Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
“You go,” Arthur said, and Crunch rose and draped a towel around his shoulders and bent his long self through the doorway.
Arthur lay still, wishing Crunch had touched him, if only for a second. It really was as though he had never seen Crunch before. He waited helplessly for Crunch to come stooping back through the door; he had never before been afraid of losing him—had never before been afraid of losing anyone, except his father and mother, and me. But our absences had not been at all like the brief absence of Crunch that morning, Arthur waiting in a strange place, a strange bed. He had known that Crunch was tall—now he had abruptly seen, as Crunch bent through the doorway, how long he was. He had always liked Crunch’s face. Now he had somehow memorized the high cheekbones, like those of an Indian, and how the long, narrow eyes slanted slightly upward and how one eyebrow was always faintly lifted—maybe that was why he almost always looked as though he was about to make fun of you. The nose was long and hooked like an Indian? Like a Jew? and two small knobs of bone gleamed faintly on either side of the forehead, just below the hairline. The lips were heavy and full, seemed always ready to smile, or to open in a grin, showing the long, straight, white teeth. The neck and arms and shoulders were powerful. Arthur shifted and turned toward the window. The shade was still drawn, the curtains still closed. Crunch was older than Arthur, but Arthur suddenly saw that Crunch was very, very young. He wanted to take Crunch in his arms and protect him—from the dawn and the road and the cars and the trees outside.
They ate their hominy grits and bacon and eggs, held in their silence, surrounded by the noise. Arthur watched Crunch laughing and joking and making noise; he watched himself laughing and joking and making noise. He made sounds to the host and hostess of the rooming house, and to whoever else, the other roomers, who were there. Webster seemed terribly loud: it was as though Webster, too, were someone he had never seen before. He wondered, for the first time, how old Webster was. He knew the ages of Red and Peanut, but he had never seen them before, either. Peanut’s color glowed like peanut butter and honey, and Red’s broad, brown, speckled face made Arthur see, as though for the first time, his light brown chocolate eyes. Everything hurt: the napkins and the tablecloth hurt; the black coffee, as the lady poured it, hurt; his smile, when he looked up and said, Thank you, ma’am, hurt; the sunlight, relentlessly rising to send them on their way, filling the dining room, crashing in the kitchen among all the pots and pans, thundering in the voices, heard from far away and yet too near, of the cook and the servants—servants?—and the man scouring the pots, hurt, assaulted, began to devastate my brother; and the telephone rang somewhere and someone said, Excuse me a moment, and someone else said, I sure hope you boys enjoy yourselves down here, and Webster said, We better make a move, and Red rose first, and Arthur’s heart shook, and then Peanut wiped his lips with the white napkin and smiled, and it hurt; and someone else said, Bam-bam, to Birmingham! and laughter filled the room exactly like the sunlight, and it hurt. And all this time, Crunch had been seated two seats away, laughing and joking and making noise, not looking at him, and yet, and Arthur knew it, entirely concentrated on him, and it hurt. He wanted to run, run, wanted to be with Crunch, somewhere, forever, wanted Crunch to take him in his arms; he did not know what he wanted, the small of his back was wet with terror, Is this my life? My life? and, to compound this terror, his imagination, like a newly wiped blackboard, held nothing at all, no images at all. Crunch’s smell was in his nostrils, the overwhelming image of the hair in his armpits, the basketball player’s thighs and ankles, deep like a river, Arthur thought, insanely, his arms, his arms; then, suddenly, silence dropped on him like a heavy cloud, he looked up, everyone was rising. There was Crunch, on his feet, laughing and joking and making noise, and there was, suddenly, the young lady who had driven all the way back here, this morning, in her father’s automobile, to say good-bye to Crunch, and Crunch was holding her lightly in his arms, and it hurt; and Arthur wiped his lips with the white, abrasive, fiery napkin, and rose, and for the first time in his life, the act of rising to his feet made him tremble with anguish, and he shook hands with all the people, and he smiled and he smiled and he heard his voice falling all around his ears from about twenty-seven million miles above his head; his feet, just the same, seemed to be on the ground—though his shoes, suddenly, were too tight, his ankles ached, his toenails seemed to bite into him, suddenly, like the claws of a crab; sweat dripped down inside his clothes, from his armpits, from the back of his neck, from all his secret places, and down the inside of his thighs, and Crunch, as though he had known all this all along, looked up, abruptly, looked him directly in his eyes, and said, with a smile which no one else could see—and Arthur saw this, it helped him to move, he had, in truth, been paralyzed—Come on, little fellow, bam-bam, to Birmingham! He had one arm around the young lady. With the other arm, he reached out and pulled Arthur to him, he introduced them to each other, Arthur smiled and said the Lord alone knows what, and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
They hurried to their room, to pack—they did not have much to pack. Arthur was wet, he was trembling. Crunch locked the door behind them, and stood against the door.
Arthur stood in the center of the room. Crunch watched him.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
He picked up his suitcase, and tried to begin to pack. But he was young, my brother, and he started to cry.
For a second more, Crunch watched him.
