Blood and Wine: An Anthology

By Wallace B. Collins

Blood and Wine is complied from a collection of fictional writings, free verse and autobiographical material I wrote and published in several books over the years. I selected segments I thought were essential to the general focus of my book to hone prose and target free verse to signify the creative process within which my book strives. I began the book with a poetic challenge-Intruders, do not enter the mind / of the unborn child in the womb of thought-thereby promoting prose against the originality of free verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595616787

Wallace B. Collins

Wallace Collins is the author of eleven books and now has returned to playwriting. Born in Kingston Jamaica, he lived in London and Toronto, before moving to New York, where he is a graduate of Queens College.

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Copyright © 2008 by Wallace B. Collins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in these short stories are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-50854-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-61678-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

Blood and Wine

Broken Circle

Joseph (Jo-Jo) Souvenier

A Broken Circle

The Exit Interview

Blue in Green

Blue Sable

Sandra Souvenier

Ras Joseph

Curtain Call

Strawman

Lucky to be Alive

Gabrielle

Blue in Green

Goodbye

The Empty Stage

Rain

Imagery

Ghosts

Toast

Lost and Found

Agitation

Friction: Lost and Found

Rest and Relaxation

Broken Circle

Reprise

In memory of

Pauline Cynthia Collins

Dedicated to

Barbara: her loyalty

Malikha: her bravery

Tanisha: her dedication

Selections from:

Blood and WineAnthology Published by iUniverse Inc. 2008

The Innocent and the Damned Published by Xlibris Corporation 2006

Orientation: A Journey Travel through Asia and Africa, Published by iUniverse Inc. 2004

Ebony Mask/Ebony Gold Published by iUniverse Inc. 2003

Blue and GreenPoems/Word Images Published by iUniverse Inc. 2001

Swell Tide ShimmyTo Jamaica with Love, Published by iUniverse Inc.2000

In Winter’s Eye Published by Xlibris Corporation 2000

A Rose in Cement Black Book, Published by Xlibris Corporation 2000

Love is a Drumpublished by iUniverse Inc. 2000

Shadows and Reflections Published by Xlibris Corporation 1999

Dragon FirePublished by Xlibris Corporation 1998

Introduction

Word/Imagery

Blood and Wine is a collection of Images and Impressions, some of which the writer has edited and rewritten for this Anthology, and dedicated to the author for his narrative that flows through the book like liquor poured into the reader’s glass. The reader swills the red wine in his glass as he celebrates the author for his collection of fictional and biographical libations as reflections he sees in his wine glass. He tilts his head with pride and assumes his role of reveler while he raises his goblet and drinks to the author for using sparse narrative in his imagery. He becomes loquacious as he sips his wine and salutes the writer for his depictions that highlights free verse and illuminates fiction. The reader focuses on the author’s intent and his endeavor to target prose to free verse that attracts the reveler in him and his bravado while he swills the blood-red-wine in his goblet and drinks to the author’s narrative. He imbibes the rich red wine; he sips it loudly to amplify the sound and glory he salutes the author for his narrative; then he raises his glass and toasts the author for his prose and the free verse he culled in his verbal excursions.

The reader slurps this prosaic libation as he takes on an image of the saga man. He mumbles his toast to the author and nods to the biographical images before him that emerges from what he reads as fictional impressions the author uses to create and promote a reality guide to his fiction. The reader concludes that the author has intensified fictional segments of his work by yielding to his rush of consciousness in his prose that runs concurrently, if not, spontaneously with free verse. He sees how the writer applies clichés to tempo the rhythm of his colloquialism, his shtick of the creative writer, poet and a raconteur. The reader is conditioned then to the author’s narrative, enough that he sees where the author assume literary license for himself as he plays words with harmony against dissonance. All of which gives the reader wiggle room to dance to the rhythm and beat of the author’s narrative that he propels into a spontaneous hip movement and in time with the irregular beat of the author’s prose.

The reveler smacks his lips then moistens them as he savors the author’s prose, how it flows asymmetrically and contrasts the narrative depiction of his characters and their situations against free verse. The reader gels with the intensity of the author’s prose; it projects a spontaneous rush of the author’s consciousness that runs concurrently with his free verse. What he reads, ebbs with the irregular flow of words and images that contrasts the author’s depiction of characters and their situations against his word imagery; they emerge as words and imageries that evokes a portrait, as in: Intruders, do not enter the mind/of the unborn, child in the womb of thought. The reader, in his verbal stupor, drains his glass and drinks to the author’s prose that gives prominence to free verse. Now, in his eventual sobriety, the reader points to the imagery and the melody the author trumpets; it reflects the Impressions and Imageries the author plays in the riffs behind the solo below.

Miles! His horn trumpets a mellow call A lyrical cry from tarnished brass inside the hall Notes that sing to the bereaved, bereft of hope, His pain, hate and joy, in one, long, whole note.

Ennui’s true refrain bears the heat And attracts the fire that engulfs the beat It embraces nineteen in two, in assonancic, bursts Stress in four, four times with tones of poetic firsts.

His whole notes fire a fervor that cools the coda. Miles creates licks that instill a mood of peace, That strokes the soul and caress the sense—sublime.

Blood and Wine

From Love is a Drum

Hilma saw him, but she could not believe that the homeless figure she gazed at sprawled in the door way of the Coliseum was Cy, her brother; she thought it incredible that the stilled, disheveled, man she stared at was her brother, Cy, sheltering in a door way in Columbus Circle. But how could she have anticipated seeing him there, stretched out in the door way of the Coliseum showroom building, or expected to see his limbs bared to the freezing temperature with wind blowing the snow like confetti around his exposed body, and not be anguished?

