Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (8 page)

I asked, “Not even when you were little? in school?”

Caleb said, “Maybe. I don't remember.” He smiled at me. “I never met a good one, Leo. But that's not saying that
you
won't. Don't look so frightened.”

We were in front of our door. Caleb raised his hand to knock. I held his hand.

“Caleb,” I whispered, “what about Mama?”

“What do you mean, what about Mama?”

“Well, Mama”—I stared at him; he watched me very gravely. “Mama—Mama's almost white—”

“Almost don't get it,” Caleb said.

I stared at him.

“Our mama is
almost
white,” Caleb said, “but that don't make her white. You got to be
all
white to be white.” He laughed; inside, we heard our father cough. “Poor Leo. Don't feel bad. I know you don't understand it now. I'll try to explain it to you, little by little.” He paused. “But our mama is a colored woman. You can tell she's a colored woman because she's married to a colored
man,
and she's got two colored
children.
Now, you know ain't no white lady going to do a thing like that.” He watched me, smiling. “You understand that?” I nodded. “Well, you going to keep me here all night with your questions or can we go on in the house now?”

I told him to knock, and he did, and our mother opened the door.

“About time,” she said dryly—she was chewing on a porkchop bone, and had her hair piled in a knot on the top of her head. I liked her hair that way. “You must have sat through that movie four or five times. You're going to ruin your eyes and that'll just be too bad for you because you know we ain't got no money to be buying you no glasses. Leo, you go on inside and get ready to take your bath.”

“Let him come over here a minute,” said our father. He was sitting in the one easy chair, near the window. He was drunk, but not as drunk as I had seen him, and this was a good mood drunk. In this mood, he would not talk about his job, or the white workers on the job, or his foreman, or about white people, or about African kings. In this mood, he talked about the islands, his mother and father and kinfolk and friends, the feast days, the singing, the dancing, and the sea.

I approached him, and he pulled me to him, smiling, and held me between his thighs. “How's my big man?” he asked, smiling, and rubbing his hand gently, and with wonder, over my hair. “Did you have a good time tonight?”

Caleb sat on a straight chair near him, leaning forward. “Let Leo tell you why we so late. Tell them what happened, Leo.”

“We were coming down the block,” I began—and I watched my father's face. Suddenly, I did not want to tell him. Something in Caleb's tone had alerted him, and he watched me with a stern and frightened apprehension. My mother came and stood beside him, one hand on his
shoulder. I looked at Caleb. “Maybe you could tell it better,” I said.

“Go on, start. I'll fill in.”

“We were coming down the block,” I said—and I told him which block—“coming from the movies”—I looked at Caleb.

“It's not the way we usually come,” said Caleb.

My father and I stared at each other. There was, suddenly, between us an overwhelming sorrow. It had come from nowhere. “We got stopped by the cops,” I said. Then I could not continue. I looked helplessly at Caleb and Caleb told the story. As Caleb spoke, I watched my father's face. I don't know how to describe what I saw. I felt the one arm he had around me tighten, tighten; his lips became bitter and his eyes grew dull. It was as though, after indescribable, nearly mortal effort, after grim years of fasting and prayer, after the loss of all he had, and after having been promised by the Almighty that he had paid the price and no more would be demanded of his soul, which was harbored now; it was as though in the midst of his joyful feasting and dancing, crowned and robed, a messenger arrived to tell him that a great error had been made, and that it was all to be done again. Before his eyes, then, the banquet and the banquet wines and the banquet guests departed, the robe and crown were lifted, and he was alone then, frozen out of his dream, with all that before him which he had thought was behind him. My father looked as stunned and still and as close to madness as that, and his encircling arm began to hurt me, but I did not complain. I put my hand on his face, and he turned to me, his face changed, he smiled—he was very beautiful then!—and he put his great hand on top of mine. He turned to Caleb.

“That's all that happened? You didn't say nothing?”

“What could I say? It might have been different, had I been by myself. But I had Leo with me, and I was afraid of what they might do to Leo. You know those bastards. You
can't
get no lower than those bastards until they lower you six feet under.”

