“Daddy was like that. He would start to talk, and next thing you knew you were on the ground with loose teeth. He knocked me over a couch once. Remember that?”
“I do.”
“I was damn little. You were older, and you tried to fight him, and he knocked you down.”
“I remember that part really well.”
“He called us his little snowflake fuckers.”
“I remember that too.”
“You think about this, Ed. Someone finds out you got a drop of colored in you, all of a sudden you’re colored, and that’s it. You want to play that game all your life, lying to yourself and everyone around you? Trying to be white?”
“We are white. Look at us. Shit, Melinda. I got a good job and a Cadillac out of lighter skin.”
“Who you are chases you, is what I think,” Melinda said. “I don’t believe there is anywhere you can go where you’ll stay white. We decide to be black, that doesn’t work out well either, even if we are driving a Cadillac.”
“I’ll play the game as long as I can get away with it,” I said. “How do you think it works we play the other side? We’re caught in the middle and squeezed from the sides.”
“I guess so.”
“You got to play it too, baby. The game is already set, and the winning side has lighter skin.”
“Our own brother doesn’t have anything much to do with us, Ed. Maybe in your case, nothing to do with you at all, and you like it that way. We don’t even know him. Not really. Mama loves him, but she doesn’t want us tainted with his blackness.”
“She’s just being realistic. I don’t like it that way, but it’s for the best for all of us, so that’s how we play it. Up north, they don’t have the signs on water fountains and above toilet doors that say Colored, but they got places they can’t go because they’re dark-skinned. It may be better in Detroit, but it’s not like it ought to be, and me and you, we don’t have to worry about that. We can go anywhere and do anything we want without a Green Book to guide the way. It may not be right, baby sister, but that’s how it is. Life doesn’t have balance, just extremes.”
“I’ll see you, Ed. But not too soon, okay?”
Melinda got out. I watched her go up the steps and into the house trailer. I put the pistol back in the glove box, slid over behind the wheel, and pulled away from there.
(16)
When I got back to my place, there was a note stuck in the door handle. I pulled it out and looked at it under the porch light.
COME BY AND SEE ME TOMORROW. AT THE DRIVE-IN. FIVE P.M. WEAR TIGHT PANTS. N.
I went inside and got myself a beer out of the refrigerator and then I thought about Mama and tonight and how I had enjoyed hitting Cecil with that blackjack and how right he was about how mad I was, and about how I was so mad it was like I wanted to hit myself. He was just being a smart-ass, but he was righter than he realized.
It ran through my mind about Mama in her bedroom smoking cigarettes and trembling from lack of booze, looking up at me, her disappointment of a son who ought to be doing better because his black-skinned brother was doing well, and he didn’t even have the advantage of looking white. I thought about Melinda, how smart she was for her age, what she could learn if she could get out of that trailer, get educated, find a decent job.
I put the beer back and got an ice tray and emptied it into a plastic bowl and used some of the ice to half fill a glass. I poured iced tea from a pitcher into the glass. I had melted about a half a cup of sugar in the pitcher when I’d made the batch and it was hot. It was some damn sweet stuff.
I filled the tray with water and put it back in the freezer part of the refrigerator, put the pitcher back where I got it, then went and sat down on the couch. I thought about getting up and turning on the TV set but didn’t do it. All of a sudden, I felt tired and worn out and unreal.
I sipped the tea slowly. It was good and cold and it took some of the heat out of me. Heat from the weather and from what I had done. When the tea was all gone, I read Nancy’s note again, then went to the bedroom. I took off my sports coat and felt the blackjack sliding around in the coat pocket. I took it out and saw that it had blood on it. I washed it in the bathroom sink, watched as bits of red went down the drain. I felt a little sick seeing that.
I dampened a rag and turned my coat pocket inside out, and as I suspected, there were drops of blood in it. I used the damp rag with cold water to clean it. I got most of it out. There was a little darkened stain left, but it didn’t go through onto the outside of the coat. I put the rag away and hung the coat up in the closet.
I stripped off naked and got in bed. I pulled the sheet and blanket up to my chest. I left the bedside lamp on so I could read. I picked up a book I had been reading off the nightstand, then put it down. I didn’t want to read.
I thought about seeing Nancy tomorrow and I could almost smell her.
(17)
Next morning, I felt sluggish. All night long I had awakened from dreams about that man I had hit with the blackjack. I couldn’t decide if I was waking up because I was sick over what I had done or if I was excited about it. After I showered, I looked in my closet and picked my best outfit. I didn’t have any tight pants. What I had was a dark pair that had a nice crease. I wore a light blue shirt with a blue and red sports coat and no tie and a blackjack in the pocket. My shoes were black and well shined. I had learned how to shine shoes from my father. He had shined shoes for a living, at least some of the time, in a barbershop in Gladewater, Texas. He had his own stand in there. When I thought about that, I felt a lot like an impostor. I’d told Dave my father had died when I was young and that he had been an engineer.
I stood in front of the mirror.
I looked like a used-car salesman. I looked like one every day, but that day the realization landed on me like pigeon shit.
