Selected excerpts from:    WHITE SAMBO
A Novel in Stories by   Robert Burdette Sweet

     The Negro had been introduced onto the campus that Iowa winter of 1950 as an experiment, much as a zoo keeper might pop into a cage dissimilar species to observe if they'll be tolerated or can tolerate.
     The heaviness emanating from the black eyes, the blue tints that coruscated off the glowing skin, the tight dry knots of charcoal hair and the forward pitch of his sleek body—Mike had never really seen one of his sort before, not up close, not to know.
     "Hello there," Mike, head down, passed the Negro who leaned over Laurie Smythe whispering perhaps some witty observation. She appreciatively shook her blond curls in the wind, the grey afternoon and the beginning of light flakes of snow already flecking the tortoiseshell comb jutting near her pink ear. The Negro was obscured by a navy pea coat most students wore whether they'd gotten a GI grant or not. With the collar turned up, all Mike saw of him was the black hair-knots dusting with white.
    They waved him by, an obligatory response Mike received with feigned indifference just as he tried to ignore all the mere politic acknowledgements of his classmates. No one ever explained to him why he didn't seem to belong. Mike hurried around Laurie and the object of her newfound liberality.
     He entered the room rowed with easels. Good, no one there. He stood in front of his soldier, instantly wrapped. There was something about what you produced that no masterwork of past or present could equal in fascination: the cerulean head, sorrowed against the lighter sky, grasped by violet hands pressing on a secret, a dread. Not only of death, but of some memory and an immediate want. "Never use essentially one color," his teacher grimaced over sharp teeth as if he were a fool she must tolerate for a paycheck. "You're self-indulgent, you realize that Mike?" God, he hated her. Was it possible not to reproduce, even unwillingly, the confusions inherent in the self?
     "So what are you doing here by yourself? Why no lights?"
     Mike spun around. He hadn't heard even a footstep. "Guess I'm looking at it snow. Thinking of painting . . ." He apologized, but to whom? All he saw was a large fellow with a pea coat standing motionless near the door.
     "Sure, the snow is beautiful." The pea coat began slanting through the easels toward him. "Mind if I look with you?" It was the Negro, face wet from melting flakes. "We folks from the South don't know all that much about the stuff." He came to lean right next to Mike, large chin cupped in his big hands.
    Neither of them spoke again for a long time. Mike didn't know whether to resist or sink into the silence. Something emanated from the Negro, an aura, some sort of weight, a thickness. These were strange people, Mike decided. Finally, "You didn't expect anybody to be here? Maybe you're going to take an art class?"
    The dark head with the soft eyes turned toward him. "I knew you'd be here." The chapel bell began its baritone ringing through the soughing snow. Six tolls, mysterious, slow, but, to Mike, clangorous that particular evening. When the sound finally faded off, the Negro whispered, his voice deep and phlegmy, "I followed you."
     Mike tried to take that in. The snow rubbed against the window pane. Finally: "I know your name is Roland, but . . ."
    "Last name's Astor, the Third." He snickered. "When I was a kid I lisped and said turd."
     Mike wondered at the fears and presumptions the Negro must carry with him suggested by the Brahmin name with its Roman numeral to dignify a dubious lineage. And the cologne or after- shave, unusual for any male on the campus—was it meant to obscure odors he might believe he had?
    "You're a nice guy, Mike." The observation seemed to come from nowhere and struck Mike as inappropriate and unfounded.
     "How would you know?"
     The Negro looked taken back and with both hands pushed the coat collar close to his ears. "I just know. You're not intuitive?"
     "Well . . ." Mike stumbled, searching for a reply, and then it exploded from him before even he was aware: "I haven't been especially nice to you. Because everyone else has been, been too . . ."
     Roland Astor III gripped Mike's arm hard through his dead Uncle Henry's long black overcoat. "They don't know whether to hug or lynch me. Neither do you." He withdrew his arm but leaned closer toward Mike.
     "I didn't think it proper to treat you in any way different from anyone else."
     "And thank God for that." Roland laughed, crossing arms over his chest and pressing his forehead to the window. "I'm no more different than any Australian platypus humping through an Iowa field. Hump, hump," and he scrunched his knuckles past his head, illustratively crawling them through the frost marks on the glass.
    "Sometimes I feel that way too," Mike offered.
    "Oh, hell, I think everyone does." Roland bent back and swiped with his sleeve at the clouded marks his hands and forehead left on the window. "So, we've got something in common."
     "Apparently with everyone else."
     "But we admit it."
     The pronoun stopped Mike's breath. He hadn't intended to link them in any particular way. The Negro kept assuming, tearing at a curtain Mike wanted draped between them.
     "Let's get out of here."
     "I was going to paint."
     "Which one is yours?" Roland pivoted to eye the easels. Mike had never seen anyone swivel on their heels like that, the about-face accomplished with effortless finesse.
