Copyright © 2021 by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
One World and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Some of the stories in this work were originally published in Apalachee Review, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, The Pinch, Redivider Journal, Slant, and South Carolina Review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ruffin, Maurice Carlos, author.
Title: The ones who don’t say they love you : stories / Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Other titles: The ones who do not say they love you
Description: First edition. | New York : One World, 2021
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048605 (print) | LCCN 2020048606 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593133408 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593133422 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: New Orleans (La.)—Fiction. | LCGFT: Short stories.
Classification: LCC PS3618.U4338 R84 2021 (print) | LCC PS3618.U4338 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048605
Ebook ISBN 9780593133422
oneworldlit.com
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Susan Turner, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Michael Morris
ep_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You
Cocoon
Beg Borrow Steal
Mercury Forges
Caesara Pittman, or a Negress of God
Bigsby
Rhinoceros
Ghetto University
Token
The Pie Man
The Places I Couldn’t Go
Spinning
Fast Hands, Fast Feet
Election
The Sparer
Catch What You Can
Zimmermann
Glamour Work
Before I Let Go
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Maurice Carlos Ruffin
About the Author
In New Orleans, culture doesn’t come down from on high, it bubbles up from the street.
—Ellis Marsalis
The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You
You on the sidewalk out front of the convenience store. The sun beat down like it do every morning. The street cleaner pass by spraying lemonade-smelling water. It get on your tennis shoes, shoes that’s coming loose at the heel, so your socks get wet, too. Soapy water drip down the curb. Not like this street stay clean long.
Mr. Jellnik round the corner like he being dogged. He ain’t much to look at. They never is. He like the other men who come down for foot-fixing conventions and brain-fixing conventions. He got a fat neck and skin like old peaches. His wallet fat, too; that all you care about.
Jellnik eye you from crotch to mouth. He pull out a pack. He smoke. You pull one from the pack and light yours with his.
“Why are you the only one out here this morning?” He cover his eyes halfway. The sun glare off the Mississippi River Bridge like I see you, boy.
“I’m the onliest one you need,” you say.
“True enough.”
The other tappers already off to work, probably almost done with the men they left with. They left you with the tip box. The box is for your protection. You wear bottle caps on your soles and dance so people think you and the others are cymbal monkeys.
A police car roll up the street. The lights flash blue white blue, but the car don’t slow down even though the cop lean over to get a eyeful of your faces. Jellnik’s butt cheeks tense up. You could tell him don’t sweat it, but you like seeing him squirm. If you didn’t like seeing him squirm, you would tell him cops never arrest johns, especially not johns from Ida-fucking-ho. What you do probably make the cops puke, make them stay away. It’s easy to lock up dudes for shooting dudes. That’s good business. Putting a junior high slut in jail is bad business. If they hear all about what you do, people stop coming to town. You all starve then.
The stoplight turn green. The police car pull off. Jellnik’s ass relax. You don’t really need to tap-dance to stay out of jail. But if you don’t at least fake it, what else you got?
* * *
—
Jellnik the only one who buy you food after he do his business. Now, you sore inside and out, but you starving, too. The queenie cook behind the counter flipping pancakes. Maybe the pancakes’ll take your mind off how rough Jellnik handle you.
Jellnik’s toast and runny eggs come out first. He squirt ketchup all over. He gulp coffee, get a refill, gulp that, too. He don’t give you none. Your stomach growl. When you bring food to the corner, the other tappers take most of it, leave you the scrap. Most days you don’t eat till you go home. But today you hungry. What the shit is the holdup? The queenie cook went in back and your pancake sitting on the cold side of the grill like a Frisbee that just stop spinning.
Jellnik been here all week. The first day he show up, he take Pink and Quincy first, one in the morning and the other round lunch. He come back for you after noontime, rocking up the street with hair stuck to his forehead. After he take a piece of you, he never buy what Pink and Quincy selling again. That’s a plus on top of the money. It’s the only time you won out when they around. You too dark and your hair ain’t good and wavy like Pink hair. But now you can laugh inside when you see them. You can’t laugh out loud. They punch you if you smile.
Jellnik break out a roll of cash. He put down two twenty-dollar bills. One for the food and one for you. Twenty won’t cover the food, so that’ll come out of what you earn.
“When I leave tonight,” Jellnik say. “I want you to come with me.”
He pour sugar in his coffee. His finger got ketchup on it that he don’t see. He stir his coffee with that finger.
“I’ll get you a plane ticket, and I have a storage unit you can stay in until we find you something more appropriate.”
“Man,” you say, “I ain’t going to nobody Idaho.”
