Unmentionables

by Laurie Loewenstein

  Only in the army six months and nothing but skin and bones, his mother would tut-tut. Six months of drills, artillery practice and marching around the piney woods chopped down into a makeshift parade ground, eight-mile marches with a full pack, and all under the broiling Texas sun.

  Only five hours, get going, fool. He picked up his pace. Not enough time to see the fellows. Tuck in particular. Tuck, who had needled him about wanting to join up. “You’ll be nothing but a stevedore like all the other colored troops. Same old heavy lifting,” he’d taunted. But Tuck was wrong. Emmett had landed in a combat unit, the 370th. Yeah, too bad he couldn’t meet up with Tuck. He’d have been sure to tell him all about the colored females coming out to camp from Houston with pies and lemonade. “And sure enough, don’t they admire a man in puttees,” he’d have bragged.

  Emmett turned away from the main drag and onto narrow Adams Street, a shortcut to the colored section, the single dirt street at the edge of town. Damn, the left puttee was unwinding. He knelt in front of an empty storefront to rewrap it. The street was shadowy. The only light came from a streetlamp on the far corner and, across the way and a couple of doors down, the glow from some business open after-hours.

  The dank smell of concrete, maybe urine, rose from a basement stairwell at his back. Footfalls could be heard echoing a half-block away. He jerked to attention. Two men, one whistling off-key, stepped unsteadily into the streetlamp’s cone of light. Emmett recognized Wade Johnson and his cousin Merle, the mechanics from Harp’s Garage. Both had the unsteady gait of end-of-the-night drinkers.

  Seeing the cousins coming up the street, he stepped back in the shadows.

  “. . . think about that?” Wade was saying loudly, punching Merle on the arm.

  “I said,” Merle began, then, “Whoa, what’da we have here?”

  The two halted in front of Emmett. The air ballooned with the yeasty odor of beer.

  “I think it’s that boy from Harp’s. Don’t you think so, Wade?”

  “Yes, but what’s he doing here?”

  Emmett stepped out. “Evening, Wade. Merle. Just heading home,” he said, his voice stiff. He was turning away when Merle caught his arm. Underneath his khaki tunic, Emmett’s heart quickened.

  “Hey. Don’t go rushing off. Let us get a look at you in that fine uniform.” Merle’s rubbery face broke into a too-wide grin.

  Wade jumped in with a friendlier tone: “How’s the army treating you?”

  “It’s not so bad. Sort of . . .” Emmett began.

  Merle broke in: “Got you toting bales and all that? Bet you’re not shooting guns . . . or driving Packards, are you?”

  “I’m in a combat unit.” Emmett stepped back, legs quivering. The iron railing that edged the stairwell pressed against his thighs. He couldn’t help but think of the riot that had erupted in Houston a couple of months before his unit rolled into town. Regular colored soldiers fighting the police. It had ended badly. Thirteen colored soldiers hanged, and lots more colored skulls cracked open with batons.

  “So where’s your gun?” Merle asked, his eyes flicking across Emmett’s puttees, the brass clasp of the Browning belt. “If you’re combat you’ve got to be carrying a gun. Or a knife?”

  Emmett shook his head, frantically searching the street, the lighted windows of the store across the way. The volume of Merle’s rough voice grew, bounced against the walls of the shuttered stores.

  Inside the Garland Weekly, Deuce put down the jigger, startled by the shouting. He rose cautiously and approached the window. There was movement in the shadows across the street. Two figures—no, three. Wade Johnson’s thick mat of black hair. The other fellow was surely Merle. The third? Deuce couldn’t make out.

  “You know, Wade, I think this boy has a knife on him! Don’t ya? Hah!” Merle lunged forward.

  Suddenly, Emmett Shang’s face heaved into view, constricted in fright. His eyes roved frantically up the street, his head twitching this way and that. Then his gaze locked on Deuce, the dark eyes pleading. Deuce was out the door in two strides. Up ahead, he caught a flurry of movement. The soldier pulling away from Merle, the larger man advancing until Emmett was bent back over the railing. As he ran toward the group, Deuce heard leather soles skittering frantically on the concrete. An animal howl sprang from the soldier’s throat as he disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell. The two cousins paused, caught sight of Deuce, and turned and fled up the street. He shouted at them to stop but they ran on. Heaving, he clattered down the steps, to the dark heap at the bottom. In the dim light, Deuce could make out Emmett’s twisted form. One leg was splayed out cruelly. Kneeling beside the head, Deuce shoved his hand under the skull; it came away sticky. His ear to the soldier’s lips, he couldn’t be sure whether he heard breathing or not, his own was coming so rapidly. Running back up the stairs, he tore into his office and called Dr. Jack, then the sheriff. Before heading back down the street, he took the stairs up to his apartment two at a time and snatched a blanket from the bed and a flashlight. Back in the stairwell, he covered Emmett with the blanket, then went to stand at the top. A pair of headlamps appeared.

