scrotal skin. As my hand pulled back from its reach, Mrs. Walker laughed out loud.
"Takes you one, child," she said. "They just paper weights. Got rocks in 'em now," and she slapped her leg and laughed again.
I could see where the objects had been sewn back together, and decided to decline, but Ben thought they were cool and took one, turning it over and over in his hands. I kept looking at his face and then at the testicles, trying to figure out what was in his mind. A privately morbid fascination, I decided.
Mr. Walker returned with two wooden trays holding Mason jars of juice, slices of pickled watermelon, and thin rounds of summer sausage. "Here, Pleasure, here's a couple of cookies for you." He winked at Ben, but did not mention where they came from. Mrs. Walker took the cookies and came slowly upright, put one cookie in her lap, and began chewing on the other. She chewed earnestly.
"I heard said you two come by boat," Mr. Walker continued as he gave us the trays. "You must be hungry."
We were, but I wasn't sure about the sausage. I knew what went into sausage on our farm, and I was never very fond of it. But as I watched Mrs. Walker still gumming away at the first cookie, I was reminded that it wasn't polite to refuse an offering of food. I nibbled at the round patty of meat, mixing it well with large bites of pickled watermelon, which was spicy and delicious.
"This watermelon is really good, Mr. Walker," Ben told him.
Mr. Walker smiled at him and said, "White folks knows we knows all there is to knows 'bout melons. Sometimes I'd guess that's all they knows 'bout us." Which I was beginning to think was true. "Where you off to today?" he wanted to know. "Headin' down to the Brazos?"
We explained that we were getting out here, and that we might walk back home and pick up our canoe later with Dad's truck.
"No need for such troubles as that," came the expected reply. "I'll hitch up Jesse and Floe and run you back in the wagon. Would likes to see your dad anyways."
Mrs. Walker still worked that first dry cookie, and when she finished it she reached for a jar of water on a table beside her and took a long drink. Then she examined the other cookie, turning it over in her spidery fingers, and looked up at her husband before speaking. "Price? Where in tarnation did you get these dad-blamed cookies?"
Mr. Walker never looked at Ben as he spoke gently to his wife. "Now, Pleasure, don't be cussin' them cookies. Ben here brung 'em." Mrs. Walker's eyes slowly raised to meet Ben's and each of them smiled apologetically, then she took another small bite of the remaining cookie and began chewing. Her jaws worked with renewed determination.
We stayed and sweated in the little room for nearly an hour, mostly listening while they poured out memories from a long passed youth. After Ben called him Mr. Walker several times, he said that was enough of that. "Call me Price, Ben. And the Misses is Pleasure."
"How come 'Pleasure'?" I asked. "And how did you get your name, Mr. Walker?" I found it difficult to address grown-ups by their first names. Pleasure began, but she didn't get far. Whenever any of us spoke, Price would lean forward on the edge of his chair, drum his fingers on the arms and faintly mouth the speaker's words. A true communicator.
"Well," Pleasure began, "it was in eighteen and ah, well, sixty and nine..."
"Eighteen sixty and eight," Price corrected.
"Uh, huh, and my Momma and her sis, Aunt Inez, they's identic twins, see, and they was birthin' the same damn day on the same damn hour and all, and it was a hot day in July, I guess..." Again Mr. Walker leaned into her conversation.
"July seventeen, eighteen sixty and eight," he said. "They was pupped in the same house 'cause families, they all lives together back then, and pretty soon they got those babies to the wash tub, scrubbed up and all and their tails fluffed, and when they done stop bawlin', no one had no idea which one was whose. 'Cause they was two black-eyed peas in a pod, see, and everyone commenced fussin' over which was whose and what all, and them babies just started bawlin' again and they didn't care one hoot and..."
"Oh, my, no," Pleasure said, her neck stretching out from her frail shoulders. "Just babies wantin' a teat to latch onto, I 'spect, and then Momma, oh that dear Momma of mine, God rest her soul, she said then her and Aunt Inez, they took to arguin' 'bout it too, and it was causin' such a commotion and all, so Aunt Inez she just plumb gives up, and she says, 'Well here, then...'", (and I watched Mrs. Walker pick up a pillow and shove it through the air to Ben, who took it like it was a real baby) "'Takes this one here and be done', and that one was me. And Aunt Inez she snatched up the other baby for herself and said, 'Humph!", and then Momma she said..."
