by Mary Monroe
Oscar was doing pretty good for a man who had dropped out of school in the second grade. His field hands, Jerome Fisher and Amos Cobb, had been helping him run his farm as far back as I could remember. He grew corn, watermelons, and other produce. And since most white folks didn’t like to see us doing too good, he sold his crops only to colored folks.
Me and Willie Frank dropped off three gallons of moonshine that Oscar had ordered to serve at his next poker party. We hadn’t planned on staying long, but he kept bugging us to have a drink with him, so we did. Sometimes he was so cranky, folks didn’t like to visit him. Whenever they did, he went out of his way to get them to stay as long as possible. He loved to talk, and he always had something interesting to blab.
“I recently lucked up on me some sweet goodies,” he let out with a smug grin. Oscar was kicked back in a rocking chair, facing us, with a flyswatter in his hand and a toothpick dangling from his lip.
“You must have come into some mighty big money,” Willie Frank said, nudging me with his elbow. Me and him was sitting on Oscar’s living-room couch.
“Nope. I ain’t had to pay nothing for it, and it’s some of the best. See, that siddity geechee that live down the road came here last week and talked me into a game of poker. Well, I fixed his tail. When I got him good and drunk, I switched his cards with one of my special decks, the kind that guarantees I win,” Oscar gloated, winking one of his ratty eyes.
A little voice in my head told me that before I got in another poker game, I needed to mark me a deck of cards.
“Good for you,” Willie Frank said, with a thumbs-up. “How much did you take him for?”
“He didn’t have no money, but he had something just as good.” Oscar paused and looked from me to Willie Frank, grinning like a clown. “I got me some new tires for my tractor, three hoes, a shovel, a pickax, and the top-of-the line plow I been wanting for years. Oomph!”
“Ooh-wee. You did do all right.” I grinned, rubbing my hands together. “You better keep that stuff hid real good. Branson got a heap of folks always looking for something to swipe.”
Oscar waved his hand. “Pffft! I ain’t worried about nobody taking nothing from me. I had Jerome help me put them new tires on my tractor yesterday. The rest of the stuff is in my barn, up under a pile of hay and some old horse blankets, until I get ready to use it. Jerome and Amos is the only ones that know about it.” Oscar let out a mighty burp and stood up. “Y’all excuse me for a minute. I need to go see a man about a horse. My bladder is about to bust wide open.”
As soon as Oscar was out of earshot, Willie Frank tapped my shoulder. “If this ain’t a opportunity for us, I don’t know what is,” he whispered. “Anybody fool enough to blab about the stuff he got by cheating and where he got it hid don’t deserve to keep it.”
“You right. Especially after things didn’t work out when we tried to pull that scam on Cleotis. Stealing back liquor that we done already sold don’t sound like nothing I want to try again. But Oscar just answered our prayers to find another good score to make up for Cleotis.”
We heard Oscar’s heavy feet walking back toward the living room and him huffing and puffing, like his trip to the toilet had wore him out. He flopped back into his chair with a groan. “Where was we?” he panted.
“I was about to say, you shouldn’t have told your field hands where you put them things at. They might up and decide to run off with it,” I warned.
“I had to tell them. I couldn’t tote that stuff by myself, so I needed them to help me get it home and hid! I ain’t worried about Jerome running his mouth. Amos is a slow wit and a alcoholic, though, and I done told him twice to keep his mouth closed if he want to keep his job. They been working for me going on ten years and ain’t stole nothing from me yet, so I trust them.” Oscar coughed and then hawked into a dingy handkerchief. “Y’all want another drink?” he asked, looking at my empty cup.
“Um, no. We have to haul ass. We got other orders to drop off,” Willie Frank explained, nodding at me.
“Yup, that’s right. And we expect a big crowd tonight, so I need to get home and help Yvonne get the house ready,” I added, already moving toward the door. “We’ll stay longer the next time.”
