“The idea of a contest is a farce with them here, isn’t it?” Fleece said.
I was concentrating on Harley again. He was a bit forward of the band. How, Harley? I wanted to know, what kind of threat have you hung over them in so few months to get these pubes to play like this? Harley was less nonchalant than he had been. He had his eyes closed; in fact, he smiled, and was enjoying the hell out of his band.
The gallery on his side was solid black skin, five deep. The smallest children were in the front row, and they were scared to death but having a fine time. I observed a big strange hat moving up behind the kids. Next thing I knew there was Whitfield Peter, with his hands over the shoulders of a tiny Negro. The child shot out of the spectator line at an odd angle, turning like a top. He knocked into Harley’s legs and both Harley and the child went down on the pavement. You knew the kid had been pushed then. The big hat of Whitfield Peter rioted up and down and I saw him trying to get back through the blacks, but he was held there by the mass of them. In fact, he was bounced out in the gutter, and by that time Harley was on him, head to head, he knew who had pushed the child, and he back-handed Peter in the face, knocking the big hat a long ways back into the gallery, then stopped abruptly in the middle of the next blow. By then the band cut us off from the scene, but they gave in our direction, marching around the fight. Then a euphonium was raised by a player on the other end of the line, and the thick horn fell like an ax. I saw the eggshell-suited body sprawl at the end of the euphonium line. Harley flashed out ahead of the band, double-stepping and adjusting his helmet. He had sooty marks on the back of his uniform. I looked for Victor the cop, who was not at the pole any more.
Fleece and I caught up and began walking alongside the Gladiators, as I’d planned anyway, so as to meet Harley at Parade’s end in front of the King Edward. We were hustling. Fleece told me he’d shot twice at the fight, but he didn’t know what would come out, he didn’t have the shutter-speed for an actual fight.
About at the Heidelberg Hotel, I looked across the street and — I’d thought I caught something disturbing the gallery — there was old Peter walking parallel to Harley too, screaming. Peter had found the hat, but his face was botched and you could tell he’d been wocked by that horn. His suit was smudged and ripped. Peter got in step with Harley and mimicked his posture, but Butte was the heedless Prussian. Peter couldn’t stand this. The gallery was much thinner now, and I saw every move. Peter was gathering his mouth to shout something at Harley but just then the band lit into “Washington Post” inhumanly, a drastic sound that blurred sight and made human voices into a squeak. I thought I could pick out Peter’s squeaking across the street, as he stayed even with Harley.
All at once Whitfield Peter put his hand into the breast of his coat. I knew he was going for a gun; it did not occur to me that he could be reaching for anything but a gun, my forehead was hot with knowing this; but something could be done because he had missed yanking his gun out the first time, whereas I already had mine out and was almost to the middle of the street since I knew I could hit nothing from the distance I was from him on the sidewalk, and if I got there in time there might be no gunfire at all. Then Peter saw my gun out, and his not even drawn. Fleece was right with me—“Don’t! Idiot!”—huffing away. It was a mistake. Peter had nothing, or only a big handkerchief, on his second draw. Fleece knelt and pretended to be getting some camera shots of the Gladiator band, and I passed the gun very subtly back into my coat pocket. Apparently no one had seen. We faded back off the street. Fleece’s trifurcated chrome-ringed instrument aided in the ruse. He seemed to be railing technical observations to me, when of course what he was doing was scolding me to blister a slut I had nothing to say. There were cops all over down here at the end of the parade. They had billy clubs at the casual. Whitfield Peter was gone.
We made our way to the front of the King Edward. The Gladiators treaded time to the drums, whose volume ballooned out into the Illinois Central overpass. Finally they cut off, whoooommmpp! and you could’ve sliced the silence with a knife. Harley signaled the disbandment. The players turned toward us and massed at the hotel door. I couldn’t believe how ordinary and small they looked. They pranked around and barked at each other in that private nigger English you couldn’t understand. There were several girls among the Gladiators, too, jammed into green pants and double-breasters with the rest of them. The sweat on a couple of necks was another surprise. Then Harley came up. He held his helmet. With the other hand he had a euphonium-player in tow. The boy was telling Harley, “I gan outa control,” almost crying. “You little sonuvabitch, you’da been watchin the music … you don’t mind about me, you hear?” The boy was a head taller than Harley. Harley cast him away violently, and the boy ran ahead to the door. Harley turned back to look again.
I told Harley we’d seen everything. “He’s crazy. He’s been in Whitfield.” He seemed consoled a bit to see me. Then we went through the hotel door with him.
“Wherever he is, his head ain’t any better now. That boy busted him on it with his horn, I mean hard, and he fell down on the road and right on his head.”
“You hit him,” said Fleece. “I took a picture of that” Fleece was only making a technical point, as he often did. But Harley looked at the camera distraughtly. “No, I mean he deserved it. I guess,” said Fleece.
“What the hell you mean by I guess?” I demanded of Fleece.
“I didn’t know he was a white man till I hit him,” said Harley.
“All I meant was that a fight is unfortunate. Somebody’ll carry it on,” said Fleece, trying to make up. “This damn place was built out of long memory.”
“He knows. That boy knows,” said Harley. “That Whitfield man followed me for a mile screaming at me.”
“What’d he say?”
“Ah, all about my daddy, my daddy, who was my daddy? Everybody thinks they’re the first sonuvabitch to notice I’m not a true nigger.”
The pause after this was charged with gloom all around. Harley’s beard was almost black with sweat. The helmet seemed to hang at his leg like a wilted trophy.
“He was so crazy he was stone-deaf, that man,” Harley broke the gloom. “Anybody that heard that band, they couldn’t … You heard my band.” He smiled dreamily, beyond me.
“Yes—”
“Aw, my ass. Look in there.” He put the helmet on. What he meant was that his bandsmen were standing all over the edge of the lobby and jamming up the hotel walk-through instead of moving on to the buses waiting outside as they were supposed to. The Gladiators, tubas set on the floor and brass and woodwinds jabbing around, brown faces wandering, were crammed everywhere, back to the plate glass of the souvenir shop and down the granite hall flush against the registration counters, on back to the airlines service. We passed some white couples holding newspapers who were getting out, in a rage. Some of the girls sat in the old plush chairs and couches; a few bandsmen were flirting with the water fountains — for whites only, like the whole hotel. Harley found the drum major, a big boy with his fur hat still on, dragging his braid-wound baton on the carpet. He dressed the boy down in some quiet gnashing language. The boy blew the whistle and made an epical gesture with the baton, shagging toward the rear revolving door. The Gladiators gathered into file quietly; there had never been much noise, anyway. Now they were a sagging retreat of children barely able to hold up their brass. Harley seemed satisfied with them again.