Clock Without Hands (10 page)

"Zippo's sister is a nice-looking girl," Jester remarked, as he felt that Sherman was expecting some comment about his friend's relatives.

"Jester Clane," Sherman said, and though his voice was hard, Jester felt again the creepy thrill from the simple calling of his name, "if you ever, ever," Sherman continued in a voice that lashed at Jester, "if you ever, ever have the teeniest least lewd lascivious thought about Cinderella Mullins I'll string you up by your heels, tie your hands, light fire to your face and stand there and watch you roast."

The sudden fury of the attack made Jester hold on tight to the headboard. "I only said..."

"Shuddup, shuddup," Sherman shouted. He added in a low hard voice, "When you looked at the picture I didn't like the look on your puss."

"What look?" asked Jester, baffled. "You showed me the picture and I looked at it. What else could I have done? Cry?"

"Any further wisecrack and I will string you up and make the slowest barbecue that anybody ever made, smothering up the flames so it will last and keep on lasting."

"I don't see why you talk so ugly, especially to somebody you just met."

"When it's a question of Cinderella Mullins' virtue, I talk how I please."

"Are you in love with Cinderella Mullins, passionately, I mean?"

"Any further personal questions and I'll have you fried in Atlanta."

"How silly," Jester said. "How could you? It's a matter of legality."

Both boys were impressed by that last phrase, but Sherman only muttered, "I'll turn the juice personally and set it for very slow."

"I think all this talk about electrocution and roasting people is childish." Jester paused to deliver a stinging blow. "In fact, I suspect it's because you have a limited vocabulary."

Sherman was properly stung. "Limited vocabulary," he shouted with a little quiver of rage. Then he paused for a long time before he asked, belligerently, "What does the word 'stygian' mean?"

After Jester thought for a while he had to admit, "I don't know."

"...and epizootical and pathologinical," Sherman went on, making up phony words like crazy.

"Isn't pathologinical something about being sick..."

"No," Sherman said, "I just made it up."

"Made it up," Jester said, shocked. "It's utterly unfair to make up words when you are testing another person's vocabulary."

"Anyway," Sherman concluded, "you have a very limited and putrid vocabulary."

Jester was left in the situation of trying to prove his vocabulary; he tried in vain to make up long fancy words but nothing that made sense occurred to him.

"Forchrissake," Sherman said, "less change the subject. You wish me to sweeten your Calvert's?"

"Sweeten it?"

"Yes, goofy."

Jester sipped his whiskey and choked on it. "It's kind of bitter and hot..."

"When I said sweeten it, did your dim mind suppose I was going to put sugar in this Calvert's whiskey? I wonder more and more if you come from Mars."

That was another remark Jester thought he would use later.

"What a nocturnal evening," Jester said to prove his vocabulary. "You are certainly fortunate," he added.

"You mean about Zippo's apt?"

"No, I was just thinking ... ruminating you might say ... about how fortunate it is when you know what it is you're going to do in life. If I had a voice like yours I would never have to worry about that particular headache any more. Whether you know it or not, you have a golden voice, where I don't have any talent ... can't sing or dance and the only thing I can draw is a Christmas tree."

"There are other things," Sherman said in a superior voice, as Jester's praise had been sweet to hear.

"...not too good at math, so nuclear physics are out."

"I suppose you could do construction work."

"I suppose so," Jester said dolefully. Then he added in a suddenly cheerful voice: "Anyway, this summer I'm taking flying lessons. But that's just an advocation. I think every person ought to learn to fly."

"I utterly disagree with you," said Sherman, who was afraid of heights.

"Suppose your baby was dying, like say one of those blue babies you read about in the paper, and you have to fly to see him before the end, or suppose your crippled mother was sick and wanted to see you before she died; besides, flying's fun and I look on it as a kind of moral obligation that everyone ought to learn to fly."

"I utterly disagree with you," said Sherman, who was sick about talking about something he couldn't do.

"Anyway," Jester went on, "what was that song you were singing this evening?"

"This evening I was singing just plain jazz, but earlier this afternoon I was practicing genuine Simon-pure German lieder."

"What's that?"

"I knew you would ask me that." Sherman's ego was glad to get on the subject. "Lieder, goofy, means song in German and German means German, like in English." Softly he began to play and sing and the new strange music throbbed in Jester's body and he trembled.

"In German," Sherman boasted. "They tell me I don't have a trace of accent in German," he lied.

"What does it mean in English?"

"It's a kind of love song. This youth is singing to his maiden ... goes something like this: 'The two blue eyes of my beloved, I've never seen anything like them.'"

"Your eyes are blue. It sounds like a love song to yourself; in fact, when I know the words of the song it makes me feel creepy."

"German lieder is creepy music. That's why I specialize in it."

"What other music do you like? Personally, I adore music, passionately, I mean. Last winter I learned the 'Winter Wind' etude."

"I bet you didn't," Sherman said, unwilling to share his musical laurels with another.

"Do you think I would sit here and tell you a lie about the 'Winter Wind' etude?" said Jester who never lied under any circumstances.

"How would I know?" answered Sherman who was one of the world's worst liars.

"I'm out of practice."

As Jester went to the piano Sherman watched intently, hoping Jester couldn't play.

Loudly and furiously the "Winter Wind" etude thundered into the room. When, after the first few bars, Jester's furiously playing fingers faltered, he stopped. "Once you get off the track of the 'Winter Wind' it's hard to get back on."

Sherman, who had been listening jealously, was relieved when the music stopped. Furiously Jester attacked the etude at the beginning.

"Stop it," Sherman shouted, but Jester played on, the music punctured frantically with Sherman's shouted protests.

