Just Above My Head Read online

  I picked up his glass. I couldn’t help laughing, because of his intensity and because of my love, but then I said, very soberly, “No, brother. I do not think that at all. You sound like you’ve been working. You sound like you are working.”

  I stood up and I would have started for the kitchen, with both our glasses in my hands, but I was checked, held, by something in his face.

  “It’s strange to feel,” he said, “that you come out of something, and something you can’t name, you don’t know what it is—something that has never happened anywhere, ever, in the world, before.” He grinned, and clapped his hands. “I don’t know no other people learned to play honky-tonk, whorehouse piano in church!” He collapsed, laughing, on the sofa, and I almost dropped the glasses. “And keep both of them going, too, baby, and all the time grinning in Mister Charlie’s face.” He wiped his eyes. “Wow. And sing a sorrow song so tough, baby, that it leaves sorrow where sorrow is, and gets you where you going.” He subsided, looking toward my window. “And that’s the beat.”

  I walked into the kitchen with the glasses and poured vodka on the rocks for him and a Scotch on the rocks for me. At the front door, I heard the key turn in the lock.

  It was either Julia or Jimmy, and I stood still in the kitchen, waiting.

  It was Jimmy. But—I looked at my watch—Julia should be arriving soon.

  I heard: “Hey! Arthur! Don’t you remember me?”

  A beat: “Goddamn. Jimmy—you live here?”

  “Oh, I hang out here from time to time—I’m glad to see you, man!”

  Jimmy had leapt up on Arthur by the time I came out of the kitchen, as friendly and unwieldy as a Great Dane puppy.

  Arthur was both astounded and delighted—and somewhat relieved when he finally managed to disentangle himself from Jimmy’s arms and legs. He held him by the shoulders and stared into his face.

  “Hey! I’m glad to see you, too. When did you get back here?”

  “Not long—a month, maybe—”

  “Where’s Julia?’

  “Julia—I thought she was here already.”

  Arthur turned and looked at me, riding between astonishment and laughter.

  I said to Jimmy, “I haven’t had time to tell him everything, son. He just got here, too. Why don’t you get whatever you want out of the kitchen and join us?”

  Jimmy looked as though he thought he’d done wrong. I handed Arthur his vodka, and laughed, and grabbed Jimmy by one shoulder.

  “Don’t worry—why you looking like that? Julia’s going to be here in a few minutes and, if you put on some decent clothes, I’ll take you all out to dinner someplace on one of my credit cards.”

  “He ain’t never said that to me,” said Arthur. “I did’t even know about his credit cards.” Jimmy laughed. “Come on in the house, man. I just got in from Canada, and I been doing all the talking. But I think I already got everything pretty well figured out.” He winked. “I’m delighted you part of the family. I mean that.”

  Jimmy said, “Man, I am, too,” and walked into the kitchen.

  Arthur and I sat down again in our easy chairs.

  “I’ll bring you up-to-date presently,” I said—but I felt a strange discomfort.

  Arthur lifted his chin and sucked his teeth. “Baby. Don’t you worry about it. Wow.” Then he laughed. “Life is the toughest motherfucker going.”

  Jimmy came in with a vodka on the rocks. He suddenly looked very vulnerable, and I watched Arthur watching him.

  “I’ll have to go home to change my clothes,” he said.

  “Well. Wait till Julia gets here,” I said, “and I’ll figure out where we’re going to eat and you’ll meet us there.”

  I realized that Arthur also felt a powerful discomfort, and I watched Jimmy watching him.

  In my experience—and this is a very awkward way to put it, since I don’t really know what the word experience means—the strangest people in one’s life are the people one has known and loved, still know and will always love. Here, both I and the vocabulary are in trouble, for strangest does not imply stranger. A stranger is a stranger is a stranger, simply, and you watch the stranger to anticipate his next move. But the people who elicit from you a depth of attention and wonder which we helplessly call love are perpetually making moves which cannot possibly be anticipated. Eventually, you realize that it never occurred to you to anticipate their next move, not only because you couldn’t but because you didn’t have to: it was not a question of moving on the next move, but simply, of being present. Danger, true, you try to anticipate and you prepare yourself, without knowing it, to stand in the way of death. For the strangest people in the world are those people recognized, beneath one’s senses, by one’s soul—the people utterly indispensable for one’s journey.

