There were framed photographs on either side of the hall, and though it was dark, I had seen them all before, so I knew exactly what was in every frame. There was a photo on the right side of me that had been taken when I was small, eight or nine, when we lived on a farm. I had my arm around a white goat. A big black man stood behind me and the goat. He was wearing overalls and a fedora. He had his hand on my shoulder. The other photos were even less exciting.
When I got to the door, Melinda knocked gently, said, “Ed’s here.”
“Oh, my baby boy, come in, come in.”
I was a middle child, but still the younger of two brothers. Melinda, of course, was the baby of the family. But Mama always called me baby boy.
Melinda walked back into the living room as I turned the doorknob.
Inside the room, the air, the walls, and curtains were baked in smoke and it was hard to breathe. Mama was sitting up in bed smoking a cigarette with an ashtray on her lap. It was already full and when she poked her cigarette into it as I came in, ash and butts fell out of the tray and onto the old blanket she had pulled over her.
For someone in her state, she was still an attractive-looking woman, but she needed to be outside and she needed to comb her graying hair that only a short time ago had been as dark as a raven’s wing. There was a sheen of sweat on her face, and her eyes were reminiscent of someone shell-shocked, like the way I saw eyes in Korea, like maybe mine had been back then, right before they discharged me. Still, it was easy to see why Melinda was a beauty. She had borrowed the best parts of herself from Mama.
I went and sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She smelled like the smoking car on a train.
“It’s been a while. I thought any day you’d come by and see your old mama.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Old enough. Melinda just told me you got a Cadillac.”
“A red one.”
“You like it?”
“Sure.”
“It’s good to see you doing well enough to buy a car like that on the money you make.”
“It’s not so bad, and it’s used.”
“Not new, then?”
“Hey, I was thinking you might want to set a back fire in the kitchen.”
Mama sort of coughed a laugh, like it was struggling around the cigarette smoke she’d pulled inside of herself. “Jake, he says he’s going to buy me a dishwasher.”
“He says a lot of things.”
“At least he calls me a lot. He’s done the best of all of you, though the verdict is still out on Melinda. She’s still young. Depends on if she marries someone with money.”
“She wants to go to college.”
“She can’t afford it. She needs to get out of this life. Her looks, she can make it easy, she marries the right man.”
“She’s got smarts. She doesn’t need to waste that making cookies. She can make cookies later, she wants. She can marry later, she wants. She needs to go to school.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Same problem. No money. And in my case, not as smart as her. She’s special.”
Mama lit another cigarette and took a deep, long drag. She let the smoke out slowly and with great satisfaction. “Jake, he’s done all right,” she said.
“Assembly line in Detroit. I don’t know, Mama. That might be all right for him, but maybe not for me, and certainly not for Melinda. Doing all right is relative.”
“He’s the darkest of the three of you, and he’s done all right.”
“He came down solid on a side, way he looks. Me and Melinda didn’t. People always think I’m Puerto Rican or Mexican, sometimes Italian. They knew the truth, I wouldn’t be working at the car lot. I’d be emptying wastebaskets.”
“I should never have gotten involved with a nigger.”
“Damn, Mama. He was our father.”
“I know. I’m just being mean. I need a drink.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You just don’t understand.”
“I understand it’s not doing you any good or you wouldn’t be in bed this early. And all those cigarettes, that can’t be good for you.”
“Smoke is the only thing holding me together. Listen here, baby boy. You and Melinda, you’re light enough to pass. You can do better for yourself. You can do like Jacob, but you can do even better. Don’t be poor. I been poor all my life, and I don’t like it. I can barely send Melinda to the store, let alone pay for college. She might have to marry her way out. But you, you’re smart too, baby boy. Take advantage of your whiteness. Do something other than sell used cars.”
“Do you hear from Daddy?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t even know where he is. I don’t know anyone knows where he is. We got back together just long enough for me to get pregnant again with Melinda. He might be dead, for all I know. He might be remarried, not that we ever had formal papers back in Fort Worth, and he might have ten kids. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t need a dark man in my life. Life is easier when you’re pale.”
“It didn’t do you a lot of good, did it?”
Soon as I said that, I wished I hadn’t. Her face pinched. She pulled on the cigarette again and eased the smoke out through her nose.
“No, it didn’t do me all that much good at all. My problem is I fell in love with the wrong person, and the wrong color.”
(12)
Melinda walked me out to my car. We leaned against the hood. The air was nice. Mama’s trailer was the only one in the area. It wasn’t much, but she at least had a couple acres to put it on, and that gave her room. You could see houses from where her mobile home was set, but you couldn’t lean out the window and shake hands with your next-door neighbor.
The porch light was on, and it shone down on the steps and made them shiny.
