by Pete Dexter
"I got money. What color you like?"
"Purple," she said. She'd had only one Popsicle in her life, and it was purple.
He seemed to be deciding something again. "You ain't gone tell stories to Miss Mary?" he said.
"I already said I don't tell no stories."
He drove across the road that led to the Heights and into town. He turned right on Main Street, and Rosie studied the people on the sidewalk, thinking she might see the lady who had taken her to Thomas Cornell Clinic. She thought she might wave. The woman wasn't there, though; none of the white people she saw were pretty. Rosie guessed Mr. Trout kept her inside.
Henry Ray continued east, crossed into Bloodtown, and pulled into a gas station. The man who pumped the gas smiled at Rosie as he washed the windshield. He had a uniform with letters over the pocket. ROY. He was skinny and light-skinned, and she liked his looks better than Henry Ray's, maybe better than Thomas's.
She did not acknowledge his smile, even when he waved at her with his pinkie finger right up against the windshield. She thought about it later, though.
The man stopped the pump at one dollar. Henry Ray came out of the station, carrying a Popsicle, and held it in his teeth while he opened his wallet to find his dollar bill. Once he was inside the car he broke the Popsicle in half, and then slid one side out of the paper and handed it to her.
It was purple, just like he promised.
She put it in her mouth carefully, not wanting it to break, and held it there a moment, tasting just the cold at first and then the flavor beneath it. She slid it out as carefully as she'd put it in, wishing there was some way to make it last.
Henry Ray was chewing his, taking it in bites. He started the car and began to back out. She put the Popsicle back in her mouth, feeling the edges turn smooth, and suddenly there was a bump, and it was broken in half.
She did not realize until Henry Ray screamed that they had been hit. Then he was sitting up off his seat, looking through the rearview mirror. He screamed again and got out of the car. She turned to watch him, half the Popsicle still in her mouth, and saw the truck. It was a lumber truck, just like the ones that carried cut boards out of the sawmill near Damp Bottom. The back end was up against the back end of the car, and a few of the boards had slid off onto the trunk.
Henry Ray was a crazy man.
He held his head and flapped his arms and jumped up and down and screamed. The driver of the truck got out slower; he looked half as heavy as his truck. He watched Henry Ray a few minutes, then he walked over to the car and had a look. He said, "Be quiet, nigger, so I can see what's did."
Henry Ray said, "Who you callin' nigger, nigger?"
Rosie had heard this before, it meant they were fixing to fight. She looked at the man who had climbed out of the truck and did not think Henry Ray ought to fight him. She had seen enough fighting now to know who would win.
The man in the uniform came out of the station and stood with his hands on his hips while Henry Ray and the man from the truck cussed. He studied the back end of the car, and then he studied the back end of the truck. He pushed the lumber that had slid off back onto the truck.
Henry Ray and the truck driver stood one on each side, watching. Rosie opened her door, and when nobody yelled at her to mind her business, she walked around to the back and had a look for hersel.
The truck had knocked one shiny piece of the car off — it was lying on the ground — and tore a hole in another piece, about big enough that Henry Ray could have fit through it.
That thought came to her because of what the driver said to him. "I stick your skinny ass through there and back up some more, you don't shut up."
The driver said that, and then he bent down and touched the edge of the tear. His finger crumbled the metal there, and then he moved it a couple of inches farther away, and pushed straight through.
Rosie was sure Henry Ray oughtn't to tight him.
"Ain't nothing but paint and rust anyways," the truck driver said. He stood up, looking at his finger. Henry Ray was staring at the hole he'd poked in the car. He bent himself almost in half and looked underneath.
"Ooo — e," the man from the station said.
Henry Ray stayed underneath the car a long time, longer than it took to see the other side of a hole. The truck driver said time was money and he didn't have any more to spend looking at this skinny nigger's ass, and he left.
