As I turned away I noticed that my boy had come to stand beside me.

  ‘What you looking at, Daddy?’ he said.

  ‘I guess Daddy was just looking out on the world.’

  Then he asked if he could go out and play with his ball, and since I would soon have to go down myself to water the lawn, I told him it would be all right. But he couldn’t find the ball; I would have to find it for him.

  ‘All right now,’ I told him. ‘You stay in the back out of everybody’s way, and you mustn’t ask anyone a lot of questions.’

  I always warned about the questions, even though it did little good. He ran down the stairs, and soon I could hear the bump bump bump of his ball bouncing against the garage doors underneath. But since it didn’t make a loud noise, I didn’t ask him to stop.

  I picked up the book to read again, and must have fallen asleep immediately, for when I came to it was almost time to go water the lawn. When I got downstairs the boy was not there. I called, but no answer. Then I went out into the alley in back of the garages to see if he was playing there. There were three older white boys sitting talking on a pile of old packing cases. They looked uneasy when I came up. I asked if they had seen a little Negro boy, but they said they hadn’t. Then I went farther down the alley behind the grocery store where the trucks drove up, and asked one of the fellows working there if he had seen my boy. He said he had been working on the platform all afternoon and that he was sure the boy had not been there. As I started away, the four o’clock whistle blew and I had to go water the lawn. I wondered where the boy could have gone. As I came back up the alley I was becoming alarmed. Then it occurred to me that he might have gone out in front in spite of my warning not to. Of course, that was where he would go, out in front to sit on the grass. I laughed at myself for becoming alarmed and decided not to punish him, even though Berry had given instructions that he was not to be seen out in the front without me. A boy that size will make you do that.

  As I came around the building past the tall new evergreens, I could hear the boy crying in just that note no other child has, and when I came completely around I found him standing looking up into a window with tears on his face.

  ‘What is it, son?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘My ball, my ball, Daddy. My ball,’ he cried, looking up at the window.

  ‘Yes, son. But what about the ball?’

  ‘He threw it up in the window.’

  ‘Who did? Who threw it, son? Stop crying and tell Daddy about it.’

  He made an effort to stop, wiping the tears away with the back of his hand.

  ‘A big white boy asked me to throw him my ball an’, an’ he took it and threw it up in that window and ran,’ he said, pointing.

  I looked up just as Berry appeared at the window. The ball had gone into his private office.

  ‘John, is that your boy?’ he snapped.

  He was red in the face.

  ‘Yessir, but –’

  ‘Well, he’s taken his damned ball and ruined one of my plants.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘You know he’s got no business around here in front, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Well, if I ever see him around here again, you’re going to find yourself behind the black ball. Now get him on round to the back and then come up here and clean up this mess he’s made.’

  I gave him one long hard look and then felt for the boy’s hand to take him back to the quarters. I had a hard time seeing as we walked back, and scratched myself by stumbling into the evergreens as we went around the building.

  The boy was not crying now, and when I looked down at him, the pain in my hand caused me to notice that it was bleeding. When we got upstairs, I sat the boy in a chair and went looking for iodine to doctor my hand.

  ‘If anyone should ask me, young man, I’d say your face needed a good washing.’

  He didn’t answer then, but when I came out of the bathroom, he seemed more inclined to talk.

  ‘Daddy, what did that man mean?’

  ‘Mean how, son?’

  ‘About a black ball. You know, Daddy.’

  ‘Oh – that.’

  ‘You know, Daddy. What’d he mean?’

  ‘He meant, son, that if your ball landed in his office again, Daddy would go after it behind the old black ball.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, very thoughtful again. Then, after a while he told me: ‘Daddy, that white man can’t see very good, can he, Daddy?’

  ‘Why do you say that, son?’

  ‘Daddy,’ he said impatiently. ‘Anybody can see my ball is white.’

  For the second time that day I looked at him a long time.

  ‘Yes, son,’ I said. ‘Your ball is white.’ Mostly white, anyway, I thought.

  ‘Will I play with the black ball, Daddy?’

  ‘In time, son,’ I said. ‘In time.’

  He had already played with the ball; that he would discover later. He was learning the rules of the game already, but he didn’t know it. Yes, he would play with the ball. Indeed, poor little rascal, he would play until he grew sick of playing. My, yes, the old ball game. But I’d begin telling him the rules later.

  My hand was still burning from the scratch as I dragged the hose out to water the lawn, and looking down at the iodine stain, I thought of the fellow’s fried hands, and felt in my pocket to make sure I still had the card he had given me. Maybe there was a color other than white on the old ball.

  In a Strange Country

  In the pub his eye had begun to close. White spots danced before him, and he had to cover the eye with his hand in order to see Mr Catti. Mr Catti was drinking now, and as the bottom of the glass swung down and tapped the table, he looked into Mr Catti’s pale, sharp-nosed face and smiled. Mr Catti had been very kind, and he was trying hard to be pleasant.

  ‘You miss this on a ship,’ he said, draining his glass.

  ‘Do you like our Welsh ale?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘It’s not so good as before the war,’ Mr Catti said sadly.

  ‘It must have been very good,’ he said.

