My grandmother’s father had been a slave.
I decided to tell Harry in the morning that I no longer cared to share a taxi with him.
I kept putting it off.
He got into the taxi with me every morning, and every morning I would turn toward him and start to tell him, and I would see those pale blue eyes behind the thick glasses, and I would remember how he had eased his way into our group on the train. And it would occur to me that perhaps Harry Pryor needed my companionship more than I needed my own privacy, which was crazy.
He kept asking me questions about Negroes.
He wanted to know how it felt to walk into a good restaurant, did I always fear I would be turned away, or not served, or otherwise treated badly? He wanted to know how I handled hotel reservations; did I explain on the phone that I was a Negro, or did I simply arrive with my luggage and surprise them? He asked me if I had ever gone out with white girls, so I told him about Susan who had been in the School of Journalism at Columbia and whom I had dated for six months when I was going to Fordham. We were quite open about being seen in public together, I told Harry, even though Susan never mentioned me to her parents, and even though I never wrote about her in my letters home. We had quite a thing going for six months, but then it all ended pretty routinely when I went off to fight in Korea. I wrote to her once or twice, and once or twice she answered, and then it simply ended, almost as if it had never happened at all.
I also told him about my sister who was in the English department at U.C.L.A., and how she had gone through a severe Muslim phase, only to swing over to dating white men exclusively. She was now involved in all that crazy California scene of surfing and psychedelics and Oriental religion. I told him she still called me “Hub,” which had been my nickname as a boy. I told him Adele’s brother favored a separate Negro nation, that he had been jailed six times in Georgia and Alabama, and that he had fled north this past summer after striking back at a deputy with a piece of lead pipe. His eyes burn in his head, I said, I think he’s a fanatic. I told him that I myself had respected only Martin Luther King as leader of the civil rights movement, but that I would never ride a freedom bus or join in a march because, quite frankly, I was afraid I would be hurt or possibly killed. I told him I had an aunt named Fiorina who hired out as a cleaning woman, and whom I had not seen since I was coming along in the South, though every Christmas she sent a plum cake to the house in North Stamford. I told him that James Baldwin gave me a pain in the ass. And at last, I told him about what had happened the day I tried to walk across that little wooden bridge a mile from where my sister and I lived with my grandmother.
“Why didn’t you fight back?” Harry asked.
“I was just a little kid,” I said.
“How old?”
“Six. And my sister was only four.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought I was a fool to get into a fight with bigger kids.”
“Bigger white kids?”
“No.”
“But you must have thought that, Howard.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Just bigger kids, that’s all. White had nothing to do with it.”
These conversations all took place in various taxicabs in the space of, oh, two or three weeks, I would guess. All the time, I had the oddest feeling that Harry was waiting for me to say something I had not yet said, reveal something I had kept hidden until then, do something — it was the oddest feeling. It brought to mind again the Chinese machine gunners waiting for us to try a run through that treacherous ravine.
One morning, as I got out of the cab, I realized I had forgotten to offer Harry my customary dollar and a quarter. I reached for my wallet.
“Forget it,” he said.
“Harry,” I said, “we’ve been riding together for a long time now. I wish you’d let me pay my share.”
“It’s deductible,” he said, and shrugged.
“Are you sure?”
“I am absolutely positive,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, and got out of the cab. “So long,” I said, “have a good day.”
“The same to you, Howard,” he answered. “The same to you.”
All through the next week, I rode down to 86th Street in a cab with Harry, telling him what it was like to be a Negro in America. I no longer offered to pay for the ride because it seemed to me the point had been settled. If he really was deducting it, then why go through the same pointless routine each morning, taking out my wallet and extending the cash only to have it turned away?
“Good-by, Harry,” I would say. “Thanks for the ride.”
“My pleasure, Howard,” he would answer, “my distinct pleasure,” and the taxi would gun away from the curb.
On the following Monday, I arrived at the Stamford station late, approaching the train from the front end, which was closest to where I always parked my car. The train was about to pull out, so I hopped aboard and began walking back toward the last car when suddenly something powerful rooted me to the spot. I will not have to sit with the group, I thought, I will not have to ride in a taxi with Harry Pryor and tell him what it is like to be a Negro in America, I will not have to do either of those things if I stay up here in the first car. If I stay up here, I thought, if I take a seat up here, then I may be able to ride a taxicab down to 86th all by myself, light a cigar and inhale some good luxurious smoke, read my newspaper in peace and quiet, ruminate upon the state of world affairs if I want to, or dream of belly dancers in Cairo if I want to, or pray for peace, or wonder about my daughter’s teeth, or think about my wife’s car, or sketch out some plans for a boat I’d like to build one day, what with the Sound being so close and all. In short, if I take a seat in this first car of the train, I can perhaps avoid Harry at 125th Street and therefore be a Negro in America.
I took a seat next to a fat woman wearing a horrible perfume. I felt like a defector. I was certain they would come looking for me before the train reached 125th Street, certain Harry would burst into the car and shout, “Ah-ha, there you are!” exposing me for the runaway slave I most certainly was. The train rumbled across the Harlem River Bridge, the bleak gray tenements appeared suddenly on the horizon. I pulled my collar up high, and leaped onto the platform. I saw Harry as he got off the train at the other end, but I pretended not to. Instead, I walked very quickly to the closest staircase, raced down it, and, rather than walking up to 126th Street, cut across Park Avenue and headed crosstown.
I had just reached Lexington Avenue when two things happened at once.
A pair of taxis came rolling toward the corner, and I saw Harry Pryor standing there with his arm raised, hailing one of them. He saw me in that same instant.
“Good morning, Howard,” he said quickly, and pulled open the door of the nearest taxi. “I’ll grab this one,” he said, and got into the cab hastily and slammed the door. The second taxi had just pulled to the curb. I opened the door and got in. “86th and Madison,” I said, and watched as the taxi ahead, the one carrying Harry, gunned away from the curb and headed downtown.
I did not know what to think at first.