“No, you did right, man, I got no fault to find. You didn't take their badge number?”

Caleb snickered. “What for? You know a friendly judge? We got money for a lawyer? Somebody they going to
listen
to? You know as well as me they beating on black ass all the time, all the time, man, they get us in that precinct house and make us confess to all kinds of things and sometimes even kill us and don't nobody give a damn. Don't nobody care what happens to a black man. If they didn't need us for work, they'd have killed us all off a long time ago. They did it to the Indians.”

“That's the truth,” said our mother. “I wish I could say different, but it's the truth.” She stroked our father's shoulder. “We just thank the Lord it wasn't no worse.”

“
You
can thank the Lord,” said our father. “I ain't got nothing to thank him for. I wish he was a man like me!”

“Well, you right,” said our mother. “It was just an expression. But let's don't sit here brooding about it. We just got to say: well, the boys got home safe tonight. Because that's the way it is.”

I asked, “Daddy, how come they do us like they do?”

My father looked at me for a long time. Finally, he said, “Leo, if I could tell you that, maybe I'd be able to make them stop. But don't let them make you afraid. You hear?”

I said, “Yes sir.” But I knew that I was already afraid.

“Let's not talk about it no more,” our mother said. “No more
tonight.
If you two is hungry, I got some pork-chops back there.”

Caleb grinned at me. “Little Leo might be hungry. He stuffs himself like a pig. But I ain't hungry. Hey, old man”—he nudged my father's shoulder; nothing would be refused us tonight—“why don't we have a taste of your rum? All right?”

Our mother laughed. “I'll go get it,” she said. She started out of the room.

“Reckon we can give Leo a little bit, too?” our father asked. He pulled me onto his lap.

“In a big glass of water,” said our mother, laughing. She took one last look at us before she went into the kitchen. “My!” she said, “I sure am surrounded by some pretty men! My, my, my!”

I awoke suddenly, rising up abruptly from darkness, and flowers faced me on a table far away, great, blatant, triumphal blooms, reminding me of Barbara's dressing room on opening nights. The table was placed before a large, high window, hung with yellow drapes. The drapes were slightly parted, and I could see the sun outside. The rest of the room was white—white walls, a white closed door. My blue dressing gown hung against the wall nearest my bed. I tried to raise myself up to see the rest of the room and then discovered that I had no strength at all. I felt as light and as hollow and as dry as a bleached bone in the sand. My skin seemed flaking. The hair on my head felt like an affliction. A woolly trap, it felt so heavy that I might have been in the grave for days. Then I wondered what day it was, and how long I had been here. All was silent—silent
and white. I tried to guess from the sun what time it would be, and I decided it would probably be about eleven. But nothing mattered—except my heavy load of hair; I didn't care if the silence never ended; I didn't care if the room remained empty of people forever. I stretched my legs. They did not feel like mine, they had no weight at all. I felt a great peacefulness—such as I had never felt before. I turned my shell of a body into the white sheets and closed my eyes.

In no time, it seemed, I opened them, but now the sun was in another place and I supposed it must be about four. The nurse was in the room. “Hi, there, sleepy-head!” she cried cheerfully—with that really unnerving cheerfulness of nurses; one dare not speculate on what awful knowledge the cheerfulness hides—“You certainly got a good rest. How do you feel?”

She was young, very pretty, with a clean, scrubbed face, and with short red hair under her starched cap.

“I feel pretty exhausted,” I said. I did. And I suddenly felt very depressed.

“That's only natural,” she said. “Please—may I?” And she extended the thermometer toward me.

“How long have I been here?”

“Just a day and a night—well, a night and a day and a night. Does it feel longer?”

“I don't know,” I said. “It feels like my hair's been growing for a month.”