“Listen to me,” he say, “you can do better than this place. It’s not safe for you.”
“Nobody mess with me round here,” you say.
He put a hand on your face where you bruised from when Pink hit you the other day. You like to flinch away, but you don’t ’cause his hand feel warm.
“You don’t know anything,” Jellnik say. “I’ve been visiting New Orleans for over twenty years. You think you’re one of the first boys to stand on that corner? What do you think happened to the boys who were there before you?”
You could tell Jellnik about Pink’s brother, Simmy, who went puff like match smoke last month. Simmy was the first one you met when you came out here. He looked out for you, but now he gone. You know he ain’t go to Idaho.
“Why you care about what happen to me?” you ask.
“Just be back at the corner around six p.m. with your personal belongings. I’ll be in a gray sport utility vehicle.”
When Jellnik get up, the stool squeal like it being stabbed. By then, your pancake black and crusty, still dying on that grill.
The queenie cook wearing mascara and ho
op earrings, so you know he a full-on Mary. He flip the pancake to your plate. He smack the plate down. Sound like it crack, but it don’t. He shake his head at you like he better than you. You want to jump over the counter and stomp his face on the grill. Or make him suck your junk. You want to make him say your name like he mean it. But he grown. He break you in five pieces, if you try. You be on the wrong end like always.
The pancake darker than you. You don’t touch it.
You snatch all the money and run. The cook yell after you, but those just words.
* * *
• • •
When you go into the house with a box of chicken and biscuits, Lorraine back early from the casino downtown. She in her spot in front of the TV. She don’t have no legs. You bought toilet paper and chocolate milk, too. You unpack the groceries. She don’t look up. She eating a bag of orange puffs. Her lips orange. She keep them on her lap so the little kids won’t get none. None of you like to get close to her. She grab too hard.
You go to the kitchen and put the chicken down. You yell out the back door for the little boys rolling in the grass by the flat-tire pickup truck. The boys are foster boys like you. Lorraine get a check every two weeks for keeping y’all. You don’t get any because she call it rent. She take rent to the casino. If she win, she don’t tell you.
“You better find your own,” she always say. But she eat what you bring home. Her cut she call it.
You go back to the kitchen. You open the box and a roach in it. The little boys come in the back door, screaming and smacking each other. You can’t let them see that roach because then they won’t eat. You don’t have money to buy more, and the little bit of chicken you brought ain’t enough for them anyway. You pop the bug in your mouth.
Jellnik’s storage shed must be pretty big. A big man wouldn’t have a small shed. A big man would have a shed big enough to do cartwheels in. His condo in the French Quarter is small. But everything in the French Quarter small. If everything was big, it would be the French Dollar. When he put you in position, you stare out the window. There’s a tree outside with heart-shaped leaves. You count those leaves. You never get past fifteen. In all the times you done business with Jellnik, he never say he love you. That’s the only reason you listen to him at all. The other ones always say they love you.
* * *
—
You don’t want to see Pink and Quincy at the corner, instead they over there tap-dancing extra fast. They trying to wring the last little bit of pocket change out of the tourists before it get dark. The cops won’t take you in for hustling johns, but they don’t stand for curfew breakers. It don’t look right for tappers to be on the street after dark. What don’t look right is bad for business. Bottle caps scraping concrete make you sick like you ate a crate full of bottle caps. You wonder where Jellnik at. It’s after time. You wonder if you feel better when he come around.
“Where you been at?” Quincy say.
“Not making any, I bet,” Pink say. “Ain’t never got his shit together, this baby here.”
You tell them to suck a horse and they howl.
“You a salty little bitch today,” Pink say. “You slow?”
You tell them you ain’t slow. You tell them you about to get paid. You tell them you leaving with Jellnik as soon as he get here.
“Humpty Dumpty?” Quincy frown.
“That man ain’t bringing you nowheres, boy,” Pink say.
A gray SUV down the block. It look like it going to turn before it make it to you. You stop looking.
Quincy pinch your shoulder. “You’re serious, ain’t you, baby?”
“He coming for me,” you say.
“I bet you twenty he ain’t,” Pink say.
Pink wrestle you and snatch your last from your pocket. It’s only a five. Pink say that’ll do until you get more. You tell him you ain’t lost yet. Pink say he good for the night and leave with your five.
You only have one bottle cap for your shoe, but you going to pass some time tapping. Make some change to buy a cold drink because your mouth taste like funk. You dance until that cap break loose and roll into the gutter.
Something flash. A police car creep your way. The lights beep slow, but the car speed up. You can’t see the cop driving, but hands in cuffs press on the back seat glass. Jellnik face behind those hands.