“Good. Willie Frank, you sure put your foot in this batch of moonshine. My head is spinning, and I can’t hardly keep my eyes open,” Oscar chuckled and then yawned.
“You go on and take a nap, then. We’ll let ourselves out,” Willie Frank advised. “But before we go, can I go get a glass of water?”
“Go on. You know where the kitchen is at.” Oscar belched and waved Willie Frank toward the back of the room. “Y’all drive careful, and don’t run over none of my chickens. Next time I won’t drink much, so I can stay woke and chitchat with y’all a little longer. Bye, y’all.” He stood up and starting shuffling down a short, dim hallway, already taking off his stiff plaid shirt and yawning and stretching his arms above his head.
We drove just a few yards down the road and parked. We waited about fifteen minutes before we walked back to Oscar’s property. We went straight into his barn. The plow and all them other goodies was right where he said he’d hid them. I was amazed. I knew a lot of other farmers who would put out some sweet money to own such nice equipment.
“Before we do anything, let’s creep back into the house and make sure he ain’t playing possum,” Willie Frank suggested in a low tone.
I followed him to the back door, which he had made sure was unlocked when he went to get a glass of water. Once we got in the kitchen, we tiptoed toward the living room. Oscar had three bedrooms, so we didn’t know which one to look in. His loud snoring led us to the right one. I cracked open the door and seen him belly-up in his bed.
“That fool is dead to the world,” I whispered.
“Yeah, but for how long? We need to do our business lickety-split,” Willie Frank whispered back.
“You go get the truck, and I’ll keep a eye on him,” I said.
“What if he wake up before I get back?”
“I’ll tell him we seen a couple of suspicious-acting characters heading this way when we was leaving, and we just came back to make sure he was all right. Now, you hurry up and go get the truck.”
It didn’t take but a few minutes for Willie Frank to get back. He parked behind the barn, and we loaded up the equipment. It was one of the easiest jobs we’d ever pulled. It gave us a good rush, but we still smoked some rabbit tobacco during the ride back down the road. We was feeling so good, we didn’t want it to end. So, we stopped off at Aunt Mattie’s house. Her girls was glad to see us. But since we didn’t have a lot of time or money to spare, all we got was blow jobs.
CHAPTER 19
YVONNE
I DIDN’T BELIEVE JOYCE AND ODELL’S MARRIAGE WAS AS PICTURE-perfect as she made it out to be. Maybe the real reason she worked during the summer every year was to have something to do to keep her mind off all the time he spent with his ailing daddy. And that had started to sound mighty suspicious to me.
According to the story they had told us, a few weeks after they got married, Odell started spending a lot of his free time with the old man. Odell’s stepmother didn’t like Joyce, so she went with him only every now and then. His daddy’s brain was going to mush real fast, so Odell had gradually started spending more time with him. If he was as bad off as Odell had people thinking he was, he should have been dead by now.
Thirty minutes after I got back home from making hush puppies and visiting with Joyce, I started feeling kind of lonesome. I didn’t know none of the other neighbors well enough yet to drop in on them, so I ended up going back to Joyce’s house. The chores she had mentioned must not have been too important, because she was reading a book when I walked in. She seemed happy to see me again so soon.
“I’m as pleased as I can be that you came back. After you left, I got so bored, I wanted to scream,” she admitted, setting the book on the coffee table. I would have felt better if she had told me she was pleased I�
�d come back because she was lonely. I didn’t like to think of myself as something people turned to when they was bored. I hoped I wouldn’t regret coming back.
“What about your chores and visiting your parents?”
“Huh? Oh, I’ll do chores tomorrow, and I don’t really feel like dealing with Mama and Daddy, after all.”
I dropped down on the couch, and Joyce rushed into the kitchen to get us some elderberry wine. Before I had time to swallow my first sip, she got on the subject of her great life. She focused on her work the first few minutes. She had already told me so much about her job, I could probably do it myself with my eyes closed. Every time I steered the conversation toward me, she steered it back to her.