  So now, sitting before my big West End Avenue apartment window, feeling the discomfort which had entered the room with Jimmy and which, had immobilized Arthur, though I did not know what was going to happen, I did know that something had happened. I will not say that I looked ahead; clearly, anyway, during all this time, I have been painfully looking backward. But I was glad that Jimmy and Arthur had met at my house, and I was glad that Julia would soon be turning her key in the lock. I was, perhaps defensively, more amused than astonished. Our two little brothers would be compelled to deal with each other and leave the two weary old folks alone.

  Jimmy had guts. He said, “Maybe we can work together up yonder, one of these days—I play piano—”

  “I play piano, too,” said Arthur, more coldly than I had ever heard him sound. “And I ain’t going back up yonder for a while. I’m thinking of going south.”

  “I just came back,” said Jimmy promptly. “I’d love to go there with you.”

  Arthur gave Jimmy a look, which, though it was genuinely exasperated, was also genuinely amazed. He was seeing Jimmy for the first time. He was seeing a stranger who might become a part of his life in quite another way than he had been until now. His nostrils and his upper lip quivered slightly. He could not quite believe that Jimmy was saying so blatantly what he was saying. Arthur was made uncomfortable, too, I could see, by my presence in the room; my presence did not disturb Jimmy at all. Arthur stared at Jimmy helplessly, but he was no longer looking at Julia’s kid brother. His eyes darkened—or rather, a light went on, deep behind his eyes, and a most unwilling smile touched his lips.

  Jimmy was tranquil, smug, triumphant: he had made Arthur look at him—at him: tranquil, triumphant, and smug as he appeared to be, he was also a little frightened, now, of the scrutiny he had so recklessly demanded.

  “Well,” said Arthur, after a moment. “We’ll talk about it.” Then, “You sure you want to hang out with an old man like me?”

  Jimmy laughed, and I laughed, too—then Arthur laughed.

  “You don’t look so old to me,” Jimmy said, and now he had Arthur’s full attention. Though, as I say, I knew nothing, officially, about Arthur’s life at that moment, I knew more than he thought I knew; or, more accurately, far more than he had told me. I could see how it all made perfect, idyllic sense to Jimmy, who would have a family again, or who would, perhaps, have a family for the first time. He would have Julia and me and Arthur, all of us belonging to each other. I could see, too, as Arthur couldn’t, that Jimmy had probably had a crush on Arthur all his life.

  Then the bell rang, sharply, three times, Julia’s sometime signal, and she came on in the house.

  Julia sometimes rang the bell, according to Julia, because she didn’t want to seem to be spying on me, or risk catching me in my sins: and I accepted this nonsense, as I accepted almost everything from Julia, in those days, with a wry delight.

  She was carrying packages, she was dressed in something brown and yellow, she was bareheaded and radiant from the wind outside, and she hadn’t gained any weight. I watched her figure very closely in those days because I was hoping to get her pregnant, and so persuade her to marry me.

  “My Lord,” she said, and pu
t her packages on the table, “we got the whole family here today!” She kissed me briefly, pulled her brother’s hair, and ran to Arthur. They held each other a moment, in silence: it was nice to see. “When did you get back here?”

  “Just today. It’s wonderful to see you. How are you?—you look wonderful.”

  “I’m fine—you know your brother’s turned me into a fallen woman?” and she left Arthur and came to stand next to me.

  Arthur grinned. “He hasn’t had a chance to tell me much of anything, I been doing all the talking—but I figured it out—it agrees with both of you.”

  “He didn’t figure it out,” said Jimmy proudly, “until he saw me come bouncing in here.”

  “Yeah,” said Arthur. “Your brother done got loud since I last saw him—what you figure on doing with him?”

