And If I Die

by John Aubrey Anderson

  Willie nodded and put the dime back with its lonesome twin.

  Mose watched every inch of the money’s journey back to the man’s pocket, then looked at the man’s face. “I reckon I won’t never forget you offered.” The boy was nodding to himself as he turned away.

  Mose Washington went back out to the cabin on Cat Lake to pick cotton for the Parkers and wait for Mr. R. D. to get back to the gin.

  When Willie Edwards got to the gin Saturday morning, Mose was waiting. Willie took him behind some cotton bales and showed him how to take his hat off and hold it by his side and how to stand still and say “Yessuh” while he was being given instructions. “An’ don’t be wearin’ no hat while you talkin’ to a white man,” he repeated for the tenth time.

  The overseer had the boy go through the motions several times, continually reminding him how important it was to show Mr. R. D. that he knew how to be polite. “If I’m gonna show you to Mr. R. D., you needs to make sure I don’t come off lookin’ bad. You make sure you speak respectful if he says somethin’ to you, but you don’t need to be askin’ him no questions,” lectured Willie. “Anything you needs to know, I’m gonna tell you after.”

  Mose already knew about having manners, but he endured the lessons because Willie was trying to help him.

  They were waiting by the office door when R. D. Parker mounted the steps.

  When he saw them, the white man broke stride, hesitated a moment, then walked to where they were standing.

  Mose, who until that minute was relaxed and confident, felt his mouth go dry. This was the first time he’d seen Mr. R. D. up close since the day he had to hit Ced Pommer with the hoe handle. His knees started shaking.

  Willie took off his hat and greeted the boss. “Mornin’, Mr. R. D.”

  “Mornin’, Willie. Who’s this?”

  “This here Mose Washington, boss. He lookin’ for a job.”

  “I thought that was you, Mose.” Parker nodded solemnly. “I guess I haven’t seen you much in the last few years.”

  Mose wanted to say something, but someone had stuffed cotton in his mouth. He ended up just nodding his head.

  Willie nudged him and he realized he was still wearing his hat. He snatched it off too fast and dropped it. Fumbling the hat put him in a quandary because he didn’t know if he should pick it up or leave it where it was. He cut his eyes at Willie, and the big man frowned and nodded for him to pick it up. By the time the boy got his orders from Willie, Mr. R. D. had stooped over and retrieved it.

  When Mr. R. D. handed Mose his hat, the boy stared at it for a moment, then put it back on his head. He didn’t bother to thank the white man.

  Willie Edwards put a big hand over his eyes and groaned out loud.

  Parker was smiling. “Mose knows how to do a man’s work. Show him what to do.”

  The giant uncovered his eyes. “Suh?”

  “I reckon you picked the best man in town, Willie. Get him started.” Parker left the overseer with his newest hand and went to the office.

  Seven years later, just before Mose’s twenty-first birthday, Mr. R. D. tore down the old commissary out at Cat Lake and built a new gin on the site. Mr. R. D.’s big white house was right across the road from the gin; Mose’s cabin was in a thick stand of pecan trees on the far side of Cat Lake. Mr. R. D. ran the office, and Mose ran the gin. Willie Edwards’s son, Roosevelt—a nineteen-year-old version of his daddy—was Mose’s right-hand man.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The knee sprain Mann picked up during his session with the mechanical bull—aggravated by the twist it took when Missy knocked him into Mose’s daylilies—was bothering him when he woke up on Sunday. He skipped breakfast and subsisted on a diet of coffee and aspirin. Patterson and Missy showed up at the front door an hour or so after lunch. Missy was carrying a chocolate cake.

  The cake thing was a tradition—initially started by Mann’s mother when he was in the first grade. On his first day of school, the six-year-old was nervous about the prospect of spending all day in the big building, and his mom bribed him by promising him a slice of chocolate cake every day when he got home from school. Thereafter, for the next five years, until his mother was killed, he had chocolate cake every afternoon for his “school snack.”

