by J. J. Murray
He cackles. “Miss Chloe’s an alcoholic, then?”
Here we go. “No. She was drinking ice water.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe rolls his eyes. “Bet it was some corn liquor.” He wraps the bandanna around his head, looking every bit like an old gangbanger. “Has to be corn liquor to hook up with you.” He steps next to Chloe. “You a rabbit, girl?”
“What?” Chloe asks.
“I said, are you a rabbit?”
“No,” she says. “Are you?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe smiles. “I ain’t no rabbit, but you are. You’re scared as a rabbit. You shoulda seen yourself jump out there.”
“It’s not every day a skinny old man grabs your ankle for no good reason,” Chloe says.
“That’s right, girl,” I whisper. “You tell the old moustacheeating gangbanger a thing or two.”
I look up again. I’ll bet Mr. Shaggy White Man could eat his own moustache. He’s still looking? He has only gotten to the Rs. At least he’s methodical, though it would have been easier for him to run a simple search on the computer to spit out some titles.
“Who said I didn’t have a good reason?” He cackles once, then gives Chloe the evil eye. “Now what you doin’ with Robbie?”
“I, uh—” Chloe starts to say.
“He ain’t nothin’ special. Just cuz he’s college educated don’t make him special. Just cuz he got a good job over in Roanoke sellin’ houses to uppity colored folks don’t make him special.
Two books in a row? What is so special about this place? As far as I can tell from working at this library, Roanoke is where literature went to die!
Just cuz he got himself a nice house and two bathrooms don’t make him special. Just cuz he’s thirty and don’t have no wife and kid don’t make him special. He ain’t nothin’ much to look at neither. Takes after his daddy, who was the ugliest man who ever lived, and I oughta know cuz I’m his daddy’s daddy.”
Chloe looks at me as if to say, “Is any of this true?”
It is, sort of. Daddy isn’t a pretty man, but he isn’t ugly. To me. And anyway, I think I take more after my mama than him.
“I tried to leave Robbie’s daddy outside in the snow one day, but damn if he didn’t keep on comin’ back into the house. I even drove him down the road aways.” He plucks hair from his chin and looks at it. “He come back the very next day, can you believe it? Then I kept him in the house, made him stay in his room till he was…eighteen, I think. Didn’t want him to scare the neighbors, don’t you know.”
Chloe only blinks rapidly. What she must be thinking.
“Run, girl, run!” I whisper, a little too loudly. I look up and see Mr. Shaggy White Man juggling several more books between the R and W stacks near the window. He won’t be long now, and just when this book was pulling me in. As ludicrous as this novel is, it’s growing on me…like kudzu!
“How is your ugly-ass daddy anyway, Robbie?”
“Daddy’s fine,” I say.
“He still got that fool worm farm?”
“Yes.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe cackles and gets right up in Chloe’s face. “Robbie’s ugly daddy has a worm farm, and everybody thinks that I’m the crazy one. He got a couple million of ’em copulatin’ and fornicatin’ down near the lake. You wanna meet crazy and ugly, you go on down there.”
Chloe is looking very much like a scared rabbit now. Time to rescue her. “Uh, yeah, Grandpa Joe-Joe, we’d better be going.” I turn Chloe toward the car. “It was good seeing you again, Grandpa Joe-Joe.”
“No the hell it wasn’t,” he says, and he cackles. “You got nice ankles, Chloe. Get yourself a new name, and you’ll be all right.”
Chloe turns and stops. “What name should I get?”
Grandpa Joe-Joe blinks. He’s not used to someone talking back. “Bess. Bess is a good name, a good solid name for a woman. Change your name to Bess, and you’ll be all right.”
Then Chloe cackles, and it’s almost a perfect mimic of Grandpa Joe-Joe. “Now that’s a name you’d give to a cow.”
Oh…no! Bess was my grandma, Grandpa Joe-Joe’s wife! “Uh, Chloe, um, please don’t—”
“Here, Bess Bess Bess, here Bess Bess Bess, come get yourself milked, Bess Bess Bess,” Chloe says, still mimicking Grandpa Joe-Joe.
