The Vain Conversation

by Anthony Grooms

  “There’s no place on Earth that nigger can hide from me,” Jacks heard Venable shout. “I’ll kill him.”

  “I see you came mighty close to killing him just now,” Betty said.

  “He snuck up on me! Damn it! That nigger’s dangerous.”

  “I reckon he’s more dangerous than you think.” She was mocking him. “Why don’t you give Sheriff Cook a call?”

  “Cook. Fuck. I’ll take care of this myself.”

  “I’d prefer if you’d let Cook handle it.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you prefer. That nigger is a dead nigger.”

  “Just shut up, please. All of y’all. Cora Mae,” she addressed her daughter, “That means you, too.” The crying continued until Cora Mae saw Jacks. She stopped herself with a snort, put her palms over her acne-covered face, and briskly retreated to a room at the end of the hall. Jacks knocked on the doorjamb, and Betty looked up.

  “Oh, Noland,” she said. “Thank God you are here.”

  “What’s the trouble?” Jacks took off his hat and walked into the bedroom to find Venable lying across the bed on his stomach. His pants were strewn on the floor, and his buttocks were wrapped in a bloody strips torn from a sheet. Betty held a bottle of bourbon and a glass. “I was told you were hurt badly, Vernon.”

  “Nigger stabbed me.”

  “Some altercation of some kind,” Betty said. “Noland, I am glad you are here to make sense of it. I’ve had my last with him. And I know, I just know it had to do with some gal.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know you, Vernon. God, but I do.”

  “It’s nothing, Noland. Nothing that concerns you.”

  “But you just said that the boy was one of Noland’s. Noland,” she said and walked toward him. “He said one of your boys stabbed him. Attacked him for no reason.”

  “Is it bad?”

  Betty considered, looking at her husband’s rump in the bloody sheets. “They don’t seem very deep,” she said. “I poured peroxide on them, and we are waiting for Dr. Talmaedge to come.”

  “Noland doesn’t need to know all of that. Go away, Noland. Give me my privacy.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “I called Noland here!” Betty said. She moved back to the bed and put the liquor bottle on the nightstand. “You said it was one of Noland’s workers, so Noland will know what to do.” She turned again to Jacks, and took a deep breath. Her red hair had grown less brilliant over the years, and now Jacks noticed a prominent gray streak in her forelocks. “It so aggravating, Noland. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Be quiet,” Venable said.

  “You be quiet.”

  “Go home, Noland.”

  “No. You stay right here, Noland. One thing I can say about Noland is he thinks before he acts. He isn’t ruled by impulse like you. I can’t think what you must have been doing to that boy to make him want to attack you. He wouldn’t have just attacked you. Some of that trash you socialize with over in Greene County would have, but a colored boy wouldn’t have just attacked you. Besides, he’s Noland’s worker, you said.” She looked at Jacks, her eyes seeming to plead. “So this involves Noland.” She turned back to her husband on the bed and leaned forward and pointed. “Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think who else was involved when you did your deed? Did you think about me and the children? Did you think about our family? Did you even think about your own mother? Damn, Vernon. How can I depend on you? I can’t. I have to go to Noland again and again and again. I don’t know what I would do without Noland.” She walked away from the bed to window, and pulled back the drapes. Her features lost against the bright backdrop, she appeared to be looking out at Woodbine. “He’s a better husband to me than you.”

  “Goddamn Noland Jacks!” Venable said.

  “If that’s the way you feel,” Jacks said. It gave him a mild sense of vindication to see the Venables in an uproar. Indeed, over the years, Betty had come to him many times, not quite a confidant, but with many complaints about Venable’s lack of responsibility. He was happy that she realized that he would have been the better husband, but this tidbit did not fool him. Even now, as he looked at her, her broad hips silhouetted in the window, he knew that her affection lay with Venable and always would. “If he’s not hurt, and Cook and the doctor are on their way, then there’s nothing for me to do.” Jacks turned to leave.