  Missy found out about the practice when Mann was a freshman in college and reinstituted the custom.

  She carried the cake into the kitchen, and Mose followed to help pour the coffee. Patterson and Mann stayed in the living room.

  “Any better?” Patterson sat down and pointed at Mann’s leg.

  “Sore.” Mann was trying to get comfortable on the couch. “It’ll straighten out in a couple of days.”

  “You want to take off from work for a few days and rest up?”

  “I guess not, thanks. The other bull riders might make fun of me.”

  “You’re still bent on riding bulls then?”

  Mann shrugged. “Only the tame ones.”

  Patterson rolled his eyes. “Wise choice.”

  Missy and Mose came in with the cake first, and Mose took a seat in his easy chair while Missy brought out the coffee. When everyone was served Mose said, “This ain’t a meal, but it seems like it’d be a good idea to pray ’fore I tell y’all these ol’ stories.”

  Missy took a seat on the couch with Mann. They bowed their heads and Mose said, “Lord, You an’ me know how You’ve blessed my life, an’ I ’preciate it. I reckon I’m the last person livin’ what knows about the things You’ve done in my life . . . all the different ways You’ve worked to bring us to this day. My prayer, Lord, for all of us is . . . don’t let us take a breath in vain. Give us to come to You well used. Amen.”

  The old black man started with the death of his daddy and told it the way he remembered it.

  Missy knew the people in Mose’s story and stopped him once or twice in the beginning to ask questions about the old gin in town and her great-granddaddy. Her questions stopped when Mose got to the part about what Ced Pommer tried to do —and what happened when Mose intervened.

  Mose talked most of the afternoon; Patterson, Missy, and Mann listened. Missy or Patterson would get up every now and then to refill the coffee cups. At suppertime, they all moved to the kitchen table for tomato sandwiches. An hour later they were back in the living room with fresh coffee and more cake.

  The sun was down when Mose finished his story.

  Mann shifted to try and make his leg comfortable. Patterson was staring out the window. Missy had the dog’s head in her lap. No one spoke.

  Mose removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before putting them back. “Things out at the lake stayed quiet ’til ’45. After them demons attacked, I figured we was back in a sho’ ’nuff fight.” He looked at Mann and Patterson. “You two came in late, but you know ’bout what went on. When it comes right down to it, God’s been bringin’ us all along, like puttin’ us all in one of them funnels. We all been swirlin’ ’round some, but we all headed for the same spot.”

  He paused, then said, “The Lord give me a good life; I just hope I finish it good.”

  No one spoke until Patterson stood up and stretched. “If y’all will excuse me, I’ve got some things I need to think about.”

  Missy came out of her reverie and slid to the edge of her seat. She picked up the few dishes on the coffee table and started into the kitchen. “Me too. I’ll be ready to go in half a sec.”

  When she came back through the living room, Missy knelt by Mose’s chair and took his hand. “You saved my life before my daddy was ever born. Thank you.”

  He patted her arm, and she kissed him on the cheek. “G’night.”

  The pain in Mann’s knee started paying higher dividends late Sunday night, and on Monday morning he was operating on twenty-four hours without sleep. He eventually gave up trying to get the upper hand on his discomfort and lurched into Nettie’s Café just after sunup. He seated himself away from the diner’s morning traffic and was taking his first sip of c
offee when Collin Turner stepped through the front door.

  His bull-riding coach winked at him, and Mann watched him walk back and join several ranchers gathered around a table in the back of the room. The prospect of having to be civil to a crowd of old men who would want to make him the butt of their bull-riding jokes prompted his decision to get to work early.

  Nettie Holton understood why Mann pushed himself out of the chair and limped toward the cash register; he didn’t want to put up with a lot of guff from a pack of foolish old men. The boy was outgoing enough, but he wasn’t the kind to let others squander a desire for privacy.