“Sometimes I still can’t believe I’ve been married for more than five years now. Lord knows what I would be doing if I was still single. My life had been so miserable and empty before I met Odell.” She smiled from ear to ear. Then, all of a sudden, she got a sad look on her face. “I don’t tell too many folks, but several of the men I dated before I got married treated me real bad.”
I was surprised to hear that, and just as surprised to hear that she’d had “several” other men before Odell. “Did any of your used-to-be boyfriends ever beat you up?”
“Good gracious, no. But they hurt me in other ways that were painful. They would make love to me, and then I wouldn’t see them again until they wanted to do it again. One had the nerve to tell me that he wasn’t the marrying kind. A few weeks later, he married a woman from my church.” Joyce gave me a sorry look and asked, “Has any man ever beat you?”
“Girl, my daughter’s daddy used to beat me for sport. After him, almost every man I got involved with was violent.”
“Milton too?”
“Oh no. When I told him how the others had treated me, he promised he would never lay a hand on me. And he ain’t.”
“It’s good to know that Milton’s got at least one good quality.”
Joyce’s last comment made me cringe. I decided to say something that I thought would distract her so she wouldn’t go off on a rant about my man. “You are such a lucky woman. You got a dream job, a dream house, and a dream husband.” The moment them words left my mouth, I realized that the last thing I needed to be talking about was wonderful Odell. She ran with it.
“I know how lucky I am. I suspect that every woman I know would trade places with me in a heartbeat if they could,” she practically swooned. “And I’m so grateful for all my blessings. Especially Odell.”
It ruffled my feathers when I had to listen to Joyce heap praises on Odell over and over and over. She made him sound like such a prize, I wondered what my life would be like if I had a man like him.
“Odell is so much more thoughtful than other men. That’s why I don’t have a problem turning over most of my paycheck to him every payday. If I had to take care of our finances, we’d be in a lot of trouble.” Joyce laughed and clapped her hands together. “Running all over town to pay utility bills and keep track of how much we have in the bank would be too much of a hassle for me. I need to focus on my job, keep an eye on my parents, and give Odell the attention he deserves.” She suddenly steered the conversation in a totally different direction: my children. I had already told her why they wasn’t with me. “I sure would like to meet your kids someday.”
That brung a smile to my face. “I got a letter from my aunt last week. She wrote that they might bring them to visit me in the next week or so. If they don’t come on a weekend, they’ll come during the week.”
“Aren’t your kids in school? Or have they dropped out already, like you and Milton?”
I could feel my insides knotting up. I should have knowed she would say something like that. “Aunt Nadine and Uncle Sherman would never let them kids drop out of school.”
“I’m glad to hear that somebody in your family has enough sense to go in the right direction.”
“The school my kids go to is going to be having some repairs done on their water pipes, so they’ll be shutting down for a few days soon.”
“Do you ever go visit them?”
“It’s too hard to get somebody to take me to Mobile and back. If I take the bus, I’d have to transfer four times coming and going, so it could take five or six hours each way.”
“Well, whenever the kids do come, I’ll help you entertain them. If it’s during the week, I’ll even take off from work.”
I gasped. “Joyce, that would be so nice. If I have a little extra money, we’ll take them to Mosella’s for lunch—”
Joyce cut me off so fast, it made my head spin. “Don’t you worry about that!” she gushed. “You won’t have to spend a plugged nickel. Everything will be on me. We can swing by the store and let the kids pick out whatever they want. Odell is a fool for the young kids that drop in, and he always has a lot of play-pretties in stock.” She abruptly stopped talking, and within seconds, her giddy demeanor shifted to gloom. “Now, I hope you don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way.”
Whenever somebody told me that, I did, anyway.
She went on. “I know you love your babies. I hope they won’t resent you when they finally find out you are their mother, after being lied to for so many years. I know I’ve mentioned it to you before, but I can’t say it enough. I still think they are better off with caring, settled-down people, like your aunt and uncle, instead of being with you or tucked away in the orphans’ asylum.”
