Bridge of Sighs

surprise that we hadn’t run into each other when the howling was upon us. Gabriel guessed that we howled in different circles. Usually, it was fun trading these stories, but after what I’d witnessed yesterday I wasn’t in the mood, so I said I’d stayed home.
    “You nothin’ but a ama-teur howler, is why,” Gabriel said. “Bet you don’t even know what last night was.”
    “What was it?”
    “See? That’s what I’m talkin’ about. You a
ama
-teur.”
    “What was last night?”
    “Last night be a full moon, Junior. A real howler would of knowed that. Best night to howl, full moon. You ama-teurs, you don’t know your full moon.”
    Where we were headed, I feared, was yet another discussion that would end with Gabriel telling me I didn’t know up from down. “Why do you like to howl so much?” I asked, since that’s what I’d been puzzling about.
    “I don’t,” he said, surprising me. “Up to me, I’d never howl. Drove to it, is what I am. You’d know that if you wasn’t a ama-teur.”
    This was proving to be an even slower conversation than usual. As a general rule, Gabriel liked to talk but was never in a hurry to arrive anywhere. Two steps forward, one back, was the sort of dance he preferred. And the one step back was usually an insult of some kind.
    “Don’t know why I waste my time tryin’ to educate white boys and ama-teurs. Specially you. You both a white boy
and
a ama-teur. No hope for you at all.”
    Though they were nothing alike and spoke a different language entirely, at times Gabriel reminded me of my mother, both of them having concluded that I was a slow, reluctant learner. “What drives you to howling?” I asked.
    “Pussy,” Gabriel said. “What you think?”
    I shrugged, instantly uncomfortable. I’d heard the word used in a similar context before and had a pretty good idea what it meant, and that I shouldn’t be discussing it.
    “Pussy make you crazy,” Gabriel elaborated. “You still too young to know ’bout that.”
    I shrugged again, hoping to concede that he was right and thus open a new line of inquiry.
    “You like it, though, I bet.”
    Yet another shrug.
    “Don’t you be shruggin’ at me now. You old enough to know that much. You like it or you don’t like it. Even amateur white boys know if they like it or they don’t like it.”
    In that case, I said, I supposed I liked it.
    “Ain’t no suppose about it. Suppose.” He snorted. “You a white boy if ever they was one.”
    I said fine, okay, I liked pussy.
    “Watch your mouth now,” he advised. “Your mama hear you goin’ on about likin’ pussy, you be in
big
trouble. Don’t come to me for help neither ’cause I’ll have to tell her the truth. How you told me your own self how much you like pussy. Be in trouble, then, won’t you.”
    Gabriel’s spirits appeared to be improving by the minute. He had both eyes open now, and his voice, thin a few minutes ago, was robust.
    “Good news is, you prob’ly ain’t gon have no brown girlfriends. Just as well, too, take my word. Start out, you all they need. That’s what they tell you. ‘Sugar, you
all
I need. You so sweet.’ Then one day you ain’t payin’ attention, they find Jesus. Black girl find Jesus, she might as well sew it up with a needle and thread. Put a zipper on it, for all the good it gon do her
or
you.”
    I would have liked to change the subject, not because Gabriel’s views on women were without interest but because something else interested me even more. Knowing what I did about his howling, I had no trouble understanding why his wife might be growing weary of his shenanigans. What I would’ve liked to know was what he’d done to cause his own son to say he didn’t have a father. I tried to imagine what my own father could do that would make me deny his very existence that way, and failed utterly.
    “Black girl find Jesus, the next thing she find is the devil. You know who the devil is?”
    I had a pretty good idea. “You?”
    “Damn straight. Now
you
the devil. Yesterday you sugar, you so sweet. Today you the devil. Turn you out so fast it make your head spin. Say ‘Don’t you be coming round here no more.’ While back she like to howl just like you, but now it’s ‘Don’t you be comin’ round here with your howlin’ ways. This child studyin’ you,’ she say, ’cause by now you got one, maybe two, if you ain’t lucky. Pretty soon she got the child poisoned against you. Don’t want you for his