This is not good for you. This will kill you! She said to herself as she braced herself against the cold turbulence and edged her way toward the subway station. She flinched as the icy wind slapped her face repeatedly. The chill bit down into her bones and she shuddered as it ripped into her body and heightened the burning sensation on her cheeks.

Christ! She said, as she turned her head away sharply, pulling the fur collar up around her ears to mask her face against the blistering cold. The cascading snow-laden gusts continued to rain blows on her ears; each flurry stung her like hordes of bees biting into her flesh, making the numbness in her forehead unbearably painful. A current of cold air rushed up her legs like icy fingers assaulting her inner thighs and made every crevice in her body racked with chilly spasms. She shivered and hunched her shoulder, as the blizzard raged around her, sweeping into doorways with snow piling-on everywhere around him.

Hilma braved the icy wind that slapped her face as she looked askance at her brother, Cy; just seeing him stretched out in a doorway like that, and with the icy winds blowing up her skirt, made her discomfort profound. She shivered, then whispered,

Oh my God, is that you CY?

Her fear of seeing him looking disheveled and lifeless lying in a doorway, as if he was dead, were justified. She shook her head with disbelief that anyone could sleep outside on the cold, hard, concrete, door way, in that freezing temperature. Seeing him lying there, the way he was, thawed her emotions and brought home to her, the severity of his condition. She stood over him allowing the early evening frost to sink deep into her plump body to the marrow of her bones. She gazed at the crumpled figure huddled in the doorway under scraps of newsprint, while the wind-blown snow blanketed the corrugated cardboard that covered him.

Oh my God, is that you CY? Was that you, my brother? She murmured.

Bursts of cold air affected her breathing as she exhaled the warm air that rushed from her lungs through her large, generous mouth, like steam from a chugging locomotive engine.

Look at you! She said with her eyes filled with tears. Just look at you, Cy Smith! She whispered again.

My God ...! She hissed.

She pulled the fur collar over her mouth, as if trying to conceal her identity from passers by; she kicked the snow away from his exposed body, an agonizing sound came from deep within her. It frightened her; she felt a deep emotion for Cy; she found her brother’s deprivation, and his physical deterioration, wrenching.

Look at you! She shook her head.

Down there just like the garbage under you, the snow on top of you, the snow under you, the snow all over you ...

Hilma pulled the leather overcoat close around her body as she tried to avert the wind and cold air from rushing up her legs. She exhaled, realizing that no matter how much she felt for him, all her cares about his well-being would be still not enough to rescue him from the cold, and to save him from his sure fate. She shook her head in resignation, and walked briskly away into the wintry morning. Hilma hurried away from Columbus Circle, down into the subway station, looking glassy eyed and befuddled.

That was you, Cy! Once, I was so proud of you when you wrote for the weekly paper you’d worked for immediately after you finished college, then you becomes its editor? Was that you Cy? Hilma said to herself, as she tramped down the crowded subway steps, as if walking on air. It can’t be Cy! It can’t be Cy, my brother, it can’t be." Hilma was trying to clear up the confusion that crowded in her thoughts about Cy, as she tried to think positively about him.

It is then that everyone became relaxed, he’d written,after they shed their inhibitions, everyone argued passionately about their commitment to each other and to their ideas about one another.

"Cy had told his detractors that he was from the inner city, from an area where, though some people were poor, they remained proud and ambitious; now, overnight, progress has caught up with them and everyone has shed their inner-city, inhibition and are not ashamed of being poor. They wear it like a badge of honesty and political correctness with influence over their enemies. Yet, he never speaks to me as if I was his sister, so that I could have pity on him or feel sorry for him for the drunk that he’d later become.

A drunk, a dysfunctional, whose chaos is against order, or is it order with chaos he’s create? Cy wrote in one of his earliest pieces when he was on top of his game. ‘One maintains spontaneity and the other creates cycles of order and disorder, but the other? The other is the surface serenity of a calm sea; it envelops everything diverse and opposite,’ all that does is to reveal his tendency for abstraction, and clouds his sense of reality, which came back to haunt him later.

Cy, I just saw you stretched out in a doorway at Columbus Circle, with your bare ass in the snow.

Stretched out ... in the snow ... bare ass? Some stretching out, for sure, for the question of violence to solve interactive human affairs always brings to ones mind this historical soliloquy. You have descended the Alps and are now at the gates of Rome. Now what will you do, what will it be? Will you batter down the gate of the City, or will you sing, We shall Overcome,’ hoping that the great walls of Rome will crumble under the vibration of your ululating voices. How does the idea of the Trojan horse strike you? Oh Happy Days? You know that is only a subterfuge, a premature buildup because you are still climbing the mountain. You also know that I am incapable of being distracted by any of your superlatives, unlike some of those ideological transvestites, who talk conservative, but vote liberal and vise-versa. I acknowledged your contribution to me, for your own needs’.

Hilma felt that decisive moment entering her heart and mind as she recalled Cy and his fine, productive years. She thought then that work he did on the local, weekly, paper, contributed to what was good for him then, compared to what it is now in his homeless existence in a snow, bound, door way. It was a long way from those times when he made his family proud of him by the success he had in his job, she recalled, and of how he was in his earlier life. When she saw Cy huddled in the snow, bound, doorway, all the memories about her and her brother, Cy, surged into her mind. She recalled when they competed against each other to get their parent’s attention, all of which now explode in her head as she sat in the "A train, scrunched between a heavy, set, black man and an Asian woman near the door of the subway train.

