Karintha

                             Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
                             O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
                             Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
                             …When the sun goes down.

    Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down.  Old men rode her hobby-horse upon their knees.  Young men danced with her at frolics when they should have been dancing with their grown-up girls.  God grant us youth, secretly prayed the old men.  The young fellows counted the time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them.  This interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could mean no good to her.
    Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just what it was to live.  At sunset, when there was no wind, and the pine-smoke from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a bit of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in light.  With the other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping in the two-inch dust.  Karintha's running was a whir.  It had the sound of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road.  At dusk, during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down, and before any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs, her voice, high-pitched, shrill, would put one's ears to itching.  But no one ever thought to make her stop because of it.  She stoned the cows, and beat her dog, and fought the other children…Even the preacher, who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently lovely as a November cotton flower.  Already, rumors were out about her.  Homes in Georgia are most often built on the two-room plan.  In one, you cook and eat, in the other you sleep, and there love goes on.  Karintha had seen or heard, perhaps she had felt her parents loving.  One could but imitate one's parents, for to follow them was the way of God.  She played "home" with a small boy who was not afraid to do her bidding.  That started the whole thing.  Old men could no longer ride her hobby-horse upon their knees.  But young men counted faster.

                                  Her skin is like dusk,
                                  O cant you see it,
                                  Her skin is like dusk,
                                  When the sun goes down.

    Karintha is a woman.  She who carries beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down.  She has been married many times.  Old men remind her that a few years back they rode her hobby-horse upon their knees.  Karintha smiles, and indulges them when she is in the mood for it.  She has contempt for them.  Karintha is a woman.  Young men run stills to make her money.  Young men go to the big cities and run on the road.  Young men go away to college.  They all want to bring her money.  These are the young men who thought that all they had to do was to count time.  But Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child.  A child fell out of her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest.  Pine-needles are smooth and sweet.  They are elastic to the feet of rabbits…A sawmill was nearby.  Its pyramidal sawdust pile smouldered.  It is a year before one completely burns.  Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and hangs in odd wraiths about the trees, curls up, and spreads itself out over the valley…Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy you tasted it in water.  Some one made a song:

                                Smoke is on the hills.  Rise up.
                                Smoke is on the hills, O rise
                                And take my soul to Jesus.

    Karintha is a woman.  Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing thing ripened too soon.  They will bring their money; they will die not having found it out…Karintha at twenty, carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down.  Karintha…

                              Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
                              O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
                              Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
                              …When the sun goes down.

                              Goes down…

     Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She's dead; they're gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.

    Becky had one Negro son. Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the white folks' mouths. She wouldn't tell. Common, God-forsaken, insane white shameless wench, said the white folks' mouths.Her eyes were sunken, her neck stringy, her breasts fallen, till then. Taking their words, they filled her, like a bubble rising - then she broke. Mouth setting in a twist that held her eyes, harsh, vacant, staring. . . Who gave it to her? Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the black folks' mouths. White folks and black folks built her cabin, fed her and her growing baby, prayed secretly to God who'd put His cross upon her and cast her out.  When the first was born, the white folks said they'd have no more to do with her. And black folks, they too joined hands to cast her out. . . The pines whispered to Jesus. . The railroad boss said not to say he said it, but she could live, if she wanted to, on the narrow strip of land between the railroad and the road. John Stone, who owned the lumber and the bricks, would have shot the man who told he gave the stuff to Lonnie Deacon, who stole out there at the night and built the cabin. A single room held down to earth. . . O fly away to Jesus . . . by a leaning chimney. . .

    Six trains each day rumbled past and shook the ground under her cabin. Fords, and horse- and mule-drawn buggies went back and forth along the road. No one ever saw her. Trainmen, and passengers who'd heard about her, threw out papers and food. Threw out little crumpled slips of papers scribbled with prayers, as they passed her eye-shaped piece of sandy ground. Ground islandized between the road and the railroad track. Pushed up where a blue-sheen God with listless eyes could look at it. Folks from the town took turns, unknown, of course, to each other, in bringing corn and meat and sweet potatoes. Even sometimes snuff. . . O thank y Jesus. . . Old David Georgia, grinding cane and boiling syrup, never went her way without some sugar sap. No one ever saw her. The boy grew up and ran around. When he was five years old as folks reckoned it, Hugh Jourdon saw him carrying a baby. "Becky has another son," was what the whole town knew. But nothing was said, for the part of man that says things to the likes of that had told itself that if there was a Becky, that Becky now was dead.

