Sonny's blues by James Baldwin I read about it in the paper in the subway on my way to work I read it and I couldn't believe it and I read it again then perhaps I just stared at it at the newsprint spelling out his name spelling out the story I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car and in the faces and bodies of the people and in my own face trapped in the darkness which roared outside it was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that as I walked from the subway station to the high school and at the same time I couldn't doubt it I was scared scared for Sonny he became real to me again a great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long while I taught my classes algebra it was a special kind of ice they kept melting sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins but it never got less sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke her scream this would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific things Sonny had once said or done when he was about as old as a boys in my classes his face had been bright and open there was a lot of copper in it and he had wonderfully direct brown eyes and great gentleness and privacy I wonder what he looked like now he had been picked up the evening before in a raid on an apartment downtown for peddling and using heroin I couldn't believe it but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me I had kept it outside me for a long time and I hadn't wanted to know I had had suspicions but I didn't name them I kept putting them away I told myself that Sonny was wild but he wasn't crazy and he'd always been a good boy he had never turned hard or evil or disrespectful the way kids can so quick so quick especially in Harlem I didn't want to believe that I'd ever seen my brother going down coming to nothing all that light and his face gone out in the condition I had already seen so many others yet it had happened and here I was talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might everyone of them for all I knew be popping off needles every time they went to the head maybe it did more for them than algebra could and I was sure that the first time sunny had ever had horse he couldn't have been much older than these boys were now these boys now we're living as we've been living then they were growing up with a rash in their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities they were filled with rage all they really know were to darkness as the darkness of their lives which is now closing in on them and the darkness of the movies which had blinded them to that other darkness and in which they now vindictively dreamed had once more together than they were at any other time and more alone when the last bell rang the last class ended I let out my breath it seemed I've been holding it for all that time my clothes were wet I may have looked as though I've been sitting in a steam bath all dressed up all afternoon i sat alone in the classroom a long time and I listened to the boys outside downstairs shouting and cursing and laughing there laughter struck me for perhaps the first time it was not the joys laughter which God knows why one associates with children it was mocking an insular its intent was to denigrate it was disenchanted and in this also lay the authority of their curses perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother and myself one boy was whistling a tune and once very complicated and very simple it seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird and it sounded very cool and moving through all that harsh bright air only just holding its own through all those other sounds and I stood up and walked over to the window and looked down into the courtyard it was the beginning of the spring and the SAP was rising in the boys a teacher passed through them every now and again quickly as though he or she couldn't wait to get out of that courtyard to get those boys out of their sight and off their minds I started collecting my stuff and I thought I'd better get home and talk isabell the courtyard was almost deserted by the time I got downstairs and I saw this boy standing in the shadow of a doorway looking just like Sonny I almost called his name and then I saw that it wasn't Sonny but somebody we used to know a boy from around our block he'd been Sonny's friend he had never been mine having been too young for me and anyway I'd never liked him and now even though he was a grown up man he still hung around that block still spent hours on the street corners was always high and raggy I used to run into him from time to time and he'd often work around to asking me for a quarter of 50 cents he always had some real good excuse to and they always gave it to him I don't know why but now abruptly I hated him I couldn't stand the way he looked at me partly like a dog partly like a cunning child I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing in the school courtyard he sort of shuffled over to me and he said I see you got the papers so you already know about it you mean about Sonny yes I already know about it how come they didn't get you he grinned it made him repulsive and it also brought to mind what he looked like as a kid I wasn't there I'll stay away from them people good for you offered him a cigarette and I watched him through the smoke you come all the way down here just to tell me about sunny that's right he was sort of shaking his head and his eyes look strange as though they were about to cross the bright Sun deadened his damp dark brown skin and it made his eyes look yellow and showed up the dirt in his King tear he smelled funky I moved a little away from him and I said well thanks I already know about it and I gotta get home I'm gonna walk here little ways he said we started walking and we're a couple of lads still loitering in the courtyard and one of them said good night to me and look strangely at the boy beside me what are you gonna do he asked me I mean about Sonny look I haven't seen Sonny for over a year I'm not sure I'm going to do anything anyway what the hell can I do that's right he said quickly ain't nothing you can do can't much help old Sonny no more I guess it was what I was thinking and so it seemed to me he had no right to say it I'm surprised at Sonny though he went on he had a funny way of talking he looked straight ahead is that we were talking to himself that's how I thought it was a smart boy I thought it was too smart to get hung I guess he thought so too I said sharply and that's how we got hung and how about you you're pretty goddamn smart I bet then he looked directly at me just for a minute all right smart he said if I was smart I'd have reach for a pistol a long time ago look don't tell me your sad story if it was up to me I'd give you one then I felt guilty and guilty probably for never having supposed at that poor bastard had had a story of his own much less a sad one and I asked quickly what's going to happen to him now he didn't answer this he was off by himself someplace funny thing he said and from his tone we might have been discussing the quickest way to get to Brooklyn when I saw the papers this morning the first thing I asked myself was if I had anything to do with it I felt sort of responsible I began to listen more carefully the subway station was on the corner just before us and I stopped he stopped too we were in front of a bar and he ducked slightly peering in but whoever he was looking for didn't seem to be there the jukebox was blasting away with something black and bouncy and I have watched the barmaid as she's danced her way from the jukebox to her place behind the bar and I watched her face as she laughingly responded to something someone said to her still keeping time to the music when she smiled one saw the little girl one sense the doomed still struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi I never give Sonny nothing the boy said finally but a long time ago I come to school hi and Sonny asked me how it felt he paused and they couldn't bear to watch him and watch the barmaid and I listened to the music which seemed to be causing the pavement to shake and I told him it felt great the music stopped the barmaid paused and watched the jukebox until the music began again it did all this was carrying me to someplace I didn't want to go I certainly didn't want to know how it felt it filled everything the people the houses the music the dark Quicksilver barmaid with Menace and this menace was