Juneteenth (34 page)

I chewed some popcorn. My throat was dry, thick. The sinners were laughing behind us.

They call this doo-doo
history
, one of them said.

I closed my eyes.
Why doesn’t Daddy Hickman shut them up?
I thought. Then the sound of flapping began again and for a second the light came back, again very bright, then faded to become soft and full of wiggles and there was Daddy Hickman’s face smiling in the dim light.

You see, Bliss? he said.

Yes, sir. I was looking hard.

You like it, Bliss?

Oh, yes, sir.

Does it come up to what you expected?

It’s better, I, Bliss, said; it’s pretty keen.

Yes it is, Daddy Hickman said. It’s marvelous and at the same time it’s terrible, but that’s the way the world is, Bliss. But
shhh
now, it’s started again.

She was back, sitting down at a distance in the room looking at a book and I strained to be there and went in. She wore pointed white shoes, with buckles. I was glad.… But then the house
 … The house was not there and that old fool high coffin and that strumpet doing splits without her drawers on the floor what the—
Then I was with a soldier galloping on a white horse through a tree-lined lane. Fast, this time, the trees tear at my face, his long cape streaming in the wind. Things tossed. The road ran wobbling up and down before us, the trees tearing at my face, as the hot horse went tearing along with a smell of oak and leather. Too fast now to see all but suddenly I could hear the leather and the brass creaking and straining and it was like sitting in the barber chair and hearing Mr. Ivey say,
Gentlemen, I swear, when that ole hoss went into that backstretch he was running so fas’ you could hear him sucking air straight up through his ass!
I held on tight, ducking the branches. Then someone was rushing behind us but I couldn’t see. We were stretched out now and suddenly we turn and fire a pistol and now I can see the man on the black horse coming on. Then we’re through the trees and approaching a big house with cabins behind it. It’s her house and we leap off while the horse is still in motion, tossing its head as we yank on the bit and throw the reins to a servant who looks like he knows us. But his face isn’t happy. Then we’re inside the house and coming into the room where she stands wearing a long white cape and as she comes forward and sees us, suddenly she stops short, then throws out her arms and runs forward
and, her face painful with eyes closed, flies toward me, filling the room and I screamed….

Daddy Hickman whirled in his chair. What’s the matter, Bliss?

It’s her, the lady … I was crying.

What lady, Bliss. Where? This is a moving picture we’re watching.

I pointed toward the light.

She’s the one. She tried to take me out. The one who said she was my mother.… Goodehugh….

He sighed. Oh no, Bliss, he said, and talk low. We can’t be disturbing the other folks like this.… This is a
moving picture
we’re watching, Bliss.

But it’s her, I whispered.

No, Bliss. That’s not that woman at all. She only looks a bit like her, but she’s not the one. So now you sit back and enjoy yourself. And don’t be afraid, she cain’t hurt you, Bliss boy; she’s only a shadow….

No
, I thought,
it’s her. He doesn’t want me to know, but just the same, it’s her….
And I tried to understand the play of light upon the dark whiteness, the rectangle of cloth that would round out the mystery of my mother’s going and her coming.

They’re only shadows, Bliss, Daddy Hickman whispered. They’re fun if you keep that in mind. They’re only dangerous if you try to believe in them the way you believe in the sunlight or the Word.

Yes, sir, I, Bliss, said.

But for me now the three had become hopelessly blended in mystery: my mother gone before memory began, then she who called me Goodehugh Cudworth, and now she I saw as once more I entered the shadows.

Say there, Mister Dreamer-Man, she beside me said
.

