Holiday

Front matter

by WALDO FRANK

BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers

New York

Part 1

Part One DUSK

Sunset at Nazareth.

Niggers go home through the copperglow of pines. Niggers sing home.

White men stand lean in the doors of paintless houses. White men stand still.

The waters of the bay go red to the blue Gulf where swims the bloody sun . . sunset on Nazareth.

The Reverend Dill of the White Church cries:

"Air we gwine t' live up to our blesséd holy name? Air we gwine t' play cards 'n' dance 'n' drink co'n likker: or air we gwine t' be true t' the sperrit of our Lo'd Jesus Christ . . hallelujah! . . he nebber shot no craps, he nebber looked with lust upon no woman."

Nazareth. The Gulf of Mexico drains soil from her, blood red, to seas gray with moving. Moving seas of the world move athwart Nazareth standing . . niggers move, niggers sing . . a clot of crimson clay. But the trees sway up. And a dark man's eyes peer through the corridor of pine and yupon, he scents the flood of camphor leaves in the Fall:

—When the year dies why does she stir? When the year dies why does she sing?

He is tall and slender. His height and slenderness is lithe. He is the color of dusk on the shadowed road he walks. White folk call him 'Lank.' They do not see how his height sings, they do not see how frail and hungry he is beside the pine. 'Big nigger' they see.

The road is behind him. Pines in this swampy world turn to cypress. Road in this lowering world turns to trail. The sky is a drum of drawn white skin: empty, beating emptiness. He walks. Voices rib under the white drum of the sky. Dark voices. Sorrow voices making hope. Song ribs the white sky whence the sun has fallen.

The ground is red . . sparse grass and needles spraying leave the ground naked: and the trees thrust up above their draping dimness into pale open. Sky is naked white, earth is red naked. Among the trees, between the sky and the earth, the dark begins to live.

It is inhabited by songs . . black flame . . that twist like horizontal rockets through the stanchioned silence.

Silence around the song. The cypress swamp a silence full of song.

"Ha-o. Ha-o. O watchin' skies ob de Lo'd."

A little skirt flicks white above black twirling legs. A little waist gleams white within black arms. Above the round head, hair thrusts like a pinwheel.

"How yo' feelin' John?"

"How yo' feelin' Mandy Smith?"

She is short: she prances straight to underneath his chin.

"I's good, when I's lookin' at you."

He smiles and touches the girl's hard cheeks that gleam in the dimness.

"Yo'-all late," he says.

"An' ef?"

"Yo' Mammy, she'll be sayin': wha' yo'-all done in de dark?"

The girl's laughter, angular and strong, pierces up as her legs prance.

"An' I'll say to Mammy: 'Ah been wid Lank John Cloud.' An' Mammy, she'll stroke mah arm. She'll smile an' she'll say: 'O wid John? Well, dotter, da's alright. Ef yo'-all been wid John.

A scuffle of children's cries and bare feet beating brush lies yonder in the shadow. Mandy skips away, her voice in laughter drawing a silver riband above the brown dance of her body.

A corps of children burst on him: stop.

"Done yo' seen her?" A boy with ripped pants and a hemp-hued shirt flared to his navel, all brown, all naked else, asks the question.

"Seen what?"

"Our goat."

"O yo'-all chasin' a goat?"

Three boys, four girls, hot, bronze with sweat, and the rags of skirt and pants laid casual upon their nakedness, stand and lift eyes on John.

"Yo'-all sho' she went this way?"

Seven black heads nod.

"Come along, then. Don't make such a racket, though. Steal up on her easy. She's suttingly hungry, jes' like yo'-all. She wants t'git home too. Yo'-all been too urgent: scar't her."

They fall in line with John. His arms point the fan form that their bodies docilely, instantly accept. They move into the trees. The song calls fill the silent falling night.

Beneath a huge live oak is the cabin of John and his mother. Its weathered wood is mellow with the dusk that the great flood of leaves suffuses with green shimmer. It is symmetrical: its two rooms deep as the house, on either side of the hall that cuts through to the rear. A murmur of barn-life thrusts forever through to the wide open sward in front where tree-stumps stand, and a hitching post, and the chickens and the hogs by day lose their identity within the stillness.