Cocoon
My father named his bug company “Stevens and Son” even before I came into the world. I found insects disgusting, but it was just me and him, so I did my best to keep my objections hidden. I certainly never told him about my proclivities.
I was a pretty good bug man in my teens and could tell what the infestation was by the faintest clues. Teeny tiny scratch marks on a pantry shelf were the sign of a mouse, for example. Whenever we came across something we’d never seen before—like that bellows-shaped mud nest in Ms. Berthelot’s attic—I was the first to guess and was nearly always right. They were mud wasps. The males sipped nectar on swamp azaleas while the females built houses with their mouths.
Still, I grew tired of spending my weekends hunting vermin. My father was in his sixties and needed someone who would really put his back into the work. That’s why he hired Tyronne Myers. Tyronne was into it. I had the impression that he had lived a hard life somewhere else. Yet, whenever I asked him about his past he just placed a hand on my shoulder, a situation I very much enjoyed, and chuckled.
“Can’t stay wrapped in what you come from,” he’d say.
I was in my bedroom one night, alone I thought, when I sensed Tyronne near the door. I don’t know if he saw me, in front of my mirror in a calico dress I’d bought at the thrift store on Carrollton Avenue. Quickly, I switched off the lamp, slipped on jeans in the dark, and left the house to meet my friends. The next morning, I quit. My father showed no emotion, but he took sick a year later and sold the company to Tyronne.
Years after I moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion design, I went back home. Tyronne never changed the name of the company and, to my surprise, he didn’t seem shocked to see me with hair extensions and wearing a crinkled suede waistcoat of my creation. He invited me into the house he was servicing to show me something he had found. He stooped and gave me a ghostly thing, lighter than a feather and so thin the lines on the palm of my hand were clearly visible through it.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked.
“It’s what moths come from,” I said.
Beg Borrow Steal
The first thing Pop do when he get home from Angola is shove you and your little sister out the front door. He don’t even say hi. He just tell Mama to please give him a dollar for you to get huckabucks. Mama tell him he got nerve telling her what to do with her dollar when she been trying to pay the bills all by herself for twenty-three and a half months and five days. The lights been out since last night, so how ’bout earning a dollar? That one vein in the crook of Pop elbow pulse like a fat worm. He say you know I love you, baby. He push past Mama, borrow a five from her purse, and tell you not to come back till the streetlights light up. You and Timithea head over to the Johnsons’, who sell chips, cold drinks, and everything out they house on weekends, but the back window down and the curtains drawn, too, so they ain’t open. Before long you and Timithea end up where the community center was before it burned. Full dump trucks wait like big, dumb elephants. You never do get those huckabucks.
You and Timithea go back to the house but sit on the back porch floor and watch boxcars clank together. Timithea’s hair barrette done fell loose, and she look agitated. You don’t know how to fix it, so you throw down your bouncy ball and let her chase it. She a lot more fun now that she more than a honeydew melon wrapped in swaddling. Even more fun than that mutt dog you had for a day that one time.
Pop open the back door, run his hand over your head, and say we going. You ask where.
Mama’s st
anding behind him smiling, and that make you smile.
Just do what you told, she say. But she don’t say it mean. Pop grab the necklace, a wire-thin gold chain with a teardrop pearl, round Mama’s neck. His fingers pulling at it, so it’s taut, but doesn’t break from around her neck.
Where the rest of that good jewelry I got you?
I sold it, Mama say.
All of it? he ask.
It’s what I had to do, Mama say.
Pop nod. I see that, he say.
Mama pick up Timithea and do that thing with her hand to check Timithea’s diaper like checking a pear to see if it ready to eat.
Pop whistle as we walk from the backyard to the front of the house. He toss the keys at you.
You want to drive? he ask.
Serious? you ask.
It’s Mama car that she bought with her money. The thing got a spoiler on the back hatch and pink dice hanging like cherries from the mirror. She don’t even like Pop driving it. But maybe everything different now.
Fight me for it, he say. We wrestle on our feet, laughing the whole time. He put you in a headlock, but you hold that key tight in your fist. When you get behind the wheel, he shaking his head and frowning.
Get out, he say.
Why?
I thought you’d be taller by now. Instead, you just got fat. Your feet barely come down to the floorboard.
You don’t move, but just keep your hands on the wheel. A bug crash into the front glass.
It flutter for a sec like it’s trying to figure what the shit just happen. Then it spins away.
Just around the block, you say. Pop smack the back of your head hard enough to make you fuzzy.
The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You Page 1