Just Above My Head Read online

  Then, I would get dressed—dressed: she was everywhere, she used to help me dress. This tie, no, she didn’t like that tie, this shirt goes better with your skin, she said, my God, Hall, where did you get those socks? Oh, Lord, and wander around that house, those rooms, in and out of that fucking kitchen, Christ, the dishes, fuck the dishes, one shoe in my hand and one shoe on my foot, looking down to make sure they were the same color at least, taking out ice cubes and pouring myself a drink, running an ice cube over my face to stop the tears from flowing, forcing myself to sip the drink instead of smashing the glass against the wall, hearing myself laugh as I got the other shoe on, looking into the mirror, dressed, it’s all right, you look all right, where has Hall gone? Then pouring myself another drink and turning on the record player and sitting in front of my window.

  All day, sometimes, all night. The phone would ring, it would be my mother, or my father, just calling to say hello, and we’d love to see you, soon as you get the time, or it would be Arthur, long distance, clowning about his life as a gospel singer—delicately suggesting that he could use me out there, if I could find the time.

  And I would have to respond, somehow, if only for the exasperating split second, to the unspoken—their respect for my life, and for my pain. I knew that they were not listening, for an instant, to anything I said—which meant that I did not have to say much. They were listening to the tone of my voice, were checking, in effect, my temperature. I didn’t want them to start worrying about emergency wards and blood transfusions, after all, I loved them, too, and so I guess I sounded, all things considered, all right.

  Yes, we save or damn or lose each other: of this, my soul is a witness. I was under, and nearly helpless, but I was not gone—so those faraway voices insisted, therefore, I was still among the living.

  Anyway, Paul and Florence dropped by one evening. Paul had come to take me downtown, to hear a new piano player. Florence just wanted to lie down, she said, and she’d wait till we came back. Paul said that he had a taxi waiting, and so I’d have to hurry, and I did. I was glad to see them, and glad to get out of the house. Paul and I went down to the Village, and the piano player was not bad, in fact, he was very good. My father and I didn’t talk much, but we had a very nice time, and I laughed a lot, for the first time, it seemed to me, in the Lord knows when. It was a funny kind of laughter, because it hurt, hurt the way an unused muscle hurts. But Paul liked to see me laugh—why had I never noticed that before?—and I had always loved hanging out with him. I remembered again how proud I had been the first time I realized that he was proud of me. He got me a little drunk, and I knew he was doing it deliberately; he was a kind of honored guest of the house, and people kept coming over to our table, and he was kind of showing off, for me; the young piano player announced his presence, and played a number for him. Paul kept ordering doubles for me, and then, one for the road—which tune, the piano player obligingly played.

  Maybe it’s not a great song. I’ll never know. I was leaning forward, laughing, talking some shit to Paul, when I heard:

  We’re drinking, my friend,

  to the end

  of a brief episode,

  and I looked at my father and I opened my mouth and I couldn’t catch my breath, I felt my father grab one of my hands in his, and that was all, all, I swear to you, that held me in this world, this life, the lights swung, like circus lights, inside and outside my head, I was on some maniacal merry-go-round, and I still couldn’t catch my breath or close my mouth, I held on to my father’s hand.

  so,

  make it one for my baby,

  and one more,

  for the road.

  And I closed my mouth, or my mouth closed itself, it hurt my teeth, and when my mouth closed itself and my breath came back, it hurt my chest so, and the tears came pouring down. I just sat there, shaking from head to toe, and I know I didn’t make a sound, with water pouring down my face.

  that long, long road!

  My father didn’t stroke my hand, he just held it—held it hard. Then he pushed a handkerchief across the table, near my other hand. I don’t know if anybody noticed what was happening. I guess not, I don’t know. I hadn’t made a sound. Paul never looked around.

  I took the handkerchief with my free hand, then took my other hand away from Paul’s, and put my face in the handkerchief and wiped my face and blew my nose.