their reality what's going to happen to him now I asked again I'll send him away someplace and they'll try to cure him he shook his head maybe he'll even think he's kicked the habit then they let him loose he gestured to throwing his cigarette into the gutter that's all what do you mean that's all but I knew what he meant I mean that's all he turned his head and looked at me pulling down the corners of his mouth don't you know what I mean he has softly how the hell would I know what you mean I almost whispered it I don't know why that's right he said to the air how would he know what I mean he turned toward me again patient and calm and yet I somehow felt him shaking shaking is oh he were going to fall apart I felt that ice and my guts again the dread I'd felt all afternoon and again I watched the barmaid moving about the bar watching glasses and singing listen they let him out and then it'll just start all over again that's what I mean you mean they'll let him out and then he'll just start working his way back and again you mean he'll never kick the habit is that what you mean that's right he said cheerfully you see what I mean tell me and I said at last why does he want to die he must want to die he's killing himself why does he want to die he looked at me and surprised he licked his lips you don't want to die he wants to live don't nobody want to die ever then I wanted to ask him to many things he could not have answered or if he had I could not have borne the answers and I started walking well I guess it's none of my business and it's going to be rough on old Sonny he said we reached the subway station this is your station he asked I nodded I took one step down diam he said suddenly I looked up at him he grinned again damned if I didn't leave all my money home you ain't got a dollar on you have you just for a couple days is all all at once something inside me gave and threatened to come pouring out of me I didn't hate him anymore I felt that in another moment I'd start crying like a child sure I said I don't sweat I looked in my wallet and didn't have a dollar I only out of five here I said that hold you he didn't look at it he didn't want to look at it a terrible close look came over his face as though he were keeping the number on the bill a secret from him and me thanks he said and now he was dying to see me go don't worry about Sonny maybe I'll write him or something sure I said you do that so long be seeing ya he said I went on down the steps and I didn't write Sonny or send him anything for a long time when I finally did it was just after my little girl died he wrote me back a letter which made me feel like a bastard here's what he said your brother you don't know how much I needed to hear from you I wanted to write you many a time but I'd dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write but now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep real deep in funky hole and just saw the Sun up there outside I gotta get outside and I can't tell you much about how I got here and I mean I don't know how to tell you and I guess I was afraid of something or I was trying to escape from something and you know I've never been very strong in the head smile I'm glad momma and daddy are dead and can't see what's happened to their son and I swear if I'd known what I was doing I would never have hurt you so you I'm a lot of other fine people who were nice to me and who believed in me I don't want you to think it had anything to do with me being a musician it's more than that or maybe less than that I can't get anything straight in my head down here and I try not to think about what's going to happen to me when I get outside again sometimes I think I'm gonna flip and never get outside and sometimes I think I'll come straight back and I tell you one thing though I'd rather blow my brains out then go through this again but that's what they all say so they tell me if I tell you when I'm coming to New York and if you could meet me I sure would appreciate it keep my left Isabel and the kids and I was sure sorry to hear about a little Gracie I wish I could be like mom and say the Lord's will be done but I don't know it seems to me that trouble is the one thing that never does get stopped and I don't know what good it does to blame it on the Lord but maybe it does some good if you believe it your brother Sonny then I kept in constant touch with him and I sent him whatever I could and I went to meet him when he came back to New York when I saw him many things I thought I had forgotten came flooding back to me this was because I'd begun finally to wonder about Sonny about the life that Sonny lived inside this life whatever it was had made him older and thinner and it had deepened the distant stillness in which he had always moved he looked very unlike my baby brother yet when he smiled when we shook hands baby brother I'd never known looked out from the depths of his private life like an animal waiting to be coached into the light how you been keeping he asked me alright NGO just fine he was smiling all over his face it's good to see you again it's good to see you the seven years difference in our ages lay between us like a chasm I wondered if these years would ever operate between us as a bridge I was remembering and it made it hard to catch my breath that I had been there when he was born and I had heard the first words he had ever spoken when he started to walk he walked from my mother straight to me then I caught him just before he fell when he took the first steps he ever took in this world how's Isabel just fine she's dying to see you and the boys they're fine too they're anxious to see their uncle oh come on you know they don't remember me are you kidding of course they'd remember you he grinned again we got into a taxi we had a lot to say to each other far too much to know how to begin as the taxi began to move asked you still want to go to India he laughed you still remember that hell no this place is Indian enough for me and it used to belong to them I said and he laughed again they damn sure and knew what they were doing when they got rid of it years ago when he was around 14 he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India he read books about people sitting on rocks naked in all kinds of weather mostly bad naturally and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom I used to say that attended to me is that they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could and I think he sort of looked down on me for that do you mind he asked if we have the driver drive alongside the park on the west side I haven't seen the city and so long of course not I said I was afraid that I might sound as though I were humoring him but I hoped he wouldn't take it that way so we drove along between the green of the park and the stony lifeless elegance of hotels and apartments building toward the vivid killing streets of our childhood these streets hadn't changed though housing projects jetted up that of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea most of the houses in which we had grown up had vanished as had the stores from which we had stolen the basements in which we had first tried sex the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks but houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the land cape boys exactly that the boys we once had been had been found themselves smothering in these houses came down at the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster some escaped the trap most didn't those who got out always left something of themselves behind as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap it might be said perhaps that I had escaped after all I was a school teacher or that Sonny had he hadn't lived in Harlem for years yet as a cap moved uptown through streets which seemed with a rush to darken with dark people and as I covertly studied Sonny's face it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind as always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches we hid hundred and tenth Street and started rolling up Lenox Avenue and I'd known this Avenue all my life but it seemed to me again as it had seemed on the day I'd first heard about Sonny's trouble filled with a hidden menace which was his very breath of life we almost there said Sonny almost we were both too nervous to say anything more we live in a housing project it hasn't been up long a few days after it was up it seemed uninhabited Lee knew now of course