Mrs. Cloud sits rocking on the porch, waiting her son. Odor of yam and cabbage and fried pork circles the quiet cabin, fends it off like a beneficent magic from the swamp's dank pressures. The live oak sleeps. Its streams of moss stand vertical within the gnarl of the wood. An early firefly studs the black of its low branches. The cabin hall is the cabin's throat. From the yard, through the cabin throat, come the thick stirs of animals asleep. A hog squeals wistfully. Yonder the bray of a mule sets momently on edge the firmamental stillness John's striding feet punctuate the purple steadfast world like heavy bolts holding the wood of a chest.

He sees his mother waiting, rocking: he smiles.

"Sorry, Mammy. Meaghan's goat got lost. We had quite a chase."

"Come in, son. Supper's waitin.' Meetin' tonight."

She is serious and heavy. She gets up.

" . . 'n' Mary Cartier's comin' fo' to go 'long with us."

The cabin is propped above the clay. She steps down to the ground. Her son smiles at her serious way. He tucks his hands about her waist and turns her. There is the cabin above them: tall son smiling and a heavy woman nearer the ground, whose seeping dampness is heavy under the heavy garland of moss and of tree. But he smiles. And the cabin intercedes . . hands of a man musing, living, loving as he worked wrought this . . for the smile of John against the weight of his mother.

He bends so that his bronze cheek lies on hers. He helps her up, mock-painfully.

"Ol' woman—yo' gettin' lazy, yo' gettin' fat! Yo' cookin's too good. Mammy, soon I'll have to h'ist you."

Within the steam and cloy of the cooked food, she sits at his side. Her mood, with soil and tree and dying sky to strengthen it, pushes his smile away.

"John," she says, "I tol' yo' Mary Cartier's comin' fo' to go 'long with us. An' yo' sit 'n' say nothin', son."

"Ah heard you, Mammy."

"Ain't yo' glad, John?"

He looks at her, silent. —It is your skin!

"Ain't yo' glad, son, jest a bit?"

—Your love's a white sun shinin' on a sea. <> Summer blue sea <> Summer blue sky >> . . Da's your love! It is your skin!

"Why don't you answer yo' Mammy?"

"Mammy, fo'give me."

"Ain't yo' glad?"

"No . . No."

She shakes her head.

"I ain't sorry . . 'n' . . I ain't glad." All that he sees is his mother: old brown hands, black at the nails, blue at the knuckles, clasp in wistfulness.

—Summer sea . . blue sky . . white sun . . It is your skin!

Her face is glowing with the youth of her love. It turns away so that the lamplight bathes it. Profile sheer with its high arched nose and its straight brow, with its thick mouth making a smile as delicate and fair as her handclasp.

—I love you, my mother. But it is your fault. You made me.

"Mammy," he says aloud, "I don't mind that Mary Cartier is comin' along to church."

"O you don't mind. Da's somethin'. Thanks." She studies him. "Yo' cares fo' her, son. Don' lie to me. Yo' does."

—An' I care fo' you. An' in my love fo' you, why is there blame?

"Dear Mammy," he says, "do yo' want so soon to get rid o' yo' son?"

She is stirred. She fights her feeling. She takes the last dishes from the table and carries them away. She faces the cupboard where they lie. She cannot escape the urgence of her mood. She returns to the table with its sooty lamp and the face of her son shining upon her.

"John," she says. And she sees not him, but the room where they are sitting. Sitting beside him, drawing the heavy chair to sit beside him, she sees the room that lives within her eyes . . their world she sees. A brown dark room, dark always, sun has never touched its crude-splashed plaster, the broad beams of the floor. Sun beats down upon the oak tree and its leaves turn sun into a green cool dance. Sun is a curse save the cool leaves transfuse it.

"John," she says: "John" her hand moves toward him, draws his hand to the apron of her lap. "John, I fear."

He watches his hand held in the hand of his mother.

"Son, you are strong and good. Son, I am proud o' you. The cabin and the swamp, dey've stuck me here. But you are here, dey haven't took you from me. Not yet."

"Not yet?"

"Ah wants you always, John. Fo' I fear. I fear."

He understood. He lifted his hand a little to stroke hers.

"But Mammy, ef the cabin 'n' the swamp is chokin me?"