    The two boys grew. Sullen and cunning. . . O pines, whisper to Jesus; tell Him to come and press sweet Jesus-lips against their lips and eyes. . . It seemed as though with those two big fellows there, there could be no room for Becky. The part that prayed wondered if perhaps she'd really died, and they has buried her. No one dared ask. They'd beat and cut a man who meant nothing at all in mentioning that they lived along the road. White or colored? No one knew, and least of all themselves. They drifted around from job to job. We, who had cast out their mother because of them, could we take them in? They answered black and white folks by shooting up two men and leaving  town. "Goddam the white folks; goddam the niggers," they'd shouted as they left town. Becky? Smoke curled up from her chimney. Nobody noticed it. A creepy feeling came over all who saw that thin wraith of smoke and felt the trembling of the ground. Folks began to take her food again.
They quit it soon because they had a fear. Becky if dead might be a haint, and if alive - it took some nerve even to mention it. . . O pines, whisper to Jesus. . .

    It was Sunday. Our congregation had been visiting at Pulverton, and were coming home. There was no wind. The autumn sun, the bell from Ebenezer Church, listless and heavy. Even the pines were stale, sticky, like the smell of food that makes you sick. Before we turned the bend of the road that would show us the Becky cabin, the horses stopped stock-still, pushed back their ears, and nervously whinnied. We urged, then whipped them on. Quarter of a mile away thin smoke curled up from the leaning chimney. . . O pines, whisper to Jesus. . . Goose-flesh came on my skin though there was neither chill nor wind. Eyes left their sockets for the cabin. Ears burned and throbbed. Uncanny eclipse! fear closed my mind. We were just about to pass. . . Pines shout to Jesus! . . the ground trembled as a ghost train rumbled by. The chimney fell into the cabin.   Its thud was a hollow report, ages  having passed since it went off. Barlo and I were pulled out of our seats. Dragged to the door that had swung open. Through the dust we saw the bricks in a mound upon the floor. Becky, if she was there lay under them. I thought I heard a groan. Barlo, mumbling something, threw his Bible on the pile. (No one has ever touched it.) Somehow we got away. My buggy was still on the road. The last thing I remember was whipping old Dan like fury; I remember nothing after that - that is, until I reached town and folkks ccrowded round to get the true word of it.

     Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She's dead; they're gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.

     Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
     Bootleggers in silken shirts,
     Balooned, zooming Cadillacs,
     Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War. A crude-boned, soft-skinned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington.  Wedges rust in soggy wood. . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood. Prohibition would put a stop to it. Who set you flowing? White and whitewashed disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing down the smooth asphalt of Seventh Street, in shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants and cabarets? Eddying on the corners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? God would not dare to suck black red blood. A Nigger God! He would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgment Day. Who set you flowing?

     Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
     Bootleggers in silken shirts,
     Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
     Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.

    Bona: He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons. [. . .]  He is a harvest moon. He is an
autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But don't all the dorm girls say so? And don't you, when you are sane, say so? That's why I love - "

                                            ***

    Art:  What in hell's getting into Paul of late, anyway?  Christ, but he's getting moony.  Its his blood.  Dark blood:  moony.  Doesnt get anywhere unless you boost it.  You've got to keep it going--
    "Say, Paul!"
    --or it'll go to sleep on you.  Dark blood:  nigger?  Thats what those jealous she-hens say.  Not Bona though, or she . . . from the South . . . wouldnt want me to fix a date for him and her.  Hell of a thing, that Paul's dark"  youve got to always be answering questions.
    "Say, Paul, for Christ's sake leave that window, cant you?"
    "Whats it, Art?"
    "Hell, I've told you about fifty times.  Got a date for you.  Come on."
    "With who?"
    Art:  He didnt use to ask; now he does.  Getting up in the air.  Getting funny.
    "Here's your hat.  Want a smoke?  Paul!  Here. I've got a match.  Now come on and I'll tell you all about it on the way to supper."
    Paul:  He's going to Life this time.  No doubt of that.  Quit your kidding.  Some day, dear Art, I'm going to kick the living slats out of you, and you wont know what I've done it for. And your slats will bring forth Life . . beautiful woman . . .
                                            ***