Grandpa Joe-Joe’s face drops, and he shoves his hands into his pockets. “Bess was my wife’s name.”
Chloe sucks a sigh through her teeth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“She weren’t no cow.”
Chloe leaves me and takes a few small steps toward Grandpa Joe-Joe. “I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Grandpa Joe-Joe turns away. “She was as big as one, yeah, kinda spotted like one, had these big brown eyes, even had herself a cute tail, but…”
“I’m so sor—”
Grandpa Joe-Joe’s cackle cuts her off. “Robbie, I like this one. She got spunk. I like her a lot. She ain’t no rabbit. You can bring her around here anytime.” He points at the ground at my feet. “And what you doin’ standin’ on my daddy?”
I look down. The ground at my feet doesn’t look any different, but I step back anyway. “I thought he and Grandma were buried under the oak tree out back.”
“I moved ’em,” he says, with a scowl. “If you came around more often, you’d know that.”
Chloe steps quickly back to me. “Let’s go,” she whispers.
“Why’d you move them, Grandpa Joe-Joe?”
He folds his arms to his chest. “So the shit wouldn’t get to them is why. Damn. That’d be a fine howdy-do, wouldn’t it? You’re pushin’ up daisies and then you’re pushin’ up shit. That ain’t no way to spend eternity.”
“Please, Rob,” Chloe whispers.
“Uh, see you later, Grandpa Joe-Joe.”
We turn toward the car and walk quickly through the heavy grass. “Shouldn’t he be in a home?” Chloe asks.
“He is in his home.”
“No, I mean—”
I squeeze her hand. “I know what you meant, and don’t think we haven’t tried. He lasted six hours in a home I had all lined up for him, and I still had to pay for the whole month.”
“What happened?”
We get into the car, and I crank up the air-conditioning. “At first, he seemed okay, you know, flirting with all the ladies, shaking hands with all the men. I took him to his room, got him settled in, and gave him a hug. A few hours later, I get this call. ‘Come get your grandfather,’ they said. ‘He’s hanging outside his window on a sheet.’” I turn to her and pull away from Grandpa Joe-Joe’s. “He tried to escape by knotting sheets into a rope, but he didn’t have enough sheets to reach the ground.”
“They kicked him out for that?”
“Well, he did, um, leave a mess on his mattress.” I stare at her, so she knows what kind of mess I mean without me saying it.
“Oh.” She slips off her sandals and puts them on the floor in the back.
“I’ll buy you some news ones, I promise,” I say.
“Don’t worry about it.” I check out her feet and her short toes, each one the same length as the other. “Don’t stare,” she says. “I know they’re deformed.”
“They’re not. They’re…unique.”
Let’s evaluate our author, J. Johnson. We know the author is fixated on titties, “shelves,” ankles, and feet. This is definitely TMI—too much information.
“Uh-huh.” She rolls down the window, letting the wind ruffle some stray hairs above her cornrows. “Doesn’t he get lonely out there all by himself?”
I can’t say that he has Jimmy now. Jimmy will only show up to tend to his plants, wherever they are. “Grandpa Joe-Joe’s where he wants to be, I guess. He never complains about being lonely. And I visit as often as I can, just about every weekend.”
“You ought to visit him more often, even help him keep his place up.”
“I just don’t have the time.”
“Make the time.”
“Wh
y are you so concerned about my crazy grandpa anyway?”
She laughs. “That man isn’t crazy.”
“You said he was.”
“Well, I was wrong. He’s not crazy at all, Rob. I know crazy, and he isn’t crazy.”
I glance at Chloe. The only people I know who truly know crazy are either psychologists or crazy themselves. Is the crazy pretty girl sitting next to me a crazy crazy pretty girl?
“I was a psychology major at Tech,” she says.
Whew. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. And your grandfather is smart.”
“Even if he thinks you have cute ankles?”