  Over the past few years, Nettie and her only regular black customer had developed their own mutual admiration society. He didn’t know why the tough old lady liked him, but she obviously did, and that suited him. She was one of his favorite people because she didn’t ask anything in return for her friendship.

  For the woman’s part, her affinity for the young black man had nothing to do with his being her cook’s—and silent partner’s— cousin. Nor did she have any way of knowing that the financial windfall that kept her café in business came from Bill and Mose. She was fond of Bill because, unlike so many of the young people who were coming up in Pilot Hill, she saw in him a measure of dignity. She expected great things of Bill Mann, and bull riding wasn’t one of them.

  He put his coffee mug by the cash register and dug in the pocket of his jeans for some change. Nettie said, “It’s on the house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Mmm.” She frowned up at him. “Sam said you hurt your knee.”

  “The truck was bigger than I was.”

  Inhibitions regarding the guidance of other people’s lives, especially this motherless boy’s, did not burden Miz Nettie. “You try aspirin?”

  “Roughly four an hour for the last ten days.”

  “I think you’re an idiot . . . so is anybody else that gets on the back of a bull.”

  “I’ll have my secretary make a note of that.”

  “Everybody loves smart-alecky kids.” She rummaged around in a drawer beneath the cash register and pulled out a small brown bottle. “This is a little something that’ll stop the pain—and you. Take one every twelve hours for a day or so.”

  He took the bottle and rolled it back and forth in his palm. Nettie’s name was the only word printed on the label. “What is it?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t pronounce it.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  She motioned toward the kitchen. “I scalded my arm a while back . . . doctor brought this by, saying it would stop the pain. He was right.” She tapped the bottle. “There’s ten pills left in there, but don’t get smart and take more than one every twelve hours. If you take more than that, you’ll wake up sometime next week. Understand?”

  He took the bottle and started to open it.

  “Not now, cowboy”—she shook her head—“wait’ll you get to where you’re going. You don’t want to be driving while you’ve got this stuff in your system.”

  He put the pills in his pocket and picked up the mug. “I’ll bring your cup back later.”

  “See that you do . . . and any of those pills you have left over.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You might want to say ‘Thank you.’ ”

  “If they don’t work, I’ll have my lawyers sue you for malpractice.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Mann walked— or hobbled— out. Collin Turner and his friends watched and smiled.

  The beginning of summer school was two days away, and the North Texas campus was all but deserted when Bill got there. He parked in a space reserved for faculty members, washed one of the little pills down with the last of his coffee, and took a few minutes to reread the Sunday paper’s sports section. The throbbing in his leg began to fade, and he was limping across the marble terrace in front of Cartwright Hall at seven o’clock.

  The unconditioned air in the old building’s vestibule was nighttime cool, but that would change by midmorning; white-orange sunlight came in level streaks through the east windows, warming everything it touched and highlighting the building’s emptiness.

  The offices of the philosophy department were on the second floor of the building. Mann paused in the center of the lobby; brightly lighted dust particles drifted near him as he divided his attention between the tall staircase and the elevator, deciding. The welcome beginnings of relief granted him by the pill boosted his confidence, and he decided the short climb might help loosen his knee.

  By the time he got to the tenth step, the brief rush of relief granted by the pill was evaporating like steam, and the pain in his knee had graduated to agony. When he reached the top, he was gritting his teeth and cursing himself. Nettie was right; he was an idiot— especially for letting her prescribe medication for him.

  The door to the philosophy department was approximately a mile from the top of the stairs; a water fountain marked the halfway point. He made it to the fountain, sweating and panting, and stopped to catch his breath. He washed down two more of the ineffectual tablets, desperately hoping they might help him finish his journey. Somewhere along the way he acquired a broom and used it for a makeshift crutch.

  The door to the department’s outer office was standing open, and the reception area was empty. As Mann drew close to Pat’s personal office, he could swear he heard someone snoring.

