The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “Yeah, I tole you. That’s about the time you passed all the way out, just as I was beginnin to explain how come I got that name.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Aw, that’s okay. I passed out myself not long after you did.”

  “How did you get that name? Because you’re short and brash and saucy? And ambitious?”

  “Naw, they didn’t name me after that Napoleon,” he said. “My daddy he was born in Desha County down on the Mississippi, and he named all his chillen after towns in that county. My dad wanted to name me McGeehee cause that’s his home town, but my momma wouldn’t let him name me that for some reason, so he named me Napoleon, but the town Napoleon aint there no mo, it aint been there for a long, long time. Mark Twain tells in his Life on the Mississippi how the river come up a big flood one day and washed that whole town down toward N’Orleans, and they aint nuthin out there on that muddy bank no mo but a piece of lumber here and there and some old bricks. It washed away before my dad was even born, but it was a big place once and they still tell about it to this day.” After a sip of coffee, Naps went on. “They’s a lot of Little Rock folks come from Desha County, for some reason or other. You know Feemy Bastrop, well, he come from there…. And Mr. Slater, too, he was born in McGeehee, same town as my dad. Matter of fact, that’s how come Feemy workin for him. Mr. Slater figured that Feemy’s granddaddy had most likely been owned by Mr. Slater’s folks and therefore he had a sentimental attachment for Feemy.”

  “I suppose the feeling wasn’t reciprocal.”

  “It was for a while. Feemy used to think Mr. Slater was a fine man, but he says he’s been going downhill for the last few years, and aint worth a hoot no more.”

  “From what I’ve managed to learn about Slater, I’ve got a pretty low opinion of him myself.”

  “I know,” Naps said, grinning. “That’s nearly all you talked about last night.”

  “Really? I can’t remember a thing I said.”

  “Him and that girl. You were awfully bothered about um.”

  “What did I say about her?”

  “You said a awful lot.”

  “Like?”

  Take what all she done to her room.”

  “I told you that?”

  “Yeah, man, you really did. Tatrice got kinda upset. She don’t know her, but I mean, well, she got kinda upset hearin you tell about it.”

  “Gee, why didn’t you shut me up?”

  “Me? Not on your life, boy. Wasn’t no call for me to interfere, specially as curious as I was. You know me, Nub, I’m just like you, always stickin my nose in other folks’s business.”

  “Was I very obnoxious?”

  “Now I wouldn’t say that atall. You was just tired and sorrowful, but you didn’t cause no offense. Seemed to me you was pretty heartbroken, and the least I could do was hear you out.”

  “I was, I guess. I feel a lot better today, but just thinking about it again gets me sad all over again.”

  “Aw, don’t let it bug you. Just blame it all on Mr. Slater and forget about it.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know whether he’s really to blame or not.”

  “Sho he is. I spoke with Feemy on the phone this morning, and he said she was out there the other night, and he said they didn’t get along none too well, lots of hollerin and cursin at each other.”

  “Does your friend Feemy know what they were saying?”

  “Says she tole um she didn’t need him no more, cause she had somebody else now, and he got mad.”

  “She didn’t say who else?”

  “Naw, but I do believe she must’ve been meanin you.”

  I sighed. Lost in thought, I contemplated the bitter poignancy of it. Was this sorrow I felt sorrow for myself, or was I beginning to feel it for her again, all over again?

  “Last night,” Naps said. “Last night when you were pretty far gone you tole me you liked it here so much, I mean here at my place, that you just wished you was a nigger, wished you was a Howard, you said, so you could just stay here and not see no white folks again.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah, and I tole you you just a white nigger, but I don’t believe you could hear me. Well, there’s a lot of whites seem to feel that way. They say, Oh, lookee how musical the black man is, lookee at how creative and all he is! Oh, what joy and color he gets out of life! He don’t never get bored, he don’t never feel stale, cause everthing he does is just one big jamboree that suits him right down to the ground, just a livelong whoopdeedoo. Shit, I say. You want to know how come the colored folks feel so deep, how come they got such pepper and passion in um, I’ll tell you: It’s cause they suffer. They aint nobody got any heart or soul until they done a little sweatin and bleedin. The more you hurt, the more you weep, and sing. The more you die, the more you get a big kick out of living. That’s the way it is. Me and you are past that, it don’t matter that you’re white and I’m black. Me and you are just a couple of fat cats with satisfied ways, we on Easy Street now. But, Nub, I’m still fightin, some, I aint halfway across that river yet. Are you?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Aw, I doan mean you not welcome to stay here. Naw. You one of the finest peckerwoods I know, and they not many fine ones in this town. I just mean it won’t do you no good to be a nigger, even if you could. You aint even learned how to be a white man yet.”