“She has the mark of death on her,” I said.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Saw it in Korea. It’s a look they got when they were sick or wounded, and you knew it was going to get worse, and they were going to die. And if they were okay, not sick or wounded, and they had that look, then death was coming for them. It already owned them, and all death had to do then was collect.”
“That’s silly.”
“She has that look.”
“You say.”
“It’s illogical, but she has that look.”
“If she could stay away from the booze and those cigarettes.”
“This guy comes around and sells her the booze. Tell me where he is.”
“What you going to do?”
“Talk to him.”
“Oh, that will help. That’s like asking a shark not to eat you.”
“Tell me where I can find him.”
“I got an idea, but I better ride with you. It’s a hard place to find.”
“How do you know the place, then?”
“I been out there.”
“With who?”
“With a man.”
“A black man?”
“We’re half black.”
“Gee, I didn’t know that. Listen, you got a chance to climb up in the world, and you ought to. Stay away from colored people, hear me?”
“You mean pass.”
“Aren’t you already?”
“Sometimes.”
“Choose a side. Choose the winning side. The white side.”
“You sound like Mama. She’s drunk a few or she’s stressed, you should hear her talk.”
“I didn’t say it was right. I said it’s the better choice. Your brains and looks, you could do all right for yourself.”
“You have brains and looks and you sell used cars. Shit, Ed. I shouldn’t have said that. Didn’t mean it. That was Mama talking. We both sound like her sometimes.”
“Well, pains me to say it, but she’s not altogether wrong.”
(13)
I drove out there, Melinda giving me directions. It was well out in the woods, and there
was an old house there and there were lights on inside of it, but the lights were from kerosene lamps, not electricity. I knew that kind of light. I had grown up with it. It was softer and warmer, and if you walked six feet away from the lamp in the dead of night, you couldn’t find your ass with both hands.
The house itself looked as if it was one good windstorm from going flat. The porch sagged and the steps didn’t quite connect to it. There were four cars in the yard. I didn’t stop there but on down the road. I turned off the lights and engine, turned in the seat to look at Melinda’s shadow shape. “That was it?”
“No. I’m just messing with you. It’s a house I’m thinking of buying.”
“Smart-ass. Okay. What’s he look like?”
“Good-looking. Dapper. Wears a hat with a feather in it.”
“What if another guy there has a feather?”
“I guess I better come with you.”
“I don’t know.”
“You might talk to the wrong fellow.”
“I might at that.” I leaned over and got the little revolver out of the glove box and put it in my jacket pocket.
“That help you talk better?”
“I find it a comfort in case the talk stops talking.”
We got out of the car and walked along a line of hickory trees and then we walked softly across the yard and up the porch steps. We went up them as quietly as possible, but they squeaked like a mouse. We stopped at the door.
No one seemed to have heard us.
The door was open and there was just the screen. All the windows along the porch were open, and they were screened. Bugs bounced against them. Mosquitoes buzzed in my ears.
“Stand right here,” I said.
I went over and peeked in one of the windows. There were four men sitting around a table playing cards. There was a kerosene lamp on the table. There was money on the table too. No one was wearing a hat. No one saw me. They were too engrossed in their game.
I eased back to Melinda. “Come here. Be quiet about it.”
I led her to the window and she looked in, then we walked back to the screen door.
“Well?”
“It’s the man in the brown shirt. That’s Cecil.”
“Cecil, huh. Go back and wait in the car.” I dug in my pocket and gave her the key. “Things don’t go right, you drive away. He might not be in a talkative mood.”
“Sometimes they carry guns.”
“Like the one I got?”
“I just know they sometimes do.”
“You been out here more than once, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“We’ll call this your last trip and I mean it. Go back to the car, please.”
(14)
It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but I was feeling pissed off about Mama and this guy making a deal with her for booze. I was pained by it on more levels than I could’ve explained if I had all night and a better vocabulary.
I eased the screen open and tiptoed down the hallway, through the door, and into the main room where the light was.
One of the men looked up and saw me. I saw him ease his hand under a coat lying on an empty chair next to him.
I pulled my pistol out and let it hang by my side, said, “I wouldn’t. I’m not here to give you grief. I just want to talk to Cecil.”
The lamplight lay on Cecil’s face, and he was I guess what you would call handsome. His skin was black as night and he wore his years pretty good. I figured him to be fifty or so.
“I don’t know you,” Cecil said.
“I’m thinking you might like to.”
“On account of?”
“I say so and I got a gun.”
“We all got guns.”
“Yeah, but I have mine drawn and I don’t miss much.” This wasn’t true. I couldn’t hit a house if I was in it.
“What you want with me?”
“It’s not gunplay. This is just an insurance policy I have.”
“Yeah. What you collect if you need it.”
“Way it works is I don’t collect nothing, but whoever gives me shit might collect bullets. Look here. I don’t want trouble, and I got nothing to say to the rest of you. Just want to talk to Cecil, not shoot him.”