"Chokin's our life." Her voice is harsh.

"It has been."

"An' it will be, John. O I knows I'm right to fear. Chokin' is de black man's life. Da's why he's black, I tell yo'. Choke a white man, he gits black too. Don' yo' dare dream otherwise. O John, I knows I'm right to fear!"

"Mammy, did I ever make to leave you?"

"It's de look in yo' eye. Ef dey ever fin' dat look, John, in yo' eye. Yo' done fo'get about yo' Uncle Wallace. My brother Wallace. He had a dream lak you. What was it? Nothin', John. Jes'—to stop chokin'. Jes' a dream of a black man's breathin' free. An' de dream gave a look to his eyes. An' wid his eyes he went to de White Town, an' he looked: looked at de sto's, looked at de cafés, looked at de men who called out 'Howdy, nigger.' John, John . . one day, wid dat look o' singin' freedom in his eyes, he looked at a white woman. He was lookin' at air: at free open sky; an' dat woman she got in de way of dat look in his eyes. An' somethin' in her eyes got kindled up by his. John, no mo'. Jes' de kindlin' look in his eyes and de kindled look in hers. John, no mo'. At nightfall, dey comes up. Right here. An' dey words was low: Git out. Git quick. 'Fo' de sun comes back, git away. An' Wallace went."

"He went No'th."

"We lost him, No'th."

A voice rose within the night. It clambered up, like a swift dark flying flower. And when it reached the ranges of the night, it sang:

"Deep River Deep River."

And when its song was done, it wafted down, a flower with wings falling, till it reached the clay of the night's red sleeping floor. And it slept.

"Mammy," said John, "how lovely is our world."

"We lost him No'th."

"Mammy love, don' you see? I'll never go No'th. Don' you see how I loves . . how I loves" A faint breeze rising scudded in the cypress trees and turned a silver whisper wide in the black night.

"How I loves . . how I loves . . our land!"

"Ours," she swings her head in irony. "Our land!"

"Didn' yo' hear dat song? It was a woman of ours. Didn' it fit right perfect in de night? Don' the night lie homelike on our town . . ?"

"Niggertown."

"Yo' ought to see the night yonder on Main Street, Mammy. Night's all broke up with jagged ugly lights. Night's runnin' away from Main Street, all de time. It's our night, Mammy, an' it's our red lan'."

She has dropped the hand of her son.

"—an' it's our white sun."

Her face is full on him: her eyes confront his eyes that do not see her. Her face is sharp with a dawning horror.

"Son," she murmurs, "have dey already seen dat look o' yo' eyes?"

He laughs. He strides with his bolt-like steadfast march from corner to corner of the room.

"Our land! Our night, it is! Our breathin', singin' world!" His striding feet hammer the room shut. She is afraid of her son. His voice flames in the cabined room. Room is shut and dark, the flame of his voice lances free. She is afraid for her son.

—Ah loves you, you is mine, Sweet dark lan' o' de South: Yo' eyes wi' deir swayin' shine, De sweet song o' yo' mouth. What are de niggers singin'? Ain't it de breath o' de South? You mine, O lan' o' de white snow stalks over de red soil swingin', You mine, fo' my song an' yo' song Am de breath o' my mouth.

He has stopped as his moving will went upward into song. With the last words he stands erect in the corner of the room, and his head is high in the shadow of the rafters. His mother, short sheer bulk by the lamplight, watches the height of her son: watches the look of his eyes.

She moves to him. She sinks to her knees. Her hands go up, like the flutter of old leaves. Her voice goes up, clearer, straight like the gaunt black trunk above the autumn leaves.

"Son," she says, "I fear. Jesus, be merciful to him who has de look dat's danger!"

He lifts her up: her brown face close to his, now stooping.

—Your skin.

"She's pretty, is Mary Cartier. She'll make you safe. She's smart. She'll wash away dat look. Marry her, son."

"When I marry"

"You better. You twenty-three next April. A man needs his woman. Else his eyes go lookin', else his eyes go huntin' . . "

Knock. Mrs. Cloud rises, lightly for her, her hands already wide to greet Mary Cartier who steps in.