  “Now that sounds a trifle insulting to me. Not to say contradictory.”

  “Maybe it is. What I’m tryin to tell you is: What do you know about raisin ruckus nowdays? what principles you got that you would stick up for? how many chips you got on your shoulder?”

  “I’m no crusader. I don’t have any reason to be. If I can just watch out for myself, I’ll be doing all right.”

  “But you aint even watchin out for yourself, that’s what I mean! The world stompin all over you, man, and you not doin nuthin about it.”

  “What am I supposed to do? What the hell can I do?”

  “You lissen a me, Nub. You been knockin around like a chicken with his head cut off, and you got me worried, man. You gimme all that truck bout runnin back to Boston, and I say to myself: What kinda yellow-gut fraidy-cat is this boy, my old buddy who used to whale tar out of anything or anybody that got in his way? Why don’t he get wise to hisself? Wants to scoot back to his Boston mammy with his tail tween his legs. I got to laugh. No, man, that just aint you, that just aint ole Nub. If you got any gism in you, if you got any shine at all, you wouldn’t let yourself get so bothered by a little thing like what Miss Margaret done to the walls of her room.”

  “A little thing? My God, Naps, it—”

  “Hold on, man. Just pardon me for sayin so, but you the kind of fella jumps to conclusions too much. Lemme just ask you: did you smell it?”

  “Certainly,” I shot back, offended. But then I had to pause and ponder. Come to think of it, I had been so stunned by the sight of it that I hadn’t taken the trouble to notice what impression, if any, my olfactory sense had been registering. I could not honestly recall any precise smell.

  “How you know it wasn’t plain old mud, maybe?” he asked.

  “Maybe it was,” I allowed.

  “Okay. There. Don’t go runnin off from your projects just cause they got a kink in um.”

  I asked him what he recommended that I do. He said that was entirely up to me. I said I wondered if he expected me to return to Margaret’s house and say to her mother, “Madam, may I run upstairs for a moment to smell your daughter’s room?” Don’t get smart, Naps admonished.

  Most of the afternoon I spent in meditation. Where was Margaret now? What had her mother done with her? Some of the things written on that wall probably tipped Mrs. Austin off to the fact that there was more than simply a professional relationship between Slater and Margaret, in which case Mrs. Austin might be all the more outraged. And what about this Dr. Ashley whom Mrs. Austin had whisked Margaret off to
see? Would he commit her to the state hospital for observation? Would he give her a long series of ink-blot tests or something? Was she really crazy? When, if ever, would I see her again? What, if anything, could I possibly do for her—short of eloping with her? And wasn’t there something rather odd—loose, even—about her eagerness to shack up with me in a motor hotel? I couldn’t cope with all these questions by myself. I needed help, and I knew who that help was.

  Later in the afternoon, as Naps was in his study working on his accounts, I interrupted to ask what day it was. He said it was Friday. Good, I thought. Dall had said that Friday was his day off. I told Naps I had to go see a man about a dog. I was re-seersuckered again; Tatrice had laundered my suit, my shirt, even my underclothes, and had neatly mended the rip in the knee of my trousers.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Naps said. “Lemme give you a ride.”

  I had Dall’s address written down on a scrap of torn Wanted poster in my billfold. I dug it out and told it to Naps, and he drove me over there. When we got there he asked me who it was I was going to see. I knew that he and Dall were violent enemies, but I told him anyway.

  He chuckled. “Well, just remember what I told you. If you obliged to eat dirt, eat clean dirt.” I got out of the car, and Naps sat there watching me walk away.