She couldn’t have had pleasant memories of her brother? She thought. She used his past success as a reminder, to insure her memory a future that Cy now abandoned. She saw it as evidence from what she’d just seen of him, a ravaged, homeless person lying in a door way in Columbus Circle? Her immediate memory of him made her felt ashamed of his present disgusting appearance, as he lay prostrate in a door way at Columbus Circle. The snow and rubbish around engulfed him. Why!

Compelling thoughts ran through Hilma’s head, her mind then focused on Cy, who she’d just seen in the most horrible and depraved condition she never would have thought she would see him, as her brother, Cy, who, once, was so close to her.

You can say that I’ve benefited from your light; a light that now appears dim to me; not because you have faded, but because I’ve grown,’ Cy once wrote. Hilma recalled that it might be something to that effect. It was near enough anyway, that what he was saying was somewhat philosophical, that it was her choice and it was her right as a humiliated and dishonored sister to embellish what her dying brother had written when he was well in his mind, and in his body. Of course, that needs not be so, unless you have remained fixed in your mind. Stay your ground; after all, we are men of honor! He wrote.

Cy wrote that he believed—felt desperately that he wanted to break new ground. He thought it cruel that he had reach the early stage of his life where most questions that came in his mind have been answered by him to his satisfaction, and that his knowledge of things has meaning, and that meaning was conferred, mostly on those who are fools and thus have no fear of it.

Though Cy’s radical awakening initially frightened him, he soon found it was a major part of his new existence in a world that he was forced to function within, successfully. He stood for all the peoples’ goals, ideals and their aspirations for the downtrodden against injustices. Similarly, he knew that this new stance was the source of his survival as a sane and just person.

As far as he was concerned, moral value are at their highest Sunday Mornings in our churches. Wickedness and sin are rife in the land on weekdays except Sundays that first day of the week, that day of rest biblically prescribed for working men and women. Of course, all of that does not discourage the ladies of the evening whose Sunday service they clearly see as a heavenly matter, though to some as a lamentable disappointment to God-fearing ladies of the evening, who professes, Never on Sundays. However, come Monday and everybody, good and bad is back in business. Then, the world is a good place again, where honest labor and legit business thrive, like the hustler, begets their bread till next Sunday Morning when the semantics of good evil, of sin and the righteous will be followed by the call for tithes.

He recalled that a militant friend had said to me, with candor that, flames of the idea always consume the spark that ignites the mind. Everything that comes into ones mind by way of reading or association, or any form or gathering information through ones, experience, one uses in post thought or constructive reflection. From my inner experience, God and the Devil are hardly mutably interchangeable, as doubters would have you believe. My friend had doubts in his mind, I am sure when he said that those who do good deeds also do evil, and that those who commit evil also do good deeds therefore, God and the Devil complement the sinner and the religious individual. Well, maybe! Man cannot exist without God—of any denomination or religion—and his counterpart and opposite, the Devil—will God allows Himself to exist in His kingdom without man and his nemeses, the Devil. While man exists, God will be—is among the living, banishing Satan in the process. The question is whether God exist without man, or man can exist without recognizing the existence of God and his omnipotence in a world that He created? The life force is God and death is the Devil. What else is new?

Hilma reflected that she had walked away from Cy, away from the gaunt figure she’d known all her life as Cy, a healthy promising human being, and her brother. The snow could not hide that same figure from her now. Why, why are you out there in this weather? She kept asking herself as she rode down on the subway escalator.

The snow left him exposed. Though it freed him, the snow continues to pummel him with its flaky torrent that raged in and out of the doorway he called home. It was in that doorway that his ill fate appeared was being exhibited. It displayed his outcome as an event outside the arena, just as it also showed him as the subject of a performance in an igloo alcove. It was there the blizzard hugged him in its frosty bosom. It caressed him. It stroked his bearded face and kissed his hidden, puffed-up cheek in a romance with death. Winter embraced him. The snow entwined his long grimy fingers, taking him to that final pinnacle of mortal ecstasy as he clutched his crucifix—a half-empty wine bottle, although its contents remained red, spiritual and alive, it lay deserted beside his body. He lay in that doorway just like the trash that blew up in the doorway alongside him. Just like the hotdog wrappers, the Styrofoam cups and scraps of bagels tucked under his body. He made a short wheezing sound, but his cry for help did not attract the attention of passersby fighting the cascading snow, and hurrying to get out of the cold. He stirred occasionally. Those who turned their heads away from the onrushing wind and snow, long enough to give him a furtive glance thought he was dead.

Cy was alive, alive despite the cold wind that blew snow under his body and blanketed the newspaper that covered his rags. He was alive. This crumpled figure of a man, Cyril Smith, once known affectionately to his intimate friends as Cy, was alive. He remained alive because of the efforts of Dr. Weatherby, who, if he had he not left New York for a well, earned vacation in Florida with his wife, Cy would not have been lying in a doorway, half frozen. The doctor, through the clinic he operated and its convenient location for men like Cy, came to know him quite well. However, Cy was unable to appreciate the doctor’s attempt to rescue him because of his alcohol addiction.

In his delirium, Cy had no idea what was happening to him. Moreover, even if he had, he had no way of knowing that in Florida, the man who had rescued him several times was himself dying, even faster than he was. He could knot have known that in Miami, where the sun blazed down on Highway 95, that the good doctor lay dying as he struggled for his life. There was no way either, he could have known that the heat that burned in his belly was similar to the blaze in the sky that dried the doctor’s blood on Highway 95. It looked like wine that had spilled earlier, and now dried up with its dark, crimson streaks of blood caked up on the side of the doctor’s head and face.