She slaps my thigh. “I do have cute ankles. Anyway, he was just testing me, and I know I passed the test.”
“What test?”
She rolls her eyes. “Where are we going?”
“Huh?”
“Where are you taking me?”
I haven’t been paying attention. I’ve just been driving and thinking about Chloe’s toes and cute ankles and Grandpa Joe-Joe being smart under all that crazy. “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t even know where you live.”
“I live in Roanoke, near Roanoke Memorial. I’m a nurse there.”
Roanoke again. I pick up The Quiet Game and rush through the pages until I see…Roanoke mentioned again. Three out of four books I have to review take place in “The Star City of the South”? But I’ve only been here a year! I’m no expert on this place. But, I suppose I’m the best MAB member for the job.
I hear books fall and look up sharply. Mr. Shaggy White Man is trying to carry too many books, and the more he tries to catch them, the more they slip through his fingers. He’s hunched down and collecting them into a huge stack. Oh, shoot! He’s coming this way, and I just have to finish this chapter.
She turns to me. “The hospital is where I sometimes work with really crazy people, so I know your grandpa’s not crazy at all. Eccentric maybe, a little rude, a little coarse, but not crazy.” She sighs. “Your daddy probably isn’t crazy either.”
“Wanna bet?”
Who’s she kidding? His daddy has a worm farm. He has to be crazy—
“I’d like to check these out.”
Shoot. I close my book and look up at Mr. Shaggy White Man. “We have a policy about how many books a patron can check out at one time, sir.” I count fifteen books! Geez, at around 100,000 words each, he’d have to read 1.5 million words in three weeks! He’s out of his mind.
I’ll bet he has a worm farm.
“Oh. Uh, what’s my limit?” He hands me his library card.
I try not to stare at any part of Mr. Shaggy…whose real name is Jack Browning. I look up from his library card. “Five is the limit.”
“Okay. I guess I’ll have to weed a few of these out.”
And I get the privilege of waiting for you to “weed them out.” Wonderful. It’s one of my many perks.
I watch him flip over and examine the backs of several books, and it’s not a bad collection. He has Margaret Hodge-Walker, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Tannarive Due, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan, Omar Tyree, Eric Jerome Dickey, and Yolanda Joe. He has made decent choices all around. He places Paradise, by Toni Morrison, on the counter, and I scan it. Terry McMillan’s Disappearing Acts follows. Decent novel, but the movie was average. He turns Alice Walker’s The Color Purple over several times before placing it on the counter. Great read, great movie, a good choice. Now he’s debating between James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Richard Wright’s Native Son.
“I want to read this one”—he holds up Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man—“but which one of these two should I get?”
Is he expecting me to make a recommendation? I look closer at this man named Jack. He has tiny lips; freckles (or are they moles?); a severe, sharp nose casting a shadow over a ratty, uneven blond moustache and beard; and more worry lines than my grandma. And he has a little boy? I’ll bet he robbed the cradle. That’s what these “don’t-have-to-work-during-the-holidays” white men do.
“Um,” he says, “which one would you recommend?”
And, of course, he said “you” louder, as if I, a black woman, would know exactly which black book to recommend. I slide his stack around until I find Ernest Gaines’s A Gathering of Old Men. Instead of saying anything, I scan it. I really ought to hit him with June Jordan’s Technical Difficulties, but it’s not in his stack.
“A Gathering of Old Men. I’ve heard of that one.”
Uh-huh. Right.
He collects his books. “Thanks.”
“They’re due back in three weeks,” I say.
He smiles, and finally I have something nice to say about him. He has a nice smile full of straight teeth, a smile that makes his worry lines disappear. “I’ll have them back well before then.”
Uh-huh. Right.
“Are you open on New Year’s Eve?”
I want to get smart with him and say something like, “Me or the library?” but I don’t, partially because he’s not the least bit attractive, but mainly because I do have to work on New Year’s Eve. I have no life. I’ll have to put up a sign behind me that reads “Dateless on New Year’s Eve—Pity Me.” I force a smile. “Yes, we’re open until nine on New Year’s Eve.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.”