  I looked up. Paul was smiling—a strange, sad, proud smile, and his eyes were wet. He was very very cool about it, but his eyes were wet.

  He said, “I can’t blow your nose for you no more, son.” Then, “But you seem to be getting the hang of it.”

  Then we both laughed—laughed until we almost cried. I said that I wanted revenge—I would buy him one for the road. And so I did, and we got out of there sometime long after the joint was closed, and my father took me home, where my mother sat, watching The Late Late Late Late Late Show. Then they very calmly took their leave, and I crashed.

  In the morning, I realized that my mother had gone over the house with a toothbrush and a fine-tooth comb, scouring, vacuuming, ventilating, exterminating, had hung up all my clothes, and washed all the dishes—meaning: that the rest was up to me.

  And so: Peanut and Arthur and I drive south.

  In those days, Arthur had no musicians, simply sang behind whatever the local scene offered, or accompanied himself. Peanut was standby, and man Friday, to handle practical details and hold off the mob: for, curiously—though I did not see this then—Peanut was the first to recognize the dimensions, and the potential—to say nothing of the potential danger—of Arthur’s popularity. Only he knew, for example, how many churches, deacons, pastors, all over the South, had heard of Arthur, and wanted to see him; only he knew how passionately Arthur’s voice was claimed by the students. And this was almost entirely by word of mouth, for Arthur had made no records then. Well, he had appeared on a few, four or five, maybe, with various choirs; but, as these had all been recorded “live,” that is to say, had not been recorded in a studio, and as he had been singing with that choir that day or evening anyway; and, as he had not been paid for it, or had been paid something minimal; he had not thought of them as records, it had not occurred to him that his voice carried any further than the given space he happened to occupy at the given moment. Even this is not entirely true, for rumors reached our ears—but they were not real. They were real, however, for Paul, who heard a coming thunder—that is why he wanted me to manage Arthur—and it was certainly real enough for Peanut, who had promised Arthur’s presence, and who was de facto manager on this maiden voyage.

  I always say Birmingham, because Birmingham, Alabama, was the most wicked and loathsome city I had ever seen in my life. I am not the only nigger, who, dreaming of Birmingham, wakes up in a cold sweat, stifling a scream. But, in fact, our first stop was Richmond, Virginia. Then we were going to Atlanta, Birmingham, and Tallahassee. These places are not exactly garden spots, either, they certainly weren’t then—nor are they now; but I was to discover, during this trip, and, later, during so many others, that one would do almost anything to avoid spending an extra night in Birmingham. It sounds insane, perhaps, but, in those years, if one couldn’t get as far as Washington, or New York, one breathed a great sigh of relief upon arriving in Atlanta. This is not because Atlanta had seen the light, but because the city simply could not afford public scandals any longer. To give up public lynchings—which had only lately, after all, begun to be looked on as public scandals—was a small price to pay for continued investments and galloping prosperity. And, in any case, life went on as usual—exactly as before—just outside Atlanta, in the Georgia pines.

  We traveled by car—instructive: we never did it again. I think Arthur had to find out something, wanted to see for himself, exactly what had changed on these roads since he had traveled them last. Peanut was willing to teach him; Peanut was endlessly willing to see. And they both, for different reasons, in their different fashions, wanted to see what I saw, w
anted to see it through my eyes. I think that they felt, obscurely—and I think I understand this—that what I saw, since I was seeing it for the first time, would cause all three of us to see what no single one of us would have been able to see alone.

  And, as you travel that road, having crossed the bridge, or got through the tunnel, into and out of blighted New Jersey, getting out of Newark, bypassing Trenton, heading south, to Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and then, to the unimaginable regions below, you are traveling through history, and at almost exactly the same rate of speed at which that history was created. It is all “new.” It is all, already, older than dust. Nothing you pass took longer to throw up, nor will it take longer to pull down, than the moment of your eye’s brief and flinching encounter. On the other hand, there is the road, as endless as history, to be endured.

