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PARTISAN REVIEW
the air with the immense suggestion that Sonny speak for himself.
Then 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 contained so many
others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the
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
and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning
he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make
it
ours,
how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I un–
derstood, at last, 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 con–
tinue to go through until he came to rest in 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 saw 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
Isabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin 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.
Then 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 awhile 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.