  “Down here,” Deuce said to Dr. Jack, ushering him down the steps.

  After a minute, another car pulled up.

  “What happened?” the sheriff called down from the sidewalk. He’d apparently been sleeping when Deuce’s call roused him. A tuft of his hair stuck up in the back like a fowl’s tail feather and his vest was buttoned crookedly.

  “Just hold off a minute, Johnson. I need Deuce’s help,” Dr. Jack said, kneeling beside Emmett.

  The cellar way was dank and there was a sharp ammonia scent of cat piss. Deuce squatted down on the other side of the cramped space.

  “Hand me the light,” the doctor said to Deuce. He drew up Emmett’s lids—first one, then the other. The soldier’s face was illuminated, the young man’s lips pulled back in a grimace of fear. Dr. Jack handed Deuce the light and placed his fingers on the neck.

  “So?” the sheriff called down.

  Deuce glanced at Dr. Jack, who murmured, “Pulse is very thready.”

  “Damnit.” Deuce rose.

  The sheriff was leaning over the railing.

  Deuce said, “I was working late, heard some shouting. When I looked out, I saw Merle and Wade. They were arguing with a third person. I couldn’t make out who at first. Their voices were getting ugly, though. Then one of them, not sure which, lunged at the fellow and I saw it was Emmett. I ran out the door and up the street. My head was down part of the time. When I looked up again, I heard Emmett cry out but didn’t see him. Merle and Wade were leaning over the railing here. Then they caught sight of me and took off. That’s it.”

  “You’re sure it was Merle and Wade?” the sheriff asked, running his fingers through his hair.

  Deuce nodded. “Positive.”

  The sheriff sighed wearily. “All right. I’ll go over to their place right away. Last I knew they roomed at the American House.”

  Dr. Jack called out, “Before you go, Dan, get someone to drive out to the Shangs’ place and bring the family back. He’s slipping away on me and they should come quick.”

  A slight breeze kicked up, stirring the awning above a nearby store. The canvas flapped erratically. Deuce opened his mouth, then closed it. The name calling and taunts filled his ears for a moment. “I’ll go,” he said, his voice low.

  “What say?”

  “Said I’ll go.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later he was driving down Armstrong Street, into the shabby section of Emporia. Pillared porticos and trim brick gave way to narrow houses with rickety porches in need of paint. At the railroad tracks, even those shells of civilization fell away. The brick paving and streetlamps stopped abruptly. Asphalt shone dully in the headlights. On the right, Deuce caught the dump’s cacophonous odor of decay, fermentation, and cloying sweetness. He saw without seeing the row of discarded doors, broken shutters, and splintered pallets that formed the fenc
e.

  Just beyond the dump was the Flats, a street of skinny wooden shanties. Every window was dark. Far away a bullfrog hummed, but otherwise elongated shadows of silence stretched between the houses, under the elms. As the Model T puttered past the thin-walled shacks, its vibrations did not go unnoticed. This Deuce knew. His hands shook on the steering wheel. He gripped it harder.

  He had no idea which house was Laylia and Oliver’s. He should have asked the sheriff. Six places or so on each side, that meant odds of one in twelve. Might as well try this one. He pulled up to a dim façade and stepped outside of the auto. A chill wind raised goose bumps on his arms. When he’d dashed out of his shop at the sounds of an argument, he hadn’t stopped to put on a coat. Only now did he become aware of the grease on his hands from the press’s bearings. His shirtsleeves were still rolled up. Nothing to do but wipe his hands on his pants and roll down his sleeves.

  He mounted the porch steps and gingerly tapped on the door. He tried again, louder. Someone grunted inside. The slap of bare feet on wood sounded and the door swung open. Deuce stiffened. It was Smitty, whom Deuce had seen, and avoided, dozens of times at the train station as the janitor leaned on his mop, waiting for the passengers to board so he could swab out the men’s toilet. But tonight, instead of frayed overhauls, Smitty wore snappy blue-striped pajamas. Someone had ironed a crease down the trouser legs. They eyed one another. Smitty’s face was an impassive mask.