  Chapter twenty-four

  He was in the back yard of what I took to be his house, a simple small white frame hutch tickled by itchy fig trees on a narrow lot in a rather dumpy neighborhood of West Fourth Street. He was out of his uniform, dressed in a white T-shirt stretched taut over his muscular middle, a pair of khaki ex-army pants, and loafers; he looked less commanding. He was playing with a dog, a strapping, sinewy German shepherd of lustery gray coat streaked with black, and of rather menacing mien. The way he was playing with it suggested that either it wasn’t his dog or else he wasn’t very accustomed to it.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He grunted.

  “Your dog?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he grunted.

  “Splendid-looking beast,” I observed. For my compliment the dog snarled at me, baring teeth which seemed to have been filed sharp as a shark’s.

  “Sit,” he grunted.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” I said, surprised and pleased at his hospitality. I sat down on the grass, casual-like, hoping it wouldn’t stain the seat of my suit.

  “I didn’t mean you,” he said. “I was speakin at this here dog.”

  “Oh,” I said and got up, stuck my hands in my pockets and stood as inconspicuously as possible to one side, like a sidewalk superintendent observing the progress of an enormous hole.

  “Sit, damn ye,” he growled at the German shepherd, whacking it on the rump with the back of his hand. Reluctantly, and with considerable snarling, gnashing and frothing, the dog sat. I observed that it had a kind of leather loop attached to its collar and that Dall was clutching this tightly, like a blind man hanging on to a seeing-eye.

  “What’s his name?” I asked, trying to be sociable.

  “Bowzer,” he grunted.

  “Really? That’s interesting,” I said affably. “Hi, Bowzer,” I said to the dog. He snarled, curling his black upper lip more sneeringly than my father can do. “I don’t guess he likes me,” I said.

  “Who would?” Dall said unpleasantly, but at least it was good to hear him make a substantial remark, ungrunted. “Up,” he said to the dog and kicked him in the tail. The dog rose, chomping at imagined butterflies. “Whuddayawant?” Dall gargled, turning to look directly at me for only the second time since I had arrived.

  “Dall, let’s be friends,” I suggested.

  “Why?” he said, and scrutinized my face for a moment as if trying to answer the question for himself. Then he turned back to his dog. “I got no use for you,” he said. I was hoping he was addressing the dog, but he wasn’t. He and Bowzer moved away from me, to the other side of the yard. I remained where I was, watching them from that distance across thirty feet of weedy turf. The two of them resumed their play or work or whatever it was, although the dog was as stubborn as before: Dall would grunt some command at him, and then repeat it, and then reinforce it with a kick or a backhanded whack. This went on for some time; such a battle of wills could not fail to be spectacular and I watched with interest. Silently I was rooting for the dog, and for a moment or two Bowzer’s intractable nature seemed to be getting the upper hand. But ultimately Dall succeeded in extracting a measure of obedience from the dog, for he (Bowzer) would now spring and chomp at an imaginary foe, pulling frantically at the leash. Satisfied, Dall hooked his leash to a clothesline pole for a moment, entered the toolshed, and emerged carrying a limp figure which appeared at first glance to be some sort of intricate but threadbare scarecrow. He attached this big floppy mannequin to the clothesline, hooking its shoulders to the line in such a way that it appeared to be standing upright. I gasped in sudden recognition; this huge doll, fashioned with a skill that I would have put completely past Dall’s limited talents until I remembered that he had taken art in high school and had some experience with simple sculpture, was, down to the last detail, thick painted lips and broad nose and all, a perfect simulacrum of an insolent Negro man. Although it tended a little too much in the direction of caricature, it was a likeness sufficient to curl my hair and curdle my blood if I had run into it in some narrow alley at night.

