“What’s wrong with him?” Ma Buster still clung to his arm, smiled from her furs. “Well? We want privacy, don’t we?”
“Wait a minute.” Carlyle pulled himself free, and stepped closer to Hondo, realizing his friend felt afraid. “That’s the Devil?”
Hondo nodded. “Only last time he had on a silk suit.”
“He don’t look like the Devil to me.”
“He don’t look like the Devil to me neither.”
Carlyle thought for a moment, shrugged. “So what.”
“So what!” Hondo made the face of a burp.
“Far as I see, he’s a chauffer.”
“But he’s the Devil.”
“Okay, but you already signed up. So what you worrying about?”
They climbed into the back of the limousine, Ma Buster between them, pounding both their knees with mittened fists. “I can’t say I’m happy to have you aboard, Johnny, but Wallace and me’ll make out.” She turned to him. “Catch my drift?”
“Easy, Ma.” He removed her mitten from his leg. “First, show me that money you talking about.”
She smiled with her upper lip, removed the fur from her right hand, unzipped the suit, reached in and pulled up a pouch-like purse.
“You see that, Hondo?” He had caught her in a lie. “She told us it was in the car.”
Hondo’s whites shone at him from the backseat’s far corner. “I see it.”
He studied Ma Buster’s large, square, weathered, human face. “Listen, Ma, I don’t know how they act where you come from, but now you in Harlem where the woman chase the man, until she gets selected to get caught.” Cooley used this approach with women of European descent. “If you don’t like it, well…”
Hondo forced himself to laugh. Carlyle reached across Ma Buster and let his friend slap his palm.
Ma Buster did not laugh. “You wanted to see my money?”
“We ain’t laughing at you, Ma.” He took the pouch from her lap. For a minute, the lock would not work. When he did open it, he found the money she had mentioned, and a check-book besides. He counted himself one hundred dollars in tens, returned the purse, patted her bare hand. “Keep that, Ma.” He smiled. “You know, I’m not only interested in your money. A lot of women with money I don’t mess with.”
“Don’t horse me.” She straightened up, breathed through her nose. “Ma’s seen your type before.”
He answered softly. “You never met nobody like me, Ma.”
“What about your uncle?”
But she had called him Wallace. “You met him in Hollywood, right? When, fifty-six?”
“Stow fifty-six. September fifty-seven.”
“Maybe so.” He sat up straight. “Tell him to drive us to City Island.” He wanted to take her into the Bronx somewhere.
“Aye!” She leaned forward, tapped on the glass separating them from the chauffer. Before she spoke the order, the chauffer cut the limousine across traffic, into and out of a U-turn around the divider, sending them north on the Avenue.
The chauffer could hear them. “Open that glass, Ma.”
Ma Buster pressed a button; the glass slid open.
“Listen, man: Drive Careful.”
“Yes, sir.” The chauffer kept his eyes on the Avenue and the double-parked cars. He looked human, his ears pink and round as roses, lobeless.
“Remember because I could get you fired.”
“Yes, sir.”
Carlyle sat back, smiled at Ma Buster. “Just steadying the ship, Ma.” He enjoyed riding in good cars, especially if he did not have to drive. “We’ll have us a good time, Ma. We’ll get some fried clams and fries and have a little party, just the three of us, and him too, if he wants.” He indicated the chauffer. “Then we’ll drop off Hondo and send your man home, and have a little party, just us.” He winked.
She winked in return, but her face did not change. He wondered if he had taken the right trail to Ma Buster’s heart. “What’s wrong, Ma?”
She lowered her chin to her fur-covered breast. “Ma ain’t happy.” She laughed, howling at the upholstered roof. “I got money and I want a man is what the old gal said.”
He relaxed. “You said you didn’t pussyfoot around.”
“That’s a snort coming from Ma Buster. I bark like I got a hell of a bite.” The whites of her eyes islanded their light-gray pupils. “Ma Buster’s a virgin. Spent the whole sledge-ride with men and not one of them ever laid a mitt on me.”
“That’s too bad.” He looked out of the window. They had just passed the last barbecue place before the bridge into the Bronx. “Why you think that happened?”
“Just turn your goggles on me.”
He set his face, looked at her, smiled. “You got one little thing going for you.”
“I do?”
He nodded. “Money.”
“You think that was enough to get Ma banged?”
“Works most of the time.”
“But I was saving myself for the right guy.” She sighed. “The pay-off didn’t come until after the expedition and by that time, my looks was gone. Too much hard living with the boys.”
“That’s a shame, Ma.” He clicked his tongue.
“Just my card. I was never known as one of Gully City’s prettiest.”
“You don’t understand, Ma. The shame be that nobody climbed in your bed and took you off all them long nights. Right, Hondo?”
Hondo nodded.
“But they all acted like real gentlemen, and I always tried to fit right in and not use my sex. That’s what I wanted to show, that a girl could do anything and they didn’t have to pack special equipment.”
“How many men went up, Ma?”
“Set out with fourteen.” She paused. “Came back with twelve.”
“How long all this take?”