     Mike decided not to risk Roland's reaction to the crouched blue serviceman. "Never mind. The snow beckons," he attempted a humorous wave at the window.
     "A walk across the highway, toward the farms?"
     "Sure. Why not." To get free of Roland, he had to accompany him. Mike felt as if he were being hauled by chains out of the art building, pulled along the icy sidewalk, dragged across the highway, lured up the first farm road. They tromped at an easy pace through the undisturbed drifts covering the crossroad, the metal buckles of both their galoshes clanking through the quiet.
     Then from Roland, "Did you hear? They're discharging Mr. Rinken, the music teacher. Sending him packing. Straight out of town. The singer, the tenor, the voice coach or whatever he's called. Now, Mike, what do you think of that?"
     "Is it any of my business?"
     "Would it become your business if they decided to lynch me?" Roland, shoving through the snow a pace ahead, abruptly whirled and clapped a gloved hand on Mike's shoulder, his eyes staring, liquid and heavy. Mike felt punched in the stomach.
     Mr. Rinken? Mike barely knew him. But there was an aura about the man he didn't like. The tenor's feet seemed barely to touch the ground and when he sang in chapel his rising voice and lifting arms irritated more than inspired. "There's a connection?" he eventually managed. "Between Rinken and . . ." unable to echo the word `lynch.'
    "Come on. Let's keep moving," Roland III said, buckles on his galoshes clanging again. He punched the pea coat collar roughly around his brown ears. "My roomy told on him. How during his voice lessons Rinken played with him. That's how I know. They were going at it together, my friend. Surely, you catch my meaning."
     Mike wasn't certain he did comprehend. On one level, true, he understood but on another he found it strange, even repellant. He felt Roland's arm flung over his shoulder. Without shaking free, Mike tried to deflect the intimacy, "You going to the dance Saturday? I asked Sue Godwin and maybe I like her because she said yes."
     "Nice tits."
     Well, Mike didn't know by touch. All you had to do after a date was walk the girl back to her dorm by eleven and, if the relationship were intense, kiss her quickly under the bright porch light before she squeezed through the door.
     Roland's arm tightened around Mike's shoulder. "Well, you know ah kaint date them cracker asses, Suh."
     "That's not funny."
     "No, it's not. Hey, I like being with you, buddy. See that barn over there with the big bare tree clawing at its roof? Like a painting, isn't it."
     Mike imitated, "Like a painting. Just like a painting, Roland." A bad one, he thought. But the snow that gripped the barn, the peaked roof, the hex sign, rare in this part of the country, an ominous oval between the eaves—well, there must be some potency left in any cliché if one honed it.
     Mike ran ahead, kicking the untouched snow into sprays of glitter. The white world falling gently around him, the hex sign that might be warding off evil, permitted Mike to feel charged, even exuberant.
     Roland caught up with him. "Don't you wonder why my roomy blabbed on Mr. Rinken?"
     That again! "Why shouldn't he have?"
     "Ruined his life, you mean?"
     "I guess . . . I don't know." Thinking: Rich Langly offered himself and his room to fulfill the experiment of you, Roland. But then it's typical to blame persons one lives with. That's why Mike had a dorm cubicle to himself. "Maybe Rich felt he had the right. Rinken's sort of disgusting, you know."
     "Sure, there's nothing more disgusting than folks that are different. Isn't that so, Mike?"
     Suddenly Mike felt cold. He shivered and tried to shake the snow out of his carroty hair. "Different is a discomforting thing to be. The assignment is to try to fit in."
     "If I'm an example, you can see it can't be done. I'm no chameleon."
     "But you would be if you could. Let's keep moving. It's the only way to keep warm."
     But why all this talk about sex? He'd almost forgotten what it was. There seemed to be something suffocating and wrong about it. Unless you were married. To Sue Godwin, perhaps. She liked to watch him paint, her big eyes shifting over him and the canvas, quietly approving. Married, he wouldn't get drafted. Wouldn't die so young. His father might acknowledge him as a person. Rinken and Rich Langly? What were they to him?
     "Come watch with me," Roland called, his voice vague through the snow that veiled and softened everything. Mike obeyed, finally placing himself to Roland's right, one foot hooked onto a lower board of the fence. He noticed Roland's elbow slide toward him through the snow-piled fence. He felt Roland's eyes upon him and he turned to observe their slightly yellowish cast. As their eyes met, Mike lost all semblance of breath. His chest locked. Stale air snared his lungs. Drowning . . . when Roland, without hesitation, edged close and kissed him hard on the mouth. Mike tried to pull back but then the wide lips softened, lingered, both their eyes remaining open, staring.
     And it was as though the night itself entered him, the snow and the glowing darkness invading his body, the smell of the heavy cologne oddly contrasting with the rawness of the cold.
     "I know more about you than you care to know," Roland's voice was husky. The Negro's lower lip nestled in the furrow beneath Mike's.
