James Baldwin - Another Country

They began to walk. “I want to get out of this town,” Eric said, suddenly.

“You and me both,” said LeRoy.

“Maybe we can go North together,” Eric said, after a moment, “where do you think’s best? New York? or Chicago? or maybe San Francisco?” He had wanted to say Hollywood, because he had a dim notion of trying to become a movie star. But he could not really imagine LeRoy as a movie star, and he did not want to seem to want anything LeRoy could not have.

“I can’t be thinking about leaving. I got my Ma and all them kids to worry about.” He looked at Eric and laughed, but it was not an entirely pleasant laugh. “Ain’t everybody’s old man runs a bank, you know.” He picked up a pebble and threw it at a tree.

“Hell, my old man don’t give me no money. He certainly won’t give me any money to go North. He wants me to stay right here.”

“He going to die one day, Eric, he going to have to leave it to somebody, now who you think it’s going to be? Me?” And he laughed again.

“Well, I’m not going to hang around here the rest of my life, waiting for my papa to die. That’s certainly not much to look forward to.”

And he tried to laugh, to match his tone to LeRoy’s. But he did not really understand LeRoy’s tone. What was wrong between them today? For it was no longer merely the world — there was something unspoken between them, something unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired. And yet, on that far-off, burning day, though this knowledge clamored in him and fell all around him, like the sun, and everything in him was aching and yearning for the act, he could not, to save his soul, have named it. It had vet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. It had only a shape and the shape was LeRoy and LeRoy contained the mystery which had him by the throat.

And he put his arm around LeRoy’s shoulder and rubbed the top of his head against LeRoy’s chin.

“Well, you got it to look forward to, whether you like it or not,” LeRoy said. He put one hand on Eric’s neck. “But I guess you know what I got to look forward to.” And Eric felt that he wished to say more, but did not know how. They walked on a few seconds in silence and LeRoy’s opportunity came. A cream-colored roadster, bearing six young people, three white boys and three white girls, came up the road in a violent swirl and wake of dust. Eric and LeRoy did not have time to move apart, and a great laugh came from the car, and the driver beat out a mocking version of the wedding march on his horn — then kept his entire palm on it as the car shot down the road, away. All of the people in the car were people with whom Eric had grown up.

He felt his face flame and he and LeRoy moved away from each other; and LeRoy looked at him with a curiously noncommittal pity.

“Now that’s what you supposed to be doing,” he said — he said it very gently, looking at Eric, licking his lower lip—“and that’s where you supposed to be. You ain’t supposed to be walking around this damn country road with no nigger.”

“I don’t give a damn about those people,” Eric said — but he knew that he was lying and he knew that LeRoy knew it, too—“those people don’t mean a thing to me.”

LeRoy looked more pitying than ever, and also looked exasperated. The road now was empty, not a creature moved on it; it was yellow-red and brown and trees leaned over it, with fire falling through the leaves; and the road now began to drop beneath them, toward the railroad tracks and the warehouse. This was the town’s dividing line and they always turned off the road at this point, into a clump of trees and a rise which overlooked a stream. LeRoy now turned Eric into this haven. His touch was different today; insistent, gentle, ferocious, and resigned.

“Besides,” said Eric, helplessly, “you’re not a nigger, not for me, you’re LeRoy, you’re my friend, and I love you.” The words took his breath away and tears came to his eyes and they paused in the fiery shadow of a tree. LeRoy leaned against the tree, staring at Eric, with a terrible expression on his black face. The expression on LeRoy’s face frightened him, but he labored upward against his fear, and brought out, “I don’t know why people can’t do what they want to do; what harm are we doing to anybody?”

LeRoy laughed. He reached out and pulled Eric against him, under the shadow of the leaves. “Poor little rich boy,” he said, “tell me what you want to do .” Eric stared at him. Nothing could have moved him out of LeRoy’s arms, away from his smell, and the terrible, new touch of his body; and yet, in the same way that he knew that everything he had ever wanted or done was wrong, he knew that this was wrong, and he felt himself falling. Falling where? He clung to LeRoy, whose arms tightened around him. “Poor boy,” LeRoy murmured again, “poor boy.” Eric buried his face in LeRoy’s neck and LeRoy’s body shook a little— the chest and belly of a man! — and then he pushed Eric away and guided him toward the stream and they sat down beside it.

“I guess you know, now,” LeRoy said, after a long silence, while Eric trailed his hand in the water, “what they saying about us in this town. I don’t care but it can get us in a lot of trouble and you got to stop coming to see me, Eric.”

He had not known what they were saying, or he had been unable to allow himself to know; but he knew now. He said, staring into the water, and with a totally mysterious abandon, “Well, if we’ve got the name, we might as well have the game is how I see it. I don’t give a shit about those people, let them all go to hell; what have they got to do with you and me?”

LeRoy looked briefly over at Eric and smiled. “You a nice boy, Eric, but you don’t know the score. Your Daddy owns half the folks in this town, ain’t but so much they can do to you. But what they can do to me —!” And he spread his hands wide.

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

LeRoy laughed. You better get out of this town. Declare, they going to lynch you before they get around to me.” He laughed again and rubbed his hand in Eric’s bright red hair.

Eric grabbed his hand. They looked at each other, and a total, a dreadful silence fell. “Boy,” LeRoy said, weakly. And then, after a moment, “You really out for trouble, ain’t you?” And then nothing was said. They lay together beside the stream.

That day. That day. Had he known where that day would lead him would he have writhed as he did, in such an anguished joy, beneath the great weight of his first lover? But if he had known, or been capable of caring, where such a day might lead him, it could never have been his necessity to bring about such a day. He was frightened and in pain and the boy who held him so relentlessly was suddenly a stranger; and yet this stranger worked in Eric an eternal, a healing transformation. Many years were to pass before he could begin to accept what he, that day, in those arms, with the stream whispering in his ear, discovered; and yet that day was the beginning of his life as a man. What had always been hidden was to him, that day, revealed and it did not matter that, fifteen years later, he sat in an armchair, overlooking a foreign sea, still struggling to find the grace which would allow him to bear that revelation. For the meaning of revelation is that what is revealed is true, and must be borne.

But how to bear it? He rose from his seat and paced restlessly into the garden. The kitten lay curled on the stone doorstep, in the last of the sun, asleep. Then he heard Yves’ bicycle bell and, shortly, Yves’ head appeared above the low stone wall. He passed, looking straight ahead, and then Eric heard him in the kitchen, humping into things and opening and closing the icebox door.