it's already rundown and it looks like a parody of the good clean faces life God knows the people who live it do their best to make it a parody the beach looking grass lying around isn't enough to make their lives green the hedges will never hold out the streets and they know it the big windows fool no one they aren't big enough to make space out of no space they don't bother with the windows they watch the TV screen instead the playground is most popular with the children who don't play at jacks or skip rope or roller skate or swing and they can be found in it after dark he moved in partly because it's not too far from where I teach and partly for the kids but it's really just like the houses in which Sonny and I grew up the same things happen they'll have the same things to remember the moment Sonny and I started into the house I had the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape Sonny has never been talkative so I don't know why I was sure he'd be dying to talk to me when supper was over the first night everything went fine the oldest boy remembered him and the youngest boy liked him and Sonny had remembered to bring something for each of them and Isabelle who was really much nicer than I am more open and giving had gone to a lot of trouble about dinner and was genuinely glad to see him and she's always been able to tease Sonny in a way that I haven't it was nice to see her face so vivid again and to hear her laugh and watch her make Sonny laugh she wasn't nor anyway she doesn't seem to be at all uneasy or embarrassed she chatted as though there were no subject which had to be avoided and she got Sonny past his first faint stiffness and thank God she was there for I was filled with that icy dread again and everything I did seemed awkward to me and everything I said sounded fray did with hidden meaning and I was trying to remember everything I'd heard about dope addiction and I couldn't help watching Sonny for signs I wasn't doing it out of malice I was trying to find out something about my brother I was dying to hear him tell me he was safe safe my father grunted whenever mama suggested trying to move to a neighborhood which might be safer for children safe Hale ain't no place safe for kids no-nobody he always went on like this but he wasn't ever really as bad as he sounded not even on the weekends when he got drunk as a matter of fact he was always on the lookout for something a little better but he died before he found it he died suddenly during a drunken weekend in the middle of the war when Sonny was 15 he and Sonny hadn't ever got on too well and this was partly because Sonny was the apple of his father's eye it was because he loves Sonny so much and was frightened for him that he was always fighting with him it doesn't do any good to fight with Sonny Sonny just moves back inside himself where he can't be reached but the principal reason that they never hit it off is that they were so much alike daddy was big and rough and lap talking just the opposite for Sonny but they both had that same privacy mama tried to tell me something about this just after daddy died I was home on leave from the Army this was the last time I ever saw my mother alive just the same this picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had of her when she was younger the way I always see her is the way she used to be on a Sunday afternoon say when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner and I always see her wearing pale blue she'd be sitting on the sofa and my father would be sitting in the easy chair not far from her and the living room would be full of church folks and relatives there they'd sit in chairs all around the living room and the night is creeping up outside but nobody knows it yet you can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by but it's real quiet in the room for a moment nobody's talking but every face looks darkening like this guy outside and my mother rocks a little from the waist and my father's eyes are closed everyone is looking at something a child can't see for a minute they'd forgotten the children maybe a kid is lying on the rug half asleep maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and his absent mindedly stroking the kid's head maybe there's a kid quiet and big eyed curled up in a big chair in the corner the silence the darkness coming and the darkness and the faces frightens the child's obscurely he hopes at the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop will never die he hopes that there will never come a time when the old folks won't be sitting around the living room talking about where they've come from and what they've seen and what's happened to them and their kinfolk but something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bount and he's already ending in a moment someone will get up and turn on the light then the old folks will remember the children and they won't talk anymore that day and when light fills the room the child is filled with darkness he knows that every time this happens he's moved just a little closer to that darkness outside the darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about it's what they've come from it's what they endure the child knows that they won't talk anymore because if he knows too much about what's happened to them he'll know too much too soon about what's going to happen to him last time I talked to my mother I remember I was Restless I wanted to get out and see Isabelle you weren't married then and we had a lot to straighten out between us their mamas sat in black by the window she was humming an old church song Lord you brought me from a long ways off Sunday was out somewhere mama kept watching the streets I don't know she said if I'll ever see you again after you go off from here but I hope you'll remember the things I tried to teach you don't talk like that I said and smiled you'll be here a long time yet she smiled too but she said nothing she was quiet for a long time and I said mama don't you worry about nothing I'll be writing all the time and you be getting the checks I want to talk to you about your brother she said suddenly if anything happens to me he ain't gonna have nobody to look out for him mama I said ain't nothing going to happen to you or Sonny Sonny's alright he's a good boy and he's got good sense it ain't a question of his being a good boy mama said nor of his having good sense it ain't only the bad ones nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under she stopped looking at me your daddy once had a brother she said and she smiled in a way that made me feel she was in pain you didn't never know that did you no I said I never knew that when I watched her face oh yes she said your daddy had a brother she looked out of the window again I know you never saw your daddy cry but I did many times through all these years I asked her what happened to his brother how come nobody's ever talked about him this was the first time I ever saw my mother look old his brother got killed she said when he was just a little younger than you are now I knew him he was a fine boy he was maybe a little full of the devil but he didn't mean nobody no harm then she stopped them the room was silent exactly as it had sometimes been on those Sunday afternoons mama kept looking out into the streets he used to have a job in the mill she said and like all young folks he just liked to perform on Saturday nights Saturday nights him and your father would drift around to different places go to dances and things like that when you sit around with people they knew and your father's brother would sing he had a fine voice and play along with himself on his guitar well this particular Saturday night him and your father was coming home from someplace and they were both a little drunk and there was a moon that night it was bright like day your father's brother was feeling kind of good and he was whistling to himself Mandy had his guitar slung over his shoulder and he was coming down a hill and beneath them was a road that turned off from the highway well your father's brother being always kind of frisky decided to run down this hill and he did with that guitar banging clanging behind him and he ran across the road and he was making water behind a tree and your father was sort of amused at him and he was still coming down the hill kind of slow then he heard a car motor and that same minute his brother stepped from behind the tree into the road in the moonlight and he started