  Whether or not it could fool Bowzer remained to be seen. Dall unhooked the dog with one hand and with the other gave the clothesline a violent shake, causing the fake Negro to begin a disjointed but audacious dance, like a crude marionette, or like one of those old wooden toys with a string-manipulated darkie automaton. “Sic im!” I heard Dall snort, turning the dog to face the wild dancer, and urging him on. “Sic im!” he said again. “Bad nigger! Bite his pants! Gnaw the bastard!” Bowzer, however, fascinated with this strange creature and its weird convulsive dance, remained rooted to the spot, his haunches planted firmly on the ground and his head tilted sideways in an expression of extreme curiosity and dispassionate observation. Dall’s mouth was making a sort of dry flat whistling sound, “Fftt! Fftt! Sic im, boy! Fftt!” but this earnest urging became progressively vehement in the face of Bowzer’s disinclination to co-operate. “Goddammit, boy, sic im, I’m tellin yuh! Get im! G’on, kill the black bastard! Eat im up!” He began kicking the dog in the rump, which I immediately sensed was a grievous error. “Stupid mutt!” he yelled. “Sic im, you no-good yap-headed shit-eating fleabag! Sic, SIC, SIC IM!”

  Bowzer slowly turned his head and gave his master a look of sad, tired, pitying beseechment, then he bit him. He scissored his strong jaws around the calf of Dall’s leg and came away with bits of khaki and flesh all commingled. Dall, for all of his great height, managed to rise about four feet skyward, hung there howling for an instant, and came down kicking. His foot connected with the dog’s ribs, and the dog howled too, once, then resumed munching Dall’s limbs. “Sonofabitch!” Dall yelled. “Down, you motherfucker!” Bowzer, stretched on tiptoe with his teeth aiming for Dall’s neck, was almost as tall as Dall, and I was a little surprised to discover how equal this match was turning out to be. It would have pleasured me immensely to witness the conclusion of such a contest, but I felt a sense of moral obligation to this old comrade-in-arms, however much he was hostile, and thus because of this ornery onus I determined to furnish a helping hand.

  Leaping into the breach, I straddled Bowzer, locking my ankles around his belly and throwing him to the ground. I got a tight, vise-like grip on his jaws, keeping them shut, and commanded Dall, “Get his muzzle, quick! Muzzle him!”

  “Aint got ary!” Dall replied, bewildered, forlorn.

  “A rope, then! Anything!”

  Dall scattered in three or four directions at once, and I took advantage of his absence to pacify Bowzer. “Easy, boy,” I said. “Bad man gone away. There now, calm down.” I scratched his neck and ears with a free hand and whispered sweet nothings into his ear.

  When Dall re
turned, trotting up with enough hemp to bind all the canines in Christendom, I was sitting relaxed while Bowzer licked my hand. Dall made to fetch him another kick, and Bowzer made to fetch Dall another chomp, but I stayed them both.

  “Dammit all to hell, didja see what he did?” Dall demanded. “He bit me, for godsakes!” Dall rolled up the remains of his trouser leg to show me his wound, which was dribbling a steady trickle of gore. Twenty bucks I paid for that pooch, and he bites me! What kind of a police dog does he think he is?”

  It was awfully hard for me to resist the temptation to say, “It served you right.” But I resisted. Dall and I had to make up, at all costs. There was a chance, in the excitement of the moment, that he might forget his grudges. So I said, “Let’s put Bowzer in the toolshed and then let’s see if we can’t do something for that nasty leg of yours.” Almost absently, distraught and distrait by his ordeal, he yielded to this suggestion. After insuring the dog’s comfort in the toolshed, I led Dall into his house, bade him sit, and rounded up some first-aid stuff from his medicine cabinet. While I washed his leg and disinfected it and dressed it with a gauze compress, he kept up a flow of muttered grumbling, speculating about the dog’s ancestry, its intelligence, and letting fall enough clear keywords to make it plain that he had bought the dog, out of his own pocket, intending to train it himself for the use of the police in some pending racial crisis. At last he realized who was listening to this incriminating muttering, and he clammed up, staring at me silently and coldly until I finished the bandage. “There,” I said. “Maybe you’ll live, if Bowzer isn’t rabid.”

  Thanks, Doc,” he said, not smiling.

  “Keep in bed for a week, take plenty of aspirin, stay away from dogs and Negroes, and you’ll be all right,” I said.

  “Maybe you oughta drag-ass on out of here anyway,” he said. “Ever fool thing you say just makes me mad.”

  “With your leg like that, you can’t throw me out,” I said.