“We got to believe that?” said the man who had made to reach beneath his coat.
“You don’t got to, but you might want to.”
“It’s all right,” Cecil said. “I want to see what this cracker is talking about. This about some booze?”
“It is.”
“You must be wanting some bad, come out here like this this time of night, and with a pistol.”
“Let’s just say I get mighty thirsty.”
Cecil stood up slowly and placed his cards facedown on the table. “You can deal me out. My hand couldn’t be any worse if there was nothing but jokers in the deck.”
“You sure?” said another of the men.
“Yeah. It’s all right. Me and him just going to do some business.”
“That’s right,” I said. I stuck my hand and the pistol in my coat pocket, but I didn’t let go of it. I let it and my hand rest in there with my blackjack. I liked carrying that around on a regular basis. Call me nervous.
The other men started playing cards again. They were far more interested in that than a liquor transaction.
Cecil put on his hat. It had been resting on his knee. It had a white feather in it.
Me and Cecil went outside. He automatically walked toward his car, thinking I wanted to buy some booze. He put a key in the trunk lock and lifted it. There were wooden cases filled with fruit jars of a dark liquid. There was straw packed between the jars.
“You come out here late at night, and me busy, I got to boost the price.”
“I said I wanted to talk, not buy.”
“What the hell, fellow. You said you were thirsty.”
“I did, didn’t I? I lied a bit.”
“On account of?”
“I got a drunk mother you sell booze to, and I want you to quit. And I sure want you to quit trading booze for something else.”
Cecil let that float around inside his noggin for a while. “Oh, I know who you’re talking about. That your mother? She’s a fine-looking woman. Could dress up a bit. She’s fine, though. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. And I don’t want you messing with her. I don’t want you selling her booze. Fact is, I don’t want you over there at all. Your car breaks down a mile from her place, you better start walking the other way. Your dog sniffs around the door there, you better call him in and shoot him.”
“That’s some tough talk, there. You got a mirror at your house, boy? I’m twice your size. That gun, I’ll take that away from you and jam it up your nose.”
I pulled my hand out of my pocket quickly. I no longer had hold of the pistol. I had the blackjack. I caught him over the ear hard enough to knock him to his knees.
He put his hand to the side of his head, said, “Goddamn, man.”
“Still want to take my gun? Want my blackjack?”
“I want you to leave my ass alone.”
“You going to stay away from her?”
“I’m going to do what I want to do. You mad because she’s white and I’m black. You don’t like to think about that nigger dick in your sweet mama’s pussy.”
I hit him with the blackjack again. “Wrong answer.”
“Goddamn, man. Sure. I’ll leave her alone.”
“You don’t sound all that convincing.” This time I hit him right on top of the head. He went forward and held himself up with his hands. “Am I starting to make myself clear?”
He threw up and began breathing heavily. “Yeah, man. I got you.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
I went to work on him a little. I don’t know how many times I hit him, but it must have been three or four more. I tried to keep all the blows on his shoulders and ribs from then on.
He sat back on his ass then. His
quivering hand reached under his coat. I stepped forward and hit him again and leaned down and took out a little Saturday-night special with my free hand and gave it a sling.
“I meant what I said. You don’t go by there no more. I don’t care if she wants it and sends a carrier pigeon with a fucking note telling you she does.”
“All right, all right. It’s done. I’m done. No booze for her. You looking crazy, man. You look like you so mad, you want to beat yourself. I don’t know why you just can’t leave a nigger alone.”
“Don’t call yourself that.” I put the gun back in my pocket.
He looked up at me. “You a funny white boy.”
I waved the blackjack. “Want me to have a few more laughs?”
Cecil held up his hand. “No. I’ve had enough.”
About then, one of the men came out of the house and let the screen door slam. I could see the others bunched up behind the screen.
“What in hell is going on out here, Cecil? He hurting you?”
“Oh, it’s all right. I done got a lifetime of that. It’s all right.”
The man outside the screen door moved toward the porch.
“Tell them to go back to their game or you won’t be joining them later.” I dropped the blackjack back in my pocket and pulled out the pistol.
Cecil managed to stand up. I’ll give him this. Had that been most people, they couldn’t have gotten up after that. He was bleeding under his ear and under his nose. I didn’t even remember catching him there.
“You got something wrong inside of you, boy,” he said.
“You go on with your game, now. Just do like I asked, and me and you won’t be visiting anymore.”
“That’s news I like hearing,” he said and started back toward the house.
I walked out to the road, and when I got there the lights from my car were coming my way. Melinda picked me up and we drove out of there.
(15)
We drove to Mama’s house trailer and parked out front. Melinda kept sitting behind the wheel.
“I got a feeling that wasn’t just a talk.”
“It had some argumentative moments.”
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