“You all right?” Caroline asks. “You don’t look too good.”
But I look right through her dress, right through its illumination in front of Jimmy’s headlight. Right through Caroline, through the Studebaker, and even through the water of the ocean beyond. I can see my future. “I’ll be fine,” I tell her.
PART SEVEN
Caroline
DITCH
When Baby Nate got up on two years old, Mr. Barbour rented one of them big bulldozers from the county and dug him out a pond. Didn’t nobody know what he was doing at first, ruining his own earth like that, and when the men down to the Tin Cup asked him why he was tearing up his yard, he lied. “Looking for bones,” he said. “Hear tell it’s some Cherokee buried out there.” Well, he got lucky, since spring brought rains harder than Mt. Sterling’d seen in near about a hundred year, and while the rest of us was putting old feed troughs down in our cellars to catch the water, Mr. Barbour’s pond was getting deeper and deeper. Ever time lightning struck, here went Mr. Barbour, tutting out to the side of his house like a rooster, looking down the rise with his hands crossed over his belly. He got all wet, naturally, outside watching it rain like that, but he wasn’t caring a tall, and bit by bit folks figured out he wasn’t looking for no Indian bones to float up.
He started to call that old ditch his lake, and people had to remind him, all gentlelike of course, that it was just a pond. He built hisself a wood deck out to the side of it, but when the rains stopped come May, that pond dried up something powerful, and you could see almost to where he done stuck the posts in the mud. He bought a little paddleboat, but the pond wasn’t deep enough for him to get anywhere but right out in the middle. No matter, ’cause come June the sky brought us more misery, rain so strong it kilt all the corn. Mr. Barbour’s pond rose up again even higher, and he went to Burtis’s and bought hisself some live catfish to let loose in there. Pretty soon them four fish done beget forty, and then the forty begat four hundred, but still he wouldn’t let nobody near his pond. Not until the Fourth, that is, when we saw him out there fishing with Audrey. Of all people. We ain’t even seen her come into town on the bus.
We drove by a time or two in Cousin Harrel’s car just to catch a look at her, sitting down there on that deck fishing with her hateful stepdaddy, dressed all wrong for fishing, in city clothes and black stockings, dangling her high heels over Mr. Barbour’s lake what’d grown a green scum and sprouted a passel of dragonflies. Look like she ain’t even cared none whether she lost that shoe, and it made me nervous ever time I saw it, ’cause them shoes was stiletto-heeled and shiny black with straps round the ankles, and you could tell by the way they was shaped they cost plenty of money. Imagene saw it too. “Look at that ijit,” I said. “She gone lose that shoe.”
“Y’all think she cares one whit about some lost shoe?” Imagene said. She been less and less on actual conversation since we walked out the county hospital with Grandmama’s patient’s belongings bag, so whenever she did say something, I didn’t oppose her none. “She’s a princess,” Imagene said, “all the way from New York City. She probably got fifty pairs of shoes by now.”
We girls ain’t been fishing since before Daddy kilt Mama, but we knew enough to know that Mr. Barbour’s pond wasn’t fit for fishing no more nohow. In the early mornings, it looked like any other pond fed into and out of a river, with fog rising off it just like God Hisself done dug it, in His original version of earth. But by the heat of noon, that pond would be standing solid green, like it was out of a fairy tale and some wicked witch was going to rise out of it and start saying spells. The four hundred fish probably done died down to ten, was what Cousin Harrel said. Ain’t no way they could get any air under all that algae. Yet and still, there they sat, Audrey and Mr. Barbour, staring at their poles hanging into the water, not saying a thing, so deep in concentration they ain’t took note of us slowing down to drive past them twice. Part of me had a notion to go over and talk to her, tell her about how Jimmy told me, on the way to Durham, that he was married. Ask her what happened to that guitar player and why she was back up home. But then another part of me hated her. When you’ve wanted to be somebody else so bad for so long, it hurts real bad when you finally figure out it ain’t never going to happen. And that part of me what hated her got to thinking, well, here she is, with her mama’s old black dress on, just like any other girl done got left by her man. She’s a little like that pond—in the end, she just couldn’t handle the lack of air. Turns out God made her need the same things as anybody else.