Goodehugh-cudworth, she called me Goodehugh. If not my mother, who moves in the shadows? And again as I look through the
beam of pulsing light into the close-up looming wide across the distant yet intimate screen, I’m enthralled and sweetly disintegrated like motes in sunlight and I listen, as when in the box, straining to hear some sound from her moving lips, holding my breath to catch some faint intonation of her voice above the printed word which Daddy Hickman reads softly to me, explaining the action. And I knew anguish. Yes. There was the wavery beam of light. There was the smokelike weaving of the light now more real than flesh or stone or pain pouring at a slant down to the living screen. And there behind me now I hear a whirring, a grinding, a hum, broken by the clicking of cogs and rapid wheels. But from her no sound …

CHAPTER 12

It was a bigger tent than ours. The seats went up and around the sides and we had to sit up high at the end over near where the animals were coming through. I was looking down at the pumping and swaying of their backs and at the tops of the heads of the men in red coats walking beside them as they came through. I said, “What kind of elephants are those?”

“Those are Africans, Bliss,” Daddy Hickman said. “There’s African elephants and Indian elephants.”

“But how do you tell them apart?”

“By their ears, Bliss. The African ones have big ears,” Daddy Hickman said.

“What about the noses?”

“You mean
trunks
. They’re about the same.”

They were strung out like fat boys moving around the ring holding trunk to tail.

“How about those lions?” I said. The man in the white and gold
coat and the shiny boots was shooting a pistol in the air and waving an ice cream parlor chair at the lions.

“What do you mean, Bliss?”

“I mean, where do they come from?”

“They’re from Africa too, little boy.”

I looked at the lions, sitting up on some stools with their lips rolled back, snarling. One struck at the air with his paw, like Body trying to shadow-box. The man snapped the whip and he stopped. I said.

“Why don’t they catch him?”

Daddy Hickman was bent forward, looking hard.

“Why don’t they catch him?” I said.

“They’re mastered, Bliss. He’s scared them. They could destroy him like a cat with a mouse if they weren’t scared. But that’s the test of his act. He can outthink them from the start because he’s a man, but in order to get in there with those animals and master them he has to master his nerves.” He laughed. “Bliss, you can’t tell it from up here, but he’s probably popping his whip and shooting off that pistol at his own legs about as much as he’s doing it at the lions. Because sometimes the trainer makes a mistake and that’s it, the lions take over. But we don’t want that to happen, do we? It’s enough to know it’s a possibility. Is that right, Bliss?”

“Yes, sir.”

Now the man was popping the whip and making the lions gallop around in a circle, while he stood in the same spot, making them gallop around and around him. I said,

“Could you do that, Daddy Hickman?”

He laughed and looked down at me.

“What’s that, Bliss?”

“I say could you make those lions do like he’s doing?”

“No, Bliss, I’m only a man-tamer. Lions are not in my line.” He laughed again.

“Daniel could,” I, Bliss, said.

“Yes, but Daniel wasn’t a lion-tamer either, Bliss. It was the Lord who controlled those lions. What Daniel had to do was to have faith.”

“But don’t you have faith?”

“Sure. But if the Lord ever wants to test me with a lion, He’ll do it, Bliss. And He’ll put the lion in my path. I won’t have to go looking for him. I don’t think he intends for me to go bothering with these lions. Would you want to get in there with them?”

“Unh-unh—no sir. I’m too little.”

“What if you were big, Bliss?”

“Maybe. If I was as big as you I might.”

“What if they were little lions?”

“That would be better. I’m not afraid of little ones. How long do you think it took that man to learn to scare them?”

“I don’t know, Bliss. He probably started when he was your age.

Maybe he started with dogs, little puppies or little kittens….

Look yonder, Bliss, here come the clowns. My, my! Now watch this, you’ll like the clowns.”

He was smiling.