  And, on this road, you must stop, from time to time: if history makes demands on flesh, flesh makes demands on history. The demands flesh makes on history are not always easily met: the further down you go, the more vivid this truth becomes.

  But no one says anything—what is there to say? And, indeed, we are all very cheerful with each other, and the bright blue day. We stop for gas in, I think, Delaware.

  Just the same, I have, without having thought about it, become very aware of colors, am sniffing for attitudes. It is a white station attendant who fills the tank, a pasty-faced blond boy, whose face holds no expression, who seems to have no attitudes of any kind. I get out of the car, I want to pee. Arthur gets out to stretch his legs.

  Arthur points out the rest room to me. Peanut is still in the car. Arthur walks up and down. I go to the rest room, pee, and come back.

  “I’ll be right back,” says Arthur, and runs over to the rest room.

  Peanut pays the attendant, winks at me, and moves the car into the parking area. He switches off the motor, gets out of the car, locks it. Arthur comes back.

  “My turn,” says Peanut, and makes it to the rest room.

  “You want to get something to eat here, brother?” Arthur asks. “Or—you want to wait?” He grins. “Only—it might be quite a wait.”

  I know that, in principle, and on the road, public accommodations have been desegregated. But I don’t say this.

  “It’s up to you,” I say.

  “Well, if you hungry, it might be better to eat here, because, you know, otherwise, we might not be able to get nothing to eat until we get where we going—and that’s some hours away.”

  “Well,” I say, “we’ll let Peanut decide.”

  Peanut comes strolling back, and we—or rather, I—put the question to him.

  “Man,” says Peanut, after a moment, “let’s just grab a cup of coffee, or a Coke, or something, and get on to where we going.” He looks sharply at the car, and we start walking toward the coffee counter. “This place serves dogshit, man, let’s go where we can eat.”

  So we get our coffees, and walk back to the car with them. Standing beside the car, we drink our coffees, and smoke our cigarettes. We say very little. All of our attention is beginning to be focused on something else, something concerning which there is absolutely nothing to say. Peanut takes our coffee containers, and, very carefully, drops them into the trash bin.

  He looks at Arthur, and grins. “That’s the way they do in Canada, right: Everything is clean!”

  “You get a ticket if you leave anything dirty,” says Arthur, and they laugh. We get back into the car, and roll away.

  “You want me to drive?” Arthur asks.

  “Shit, no. You got to sing tonight.”

  “Well. You got to play piano.”

  “That don’t involve my voice. But I sure don’t want you wearing out your New York accent on this man’s road. You might never sing again.” They both laugh. Then, “No, I’m all right,” Peanut says.

  It is near dusk, not quite dusk. Arthur is leaning back, humming. We are in Virginia now, approaching our destination—but we are still on the highway—and I say to Peanut, “Man, I’m sorry, but my back teeth are beginning to float. Can we stop for a minute, so I can take a piss?”

  Peanut immediately looked into the rearview mirror. The road behind us was almost empty—almost, but not quite; the heavy traffic was on the other side, going north.

  “Hold it a minute,” Peanut said. “I damn sure can’t stop along here.”

  It was true. There was no margin on the highway, no shoulder, no cover. There were trees, but they were on the far side of a ditch.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Just stop if you can, when you can.”

  I leaned back, and looked out of the window, angry at myself, because I knew that my pressing need had been partly produced by my panic. The panic I had been suppressing had transferred itself to my bladder, from which receptacle it could, in principle, oh happy day, be discharged. The sky, the trees, the landscape, flew past. The land was flat: no cover. Then I heard dogs yelping, yowling, barking through this landscape, looking for my ancestors, looking for my grandfather, my grandmother, looking for me. I heard the men breathing, heard their boots, heard the dick of the gun, the rifle: looking for me. And there was no cover. The trees were no cover. The ditch was a trap. The horizon was ten thousand miles away. One could never reach it, drop behind it, stride the hostile elements all the way—to Canada? Round and round the tree: no cover. Into the tall grass: no cover. That hill, over yonder: too high, not high enough, no cover. Circle back, no cover; pissing as you run, no cover; the breath and the hair and the odor and the teeth of the dogs, no cover; the eyes and the gun and the blow of the master, no, no cover; and the blood running down, the tears and the snot and the piss and the shit running out, dragged by dogs out of the jaws of dogs, forever and forever and forever, no mercy, and no cover!

