get to the grits.”

  “How you been, Peanut? What you been doing? I’m sure glad to see you.”

  “I been busting my nuts in Washington, dee cee, the capital of our great land, with some hincty, jive-ass, half-white niggers, trying not to blow my stack, and coming up here for weekends every time I could. I just ran into Arthur by accident, man, yesterday, and”—he grinned—”he pressed me into service.” We were turning east, away from the water and the boats and the warfare just behind me, but we were in a bottleneck still. “Patience,” said Peanut, watching the traffic and beginning to inch slowly across the avenue. Somebody honked his horn behind us. “Keep farting, motherfucker. You might see some shit.”