The lamplight makes of the girl's bare throat, bare arms, a luminous darkness. Her features, curved and full, stand out from the black wood of her hair as if some sculptor with chisel and knife of flame had fashioned her from earth. She smiles. A faint side toss of her head infuses a murmurous movement to her face that makes her presence in the heavy room a sort of song of the night.

She kisses the old woman. She gives her hand to John.

"How yo' feelin', Mary?"

She smiles, saying no word. He sees her teeth gleam white above the blue-hard gums.

"Ah'll be ready in a minute, dears. John, yo' keep Mary company till I tidy up." Mrs. Cloud disappears.

The girl and the young man feel the room suddenly harden its walls, sharpen its angles to contain them. He feels the rondures of her flesh, she feels the single pressure of this man and of their knowing each is there with each.

She goes to the armchair. Her way is musing. He stands stiff and clear.

"Mary," he says, "Mammy wants fo' us two to git married."

She seats herself, and then she looks at him. Her eyes smile wistful but her bared teeth take on a gleam harsh and savage as a crying voice.

"You don' want to marry me, John?"

"I sho' do love you, Mary."

"John, O I love you!"

"Ken I kiss you, hon'?"

She gets up for him. Their bodies move with gentleness upon each other, link in a fierce moment. She puts him off.

"I'm afraid of you, Mary."

"You love me, John?"

"I can't . . marry . . "

"Not yet."

"You understand?"

"I loves you, John. Go ahead. I want fo' to make you happy."

"Ef you understand, tell it to me"

She laughs. "Ain't much to tell. Yo' ain't ready, da's all."

"Why, Mary?"

"Yo' too alive yet, I reckon, fo' marryin'. Only fo' marryin'." She holds out her hands.

"Mother's afraid." He clasps them. "So afraid, she wants you to take me now, while I'm so much alive"

Her face loses its luminous warmth. It turns away to the wall, to the world beyond the wall. It is hard like coal.

"I hate them," she mutters. "All of 'em, I hate. Deir cold hot eyes dat look at you, wantin'—hatin'."

They stand this moment lost from sight and feeling of each other in a common cloud. (White folks wanting, white folks shutting down, white world hungering and a cold hard hate, a hating poison from its hungering love.) They have lost each other. Sud- den they seek each other. Hand clasps feverishly hand and draws the burden of the other's fear . . warmed fear . . closer to it, closer.

"John," her voice is the call of that in her is voiceless. His arms about her drink the sweet comfort of her yielding body. And a rocking gentleness enarms them standing, within the cabin, within the white gaunt pall of the world.

Mrs. Cloud has a shawl about her head.

"Mammy," says John, holding the hand of Mary. "Mammy, I hope you won't mind too hard. Fo' Mary Cartier and me is thinkin' of gettin' married."

White Nazareth longs across the bay to the City yonder. Nazareth cannot see the City, but it is always there. And when the daily steamboat carries you at dawn an hour from Nazareth, the City's towers stand white in haze: and about you is the green jetsam of the Gulf: and Nazareth has died behind on its clay bank fringed with pine.

White Nazareth thrusts down longing to the bay. Main Street narrows in resolution. The frame stores, tin fronted, lose their pride, lose half their being. The red street dips and all its will is bayward. The stores, crowded, are shoddier. The street is strident with cacophony of gutter, of twisting rut and groove. On the loose-beam bridge street leaps a gully, red through water oak and holly: street flares into a tongue of wide moist land which is the way to the pier. The longing of white Nazareth is the pier: Nazareth's longing for a towered world, a world of trolleys and department stores and liners from Honduras plethoric with fruit. The pier is very long. It is rickety, moldy, bulging. It is narrow, it is uneven, its railings are gapped. It is full of boards splintered, boards dangerous to step on, boards with nails gaping orange through a spray of rot. The pier is the cluttering broken wooden will of the town, thrust out . . half mile of water . . into the bay of the world.

Dusk. Nazareth trails down, trails out to meet the Psyche which for a score of years has dumped bags, barrels, weary feet upon a patched-up pier. Dusk. The town lies straggling on the rugose street, gray like the shell of some archaic bug whence the black blood has oozed. Nazareth living flows the reddish slope to the low waters. Each drop of the dark blood has a face pale and drab like the stiff houses stuck against the sky. The angle of their frames, the paintless beams, the false tin fronts find their mysterious counterpart in nose and eye and mouth of the white human stream.