I wanted to look like what I wanted to be: A man who owned a Cadillac and might own a drive-in theater and a pet cemetery where maybe you didn’t throw the pets in the woods. Someone with a good-looking blonde on his arm that made other men turn their heads and look.
I decided then and there, after work, I would go over to James’s Men’s Wear and buy myself some nice clothes. I had enough money for that. I had enough money for a lot of things, but I wouldn’t have minded a lot more of it. Mama always said money made you glow, and right then, I didn’t glow.
When I got to work that morning, Dave was standing in the lot smoking a cigar. There was a tall man with him wearing a hat and a brown suit.
I got out of the car, and as I was heading to the office, I passed them. I heard Dave giving part of his spiel.
“Man dresses nice like you do, well, you ought to have a car matches the suit. Something makes you stand out when you’re driving along. Something makes you look like what you are. Successful.”
I went on up to the office and hung my coat over the back of a chair and started making coffee. While I was doing that, I looked out the window and watched as Dave walked the man around the lot.
They stopped at a bright green Buick that I knew was actually a pretty good car. It probably wouldn’t fall apart in a week, but the odometer had been turned back by me, and the tires had been shoeblacked to make them look fresher. They had tread, but they weren’t good tires.
After a bit Dave and the man came into the office. I poured Dave and the man a cup of coffee apiece and offered some sugar to them. We didn’t have cream, and I didn’t want to be a waiter.
Dave sat behind his desk and the man sat in front of it.
“So, thing is too,” Dave said, “car has room for your wife and kids, and you still got enough space in there to add a kid.”
“Oh,” said the man, “I think we’re calling in the dogs on the kids. I think two is plenty.”
“I hear that,” Dave said. “Kids are costly, and you want to be able to give them the attention they deserve.”
“We have family days,” said the man. “We go out to the lake and picnic, t
o movies, now and then to a nice restaurant, though no one complains about Dairy Queen.”
“I like a good hamburger, as you can tell,” Dave said and patted his stomach.
They went on a little more, then got down to brass tacks about the contract, and the man sounded like he knew a thing or two, so Dave didn’t try to pull a thing or two.
What I was thinking about was having a wife and a kid and a picnic. Basic American dream, except mine included someone else’s wife and the businesses that went with it.
I sold one car that day and kind of flubbed another sale because my mind wasn’t on it. At the end of the day, as I was putting on my coat, Dave said, “Ed, you do fine, but I tell you, I thought you had that other sale in the bag.”
He had been out in the lot wiping dust off the cars, which for Dave was real work, fat as he was. He had heard me talking to this woman who wanted a car to drive to an out-of-town job four days a week. I talked her up good. She was a little fat lady in a loose dress with flower decorations on it. It was just one step up from a muumuu. I could tell she liked me, liked what she saw, and I tried to work that.
“Just couldn’t close it out,” I said.
“You seemed like you wanted to be somewhere else. You know what I say about that?”
“Yeah. When you’re selling a car, that’s all you do until they sign on the dotted line. It’s not like it’s a magnificent saying, Dave.”
“No, but it’s true.”
He was right. I’d had that sale in my pocket, and through inattention, not answering some simple questions right, not smiling enough, and, in the end, not flirting enough, I had lost it. I was thinking about that new suit and Nancy, that’s what I was thinking about. It would have been nice to have had the sale to afford the suit, but there you have it. I was inattentive.
“I’ll get it next time,” I said.
“Hey, just saying, not complaining. We all have a day when we miss a step. Had a couple come in once, saw the car they wanted right away, a sure sale, and I talked them out of it. Problem was I couldn’t talk them into another one, and there was no going back to the other. I had made it sound inferior to what they were looking for because I could sell them another I could make more money off of. Sometimes you think you’re so good at something, you can outsmart yourself.”
“Guess so,” I said.
I put on my coat and drove over to the suit shop. I looked around for a while and then, with the assistance of the saleslady, I found what I wanted, tried it on, looked in the mirror.
I liked it. I looked like a man that owned a business and didn’t need anyone’s help.
I bought the suit, some shirts to go with it, a couple of ties, and I bought some everyday clothes as well.
I drove home and put on the suit again and stood in front of the mirror for a while, then I put the suit away and picked out a pair of nice dark slacks I had bought and a blue pullover shirt. I laid them out on the bed, went and took a long shower.
I spent extra time combing my hair, which I had let grow out a little bit so there was enough to come back on the sides and the top. For a while after I got out of the military, I wore it cut short, but I had seen the way John Kennedy wore his hair, and I thought I could look a little like him with the right clothes and the right style of hair.
I brushed my teeth and gargled some mouthwash, then drove out to the High-Tone Drive-In.
(18)
You could see the light from the drive-in long before you got to the actual HIGH-TONE sign that made the light. As you drove closer, you saw the sign sticking up above a line of trees that went around a curve in the road. It was pretty tall, and I want to say again that at night it looked like a shiny finger pointing to the heavens, and the light made a gold path through the night sky and lay across the inside of the drive-in entrance and in front of the concession stand like a pool of molten honey.