  “Sorry for the late hour, but I’m looking for the Shangs,” Deuce said.

  “This ain’t the Shangs.”

  Deuce realized he’d never heard Smitty speak before. The edges of his words were rounded.

  “Could you tell—”

  “Who is it, Daddy?” A pretty woman with a heart-shaped face and a row of spit curls across her forehead appeared beside Smitty. When she saw Deuce, she covered her mouth with her hand and drew back into the shadows.

  Deuce continued: “Could you tell me where they live? It’s urgent. There’s been an accident. In town. Emmett’s been hurt. And now . . .”

  “Emmett in the army.”

  “I guess he’s home on leave or something, because he’s right up in town. Please.” Deuce hoped the quiver in his voice wasn’t noticeable.

  “Serious?” Smitty asked.

  Deuce nodded.

  “All right. Let me get some clothes on and I’ll take you . . .”

  “Hurry,” Deuce said.

  Smitty quickly emerged, calling back through the door, “You get dressed too.”

  The two men hustled down the road. Three houses down Smitty nodded. “This they one.”

  Oliver answered the door. Even as Deuce was opening his mouth to speak, Oliver, taking in the strained faces of both men, stepped back with a moan. “Emmett?”

  Deuce jumped in, his tone urgent: “There’s been an accident. Dr. Jack is with him. I’ll drive you and Laylia. We’ve got to hurry.”

  Five minutes later, the Model T was heading back toward town. Smitty sat up front with Deuce. In the back, Oliver stared dully at the dark houses at the edge of Emporia while Laylia wailed and prayed next to him. “Please, Lord, don’t take my boy. Please, sweet Jesus . . .”

  On her other side, Smitty’s wife, who they’d picked up on the way out, tried to comfort her. When Deuce turned down Adams Street, he saw several autos and a wagon parked near his storefront. As he pulled up to the stairwell, Dr. Jack and another fellow were gently lowering a body, completely covered in a white sheet, onto a stretcher on the sidewalk. Laylia screamed and began clawing at the door handle even before the auto came to a stop. Oliver slammed open the door and reached in for Laylia.

  Smitty also began to climb out but turned back. “Thank you.” He stretched out his hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, Deuce shook it, his eyes tearing.

  The last thing Deuce saw before releasing the brake was Laylia, supported between Oliver and Smitty, stumbling toward her son’s still form.

  * * *

  In his rooms above the shop, Deuce sat numbly for a long time, his head in his hands. After a while his mind turned to Helen. How precious our children are! he thought.

  The next afternoon, the sheriff telephoned Deuce, asking him to come over to the courthouse to give an account of what he had witnessed the night before. As a clerk took notes, Deuce described hearing angry voices, seeing three figures, and immediately recognizing Wade and Merle. Had he seen a knife in Emmett’s hand? No, not during the scuffle and not at the bottom of the stairwell. Merle and Wade, who had been picked up for questioning earlier that day, had insisted that Emmett pulled a knife. They’d admitted that voices had been raised, over what Wade called the “uppity attitude” Emmett had acquired in the army. But the cousins contended that Emmett, after words had been exchanged, had started to lunge at Wade with a pocketknife, lost his footing, and tumbled over the railing. Was that scenario possible?

  Deuce bowed his head in thought, tapping clasped hands against his lips. No, he felt sure that it had been Wade who had moved toward Emmett, not the other way around. But, after questioning, Deuce had to admit that the lighting was poor and that during the several seconds it took him to run up the street, he didn’t have his eyes on the group the entire time.

  At the end of the session, Deuce stood up. There was a sour taste in his mouth.

  “Gotta tell you, unless some evidence turns up, it seems like it’s going to be your word against theirs.”

  “I’m not afraid to go up against them in court. I know what I saw and didn’t see. And it’s not just my word. What about the knife they claim he had but wasn’t there?”

  Hank shrugged. “The investigation isn’t closed, just letting you know how I see it right now.”

  Deuce shook Hank’s hand and passed out the door. He stood a moment on the courthouse steps in the watery spring sunshine. His eye caught a flyer plastered to a light pole announcing the dates of the coming summer’s Chautauqua. Someone else was in charge of publicity this year. So many things had changed.