Cousin Harrel’s friend Maywood come down with him this year, and he stayed until the blossoms started to fall from the trees. “It’s just like a carpet!” he said, first time he seen them falling in the yard. “A beautiful carpet!” He was a cityboy, I reckon, and ain’t never seen none before, because he took all twenty-three years of hisself and laid down in the grass. Even rolled around some. “Get up from there,” I told him, “ ’fore you get all eat up with the chiggers.” The blossoms was still sticking to his hair, and he went inside and took near about an hour picking them out, looking in the mirror at all those white petals stuck to his head like a swim cap. It was right cute, tell you the truth, and you could kinda see how Maywood might’ve been if them gangsters up North weren’t all the time chasing him.
I reckon Audrey saw some other side of him too, at some point I ain’t knowed about, ’cause the very next day her and Maywood was walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk in front of Mr. Barnett’s store. His hair was all clean of blossoms, and he had on a shirt the color of a shark’s hide, shiny silk that rippled and turnt dark where the sun wasn’t hitting it. Audrey had on another one a them thick city dresses what was almost too hot to wear in the summer, and them spiky heels what was starting to wear down from all the country walking she was doing. I stayed about ten feet behind them and followed them in Mr. Barnett’s store, and then I went in back and stood near the ice cream cooler so I could watch them in secret.
“I think I’ma stay down here with you,” I heard him tell her. He said it real loud and pinched the inside of her thigh, and she turnt right around and kissed him, her head turning against his like a gear, tongue probably all down his mouth. Naturally, all us girls was doing things behind closed doors, but Audrey was the first I ever seen acting like she was some White girl in the movies. “Sweetness,” he said, when she let him come up for air. “I’ma stay right here.”
“Whyn’t you take me to Chicago? Ain’t nothing but peckerwoods down here.”
“Yeah, well. It’s just a bunch of city peckerwoods up there. Dressed-up peckerwoods with new cars. I could take ’em or leave ’em.”
But by the time the rain turnt the blossoms to foam out in the yard, Maywood done gone back up to Chicago without either one of us. I cut off all my hair again and snipped my good purple dress to ribbons. Cousin Harrel said to count my blessings.
Then one day—and I remember it clear as anything ’cause I was outside with a can when she did it, watering Grandmama’s poor peonies to death ’fore they could even come up right—Imagene wrote something on the mirror what like to shock me to death. I remember walking to the bathroom and finding it, written in angry red Fuller Flair lipstick across the sink mirror: AUDREY AND RALPH.
“Audrey and Ralph what?” I yelled at her, when I went back out in the living room. I went to stand over her where she was sitting on Grandmama’s couch and I shook her shoulder. I talked to her softer—”Audrey and Ralph what?” But she wouldn’t answer me. Wasn’t till the next week, when I saw Audrey walk right down High Street and into his house without knocking, that I knew what Imagene been talking about. Audrey done moved out of Mr. Barbour’s house and in with Ralph Cundiff.
Well, before it was all said and done, she got Ralph into a bunch of mess I never would of gotten him into. It’s a lot of people who are satisfied to think that if ain’t nobody in Mt. Sterling never done it, then it ain’t worth doing nohow, but not Audrey, and I guess she got Ralph t
o thinking that way too. Tyrone told it to me when we was cruising around in his car, how Audrey took him over to Louisville to play at Johnny Flanagan’s club. Johnny’s real name was Marion Dent, Ralph told him, but couldn’t nobody ever tell he was Irish with a name like that, so he put JOHNNY FLANAGAN out on the sign above the bar to get people to come in. And they did—them people came out to Irish Hill in herds, from all over Louisville, and Johnny Flanagan’s got to be a big enough place that it was like a Louisville event.
