whose writing challenged the most powerful country in the world, who had sat down with the president and who spoke French as if he had grown up on the streets on Montmartre, came to this dank dive to think.
I was absorbed in thought myself when a person moved too close to me.
“Hello. My name is Buck. Let me buy you a drink.”
I looked up to see a huge man standing about an inch away from me.
I pulled back and said, “Thank you, but I’m with someone.”
He grunted. “Well, he’s not your husband.”
“Oh really, how did you come to that conclusion?” I flinched a second after I asked the question. I really didn’t want him to answer, in case his response would be too telling.
He stuck out his arm and shook his hand on a limp wrist. “He’s one of those, you know.”
“What I do know is that I am with him. So you’d better go to your seat before he comes back.”
Jimmy did walk and gesture with feminine grace, but I couldn’t allow the intruder to get away with his insinuations.
Buck was still talking when Jimmy returned. My eyes had grown used to the light given off by neon signs behind the bar. Jimmy saw the man, sized up the situation and neatly stepped between the offender and me.
He looked up into the intruder’s face. “You’ve been looking after her for me, haven’t you?”
Before Buck could answer, Jimmy said, “Thank you, you son of a bitch. Now you are dismissed.”
Jimmy’s ferocity shocked me, and my jaw dropped. It dropped farther when the man turned, unspeaking, and walked away.
Jimmy sipped his drink. “Well, baby, I’m going to California. I’ve decided that I should help Eldridge Cleaver.”
Hearing his plans kept me speechless.
“I know you say you hate him, but he is a thinking black man, and he is in trouble because he is thinking and is talking about what he thinks. He needs our help.”
I said, “Well, I thought about it, and what he wrote about your homosexuality in his stupid book was so vulgar that I’d rather hang him than help him.”
“
Soul on Ice
is a very important book, and you have to remember, the son always kills the father.”
The statement was intriguing. I mulled it over as Jimmy gathered his thoughts.
“I met Richard Wright in Paris and got to know him sufficiently,” he said. “Everything about Wright that I disliked I wrote about in my essay ‘Alas, Poor Richard.’ Many Wright devotees were as angry with me then as you are now with Eldridge.”
“I’m not a devotee.” I hastened to put myself in a clearer light. “I love you, true, but I’m not a damned devotee. I am a careful reader, and I know the difference between your critical evaluation of Wright’s post–
Black Boy
work and the hatchet job Cleaver did on you. Not on your work but on you, on your character.”
“Maybe he couldn’t find enough about my work to attack. Sometimes people assail the homosexual because they think that by flailing the gay boy, they can reduce that same tendency they suspect in themselves. It’s difficult being different.”
“Well, do you suppose if I know that, it will make it easier for me to see you go to California to help Cleaver?”
“Baby, understand when I say I am going to help Eldridge, and I hope I do, that I am really going for myself. Because it is the right thing for me to do. Understand?”
My own obstinacy would not allow me to concede quickly and admit that I did understand, and that I even hoped that if I found myself in the same or a similar circumstance, I would behave as wisely.
“Understand?”
More at that moment than ever before, he reminded me of Bailey. They were two small black men who were my big brothers.
I said, “I’m just afraid for you out there with those roughnecks.”
“I am a roughneck, too. Grow up. Being black and my size on the streets of Harlem will make a choirboy a roughneck. But do you understand why I’m going?”
I said, “Yes.”
Twenty-five
Jerry Purcell’s East Side
I was absorbed in thought myself when a person moved too close to me.
“Hello. My name is Buck. Let me buy you a drink.”
I looked up to see a huge man standing about an inch away from me.
I pulled back and said, “Thank you, but I’m with someone.”
He grunted. “Well, he’s not your husband.”
“Oh really, how did you come to that conclusion?” I flinched a second after I asked the question. I really didn’t want him to answer, in case his response would be too telling.
He stuck out his arm and shook his hand on a limp wrist. “He’s one of those, you know.”
“What I do know is that I am with him. So you’d better go to your seat before he comes back.”
Jimmy did walk and gesture with feminine grace, but I couldn’t allow the intruder to get away with his insinuations.
Buck was still talking when Jimmy returned. My eyes had grown used to the light given off by neon signs behind the bar. Jimmy saw the man, sized up the situation and neatly stepped between the offender and me.
He looked up into the intruder’s face. “You’ve been looking after her for me, haven’t you?”
Before Buck could answer, Jimmy said, “Thank you, you son of a bitch. Now you are dismissed.”
Jimmy’s ferocity shocked me, and my jaw dropped. It dropped farther when the man turned, unspeaking, and walked away.
Jimmy sipped his drink. “Well, baby, I’m going to California. I’ve decided that I should help Eldridge Cleaver.”
Hearing his plans kept me speechless.
“I know you say you hate him, but he is a thinking black man, and he is in trouble because he is thinking and is talking about what he thinks. He needs our help.”
I said, “Well, I thought about it, and what he wrote about your homosexuality in his stupid book was so vulgar that I’d rather hang him than help him.”
“
Soul on Ice
is a very important book, and you have to remember, the son always kills the father.”
The statement was intriguing. I mulled it over as Jimmy gathered his thoughts.
“I met Richard Wright in Paris and got to know him sufficiently,” he said. “Everything about Wright that I disliked I wrote about in my essay ‘Alas, Poor Richard.’ Many Wright devotees were as angry with me then as you are now with Eldridge.”
“I’m not a devotee.” I hastened to put myself in a clearer light. “I love you, true, but I’m not a damned devotee. I am a careful reader, and I know the difference between your critical evaluation of Wright’s post–
Black Boy
work and the hatchet job Cleaver did on you. Not on your work but on you, on your character.”
“Maybe he couldn’t find enough about my work to attack. Sometimes people assail the homosexual because they think that by flailing the gay boy, they can reduce that same tendency they suspect in themselves. It’s difficult being different.”
“Well, do you suppose if I know that, it will make it easier for me to see you go to California to help Cleaver?”
“Baby, understand when I say I am going to help Eldridge, and I hope I do, that I am really going for myself. Because it is the right thing for me to do. Understand?”
My own obstinacy would not allow me to concede quickly and admit that I did understand, and that I even hoped that if I found myself in the same or a similar circumstance, I would behave as wisely.
“Understand?”
More at that moment than ever before, he reminded me of Bailey. They were two small black men who were my big brothers.
I said, “I’m just afraid for you out there with those roughnecks.”
“I am a roughneck, too. Grow up. Being black and my size on the streets of Harlem will make a choirboy a roughneck. But do you understand why I’m going?”
I said, “Yes.”
Twenty-five
Jerry Purcell’s East Side
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