Unlike Cy, who wanted a drink of wine to boost his spirit, not so much to lift it out of his body and into the heavens as to survive another night in winter, the doctor wanted a drink of cold water to cool the heat that engulfed his body. He craved something cold that would check the flow of life that he felt ebbing from him.

Dr. Weatherby’s head shot back on his shoulders. A thunderous crash echoed far away in the open wound in his skull as he lay on the wet pavement. Pitch and sound scrambled in his failing, half, opened mind. Urgent wails from sirens closed in on him. Waves of high pitch sound stretched like a million rubber bands in his head, vibrating like a jack-hammer digging deep into his cracked skull and into his subconscious. A drink of water would put out the fire that burned into the back of his head, as in a dream, he felt someone loosen his tie. He heard screams, faintly, in the distance; it came closer to him, as though carried by the wind, the sound developed into the urgent, continuous wail from the siren he heard moments before. He felt the heat as it continued to rage in his veins.

... Looks bad Fred ... likes he’s finished.

What about the woman? Did you look at her yet? Get her!

She’s about the same as him . in bad shape.

Put the collar on his neck. No. Let me give you a hand to get him onto his back.

Wait; let me get the trauma board.

No. I will get it. You check the woman; she seems to be out of it . except for the screams.

I will give her a shot. It’ll quiet her awhile.

O.K., John, I got him going with the oxygen. He might need C.P.R. Call emergency and let them know the situation. The woman is serious. Some strange thing inside her is keeping her going. Her chest appears partially crushed. She has head lacerations, broken legs, and probably a spine injury .

The voices swelled to crescendo, then exploded in Dr. Weatherby’s head. His mind whirred through space and time as the medics lifted him onto the trauma board. Through the haze, through the dwindling light in his mind, he saw his late father. He saw the big burly man whom he had always respected for working hard to put him through medical school—saw him working on the docks. He reached out to him. He tried to quell, in his mind, the screams that surged through to him. It came to him in wave after wave that jolted his senses. Eventually, he saw his first love. He felt his first fumbling kiss. However, in reality, he could not see her a few feet away from him crushed and squirming in pain. He heard her screams again, then her slow, muffled cries. His mind, in a kind of spurt, raced back to one day in the operating room when he was performing an operation on a patient.

His nerves short, circuited as he received cardiac pulmonary resuscitation from the medics. His entire body shook violently, alike an old motorcar, cranked up then sputtered out from lack of gasoline. Similarly, the blood left his face rapidly giving it a sick pallor. His physical coordination escaped his consciousness, devoid of awareness, except for his mental functions that sped back and forth in time.

It was his first day in his junior high school class, and he had accidentally dropped his loose-leaf folder on his teacher’s foot as she stood beside his desk talking to the class. She cried out, and some of the students laughed loudly, while others looked on in alarm. The students were amazed that she could feel pain, enough to yell. His fleeting memory continued to flash images that bounced off the darkened sky as he lay on the wet pavement. His car was a total loss. His young wife, though seriously injured, kept him alive with her screams—screams that died to moans. It sparked faint images of his past that sailed by his blurred, upside-down vision. He heard more screams and felt someone blowing air down his throat. The screams turned into moans, not of pain, but of spent emotion—the sound of an ominous delight. Suddenly, from the inner space of his mind, one last thrust of vision appeared and he saw her as she was, just a few hours before.

She looked happy then just walking in the rain. She was happy because they were on a well-earned vacation and she was appreciative of everything in Florida, the warm weather, the light drizzle, the heavy traffic, and the light clothing everyone wore; she loved it all. She appeared to him then as she was, five feet six inches tall and lithe. She walked with short, impeccable steps that appeared measured and deliberate.

Other forms took shape, like the shock pants the paramedics put over his legs. They hugged him. Briefly, he felt safe. He felt secure in leaving with the men whose voices he heard faintly and whose hands worked on him as if by magic. This feeling of safety slowed the film in his mind and a kind of reality emerged. Gradually, he arrived at his recent past as a successful doctor with a private practice, along with his private practice; he performed duties at a midtown Manhattan hospital where he had detoxified many alcoholics, including a drunk named Cy. This man had become a special case for him. He’d dried him out several times during the past years because he felt compelled to be his friend. He became aware of an inexorable sense of duty, to care for Cy. He sought to cultivate his friendship, not only because of feelings of guilt, but equally for compassion. He had felt a need to rectify a professional error he had made years before. It was his need to absolve himself of the responsibility for the death of Cy’s young wife years before. Consequently, Cy became, willy-nilly, a man he felt he had to save from the alcoholism that plagued him. Though he had dried Cy out on several occasions, he had always wanted to ask his forgiveness. However, he was unable to get through Cy’s continuous stupor. He simply could not penetrate Cy’s inability to equate guilt with charity. It made him wonder many times, why Cy never once asked him why he was being so kind to him. Unless Cy had asked why

Dr. Weatherby was caring for him so much, the good doctor did not feel free to relate his contrition to this drunk to whom he had devoted so much of his time; the good doctor did not feel comfortable revealing himself to this drunk.