to cross the road and your father start to run down the hill he says he don't know why this car was full of white man he was out drunk and when they seen your father's brother they let out a great whoop and holler and they aim the car straight at him he was having fun they just wanted to scare him the way they do sometimes you know but they was drunk and I guess the boy being drunk too and scared kind of lost his head by the time he jumped it was too late and your father says he heard his brother scream when the car rolled over him and he heard the wood of that guitar when he give and he heard them strings go flying and he heard them white men shouting and the car kept on a-goin and it ain't stopped till this day and time your father got down the hill his brother went nothing but blood and pulp tears were gleaming on my mother's face there wasn't anything I could say he never mentioned it she said because I never let him mention it before you children your daddy was like a crazy man that night and for many a night thereafter he says he never in his life seen anything as dark as that road after the lights on that car had gone away when nothing went nobody on that road just your daddy and his brother and that busted guitar oh yes you know daddy never did really get right again till the day he died he weren't sure but that every white man he saw was a man that killed his brother she stopped and took out her hand kerchief and dried her eyes and looked at me I ain't telling you all this she said to make you scared or bitter to make you hate nobody I'm telling you this because you got a brother and the world ain't changed I guess I didn't want to believe this and I guess she thought this in my face she turned away from me toward the window again searching those streets I praised my redeemer she said at last that he called your daddy home before me I ain't saying it to throw no flowers at myself but I declare it keeps me from failing to cast down to know I helped your father gate safely through this world your father always acted like he was a roughest strongest man on earth and everybody took him to be like that but if he hadn't had me there to see his tears she was crying again till I couldn't move I said Lord Lord mama I didn't know it was like that oh honey she said there's a lot that you don't know that you are going to find out she stood up from the window and came over to me you gotta hold on to your brother she said and don't let him fall no matter what it looks like it's happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him you going to be able with him many a time but don't you forget what I told you you hear I won't forget I said don't you worry I won't forget and I won't let nothing happen to Sonny my mother smiled as though she were amused to something she saw in my face then you may not be able to stop nothing from happening but you got to let him know who's there two days later I was married and then it was gone and I had a lot of things on my mind and I pretty well forgot my promise to mama until I got shipped home on a special furlough for her funeral and after the funeral with just Sonny and me alone in the empty kitchen I tried to find out something about him what do you want to do I asked him I'm gonna be a musician he said before he had graduated and the time I'd been away from dancing to the jukebox to finding out who was playing what and what they were doing with it and he had bought himself a set of drums you mean you want to be a drummer somehow had a feeling that being a drummer might be alright for other people but not for my brother Sonny not don't think he said looking at me very gravely that I'll ever be a good drummer but I think I can play a piano I found I had never played the role of the older brother quite so seriously before and that's scarcely ever in fact I asked Sonny a damn thing I sense myself in the presence of something I didn't really know how to handle and understand I made my friend a little deeper as I asked what kind of musician do you want to be he grant how many guns do you think there are be serious I said he laughed throwing his head back and looked at me I am serious well then for Christ's sake stop kidding around and answer a serious question I mean do you want to be a concert pianist you want to play classical music and all that or or what long before I finished he was laughing again for Christ's sake Sonny he's sobered but with difficulty I'm sorry but you sound so scared then he was off again well you may think it's funny now baby but it's not going to be so funny when you have to make your living at it let me tell you that I was furious because I knew he was laughing at me and I didn't know why no he said very sober now and afraid perhaps that he'd hurt me I don't want to be a classical pianist that isn't what interests me I mean he paused looking hard at me as though his eyes would help me to understand and then gestured helplessly and so perhaps his hand would help I mean no I have a lot of studying to do and I have to study everything but I mean I want to play with jazz musicians he stopped I want to play jazz he said well the word had never before sounded as heavy as real as it sounded that afternoon Sonny's mouth and I just looked at him and I was probably frowning a real friend by this time I simply couldn't see why on earth he'd want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs clowning around on band stands while people pushed each other around to dance floor it seemed beneath him somehow I had never thought about it before I've never been forced to him I suppose I'd always put jazz musicians in a class with what daddy called good time people are you serious hell yes I'm serious he looked more helpless than ever and annoyed and deeply hurt and I suggested helpfully you mean like Louie Armstrong his face closed as though I'd struct him no I'm not talking about none of that old-time down-home crap well look Sonny I'm sorry don't get mad I just don't altogether get it that's all name somebody you know a jazz musician you admire bird who bird Charlie Parker don't they teach you nothing in the goddamn army I lit a cigarette and I was surprised and then a little amused to discover that I was trembling I've been out of touch I said you'll have to be patient with me now who's this Parker character he's just one of the greatest jazz musicians alive said Sonny solemnly his hands in his pocket his back to me maybe the greatest he added bitterly and that's probably why you never heard of him now right I said I'm ignorant I'm sorry I'll go out and buy all the cat's records right away all right it don't set Sonny with dignity make any difference to me I don't care what you listen to don't do me no favors I was beginning to realize that I'd never seen him so upset before with another part of my mind I was thinking that this would probably turn out to be one of those things kids go through and that I shouldn't make it seem important by pushing it too hard still I didn't think it would do any harm to ask doesn't all this take a lot of time can you make a living at it he turned back to me and hath leaned have sat on the kitchen table everything takes time he said and well yes sure I can make a living at it but what I don't seem to be able to make you understand is that it's the only thing I want to do well Sonny I said gently you know people can't always do exactly what they want to do no I don't know that said Sonny surprising me I think people ought to do what they want to do what else are they alive for you get him to be a big boy Mase it desperately it's time you started thinking about your future I'm thinking about my future said Sonny grimly and I think about it all the time and I gave up I decided if he didn't change his mind that we could always talk about it later in the meantime I said you got to finish school we had already decided that he'd have to move in with Isabel and her folks I knew this wasn't the ideal arrangement because his about folks are inclined to be dick T and they didn't especially wanted his about to marry me but I didn't know what else to do and we have to get you fixed up at Isabel's there was a long silence he moved from the kitchen table to the window that's a terrible idea you know what yourself do you have a better idea he just walked up and down the kitchen for a minute he was as tall as I was he had started to shave and I suddenly had the feeling that I didn't know him at all he stopped at the kitchen table