Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  Link said, “We will drink first to Bill Hod, then to Bill Shakespeare. The immortals.” He leaned against the bar. Bill obviously thought he was high as a Georgia pine, there was no reason why he should hesitate to present him with further evidence of the advanced state of intoxication he was supposed to be enjoying. He said, “‘How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.’ Bill Hod, who stands behind the bar and Bill Shakespeare who forever sits on my shoulder.” He paused, eyed Bill, repeated, “‘O brave new world, That has such people in’t!’” Then he drained the glass, quickly. “Bill,” he said, “just between friends, and confidentially, of course, absolutely confidentially, have you ever been in love?”

  “Whyn’t you go across the street and get in bed before you reach the cryin’ stage?”

  “What kind of answer is that? Here, Mr. Boss, give me another one of these.”

  “No,” Bill said flatly. “You’re drunk now.”

  “Be damned if I am. One whiskey and soda. That’s all I’ve had. Right here before your eyes. No reefers. I have never smoked a reefer in my whole life long, chum. They stink too bad. Friend of mine took me in one of those joints once. In Harlem. Dark blue lights inside, hellish light. And the cullud folks were all mixed up with the white folks, all groaning and moaning, legs and arms and torsos all mixed up on sofas and on rugs, too. I got one whiff of the interior and I said to my friend: My dearly beloved friend, I promised my dear old whitehaired mother, when I was in knee pants, that if I ever hit a joint that had a stink in it like this one, a stench, a stank, an offense to the nostrils of this kind and nature, I would leave at once and get some clean fresh air. I said: I have a bottle of clean fresh air in my pocket, and I am now leaving, and when I get outside will take said bottle out of my pants pocket, and breathe that clean fresh air until my nose begins to forget the offense, the insult, that has damned near made it stop functioning. I must go immediately for if I linger in this—er, odor, this—er, smell, this—er pollution and corruption one moment longer, I will—er regurgitate—” He smiled sweetly at Bill. “I have not been smoking reefers, old man.”

  “What in hell’s the matter with you then?”

  “If you will be kind enough to refill this tall tall glass, I will tell you. Come, come, señor. No drinkee. No tellee.”

  Bill filled the glass. “Here,” he said. “If this is the only way to get you out of here, for Christ’s sake drink it up fast and get out.”

  Link drank it slowly, sipping it delicately. “Stuff tastes like hell. Not fit for human consumption. Oh, it’s good liquor, Boss Man, but this one followed the first one too fast. I have a delicate stomach, a nervous stomach, Father Hod. My stomach does not like the way this stuff tastes. Neither does my throat. Say,” he said, using the conversational tone that a man uses when he plans to talk a long time, “did you know that F. K. Jackson has a nervous stomach? Imagine an undertaker with a nervous stomach. Partner, can you picture how her stomach must jump when she lays the boys out on the cooling board? Come to think of it, they call themselves morticians, don’t they?” He paused just a little too long, he gave Bill a chance to say something.

  Bill said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “If you’re not drunk, what’s the matter with you?”

  Link grinned at him. “That’s right, we made a pact, didn’t we?” He started walking toward the door, turned, said “Shhh! Don’t tell anybody, friend, but—I’m in love.” He opened the door wide, stepped over the threshold, leaned inside, and let out a rebel yell—long, high in pitch, wild, repeated it until the wild highpitched yelling made the glasses tinkle on the shelves.

  The sound brought Weak Knees running from the kitchen, falling over his feet. Link heard him shout, “Whassamatter, Boss? Who did that in here? Who did that in here? I’ll kill the bastard—”

  Link let the door swing shut, stood outside, on the street, looking up at the sign. The Last Chance. Redorange, harsh redorange, see-it-for-a-block neon sign. And laughed. Because once again he felt as though he could conquer the world. The Last Chance. The Last Chance.

  7

  * * *

  LINK HAD FINISHED EATING his breakfast.

  Abbie Crunch said, “I wish you’d—” stopped, said, “I—” and never finished what she was going to say.