Henry Ray came out from under just as the truck driver shut his door. He started the engine, blowing smoke over the accident scene, and ground his gears. Rosie heard something familiar in the noise, the sound things made when they were forced. She looked on the ground and saw Henry Ray's Popsicle lying beside the fender, half melted, showing the ice underneath the purple.
She wished she could pick it up.
The gas man spoke then, startling her. "You ain't got no insurest, do you?"
Henry Ray looked at him. "Insurest," the man said. "You got that, they got to fix your car for you."
Henry Ray began to nod. "I got that."
"Then all you need do is to call them up," the gas man said, "and they fix it up like new."
"That do that, for sure?"
"I swear."
Henry Ray laughed. He picked the fender up off the ground and tossed it onto the back seat. "Get in, girl," he said to her. He waited until she had pulled the door shut to start the engine. The tail pipe scraped the ground when they moved, but he didn't seem to care. She took a chance that it was all right to talk. "Where you drivin' now, Henry Ray?"
In a way she couldn't quite understand, the question decided the answer. "Takin' this here right back to Mr. Trout," he said. She sat dead still.
He began to nod. "I paid the man his insurest, he got to fix the car."
"You gone tell Mr. Trout that?"
And then she was sorry that she'd asked, because that question decided the answer too. He drove up Main Street, dragging his tail pipe. White people stopped in their tracks to see what kind of racket it was. Henry Ray looked straight ahead.
He drove past Mr. Trout's store, around the block, and back up the alley. He left the car there and pulled her after him up the steps to the store.
"They ain't nothing in here for us," she said, holding back. "I been in here before."
"You just tell him what you seen," he said.
"He don't care what I seen."
Henry Ray paid no attention. He was holding her by the wrist. He touched the handle of the door, then had a different thought and knocked. Soft at first, then harder.
Mr. Trout came to the back of the store the same way he came to the front, which was he didn't come at all, he was just suddenly there. He stood behind the screen door, looking down at them, and didn't speak a word.
Henry Ray's hold on her wrist went soft. He dropped his head. For a long time nobody spoke.
"Sir," he said finally.
Henry Ray changed and went soft one part at a time.
Mr. Trout got his face closer to the screen. "What the hell you doin' that for, beatin' on a man's door like that?"
Rosie turned and started down the stairs, but Henry Ray's grip on her wrist tightened and hurt her. "I didn't intended to cause you no disturbance," he said, "but I got to talk to you about fixin' my car."
Mr. Trout said, "You got to talk to me about paying for it, is all."
Her knees began to shake like they had after the fox bit her, and she swooned in the sun.
"I brung the car back on account of a lumber truck run into it and tore it all up."
"That ain't my obligation, to teach you to drive."
"I can drive," Henry Ray said, but so soft Mr. Trout couldn't hear.
"Did you say something?"
Rosie could feel it building to something bad.
"I can drive," he said, louder. Still looking at the ground.
"Then how come you busted up your Chevrolet? You gone three hours and come back here with your property all busted up."
"I never tore it up," Henry R
ay said. "A lumber truck run into it."
"Then the lumber company got to fix it."
"No sir."
Rosie pulled herself as far away from the screen as she could get.
"No sir," Henry Ray said again. "I bought insurest from you, cost me two hundred some dollars, so you got to fix it right."
Behind the screen Mr. Trout seemed to grow taller. "You ain't paid a cent," he said. "All you done was sign a note and drove off with my car."
"Then it's your car still," Henry Ray said. His words were so soft now it took Rosie a moment to understand what he had said. Mr. Trout never moved, but when he spoke again, he was half out of breath.
"Listen to me," he said. "You signed the note, and that makes it yours. It don't matter to me if lightning tore it up, you still got to pay. I told you before, I get my money."
But Henry Ray had something in his head now, and the more Mr. Trout said one thing, the harder he believed the other. "I got insurest," he said.
"Not for that," Mr. Trout said. "It ain't that kind of insurance."
Henry Ray turned away from the screen, meaning to leave. "It ain't so bad anyway," Mr. Trout said, looking past him at the car. "It don't hurt nothing to drive around in a car that ain't perfect. Help a person to remember to be more careful next time."