and picked up my cigarettes looking at me with a kind of mocking amused defiance he put one between his lips you mind your smoking already he lit the cigarette nodded watching me through the smoke I just wanted to see if I'd have the courage to smoke in front of you he grinned and blew a great cloud of smoke to the ceiling and it was easy he looked at my face come on now I bet she was smoking at my age till the truth I didn't say anything but the truth was on my face and he laughed but now there was something very strained in his laugh sure and I bet that ain't all you was doing he was fighting me a little the crap I said we already decided that she was gonna go and live at Isabel's now what's got into you all of a sudden you decided it he pointed out I didn't decide nothing he stopped in front of me leaning against a stove arms loosely folded look brother I don't want to stay in Harlem no more I really don't he was very earnest he looked at me then over toward the kitchen window there was something in his eyes I'd never seen before some thoughtfulness some worry all his own he rubbed the muscle of one arm it's time I was getting out of here why do you want to go Sonny I want to join the army or the Navy I don't care if I say I'm old enough they'll believe me then I got mad and it was because I was so scared you must be crazy you goddamn fool what the hell do you want to go and join the army for I just told you to get out of Harlem Sonny you haven't even finished school and if you really want to be a musician how do you expect to study if you're in the army he looked at me trapped and in English there's ways I might be able to work out some kind of deal anyway I'll have the GI Bill when I come out if you come out we stared at each other Sonny please be reasonable I know the setup is far from perfect we got to do the best we can I ain't learning nothing in school he said even when I go he turned away from me and opened the window and threw his cigarette out into the narrow alley and I watched his back at least I ain't learning nothing you'd want me to learn he slammed the window so hard I thought the glass would fly out and turned back to me and I'm sick of the stink of these garbage cans Sonny I said I know how you feel but if you don't finish school now you're going to be sorry later that you didn't I grabbed him by the shoulders and you only got another year it ain't so bad and I'll come back and I swear I'll help you do whatever you want to do just try to put up with it till I come back will you please do that from he he didn't answer and he wouldn't look at me Sonny you hear me he pulled away not hear you but you never hear anything I say I didn't know what to say to that he looked out of the window and back at me okay he said inside I'll try then I said trying to cheer him up a little and they got a piano at Isabel's you can practice on it and as a matter of fact it did cheer him up for a minute that's right he said to himself I forgot that his face relaxed a little but the worry the thoughtfulness played on it still the way shadows play on a face which is staring into the fire but I thought I'd never hear the end of that piano and that first Isabelle would write me saying how nice it was that Sonny was so serious about his music and how as soon as he came in from school or wherever he had been when he was supposed to be at school he went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime and after supper he went back to that piano and stayed there until everybody went to bed he was at the piano all day Saturday and then all day Sunday then he bought a record player and started playing records he'd play one record over and over again and all day long sometimes and he'd improvise along with it on the piano or he'd play one section of the record one chord one change one progression then he do it on the piano then back to the record then back to the piano well I really don't know how they stood it Isabelle family confessed that it wasn't like living with a person at all it was like living with the sound and the sound didn't make any sense to her didn't make any sense to any of them naturally they began in a way to be afflicted by this presence I was living in their home It was as if Sonny we're some sort of God or or monster he moved in an atmosphere which wasn't like theirs at all they fed him and he ate he washed himself he walked in and out of their door he certainly wasn't nasty or unpleasant or rude Sonny isn't any of those things but it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud some fire some vision all his own and there wasn't any way to reach him at the same time he wasn't really a man yet he was still a child and they had to watch out for him in all kinds of ways they certainly couldn't throw him out neither that they dare to make a great scene about that piano because even they dimly sensed as I sensed from so many thousands of miles away Sunday was at the piano playing for his life but he hadn't been going to school one day a letter came from the school board and Isabelle's mother got it there had apparently been other letters but Sonny had torn them up this day when Sonny came in his Abele's mother showed him the letter and asked him where he had been spending his time and she finally got it out of him that he'd been down in Greenwich Village with musicians and other characters and a white girls apartment and this scared her and she started to scream at him and what came up when she began though she denies it to this day was what sacrifices they were making to give Sonny a decent home and how little he appreciated it said he didn't played the piano that day by evening Isabelle's mother had calmed down but then there was the old man to deal with and Isabelle herself Isabel says she did her best to be calm but she broke down and started crying she says she just watched Sonny's face she could tell by watching him what was happening with him and what was happening was that they penetrated his cloud they had reached him even if their fingers had been a thousand times more gentle than human fingers ever are he could hardly help feeling that they had stripped her naked and were spitting on that nakedness before he also had to see that his presence that music which was life or death to him had been torture for them and that they had endured it not at all for his sake but only for mine and Sonny couldn't take that you can dig it a little better today than he could then but he's still not very good at it and frankly I don't know anybody who is the silence of the next few days must have been louder than the sound of all the music ever played since time began one morning before she went to work Isabel was in his room for something and she suddenly realized that all of his records were gone and she knew for certain that he was gone and he was he went to the faraway as the Navy would carry him he finally sent me a postcard from someplace in Greece and that was the first I knew that Sonny was still alive and I didn't see him anymore until we were both back in New York and the war had long been over he was a man by then of course but I wasn't willing to see it he came by the house from time to time but we fought almost every time we met I didn't like the way he carried himself loose and dreamlike all the time and I didn't like his friends and his music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led it sounded just that weird and disordered then we had a fight I'm pretty awful fight and then I didn't see him for months my and bye I looked him up where he was living in a furnished room in the village and I tried to make it up but there were lots of people in the room and Sonny just lay on his bed and he wouldn't come downstairs with me and he treated these other people as though they were his family and I weren't so I got mad and then he got mad and then I told them that he might just as well be dead as lived the way he was living and he stood up and he told me not to worry about him anymore in life that he was dead as far as I was concerned then he pushed me to the door and the other people looked on as though nothing were happening and he slammed the door behind me and I stood in the hallway staring at the door and I heard somebody laugh in the room and then the tears came to my eyes and I started down the steps whistling to keep from crying and kept whistling to myself you gonna need me baby one of these cold rainy days and I read about Sonny's trouble in the spring little