  He looked guardedly at the pretty, blue-aproned barmaid, seeing her dark hair shift lazily forward as she drew beer from a pump such as he’d seen only in English pictures. With his eye covered he saw much better. Across the room, near the fireplace with its grate of glowing coals, two men were seeing who could knock over a set of skittlepins. One of them started singing ‘Treat Me Like an Irish Soldier’ as Mr Catti said:

  ‘Have you been long in Wales?’

  ‘About forty-five minutes,’ he said.

  ‘Then you have much to see,’ Mr Catti said, getting up and carrying the glasses over to the bar to be refilled.

  No, he thought, looking at the GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU signs, I’ve seen enough. Coming ashore from the ship he had felt the excited expectancy of entering a strange land. Moving along the road in the dark he had planned to stay ashore all night, and in the morning he would see the country with fresh eyes, like those with which the Pilgrims had seen the New World. That hadn’t seemed so silly then – not until the soldiers bunched at the curb had seemed to spring out of the darkness. Someone had cried, ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ and he had thought, He’s from home, and grinned and apologized into the light they flashed in his eyes. He had felt the blow coming when they yelled, ‘It’s a goddamn nigger,’ but it struck him anyway. He was having a time of it when some of Mr Catti’s countrymen stepped in and Mr Catti had guided him into the pub. Now, over several rounds of ale, they had introduced themselves, had discreetly avoided mentioning his eye, and, while he heard with forced attention something of Welsh national history, he had been adjusting himself to the men in cloth caps and narrow-brimmed hats who talked so quietly over their drinks.

  At first he had included them in his blind rage. But they had seemed so genuinely and uncondescendingly polite that he was disarmed. Now the anger and resentment had slowly ebbed, and he felt only a smoldering sense of self-hate and ineffectiveness. Why should he blame them when they had only helped him? He had been the one so glad to hear an American voice. You can’t take it out on them, they’re a different breed; even from the English. That’s what he’s been telling you, he thought, seeing Mr Catti returning, his head held to one side to avoid the smoke from his cigarette, the foam-headed glasses caged in his fingers.

  ‘It’s a disgrace to our country, Mr Parker!’ Mr Catti said heatedly. ‘How is your eye?’

  ‘It’s better, thanks,’ he said, brightening. ‘And don’t worry, it’s a sort of family quarrel. Are there many like me in Wales?’

  ‘Oh yes! Yanks all over the place. Black Yanks and white.’

  ‘Black Yanks?’ He wanted to smile.

  ‘Yes. And many a fine lad at that.’

  Mr Catti was looking at his wristwatch.

  ‘My, my! I’m sorry, but it’s time for my concert. Perhaps you would like to come? The boys at my club are singing – no professionals, mind you, but some very fine voices.’

  ‘No … no, I’d better not,’ he said. Yet all music was a passion with him, and his interest was aroused.

  ‘It’s a private club,’ Mr Catti said reassuringly. ‘Open only to members – and to our guests, of course. We’d be very glad to have you. Perhaps the boys will sing some of your spirituals.’

  ‘Oh! So you know our music, too?’

  ‘Very well,’ Mr Catti said. ‘And since your boys have been with us we’ve learned that, like ourselves, your people love music.’

  ‘I think I’d like very much to go,’ he said, rising and getting into his seaman’s topcoat. ‘You might have to guide me along though.’

  ‘Righto. It isn’t far. Just a bit up Straight Street.’

  Outside, the pale beam of a flashlight revealed the stone walk. Somewhere in the damp darkness a group of adolescent girls were singing a nostalgic Tin Pan Alley tune. Here you go again, he thought. Better go back to the ship, no telling what’ll jump out of the darkness next; maybe the Second Avenue El. And suppose someone else brings a Yank? Why spoil the fun? Hell, so let him walk out …

  Mr Catti was guiding him into a doorway toward a soft murmur of voices. Maybe, he thought, you’ll hear that old ‘spiritual’ classic Massa’s in de – Massa’s in de Old Cold Masochism!

  When the light struck his injured eye, it was as though it were being peeled by an invisible hand. He did not know whether to cover it or to let it be so as not to attract attention. What was the use?

  Mr Catti was greeting the men who made room for them at the bar. Looking across the room, where folding chairs were grouped neatly around rows of small tables, he heard a man in a blue suit running brilliant arpeggios upon an upright piano. It was a cheerful room.

  ‘Two whiskeys, Alf,’ said Mr Catti to the man behind the bar.

  ‘Right! And a good evening to you, Twm,’ the man said.

  ‘This is Mr Parker, Alf,’ Mr Catti said, introducing him. ‘Mr Parker, Mr Triffit, our club manager.’

  ‘How do you do?’ he said, shaking Mr Triffit’s hand.

  ‘Welcome to our club, sir,’ Mr Triffit said. ‘You are an American, I take it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. And with sly amusement he added, ‘A black Yank.’

  ‘I thought Mr Parker would like the concert, Alf. So I brought him along.’

  ‘We’re happy to have you, sir,’ Mr Triffit said. ‘I believe you will enjoy it, Mr Parker. If I do say so myself, our boys are … are … yes, dammit, they’re smashing!’