Henry Ray walked down the steps and then up the alley, away from the car. Rosie was at his side, sometimes a step in front. She heard the screen door open and Mr. Trout coming down the steps.
"Hey, there," he said.
Henry Ray did not stop or turn around. "You forgot your car, mister. You don't want to leave it in the alley, something else come along and bust it up worst."
Henry turned around, still walking away. "It ain't none of my affair," he said.
"It's your own car," Mr. Trout said. He was yelling now. "You and me done business. Now come get this and take it with you." Mr. Trout pointed down the alley at them with his finger, but Henry Ray had turned back around and was walking away. Rosie saw him point, though, and a few seconds later, at the end of the alley, she looked again and he was still at it.
"I think he's gone get a police after us," she said.
"Don't make no nevermind to me," he said.
They walked to the comer — Henry Ray had let go of her wrist now — and suddenly Mr. Trout was there again; she saw that he must have gone out the front of the store to head them off He was breathing hard and had screaming eyeballs, and he stepped right in front of Henry Ray. "Seventeen dollars and fifty cent a week," he said. "You leave the car or drive it into the river, it's still the same payment."
Henry Ray stepped around Mr. Trout and crossed the street. Rosie followed him, and when they'd got to the sidewalk, Mr. Trout began to yell. Called them niggers. "You and me got bi'nis," he yelled. "It ain't over till that car's paid for, one hundred percent."
Henry Ray turned and shouted back, "You and me ain't got no bi'nis." Rosie saw some of the white people on the street begin to laugh.
"You just ask your people about that," Mr. Trout yelled. "You ask what happens if you don't pay Mr. Trout."
Henry Ray held his ground a long time and then turned without another word and began the long walk back to Indian Heights. The girl followed him. The cement was hot on her feet, and where there was grass she walked in it. "I wished we'd took the car horn," she said, somewhere near the highway.
"Henry Ray Boxer don't drive no tore-up car," he said.
"Mr. Trout gone want his money," she said, a few hundred yards later.
"It don't matter to me what a white man want."
"What if he come to get it himself?" she said.
"What if he do?"
They had just turned and were coming back into the Heights again. She didn't think he would of said that anywhere else.
* * *
THE CAR STAYED IN the alley behind Mr. Trout's store. Rosie saw it there a month later, on the day Miss Mary walked her to town to get her a dress for church. Rosie had picked the first one she touched, it was white with little blue sashes all over, from a shop in Bloodtown. On the way back Miss Mary bought her a Coca-Cola. She would not let the girl thank her.
"Hush, now," she said, "you make Miss Mary feel ashamed."
They walked back through town, drinking Cokes and looking in the windows of the stores, and suddenly they were in the alley behind Mr. Trout's store. Rosie recognized the car and realized where she was.
It was sitting right where Henry Ray had left it, still tore up from the lumber truck. It looked just like it had, except it was dirty. She stopped in her tracks, afraid Mr. Trout would come out and find her. Miss Mary walked ahead, through the alley. The girl caught up. She didn't think Miss Mary had noticed her stop.
At the end of the alley, though, without ever looking back, Miss Mary said, "That's Henry Ray's car, ain't it?"
"Yes, ma'am," she said. Henry Ray had warned her not to tell, but she never thought of lying to Miss Mary.
"That boy remindful of his father," she said.
Rosie didn't reply, but when she sipped at the Coke-Cola again, it had lost its taste. They walked past the officer academy and beyond. Rosie wondered if Miss Mary knew Henry Ray had rode her out of town in the car. If she knew what they had done. She began to feel ashamed herself.
"What I heard," Miss Mary said, "was Henry Ray had Paris Trout yellin' in the street, shaming himself in front of white people."
"Yes, ma'am."
Miss Mary closed her eyes as she walked. "He told you not to tell," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
Miss Mary stopped under a shade tree and sat down. The girl sat clown with her. For a long time Miss Mary seemed to forget Rosie was there. "The problem with Henry Ray is partly in his blood," she said finally, "and partly that he believe he got to be more than he is."