Dr. Weather by had comforted himself with the idea that it was not guilt that made him tries to save Cy from alcoholism, as it was compassion. For, he believed that as a doctor, and as a man, he was a generous and good person whose sense of humanity was always important to him. It was that soft, unprofessional spot in his makeup that made him felt indebted to Cy. He had first met him on a hot summer night when Cy brought his pregnant wife to the hospital. He had lost her on the operating table, and felt ineffective then. The doctor could not do anything that would save the young woman’s life. He realized that years later. Still he had wondered what had gone wrong that night. Sometimes, in his desire for understanding, he would abandon his search for reason and chalk up the whole thing to an act of Providence. He made himself believe that simply, the young woman’s time had come; he thought there was not anything he or anyone else could have done to save her life.

An image slid out from behind the drawn curtain of his mind like a giant still photograph—the photograph of this young woman. Her dazed eyes rolled over in her head. Her light brown face wore an ashen mask that merged with the prematurely gray streaks in her dark hair. The blood from her opened veins jumped out at him as he worked on her.

On the curb where Dr. Weatherby lay, his blood ran to a trickle. It settled in some spots where it reflected brightly under the hot sun. It appeared just like the red strobe light that flashed from the ambulance and police cars hovering around him. His last mental image, as he sucked in oxygen from Fred—an image that shot through his subconscious into a bright endless opening—was crisp and profound, like a bright, bright light. It slipped from his view, into nothingness.

Cy’s grip froze on the half-empty wine bottle he held. Spurts of life continued to rage in his gnarled, stilled body—life that manifested itself in the ebbing sensation of his undying desire for sweet red wine. He could not bend his elbow to take a sip. Something told him, from somewhere in his faded mind, that if he had that drink, his mouth would not feel like a birdcage; the stink from his rags would not have offended his diminishing senses. One sip and the smell would go away. The dirt encrusted his skin would not itch neither, or would the cold sore and welts all over his body, sting. One sip and he would be able fight off the insects and other animals in his tortured mind that attacked him continuously before the glass door where he lay. He shrieked and made strange noises when he thought he felt them chewing on his flesh, gnawing on what remained of his twisted body. One sip and the pain would vanish. He would not feel the chill on his threadbare backside either. The snow that packed tightly under his newspaper blanket in the doorway he took as home, would feel warm as cinders under his distorted body.

Cy, you are only thirty-four years old! How can a thirty-four-year-old man become a bum like you, a skeleton of a man on the brink of death? How can a man who had so much going for him, a university education and a profession, as a newspaper editor becomes a-nobody, as if you have become, Cy. Goddamnit! Let me say something! I want to talk to you! I must speak for you! You have no voice, boy. Your throat hole is gone—eaten away by liquor! Let me talk to you as a friend and sister. I must talk to you. You are my brother. You are someone I love. I saw you as someone who was a credit to his family. I view you as someone who could be a credit to his race and to others, not merely as a newspaper editor, but as a man. I am sorry to say, Cy, but when you developed that taste for wine, there wasn’t anything anyone could do to stop you. I could not help you. Mother could not talk to you about the danger you were putting your young life into by your excessive drinking. I could not help you. Our mother and your friends tried to help you, but they could not check you in your unending slide down to where you are now. Sometimes I see you, Cy; sometimes I see you and you are in rags. You broke your sister’s heart, Cy. Yes. Me, Hilma, my heart bleeds for you.

Sometimes I’d see you lying there on your side in a doorway I had seen you looking, but you were not seeing anything. Even if you were seeing something, you were not able to recognize anything, not me, not reality. No, Cy, you never recognized me. You could not recognize me. I have put on a little weight now. You did not know that I dropped a bagel and a cup of hot coffee beside you most mornings and evenings. You could not because you were too far-gone in your stupor. Other times, Cy, I would pass you by, ashamed to offer you food or money. Sometimes, Cy, I would pass you by and hope secretly in my heart that you would die and relieve mother and me the pain of knowing that you are out there—suffering.

Hey, Cy, do you remember Matthew in the Bible? Mother would quote some passages to Dad after he had returned home from one of his road trips only to turn right back to go on another. She had said, ‘You off to another trip, Henry? Can’t you find work in New York? There are more nightclubs in New York than anywhere else in the country, Mama,’ he would say going into his musicians’ hip talk whenever she annoyed him, ‘it is to pay the rent and buy the food? If the work does not come to me, I must go where it’s at.’

She shook her head and lament, ‘My God, this man! Birds have nests. Foxes have holes, but the son of man has no place to rest his head.’ Cy, is that you? That is you, Cy, like Dad, except you are not working, you dying. I see you killing yourself slowly, and there is nothing Mom or I can do to save your life—or end it—to eases the suffering you cause us.

Say what, Cy, you suffer—for me, since when?

"I can remember, Cy; I remember it, as if it were yesterday. I remember it, as I must as your sister, someone you tried to emulate. Cy, you needed a brother. I think if you had a brother, you would have been much tougher. With me as your senior, someone who was always sentimental about things, about you and our parents, you would not have given up so completely if you had a brother. You would not have given up after Isla died, and you would not have lost your sense of survival after Stephanie left you. You got no guts, Cy Smith. That is what I want to talk to you about . let me say something, will you? Please!

Ah, shut up!

That is the last thing he said to her. He never spoke to her after that. It was not because he did not want to, but because he could not. He could not erase the self-pity that gripped him after Isla bled to death in a hospital just a few blocks from where he now lay. Neither could he wipe away the feeling of hurt he felt after Stephanie left him. It was as if he willed himself to die in the gutter or in some shop doorway. The depression he felt after Isla’s death disappeared, gone after he began to drink whiskey. It raised his spirits and chased his blues away. Yes, he thought that his hurt would disappear, and that Isla’s death was behind him then.

