Beetlecreek, p.2
Beetlecreek, page 2
“I could tell you something, Johnny, about being here all by yourself. I never would of chased nobody away ’cept they don’t ask. I come from respectable folks and I respect people’s property.” But he saw that the boy wasn’t listening.
When he looked toward where the boy was looking, he saw the gate burst open and a tall, distracted-looking Negro run into the yard. He looked questioning at Johnny and even moved closer to the boy as if to protect himself.
“That’s my uncle,” Johnny said.
“What’s he want?” Bill Trapp asked. “I’ve got my rights and I respect people’s property….”
“What’re you doing with that boy?” the man demanded, grasping hold of Johnny’s hand as if to pull him away.
Bill Trapp couldn’t open his mouth to speak. He was deaf. There was too much sound about him. He could hear the clock on the table inside the house. What did it mean, having these people on his porch? He was afraid, but he had gone this far, there was no turning back.
“He wasn’t hurting me, Uncle David,” the boy said. “We was just talking.”
“I respect people’s property, mister. I’m a law-abidin citizen. I’m an old man now. But I don’t hurt nobody. See all this place here. I built it up. We come from respectable folks.” He got up and went into the house. When he came out he brought a bottle of dandelion wine. The Negro man and boy became very quiet.
They drank; their breaths and sighs were in unison. They stole looks at each other from out of the corner of their eyes. And then the Negro man laughed.
“So you’re Mister Bill Trapp?” he said. “Well, sir, it’s a pleasure to be here with you. A real pleasure.”
“I don’t have many visitors,” Bill Trapp said. “I’m what you call a retired man. I’ve done my share. But I could tell you a thing or two about being here all alone, no one to talk to. Gets so you forget a lot of things. But we come from respectable folks. I don’t mean nobody no harm.”
The light faded to near darkness and the three of them were still sitting there. To Bill Trapp it was like something out of his fantastic dreams to have the Negro man and boy on his porch. There was a lot of talk. The Negro man talked continuously with a nervous, jerky flow of words that Bill Trapp finally gave up trying to follow. He had been too long alone. He remembered a warning feeling which came to him, a feeling which as soon as it came he hastened to brush away. He felt vaguely that he was in danger. But dominating all that he was feeling was the tremendous resolution not to go back to the lonely ways of before. He was conscious of a change of life in him, a change that seemed to have come suddenly but which he knew was prepared for years before.
Before his visitors left, he recklessly promised to meet the man that night, promised to go with him to Telrico’s Café.
Alone once more, still trembling, he went to the mirror and looked at his eyes. They were milky damp. His eyelids were sweating. This time he stayed at the mirror until it was so dark he could see only the slightest reflection on the whites of his eyes. What kind of mad thing had he let himself in for? He stayed up just long enough to warm himself a can of beans. By six o’clock he was undressed and in bed speculating on whether or not he would get up to meet the Negro man. He was hot and sweating. He kept the lamp lit so that he could watch the clock. Slowly and meticulously, his clumsy fingers pulled hairs from his thighs.
Chapter Two
Johnny Johnson, completely undressed except for his underwear, lay across the bed. A Doctor Zorro and the Dope Smugglers lay unopened across his stomach. He had wanted to go outside where he knew the boys were waiting to hear what happened at Bill Trapp’s, but, because he had been caught, his Aunt Mary had been very strict with him. He could hear them whooping and laughing and every once in a while he could hear the Leader calling his dog.
He looked around at the pink-rosed wallpaper. Everything was strange here, he decided. From the time when his cousin put him on the bus and he’d been left alone, sitting all by himself in the back of the bus watching the smooth West Virginia mountains already tinted by patches of red and brown gold, he had had the feeling he sometimes had when walking on a strange street in a strange neighborhood, a feeling like walking up the aisle of a full movie house when the lights were on, seeing all the faces, yet not seeing—feeling. A feeling of vague, itchy fear.
And that afternoon sitting with the old white man on his porch at the May Farm, drinking cider and feeling the man’s terrible eyes on him, seeing the shack and the funny-shaped trees and the big flowers like nothing he had ever seen before, he had had the same feeling.
He wished he were back in his room at home in Pittsburgh. He rose and sat on the edge of the bed and turned on another light. He stared toward the closed door as if he expected the source of his fears to come in.
From downstairs, as he held his breath waiting, came the sound of his aunt’s sobbing. Now with the fear was the conflicting desire to go to her, to put his arms around her waist as he remembered he used to do many years ago to his mother. He jumped up. His book fell to the floor and the sound startled him so that he couldn’t close his mouth.
Quickly he slipped into his trousers and shoes and went to the living room where she sat crumpled in the rocker.
“Aunt Mary,” he began, and the sound of the words seemed to crystalize and echo and echo through the room, mixing finally with the hoarse sound of her crying. She became rigid and their eyes met. A look, first of shame and afterward of anger, darted across her eyes in quick succession.
“Well, I’ll be! What are you doing up and sneaking around the house for?” she snarled.
The savagery of her tone chilled him. He stuttered, “Can-n-n I…can I do something for you?”
“You can get right upstairs to your room, that’s what you can do. We don’t have to put up with any of that Pittsburgh smart-aleckness out of you!”