  They both heard the screams that came from upstairs. Link knew by the volume, by the pitch, that these hair-stand-on-end screams, these curdle-the-blood screams could only have issued from the throat of Mrs. Mamie Powther; thinking how aware of her he had become, how familiar with the sound of her voice, that he should recognize it even when lifted in distress.

  Abbie said, “Why—what—” shuddered, took a deep breath and said, “Link—go and see what—”

  He ran up the outside back stairs, ran up them, thinking, Well, perhaps Powther had come hurrying home, in his dark suit, razor crease in the pants, in his black shoes with the mirror shine, had come home, and found Mr. B. Hod in his bed, and had murdered Mr. Hod, and was now murdering Mrs. Powther.

  In the kitchen, upstairs, Mamie Powther was standing on a chair, skirts wrapped around her, held high, wrapped tight around her, so that knees, leg, thighs were exposed. She had red sandals on her feet. No stockings. One hand over her eyes, the other hand holding up the skirts. He thought of a girl wading, a girl with her skirts wrapped around her, skirts lifted, wading. Not good enough, what then? Venus. Why Venus? Goddess. It was the shape of the calf, the swelling of the thigh. Only the Greeks reproduced it like that. Goddess. Hardly. Well, a profane goddess then. Lead us not into temptation. But who would not follow where Mrs. M. Powther’s softfleshed thighs—

  He glanced around the kitchen, looking for an intruder, a robber, an outraged husband. Nothing. Nobody. Dishes piled in the sink. Coffee cup on table.

  He said, “What—”

  “That way—” she didn’t point, she just said, “That way. Oh, get him, get him, get him—” One hand clutched at the skirts, the other covered her eyes.

  He went all through the apartment. Nothing. He stayed longest in the Powthers’ bedroom, recognizing it immediately because of the cupids that adorned the bed. He grinned at the cupids, saluted them, thinking, Friends, Fellow Travelers, Eyewitnesses, Comrades-in-Arms. Hail, Cupids!

  He returned to the kitchen. “What was it?” he asked.

  She took her hand away from her eyes. “Oh, it’s you—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Who went—er—that way?”

  “Mouse.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, skirts still held up, wadded up, had she forgotten them or—

  “You mean a small four-legged gray creature, relative of the rat?” Sometimes Dumble Streeters gave choice, highly appropriate names to friends and enemies. “Mouse” could be a second-story man.

  “A mouse,” she said, dropping the skirts.

  So she really did forget about them. I wish you hadn’t though, Mamie Powther, after all a man can dream, he thought, and said, “Well—uh—no mouse—anywhere. He was probably as scared as you were.”

  He held out his hand, intending to help her down from the chair. She got down by herself, gave her skirts a shake, patted them in place.

  She smiled at him, a great big flashing heartwarming smile, and said, “Thanks. I’m all right now. Only thing I’m scared of is mice. I been tellin’ Powther to set a trap—”

  The instant he re-entered Abbie’s kitchen she said, “What—”

  “Mice,” he said. “A mouse ran across the kitchen floor. She’s afraid of ’em.” Not men. Mice. Not afraid of men because if he had stayed up there another five minutes, he and the cupids on the headboard of the bed would have been better acquainted. He would have been able to study the cupids, just lift his eyes and study them—wings, behinds, grapes, et al. Invitation in Mrs. M. Powther’s
eyes, in the curve of her mouth, invitation cordially, consciously, graciously extended.

  Abbie said, “You mean to tell me that that woman, a big woman like that, is afraid of mice?”

  “Yeah. She was standing on a kitchen chair, her hand over her eyes, screaming her head off. Because she’s afraid of mice.”

  “How perfectly ridiculous,” Abbie said, anger in her voice.

  “One man’s meat, Miss Abbie,” he said lightly and went on across the street to open up the bar for the day, thinking that Abbie’s voice when she said “that woman” had the same tone as when she referred to Bill Hod as “that man.”

  He wedged the door so that it would stay open. It would be two hours before Old Man John the Barber stalked in for his morning beer. By that time the place would be aired out, cleaned up, slicked up.

  While he worked, opening cases of liquor, cleaning out the beer pumps, polishing the bar, he thought, not about the girl, the girl who called herself Camilo Williams, not about Mamie Powther, not about China, but about The Last Chance.

