They never talked about it to Della, and seldom among themselves, because the shrieking cat howls cut deep into them, like the voice of hidden, repressed desires, fantasies not actualized, abandoned but not forgotten. Hearing her was like listening to the screams of your own imprisoned passions.
Wilson had only one dog left—a fourteen-year-old beagle named Cindy, who still carried herself with dignity, though her legs were stiff and crooked and hardly held her up when she ate.
THREE
Eight men were in the garage. It was July, very hot, and cold sodas were pulled one after another out of the machine. It was no cooler in the garage except for the company and the absence of the pressing issues of field work. John moved at a snail’s pace, but never completely stopped, taking apart a chain saw and welding together an auger cracked away from the shaft. It seemed the sweltry air grudgingly made room for them when they moved, swirling thick around their arms and faces, wringing out beads of dark sweat.
“You know, it’s where we’ve forced them. They had nothing to do with it. Could’ve been us if the situation was reversed.”
“But they seem to excel in some fields, naturally. It comes from them coming from Africa—the drums and dances and all.”
“I don’t recall ever hearing about basketball being played over there.”
“Or football, or razor fighting.”
“Or baseball.”
“Wait a minute—they’re not better.”
“Take the percentages. Take the percentages. What’s the total population of—”
“It’s like the Jews. It’s being denied something, like they were denied complete freedom in business. So naturally they learned to be good.”
“That’s something different. They could learn that. But I could never learn how to be more coordinated.”
“They don’t seem to be too intelligent, and you could say they were denied good educations.”
“Who?”
“The Negroes.”
“Even when they’re given a chance they don’t really try. Talk to anyone who ever taught in a mixed school. They don’t want to learn, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What do you do, call their parents in?”
“Or parent. Usually the old man don’t live at home.”
“They don’t respect authority.”
“Jesus, how can you expect them to? Look at the—”
“We know it ain’t their fault. But it’s true. They don’t respect authority. They live in the streets. They commit more crimes. They take drugs and all of ’em drink heavily. It’s a matriarchal society—”
“A lot of ’em don’t work.”
“It’s our fault.”
“I know that. We all know that. Nobody’s proud of it. But what do you do now? They don’t respect the same things. If you let ’em in your school, the level of education’ll go down. If you let them live next to you, they’ll be trying to get at your wife. That’s fact.”
“Bah.”
“Bah nothing. Marion’s right. Why do you think people in cities hate them so much and keep them out of their neighborhood? Do you think they’re mean or stupid, all of them? No, they know more about it than you do.”
“I heard some fellas one day yellin’, ‘You’re not human, you’re animals,’ at a bunch of school kids walking down the street in front of a Younkers store. It made me sick.”
“There you go, see?”
“I’m not defending anything. All I say is that there’s a reason. More rapes among coloreds.”
“Look how tall they got by drinking orange soda and eating potato chips!”
“Here comes Morley.”
“Hi, Morley.”
“Wasting time again,” said Morley, shaking his head from inside his car at the stop sign. Then on again.
“He’s a good guy.”
“Sure has tough luck, though, at least lately.”
“It’s mostly his wife’s fault, though he won’t let on so.”
“What I think is that you have to keep them separate from us. There’s no way either of us will get a real fair shake with them hating us the way they do.”
“But they want what we got. They want all the things and money we got. They’d live right next door to you if you gave them a chance. There’s no way to separate them.”
“Sure there is. Give them their own schools. Let them educate themselves in whatever way they want. Let them own their own businesses. Let them take care of themselves.”
“Their own prisons, too.”
“And their own police force.”
“And their own traffic court.”
“And garbage collection.”
“And welfare state.”
“They’d never do it. They like being where they are—living on welfare—taking what they can get from us and laying back.”
“If you think it’s such a great life, why don’t you try it? Sell the farm, move into town, go on welfare and start living the good life.”
“I didn’t say I’d want to live like that.”
“Then it must not be so great, if you wouldn’t want to. Right, John?”
“I don’t know,” said John, the first time he’d spoken. But he was listening to everything.
“I think they’d be happy to take care of themselves.”
“How they going to get any food?”
“Well, there’d have to be some exchanges made between them and us.”
“What are they going to give in return?”
“Probably something from the arts. Music, I guess.”
“That’d be pretty hard to trade. I wouldn’t give much for a song.”
“You’re just like that. If they could get any kind of advertising and exposure. When we went to Chicago last fall, Clara’s cousin took us down to a colored bar and we heard a harmonica player who could bring tears to your eyes. His name was Little something. Little Walker . . . Little Wurther . . . something like that. His voice was beautiful.”
“Music is natural to them.”
“It comes from their coming from Afr—”
“No it doesn’t. It has to do with feelings. They have more feelings than we do.”
“That’s true. They’re not as smart, but they have more feelings, and are better at expressing them. It’s something that we’ve done to them as well. But it’s not all in our