Nazareth moving down is apart from the world, and it remains apart. Red earth, blue bay, whitening sky round to the monochrome of dusk. And within, flecking the world's rapt sweep, the houses like splinters, the faces like dry flakes, jagged thoughts, pressed passions

Where the pier widens at the end, the stream of Nazareth widens and stands still. The bay, suntouched, is a saffron sheath. From it a tiny spot, dimensionless and colorless, sends a faint whistle: the whistle lingers and stings after it is gone. In the minds of waiting Nazareth, the Psyche grows: grows from the penetrant pierce of the whistle upon the silken bay . . now yellow, now suffused in rose . . until there is a boat, thrusting aside water, spitting, churning, groaning, soiled flat white: coming in full steam up.

Bells clang clang . . clang . . clang one two three. An odor of warm salt wafts with the steam and the wet wood and the hemp up the pier that seems to slide upon the steadfast steamer. She swings in sidewise. From her bridge, a man, cavernous eyed, casts angular remarks upon the deck, upon the crowd. Negroes, purple in dusk, move with ropes, cast them: the crowd stirs thickly as the ropes come scuffling. They are caught. They are taut. Steamer and pier move in upon each other over the gape of the water, like two adverse wills welded by will beyond them. A negro slips on the greasy, narrow deck. His legs stick up: with legs and arms thrust skyward, he strikes the water between the pier and the boat. The crowd rustles back, holds back as if the falling negro drew it down. A man at the bow casts a plank that holds the gap between the boat and the pier. The boat halts shivering, it stands resistant, as if the fallen negro drew it too. The water foams. Black boys peer wondering and aloof upon the frantic head. White men glance with guilty eyes away from each other. The black head sinks. Watching Nazareth is hushed before the word of the black head disappeared

"Cast that there plank:" the strident skipper's voice. The gap of water, stilled, narrows away. Steamer and pier kiss slowly.

Once more the plank is thrown in its proper place. Wagons, barrows, crates, a shuffle of white faces, a strewing of black, move from the boat to the pier.

"Too bad Who was it?"

"O, one of them Town niggers. Not ourn. They change ever' week."

"Why didn' one of his own go after him?"

"Huh! Them niggers? Catch 'em. Dey can't swim, nohow."

Virginia Hade comes through the press, comes up to a tall man whose eyes greet her with awareness of her words ere she speaks them.

"Hello, Sis," defensively.

"Bob: one of the boys go over? True?"

He nods.

"Why didn't you go after him, Bob?"

"Why should I, Virginia? Plenty o' niggers round. Why should I?"

"You swim well enough."

He pats the smooth thigh of his flannel trousers.

"Virginia, cut it. Here at least. It was one o' the niggers, I tell you. I didn't have time to think. Got sucked in between. It wasn't my affair."

The stream is flowing back to Nazareth.

"You wouldn't have thought so carefully, if it had been a White."

"Course I wouldn't. That'd been different, I reckon. Eh—wouldn't that have been different?"

"Yes," she says. And he is satisfied.

Young man, young woman, flow along with the stream. The sheath of the bay pales to a silver film over orange, over black. The sun is gone. Above gray pines, a moon at full stands pale. The red cliffs glow like copper.

The trees of Niggertown hold night sternly.

Mary Cartier with John and Mrs. Cloud come down the steps of their cabin, going to Church. The trees hold the night. Night is held moveless and warm. Young man, old woman, girl move in the perfect night. The cabins make their fire-signs, sparse and scattered among trees, within night. The cabins are shadowed secrets thrusting into night swift words of lamp and kindling that are dream: for the cabins brood about their dream-hid flame, blacker, more somber. Flame of voices too. Mothers croon lullabies. Babies jet their savage lambent cries into the womb of silence. Boys shout cadences of play. Girls make calls over dishes, that paint soft throats. Through the manifold corridor of pine, of cypress, of yupon, holly, cedar, move the feet of the erect, churchward . . skyward.

—Dere shall we meet!