  “We’ve been running ads in the papers for days,” said Julia, “but we can’t find nobody to give him to—”

  “I understand that,” said Arthur. “I’d sure think twice about it. Wouldn’t never get no sleep.” He scowled at Jimmy, who grinned, and, in a kind of insolent, delighted panic, lit a cigarette.

  “Somebody told me once,” he said, “that most people sleep too much.”

  “Not with you around, they don’t,” said Arthur. He said to Julia, “It would save you a lot of money if you’d let me strangle him right now.”

  “Ah! Let me have a drink first, and I’ll think about it.”

  “Sit down,” I said. “I’m bartender. What do you want?”

  “He always asks me that,” said Julia. “And he knows I drink gin—have we got any gin?”

  “Brought some in from Canada,” Arthur said proudly, and they sat down.

  I went into the kitchen. I knew what Arthur was worried about, and I wished I could talk to him about it. I wanted to say, Dig it, man, whatever your life is, it’s perfectly all right with me. I just want you to be happy. Can you dig that? But that’s a little hard to say, if your brother hasn’t given you an opening. I thought that I would try to make an opening; then I thought that little Jimmy was perfectly capable of spilling all the beans in sight. He didn’t care who knew what—he trusted his sister more than Arthur trusted me; but then, an older sister is a very different weight, in a man’s life, than an older brother. Arthur was worried about another man’s judgment; in this case, mine. He was worried about Jimmy’s youth. He was frightened, already, though I don’t think he knew this, and could certainly not have said it, by Jimmy’s speed and single-mindedness: for Jimmy had lit his insolent cigarette on Arthur’s wouldn’t never get no sleep as though he were saying let’s try me, and see. I laughed a little to myself in the kitchen, as I fixed Julia’s drink: unless I missed my guess, Jimmy had Arthur in his sights and wasn’t thinking about changing his mind. And, if the weather got rough, Jimmy would turn to me—I could see that coming, too: after all, he had both me and Julia. I would have to tell him the truth, which was that I really felt that it would be a damn good thing for both of them, and a great load off my mind. It would be a great load off Julia’s mind, too, and then, maybe, the two weary old folks could be left alone. For the fate and the state of her baby brother was in the center of Julia’s mind, and there was no way for me not to respect that, for the fate and the state of my baby brother was in the center of my mind, too.

  Well. I took Julia her drink, and, eventually, we decided where we were going to eat—at Harlem’s Red Rooster, though I wasn’t sure they took credit cards—and Jimmy bounced out of the house to go downtown and change his clothes, and meet us there.

  That left the three of us to have a quiet drink alone, in front of the West End Avenue window. “Lord,” said Arthur. “Time is flying so fast, I know, now, we’ll never catch up.”

  “Yes,” said Julia, “I was looking at you and thinking of the last time we saw each other—and that room on Fourteenth Street, remember?” And she laughed and then they both laughed. Then, “When was the last time you saw Crunch?”

  “I haven’t seen Crunch—oh, for a long time now—not since before Christmas.”

  “And what was he doing?”

  They looked at each other. A strange, deep, unconscious sorrow flooded both their faces.

  “I don’t really know,” said Arthur. “He’d been doing a little bit of everything—”

  “He was working in a settlement house for a while,” I said. “And then I think he was in Philadelphia for a while, and then, I don’t know.”

  “He came to see me in New Orleans,” Julia said. “Did you know that?”

  Arthur nodded, his eyes big with pain.

  “I had the feeling,” Julia said, “that something had happened to him in Korea, that something got broken—somehow—”

  “Well,” said Arthur, “I know he was worried about you—and the baby” He sipped his drink, and looked down. “I couldn’t reach him.”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t just that. Crunch was always worried about something. I had the feeling, I keep coming back to it, it’s the only way I can put it—that something got broken.”

  Arthur stared out of the window. “Well. He damn sure wouldn’t let nobody touch it—whatever it was.” He dared to say, “I tried.”