Well, old Marion Dent hated hisself some Negroes, maybe on account of he felt like he been treated like a nigger so many times hisself, so it upset him something terrible when the rich smart asses from ’round U. of L. started ringing him up on the telephone to ask when such-and-such a strange nigger might play Johnny Flanagan’s. People done stopped wanting to dance, he saw, and now they just wanted to sit and smoke and listen—1961 was breathing some new kind of strange air into the country. And what’s worse, them smart-asses wanted weird shit, music with no beat, music what didn’t make sense lessun you done read a bunch a books about it. Marion Dent hated strangeness, and Coloreds, and books. But he loved money just a little bit more’n he hated all those things, was the way Ralph told it to Tyrone, and he certainly loved money more’n any idea he had about what music ought to be, so he decided maybe he ought to appeal to the new clientele and get hisself some onstage niggers. He got hold of Mr. Glaser somehow, and it turnt out Glaser done figured out every single move Audrey’d made. You think she might’ve been too proud to go but she needed the bread, so when he called, she grabbed Ralph and they hightailed it on over to Baxter Avenue.
Her and Ralph got to Johnny Flanagan’s early on a Saturday night, some sore about the fact that a policeman at the corner of Bishop and Payne had asked where two niggers like them might be going that time a night. Downright mad about the fact that the trolley bus conductor downtown had tried to drive off while Ralph was still getting hisself down the steps. But they was all ready to go, on the promise of fifty dollars for the weekend, almost all theirs with nobody in the middle but Glaser.
“House rules,” Marion Dent said, soon as they got through the glass door. Ralph’d stuck his hand out to shake, but Marion Dent ignored him. “No eating out front in the restaurant,” Dent said, “and no using the patrons’ restrooms. There’s one for the cooks, in the back of the kitchen. When you finish your set, you will kindly leave the premises immediately. What you do in the neighborhood afterwards is your business, but I highly recommend you head on home, as the police officers in Irish Hill do like to keep the neighborhood clean. And absolutely,” he said to Ralph, “no conversation with the White ladies in my establishment.”
“What planet is this?” asked Ralph, after Dent done walked away. I guess Audrey done been down in the Deep South so long she’d gotten comfortable with the idea of taking money from people what hated her, but Ralph been up with Gordon Bell to Indianapolis Temple 74 to hear Malcolm X give a speech, and like he told Tyrone, up here it’s a new day for Negroes. He said he’d just gone up on the bus with his woman to hear her play and keep her safe on the streets at night, but after Marion Dent’s list of house rules, he half expected Baxter Avenue to swallow him up whole.
One by one the rest of the band got there—Joe Jarman with his tenor sax, Milt Greenlea with his drumsticks, and man by the name of Percy Heath on bass. Percy Heath was a skinny, light-skinned cat, with a goatee and a little bit a hair sliding off the top of a head long as a squash, but when he took his bass out of its case and started tuning up, Ralph said Audrey got to making eyes at him, and he had to cough to remind her he was sitting right there watching.
Joe Jarman done put his sax case on the floor for a rest, but when Marion Dent came over and ticked off all them house rules, Jarman picked his case back up. “Brother,” he said, tapping Greenlea on the shoulder. “I know you need the bread, but this I cannot do.”
Greenlea just shrugged. He done told them all how since he didn’t care none for public transportation, he had a fistful of parking tickets from the city of Chicago, all waiting to be paid.
“Well, there you have it,” Ralph told Marion Dent, and the band all turnt to watch Ralph talk, like it made perfect sense for a stranger to be sassing Dent on their behalf. “If we don’t see two hunderd extra dollars right this second, we’re all walking right out the door into civlized society.”
“Who’s this nigger here?” asked Marion Dent, and at that moment, Ralph told Tyrone, even he didn’t know. He’d surprised the hell out of hisself. He wasn’t even shaking, he felt so right about what he done said.
“No niggers here at all,” he told Dent. “I just see men. What even are niggers?”
