Lonely Crusade Read Free

only in brutality, and she hated him for it.
    She had been absorbing Lee’s brutality for six long years. At first, she had been convinced of his essential need for it. Hers had been a confidence in his ability to eventually come through and in some way find the verification of manhood he seemed eternally to be seeking. For a time—so many long and wasted years it now seemed—she had kept faith in this confidence, and in her own therapeutic quality to relieve. She had not minded absorbing his brutality, allowing him to assert his manhood in this queer, perverted way, because all of the rest of the world denied it. But at so great a price, for it had given to her that beaten, whorish look of so many other Negro women who no doubt did the same. Even now, under the rigid discipline she applied to herself, she had not entirely lost it.
    But now her faith in him was gone. Now she did not believe that anything would ever help Lee Gordon. And she herself was through with trying.
    “Ruth!” It was a demand for a reply.
    “What is it, Lee?” she answered wearily.
    “I was just thinking.”
    “About what?”
    “Oh, about my job.”
    “What about it, Lee?”
    “I think I’m going to like it.”
    She did not reply, and in the silence his loneliness returned. Eight years before, when they had married, he had thought that she would be the answer to his loneliness. She had been the promise of a new, happy life.
    For a brief, hurting moment he recalled the funny, crazy times they used to have in bed on rainy nights like this, that first year of their marriage. They had lived in a tiny back bedroom, so cramped for space that only one could dress at a time; and when they had been in a hurry to go some place, the other had to dress in the bathroom.
    For the most part he had been out of work, and many times the nights had been filled with hunger. But never with emptiness like this.
    And often when they had had the money to buy food, they had chosen wine instead. For with the wine they could lie together in the warm, dark nights and imagine things. This was the best, the highest they could reach in that dark-toned pattern of existence. It had seemed like something burnished—almost silver, almost gold. Really, it had been tin foil. But when both had caught it at the same time, it had been beautiful in a way. All the pageantry and excitement of life in white America had been there—the Rainbow Room and the Metropolitan Opera on an opening night; Miami and Monte Carlo, deluxe liners and flights by night. And doing noble, heroic, beautiful things for her, and at her pleased smile, saying: “Only because I love you.”
    At other times they had lain abed and read to each other. It had been a pleasure just to listen to her voice. She had taught him to enjoy literature, as she had taught him so many other deep pleasures of existence, and had introduced him to such men as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Balzac.
    Together they had felt the tragic thanatopsis of their little dog’s death. They had exulted together on warm spring days in the incomparable glory of just living. And they had seen burlesque shows on Main Street together.
    Together they had laughed. It had seemed then as if nothing on earth could have pried them apart.
    Gone now, in the pages of America…
    Well—yes, Lee Gordon thought. When you were a Negro, so many things could happen to keep you from fulfilling the promise of yourself. No doubt he had been some sort of promise to her that he too had never fulfilled.
    Yet now he was of a mind to blame her for all of it. He had acquired the habit of blaming her for most of the things that happened to him, knowing as he did that she was not to blame.
    “Don’t you want to celebrate?” he forced himself to ask.
    “I’m tired, Lee. I had a hard day at the office.”
    “You’re always tired—especially when I want something. I’ll be glad when you quit.”
    Again she withdrew in silence. He fought for dominance, struggling to