“You see, it was off and on, three years.”
“Three years? I don’t care what you look like, Ma. One of them should’ve got over. I mean, you’re a woman.”
“Stow that. I tried not to be.”
“Quite enough, Miss Buster.” The partition separating the front where the chauffer sat from the backseat began without squeak or scrape to slide down into the floor. “Say no more.” The chauffer let go his wheel, swiveled to face them. “His main concern is the money.”
Guiding itself, the limousine approached an overpass with a slow curve beyond it—rolling away from City Island and north into Westchester.
The chauffer shook his head. “You’ve missed his heart by miles, Miss Buster.”
“Now, didn’t I tell you it was him!” Hondo twisted up his face. “I’ll haunt you, man.”
Their self-steering limousine did not impress him. If he waited in the right downtown places, he might see another just like it. “Wait a minute, Hondo.”
“We are he, Mr. Bedlow.” Perhaps because of the bad light from the lamps down the center-strip snapping by, the chauffer’s eyes seemed dull-yellow. “And there’s absolutely nothing you can get from us without giving something in return. We believe in simple transactions.”
Carlyle nodded. “And you looking to buy my soul.”
“Yours especially, Mr. Bedlow.”
Carlyle turned to Hondo. “You went for this game?”
“Don’t forget my mama.” Hondo shivered; though the limousine owned a good heating system, his teeth rattled.
“Man, I never seen her.” He wanted to get out now, to call it even with the hundred he carried in his pocket. “I didn’t see her get sick and I didn’t see him get her well.”
“Trust your friend’s word, Mr. Bedlow.”
He looked hard at the chauffer, tried to decide if he might carry a gun. “So what game you really running?”
“Join us and see. We have room for you on our team.” His br
ittle voice did not fit his heavy face.
“Buying souls?” Carlyle laughed once. “I don’t need no souls.”
“We also offer money, women, glamourous apartments, the finest wardrobes. Your assignment would be signing on your friends. Your payment would be the world.”
“Starting with Ma?”
“You’d be surprised at the material of which Miss Buster is composed.”
Carlyle shook his head. “I don’t believe I would. Listen, man, can you stop this thing too?” He wanted to get out before they remembered their money.
“Apprehensive, Mr. Bedlow?”
“Tired. Drop us at a subway, will you?”
“A subway, is it?” The chauffer pressed one of a row of buttons on the steering post. The limousine left the highway climbing the next exit ramp, came to a full stop, turned right. Carlyle promised himself to own a limousine like it someday.
“We see that our car pleases you, Mr. Bedlow.”
“Sure do, boss. You have to tell me where you bought it at.”
The limousine stopped beside a small grove of oak trees. They were in one of the residential areas of Westchester, the houses back from the street, each on its own acre.
“Your subway, Mr. Bedlow.”
“Good. Thanks. The man’s making us walk, Hondo.” He opened the door, climbed out, in a moment saw Hondo’s head across the roof. He leaned back inside. “You owe me a pair of shoes, devil.” His feet already felt wet in the cuff-deep snow.
The chauffer raised a pistol, pointed it at Carlyle’s face. “You owe me one hundred dollars, Mr. Bedlow.”
23
“EXCUSE ME?” She had seemed to like him to go slow. “I mean, what did I take too long to do?”
She shook her head, sighed, looked at him, shook her head again. “How old are you, Chig?”
“Twenty-nine.” He wondered whether she would find him too old, or too young. “I’ll be thirty next month.”
She nodded. “Why don’t you get us some sherry. Please.”
He fled to the bar—waiting for the bar steward to hand him the stemmed glasses, tried to decide what he would talk about when he returned to her. Each topic led to marriage, and in his mind, the proposal offended her.
A glass in each hand, he passed back among the tables. The old ladies, brows of shiny dark hair, still watched. Some had stopped playing cards altogether.
He sat down across from her.
“Look at me, Chig.”
“Sure, Wendy.” But he could not keep himself from inspecting the wall behind her, could not meet her stare.
“You’re unlike any Colored I’ve ever met.”
He had to look back at her now. “Is that so?” They had spoken of the Experience before, but never with specific reference to Chig. “I can think of at least two others.” His brother, his sister.
“Perhaps.” She smiled, her dimple coming to her chin. “But I believe you’re perfect.”
“Tell that to my mother.”
“I feel sure she already knows.”
He listened to the warmth come to her upper-class Virginian voice, shrugged. “Everybody’s disappointed in me, but all for different reasons, including me. I can’t seem to get oriented.” He used his mother’s sentence. “I’ve been…peripatetic for eight years now.”
“But, Chig, why?”
He paused to listen to her soft voice, again, inside his ear. “There doesn’t seem to be a place for me; there…I don’t know. Once I thought I’d be a lawyer.”
“My father’s a lawyer. He—” She stopped herself. “But I won’t talk about him.” She smiled. “But I want to.” She reached out and took his hand. “I do like you, Chig. So until we get to New York, let’s pretend we’re not us.”
“Excuse me?”