“What you crying about?”
“Nothing!”
But he looked up at Crunch with tears spilling down his face; he turned away, and fell on the bed.
Crunch fell on the bed on top of Arthur and turned Arthur to face him and held him in his arms. Crunch wrapped himself around him, arms and legs, held Arthur more tightly than he had ever been held, and kissed him, first like a brother, and then like a lover.
He leaned up, and Arthur opened his eyes.
“What you got to cry about?”
Arthur simply stared at Crunch. He wanted Crunch never to leave him, never to take his arms away.
“Come on, little fellow. We only got a minute. They be knocking on the door in a minute.”
Arthur said, terrified, and, at the same time, suddenly at peace, holding on to Crunch, “I’m in love.”
Crunch said gravely, after a moment, “That’s why you was crying?”
Arthur nodded.
“I don’t understand—who you in love with? The young lady? With the automobile?”
Arthur found that he was able to laugh.
“No.”
Crunch laughed, too, his belly rumbling against Arthur’s belly—in silence: as though their bellies were one.
“With who, then?”
Arthur caught his breath. He watched Crunch’s eyes.
“With you. I’m in love. With you.”
And he caught his breath again. He watched Crunch. Doors began opening down the hall.
“Well—what did I tell you, last night?”
Crunch smiled; then Arthur smiled.
Crunch shook him, lightly.
“Come on—what did I say?”
“You said—you and me.”
“What else did I say?”
“You said, you loved me.”
“And you don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. I—just got scared.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never been in love before,” Arthur said—so helplessly that Crunch kissed him again, laughed, kissed him again, and laughed, and stood up.
“Throw them rags in your bag, little fellow—before they come knocking on this door—come on, now.”
Arthur rose, and returned to his suitcase.
“I never thought,” said Arthur, “that a man could be in love with a man.”
Crunch laughed, unlocked and opened the door.
“I never thought about it, neither, love. But I’m sure thinking about it now.” He winked, and his whole face c
They both closed their suitcases, and Crunch said, in that down-home country-boy preacher’s voice, a voice which Arthur was beginning to feel had been meant for his ears alone, it gave him such delight, “We going to be together.” He looked down the hall, which was empty, everyone was waiting for them on the porch.
For a second they stood in the doorway, then Crunch touched Arthur’s face, lightly, “Come on.” He closed their door behind them. They started toward the voices on the porch. Crunch laughed low in his throat, and he whispered, “You think, just because I’m bigger than you that I can’t be in love?”
Birmingham is a biblical city, in the sense that it awaits the sound of Gabriel’s trumpet—mile upon mile upon mile, flat, stretched out, lascivious, the city can suggest no other hope: and the sign of the judgment hangs over the city all day and all night long, in the fiery hills. Arthur thought of Sister Dorothy Green, and wondered why she said, “Every time I come to Birmingham.” He would certainly never come back here, if he ever got out, and if there was one righteous man here he had to be in an asylum.
They had time to wash and dress, but not to eat—but that was all to the good, Webster explained, for this time their rooming house was next door to a barbecue place, which stayed open all night. They had known that they would miss Paul; they had not known that they would begin to hate Webster. In New York, Webster had seemed to know a lot, and they had trusted him. But down here, they realized that he didn’t really know all that much, and they realized this from the music that they heard. They wanted to get close to it, this rough and exquisite sound, not yet known as funky—hand out, fall out, try out, get high, and learn: there had been something, as Crunch said, waiting here for them, all along. In spite of their terror, they were tremendously excited, and their terror, after all, had nothing to do with black people. They had never known any black people, true, with a house and a lawn, with more than one car, with more than one house for that matter, with servants; never been invited for tea by a black matron, dressed in a pale blue whispering frock, with hair like Rita Hayworth’s; never seen their high-breasted, arrogant daughters, with fingernails which had never rummaged through a garbage can; never encountered such a lofty, irreproachable politeness, such condescension, kindliness, a distance so unquestionably aristocratic; had never shaken hands with the son, blue blazer, open neck white shirt, dark slacks, dark gleaming pumps, a big ring on one finger, my son is studying law; never before seen such gleaming sideboards, holding every drink you could imagine; never before shaken hands with a man with a tiepin and a pipe, our bank president; never before been smiled down on by the president of our college. Peanut and Red and Crunch and Arthur knew that they stank of the ghetto, and had never really been to school, and they knew that a lot of the black people they met looked down on them, and that a lot of the sons and daughters were making fun of them, and Peanut’s relatives hurt Peanut’s feelings—were really very ugly with the boys: but they felt that they could handle that. They didn’t really understand it, and yet, they did, and what they didn’t understand, they wanted to find out, to learn.
