Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (13 page)

 
          
 
The people filled the stands behind the wire
screen, waiting. Us kids, dripping from the lake, ran between the white
cottages, past the resort hotel, screaming, and sat on the bleachers, making
wet bottom marks. The hot sun beat down through the tall oak trees around the
baseball diamond. Our fathers and mothers, in golf pants and light summer
dresses, scolded us and made us sit still.

 
          
 
We looked toward the hotel and the back door
of the vast kitchen, expectantly. A few colored women began walking across the
shade-freckled area between, and in ten minutes the far left section of the
bleachers was mellow with the color of their fresh-washed faces and arms. After
all these years, whenever I think back on it, I can still hear the sounds they
made. The sound on the warm air was like a soft moving of dove voices each time
they talked among themselves.

 
          
 
Everybody quickened into amusement, laughter
rose right up into the clear blue Wisconsin sky, as the kitchen door flung wide
and out ran the big and little, the dark and high-yellar uniformed Negro
waiters, janitors, bus boys, boatmen, cooks, bottle washers,
soda
jerks, gardeners, and golf-links tenders. They came capering, showing their
fine white teeth, proud of their new red-striped uniforms, their shiny shoes
rising and coming down on the green grass as they skirted the bleachers and
drifted with lazy speed out on the field, calling to everybody and everything.

 
          
 
Us
kids squealed.
There was Long Johnson, the lawn-cutting man, and Cavanaugh, the soda-fountain man,
and Shorty Smith and Pete Brown and Jiff Miller!

 
          
 
And there was Big Poe! Us kids shouted,
applauded!

 
          
 
Big Poe was the one who stood so tall by the
popcorn machine every night in the million-dollar dance pavilion farther down
beyond the hotel on the lake rim. Every night I bought popcorn from Big Poe and
he poured lots of butter all over it for me.

 
          
 
I stomped and yelled, "Big Poe! Big
Poe!"

 
          
 
And he looked over at me and stretched his
lips to bring out his teeth, waved, and shouted a laugh.

 
          
 
And Mama looked to the right, to the left, and
back of us with worried eyes and nudged my elbow. "Hush," she said.
"Hush."

 
          
 
"Land, land," said the lady next to
my mother, fanning herself with a folded paper. "This is quite a day for
the colored servants, ain't it? Only time of year they break loose. They look
forward all summer to the big Black and White game. But this ain't nothing. You
seen their Cakewalk Jamboree?"

 
          
 
"We got tickets for it," said
Mother. "For tonight at the pavilion. Cost us a dollar each. That's pretty
expensive, I'd say."

 
          
 
"But I always figure," said the
woman, "once a year you got to spend. And it's really something to watch
them dance. They just naturally got . . ."

 
          
 
"Rhythm," said Mother.

 
          
 
"That's the word," said the lady.
"Rhythm. That's what they got. Land, you should see the colored maids up
at the hotel. They been buying satin yardage in at the big store in Madison for
a month now. And every spare minute they sit sewing and laughing. And I seen
some of the feathers they bought for their hats.
Mustard and
wine ones and blue ones and violet ones.
Oh, it'll be a sight!"

 
          
 
"They been airing out their
tuxedos," I said. "I saw them hanging on lines behind the hotel all
last week!"

 
          
 
"Look at them prance," said Mother.
"You'd think they thought they were going to win the game from our
men."

 
          
 
The colored men ran back and forth and yelled
with their high, fluting voices and their low, lazy, interminable voices. Way
out in center field you could see the flash of teeth, their upraised naked
black arms swinging and beating their sides as they hopped up and down and ran
like rabbits, exuberantly.

 
          
 
Big Poe took a double fistful of bats, bundled
them on his huge bull shoulder, and strutted along the first-base line, head
back, mouth smiling wide open, his tongue moving, singing:

 
          
 
"—gonna dance out both of my shoes, When
they play those Jelly Roll Blues; Tomorrow night at the Dark Town Strutter
Ball!"

 
          
 
Up went his knees and down and out, swinging
the bats like musical batons. A burst of applause and soft laughter came from
the left-hand grandstands, where all the young, ripply colored girls with shiny
brown eyes sat eager and easy. They made quick motions that were graceful and
mellow because, maybe, of their rich coloring. Their laughter was like shy
birds; they waved at Big Poe, and one of them with a high voice cried,
"Oh, Big Poe! Oh, Big Poe!"

 
          
 
The white section joined politely in the
applause as Big Poe finished his cakewalk. "Hey, Big Poe!" I yelled
again.

 
          
 
"Stop that, Douglas!" said Mother,
straight at me.

 
          
 
Now the white men came running between the
trees with their uniforms on. There was a great thunder and shouting and rising
up in our grandstand. The white men ran across the green diamond, flashing
white.

 
          
 
"Oh, there's Uncle George!" said
Mother. "My, doesn't he look nice?" And there was my uncle George
toddling along in his outfit which didn't quite fit because Uncle has a
potbelly, and jowls that sit out over any collar he puts on. He was hurrying
along, trying to breathe and smile at the same time, lifting up his pudgy
little legs. "My, they look so nice," enthused Mother.