Cy believed he recovered sufficiently from the emptiness he had felt—so he told himself. He felt that it was good enough for him to remarry. He allowed himself only to experience again a traumatic breakup coming after five years of marriage to Stephanie, and including the tragic loss of his only son. It was another major emotional set back for Cy, and he threw himself completely into his job, working long hours, and drinking increasingly more whiskey to forget his woes.

The breakup of his marriage to Stephanie increased his dependence on booze and diminished his desire to form any new relationship, fearing as he did he would only get hurt again. For a while, he dulled his sensitivities by burying himself in his job. He found himself driven by an almost manic energy. Obviously, it bores the effect of the increasing amount of liquor he consumed daily, all of which eventually made it impossible for him to cope with the everyday business of living soberly. He knew that alcohol was the fuel that supplied him with his energy. He became convinced that it amply provided him with the fuel to fight his way out of his gloom. On his own, he felt he could not do otherwise. He drank more than enough to ease the pain that would not go away but kept tugging at his insides. Even more shattering for him, was that he developed a taste for wine. He loved it because it was sweet, it was red, and it gave him a pleasant feeling. More than anything else, it drowned totally his self-pity while it deadened his emotional wound, all of which turned out to be detrimental to his productive life.

How often he had caressed that bottle of wine as if it were a woman, a special woman who would become a surrogate for Isla. bottle of wine became a permanent replacement for Stephanie. Wine was that woman who offered him quickie thrills reminiscent of that of a cheap whore. Just like a Lady of the Evening who gratifies him in the morning, at noon, and she does him roundly at night, loved his brains out, all day long, and night, at first, she brought him solace, then she brought him good times. Finally, the whore that she was, with her demands on his emaciated body, she brought him bad times.

I am the only one who was true to you, Cy. Why don’t you speak to me, Cy? Is it because your mind is ..., is gone ... wasted away? You would have been better off if you still smoked grass and tripped out on speed as we used to, or drank a case of beer, at least you could function in the everyday world. Now, the way you are, Cy, everything in you, mentally and physically has gone downhill to a screeching halt. Cy, your struggle is over. You will never labor again and raise your load back up the hill.

Never! He did not cede that futility, only the absurdity of knowing that it was the same physician, at the same hospital where he had lost Isla, who was trying to dry him out and remedy his alcoholism. In recent times, he failed to recognize this dedicated man. All he knew was that the doctor took care of him and often went out of his way to help him. God knows he wanted to stop drinking. He told himself so in his attempt to justify taking another sip.

I want to stop drinking," was a thought that often escaped his befuddled mind.

Yet, without wine to fill the vacuum in his mind, it was impossible for him to try, even to think of stopping, let alone function properly in everyday living. One thing was clear to him that, without wine, he could never lead the life of the individual he once was.

Like that of the editor of a small newspaper, and of the creative teenager who played the trumpet in his father’s jazz band, until he gave it up at age sixteen when his tonsils became swollen and sore.

... Got to have them out, Cy, his father advised. We need your horn in the band.

His mother was opposed against him having a tonsillectomy. She gave into his father’s wish, finally. On a rainy night in July, the second week of his summer vacation, he entered the hospital.

The following morning he felt prepared, he felt ready as he sat in a sort of dentist’s chair. He was eager to have his tonsils out, and get it over. The nurse told him jokes. Then they strapped his arms down on the chair arm. At sixteen years of age, he had premature conceptions of being tough, he felt confident about it, enough to reassure him that he could withstand any pain. He thought it would be similar to having his tooth pulled, something he had done several times without batting an eye. He did not feel afraid. After the doctor gave him an injection in his neck, the good doctor pinched his cheek. Feel anything? Cy shook his head.

He saw a gloved hand holding a long, thin pair of cutting pliers coming toward his propped, open mouth. He felt his flesh tighten up in his throat. Another thin pair of pliers inserted behind the first one made him wince. Then bang! Everything happened. He wet his pajamas’ pants. It was as if someone viciously wrenched both his ears from his head and through his mouth. His body stiffened into a prone position in the chair. Tears sprang immediately into his eyes and ran down the side of his head. His tongue tasted salty from the blood in his mouth. The following day he left the hospital. He walked beside his mother to the Columbus Circle subway station on his way home.

For years, his father led a small jazz band around town playing trumpet. There were times when he hit the road on tours, and he would stay away from home for weeks at a time. When he was in town, Hilma sang with the band during rehearsals in their apartment building’s recreation room. The rehearsals would attract kids and grownups from the nearby buildings. It was this audience that fed the band’s ego, and the musicians responded by playing with plenty of feeling. Cy’s father would look pleased with his band and show a sense of achievement by nodding his head and saying in his raspy voice, "Yeah. Yeah.A He would say as the piece that they played ended to the cheers of the kids. In addition, it filled his family with pride.

Hilma even went on gigs around the community, despite her mother’s objections. Being a devout Baptist choir leader, she thought Hilma should leave the nightclub life to her father. Besides, she wanted her to complete her education at City College. She relented however, when Hilma rehearsed with the band at home, when the scores the band played included ‘respectable blues songs.’ Then, his father would play ballads he knew she loved, and invited her to sing along with Hilma, to vocalize with the band.

Those were happy days for me, Cy. I loved to sing with Mom; remember she made us sing with her, and then with the church choir. I enjoyed it when Mom and I sang with Dad’s band. I knew then that I could be a good band singer, if I wanted. You did not like it when I sang with the band. You hated me for it and you would flub your notes. You did it on purpose. I went out of my way to be nice and friendly to you. You know what I mean, Cy. You are a rotten bastard. This is just to show you that I am not your enemy. I invited you several times to hear the church choir I would be singing with as a guest singer, even when I knew you had refuse. That is your trouble, Cy. You do not trust in God. You never liked praying with us.