  ‘I’m sure they are,’ he said, thinking, He acts like he’d fight over it.

  ‘Here’s all the best,’ said Mr Catti.

  ‘Your health, sir,’ said Mr Triffit.

  ‘To Wales,’ Mr Parker said, ‘and to you both.’

  ‘And to America, God bless her,’ Mr Triffit said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Parker, ‘and to America.’

  He could see Mr Triffit about to mention his eye, and was glad Mr Catti was moving away.

  ‘Come, Mr Parker. We’d better select our seats.’

  They sat near the front, where the singers were grouping themselves to begin. The warmth of the liquor was spreading slowly through him now, and it was with a growing sense of remoteness that he heard the first number announced, a Welsh song to be rendered a cappella. The quiet tuning chord sounded far away. He saw the men set themselves and the conductor raising his hand, then, at the downbeat, the quick, audible intake of breath and the precise attack.

  The well-blended voices caught him unprepared. He heard the music’s warm richness with pleasurable surprise, and heard, beneath the strange Welsh words, echoes of plain song, like that of Russian folk songs sounding.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ he whispered, seeing Mr Catti smile knowingly.

  He looked about him. He saw the faces of the listeners caught in a single spell of communication while they sipped their drinks or puffed their pipes or cigarettes. Slowly the hall was filling with friendly swirls of smoke. They were singing another of their songs now, and though he could not understand the words he felt himself drawn closer to its web of meaning. Then the familiar and hateful emotion of alienation gripped his throat.

  ‘It was a song about Wales?’ he asked, soothing his eye.

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Mr Catti. ‘And the other was about a battle in which we defeated the English. Nothing like music to reveal what’s in the heart. You don’t need lyrics, really.’

  A warm flush dyed Mr Catti’s face. He’s pleased that I understood, he thought. And as the men sang in hushed tones he felt a growing poverty of spirit. He should have known more of the Welsh, of their history and art. If we only had some of what they have, he thought. They are a much smaller nation than ours would be, yet I can remember no song of ours that’s of love of the soil or of country. Nor any song of battle other than those of biblical times. And in his mind’s eye he saw a Russian peasant kneeling to kiss the earth and rising wet-eyed to enter into battle with cries of fierce exultation. And he felt now, among these men, hearing their voices, a surge of deep longing to know the anguish and exultation of such love.

  ‘Do you see that fellow with the red face there?’ asked Mr Catti.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our leading mine owner.’

  ‘And what are the others?’

  ‘Everything. The tenor on the end is a miner. Mr Jones, in the center there, is a butcher. And the dark man next to him is a union official.’

  ‘You’d never think so from their harmony,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘When we sing, we are Welshmen,’ Mr Catti said as the next number began.

  Parker smiled, aware suddenly of an expansiveness that he had known before only at mixed jam sessions. When we jam, sir, we’re Jamocrats! He liked these Welsh. Not even on the ship, where the common danger and a fighting union made for a degree of understanding, did he approach white men so closely.

  For that’s a unity of economics, he said to himself. And this a unity of music, a ‘gut language’, the ‘food of love’. Go on, fool. Behind that blacked-out eye you can get away with it. Knock yourself out. All right, I will: Dear Wales, I salute thee. I kiss the lips of thy proud spirit through the fair sounds of thy songs. How’s that? Fine. Slightly mixed in metaphor, but not bad. Give us some more, Othello. Othello? Indeed, and how odd. But. So: Oh my fair warrior nation, because of thee this little while my chaos is gone again – Again? Parker, keep to the facts. And remember what they did to Othello. No, he did it to himself. Couldn’t believe in his woman, nor in himself. I know, so that makes Iago a Fifth Columnist. But what do you believe in? Oh, shut – I believe in music! Well! And in what’s happening here tonight. I believe … I want to believe in this people. Something was getting out of control. He became on guard. At home he could drown his humanity in a sea of concealed cynicism, and white men would never recognize it. But these men might understand. Perhaps, he felt with vague terror, all evening he had been exposed, blinded by the brilliant light of their deeper humanity, and they had seen him for what he was and for what he should have been. He was sobered. Listening now, he thought, You live on the ship, remember. Down Straight Street, in the dark. And at home you live in Harlem. Quit letting their liquor throw you, or even their hospitality. Do the State some service, Parker. They won’t know it. And if these men should, it doesn’t matter. Put out that light, Othello – or do you enjoy being hit with one?

  ‘How is your eye now?’ Mr Catti asked.

  ‘Almost completely closed.’

  ‘It’s a bloody shame!’

  ‘It’s been a wonderful evening though,’ he said. ‘One of the best I’ve ever spent.’

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Mr Catti said. ‘And so are the boys. They can tell that you appreciate the music, and they’re pleased.’

  ‘Here’s to singing,’ he toasted.

  ‘To singing,’ said Mr Catti.

  ‘By the way, let me lend you my torch to find your way back. Just return it to Heath’s Bookstore. Anyone will direct you.’

  ‘But you’ll need it yourself.’

  Mr Catti placed the light upon the table. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m at home. I know the city like my own palm.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said with feeling. ‘You’re very kind.’