He nods once, and he leaves.
He just assumed I’d be here. He’s right, of course, but he assumed I would have nothing better to do than work in a library on New Year’s Eve. And he’s going to read, what, half a million words in two days? His no-ironing, teenaged wife must mind the child so he can do his thing.
I feel a colder draft and look toward the door. He’s coming back in? I gave him his library card, didn’t I?
He steps up to the counter and collects the books he didn’t take out. “I should have put these back.”
I would love for this man to put these books back so I can continue reading, but I want to make sure they’ll be put back in the right places. “I’ll put those back for you.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “I have plenty of time.”
I stand. “Don’t worry about it. You can just leave them on the counter.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”
Don’t you have to be getting on home to your teenaged wife and sneaky brat? “It’s okay. I need to stretch my legs.”
“Oh. Okay.” He smiles. “Bye.”
I don’t say “bye” to him because he has left me with fifteen minutes’ worth of work.
12
Jack
Well, at least I had tried to make her day a little easier. It was the least I could do for all her help. I’ll have to ask Diane to recommend even more books, because A Gathering of Old Men is a crackling good story.
I spend the next two days reading and taking notes mainly on dialect and dialogue from these masters of the written word, and they teach me that love is love, hate is hate, and prejudice is prejudice no matter who writes it. I know I’ll never even come close to their power, but they’ve inspired me.
And then I sketch out an outline, reminding myself to KISS—Keep It Simple Stupid. My setting will have to be good old Roanoke, the same as my first book, and my main characters will have to be an African American woman and a white man because that’s what my editor expects. As for point of view, well, even though her voice was so much stronger than his in the first book, I’m going to try third-person omniscient and see what happens. I’m going to need the simplest of plots, something much less involved, contrived, and coincidental than the first book. It has to be deeper and more serious. It has to mean something to me. It has to speak from my heart.
In other words, it has to be everything the first book was not. I wish my first draft had stood up to the editor’s scrutiny. That story had heart, soul, and emotion.
Heart, Soul, and Emotion—not a bad working title. A little vague, though. Hmm. How about…Greetings from the Melting Pot. Too long. The Melting P
ot Blues? Why not? My editor will change it anyway. At least I like it. I might as well get started:
1: Interrogating the Sponge
Why “the Sponge”?
It’s what Noël called me when we first met. I didn’t have anything to say to her at first—
You rarely did—or do.
True. She said she liked a quiet man, and that I was just a sponge soaking up life.
And now you wring life out when you’re writing.
Something like that. Now hush so I can get going.
“It looks like blood on the floor next to your computer!”
“It’s not blood. It’s—”
“And what about the stains on the walls?”
“I can explain that, you see—”
“And those muddy footprints all over the kitchen leading into the living room. What about those?”
“Oh, that. You see—”
“What happened today, Mister Jefferson? Can you tell me?”
And while you’re at it, tell me. This is supposed to be a romance?
It will be. Give it time.
Arthur Davis Jefferson, with his ashy, calloused, scarred fingers nervously drumming on the table, a cold can of Diet Coke just inches from his grasp, didn’t look at his interrogator.
“I want answers!”
So do I!
Be patient.
Where to begin, wondered Arthur. Where exactly to begin. He looked up and tried to smile, but it came out more as a wince. “It was an…interesting day, to say the least.”
“Uh-huh. And?”
Arthur glanced at the door, willing it to open. His son could explain this better than he could. His son would clear all this up. He’d fill in all the blanks, and because of his age, he’d get mercy, something his interrogator was obviously denying him. Mercy. That’s what Arthur needed. Just a small amount. Sympathy was out, and empathy was a pipe dream. A little mercy.
He reached for the can of Diet Coke, but his interrogator’s dark brown eyes said, “I wouldn’t be doing that just now.” He withdrew his hand, folding it into his other hand prayerfully, hopefully.