  Because Pat was the head of the department, he had the choice office, and he’d scraped out a corner near the windows to give Mann his own area; the path to the small table and chair allotted to the assistant was blocked by a guy Mann had never seen. The intruder had shoved Mann’s neatly arranged office furniture out of the way and was sprawled faceup on the floor in front of Pat’s desk. He was dressed in a dirty Hawaiian shirt, wrinkled khaki pants, and deck shoes—no socks; a mustard-colored sport coat served as his pillow. The sleeper’s face was completely concealed behind an unkempt mop of surfer-style blond hair; the snoring sounds came from somewhere beneath the bleached tangle.

  Mann propped himself on the edge of Pat’s desk and touched the guy’s shoe with the end of the broom. “Rise and shine, amigo. Surf’s up.”

  A muffled grunt came from somewhere under the hair, but the man didn’t move.

  Mann tapped the guy’s shoulder with the broom handle and said, “Better get a move on, ol’ buddy. The boss likes to get here early.”

  The man reached up with one hand and dug through his hair until he managed to uncover a squinting eye. “I had a rough night,” came from an unseen mouth.

  “Yeah, and you’re finishing it up in the wrong place.” Mann jerked his thumb at the door. “Time to shake, rattle, ’n’ roll.”

  The man’s head came up slowly. He pulled a handful of mane out of the way and took in his surroundings. The young black guy standing over him was slouched against a large desk, hunched over a broom—sweat ran down his cheeks and dripped from his chin.

  “Listen carefully, Jack.” The disturbed sleeper employed the meticulous diction of the completely inebriated. “I am the new peon in this department, and where I finish my nights is my business, not the custodial department’s. Now go push your broom someplace else while the academic types get some much-needed rest.”

  Acute impatience helped mask what three worthless little pills couldn’t, and Mann forgot about the pain in his knee. He straightened and said, “Son, I don’t know how well you understand English, but you’re in my way, and I’ve got work that needs doing.”

  “Judging from your conduct, I can only assume janitors are granted tenure at this illustrious institution.” The fellow was sitting up as he spoke, turning toward Mann.

  Mann pointed at his chair and table. “You’re in Poppa Bear’s way, Goldilocks, and he’s ready to sit down.”

  The long-haired vagrant gathered his coat and got to his knees. He appeared to be about Mann’s height, with a lean build. Most of the hair was out of the way, and he was struggling to
focus badly bloodshot eyes. When he dropped his coat and bent over it, Mann expected him to pick it up. Instead, he lowered himself to the floor and curled up eighteen inches from his original spot—still blocking Mann’s access to the small work area.

  “Remind me when I wake up to take issue with your attitude,” mumbled the intruder. Seconds later, he was snoring again.

  The drunk guy was too big for Mann to drag out of the way, and to try to step over an unpredictable drunk while his knee was messed up would rank right up there with deciding to climb the stairs. He used his crutch to work his way around to Pat’s chair and sat down to consider his alternatives.

  When Dr. Patrick Patterson, newly appointed chairman of North Texas State University’s philosophy department, entered the department’s outer office at eight o’clock, his receptionist greeted him with a suppressed giggle and said, “Good morning.”

  “Morning, Anna. Did I miss the joke?”

  “You’ll wish you had,” she laughed. “It’s waiting in your office.” Anna Gibson had been the department’s receptionist for two years. She was young, attractive, and unflappable; Patterson described her as effervescent.

  Technically, the two men in his office weren’t waiting. A scruffy surfboard jockey he didn’t recognize was passed out on the floor; Bill was sacked out in Pat’s chair with his arms loosely wrapped around a broom.

  Pat put his briefcase down and moved over for a closer look at the fellow with blond hair and no socks.

  “Who’s this guy on the floor?” he asked the doorway.

  “I’ve never seen him before,” Anna called back, “but he’s kinda cute in an unconscious sort of way.”