But then, here came Webster—sometimes, to their impotent fury, manhandling Crunch’s guitar. He came on, Arthur told me, later, like he was Cab Calloway, and we were his Cabettes. He told everyone how big they were in the North, how he had discovered them, and trained them, made them go to bed early, gave them their cod-liver oil—told everyone listening—college presidents, bank presidents, lawyers, matrons, sons, daughters, servants; told the honeysuckle, wisteria, magnolia; told the long, tall verandas and the somnolent porches, the long, still, flat, country streets; told the fireflies of their punishing schedule, their upcoming dates—in Chicago, in Detroit, in Denver, in Washington and, especially, in New York—and, oh, how hard it was to choose, how he had three phones ringing all the time, saying yes here, saying no there, how his secretaries were tearing their hair, and soon, he would have to make some kind of decision about England—while the boys stood around him helplessly—fascinated, terrified, humiliated, hating him. They watched the glass in his hand, and the way, from time to time, he smiled at his hosts—smiled as though he could buy them and sell them, with a phone call to Pittsburgh. When the moment came to roll, to get into the station wagon, he always made a joke about the sheriff.
Oh, we know the sheriff, one of the aristocrats might say, he knows you’ve been at our house.
Good night, one of the boys might say, grimly—with the choked, despairing politeness of the beleaguered adolescent.
Good night! came back from the shadows, and on went the headlights and down the road they went, Webster cursing all the while, Crunch holding on to his narrowly retrieved guitar.
It was a white city full of black people—they had not thought of New York this way—and none but the righteous, Arthur thought, as they took their places just below the pulpit, in the Birmingham church. They were placed so that Peanut, at the piano, could be seen. Peanut struck the chord, Arthur began the song. Red was to his right and Crunch to his left, both slightly behind him, as present as heat.
Crunch’s guitar began, as Arthur’s voice began,
Take me to the water
Crunch moaned,
yes! take me to the water!
He heard Red’s witnessing falsetto, but he answered Crunch’s echo,
take me to the water
to be
baptized.
He paused, and closed his eyes, sweat gathered in his hair; he listened to Crunch, then he started again,
Take me to the water
yeah!
take me to the water
now!
take me to the water
oh, Lord!
to be
to be?
to be
tell me, now!
to be
to be baptized!
He paused again, threw back his head to get the sweat out of his eyes, trusting every second of this unprecedented darkness, knowing Crunch and he were moving together, here, now, in the song, to some new place; they had never sung together like this before, his voice in Crunch’s sound, Crunch’s sound filling his voice,
So
I know
none
don’t tell me, I know, I know, I know!
as though Crunch were laughing and crying at the same time
but the righteous
so true!
none
don’t you leave me now!
but the righteous
and I hate to see that evening sun go down!
none
amazing grace—!
none but the righteous
yea, little fellow, come on in!
shall see God.
Crunch and he ending together, as though on a single drum. He opened his eyes, bowed his head, stepped back. Red and Peanut looked as though they had been dragged, kicking, through a miracle, but they were smiling, the church was rocking, Crunch and Arthur wiped their brows carefully before they dared look at each other. Peanut struck the chord, Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh, and Crunch stepped forward with the guitar, singing, somebody touched me and, they sang, it must have been the hand of the Lord!
It was a heavy, slow Saturday afternoon in Atlanta, and they were free until Sunday morning. Webster had disappeared early, with many a vivid warning, and they were glad to be on their own; but his warnings remained with them, and the heat was as heavy as the region’s molasses. They would have liked to discover the town, and they walked awhile, but they did not dare walk very far. If they got lost, they would have to ask someone for directions, and so they panicked whenever they saw more white faces than black faces. They had been made to know that they were from the North, and that their accents betrayed them and might land them on the chain
And the city was like a checkerboard. They would walk a block which was all black, then suddenly turn a corner and find themselves surrounded by nothing but white faces. They wanted to run, but, of course, to run meant that the white mob would run after them and they would, then, be lynched. At such moments, they smiled aimlessly, looked in a store window, if there was one, or else elaborately admired the view, slowing their walk to a shuffle. Then, as though the same idea had hit them at the same moment—which it had—they slowly turned and slowly walked back the way they had come. Sometimes they nearly exploded with the terrified laughter they had not dared release until they were again surrounded by black people, or back in the rooming house.
So this Saturday afternoon, they returned to the café next to the rooming house. Webster had prepaid their Saturday lunch and dinner. They had a little money in their pockets—not very much, for they had not been paid yet. Webster had all their money. This frightened them, too, but they did not know what to do about it. They had to trust Webster. Wordlessly, though, they trusted Crunch, who was the only one of them who might be able to intimidate Webster.
They sat down in the café, which was nearly empty—they had not yet realized that Southerners move about as little as possible on hot summer afternoons: in general, that is, due to imponderables to which they were reacting, but did not understand—and Peanut and Crunch went to the counter, and brought back four Pepsi-Colas.
“Tell you,” said Red. “This trip is starting to fuck with my nerves. Can’t wait to get back to Seventh Avenue.”
“When you was there,” said Arthur, smiling, “you couldn’t wait to get away.” He lit a cigarette and put the pack on the table. “But I know how you feel.”
“We just ain’t used to it,” Peanut said. “And we don’t know nobody. Be different, next time.”
“How?” asked Red. “How we going to get to know somebody next time? You going to write a letter to the governor?”