The band had to laugh, and Dent’s eyes got all wide like a scared bunny’s, and Ralph said he looked around at all the tables behind him, at the men and women talking and smoking and what-all. He turnt back to Ralph and winced like somebody done punched him in the kidney. “One fifty extra,” he said, and Jarman put his tenor case back down.
“Just for that,” Ralph said, “it’s two fifty extra or nothing.” Jarman picked his case back up, and even Greenlea nodded in agreement. “Don’t none of us need the money that bad,” Ralph said, even though he knew that was a lie for all of them. Ralph hisself done got behind on his rent, trying to help his mama get her teeth fixed.
“Two hunderd extra then,” Dent said, as Jarman hitched his case to the crook of his arm. “But break one a my rules, and you’re out.” He walked away, hunching a little. Funky house rules or no, he’d be out one and a half times what he should’ve.
Heath took his bass to the stage, with Jarman and Greenlea following him, and all the White people got to clapping. Then Audrey went out and sat at the piano—she always went out last, since she was the Black Woman Surprise—and the crowd went wild. The men hooted a little, and a lady in the front row whistled with her fingers in the sides of her mouth. Then Marion Dent went to the stage with some beat-up old White man following him, and crooked his finger at Audrey to get up off the bench.
She just sat there pretending she ain’t understood, even if she had.
“Get up,” Dent said, all gruff. “I thought you were the singer. You ain’t playing here.”
“It’s free jazz, bubba. We don’t have a singer.”
“Just get up, nigger.”
“I’m not getting up anywhere, lessun you want to pay my man even more money.”
Dent stuffed his hands down at his sides and said into the mike, “And on piano, Louisville native Langston Basso.”
“Who?” somebody in the crowd said, real loud, and everbody laughed.
“Let the lady play!” somebody else yelled.
Dent stared at Audrey like she was a rat he done caught trailing through his dinner, but still she didn’t move, so Dent pushed Basso in the back so hard the man almost fell over the piano bench. Basso sat down, or anyways he sat on the edge of the bench, since Audrey still ain’t moved an inch, and Ralph said it to some people, it might’ve looked like they was about to play a duet, but to him, looked like Basso was about to be Audrey’s page turner.
“And on piano,” Dent said again, “Langston Basso!”
Basso got up and bowed, then sat back down, but nobody clapped. Some of the rich-looking folks started to boo. Ralph was standing on the edge of the stage, and Dent got right up in his face then.
“Mister, what is your problem?” Ralph asked him. “Do you want this band to play or don’t you?”
“That your wife?” Dent asked.
“Yes, she is,” Ralph lied.
“Look. I really don’t give a damn. I don’t care, she’s your grandmammy. I won’t have no niggers at my piano.”
Ralph told Tyrone the man’s eyes was so narrow you could of slid pieces of paper through ’em. The take was up to four hundred, and Ralph’d never been good at math, but now that there was money involved he done took ten minutes to do some calculating and figured out Audrey’s share, fair
and square, at a hunderd. A hunderd was still more’n he seen sometimes in a month, and so he started to feel like such a man that he forgot his woman.
“Double the four hunderd,” Ralph whispered, so Audrey wouldn’t hear, “and she leaves. Anything less than double, and ever one of us leaves.”
“You just get her up from there,” Dent said. “Right now.” He took eight hunderd-dollar bills out his pocket and dropped them right in front of Ralph’s shoes. Even the hecklers got confused then, and they got all hushed. Right on up until Ralph nodded at Audrey to get up, and then, when she did, they started in again to booing. Audrey made a big show about it, scooting the bench back and walking all the way round the stage. Ralph said about three quarters of the audience just gathered themselves up and went on home.
Well, old Dent lost money that night, ’cause the crowd that was left didn’t even spend three hunderd dollars, not even on drinks. But Ralph lost more’n that, ’cause Audrey hitched on home. Ralph got hisself to Mt. Sterling early that morning and said he found a scared little girl down on High Street where before he’d had a woman, and a fence that done growed up between their two spaces of love.
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