 
          
 
I sat there, watching their movements. Mother
sat beside me, and I think she was comparing and thinking, too, and what she
saw amazed and disconcerted her. How easily the dark people had come running
first, like those slow-motion deer and buck antelopes in those African moving
pictures, like things in dreams. They came like beautiful brown, shiny animals
that didn't know they were alive, but lived. And when they ran and put their
easy, lazy, timeless legs out and followed them with their big, sprawUng arms
and loose fingers and smiled in the blowing wind, their expressions didn't say,
"Look at me run, look at me run!" No, not at all. Their faces
dreamily said, "Lord, but it's sure nice to run. See the ground swell soft
under me? Gosh, I feel good. My muscles are moving like oil on my bones and
it's the best pleasure in the world to run." And they ran. There was no
purpose to their running but exhilaration and living.

 
          
 
The white men worked at their running as they
worked at everything. You felt embarrassed for them because they were alive too
much in the wrong way. Always looking from the corners of their eyes to see if
you were watching. The Negroes didn't care if you watched or not; they went on
living, moving. They were so sure of playing that they didn't have to think
about it any more.

 
          
 
"My, but our men look so nice," said
my mother, repeating herself rather flatly. She had seen, compared the teams.
Inside, she realized how laxly the colored men hung swaying in their uniforms,
and how tensely, nervously, the white men were crammed, shoved, and belted into
their outfits.

 
          
 
I guess the tenseness began then.

 
          
 
I guess everybody saw what was happening. They
saw how the white men looked like senators in sun suits. And they admired the
graceful unawareness of the colored men. And, as is always the case, that
admiration turned to envy, to jealousy, to irritation. It turned to conversation
like:

 
          
 
'That's my husband, Tom, on third base. Why
doesn't he pick up his feet? He just stands there."

 
          
 
“Never you mind, never you mind. He'll pick
'em up when the time comes!"

 
          
 
"That's what I say! Now, take my Henry,
for instance. Henry mightn't be active all the time, but when there's a
crisis—just you watch him. Uh—I do wish he'd wave or something, though. Oh,
there! Hello, Henry!"

 
          
 
"Look at that Jimmie Cosner playing
around out there!"

 
          
 
I looked. A medium-sized white man with a
freckled face and red hair was clowning on the diamond. He was balancing a bat
on his forehead. There was laughter from the white grandstand. But it sounded
like the kind of laughter you laugh when you're embarrassed for someone.

 
          
 
"Play ball!" said the umpire.

 
          
 
A coin was flipped. The colored men batted
first.

 
          
 
"Darn it," said my mother.

 
          
 
The colored men ran in from the field happily.

 
          
 
Big Poe was first to bat. I cheered. He picked
up the bat in one hand like a toothpick and idled over to the plate and laid
the bat on his thick shoulder, smiling along its polished surface toward the
stands where the colored women sat with their fresh flowery cream dresses
stirring over their legs, which hung down between the seat intervals like crisp
new sticks of ginger; their hair was all fancily spun and hung over their ears.
Big Poe looked in particular at the little, dainty-as-a-chicken-bone shape of
his girl friend Katherine. She was the one who made the beds at the hotel and
cottages every morning, who tapped on your door like a bird and politely asked
if you was done dreaming, 'cause if you was she'd clean away all them old
nightmares and bring in a fresh batch—please use them one at a time, thank
yeah. Big Poe shook his head, looking at her, as if he couldn't believe she was
there. Then he turned, one hand balancing the bat, his left hand dangling free
at his side, to await the trial pitches. They hissed past, spatted into the
open mouth of the catcher's mitt, were hurled back. The umpire grunted. The
next pitch was the starter.

 
          
 
Big Poe let the first ball go by him.

 
          
 
"Stee-rike!" announced the umpire.
Big Poe winked good-naturedly at the white folks. Bang! "Stee-rike
two!" cried the umpire.

 
          
 
The ball came for the third time.

 
          
 
Big Poe was suddenly a greased machine pivoting;
the dangling hand swept up to the butt end of the bat, the bat swiveled,
connected with the ball— Whack! The ball shot up into the sky, away down toward
the wavering line of oak trees, down toward the lake, where a white sailboat
slid silently by. The crowd yelled, me loudest! There went Uncle George,
running on his stubby, wool-stockinged legs, getting smaller with distance.

 
          
 
Big Poe stood for a moment watching the ball
go. Then he began to run. He went around the bases, loping, and on the way home
from third base he waved to the colored girls naturally and happily and they
waved back, standing on their seats and shrilling.

 
          
 
Ten minutes later, with the bases loaded and
run after run being driven in, and Big Poe coming to bat again, my mother turned
to me. "They're the most inconsiderate people," she said.

 
          
 
"But that's the game," I said.
"They've only got two outs."

 
          
 
"But the score's seven to nothing,"
my mother protested.

 
          
 
"Well, just you wait until our men come
to bat," said the lady next to my mother, waving away a fly with a pale
blue-veined hand. "Those Negroes are too big for their britches."

 
          
 
"Stee-rike two!" said the umpire as
Big Poe swung.

 
          
 
"All the past week at the hotel,"
said the woman next to my mother, staring out at Big Poe steadily, "the
hotel service has been simply terrible. Those maids don't talk about a thing
save the Cakewalk Jamboree, and whenever you want ice water it takes them half
an hour to fetch it, they're so busy sewing."