  “I am hurt!” Venable’s lean face showed a gray bristle over the lip and on the chin. He pulled his face into an expression of pleading. “Oh, come on, Noland. I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You never mean anything,” Betty said. “Noland, please talk to him.” She left the room, stopping briefly to touch Jacks on the arm. After she was gone he smelled her perfume, faintly. Venable laughed, drawing Jacks’ attention to Venable on the four-poster bed. He rolled onto a hip, and asked Jacks to pour him a shot of bourbon, which he finished in two swallows. “Don’t you want to know what happened?” he asked Jacks. “It involves one of your niggers.”

  Jacks feigned disinterest, shrugged and sat in the chair at the foot of the bed, next to the window looking out toward Woodbine. From his position, Venable’s lanky calves and his long feet lay prominently in sight. One foot pressed against a bedpost. The toenails needed clipping and the toes were hirsute and crooked. Jacks wondered how anyone could make love to a man with such poor hygiene.

  Venable began his story. He had been sitting on the back steps of the porch of Woodbine sipping from a cold Pabst that Millie had given him, smoking a cigarette while he waited for Jacks to return from town. At first, he hadn’t paid much attention to the colored gal standing by the truck at the fence near the barn, but a breeze caught her dress and blew it close to her body. My God! Would you look at that ass, he’d thought. She reminded him of some the colored gals he had had over at Sals and Pals, and a colored gal who was ripe for you was as good a coot as you could ever get, he told Jacks. He loved kissing their big, soft lips, and tangling his fingers in their scruffy hair. And the ass on this gal was so round he imagined how it must be to grab a handful of it, to knead it, to dig in deep into the firm, round rump and to shove his cock against it. Even now, thinking about it made his cock wiggle, he said.

  “I am not interested in your proclivities,” Jacks said. He uncrossed his legs, shifted in his chair and crossed his legs again. Outside, the evening was settling, but because he looked east towards Woodbine, he could only see the darkness creeping up from the river bottom with an occasional reflection to signal that the sunset was beginning to color the sky. If he were home, he would be sitting on his porch with his pipe, enjoying the spectacle. Venable chuckled, reached, and poured another shot of bourbon. “My proclivities! At least, I have proclivities.” Suddenly, the swing music stopped and they heard Betty and her younger son arguing briefly.

  Slowly, Venable continued his story: It was enough, just then, to run his tongue over the unfiltered tip of the cigarette and to look at all that butt and those nice plump tits filling out the girl’s blouse. It slowed him down, so that he made longer drags and held the smoke down twice as long. He let it out slowly so that it filled the back of his mouth and lazily flowed out of his nose. How sweet to take in a mouthful of air and slow drag, all the time watching how that gal’s brown calves flexed as she tiptoed against the fence, how her buttocks pushed against her skirt.

  While Venable talked, Jacks wondered who the girl could have been. He had no girl on the property to match the description. Only Millie, and he no longer thought of Millie in such physical terms. Millie was a calming, pleasant, presence in his life, not the overripe corpus that Venable described. “Who was she?” Jacks asked, but Venable ignored him and continued his story. “Who was she?” he asked again.

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? I never saw the gal before in my life. I came up to her and she looked over her shoulder. Pretty face. Nice full lips. Put me in mind of some lips on a gal over in Cartersville. It was li
ke pushing your face into a mound of flesh. When they kiss, they can suck and lip your face until it is drooling wet. And what those lips can do to a cock! Make a tight little ring of muscle right around your head—”

  “I am not interested.” Jacks stood. He remembered the colored girl from Sals and Pals. She had been kind to him, he now realized. She had protected him from the other men. “Vernon, get serious, will you? So you tried to rape a colored girl on my property. Who was it?”

  “That yellow nigger’s gal.”

  Jacks racked his mind for a moment. “Which yellow nigger?” There were several who worked for him. “One of the new boys?”

  “No that one who’s worked for you a long time.”

  “Jimmy Lee?”

  “I don’t know what the hell the nigger is called. All I know is I didn’t do anything to the gal but try to have a conversation with her. True, I looked at her. But looking doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  “It must be Jimmy Lee,” Jacks said. He had a feeling of relief. “Jimmy Lee is not a bad sort. He’s a good worker. Good humored. A simple sort of fellow, but not a bad bone in his body.”