     "That's why you followed me?" Despite his heavy clothing, Mike felt naked, bone-shivering, almost nauseous, "You mean . . . that I'm responding. But I can't help . . ."
     "Yes. That's what I mean. There's no choice. Mike, listen to it, there's no choice."
     "You're so sure!"
     "And you're not? Even at this moment?"
     So that was why Roland kept bringing up Mr. Rinken and Rich Langly. And yet Mike didn't care. Not yet.
     "Don't worry, friend. Nobody else knows."
     Knows? Knows precisely what? But Mike wanted more of the night to infest his heart, the snow to drift behind his eyes, through his skull.
     "I like your hair," Roland's voice hung low. "The wavy red, the shine of it."
     Never before complimented with such intensity, Mike reacted by pressing again into Roland's lips and felt Roland's tongue tremble through his mouth. Roland tipped back his dark head, grinning. "Your body in the shower . . . the hairs on your chest, your arms . . . and I've admired."
     Admired? Only because Roland III couldn't get `cracker ass'? "You've done this before . . . with men?"
     "You're a proper fool, Michael. Only and always, answers your question. What did you think I've been saying? But have you?"
     Had he? Mike wouldn't remember. A stubborn blank drifted behind his eyes. Touching was vile, unless sanctified—by church, parents, authority. Love? Was that a form of sanctification, pure and entire unto itself?
     "Have you, have you, have you . . ." Roland's voice resounded from within the flakes surging through Mike's head. "There's more of you that wants me than you can admit to. I've waited for you. For a long, long time."
     "Where? Where have you waited?" Mike barely managed to stutter out the absurd question because somehow he did understand that Roland had waited for him in a dark place, a snow-cold and ice-locked place, hexed and forbidden. "I—I've known you before. You're a familiar. Something about you . . ." Or was it in the guise of other persons that Mike had met him, fragments of them melded into the form and touch of Roland? The feel of his friend Jim unbuckling his belt; Kenny and Mike naked in his bedroom confused when his mother burst in screaming; Bob Romer's idea of wrestling: the loser's clothes entirely removed; William's smearing him with mud from the summer-hot banks of the Des Plaines River where they'd swum nude, excited, grasping each other—all these experiences dismissed as though they'd never occurred. Until Roland interrupted an innocence that had never existed, merely denied, buried, secreted in favor of the world's expectations.
     Mike twisted his head away from Roland. His tongue felt dry, swollen. "And Mr. Rinken? I'm as awkward and unforgivable as Rinken. Aren't I, Roland. Aren't you." Mike turned to dig his chin into the harsh material covering Roland's shoulder. "Take your hand away."
     "No. Touch me."
     "I can't. Leave me alone."
     "But you don't want me to leave you alone. And you know I'll only do what your body tells me. And oh, baby, is your body telling on your white assumptions."
     Mike pushed hard against Roland unsettling the Negro's balance. "Rich Langly. Your roomy. You've done this with him too." He watched placidly as Roland stumbled back through the snow, the deep blue arms of his pea coat flailing the air. Roland's head jerked as he righted himself, his eyes cast up at Mike. But without guilt. The curve of the Negro's full lips angled toward mockery and amusement.
     "Hey, hey, Mike, take it easy. After he got involved with Rinken, I sure didn't desire any more of him."
     Mike wanted to knee him in the groin but instead he turned to hold onto the snow-crested fence and vomited yellow bile onto the pristine flakes. He wanted to fist the lips that had cracked open his secret and his dread. But he grabbed the fence and, beyond his own bidding . . . as was all of it, even his disapproval of Rinken and himself . . . spewed venom. He knew now why he hadn't been accepted, and wouldn't be. Ever.
     Roland's arm closed around his shoulder. "Let it go, Mike. Let it go. I love you, buddy. It's not going to be easy, but let's hide underground, like moles, where we were born to be. I love you, Mike. I love you, here in the snow, on this night, and for as long and however as we can. Faggot, queer, fairy, get used to those words. You'll hear them often. Turn as deaf and scared an ear as I do to nigger. We're moles, you and I. We'll burrow our way through life with itty-bitty claws scraping under the surface of things." Then he raised his voice in a whoop like Tarzan, "Me Black Sambo! You White Sambo!" Followed by a deep-chested bleat: "And thank your creamy ass you're not two in one, like me."
     Mike's teeth chattered. He sniffed vomit up his nose. "Who really told on Rinken? It was you. It had to be."
     "Oh, come on, friend. Let's just be close and together." Roland washed Mike's face with a glove full of snow. "You didn't like Rinken any more than I did. There's times we've got to protect ourselves."
     "From ourselves?" The snow tasted tart as metal.
     Roland's lips pulled into an arc of surprise at Mike's apparent stupidity. "But of course, from everyone, lover."

Return to White Sambo

[ Home | Fiction | Non-Fiction | Poetry | Rogues | Bisexual | More Info | Ordering ]