"She said," Mr. Walker interrupted, capping it off, "'It'll done be my PLEASURE...."
"And the name stuck, just like that," Pleasure said as she clasped her hands together.
"That's pretty neat," Ben said. "I like your story. And how about your name, Mr. Walker?"
"Was my daddy's name. Knew him as nothin' else. Said he was born of a slave woman somewheres about eighteen an' forty and it was a hard birthin'."
"They was all hard birthins' back then," Pleasure offered, shaking her head. "Hard now."
"And my grandma, she bled for two days and she finally got tired of that and when there was no more blood, she died. Grandma never told no one who the daddy was and it didn't matter noways. Was on a plantation in Alabam', and they was all just black meat to the overseer. He learnt of daddy and he just snatched him up and held bid on him. And two slave holders had slaves in milk with no baby and they wanted him, and the overseer, he say, 'What price? What price you give me?', and a Mr. Walker say, 'A fair price I'll give; twenty-five dolla' in script for that noisy black bean," and he done bought hisself my daddy. Just a black bean, all right, but Mr. Walker found him a momma with milk and gave him his name, Walker. Called him Price. Brought him up like he was his, 'cept he was still a nigger, but he treat him good and he told him his story, and Daddy told me. That's all I knows."
"That's pretty sad, Mr. Walker," Ben said. "But I like it too. Were you ever a slave?"
The day had grown thin by then, and though I loved their stories, I knew we had to be back to the farm before it got dark. So while the Walkers answered Ben's questions, I picked up our trays and took them into the kitchen where I planned to wash them, if there was any hot water. Water simmered on the old wood cook stove, all right, but my senses reeled at the scene before me. A table just outside the kitchen would have served as a dining area, had there been any need for formality. It laid buried under a mountain of papers, magazines, cereal boxes and crates of empty Mason jars, each still containing a hint of their former contents. There was no unused space. Plates, bowls, cups, saucers, jars, and assorted eating utensils, enough for a sizable hobo banquet, were piled to precarious heights, all more or less encrusted with the dried remains of forgotten meals. Two long tables served as counter tops, two metal washtubs would do for basins, and the cook stove stood between the tables. Each burner cover on the stove, except the one holding the kettle of water, supported stacks of cast iron frying pans, stockpots, saucepans and iron cornbread molds. The visible parts of the stove were covered in a thick armor plating of brown and black char, remnants of those same meals past. And what I took to be a homemade cooler of sorts stood its ground in a corner. A rectangular box of wood and corrugated tin, it was covered by old blankets that had been doused with water from a nearby bucket. A robust fan, balanced on a pedestal stand, pointed at the box, its blades churning in the heat of the room. Though the box was surely intended to cool, it looked more like a functional incubator. Thinking about the sausage, I set the trays amid the confusion, and retreated to the parlor.
Ben got up as I came in and Price rose with him. "We'd better be getting back, Mr. Walker," Ben said, and I could sense the reluctance in his voice. He was truly captivated by these people. "Don't mind walking, you know."
"I'll hear 'nary another word," Price said, and made his way to the kitchen. "Bu
t I'll just get somethin' here for your momma and daddy before I hitch up Bess and Jess."
He fossicked among the Mason jars on the table, found one mostly to his liking, and wiped the rim with the tail of his shirt. Then he picked up a tin can and bent down slowly to the floor where he pulled a tall glass jug out from under the table. A two-foot long rubber hose, crimped by a clothespin, ran through a cork in the jug's neck. "Your daddy likes my dewberry wine," he said with a grin, and then he took off the clothespin, spit a wad of tobacco into the tin can, and sucked on the tube until the wine began to flow. He swallowed a mouthful, then quickly got the hose in the jar and filled it up. Ben and I looked at each other as he screwed a lid down on the jar, and I felt my stomach quiver. "Okay now," he said, "let's get you and that boat of your'n home.
"We're mighty glad you two stopped by and we hopes you'll float down here and see us often. Isn't that right, Pleasure?", and she laughed a toothless laugh and her eyes twinkled behind her heavy wire-rimmed glasses.
"We sure does at that, chillun's. And Ben," she said, drawing herself up and looking him in the eye, her jaws working side to side, "I didn't mean to cuss your dad-blamed cookies."
Price And Pleasure Page 3