They came through the tent flap in a burst beneath us, all dressed up in funny clothes. I could see down on top of their heads. Seven clowns, one of them short and black, another tall and skinny in underwear and a fat one wearing a barrel, running to the center of the tent and they were hitting one another over the head with clubs that exploded and sent flowers and bird cages shooting out of their hats and heads, while the black one runs in and out, holding on to his britches with one hand and hitting at them with the other like a girl, a washerwoman, in and out between their legs. Then the others were turning and hitting him on the head and each time they hit he dropped his britches, showing his short bowed legs and his flour
sack drawers with printing on them and a big red star in the center and one of them hits him there with a big paddle and he sounds like a hoarse jackass, hoarse and disrespectful early in the morning, while he skips around trying to pull up his britches and falls and turns a flip and gets up and rolls and skips and runs real fast, still holding on. Then the one with the big red nose pulls out a big mallet and hits him on his head and he squashes down to his knees and a big red rooster flies out and runs squawking around in the ring with the others chasing him over the sawdust and he hits him again and again, real fast, and hams and sides of bacon and cabbage and spurts of flour and eggs start falling out of his clothes and he starts running out of his bloomers and a clown dog drops out and starts barking and chasing him along with the others and him skipping and running and turning double flips and more chickens squashing out and a little pink clown pig with a black ring around one eye and the whole tent is laughing while the big clowns are hitting one another with the eggs and hams and sides of bacon and it sounds like the Fourth of July. He was just my size.

“Why does he just run, Daddy Hickman?”

He was laughing. I pulled his sleeve.

“What’s that, Bliss?” Tears were running down his cheeks from laughing.

“Why does he always run?”

“Because that’s his part in the act, Bliss.”

“But why can’t he hit and see what he can knock out of them?”

“That would be good, too, Bliss. But he’s acting his part. Don’t you like him? Listen to how all the folks are laughing. These are real fine clowns, Bliss.”

“I don’t like him,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t like him to be hit all the time. It would be better
if
he
hit
them
. They’re hitting him because he’s the littlest. Are they real people?”

“Of course, Bliss. What’s wrong with you? I bring you to see the circus and to have a good time so you can see the clowns and you asking if they’re people.”

“What kind of people are they?”

“People
. Humans.”

“Like us?”

“Sure, Bliss.—Look at that little dog do his act.”

He was walking on his front legs.

“Colored?” I said.

“Oh—” He gave me a quick look. “No, Bliss, they’re white folks—at least as far as I know. Look at the little dog, Bliss.” He was doing a backflip now.

“Back there some were Germans,” he said. “Billy Kersans is colored but you haven’t seen him. But they’re supposed to be funny, Bliss. That’s the point. This is all for fun. So when we laugh at them we can laugh at ourselves.”

I looked at the little one. “Him too?” I said.

“Sure, he’s just short, a dwarf.”

“I mean is he white?”

“Sure, Bliss. Don’t you feel good? You think you want to go to the toilet?”

“No, sir, not now. Is that little one really white?”

“Sure, Bliss. Of course that’s not the point. He’s a clown. He’s there to make us laugh just like the rest. That’s burnt cork he’s wearing on his face. Underneath it he’s white.”

“Is he a grown man like the others?”

“Of course—Look a-there, he’s turning flips. See, there he goes. Now there’s what you wanted to see. He’s hitting the great big fellow. See, Bliss, he’s hitting him on his feet and the big one is hopping
around—look, look, there’s a stalk of corn growing out of the shoe where he hit him. Oh, oh, the others are chasing him again, look at him go! Right under that elephant!”

I watched. He, the little one, was running around the circle now, with the little clown pig under his arm, feeding it from a baby bottle.

The little pig was still after the bottle as they chased him out of the tent and everybody was laughing. Then the band started playing and two horses galloped in with women standing on their backs in very short flip-up skirts and shiny things in their hair, and down at the center of the tent the music was going and I could see the bandmaster swaying in time as he played a short little horn. They were pretty ladies on horseback and they bowed up and down and turned flips in the air and came down still on the backs of the cantering horses, all in time with the music and their little skirts flipped up and down like a bird’s tail or a branch of peach blossoms swaying in the wind. I wanted some ice cream, and started to ask when a man in tights came running in and the music speeded up the horse to a gallop that was like a fast merry-go-round and the man was running beside him and jumping on top along with the lady and they were galloping galloping and then she was standing on top of his shoulders and the horse still galloping along.