Mother had to beg you sometimes to say grace at the table. You asked why Dad never did. Well, I guess, I never asked him, and mother did not because I believe she understood Dad more than she understood both of us. I believe it was because of his brother John, who was a preacher in a storefront church. Dad did not like what his brother was doing. He probably thought he was not sincere. I believe Dad was always in between beliefs. Mom and I left him there to work things out for him. I believe he was getting there when he died. You, you were still a teenager. What did you have to work out in your mind about God? Cy, you are too individualistic. You see, Cy, I have a strong voice, and you knew that. You told me so. Mother thought I had a beautiful voice, and she had preferred me to go to Julliard rather than to City College. Dad thought that opera stuff was too much for his way of thinking.

‘You’re gambling when you go into the music business,’ he would say.

Well, I still have my voice, and I still sing in different church choirs, just as I did years ago when I sang in other congregations. It is the only thing that makes me continue to believe in myself—keeps me going these days, Cy. They still offer me small donations, as they did then, when I had use the money to buy small gifts for you. When I found out that you smoked marijuana, I was so surprised, but I thought that you knew what was right for you, so I bought a couple of joints from Teddy for you.

Cy, remembers Teddy, the good, looking guy who played the drums in the band. He was my first. We had something going, and neither mother nor Dad, not even you knew what was going on. Well, you found out later. Yet, Cy,

Mother was strict with me ... goes to show that if a kid wants to do something no parents in the world can stop them. That is one thing I learned from going on them neighborhood gigs with Dad’s band, Cy. We became good friends, Cy, you and me, after I graduated from college and began to teach at a nearby Public School. The money began to roll in for me and we weathered the hard times Dad was having finding work. Cy, will you let me talk, for crying out loud ...

Ah, shut up!

You shut up, she said. Allow me to say what I came here to say. I am not finished yet. Please, be quiet.

Ah, you shut up!

That was the last thing Cy said to Hilma. He never spoke to her about it after that, because it was too painful for him. Now, she’d pushed him too far—far enough to make him react to her in a dissonant tone of voice like,

His thick lips shone like tarnished brass as he blurted out, "You won’t shut up? Well, let me stop you there, finally, because I won’t be quiet, as you want me to—bitch, Hilma—bitch .

AI had you. How about that acid head ... come into my room naked as a Jay bird, the black feathers flying between your crotch, making out you didn’t know w here you were ... telling me you were floating on air, that I was your magic carpet ... sitting on me and riding me like I was a jackass. Then, you come all over me and on my bed, messing me up and floating back out of my room, as if nothing happened.

"You were good, Hilma. You knew what you were doing to your little brother. The next morning as we sat around the breakfast table, you looked me straight in the eye and asked me to grace the meal. You think I would forget that. No way—and you know what, Hilma; I never enjoyed it with anyone else as I did with you. I never had so much pleasure with anyone else as I did with you. You were better than Isla, than Stephanie, and anyone else in between. You were the first and last bitch I have ever had such a hard, on for her. It was unbelievable. Sometimes I get a real need for you, but I had remembered what we are to each other and that if Mom found out, she had commit suicide. She had surely done that if she knew what you did to me. Whenever I remember that night, you made love to me, Hilma, with you sitting on top of me, grinding away on me, then pulling my head up to suck on your big tits, whenever I remember that night, I reach for my bottle of Scotch. I wanted to drown that memory out of my head.

And you know what, Hilma, after a time I did get rid of you in my mind. The few times we met or the chance occasion I had been thinking of you I did not get a hard-on for you. I did not feel horny for you anymore. I think of you sometimes and realize that I was not as aroused for Isla and Stephanie as I was for you. After that, Stephanie had to work me up well before I could get started. Isla had no idea what to do at first, but she learned fast and well how to get me going. I never stopped loving that girl. She was sweet, jealous Hilma bitch. Now shut up and do not bother me anymore. I am tired; leave me alone."

What about your son you’ve left behind, drunken bastard, what about little Timmy? You ever think of him. You are out of your skull, you frigging drunk. You ever wondered who could have snatched him away from the park. He was playing with his neighbors’ kids in the park. Do you remember that we told the cops that? It has been a long time since he has been gone, Cy. The cops do not know what happened; they do not know anything. They know nothing about a little orange colored, four-year-old boy, disappearing from a playground in Harlem. You do not know either what happened to little Timmy. You do not know what happened to your son. You do not care either. You do not give a damn, neither for yourself nor for your son, for me, for Mom, for the memory of Isla, and for that frigging do-gooder. You said you still loved Isla. I do not believe you. You do not know your own mind from one minute to the other. I do not believe you because I know you loved me only. You loved only me—drunken slob.

No! Yes! I never stopped loving Isla. That is why I drank wine; I did it, not to recoup the memory of how good she was to me, but to ease the pain I felt for the way she suffered. Then, I had gotten to like the taste of it after a while; it deadened something in me and helped to neutralize the effect of Stephanie’s hard, driving, professional ambition on me. Man, she challenged me every bit of the way, and I should have stopped drinking, but I did not want her to believe she won over me. Then, I would have been a slave to her for the rest of my life, and that is what my ego has been fighting against all along, to be free of that entire burden. And on that, my desire won out.

His craving to be free won out over himself, his family, and his friends, and all that remained for him, because of his yearning, were bad dreams. They were strange nightmares, weird scenes that flickered across his impaired, inner vision, like a chimera in a desert of ice.