    The Boulevard is sleek in asphalt, and, with arc-lights and limousines, aglow. Dry leaves scamper behind the whir of cars. The scent of exploded gasoline that mingles with them is faintly sweet. Mellow stone mansions overshadow clapboard homes which now resemble Negro shanties in some southern alley. Bona and Paul, and Art and Helen, move along an island-like, far-stretching strip of leaf-soft ground. Above them, worlds of shadow-planes and solids, silently moving. As if on one of these, Paul looks down on Bona. No doubt of it: her face is pale. She is talking. Her words have no feel to them. One sees them. They are pink petals that fall upon velvet cloth. Bona is soft, and pale,
and beautiful.
    "Paul, tell me something about your self - or would you rather wait?"
    "I'll tell you anything you'd like to know."
    "Not what I want to know, Paul; what you want to tell me."
    "You have the beauty of a gem of fathoms under the sea."
    "I feel that, but I dont want to be. I want to be near you. Perhaps I will be if I tell you something. Paul, I love you."
The sea casts up its jewel into his hands, and burns them furiously. To tuck her arm under his and
hold her hand will ease the burn.
    "What can I say to you, brave woman - I can't talk love. Love is a dry grain in my mouth unless it is wet with kisses."
    "You would dare? Right here on the Boulevard? Before Arthur and Helen?"
    "Before myself? I dare."
    " Here then."
Bona, in the slim shadow of a tree trunk, pulls Paul to her. Suddenly she stiffens. Stops."
    "But you have not said you love me."
    "I can't - yet Bona."
    "Ach, you never will. You're cold."
Bona: Colored; cold. Wrong somewhere.
She hurries and catches up with Art and Helen.