The girl did not understand and was not even sure the woman was speaking to her at all.
"They's some people walk around all the time taller than they is," Miss Mary said. "They fool you and me, and sometime they fooled themself; and then one day a thing can happen and they try and catch up all at once to what they pretend to be. They go off blind to the world .... " She closed her eyes and grabbed at things that wasn't there.
"Henry Ray don't know how to look at nobody else and understand them," she said, "because he don't know what he look like himself."
Rosie did not interrupt — it seemed to her that Miss Mary was thinking something out — but if Henry Ray didn't know what he looked like, she didn't know who did. He spent more time in front of mirrors than anybody alive.
Miss Mary took it a different direction. "Paris Trout is a weak man," she said.
"Mr. Trout?"
"Inside," she said, and tapped herself on the chest. "Inside, he's as weak as Henry Ray."
"He scart me," the girl said.
Miss Mary nodded and looked over at her in a slow, tired way. "That's your common sense talkin'," she said. "That man scare anybody got common sense."
Miss Mary closed her eyes and rested against the trunk of the tree. She did not seem afraid of Mr. Trout or anything else.
"You stronger than Mr. Trout," the girl said after a while.
The woman smiled without opening her eyes. "Yes I am," she said.
"You ain't scart of him."
"Oh, yes," she said, "I am that too."
Time passed, and the woman opened her eyes. She put her hands underneath her bottom and began to push herself up off the ground. The girl did not want to leave yet.
"I'll tell you what I'm scart of if you want," she said.
Miss Mary settled back into the tree, but she was awake now, and in some way she was pleased. "I brung you into my house," she said, "and now you allow me into yours."
Rosie said, "I'm scart my momma will come get me back."
"You don't have them dreams with me, do you?"
"No, ma'am."
The woman bit the corner of her lip. "I tell you what," she said, "whenever you get scart
, you come to me."
"You keep me away from my momma?"
"I don't know," she said, "but I will be there with you when she come."
* * *
TWO WEEKS LATER ROSIE Sayers was sitting on the porch in her new dress when she saw the car coming up Spine Road. She'd worn the dress every day since Miss Mary bought it for her. It had rained that morning, and the car threw a steady curtain of water and mud into the air as it came.
Some of the mud landed on the car itself and blistered there in the sun. The windows were open — it had turned steamy that afternoon — and she could see Mr. Trout behind the wheel. He had pulled his hat down over most of his face, but she recognized him. From the store and from somewhere else.
Thomas was sitting on the porch too, in the chair, with his feet crossed on the railing. Thomas was sweeter than Henry Ray, but he was lazy.
The children, Jane Ray and Linda, were playing inside. Rosie Sayers stood still and watched the car come.
"Who would that be now?" Thomas said.
"Mr. Trout," she said. "Send the children after Miss Mary." They minded Thomas and wouldn't listen to her. She wouldn't hit them. Thomas sat up straight without taking his feet off the rail. "Who he comin' to see?" he said.
"Us," she said.
He called into the house for Linda. "Go fetch your momma," he said, but she never answered. There was another man in the car with Mr. Trout, and they looked at each other and spoke before they got out.
"Look out, Jesus," Thomas said.
"Who is that with him?"
"Mr. Buster Devonne," he said. "Used to be a police, but he treated folks too mean, had to let him go."
The men got out of the car. Mr. Trout was wearing rimless glasses and had pulled his hat down almost to cover them. The other one, Buster Devonne, was bigger than anyone the girl knew except Miss Mary. She saw he was bothered.
The men walked up the steps to the porch without a word. Rosie stood still, and they passed her by like she wasn't at home. Thomas did not get up or move. Mr. Trout found a place directly in back of him and waited. Buster Devonne stood to one side.
Thomas began to talk. He said, "The little money I owe you, sir, I pay it on the tenth. just to the agreement we made." His voice was quicker than she remembered it.