grace died in the fall she was a beautiful little girl much he only lived a little over two years she died of polio when she suffered she had a slight fever for a couple of days but it didn't seem like anything and we just kept her in bed and we would certainly have called the doctor but the fever dropped she seemed to be all right so we thought it had just been a cold then one day she was up playing Isabelle was in the kitchen fixing lunch for the two boys when they'd come in from school and she heard grace fall down in the living room when you have a lot of children you don't know we start running when one of them falls unless they start screaming or something and this time grace was quiet yet Isabelle says that when she heard that thump and that silence something happened in her to make her afraid and she ran to the living room and there was little grace on the floor and all twisted up and the reason she hadn't screamed was that she couldn't get her breath and when she did scream it was the worst sound Isabelle says that she had ever heard in all her life and she still hears it sometimes in her dreams and Isabelle was sometimes wake me up with a low moaning strangled sound and they have to be quick to awaken her and hold her to me and where Isabella's weeping against me seems a mortal wound I think I may have written Sunday the very day the little grace was buried and I was sitting in the living room in the dark by myself and I suddenly thought of sunny my trouble made his real one Saturday afternoon when sunny had been living with us nor anyway been in our house for nearly two weeks I found myself wandering aimlessly about the living room drinking from a can of beer and trying to work up the courage to search Sonny's room he was out he was usually out whenever I was home and Isabelle had taken the children to see their grandparents suddenly I was standing still in front of living room window watching seventh Avenue the idea of searching Sonny's room made me still I scarcely dared to admit to myself what I'd be searching for and I didn't know what I'd do if I found it or if I didn't on the sidewalk across from me near the entrance to a barbecue joint some people were holding an old-fashioned revival meeting the barbecue cook wearing a dirty white apron his Conterra reddish and metallic and the pale Sun and a cigarette between his lips stood in the doorway watching them kids and all their people paused in their Aaronson stood there along with some older men and a couple of very tough looking women who watched everything that happened on the Avenue as though they owned it or may be owned by it well they were watching this too the revival was being carried on by three sisters in black and a brother all they had were their voices and their Bibles and tambourine the brother was testifying and while he testified two of the sisters stood together seeming to say own man and the third sister walked around with a tambourine that stretched and a couple of people dropped coins into it then the brother's testimony ended and the sister who had been taking up the collection dumped the coins into her palm and transferred them to the pocket of her long black robe then she raised both hands striking the tambourine against the air and then against one hand and she started to sing and the two other sisters and the brother joined in it was strange suddenly to watch though I had been seeing these Street meetings all my life so of course had everybody else down there yet they paused and watched and listened and I stood still at the window tis the old ship of Zion they sang and the sister with a tambourine kept a steady jangling beat it has rescued many a thousand not a soul under the sound of their voices was hearing this song for the first time not one of them had been rescued nor have they seen much in the way of rescue work being done around them neither did they especially believe in the holiness of the three sisters and the brother they knew too much about them knew where they lived and how the woman with the tambourine whose voice dominated the air whose face was bright with joy was divided by very little from the woman who stood watching her a cigarette between her heavy chapped lips her hair a Cuckoo's Nest her face scarred and swollen from many beatings and her black eyes glittering like coal perhaps they both knew this which is why when as rarely they addressed each other they addressed each other as sister and as the singing filled the air the watching listening faces underwent a change the eyes focusing on something within the music seemed to soothe the poison out of them and time seemed nearly to fall away from the sullen belligerent battered faces as though they were fleeing back to their first condition while dreaming of their last the barbecue cook half shook his head and smiled and dropped a cigarette and disappeared into his joint a man fumbled in his pockets for change and stood holding it in his hand and patiently as though he had just remembered a pressing appointment further up the Avenue he looked furious and I saw sunny standing on the edge of the crowd he was carrying a wide flat notebook with a green cover and then it made him look from where I was standing and almost like a schoolboy the coppery Sun brought out the copper and his skin he was very faintly smiling standing very still then the singing stopped the tambourine turned into a collection plate again a furious man dropped in his coins and vanished so did a couple of the women and sunny dropped some change in the plate looking directly at the woman with little smile he started across Avenue toward the house he has a slow loping walk something like the way Harlem hipsters walk only his imposed on his own half beat I had never really noticed it before I stayed at the window both relieved and apprehensive and as sunny disappeared from my sight they began singing again and they were still singing when his key turned in the lock Hey he said hey yourself you want some beer no well maybe but he came up to the window and stood beside me looking out on a warm voice he said and they were singing if I could only hear my mother pray again yes I said and she can sure beat that tambourine what a terrible song he said and laughed he dropped his notebook on the sofa and disappeared into the kitchen where's Isabel and the kids I think they went to see their grandparents you hungry no he came back into the living room with his can of beer you want to come someplace with me tonight and I sensed I don't know how that I couldn't possibly say no I'm sure where he sat down on the sofa and picked up his notebook and started leafing through it I'm gonna sit in with some fellows in a joint in the village you mean you're gonna play tonight that's right he took a swallow of his beer and moved back to the window he gave me a sidelong look and if you can stand it I'll try I said he smiled to himself and we both watched it's a meeting across the way broke up the three sisters and the brother heads bowed we're singing God be with you till we meet again the faces around them were very quiet then the song ended in a small crowd dispersed we watched the three women and the lone man walk slowly up the Avenue when she was singing before said Sonny abruptly her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroine feels like sometimes when it's in your veins it makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time and distant and men sure he sipped his beer very deliberately not looking at me and I watched his face it makes you feel in control sometimes you've got to have that feeling do you i sat down slowly in the easy chair sometimes he went to the sofa and picked up his notebook again some people do in order I asked to play and my voice was very ugly full of contempt and anger well he looked at me with great troubled eyes as though in fact he hoped his eyes would tell me the things he could never otherwise say and they think so and if they think so and what do you think I asked he sat on the sofa and put his can of beer on the floor I don't know he said and I couldn't be sure if he were answering my question or pursuing his thoughts his face didn't tell me he's not so much to play it's just and it to be able to make it at all on any level he frowned and smiled in order to keep from shaking to pieces but these friends of yours I said they seem to shake themselves to pieces pretty goddamn fast maybe he played with a notebook and something told me that I should