  Venable sat up in the bed and pointed a finger at Jacks. “Bad bone or not, your nigger tried to kill me! What do you say about that?”

  Jacks leaned over the end of the bed. “Vernon, you tried to rape a girl on my property. In broad daylight. And don’t tell me you were only looking. You don’t ‘just look,’ and Jimmy Lee wouldn’t have done a thing to you if you were just looking.” Suddenly he felt nauseated and a little dizzy. “You’re disgusting.”

  “You go to hell.”

  “You go to hell, too.” Jacks said, put on his hat and started out of the room.

  “Noland!” Venable called. The call was a command; Jacks hesitated, but decided to ignore it. A second call, quieter, was a plea, and Jacks turned back to Venable.

  “Noland.” Venable moved gingerly, leaning on an elbow. His mouth twitched, nervously. “Noland. I see the way you look at me. But I’m not like that. I’m not trash, you see. I play trash sometimes. I can’t help it. I want to do right by Betty; you know, I love her so. You might not believe it, but I do. I do so much love her. But I just can’t do right. I play trash, I do. It’s expected of me, but at my core, you know me. I’m not trash.”

  Jacks breathed deeply and surveyed Venable who looked like a chastised child. He wanted to say something that comforted his friend, but seeing Venable, baring a vulnerability, the old hurt swelled in him and the impulse was to strike at him. “No one expects anything of you.”

  “That’s not true. Even you do, Noland. Even you expect me to play trash. It makes you feel superior.”

  Jacks snatched his hat from his head, fanned it as if he would throw it at Venable. Then he took another deep breath. “Vernon, you are hardly playing. You are what you are.” He walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  The swing music had started again. Harmonizing voices sang, “Rum and Coca-Cola, Rum and Coca-Cola” to a Calypso tune. Betty yelled from downstairs for Beau, the younger son, to turn off the music. He yelled that he wasn’t playing it, that it was his sister. Then Betty yelled for the sister. The noise gave Jacks a headache and he rushed down the stairs and out of the front door. He would have continued on to Woodbine, except that he met Dr. Talmaedge on the portico. The doctor, thin and patrician, was only slightly older than he, a cousin on his mother’s side. They greeted one another politely, as they always did, but Jacks cared little for his cousin. The Talmaedges had always looked down on the Jackses. He had heard they referred to the one marital link, his parents, as an unfortunate liaison, but probably the best his mother could have accomplished given her lackluster beauty. They were quick to remind people that they were no relation to the Talmadges from the southern part of the state, their name having an extra “e,” and their pedigree more distinguished, despite the fact that one of the Talmadges had been a governor. Before he got to his car, two police cars carrying Sheriff Cook and several deputies drove into the roundabout, their lights flashing.

  “What’s this about a murder?” Cook asked as he got out of the car.

  “There’s been no murder!” Jacks took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh.

  They waited in the parlor until the doctor had finished with Venable. He most certainly would live, Dr. Talmaedge announced to the group. The wounds were largely superficial.

  In the bedroom, Jacks again sat in the chair by the window. The sun had set, and out of the window he could only see the lighted path running toward the barn; the fields and river bottom beyond were dark. Sheriff Cook and a deputy stood by the bed. The deputy wrote on a notepad with a pencil. Venable talked loudly, dithering from outraged to pitiable. Was it playing he is doing now? Jacks thought. He studied Venable, looking for some sign of the contrite man of thirty minutes earlier. First, Venable extolled how dangerous Jimmy Lee was, how Jimmy Lee had attacked him from behind and for no good reason. Then he talked about how he had feared for his life, though gallantly he had fended off blows from his attacker. He admitted that the knife that had stabbed him was his own but that he had drawn it in self-defense. His attacker was not a big man, he noted. He was taller and heavier by fifty pounds, but Jimmy Lee was crazed, fierce, like a mad dog.

  “And I wonder what set him off?” Jacks interjected.

  “Does it matter?” Cook asked and looked back and forth between Jacks and Venable. “Niggers don’t attack white men.”

  “But a nigger is a man, too. He’s got pride and honor like a white man. Suppose someone had offended his honor.”