She laughed. “Well, I think we can fix that,” she said, “in a couple of days.” She extended the thermometer again, purposefully, and stuck it under my tongue. She looked at my chart, she pulled the curtains, she watered the flowers. She worked in silence, with short, childish movements. I watched her pleasing rump and her round
arms and her aggressive, and at the same time helpless, breasts. I had the feeling that she hadn't long since lost her baby fat. She opened the door and came back with an enormous basket of fruit, which she placed on the table next to the bed. “Some of your friends wanted to send over a case of champagne,” she said, “but we didn't think we could allow that. Much as I wanted to. Oh! and aren't some of the girls just
sick with jealousy!
Of me! Because
I'm
nursing Leo Proudhammer! They can hardly eat their lunch for asking me questions. I just tell them, Well, he's sleeping. There's not much difference between one man and another when they're asleep.”

“Well,” I said, as she took the thermometer from my mouth and stared at it gravely, “now you can tell them that I'm awake. And I'm still not different.”

“Oh, but you are,” she said. “Yes, you are.” She carefully noted my temperature on my chart, and replaced the thermometer in its glass jar. “The doctor will be in to see you later,” she said. “We're going to be running some tests on you. But right now,” she said firmly, “I will require a urine specimen, please.” She handed me the medieval jar, which was covered with a towel, and placed the screen in front of my bed. “I'll be right back,” she said, and I heard the door close behind her.

I laughed as I prepared to obey her. How had she ever learned to say it that way? So impeccably firm and impersonal. But there obviously wasn't any other way to say it, except, perhaps, between lovers, or parents and children.
We will require a mucus specimen, please.
But we said,
Blow your nose. Harder. That's better.
The troubling, tyrannical, inconvenient flesh. The sacred flesh. I filled up the jar. The color seemed all right; there wasn't any odor. But I was suddenly trembling, and cold
with sweat. I might have been running for an hour. My body suddenly began to reassert its claims over me, plaintively proclaiming itself as exhausted, petulantly demanding that I
do
something. I had barely strength enough to wrap the towel around the bottle and place it on the lower shelf of the table. I just lay there. The basket of fruit was at my head, I wanted to know who had sent it, but it was too much trouble to lift my hand and look at the card. I began to realize that I was helpless—a big, grown, stinking man, and as helpless as a child. Perhaps, even more than most people, it is a state I cannot endure. It is terrible to depend on others, on another, for the execution of the simplest functions, terrible to see the book one wants at the other end of the room and be unable to get there. It causes one to begin to hate oneself. And, indeed, this vile, creepy, slimy, self-loathing came back as I lay there and realized that I had to go to the bathroom. I would have to use the bedpan; but I would never be able to sit up, unsupported. And I wanted to die—to drop my black carcass someplace and never be humiliated by it any more. I thought I had left this feeling far behind me, but here it was, now, as strong as ever—stronger; as I pictured the clean, apple-faced nurse supporting my back while I strained and sweated and my heavy stink filled the room. I put my hands to my woolly hair, that vile plantation, as though I would tear it from my skull. And I knew that I had felt this, in some way, all my life. But I had buried it; and made a point, certainly, of never being helpless. But if I had always felt this, then, certainly, I must have shown it, and shown it most, perhaps, when I was least aware of it. My body, after all—I told myself—was no more vile than others; my stink was not original, it had no greater resonance; the rats and the
worms would find me as tasty as another. “Ah, Leo,” I said, “what a child you are.” This reflection did not mitigate my distress. The nurse came back. She picked up the bottle. There was no help for it. I said, “Nurse, I have to go to the bathroom.”

She said, “I can't let you move. Wait just a moment.” Then she smiled a real smile. “I
know
it's awful. But
please
don't let it worry you. Please don't.” She disappeared, then returned with the grim utensil. Her words hardly helped and yet I guess they helped a little. Anyway, we were still friends when it was over. I lay back. I wondered why humiliation seemed, after all, at bottom, to be my natural condition.

The doctor came in, the little nurse beside him. He was very cheerful, too, seeming to bring into the room with him the stinging air of the bay. His face was ruddy and he was immaculate, from his smooth, gleaming brown hair to his gleaming brown shoes. “You have decided,” he said, “to return to us. I thought you would, just as soon as you got a little rest. You know, I have never seen a man so tired as you. And that is very unwise.” He sat down and took my pulse. The nurse showed him my chart. He looked at it for awhile, looked at me. “Ah, yes,” he said. “How do you feel today? Any pain?” He watched me very carefully.