  When he was eight years old, and he always went back in his thoughts to the time when he was eight, The Last Chance fascinated him, with the special fascination of something evil, forbidden, mysterious. He tried to imagine what it looked like inside and couldn’t. Would there be vats of beer and strong drink? When men drowned in the strong drink and the beer, did they wade in by themselves, or did other men put them in the vats and hold them there until they drowned? He couldn’t picture it in his mind, though Abbie was always talking about the place, using the phrase “drowned in drink.”

  Eight years old. And when he and Abbie set out for church on Sunday mornings, Bill Hod, who owned this mysterious place, was always standing across the street, sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, a white bulldog lolling on the sidewalk beside him. The kids on the block said the dog had a gold tooth. Link didn’t quite believe this. He wanted to. But it sounded like the kind of stuff kids told you just to see if you were fool enough to fall for it. He didn’t ask Hod about the dog’s gold tooth because he knew that Abbie wouldn’t like it if he talked to Hod. Though as far as Link could see, there was nothing about Hod’s appearance that suggested he drowned his customers as part of the day’s work.

  The other man who lived at The Last Chance was quite extraordinary. He was a short darkbrownskinned man and he walked with a shambling, shuffling, unsteady gait, like the off-balance walk of a drunk. He wore white cotton pants and a dark brown sweater buttoned all the way up to the neck, and a dusty out-of-shape felt hat jammed on his head, not tilted, but set square on his head and pulled down. The only change he made in this outfit was in winter when he added an overcoat to it; and he didn’t button the coat so when the wind blew, as it often did, straight from the river, the coat ballooned away from his body, and Link could see the brown sweater buttoned up to the neck just as it was on a hot day in August.

  He saw the man with the funny walk every Saturday when he went to market with Abbie. Those trips to the stores, especially to Davioli’s fruit and vegetable store, were deeply satisfying. He was in love with Abbie in those days, he wanted to be with her all the time, and though he called her Aunt Abbie when he spoke to her, he called her Abbie in his mind because he thought it a beautiful name and liked to say it. Eight years old. So he was going to marry her when he grew up, though he did not know exactly how this would be accomplished, in view of the fact that she was already married. Anyway he was always going to live with her.

  When they went shopping, he carried the market basket, swinging it back and forth, delighting in the quietness of the street, in the quick brisk way Abbie walked, in the sound of her voice, in the fact that she called Mr. Davioli “Davioli,” leaving off the Mister, clearly establishing the social difference between them. She referred to Davioli’s store as the greengrocer’s, putting together two words that didn’t belong together, that no one else used, and yet when he thought about it, the words belonged together even though they sounded strange.

  They always saw the same people, saw them almost always in the same places, on those Saturday morning trips. Abbie said that even though they didn’t know each other, the fact that they were all of them dressed, heads combed, teeth brushed, had had breakfast, and were out on the street, at eight o’clock when the rest of Dumble Street still lay abed, faces sticky with sleep, heads tousled, there was always the possibility of their becoming acquainted, because this business of early rising was something they all had in common.

  Sometimes they met the man with the funny walk when he was coming away from Davioli’s, carrying two big brown paper bags, celery always sticking out of the top of one of them. He carried the bags in front of him, close to his chest, his arms around them, and the dark green leaves of the celery came right under his nose. By half closing one eye Link could almost convince himself that this was a horse or a cow coming down the street, head deep in meadow grass, and not a man. It was the kind of celery that Abbie didn’t like and whenever Davioli tried to sell it to her, she shook her head, saying, “It’s too coarse, Davioli.”

  One morning he and Abbie reached Davioli’s store earlier than usual or else the dark brown man was late. Anyway, Abbie was selecting oranges and Link was wandering around enjoying the fruity smell, thinking what a pleasant place this store was. There was a small stove in the middle of the floor that gave off just enough heat to keep the vegetables from freezing and made for comfort on a cold windy morning. There were chairs where you could sit down and look out on Franklin Avenue and the radio was always playing good and loud and there was the smell of Davioli’s coffee—all of which made the store like the inside of a house. Davioli kept a big white enamel coffee pot on the stove, and while he waited for the customers to make up their minds, he drank coffee from a thick brown mug and took big bites out of a doughnut.