In addition, in his aberration, he sees drips of water leading to his door way—the doorway of the Coliseum where he now lies, where, with a sort of premonition, he opens the door cautiously. Suddenly, strange thoughts came into his mind, which said to him that something terrible awaits him.

Cy sees large, brown eyes pop out from under familiar skimpy eyebrows to greet him. He is not surprised. Hesitantly, he opens the door to the gaunt, unsmiling woman. It is Isla. She is looking at him from above.

What you want? He says nervously. Why you come back? He looks apprehensively at the woman who appears as Isla one minute and Stephanie the next. He stares indifferently at the nickel, plated, gun she levels at him. He sighs with exasperation and shrugs. Put that away, baby, you are in! His smoky, low-pitched voice carries a touch of sarcasm. Why you come with a gun?

You’ve left little Timmy outside, the woman replies in a squeaky, high-pitched voice. They are beating down the apple tree to the ground. I see you with a hockey stick beating the leaves, too. The kids are tossing firecrackers. Smoke is bursting out everywhere. Noise is flooding the place Isla.

"It is a hot day here in New York Hilma . later in the evening it became dull and overcast then turns to rain. Isla is ailing; she is expecting our first child any day now. Many people are around our apartment now . Her mother, relatives and in-laws; all are here for the past month watching Isla and her expectancy.

Jesus! Cy, I could not believe it was you I saw in the doorway, stretched out like that with snow and cardboard trying to hide your bare backside. That was you, Cy; I had seen at Columbus Circle, Cy, your naked backside for everyone to see, stretched out in the doorway in Columbus Circle . My God!

"I arrived later at Toronto International Airport about 2:30 in the morning. It was an enjoyable trip. I had a few gin fizzes and quite a few gin and tonic drinks aboard the American Airlines airplane. I got in a conversation with the passenger sitting next to me; he was weird, but he was a pleasant fellow. He said that a close friend of his died only the day before in a plane crash in New York, and only the night before he had an unpleasant plane trip from Chicago. His story did not scare me, not when I had a few drinks under my belt. I don’t believe you would fault me for that, Hilma.

Cy, you said that before. How many times you’re going to repeat that goddamn line? Me, blame you. Blame yourself! It’s your funeral!

Yes, I know! Listen to me Hilma, will you? I’m going to stretch out now; get rid of the cramps I’ve been feeling lately all over my body, and in my mind and even in my soul, or what’s left of it. Hilma, you right when you said you saw me stretched out in the doorway with my bare backside exposed, for the guy had said to me that he’d been to Toronto often with his girlfriend who was from Toronto but that she is now living in Forest Hills with him. He said that she’d left home as a teenager and got pregnant in Toronto, had her baby then gave it up for adoption. After a year, she discovered that no one would adopt the baby because its father was a black; no one wanted a fair, skin, baby, is seemed, so she reclaimed her child and her mother is now rearing her four, years old son, Timothy and loving him all the way. She left Canada, praying that no one will kidnap her child, and then came to New York where she met some weird characters in Greenwich Village and found that she simply could not cope with them. Then, she returned to Toronto where she’d met and harangued by a black lawyer, who she had some various scrapes with. Months later, they admitted him into a mental institution as a chronic manic-depressive. She visited him a few times but he did not recognize her so she flew to Vancouver where she lived for a couple of years before she returned to New York. She said that she was unable to make the kind of friend she sought, and soon she returned to Toronto. It was on her return to Toronto that I met her and she’s been telling me all this after she had a few gin and tonics while flying high over Buffalo. By then the airplane was circling the airport in a last ditch landing position.

By the way Cy, was this fellow who sat beside you in the plane, a black, or was he white?

Hilma! Hilma! Let me stretch out here a bit, will you? Please! What difference does it make? I don’t care whether he was black or white; he is all the same to me. I have no prejudices or any hang-ups about color or race. You should know that by now, Hilma. Some people say that blacks have no one else but themselves to blame for their current plight of racial discrimination. Yet, in the same breath, they denounce those blacks that speak out in striving to remedy their predicament, and alleviate the ghastly humiliation of their people. They contend that if one is black one is force to be wary of the support of one’s white friends. They say this is for two reasons: First, because they are my friends, and I respect them for such I cannot feel good in my mind and in my heart when they are being harassed, badgered and abused simply because they countenance my efforts for equality and freedom. My second reason is that I feel that this aspect of our endeavor is the inner sanctum of our will to survive and as such must be a singular one, in every sense. Anything to the contrary is an impediment, ballast we can hardly afford—at this time.re you satisfied, Hilma?

"Racist! I saw you stretched out under cardboard with snow all over you at Columbus Circle; your bare backside exposed to the cold wind and snow.

I took an airline cab to Jamison Avenue. The drive through Toronto and New York made me realize how small the city of Rochester is, how provincial the people are. They are calm to the point of being cold and to some extent appear tamed. They are so, and by what, or by whom, are difficult to discern. Most of the people I met did not show any fear of me as a Blackman, or any superiority of me either as a Negro; instead, they made me felt at home again, or that I belong. I went to the bank to withdraw some money and saw Isla standing in the line before me. She looked worn to me, as I no doubt I might have looked to her. She seems to adopt a different attitude counter to what I prided her. She boasted to be, cocky even about her new house in Forest Hills and her French provincial furniture she bought in Vermont. It’s simply divine, she kept saying. I met her brother, for the first time. She never told me before then that she had a brother; he was younger than she was. He was surprised to see me and said that he did not know that his sister Isla