That light was brighter than the other drive-in lights, the ones from the concession and the ones on the marquee that shone on the black letters that announced a dusk-to-dawn extravaganza with a list of movie titles.
I parked my car on the road and studied that light. I watched it for a time, watched a line of cars going in. I sat there and thought about how much money that was per car. A ticket was cheap, but you add a lot of cars, toss in concession sales, and it could be pretty sweet.
I imagined myself standing right in front of that place, looking up at the sign, and I thought about how I could just walk back to Nancy’s house every night and how it would be my house too.
It was just imagining, but I had been imagining a lot, and the imagining was getting louder, like there was a bass drum thumping behind it.
I drove up and went through the line like everyone else. There was a man in the booth, a nice-looking guy with a small purple birthmark on his cheek. He looked tough as a boar hog.
When he said, “One?,” as if that wasn’t obvious, I said, “Is Mrs. Craig here? I thought I might see her on a bit of business. I sold her a car.”
“You seeing the pictures?”
“No. I just need to see her. She asked for me to come out.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. I’m Ed Edwards. She’ll know.”
“Will she?”
I was starting to get a bit irritated. A line of cars was forming behind me. The car in back of me, full of loud-talking teenagers, honked.
“All right, but I better not find you on the lot.”
“I wanted to sneak into the drive-in, I’d have a better plan than that, pal. I can give up a dollar and not cry about it if that’s your worry.”
“Go on in,” he said, “and pull over in front of the concession.”
There were only a few places to park at the concession. I picked one and got out. I looked up at the big tall screen and the cars that were rambling about, finding places to park beside the speaker posts. That drive-in held a lot of cars.
Inside the concession, I saw Nancy right away. She was behind the counter with a young pimple-faced woman who was handling the popcorn and such. Nancy looked up at me and smiled a little. She didn’t give the full smile much, but when she did, those nice teeth made me wish they were nibbling somewhere on me.
There were several teenagers at the counter, and as I came through the door and stepped aside, more showed up. They were buying hot dogs and popcorn, candy and sodas like a pack of hungry wolves with wallets. Thing like that, depending on the concession’s cut, could add up.
She said something to the girl and came out from behind the counter. She had on a sharp-looking blue top and an ice-blue short skirt and low-heeled, open-toed blue shoes. She said, “Did you bring the car papers?”
“Yes,” I said, playing along with whatever was going on.
“We can talk about it in the office.”
I followed her through an open door by the concession to a small room with a cleared desk, two chairs, and some odds and ends on a couple of shelves. One shelf held a cardboard box of files and a small fan. The fan had a long cord and it was plugged in, but it wasn’t on. I noticed that under her left eye, she was wearing quite a bit of makeup. It had caked a little.
“This is private business, Mr. Edwards. Could you close the door?”
She said that a little loud so it would be overheard. I closed the door.
“Lock it,” she said.
I locked it.
Nancy hiked her skirt over her hips. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. She sat back on the desk and spread her legs.
She knew where I was looking. She smiled at me. This time I got the whole thing, and let me tell you, when she turned it on full-teeth, it was a powerful thing, but not as powerful as what was between her legs.
“I thought it would save time,” she said.
I went to her, unbuckling my belt. She grabbed my crotch and unzipped me, and then she pulled at me, and I went forward and inside her. She grabbed my shoulders, kissed me, wrapped her legs around me.
I was like a st
arving man finally having dinner. I was like a thirsty man with a bucket of fresh-cranked well water. I was like a drowning man reaching for a hunk of debris to float on.
We were breathing heavy, holding in the screams we wanted to make, and it went on and on, and finally she made a kind of grunt and a sigh, and I followed with something similar.
After kissing softly, we separated. I pulled up my pants and took a deep breath. I needed it. She slipped off the desk and pulled her skirt down. It smelled musky in there.
She went behind the desk, opened it, pulled out a box of matches, and struck a few. “Turn on the fan.”
I turned on the fan. It started to rotate. It had grown hot and stuffy in the room.
“Unlock the door.”
I unlocked the door.
We waited there a moment, her standing behind the desk, me on the other side. We were looking at each other.
Her eyelids were heavy; her voice was husky. “I couldn’t wait anymore.”
“I’m glad you couldn’t,” I said.
“I’ve been thinking, thinking a lot.”
“Oh.” I hate to admit it, but I already had some inkling of where this was going, though I was hoping that wasn’t where it was going at all.
(19)
She sat down behind the desk and I pulled the other chair over and sat in front of it and looked at her.
“He’s home.”
“Frank.”
“Yeah. Him. Who else would I mean?”
“How long has he been back?”
“A while. I didn’t think you needed to know until I was sure I wanted to see you. I guess I was always sure, but I tried not to jump at the idea. I knew it could get messy. But now that he’s home, I’m certain of what I figured I was certain of. I hate him.” She touched a finger to her heavily made-up eye. “He did this.”
“He hit you?”
“He always hits me. Usually it’s to the body so it doesn’t show, and he did that too, and then this eye shot. He’s getting careless because he’s getting drunker every time he’s back in.”
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