  Cook looked quizzically at Jacks. He snickered. “Oh, now, I see. Mr. Jacks, you are trying to protect your nigger. He must be a right good nigger. Jimmy Lee. I know him. He lives down with that Lee bunch that used to sharecrop for your daddy. One of the worst bunches of niggers in the county. The old man’s a damn drunk. The brother is a drunk, too. The sister is a whore, and the so-called wife, she whores over at Colonel Rebel hotel. I ain’t caught this one at anything, but it don’t surprise me none that he’d do a thing like this. Bad breeding, you see.”

  “Bad breeding or not,” Jacks said. “A man just doesn’t attack another man without cause. What was the cause, Vernon? Tell them what the cause was.”

  Venable glowered at Jacks, then snorted and turned to Cook. “Mr. Jacks is forgetting that a nigger doesn’t need a reason to attack a white man. If Mr. Jacks was even half a white man, he would know that. But he’s neither much of a man nor a white man.” His lips quivered, not quite a smile and he glanced up at Jacks.

  The insult burned, and Jacks felt his tongue stiffen. He didn’t know what to defend first, his manhood or his race. After all these years, after all he knew of the tawdriness, venality and disorder that was Venable, why would his tongue stiffen at an insult from the man? Jacks stood.

  “Sit down, Noland,” Venable waved him back to his seat. “I know you are a white man. Cook knows you are a white man and so does Bobby,” he indicated the deputy, who looked at Jacks and nodded at the mention of his name. “But you also have to act like a white man. Play the role of white man that has been given to us since time immemorial. I play my roll, whatever you think of it. I do. Sheriff plays his role and so does Bobby. That’s what people expect, Noland, white and niggers, too—especially from you who wants so badly to be respected.”

  Bobby nodded profoundly and Jacks glanced at him sharply.

  “What I want to know,” Venable continued, “is what you are going to do about your own nigger going around stabbing white men.”

  Jacks took his seat. Uncomfortably, he shifted. He felt Venable was playing a game with him, part teasing, part egging. Everything was a game to Venable. Uncle Rye. The girls at the university. Betty. There was no core in Venable, because everything Venable did was play. Jacks stiffened his back and sat straighter in the chair. I can play, too, he thought. And better. “What do you want me to do with him, Vernon?” he asked, forcing a grin. “Yo
u want me to noose him and dangle him from a tree? Maybe the big magnolia in your own front yard? Would that be a fitting place to do it?” Venable’s jaw twitched and Cook looked back and forth between the two. The deputy looked at his pad. “But what I think I will do—” Jacks stood and came to the edge of the bed, mirroring Venable’s glower “—is to give him one of my knives so he can finish the job.”

  “Shut up, you son of a bitch.”

  There is was. The real Vernon. Not playing. Trash. “Cook,” Jacks said, facing the Sheriff and straightening his body authoritatively, “Arrest Jimmy Lee, take him to the jail house. Thirty days ought to be enough.”

  Venable cursed him again and sat up awkwardly on the side of the bed. Cook reached to help Venable, but Jacks swatted at Cook’s hand with his hat. “You lie right where you are, Vernon. Talk about killing somebody! Best thing you can do is to lie still. If you can’t take care of your family, at least let them take care of you.” Again, he ordered Cook to find Jimmy Lee and make sure he got safely to the jailhouse, and left the room.

  There was a light breeze in the night, and Jacks guessed that rain would come in a day or two. From the rocker on his porch, he looked out, and though he could not see in the dark, he knew rows of young corn ran from the end of the yard to where the river cut high banks in the field. There he saw the horizon of the forest against the starry sky. He lit his pipe. He liked to smoke. He enjoyed the smell of the tobacco even more than its taste. He had experimented with a number of flavors, but he preferred apple. It had a sweet smell, heavy in the air but light in his mouth. Do you have Prince Albert in a can? He chuckled, remembering a joke. Do you have pigs’ feet? Do you have oxtails? His father had told him those. How Spurgeon had known them, Jacks couldn’t imagine. But he did know that Spurgeon himself would never have played the prank, never would have asked a proprietor any of those questions: Do you have Prince Albert in a can? “Let him out, he’s suffocating!” Jacks said aloud, laughing and shaking his head.