Viewing page 31 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

LOOK HOMEWARD BABY                   HARRINGTON

buddyin' around together over in the prisoner-of-war compound. You realize what that mean?" I had to admit that I didn't, knowing that Harris was going to tell me anyway. "Well Brother, I'm gon' tell you," said Harris. "It mean that now that this war is over they gon' kiss an' make up. It also means that when I get back home the best I can do is maybe get me a job out at the white folks country club, an' there they be hollerin' 'Harris get me this, and Harris get me that,' an' befo' they go in to play the pinball machines they be wantin' to rub my head fer luck. An' because one of 'em is a nice blue-eyed SS an' the other is a nice blue-eyed airborne, I got to let 'em or else have some trouble with the sheriff. Tha's the American Dream Brother! An' tha's also why Ma Harris' youngest boy is gon' make tracks." Harris was as good as his word. He got himself demobilized in Paris, heard about the GI Education Bill and signed up to study drawing and painting at the Grand Chaumier. It was Herb Gentry and Larry Potter, two Black expatriate painters, who told me between squalls of laughter, about Harris' first day at the Grande Chamier. Harris had signed up for the "life class" although he didn't quite know exactly what that meant. He found a seat in the huge studio and did what everyone else was doing. He opened his large drawing pad, steadying it on the chair in front, opened his box of brand new charcoal pencils and erasers and then looking up, realized that there was a completely nude woman standing on the platform just above him in the first pose of the afternoon. Harris split, leaving all of his equipment and his most prized possession, his beret. He didn't stop galloping until he'd locked the door of his tiny hotel room in the Rue Delambre! "Thought the rednecks had finally trapped him," gasped Gentry, wiping the laughing tears from his eyes. It took a week to convince Harris that the French didn't have any rednecks, and so Harris cautiously went back. Of course everyone knew that Harris would never become even a third rate painter but he was so beamingly happy that not even the instructors had the heart to tell him.

I usually found Harris around three or four in the afternoon at the Cafe Select in the Boulevard Montparnasse, where we'd discuss art and what Harris called "deep stuff" until dinner time. One rainy afternoon I poked my head in, looking down toward the corner table where Harris usually roosted with his drawing portfolio in the seat of the wicker chair beside him, his broad forehead puckered over some book of reproductions. As usual, Harris was there, but he didn't jump up and wave enthusiastically as he customarily did. I walked toward his table, shaking the rain from my "impermiable."

205