In a sad little voice, Irene said, “But they wouldn’t be kids anymore, and I wouldn’t be young anymore. The love wouldn’t be the same because it’s already gone from me to somebody else. Our dreams, if we had any, would be died out . . . or lost at some woman’s place where you had laid em down and forgot em. Or you’d probably be sick, or wore out and through livin. I want to live . . . now.”
Mr. Summer took Irene’s arm and she turned, again, to leave, then turned back to Cool and said, “Take care of yourself, Cool.”
But Cool lunged for Irene again and when Mr. Summer tried to pull her out of the way so he could step in front of her, Irene stumbled and fell to her knees. Cool raised his fist to strike her, Joe reached for his arm, and Mr. Summer pulled out a gun and put it to Cool’s head!!! Jesus!! And said, “Don’t hit her again, man.”
Mr. Summer didn’t seem mad and he didn’t raise his voice, but . . . in a low, sure-serious voice he said, “I mean what I said, don’t . . . put . . . your . . . hands on my wife ever again in your life.”
Cool heard him, and backed up a bit, but he was hysterical, I guess. He could only see Irene. He screamed at her, “You bitch! You musta had everybody laughin at me! Whorin round callin it housecleaning! You don’t know who the daddy of them bastards of yours is!”
Mr. Summer steps between Irene, who looks frightened and shocked, and Cool. Cool finally registers Mr. Summer in his mind. I don’t think he has seen the gun good. He says to Mr. Summer, “Get the hell away from here, man, I’m talkin to my woman!”
Mr. Summer holds the gun up closer to Cool’s head and answers, “You are talkin to my wife. And I am not goin to let her be called another bitch out’a your mouth or I will put something in your mouth to stop it up.”
Cool saw the gun then. He steps back, disbelievin, and says to Irene, “Your wife?!” Then he laughs at her (but he don’t say “bitch”), “You married this old man?”
Irene answered right up, “Yes! The good Lord blessed me and my heart with a real Man!”
Cool must be crazy because he starts to reach for Irene again, sayin, “If I catch you with—”
Mr. Summer cocks his gun and even in all that noise, we ALL heard it. Cool, too. Mr. Summer said, “You gonna have to catch up with your head first, cause if you make one more move to hurt my wife . . . you gonna be lookin up at yourself from the floor through a hole in your head.”
Cool is very aware of that gun . . . now.
Mr. Summer kept the gun cocked and kept talkin, “You need to pray that when you get my age . . . in a few years . . . you do as well as I have done. I have the woman I love . . . and my sons.” Then he turned to Irene and said, “Come on, Irene, lets go get our sons and go where there is peace.”
As they begin to leave, Cool hollers after Irene, “I’ll marry you now, Irene.” He reached his arms out to her, still shoutin, “Tomorrow morning, today! I’ll marry you right now! Irene, don’t, please, don’t take my sons.”
Mr. Summer has put his gun away, but he turns back to say to Cool, “We don’t have to take our sons, they are already at home at their father’s house. You need to understand, they . . . are . . . not . . . your . . . sons.”
Before they get completely out the door, Cool shouts at Mr. Summer, “Take her then, old man. I had her first.”
Mr. Summer stops and smiles, a little, as he says. “That’s right. You did. But you didn’t have the best of her. You didn’t have sense enough to know how to get it. You didn’t have sense enough to hold on to her. You maybe coulda had my sons, too . . . and I’m glad you didn’t have enough sense for that either! It really was all your choice for the first year or so. But all that is pass. It’s history now.” Then he went on out the door to his wife, Mrs. Irene Summer, mother, wife and property owner. Now!
But Cool tried to get the last word. “Get on out’a here! Get on out’a here! You think you got somethin, but you ain’t got nothin!”
Everything was dead quiet in the bar. Joe and Tan were dead still. Me, too. But, I heard Tan say softly, “He got somethin, Cool. It’s you that don’t have nothin.”
Cool, in his extremity, does not hear anything, but he does remember Joe and Tan were witnesses to his loss and the beggin. So he says, “You see that bullshit, man? I didn’t want to hurt that ole man! Shit! Who needs her? But them are my sons . . . my sons. She lyin, man! She be back. She gonna think of me and all them good lovin times we had. She gonna need me! But . . . I’m a loner, a player!”
His voice begins to break and his eyes are tearin up, still . . . he can’t let anyone see that he is hurt. So he says, “But she be back! But I don’t need her! I ain’t gonna take her back! When them kids grow up, they know who they real daddy is! Where is my lucky hat?”
He looks around the stools at the bar, forgets the hat again and says, “Gimme a drink, man!”
As Joe fixes the drink, Cool’s body jumps as if he’d been shot, I guess it was the reality hittin him. He grasped the bar with his arms stretched out, and leanin on the bar, he sobs . . . deep rackin sobs as he slowly crumbles to his knees on the floor. Between sobs he says, “I . . . don’t want . . . to be . . . no . . . loner. I don’t . . . want . . . to . . . be . . . no loser!”
During all this time Tan has got up from her stool and looks for Cool’s hat. She finds it crumbled up beneath the table. She walks back to the bar and picks up her glass and takes a drink, all while she is lookin at Cool in the strangest way; a cross between a grin and a smirk. Then she leans down to help Cool up. He lets her help him. She puts his lucky hat on his head as she tells him, “Come on, honey, you need some company . . . Come on with Tan-Tan.” She does not say it like “everything will be alright.” Just with a smirk.
As they slowly walk toward the door to go out of the bar, Tan looks back over her shoulder to Joe and smiles.
As they go through the door, Cool’s lucky hat falls off again and rocks back and forth on the floor for a time. Joe comes from behind the bar, again, and goes to pick up the hat. He looks at it a moment, then opens the door, leans out and hollers to Cool.
“Hey! Man! You left your new lucky hat!!”
I untied my apron, came out that kitchen, hugged my nephew “good-bye” and went home and sat in my own red swing and thought about all that. Yes mam!
1 the Time Keeper,
2 if you have good sense,
J. California Cooper
The Future Has a Past
J. California Cooper is the author of five collections of short stories, including Homemade Love, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and the novels The Wake of the Wind, Family, and In Search of Satisfaction. She lives in northern California.
Also by J. California Cooper
A Piece of Mine
Homemade Love
Some Soul to Keep
Family
The Matter Is Life
In Search of Satisfaction
Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime
The Wake of the Wind
Copyright © 2000 by J. California Cooper
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
These stories are a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses,
organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of
reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Cooper, J. California.
The future has a past: stories / J. California Cooper.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Contents: A shooting star—A filet of soul—The eagle flies—The lost and the found.
1. Afro-American women—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O5874 F8 2000
813’.54—dc21 00-034602
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42864-6
v3.0
The Future Has a Past Page 24