if beale street could talk by james baldwin

chapter 9

Now, Fonny knows why he is here – why he is where he is; now, he dares to look around him. He is not here for anything he has done. He has always known that, but now he knows it with a difference. At meals, in the showers, up and down the stairs, in the evening, just before everyone is locked in again, he looks at the others, he listens: what have they done? Not much. To do much is to have the power to place these people where they are, and keep them where they are. These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned. To do much is to have the power and the necessity to dictate to the damned. But that, thinks Fonny, works both ways. You're in or you're out. Okay. I see. Motherfuckers. You won't hang me.

I bring him books, and he reads. We manage to get him paper, and he sketches. Now that he knows where he is, he begins to talk to the men, making himself, so to speak, at home. He knows that anything may happen to him here. But, since he knows it, he can no longer turn his back: he has to face it, even taunt it, play with it, dare.

He is placed in solitary for refusing to be raped. He loses a tooth, again, and almost loses an eye. Something hardens in him, something changes forever, his tears freeze in his belly. But he has leaped from the promontory of despair. He is fighting for his life. He sees his baby's face before him, he has an appointment he must keep, and he will be here, he swears it, sitting in the shit, sweating and stinking, when the baby gets here.

Hayward arranges the possibility of bail for Fonny. But it is high. And here comes the summer:

time.

On a day that I will never forget, Pedrocito drove me home from the Spanish restaurant, and, heavy, heavy, heavy, I got to my chair and I sat down.

The baby was restless, and I was scared. It was almost time. I was so tired, I almost wanted to die. For a long time, because he was in solitary, I had not been able to see Fonny. I had seen him on this day. He was so skinny; he was so bruised: I almost cried out. To whom, where? I saw this question in Fonny's enormous, slanted black eyes – eyes that burned, now, like the eyes of a prophet. Yet, when he grinned, I saw, all over again, my lover, as though for the first time.

"We got to get some meat on your bones," I said. "Lord, have mercy." "Speak up. He can't hear you." But he said it with a smile.

"We almost got the money to bail you out."

"I figured you would."

We sat, and we just looked at each other. We were making love to each other through all that glass and stone and steel.

"Listen, I'll soon be out. I'm coming home because I'm glad I came, can you dig that?" I watched his eyes.

"Yes," I said.

"Now. I'm an artisan," he said. "Like a cat who makes – tables. I don't like the word artist. Maybe I never did. I sure the fuck don't know what it means. I'm a cat who works from his balls, with his hand. I know what it's about now. I think I really do. Even if I go under. But I don't think I will.

Now."

He is very far from me. He is with me, but he is very far away. And now he always will be.

"Where you lead me," I said, "I'll follow."

He laughed. "Baby. Baby. Baby. I love you. And I'm going to build us a table and a whole lot of folks going to be eating off it for a long, long time to come."

From my chair, I looked out my window, over these dreadful streets.

The baby asked,

Is there not one righteous among them?