A Broader View

A BROADER VIEW

Clermont Buchanan stood at the old gas range that had been in this house since he was a boy. He could hear the faint rumbling sound of boiling water beginning ever so softly in the granite coffee percolator. Like the range this same coffee pot had been here as long as he could remember. In fact, in this house that he shared with his mother and grandmother until they each passed, hardly anything had changed in all these years. Outside the house the neighborhood had changed from the time when his was the only black family in it. Now there were many types of people. Ms.Cohen for instance, who lived next door for years before going to a nursing home, had been Jewish.

Clermont tilted his head back and closed his eyes to breathe in the final notes of a piano concerto by Chopin billowing from the old fashioned radio sitting atop the Frigidaire - his broad lips thinned across his brown face in a smile.

In the dining room, he passed between the oak buffet that once held beautiful starched white table cloths and the matching oblong antique table where family once gathered for Sunday dinners. Rounding the head of the table to get to the window, Clermont grunted against the strain of trying to move the window pane, its wooden frame warped and swollen with time. The creaking of the pulleys moving along their ropes rewarded his effort. His only view was of Ms. Cohen's vacant house next door but at least he could hear the birds and feel the air.

His grandmother and mother both died off long ago and as so often happens in black families, the tradition of family gatherings died with the matriarchs. Therefore, Clermont had established his own Sunday ritual. After church he would spend two or three hours writing his book of memoirs. The major props required were coffee, classical music and fresh air. A pad and pen already placed on the table indicated the stage was now set to begin.

The coffee poured smoothly filling the Rookwood coffee mug, as Beethoven's Moonlight Sonato filled the kitchen with just enough spilling into the dining room to suit him. Cup and saucer in hand Clermont carefully negotiated the close quarters in the dining room and sat down to write. That's when a wailing sound so awful blasted into the window sending shockwaves through his body -- Hank Williams crooning Hey, hey good lookin'…What'cha got cookin'. Clermont bolted up from the table, knocking into chairs to crouch before the window and peer out in search of the heathen defiling his ears with pure garbage.

Clermont registered a tall dark-skinned man standing on the porch of the yellow house, with muscular biceps bulging from a torn T-shirt, dusty jeans and oil stained work boot. Bringing the can of Budweiser down from his mouth the man threw his head back and added his own insulting bellowing to the cacophony blaring from inside the house.

"What is your problem, man?" Clermont shouted at him.

"Don't you have any respect for your neighbors? And when did you move in anyway?"

The man moved a wad of tobacco from the right side to the left side of his mouth with his tongue, and turned his head towards the voice he heard as he spat a stream of brown.

"Hey, man. I just bought this house. I was planning to come over and meet'cha. I'm Carter -- Carter G. Woods that is but my friends calls me Woody"

"Well, Carter G. Woods could you turn that crap down a bit?"

"Crap? Hold up, man. What do you call that sissy music you listen to? I thought you must've been white. What kind of black man listens to that classical junk?"

Clermont jerked up from the window stiffening himself to a standing position about to hurl an insult in-kind to the one just received -- Well, what kind of black man listens to country music? He was about to say. But instead, he smiled to himself as he remembered all the other times he had deflected the ignorance of people chiding and berating him because of his choice of music, the foods he liked, the books he read or the clothes he wore. He would not succumb to such Neanderthal censoring of self expression himself by assaulting this man with the same weapon used against him -- the accusation of not being "black enough."

Clermont heard his grandmother's voice of wisdom in his head, All people have a right to be, so let 'em be. Still smiling he tugged on the wooden pane until the pulleys creaked in agreement and gently closed the window. He already knew what kind of black man listened to Hank Williams, Roy Clark and Glen Campbell -- the same kind that listened to Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin; a man that can think for himself, knows who he is and isn't afraid to be just that. And he knew he and Carter, no "Woody", were gonna get along just fine.

WC: 800