"Well that's pretty fair," Sherman said at the frantic, rickety end. "However, you don't have tone."

"Didn't I tell you I could play it?"

"There are all kinds of ways of playing music. Personally, I don't like yours."

"I know it's just an advocation, but I enjoy it."

"That's your privilege."

"I like the way you play jazz better than the way you play German lieder," Jester said.

"When I was a youth," Sherman said, "for a while I played in this band. We had hot sessions. The leader was Bix Beiderbecke and he tooted a golden horn."

"Bix Beiderbecke, why, that impossible."

Sherman lamely tried to correct his lie. "No, his name was Rix Heiderhorn. Anyway, I really wanted to sing Tristan at the Metropolitan Opera House but the role is not adaptable to me. In fact, most of the roles of the Metropolitan are severely limited for people of my race; in fact, the only role I can think of offhand is the role of Othello who was a Negro Moor. I like the music all right, but on the other hand, I don't dig his feeling. How anybody can be that jealous over a white dame is beyond me. I would think about Desdemona... me ... Desdemona ... me...? No, I can't dig it." He began to sing, "O! now, for ever farewell the tranquil mind."

"It must give you a funny feeling, not to know who your mother was."

"No it don't," said Sherman, who had spent all his childhood trying to find his mother. He would pick out one woman after another who had a gentle touch and a soft voice. Is this my mother? he would think in wordless expectancy that ended always in sorrow. "Once you get accustomed to it, it don't bother you at all." He said this because he had never gotten accustomed to it. "I loved very much Mrs. Stevens, but she told me outright I wasn't her son."

"Who is Mrs. Stevens?"

"A lady I was boarded out with five years. It was Mr. Stevens who boogered me."

"What does that mean?"

"Sexually assaulted, goofy. I was sexually assaulted when I was eleven years old."

Jester was speechless until he finally said, "I didn't know anybody ever sexually assaulted a boy."

"Well they do, and I was."

Jester, who always had been subject to propulsive vomiting, suddenly began to vomit.

Sherman cried, "Oh, Zippo's Wilton rug," and took off his shirt to scrub the rug. "Get towels in the kitchen," he said to Jester who was still vomiting, "or get out of this house."

Jester, still vomiting, stumbled out. Jester sat on the porch until he stopped vomiting, then he came back to help Sherman clean up the mess, although the smell of his own vomit made him feel sickish again. "I was just wondering," he said, "since you don't know who your mother is, and since you have a voice like yours, if your mother wouldn't be Marian Anderson?"

For the first time Sherman, who soaked up compliments like a sponge because he had had so few, was truly impressed. In all of his search for his mother he had never thought about Marian Anderson.

"Toscanini said she had a voice like once in a century."

Sherman, who felt it was almost too good to be true, wanted to think about it alone, and as a matter of fact, hug the idea to himself. Sherman changed the subject abruptly. "When I was boogered by Mr. Stevens"—Jester turned white and swallowed—"I couldn't tell nobody. Mrs. Stevens asked why I was always hitting Mr. Stevens. I couldn't tell her. It's the kind of thing you can't tell a lady, so at that period I began to stammer."

Jester said, "I don't see how you can even bear to talk about it."

"Well, it happened, and I was just eleven years old."

"What a queer thing to do," Jester said, who was still wiping the iron alligator.

"I'll borrow a vacuum tomorrow and vacuum this rug," Sherman said, who was still concerned about the furniture. He flung a towel at Jester: "If you feel anything like that is coming on again, kindly use this ... Since I was stammering and always hitting Mr. Stevens, Reverend Wilson talked to me one day. At first he would not believe me, as Mr. Stevens was a deacon in the church and as I had made up so many things."

"What other things?"

"Lies I would tell people about my mother." The thought of Marian Anderson returned to him and he wanted Jester to go home so he could brood about it. "When are you going home?" he asked.

Jester, who was still feeling sorry for Sherman, did not want to take the hint. "Have you ever heard Marian Anderson sing 'Were You There When They Crucified My Lord'?" he asked.

"Spirituals, that's another item that makes me blow a fuse."

"It occurs to me your fuses blow awfully easy."

"What's that to you?"

"I was just commenting how I love 'Were You There When They Crucified My Lord' sung by Marian Anderson. I practically cry every time I hear it."

"Well, cry ahead. That's your privilege."

"...in fact, most spirituals make me cry."

"Me, I wouldn't waste my time and trouble. However, Marian Anderson sings a creepy species of German lieder."

"I cry when she sings spirituals."

"Cry ahead."

"I don't understand your point of view."

Spirituals had always offended Sherman. First, they made him cry and make a fool of himself which was mortally hateful to him; second, he had always lashed out that it was nigger music, but how could he say that if Marian Anderson was his true mother?

"What made you think up Marian Anderson?" Since that worry-wart Jester wouldn't take the hint and go home to let him daydream in peace, he wanted to talk about her.

"On account of your voices. Two golden, once-in-a-century voices are quite a coincidence."

"Well, why did she abandon me? I read somewhere where she loves her own old mother," he added cynically, unable to give up his marvelous dream.

"She might have fallen in love, passionately, I mean, with this white prince," Jester said, carried away with the story.

"Jester Clane," Sherman's voice was mild but firm, "never say 'white' just out like that."

"Why?"

"Say Caucasian, otherwise you would refer to my race as colored or even Negro, while the proper name is Nigerian or Abyssinian."

Jester only nodded and swallowed.

"...otherwise you might hurt people's feelings, and you're such a tenderhearted sissy, I know you wouldn't like that."