OCR Text |
Show May 13, 1977 Signpost Page 7 SOMETHING SLEEPING WAKES (cont.) Cont. from Page 6 Lucky had not forgotten how to hope; it was as if the hoping was a round, soft and filled thing with a quality almost rubber-like, as if nothing that anyone or anything could do would be able to pierce it but if anyone or anything did the substance within would all escape, as if the hoping was an organic thing that could not be revived once it had been killed or once it had given up. That summer only one girl tried out for the role of Sleeping Beauty because the one girl was Thelma Cudlipp. That summer was the hot, moist grey summer of our remembering for summers to come. That summer Lucky tried out for the role of Prince Charming for the third and last time. Lucky's hoping had turned the flutter in his stomach from a teasing to an impotent commotion and a rage. It was as if Lucky had lost all control of whatever he said or did or how he looked. The control had been taken over by the impotence and commotion of despairing and hoping at the same time. That summer Lucky lost the look that his face had shown in carelessness but his eyes, kindled by the hoping, retained their glitter, making Lucky a contradiction in flesh, as if the lips belied the eyes, or the eyes the lips. He had forgotten that he wanted to be Prince Charming, had forgotten thinking and remembered remembering. And doing so during the endless rehearsals, the hoping had gone wild and furious: after he had exhausted himself with the gesture and articulation, after his mother had gotten out of her bed at nights to tell him to get into his he would mumble the lines until the mumbling and exhaustion made him sleep. But even in his sleep he could not escape the commotion and fury of his hoping. The day before he was to find out about the part his friend Frossus told him this: "Can't change nigger nigger can't change!" Frossus Cowper lived on Billy Goat Hill. It seemed that no one knew why Billy Goat Hill was called by what it was, but perhaps it was because everything on that squalid hill, including the shacks that people like Frossus Cowper lived in, looked like something a billy goat would feed on. But man and time, not billy goats, had fed on Billy Goat Hill ; none of the shacks there were painted or even looked as though they ever had been. There were no lawns on Billy Goat Hill. Some folks, like Thaddeus Long, our mailman, kept hogs instead. "Man's gotta live," Thaddeus would say, if he had thought to, but he didn't. Frossus Cowper had been born on Billy Goat Hill and would probably have died there too. Most of the people who lived there were never fortunate enough to escape that squalor and putrefaction; most of them never really knew much poverty and many of them anything but disease because Billy Goat Hill lay downwind from the smokestacks of the Hunger Steel Mill and although none of us then knew what geographical features of Hopkin's Valley caused the moist smoky air to become thicker there the air did its workings in spite of and, it seemed, in detached obligation to those that lived and died there. Lucky and Frossus had been friends since kindergarden, since Thelma had first become the object of Lucky's adoration and hope and despair. But the day before Lucky was to find out, the day that Frossus had told him what he did not want to but had begun to believe, Lucky was not sure whether he wanted to be Frossus' friend anymore. The hoping and despairing had gotten all mixed together and the demarcations between the two, if there were any, had disappeared. When Miss Lillian Rosenthal announced that the role of Prince Charming would be played by Burt Griswold it seemed to Lucky that something had snapped inside of him somewhere, somewhere deep within, turning the rage to outrage and the fear to fire. But in a way he was relieved; the snapping that had happened had broke the cord of his remembering. He no longer listened or had to listen or could have listened to that less than a voice within. Perhaps Lucky had reconciled himself, or had been reconciled by the despair of experience and the baselessness of hope, to the role of the Head Evil Fairy. Perhaps then he first understood what the Evil was that Miss Lillian had chosen to write about, but without understanding or knowing, year after year, without understanding or knowing like Lucky understood and knew. It was as if he had been purged of some substance that rested on some surface and that then the clean surface was ready, waiting itself to be covered with the new force or matter. ' ' Lucky could not and did not think anything when he found out; he did not think about the insult, or about Thelma Cudlipp, or about what Frossus had said. But Lucky did see something for the first time on that moist smoky summer day. He saw, perhaps for the first time and forever, the oppressive air of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. He did not know it then but he felt that he would know it soon:, it was something that hung in that same air, something that he could sense but not articulate, not even think or imagine. Something or someone was leading him, it seemed, to a new understanding and knowing: doom. That summer night was breezeless and still and the feeling inside the old Cooper Opera House, even before and as it was filling up with people, was something of an excited hush. Lucky felt it, was permeated by it. It seemed to all of us, not just to Lucky, that the entire night's happenings hung in the very moistness arid thickness, as if, if one only knew how to, the things that were about to happen could be foreseen, divined, as if the near future was intricately wove into the fabric of the present, so intricately that you could see it, feel it, know it. Frossus seemed to know it too because you could see it in his eyes ; but even in his seeming or knowledge of it he would not or could not act on whatever it was that he knew might come about. The white people and the black people and the children knew it. The stillness became stiller yet when the white people began to fill up the intervening row between where they traditionally sat and where the blacks sat; the row was a line that everybody and it seemed everything had agreed upon as the line of demarcation separating black and white. Miss Lillian Rosenthal seemed to know it too ; maybe that was the source of her nervousness. Never before had that woman who was a tradition known fear and trembling. And never before had she worn that outlandish pink floral dress; it was so unlike the greys and browns and blacks that had become her uniform. She would not and did not look at Lucky that night, into his eyes; she had not looked into his eyes since she had so coolly pronounced Burt Griswold instead of Theodore Lucas Harmon. It was as if she had caught what Skinny Fechner had that disease of the eyes. It was like Lucky had gotten outside of himself, like he had turned into a pure and detached perception of the drama, as if he was looking at himself like it was someone else. He neither liked nor disliked the dreamy texture of that hot August night; Lucky watched himself sneak up behind Sleeping Beauty in the first act to cast the Evil spell of somnolence upon her. Sleeping Beauty had ceased to be Thelma Cudlipp; when that something had snapped, the object of his adoration and desiring had burst into a nothingness, as if Thelma and the beauty that she had once radiated had died with the hoping. He felt a commotion of strange enjoyment as he artfully slunk back into the darkness at the rear of the stage. Byrt Griswold had ceased to be Prince Charmmg. Perhaps he never was. Lucky was not surprised when Prince Charming struck him on the ear with his shining sword. That was in the second act and it still hurt in the third act when what was to happen did happen. Neither was -Lucky surprised by the maniacal grin on the Prince's face as he did it. He seemed to have suppressed the outrage when it should have gotten out, when he might have gotten it out at Miss Lillian Rosenthal, at the affronting pink floral dress or at the excuses that she nervously made for what Byrt Griswold had done to him with the sword, saying how it added a nice touch, a bit of realism. Cont. on Page 5 For Both of Us by Annette Bednar He leaves me free with my plow; it is the fields we share. And he seems to know how I will take any dare except leaving him. He does not question the seeds I scatter He dances in the furrow next to mine. The straightness of my row matters little When the wind blows his smile across , fine like Stardust, into the land of my eyes. He will have his way of looking after my seedlings (he has his way of looking beautiful ! ) He promises to water my seedlings And to build a scarecrow from the crosstrees of our hearts. I shall not ask for much. I will take any dare especially believing him. Up since a yesterday dawn with no clocks to stop us, we trip on clods of earth, giddy with thoughts of rich harvest. The Stardust and sundust mixing, we shuffle our separate feet down our furrowed lives. And when the sun begins to storm too hot and too dry For both of us We tiptoe from the open field, find a narrow shade, and rain on each other for joy. |