                                            ***

Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. People . . . University of Chicago students, members of the stock exchange, a large Negro in crimson uniform who guards the door . . had watched them enter.  Had leaned towards each other over ash-smeared tablecloths and highballs and whispered: What is he, a Spaniard, an Indian, an Italian, a Mexican, a Hindu, or a Japanese? Art had at first fidgeted under their stares . . what are you looking at, you goddam pack of owl-eyed hyenas? . . but soon settled with his fuss with Helen, and forgot them. A strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that people saw not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference. Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him, and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was a fullness, and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself, cloudy, but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables round him. White lights, or as now, the pink lights of the Crimson Gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it equal to that of love or dream, of seeing this. [Norwegian friend] Art and Bona and Helen? He'd look. They were wonderfully flushed and beautiful. Not for himself; because they were. Distantly. Who were they, anyway? God, if he knew them. He'd come in with them. Of that he was sure. Come where? Into life? Yes. No. Into the Crimson Gardens. A part of life. A carbon bubble. Would it look purple if he went out into the night and looked at it? His sudden starting to rise almost upset the table.
    "What in hell--pardon--whats the matter, Paul?"
    "I forgot my cigarettes--"
    "Youre smoking one."
    "So I am.  Pardon me."
The waiter straightens them out. Takes their order.
Art: What in the hell's eating Paul? Moony ain't the word for it. From bad to worse. And those godam people staring so. Paul's a queer fish. Doesn't seem to mind. . . He's my pal, let me tell you, you horn-rimmed owl-eyed hyena at that table, and a lot better than you whoever you are. . . Queer about him. I could stick up for him if he'd only come out, one way or the other, and tell a feller.  Besides, a room-mate has a right to know. Thinks I won't understand. Said so. He's got a swell head when it comes to brains, all right. God, he's a good straight feller, though. Only, moony. Nut.
Nuttish. Nuttery. Nutmeg . . .  "What'd you say, Helen?"
    "I was talking to Bona, thank you."
    "Well its nothing to get spiffy about."
    "What? Oh, of course not.  Please lets dont start some silly argument all over again."
    "Well."
    "Well."
    "Now thats enough.  Say, waiter, whats the matter with our order?  Make it snappy, will you?"
    Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The drinks come. Four high-balls. Art passes cigarettes. A girl dressed like a bare-back rider in flaming pink, makes her way through tables to the dance floor.  All lights are dimmed till they seem a lush afterglow of crimson. Spotlights the girl. She sings. "Liza, Little Liza Jane."
    Paul is rosy before his window.
    He moves, slightly, towards Bona. With his own glow, he seeks to penetrate a dark pane.
    Paul: From the South. What does that mean, precisely, except that you'll love or hate a nigger? Thats a lot. What does it mean except that in Chicago you'll have the courage to neither love or hate. A priori. But it would seem that you have. Queer words, aren't these, for a man who wears blue pants on a gym floor in the daytime. Well, never matter. You matter. I'd like to know you whom I look at.  Know, not love. Not that knowing is a greater pleasure; but that I have just found the joy of it. You came just a month too late. Even this afternoon I dreamed. Tonight, along the Boulevard, you found me cold. Paul Johnson, cold! The color and the music and the song. . . A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. O song! . . And those flushed faces. Eager brilliant eyes. Hard to imagine them as unawakened. Your own. Oh, they're awake all right. "And you know it too, dont you Bona?"
    "What, Paul?"
    "The truth of what I was thinking."
    "I'd like to know I know - something of you."
    "You will - before the evening's over, I promise it."
    Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The bare-back rider balances agilely on the applause which is the tail of her song. Orchestral instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat that ripples its fur against the deep-purring saxophone. The drum throws sticks. The cat jumps on the piano keyboard.  Hi diddle, hi diddle, the cat and the fiddle. Crimson Gardens . . hurrah! . . jumps over the moon.  Crimson Gardens! Helen . . O Eliza . . rabbit-eyes sparkling, plays up to, and tries to placate what she considers to be Paul's contempt. She always does that . . Little Liza Jane. . . Once home, she burns with the thought of what she's done. She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she'll never go out again with him along. She tries to get Art to break with him, saying, that if Paul, whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more to him than she is, well, she's through.  She does not break with Art. She goes out as often as she can with Art and Paul. She explains this to herself by a piece of information which a friend of hers had given her: men like him (Paul) can fascinate. One is not responsible for fascination. Not one girl had really loved Paul; he fascinated them. Bona didn't; only thought she did. Time would tell. And of course, they didn't. Liza. . . She plays up to, and tries to placate, Paul.
    "Paul is so deep these days, and I'm so glad he's found someone to interest him."
    "I don't believe I do."
    The thought escapes from Bona just a moment before her anger at having said it.
    Bona: You little puffy cat, I do. I do! Don't I, Paul? her eyes ask.
    Her answer is a crash of jazz from the palm-hidden orchestra. Crimson Gardens is a body whose blood flows to a clot upon the dance floor. Art and Helen clot. Soon, Bona and Paul. Paul finds her a little stiff, and his mind, wandering to Helen (silly kid who wants every highball spoon her hands touch, for a souvenir), supple, perfect little dancer, wishes for the next dance when he and Art will exchange.
    Bona knows that she must win him for herself.
    "Since when have men like you grown cold?"
    "The first philosopher."
    "I thought you were a poet - or a gym director."
    "Hence, your failure to make love."
    Bona's eyes flare. Water. Grow red about the rims. She would like to tear away from him and dash across the clotted floor.
    "What do you mean?"
    "Mental concepts rule you. If they were flush with mine - good. I don't believe they are."
    "How do you know, Mr. Philosopher?"
    "Mostly a priori."
    "You talk well for a gym director."
    "And you -"
    "I hate you. Ou!"
    She presses away. Paul, conscious of the convention in it, pulls her to him. Her body close. Her head still strains away. He nearly crushes her. She tries to pinch him. Then sees people staring, and lets her arms fall. Their eyes meet. Both, contemptuous. The dance takes blood from their minds and packs it, tingling, in the torsos of their swaying bodies. Passionate blood leaps back into their eyes. They are a dizzy blood clot on a gyrating floor. They know that the pink-faced people have no part in what they feel. Their instinct leads them away from Art and Helen, and towards the big uniformed black man who opens and closes the gilded exit door. The cloakroom girl is tolerant of their impatience over such trivial things as wraps. And slightly superior. As the black man swings the door for them, his eyes are knowing. Too many couples have passed out, flushed and fidgety, for him not to know. The chill air is a shock to Paul. A strange thing happens. He sees the Gardens purple, as if he were way far off. And a spot is in the purple. The spot comes furiously towards him. Face of the black man. It leers. It smiles sweetly like a child's. Paul leaves Bona and darts back so quickly that he doesn't give the doorman a chance to open. He swings in. Stops. Before the hulk of the big Negro.
    "You're wrong."
    "Yassur."
    "Brother you're wrong."
    "I came back to tell you, to shake your hand, and tell you that you are wrong. That something beautiful is going to happen.  That the gardens are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk.  That I came into the Gardens, into life in the Gardens with one whom I did not know.  That I danced with her, and did not know her. That  I felt passion, contempt and passion for her whom I did not know.  That I thought of her.  That my thoughts were matches thrown into a dark window.  And all the while the Gardens were purple like  a bed of roses would be at dusk.  I came back to tell you,brother, that white faces are petals of roses. That dark faces are petals of dusk. That I am going out and gather petals. That I am going out and know her whom I brought here with me to these Gardens which are purple like a bed of roses would be at dusk."
    Paul and the black man shook hands.
    When he reached the spot where they had been standing, Bona had gone.