The church stands in an open patch of the woods. Tree walls lean back and the sky presses in. A clump of buggies casts lampglow on the unpainted loom of the long church. It stands fantastic, insecure among the trees, bathed in the pallor of the hidden moon, and the wagon-lamps gashing its flank. The threshold of the church is black and choked with a murmurous people. The open ground takes the sky thirstily. Cabins fronting it are dark. Their flames are dead, have left the cabins dead. A well in the center of the open space rises like a rock within the mist that swims upon the grass: and in the mist the stars.

Main Street fights night. Jaggedly brittle, along the rugose road, Main Street fights night. Electric lamps, displays of drugstore, movie, specialty shop, the angular thrusts and jerks of house fronts . . cut the night like an ugly blade: drive night far off and in the road lie fragments of its deep . . shadows . . like shards.

The dwellers of white Nazareth fight night. Young men stand in the storeways. They are lean and motionless. Their heads upon their necks do not turn. Their faces do not speak. Their words are ejaculations of a static sense. Thought and sentiment and passion dwell fixed within a moveless pivot of their souls. Others not lean, not pallid. That which is moveless within bursts out: big fellows with flourishing mustaches, bushy brows. They are obscene with brutal energy that bursts forever out in their gruff ways, their obtuse thoughts, the raw of their voices.

Women, shut in night, fight the freeing night that lies spiked on white Nazareth. Women pale and wistful. Their languid mouths move half against the hunger of their eyes and the denied mist-longing of their hair. Fair skins, transparent like December's moon at sunset. Sky of the sun, sky of the crimson soil sicklies the broken turmoil of their youth.

But the night flames up. Moon mounting floods the pine woods. Stars fade gold against the washing softness of the moon. Stars dance, stars swing. The sky is a blue song, worded with golden stars. The sky is a blue scarf jeweled with starlight, flung about the moon White Nazareth sits upon her damp red clay and spikes her shanties into the heart of the night.

Virginia Hade walks to her church on Main Street.

(In the swamp a cypress tree, above the breathing of the nearer pines, sings aloud:

—Where is the golden dust that made me thirst? Night is a tide of silver. Day is a drouth of gold.

The tree frogs jangle:

—The land swims and the water wants to walk.

The nigger church out yonder in the swamp stands mightily with arms upthrust: it trembles, it swerves, it drowns the murmur of pines: it leaps above the trees:

Ha' Mercy, Lo'd! )

Virginia Hade walks between nods on Main Street.

Stiff boys bend, slack women stiffen, big-browed men grow sharp of eye and querulous of heart as the straight girl walks (A nigger head bobs in the water. Screams. White laughter presses the black head down into a dirty bubble.)

—We look up to you, Miss Virginia. We-all are proud, right proud of you, Miss Hade. God bless you. Your going to church does us a heap o' good. God bless you, Miss Virginia.

—I believe. And Christ and all the Apostles, they were like us. Were they like us? O yes: they were like us. Were they? The writers of the Book, the speakers of the Word . . all—were they?—like us?

The new white church is a blaze of light. Revival Week. A printed banner is strung between the church and the opposite portico of a stable:

<> <> IF JESUS DON'T GET YOU <> THEN SURE SATAN WILL!!

Muffled men and women move from the night into the electric smile of the church whose door gapes like a mouth.

" Let us pray "

With shuffle, rustle, the worshipers bow their heads. Eyes behind fingers, faces peering upon laps and trousers, brows horizontal over sweated shoes . . seek God.

Virginia Hade is late. She walks down the aisle. The grace of her strong way is broken by a strain vising her hips and her dark eyes that meet the gleam of the candelabra. She is tall and firm, but her harmony is broken and her eyes are not happy. She sinks in the dry human sea. Her black eyes fade in the welter of many bodies: her golden hair stands out.

The Reverend Dill is a sleek form holding a face contorted in supplication. His palms press high above his working face: and his mouth twists as he wrings from it God's words.

Dry rustling sea of women, girls and men.

" . . We pray you, Lord, give us a sinner, just one more sinner, tonight. For Jesus' sake "

There are no waves on this sea. The preacher's voice is acid shrill . . no waves . . his hands swing sharp . . no waves . . hate and accusal lance from his wrung mouth. The dry sea lies before his frenzy, chill in his chill heat . . no waves, no waves.

" . . O Jesus Christ "

This sea is flat. If it has waves, they sleep below. They pray for the preacher to have whipping words to lash the surface, to make it roar and foam.