  Davioli handed him the bag of doughnuts every Saturday and said, “It’s okay, Mis’ Crunch. Boys is always hungry. I know everything about the young fellers. The old woman and me made four boys. Now you just eat up, young feller.”

  Link was munching on a doughnut, hoping that this morning Davioli’s nephew, the one he called the Idiot, would come in the store before he and Abbie left. Abbie said he really wasn’t an idiot, just a trifle slow mentally, and that Davioli was such a quick-moving, fast-talking little man that the slow speech, the slow movement, of his big fourteen-year-old nephew irritated him. Link had never seen the Idiot close to but he always hoped that he would. Sometimes they met him peddling his bike slow, slow, up Franklin Avenue, his mouth open, looking as though he were asleep on the bike.

  He was thinking about the Idiot when he heard Davioli say, “Excuse me a minute, Mis’ Crunch. I gotta get some vegetables outta the back for Weak Knees.”

  He turned and saw Davioli and the man with the shambling funny walk go toward the back room of the store. He thought, Weak Knees, Weak Knees, that’s his name and it suits him; it matches the way he walks. Weak Knees.

  Davioli said, “Here’s your mushrooms and I got ye some pink grapefruit and a basket of them Cortlands. I’ll send them apples over by the Idiot if he ever gets his big can outta bed and here’s a coupla bunches of pasqualey and there’s kale and some of them oranges ye wanted, and the mother finocchio.”

  Weak Knees said, “Check,” and came out of the back room carrying two big bags. He put the bags down on a chair. “I forgot the garlic. Davie, you got fresh garlic?” fingered through the garlic on the stand, said, “These are as dried up as my—” stopped abruptly and tipped the shapeless dusty felt hat, saying, “Good morning, ma’am, didn’t see you,” to Abbie. Then, “How’re they runnin’ this mornin’, young feller? How’re they runnin’? Yours out in front?” to Link.

  He had a funny highpitched voice but Link found the tone of it pleasing. He had sounded exactly as though he were talking to someone his own age. He said, “Fine, sir,” and wondered what Weak Knees was talk
ing about. He noticed that Abbie didn’t say good morning, she looked away, and nodded, well, half nodded, half bowed, in the general direction of a big mound of potatoes, and started picking out some small ones though they had enough potatoes at home to last at least another week.

  When they left the store, Weak Knees was just ahead of them. Link remembered thinking, The trouble is his legs are crooked and they’re getting more and more crooked as he goes along. One leg suddenly gave way. It just doubled up and Weak Knees almost fell. He was way off balance and as he strove desperately to straighten up, he seemed to have fifty legs, all of them completely out of control, his weight first on one and then the other, the leg he tried to stand on buckling and as that leg straightened itself out, the other leg went under. It was like a dance, a crazy kind of dance. Link stood still, watching him. Weak Knees made a final dreadful effort to stand erect and both bags went out of his arms, fell on the sidewalk, split, broke open, oranges, grapefruit, kale, celery, mushrooms, lettuce rolled in every direction.

  Weak Knees said, “Oh, God damn that crocus sack anyway. God damn—” He looked back over his shoulder, brushed at something that Link couldn’t see, muttering, “Get away! Get away, Eddie!”

  He turned and looked, too, saw no one. Looked for a wasp, a bee, a mosquito, decided that it must be a person, because there weren’t any insects anywhere nearby, besides no one would try to nudge a mosquito away, and Weak Knees was now making a nudging motion with his elbow, saying, “God damn it, Eddie, get away. Get away.”

  Abbie said, “Come along, Link.”

  He didn’t move. He said, “Let go my hand, Aunt Abbie. I want to help him pick his stuff up.”

  Abbie tightened her grip on his hand and because he loved her, though it often meant leaving something exciting and new and very puzzling, like this man—this Weak Knees who was still muttering, talking to some unseen person, poking at the person with his elbow—he followed the tug and pull of her hand, even matched his gait to hers, so that they moved away from Weak Knees and the scattered fruit and vegetables, quickly.