  * * *

  When there was a death, it was the custom in the Flats for the body to be laid out at the house for several days. Two days after their son’s passing, the Shangs held a settin’ up. The morning of the wake, Deuce telephoned Tula.

  “I’m thinking of going over to the Shangs’ place today.”

  “I think you should.”

  “Want to come with me?”

  “Just a minute,” she said. With her hand muffling the receiver, Deuce heard her say something to someone. “I’ll be in town this afternoon, so why don’t I come over to your office at two and we can go from there?”

  Who was she talking to? Deuce thought. Had Clay come back from Chicago?

  * * *

  Tula arrived at his offices twenty minutes late, unusual for someone so punctual. Deuce noticed she wore a blue dress of a particularly flattering shade. Her skin shimmered, as if pollinated. The letterpress, now fully operational, at least for the moment, was noisily churning out a stack of flyers for St. Paul’s parish picnic, the big do-up for the town’s small and clannish Catholic enclave.

  “Be with you in a minute,” Deuce called out, feeding the last couple of sheets into the press.

  Tula set a large leather satchel on the counter and wandered over to the typesetting area where that week’s issue was about half finished. The letters were backward, but she could read enough to see that Deuce had put Emmett’s obituary on the front page.

  Her eyes welled up and she dug into her handbag for a hankie, pushing aside a jumble of wadded shopping lists, safety pins, and the small silver vanity case with its cake of powder and mirror she’d taken to carrying.

  She was noisily blowing her nose when Deuce approached, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. She gestured toward the obituary. “Laylia will be so proud.”

  Deuce rolled down his shirtsleeves. “Needed to do it, even if it costs me a subscriber or two. Stroh, my city reporter, is moving on, and I’m going to try to cover the co
unty news myself. That’ll save me some.”

  “Money that tight?”

  “Could be worse.” Deuce buttoned his cuffs. “So, ready to go?”

  On their way out, she picked up the satchel.

  “What’s that?”

  “One of Clay’s old cameras. Jasper taught me how to use it and I thought that Laylia would like a keepsake of Emmett.”

  “Jasper, eh?”

  Tula blushed.

  * * *

  On the drive out to the Flats, Tula’s mind turned to the widowed photographer. She couldn’t help thinking about him, despite the fact that she was going to a visitation.

  Tula and Jasper had been spending quite a lot of time together. He’d bought a few pieces of Clay’s, although she suspected he didn’t need them, and what he didn’t buy he helped her sell to other photographers in the area. And he was teaching her how to take and develop prints.

  She stroked her fingers, stained with fixative from the darkroom, and secretly smiled. In the red glow of the darkroom lantern she’d been courted, among the drippy prints hanging from a wash line and the shallow enamel basins of developing fluid. The darkroom was small, a closet really, so that when they worked side-by-side, their shoulders and elbows were constantly touching, as if magnetized. His hands steadied hers as she poured the sharp-smelling chemicals into basins arranged on the waist-high counter. After several lessons, as she gazed at a print slowly transforming beneath the still waters, he slowly ran his fingers along the curve from her lowest rib to her hip and back again. Just the act of stepping into the darkroom, slipping the rubber apron over her clothing, felt as if an electric current had been run through her.

  Two weeks ago she was clipping a print to the wash line when Jasper’s lips pressed against the base of her neck. She froze in shock and pleasure. His hands encircled her waist. The clothespin dropped with a ping. He fashioned a necklace of kisses, then traced her chin, her mouth. Fanned fingers moved up her body, cradled her breasts. Surely he could feel her heart dashing against her ribs. The rubber apron was untied, collapsed heavily at her feet, the blouse unbuttoned, the skirt unzipped. Someone was laughing. Is that me? Murmured breath conversed with her collarbone. It’s like swimming in fizzy water. “No corset?” A trill of giggles. A gown of air, only her stockings, her shoes. There was not enough room to bend and unlace in the ruby-tinted space. She was airborne, enthroned gently on the counter, its corrugations rippling beneath her. Suddenly shy, she covered her breasts. “My rosy goddess,” he whispered. He modestly turned, removed his shirt, his trousers, his drawers. Effervescent, she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him to her. “Got you,” she said. His member was larger than she’d expected, never having seen one in the flesh. It sprung between them, as if their party of two was now three. Jasper cupped her bottom and pulled her forward beyond the lip of the counter, then began gradually, gently burrowing into her folds. When he was inside, the fullness expanded, it seemed, to every inch of her body until she was nothing but sensation.