They finished their sherry. Then she pulled him to his feet, led him to walk the deck, as the sun began to ease down toward the edge of the dark sea. She held his hand, squeezed it when the wind blew. “You should go to Africa someday, Chig.”
“Would I like it?”
“You’d love it. The girls are beautiful. They’d teach you important things about yourself.”
His comment came too slowly; he decided to try to change the subject slightly. “There are some Africans on this boat.”
“There are?” She let go his hand too quickly. “From where?”
“The West Coast, probably.” He did not really want to talk about Africans at all. “One said he spoke French, I think he said.”
She inspected him from his shoes to his hair. Perhaps he should have used his stocking-cap. He could not remember her ever looking at him so carefully, frankly staring at him.
“Are you really the person you seem, Chig?” Before he could ask what she meant, she continued. “But if you weren’t, would you tell me?”
“Tell you I was—”
“A big, fat acorn.” She poked out her lips, and bugged her eyes.
“A what?” He laughed, enjoyed feeling how nice it felt to laugh. When he finished, he asked her if it were possible for him to be an acorn.
“Haven’t you seen any on the ship?”
He had, somewhere. “All over the place.”
She smiled at him, a quiet smile between them, and the sea wind around them. “I know you have. But since you’re on our side, it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No, dear-Chig.” She kissed his cheek, hugged his arm. “But please go on about those Africans.”
“Well, there’s not much more…”
She pulled it out of him, helped him to unburden himself; the Africans disturbed him. “I mean, I know Wally’s answer makes sense. That would explain the chains. But if they mutinied, wouldn’t the ship seem different? More unsettled? Anything strange happening up in first class?”
She shook her head.
He kept talking: “You understand? The ship’s normal, not like a hundred African sailors just tried to take it over. I admit, this is only my second time on an Atlantic ship, but everything seems…normal. Besides, one African said he was coming for to be a slave. Something like that. At any rate, what do you suppose happened?”
“The chains are the riddle, isn’t that right?” She half-smiled.
“That’s what I think. But…” He hesitated, knowing what he wanted to confess might lower her estimation of him. “But I’m not sure he said it, because I’m a little worried about my hearing.”
“Oh, Chig, that’s not true.”
“I don’t know. People say things to me, and I don’t understand them. Or what I hear doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do I make sense to you?”
He laughed away his embarrassment, then decided to act bravely. “You make perfect sense to me, Wendy.”
“For goodness sakes, Chig, don’t be so serious.” He could see nothing on her face except her tan. “You make me nervous.”
“But, Wendy…”
She watched the sea, her back to the setting sun. “Let me be very clear, Chig. I will never marry you.”
“But, why? Why can’t you marry me?” Even in the wind, his voice grew too loud. “I mean, if you want to. You seem to like me. I don’t want to get married on shipboard or anything.”
“You’re spoiling it. I just could never marry you. That’s all.” She knit her hands, looked at them.
“It’s race.” He shook his head. “God, isn’t that stupid.”
“It is not race. Race does not exist. If anything, it’s culture.” She blinked, then closed her eyes tight, began to speak before she opened them again. “Don’t think I’m stupid because my skin is white. It goes deeper than skin. I have relationships I shouldn’t like to give up, places I go where you could not go. Race? It’s ancest—”
He cut her off quite deliberately. “But wh
y don’t we forget that and find out what we have as people?”
“All right. But you still can’t think you can marry me, Chig. Must I tell you everything?” She took a breath. “I’m not travelling alone. But until tomorrow afternoon, we can pretend.”
He knew she had made her final offer. He frowned, nodded.
“Now cheer up.” She scolded him, then laughed. “Let me show you the real me, almost.”
He smiled, and in five more minutes, she had convinced him it would be great fun to talk to the Africans chained in the padded room.
“But what’ll we talk about?” He followed her down a narrow, curving staircase they had found, listened to her heels on uncovered steel.
“About why they’re chained up.” Her part ran straight and tan from forehead to bun.
“Why should they tell us?”
“Why shouldn’t they?” She turned, smiled up at him.
They went deeper into the ship, came finally, from a new direction, into the carpeted passageway where Wally had opened the door. But the door remained locked. Wendy put her ear to it. “I can’t hear a thing.”
He stood behind her. “It’s completely padded.” He felt his heart flutter as he spoke. “I think we should get out of here.”
“But we haven’t solved the riddle of the chains, Dr. Dunford.” She made her voice very English. “And I have reason to believe these waters are troubled.”
“Now just suppose they really are, you know, slaves.”
“We shall have to set them free, Dr. Dunford.”
That stopped him. He realized that even as she joked, she had given one possible answer. “Well, let’s hope Wally’s right then.”
“You’re afraid.” She stepped into the middle of the passageway, counted the doors.
“If they are slaves, the whole crew knows about it, which means that even if we did something, it wouldn’t work.”
She sucked her tongue. “Don’t be dreary, Chig. Besides, we haven’t proved a thing yet.” The second door she tried moved, swung open into a room not much wider than the door, but deep, furnished with a desk and two captain’s chairs with doweled backs.
Dunfords Travels Everywheres Page 11