  He was holding everything very carefully in, but I knew that he was not very far from tears—he was not very far, after all, from his time with Crunch. But neither Julia, nor I, were supposed to know anything about that. “He was bitter,” Arthur said. “I had never known him to be bitter before.”

  “A lot of us came back from over there bitter,” I said. “It was a bitter thing to be part of.” I looked at Arthur, who turned to look at me. “It was bitter to see that you were part of a country that didn’t give a fuck about you, or anybody else.”

  “That’s true,” Arthur said. “I see that.” Then, “But you’re not bitter.”

  “I’m not going to let it kill me,” I said. “But I’m bitter.”

  Julia looked at me with a wry, pained pursing of the lips. “You’re a little like a loaded gun,” she said. “Sometimes—you know,” she said to Arthur, “you’re afraid to touch it, it might go off.” Arthur nodded, watching her. “Like Jimmy, every time he comes back from one of his trips south.”

  “He told me he’d just come back—he’s been working down there?”

  “Yes,” said Julia. “I don’t know how to stop him—but—I guess I wouldn’t even if I could.”

  Then we were silent, watching the evening gather outside my window. I thought of Jimmy, in the subway now, rushing home to get into his glad rags to come rushing back uptown. I knew how Julia trembled for him every time he went south, how she feared the newspapers, the radio, the television set; flinched each time the telephone rang, and trembled even more when it didn’t. And, even now, with Jimmy merely riding the subway in New York, not totally at ease; he was surrounded, after all, by a lonely and vindictive and unpredictable people. We were, none of us, ever, totally at ease. Our countrymen gave our children a rough way to go, and it was hard not to hate them for the brutality of their innocence.

  “I’ve got to get there soon,” said Arthur slowly. “I’ve been wanting to get there for a while, but my manager always has other plans.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like keeping you alive, for example, so he can keep on paying his rent.”

  We laughed, and Arthur said, “That’s the most bitter thing I ever heard you say, brother.”

  “I just never wanted to meddle in your business. But I know about managers.”

  “I always hoped that, maybe, one day, you would manage me.”

  “Me? Are you crazy?”

  “No. Daddy hopes so, too.”

  Arthur said this with that throwaway, wide-eyed cunning which had sometimes made me want to strangle him as a child. He sipped his vodka, looked out of the window, looked at me. I had a cigarette between my lips, and he lit it for me. He said, looking into my eyes, “Not right now—but—later. Soon. I know you got other things to do—can I have another drin
k? Before you take us out to eat? Big brother?”

  Julia laughed, and took his glass and walked into the kitchen.

  “Will you think about it?”

  “You know fucking well I got to think about it—now!”

  “Don’t be bitter,” Arthur said.

  “That’s right,” said Julia, returning, and handing Arthur his drink. She kissed me on the cheek. “Lord. You don’t know how blessed we are—just to be together in this room.”

  I put my arm around her, and looked at my brother. “That’s true. But you’re ganging up on me.”

  Julia and Arthur laughed together. Julia took my glass.

  “That’s right. You being persecuted. You need another drink, just before you really go round the bend.” I laughed, too, watching them: I didn’t mind their ganging up on me. Julia said to Arthur, “Watch over your brother while I go and fix my face—he’s taking us out, we got to look correct.” She went back to the kitchen, throwing over her shoulder, “He’s not bitter, Arthur, he’s just damn near paranoiac—he’ll be hearing voices pretty soon.”

  I sat down opposite Arthur. It was dark now, the only light came from the kitchen. But, in a moment, Julia returned and put my glass in my hand, and switched on a lamp. She kissed me on the forehead: how sweet it is: to be loved by you, Arthur watching this with a smile, then vanished into the corridor which led to the bathroom and the bedroom. “I won’t be a minute!”

  I really wanted to follow her. Arthur saw this in my face. We laughed softly together, touched glasses, and drank. Arthur said, “I’m happy to see you happy, brother. And she’s happy. I think that’s a miracle.” He grinned. “It strengthens my faith.”