  We came to a rest area, a wide shoulder off the road, empty. Peanut pulled over, and I jumped out, ran to the farthest tree, and pissed against it. It seemed to take forever, boiling back up at me from the ground, from the tree, but, yes, in a funny way, part of my panic came out with my piss. I was going to have to find a way to deal with both.

  I got back into the car, and Peanut, as though he knew exactly what had happened to me, laughed, and said, “You think you ready to hit it now, big brother?”

  And I laughed, and said, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  We got to the home of our hostess, in Richmond; a plain, wooden house, with a gate, on a tree-lined street. A Mrs. Isabel Reed, a dark, plump lady in her forties, a high school teacher who might not have her job much longer. She trusted her students, and they trusted her: this made her, as she said, “doubtful.” She laughed as she said this, there being, as she plaintively pointed out, “nothing else for me to do.” Her husband was a lawyer, a tall, balding, big-boned man, who said he couldn’t wait till they were driven out of town, so he could go back to Zurich and walk around the lake he remembered from his days as a G.I.

  It was a nice dinner, though I don’t think Arthur ate much—he was never able to eat before a performance—and then, we headed for the church.

  The climate of those years is almost forgotten now—well, that is not really true. Who was there, who bore witness, will remember that time forever; but no one wants to hear, now, what they did not dare to face then. Still, some of our children know; some of our children will always know. Out of the plain, wooden house on the tree-lined street, which is a marked house, and we all know it, we get into three cars, all marked, and we all know it, and drive to a marked destination, from which, and we all know it, we may not return.

  It is the ordinary black church, Mount Olive or Ebenezer or Shiloh, a proud, stone edifice with a yard and steps, and it is packed. We are really part of a protest meeting, a fundraising rally, and are associated, then, with Montgomery and Tuskegee and boycotts and bankruptcy and all of the other plagues incomprehensibly being visited on the South. The church is ringed with policemen, in cars, and on motorcycles.

  Peanut and the others in the car are old hands at this.
Our passenger is one of the supports, one of the stars of the evening: his role, then, though not necessarily simple, is clear. Our roles, too, though not necessarily simple, are equally clear: we must get him in, and get him out. Peanut gets the car as close to the church steps as possible, and Arthur and I and Mrs. Isabel Reed get out. Peanut drives the car off, to park it, and Mr. Reed stays with Peanut.

  Mrs. Reed leads us in, past the two black men standing on the church steps, introducing, hurriedly, my brother and me. They smile, and shake our hands—hurriedly—make some soft, neighborhood joke with Mrs. Reed, and we enter the church. It is only now that I become aware of the music, coming from the choir, but pounding from the walls. Arthur, sharply, catches his breath, and straightens. People are standing in the aisles. Mrs. Reed takes Arthur’s hand, Arthur takes mine, and, single file, we walk down the aisle on the left side of the church. She leads us to the first row, leans over, and says something to one of the men in the first row, who immediately rises, and gives me his seat. He goes to stand against the wall. Still holding Arthur by the hand, Mrs. Reed mounts the steps into the pulpit with him. She sits him down, sits down behind him.

  The choir is finishing:

  If you pray right,

  heaven

  belongs to you,

  if you love right,

  heaven

  belongs to you,

  if you live right,

  heaven

  belongs to you,

  oh,

  heaven

  belongs to you!

  Organ, piano, tambourines, and a drum. I look around for Peanut, which is ridiculous. I would be able, maybe, to see him if I knew exactly where he was sitting, or if he were sitting beside me. I can see Arthur, but only because he’s sitting in the pulpit. In any case, Peanut is with Mr. Reed, and Mr. Reed knows where to find us.