“I agree with that. That’s why I didn’t make a fuss when they decided to keep them,” I mumbled. At the same time, my heart felt like it was breaking into a million little pieces.
“Good! God has His reasons for not allowing some women to raise children.”
There was no need for her to add that last hurtful remark. And I didn’t waste no time turning the tables on her. “I’m sure He got a good reason for not blessing you with no kids . . .”
“I’m going to keep praying for some, anyway,” she said in a feeble tone, with a miserable expression on her face.
Because of the comment Joyce had made about my children being better off with my aunt and uncle, her offer to help me show them a good time threw me for a loop. That was the only reason I didn’t feel too offended. But the next subject I picked to discuss was as far away from our relationships with men and children as I could get: the weather.
“I think it’s fixing to rain.”
Joyce glanced out the window and nodded. “It sure looks that way.”
“I’d better get home and make sure my windows is closed. I’ll see you later, Joyce.”
* * *
The sky had looked like a gray blanket when me and Milton got up this morning at a few minutes before eight. After I got home from Joyce’s house a little while ago the sun came out and it looked like it was going to be a nice warm day, after all.
Willie Frank dropped Milton off a few minutes after one o’clock. I was disappointed that he hadn’t caught no fish, because I had planned to fry some for our lunch today. A few minutes after we had gobbled up one double-decker hog-headcheese sandwich apiece, he went out to mow our lawn. A couple of times when I looked out the window, he was at the front edge of our yard, leaning over the fence, laughing and chatting it up with neighbors passing by.
We’d been at our new address about four months now, and each day was better than the last. Moving to such a nice area had really lifted our spirits, especially Milton’s. In our old location, he used to get moody on a regular basis. It bothered him that other folks had more than us. Having a friend like Odell had done a lot for his self-esteem. It seemed like they got closer by the day. I believed that if Milton continued to spend time with Odell, he would eventually be just as well turned out and refined.
By 5:00 p.m., I had fried ten pounds of green tomatoes, broiled three dozen chicken feet, and baked four dozen hush puppies. On top of all them goodies for our guests to eat, we had several gallon jars of pickled pig feet.
People started knocking on our door at
6:00 p.m. sharp, and it wasn’t long before our house was packed to the gills. We had more guests than we had expected. One reason was that it was Aunt Mattie’s birthday. She refused to tell anybody her age and would admit only to being a teenager when Lincoln freed the slaves. Instead of celebrating her big day in her own place, the way she usually did every year, this time she decided to pay us a visit. She brung all five of the women that worked for her.
Aunt Mattie had on a long pink dress with a matching shawl. The thick black hairnet covering her head could have been mistook for a spider’s web. But her workers was dressed to kill in tight, low-cut blouses and skimpy skirts with designs that included big loud colored flowers, stripes, and polka dots.
The men that had come without their own women couldn’t stop pestering the prostitutes. Every time I turned around, somebody was grabbing a titty or squeezing a butt. When Aunt Mattie started giving them men the fish eye, they calmed down. But that wasn’t the only thing that scared them off. Almost everybody in Branson had heard the rumor about the hatchet job folks claimed she’d done on her husband and about how she’d buried him in her backyard. That didn’t discourage Willie Frank at all. He was all over the place, hugging, kissing, and groping the prostitutes, and some of the regular women, too. He visited Aunt Mattie’s poon palace at least once a week, and so did a whole lot of other white men, mainly the businessmen and the bootleggers. But the only other place Willie Frank paid attention to colored women was at our house.
“Don’t touch the merchandise, fool!” Aunt Mattie barked, slapping Willie Frank’s hand when he attempted to grab another titty. She was so drunk, every time she tried to get up off the couch, she fell back down. “My girls don’t give out no free samples. You can look all you want, but you can’t touch. If you want to have some fun tonight, you got to pay your two dollars like everybody else. Shoot!”