curb my tongue that Sonny was doing his best to talk but I should listen but of course you only know the ones that have gone to pieces some don't or at least they haven't yet and that's just all about to any of us can say he paused and then there were some who just lived really in hell and they know it and they see what's happening and they go right on and I don't know he sighed dropped the notebook folded his arms some guys you can tell from the way they play they on something all the time and you can see that well then make something real for them but of course he picked up his beer from the floor and sipped it and put the can down again and they want to to you've got to see that even some of them that say they don't some not all and what about you I asked I couldn't help it what about you do you want to he stood up and walked to the window and remained silent for a long time then he sighed me he said then when I was downstairs before on my way here I'm listening to that woman sing it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through to sing like that it's repulsive to think you have to suffer that much and I said but there's no way not to suffer is there Sonny I believe not he said and smiled but that's never stopped anyone from trying he looked at me has it I realized with his mocking look that they stood between us forever beyond the power of time or forgiveness the fact that I had held silence so long when he had needed human speech to help him he turned back to the window no there's no way not to suffer how'd you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it to keep on top of it and to make its aim well like you like you did something all right and now you're suffering for it you know and I said nothing well you know he said impatiently why do people suffer maybe it's better to do something to give it a reason any reason but we just agreed and I said that there's no way not to suffer isn't it better than just to take it but nobody just takes it said he cried that's what I'm telling you everybody tries not to you just hung up on the way some people try it's not your way the hair on my face began to itch my face felt wet that's not true I said that's not true I don't give a damn what other people do I don't even care how they suffer I just care how you suffer and he looked at me please believe me I said I don't want to see you die trying not to suffer I won't he said flatly died trying not to suffer at least not any faster than anybody else but there's no need I said trying to laugh he's there in killing yourself I wanted to say more but I couldn't I wanted to talk about willpower and how life could be well beautiful and I wanted to say that it was all within or was it rather wasn't that exactly the trouble and I wanted to promise that I would never fail him again but it would all have sounded in empty words and lies so I made the promise to myself and prayed that I would keep it it's terrible sometimes inside he said and that's what's the trouble you walk these streets from black and funky and cold and there's not really a living ask to talk to and there's nothing shaking and there's no way of getting it out that storm inside you can't talk it and you can't make love with it and when you finally try to get with it and play it you realize nobody's listening so you've got to listen you got to find a way to listen and then he walked away from the window and sat down on the sofa again as though all the wind had suddenly been knocked out of him sometimes you'll do anything to play even cut your mother's throat he laughed and looked at me nor your brother's then he sobered or your own then don't worry I'm all right now and I think I'll be all right when I can't forget where I've been I don't mean just a physical place I've been I mean where I've been and what I've been what have you been Sonny I asked he smiled but sat sideways on the sofa his elbow resting on the back his fingers playing with his mouth and chin not looking at me and I've been something I didn't recognize didn't know I could be didn't know anybody could be he stopped looking inward looking helplessly young looking old I'm not talking about it now because I feel guilty or anything like that maybe it would be better if I did I don't know anyway I can't really talk about it not to you not to anybody and now he turned and faced me sometimes you know and it was actually when I was most out of the world I felt that I was in it that I was with it really and I could play or I didn't really have to play it just came out of me it was there and I don't know how I play thinking about it now but I know I did awful things those times sometimes to people or it wasn't that I did anything to them it was that they weren't real he picked up the beer can it was empty he rolled it between his palms and other times well I needed a fix and I needed to find a place to lean I needed to clear a space to listen and I couldn't find it and I went crazy I did terrible things to me I was terrible for me he began pressing the beer can between his hands I watched the middle begin to give it glittered as he played with it like a knife and I was afraid he would cut himself but I said nothing oh well I could never tell you I was all by myself at the bottom of something stinking and sweating and crying and shaking and I smelled it you know my stink and I thought I'd die if I couldn't get away from it and yet all the same I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it and I didn't know he paused of flattening the beer can I didn't know I still don't know something kept telling me that maybe it was good to smell your own stink but I didn't think that that was what I'd been trying to do and who can stand it and he abruptly dropped the ruined beer can looking at me with a small still smile and then Rose walking to the window as though it were the lodestone rock and I watched his face he watched the Avenue I couldn't tell you when mama died but the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs and then when I ran away that's what I was running from really when I came back nothing had changed I hadn't changed I was just older and he stopped drumming with his fingers on the windowpane the Sun had vanished soon darkness would fall and I watched his face it can come again he said how mister so speaking to himself then he turned to me it can come again he repeated I just want you to know that all right I said at last so it can come again and all right he smiled but the smile was sorrowful and I had to try to tell you he said yes I said I understand that you're my brother he said looking straight at me and not smiling at all yes I repeated yes I understand that he turned back to the window looking out all that hatred down there he said all of that hatred and misery and love it's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart we went to the only nightclub on a short dark Street downtown we squeezed through the narrow chattering jam-packed bar to the entrance of the big room where the bandstand was and we stood there for a moment for the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn't see then hello boy said a voice and an enormous black man much older than Sonny or myself erupted out of all that atmospheric lighting and put an arm around Sonny shoulders I've been sitting right here he said waiting for you he had a big voice too and heads in the darkness turned toward us Sonny grinned and pulled a little way and said Creole this is my brother I've told you about him Creole shook my hand I'm glad to meet you son he said and it was clear that he was glad to meet me there for Sonny's sake and he smiled you got a real musician in your family and he took his arm from Sonny shoulders and slapped him lightly affectionately with the back of his hand well now I've heard it all said a voice behind us this was another musician and a friend of Sonny's a coal black cheerful looking man built close to the ground he immediately began confiding to me at the top of his lungs the most terrible things about Sonny his teeth gleaming like a lighthouse and his laugh coming up out of him like the beginning of an earthquake and it turned out that everyone at the bar knew Sonny or almost everyone some were musicians working there or nearby or not working somewhere simply hangers-on and some were there to hear Sonny play I was introduced to all of them and they were all very polite to me yet it was clear that for them I was only Sonny's brother here I was