He ran up the stairs and slammed his door. He was ashamed now to have gone downstairs to his aunt. He fell across the bed and lay there shaking until he felt sleep coming—sleep and the dreaming.
He knew how it would be, even to the soft, billowy feeling of the bed being pushed upward from underneath. He faced toward the corner from which it would come, always the same:
First, the silverness that was like a cloud of mercury that formed from nothing. Then a hot, electric feeling as if the room had been filled with electricity. Then a feeling of movement as if everything in the room were vibrating from a streetcar running overhead. Then the rain which wasn’t exactly like rain but rather a feeling of millions and trillions of things falling. And then, the procession:
That night there was his mother dressed in a white nightgown from the hospital that was stained green and brown with blood that dripped from her neck. She was smiling but was convulsed by silent coughing. Very slowly she walked toward him. He squinched his eyes so he wouldn’t see her. Closer and closer she walked until she had passed over his stomach. When he looked up, there was blood dripping on him and he could see that she was still smiling and nodding her head and coughing.
Then there was the old white man, Bill Trapp. There was a flock of sheep with him and he had a staff like a Bible shepherd. And the sheep were all afraid and kept prancing up and down like nervous horses in a lightning storm—like the horses did that time at the county fair when he went with his father. Bill Trapp would raise his hand and smile and the sheep would be even more frightened, prancing higher and higher. And when they came too close, he ducked his head so their hoofs wouldn’t hurt him, but they passed over him so lightly, he didn’t feel anything. Then the old man glided to him. His face was so close he could look right into his deep, strange eyes, and the eyes were green and there were long, green hairs growing out of the corners of them. It didn’t look like Bill Trapp though. The face was sly and young, a combination of the Leader’s face and the old man’s, a shiny, hazy face that could be identified only by the hat….
The dream would have gone on except that he was awakened by the creaking of the door. His sleep muscles tightened as he tried to hold on to the warmth and color of the dream.
He knew his Aunt Mary was there, a ghostlike figure in her nightgown—the odor of her bedclothing more than the sight of her indicating her presence.
“Johnny! Johnny! You ’wake?” She touched him lightly under the chin and her cool hand felt pleasant in the hot, sweaty grove at his neck.
He kept very still, holding his breath, waiting until she would call again.
“You ’wake, Johnny?”
He could smell her unpleasant night breath as she bent her head close to his.
Yawning elaborately, he turned over as if he were just awakening. “Yeah, I’m awake,” he said.
“Your uncle ain’t come home and it’s after one o’clock…don’t ever stay out this late…might have been a raid like they had last spring. I think you better go on up there and see about him coming home….”
She switched on the light and Johnny saw that she was dressed in a pink-ribboned nightgown. Her hair was down and in the soft light of the bedroom she looked very young, like a little girl, Johnny thought. One of her breasts was showing and Johnny felt a rush of hot blood rise to the top of his head.
As soon as she left him, he began to dress.
Out on the street, he breathed deeply of the cool night air. He was filled with a sense of adventure and was awed by the expansiveness of the darkness. The street was completely quiet and deserted and in none of the houses was there light. Despite the urgency he felt, he walked slowly, relishing the sound of his footsteps echoing between the sides of the houses. Before many minutes had passed, he turned the corner at the creek road and could see Telrico’s red neon sign.
As he opened the doors, the smell of stale smoke and beer rushed out to engulf him. Right away he saw that no one was at the bar. Telrico was sitting by the stove reading a newspaper and didn’t even bother to look up. Young Telrico, a thick-faced youth with pimples, was sweeping the floor. He looked up as Johnny entered, and just when Johnny was about to ask him, nodded toward the back of the café.
“If you’re lookin for somebody, they’re all in the back.”
Johnny walked toward the back room, carefully avoiding the pile of trash and sawdust heaped in the middle of the floor. The whole scene seemed part of the crazy things that were happening to him. Bill Trapp was sitting very close to his uncle with his head resting on his shoulder.
“Hello, Uncle David,” Johnny said, and then, pretending he had just noticed the old white man, he said very stiffly, “And how are you, Mr. Bill?”
The two men were both very drunk. On the table before them were many empty beer bottles. The white man had unbuttoned his shirt and had one hand inside, restlessly rubbing it back and forth. His eyes, instead of being closed with drunkenness, were opened wide beyond the limits of the whites and were glazed, covered with an opaque film. His face was covered by a gratework of wrinkles. He ignored Johnny’s greeting but sat with his head down, grinning, leaning all the time on Uncle David.
As Johnny stood over the dimly lit booth, his uncle rose. He smiled, swallowed the remainder of his beer, and motioned for Johnny to sit down beside him.
“He won’t give me any more beer. It’s after midnight he says…. Hell, Sam, it ain’t after midnight, I’ve got a visitor. It ain’t after midnight, Sam, it ain’t after midnight yet….” His voice died into a child’s pleading.
Johnny held his breath wondering what Sam Telrico would say. Bill Trapp looked as if he were sleeping.
Without looking up from his newspaper, Telrico said, “We’re closing up now, Diggs, and that’s final. It’s after midnight and we’ve got to close.”
Young Telrico had stopped sweeping and was leaning on his broom, watching with frank amusement all that was going on. The way he was looking at Bill Trapp made Johnny angry and ashamed. (Look at that fart, he said to himself, I bet with all those pimples he plays with himself.)
“I guess we better be goin,” Bill Trapp said, rising. “It’s a nice place you have here, sir,” he said, bowing from the waist to Telrico, who was wrapping a scarf around his neck.
David began coughing. “All right, Johnny boy,” he said when he got his breath, “we’ll go home…go home to our little nest.” Then after a moment of looking intently at Johnny’s face, he said, “You sure look like her all right—you’re Sis’s boy all right you are. Nice boy…good kid….”
“…a very nice place,” Bill Trapp continued, “reminds me a lot of Sid Carr’s saloon in Cincinnati. Maybe they tore it down. Don’t know now. Eighteen years…let’s see…”
“Look, Diggs, you’ve got to go,” Telrico shouted from behind the bar. In his dark blue overcoat he looked strangely smaller and insignificant, more like a bank clerk than a bartender now. The yellow business smile had disappeared and he seemed really irritated. “They’ve been makin raids,” he complained, “and I ain’t takin no chances on losin my license.”
Bill Trapp began helping David into his coat.
“I wouldn’t want them tin cops from the county to pull your license,” David said, making an elegant sweeping gesture with both hands. “We’re going home to our little nest, aren’t we, boy? By the way, Sam, you haven’t met my little nephew, have you? This is my sister’s boy, Johnny, and he’s staying with us while his mother’s in the hospital. He’s from Pittsburgh.”
Sam bowed and shook hands with Johnny. “Well, sir, you’re some young man now, ain’t you?” he said. “Can’t say he looks like you though. Lot better lookin than you are.”
Johnny was pleased. He hurried to the door and held it open for Bill Trapp. He noticed how young Telrico stepped aside out of the old man’s way as if he were afraid of him. Johnny fixed his eyes on the festering pimples on the youth’s face; at least I don’t have those, he thought to himself.
The old man leaned on Johnny for support. Johnny was surprised that he was so light. That afternoon, out on the May Farm, the old man had seemed tall and heavy, almost a giant. Now he was a weak old man and Johnny felt sorry for him.
They followed the creek road, walking in single file without speaking; sometimes the moon rode out from behind a cloud to light up the black lace pattern of bare trees that lined the bank of the creek. Sometimes the moon reflected on the top of the water shot out a single ray of light into the darkness at the bottom of the bushes.
They left Bill Trapp at the swinging bridge. “I’m much obliged to you for inviting me to the beer,” he said earnestly, “much obliged.” He held David by the shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. He tweaked Johnny on the cheek and then disappeared among the blackest shadows of the bushes along the water.
“Come out and see me, come out and visit me, both of you come and see me…” his voice trailed away and the sound of his irregular drunken steps became fainter and fainter.
Back on their street again, they saw a light in an upstairs window of Mrs. Johnson’s house.
“Must be worse, old lady Johnson,” David said, stopping in front of the house. “Been saying down at the barbershop that she was in really bad shape this time.”
They stood close together on the sidewalk looking up toward the window where shadows moved behind the lowered shade. Johnny felt his uncle become tense. There was something forbidding about the darkened house. One side of the roof caught the reflection of the moonlight and there was a piece of loose roofing paper that flapped with the breeze.
Johnny didn’t like being on the deserted street now, especially not in front of the sick woman’s house. Nor did he feel safe and secure with his uncle.
“Let’s go, Uncle David,” he whined, “I’m getting sleepy.”
Just as they were about to enter their own door, David whispered to Johnny, “Don’t bother saying anything to your Aunt Mary about Bill Trapp being there tonight.”
Chapter Three
Though outdoors it was wet cold, her window was wide open. The curtain reached inward toward the bed where Mary was crouched under the blankets warming her hands between her thighs. She no longer was frightened. Her whole body was exhausted, not so much by the housecleaning at Pinkerton’s as by the quarreling and crying. Now she waited calmly for the time when the room would be filled with the smell of onions and beer, and her husband, mumbling drunkenly to himself, would crush against her in sleep.
She had never been inside the Italian’s café, but she knew everything about it from the smells her husband brought in with him. The smells and the café disgusted her and always she longed for the dawn that permitted her to leave home and husband to go to the neat, dustless whitefolks’ house.
But lying there crouched with her hands warming between her legs, she longed for her husband’s weight against her, not out of desire so much as out of the necessity one feels for something long known and suffered.
For almost an hour now she had been thinking about the annual Fall Festival the Missionary Guild would sponsor. Over and over again she had been telling herself there could be no foundation in what some of the ladies were saying about her being up for nomination as president of the organization in place of Mrs. Tolley who had been president almost as long as she could remember; nevertheless, the idea thrilled her. She imagined herself standing in front of the ladies presiding over a meeting. As if in shame for what she was doing, she pulled the blankets over her face to hide the grotesque expression of dignity she had shaped her face into, imagining herself in a black dress saying to the ladies, “The meeting will now come to order!”