in Sonny's world or rather his kingdom here it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood they were going to play soon and Creole installed me by myself at a table in a dark corner and I watched them Creole on the little black man and Sonny and the others while they horst around standing just below the bandstand the light from the bandstand spilled just a little short of them--and watching them laughing and gesturing and moving about I had the feeling that they nevertheless were being most careful not to step into that circle of light too suddenly and if they moved into the light too suddenly without thinking they would perish in flame then while I watched one of them the small black man moved into the light and crossed the bandstand and started fooling around with his drums then being funny and being also extremely ceremonious Creole took Sonny by the arm and led him to the piano a woman's voice called Sonny's name and a few hands started clapping and Sonny also being funny and being ceremonious and so touched I think that he could have cried but neither hiding it nor showing it riding it like a man grinned and put both hands to his heart and bowed from the waist Creole then went to the bass fiddle and a lean very bright skin brown man jumped up on the bandstand and picked up his horn so there they were and the atmosphere on the bandstand and in the room began to change and tighten someone stepped up to the microphone and announced them and there were all kinds of murmurs some people at the bar shush to others the waitress ran around frantically getting in the last orders guys and chicks got closer to each other and the lights on the bandstand on the quartet turned to a kind of indigo and they all look different their Creole looked about him for the last time as though he were making certain that all his chickens were in the coop and then he jumped and struck the fiddle and there they were and all I know about me because that not many people ever really hear it and even then on the rare occasion when something opens within and the music enters what we mainly here or here corroborated our personal private vanishingly vocations but the man who creates the music is hearing something else is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air what has evoked in him then is of another order more terrible because it has no words in triumphant to for that same reason and his triumph when he triumphs his ours I had just watched Sonny's face his face was troubled he was working hard but he wasn't with it and I had the feeling that in a way everyone on the bandstand was waiting for him both waiting for him and pushing him along but as I began to watch Creole and I realized that it was Creole who held them all back he had them on a short rein and up there keeping the beat with his whole body wailing on the fiddle with his eyes half closed he was listening to everything but he was listening to Sonny he was having a dialogue with Sonny he wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for deep water he was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing he had been there and he knew and he wanted Sonny to know he was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water and while Creole listened Sonny moved deep within exactly like someone in torment I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument he has to fill it this instrument with the breath of life his own he has to make a do what he wants it to do and a piano is just a piano it's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones and ivory well there's only so much you can do with it the only way to find this out is to try to try and make it do everything and Sonny hadn't been near a piano for over a year and he wasn't on much better terms with his life not the life that stretched before him now he and the piano stand word started one way got scared stopped started another way panicked marked time started again then seemed to have found a direction panicked again stuck and the face I saw and sunny had never seen before everything had been burned out of it and at the same time things usually hidden were being burned in by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there yet watching creoles face as they neared the end of the first set I had the feeling that something had happened something I hadn't heard and they finished they were scattered applause and then without an instant's warning Creole started into something else it was almost sardonic it was am i blue and as though he commanded sunny began to play something began to happen and Creole let out the rains the dry low black man said something awful on the drums Creole answered and the drums talked back then the horn insisted sweet and high slightly detached perhaps and Creole listened commenting now and then dry and driving beautiful and calm and old and they all came together again and sunny was part of the family again and I could tell this from his face he seemed to have found right there beneath his fingers a damn brand new piano it seemed that he couldn't get over it then for a while just being happy with Sonny they seemed to be agreeing with him that brand-new pianos certainly were a gas and then Creole stepped forward to remind them at what they were playing was the blues he hid something in all of them he hid something in me myself and the music tightened and deepened apprehension began to be there creole began to tell us what the blues were all about they were not about anything very new he and his boys up there we're keeping it new at the risk of ruined destruction madness and death in order to find new ways to make us listen for while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted and how we may triumph is never new it's always must be heard there isn't any other tale to tell it's the only life we've gotten all this darkness and this tale according to that face that body those strong hands on those strings has another aspect in every country and a new depth in every generation listen Creole seemed to be saying listen now these are Sonny's blues give me the little black man on the drums know it and the bright brown man on the horn Creole wasn't trying any longer to get sunny in the water he was wishing him Godspeed then he stepped back very slowly filling the air with the immense suggestion that Sonny speak for himself and they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played every now and again one of them seemed to say Amen Sonny's fingers filled the air with life his life but that life contains so many others and Sonny went all the way back he really began with a spare flat statement of the opening phrase of the song then he began to make it his it was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried there was no longer a lament I seem to hear with what burning he had made it his with what burning we had yet to make it ours how we could see cementing freedom looked around us and I understood alas that he could help us to be free if we would listen that he would never be free until we did yet there was no battle in his face now I heard what he had gone through and would continue to go through until he came to rest on earth he had made it his that long line of which we knew only mama and daddy and he was giving it back as everything must be given back so that passing through death it can live forever I saw my mother's face again and felt for the first time how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet I said the moonlit road where my father's brother died and it brought something else back to me and carried me past it I saw my little girl again and felt Isabelle's tears again and I felt my own tears began to rise and I was yet aware that this was only a moment that the world waited outside as hungry as a tiger and that trouble stretched above us longer than the sky and it was over Creole and Sonny let out their breath both soaking wet and grinning there was a lot of applause and some of it was real in the dark the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand there was a long pause while they talked up there in the indigo light and after a while I saw the girl put a scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny he didn't seem to notice it but just before they started playing again he sipped from it and looked toward me and nodded then he put it back on top of the piano for me then as they began to play again it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling