by Lewis Nordan
Rufus McKay, a sixty-year-old colored shoeshine boy, woke up in the shoeshine chair from a dream of electrocution and sang the chorus of “Danny Boy,” and slept again. The pipes, the pipes are calling.
Pigeons fluttered in the rafters, nervous.
The blues singer, out on the front porch, sang about walking with the devil side by side. He sang about beating his woman till he gets satisfied.
The fact is, Red did carry tampons, and sanitary napkins, too. He kept them beneath the counter, wrapped up real careful in butcher paper, like plain white Christmas presents. He just never had sold a package of feminine items to a woman before. He kept a bone-handled .44 pistol right beside them, so he would always know right where it was.
Usually men bought Kotex. A man knew how to purchase a box of Kotex. A man would whisper a discreet word to Red—like, “The Crimson Fairy’s visiting my house today, podner, can you do a little something to help me out?”—and Red would slip him what he needed, like contraband, to be smuggled away.
This was the first time a woman had ever asked Red for such of a thing.
At first Red didn’t say nothing. He only put both his hands down on the countertop and stared far away into the distance. His jaw jerked with a small convulsive twitch; he might have been having a seizure of some kind. Red was not believed to be a well man. Some people said he ought to go on and retire and maybe take himself a Florida vacation.
Then, without ever looking directly at Lady Montberclair, Red reached up under the counter, beside the big pistol, which he nudged to one side of the shelf, and pulled out a small, wrapped package and placed it on the open space in front of him, between the jerky and the jug of pickled eggs.
The lithesome Lady Montberclair fished her wallet from the pocket of the trench coat she was wearing, and started to take out a half-dollar piece to pay for her purchase.
The blues singer on the porch sang that he had to keep moving to stay out of the path of the blues, he sang that the blues were falling all around him like hail.
The children on the porch were daring and double-dog and dee-double-dog daring Bobo. They said, “Axe her, you so smart. Axe her, you like white stuff so much.”
The blues singer sang that there was a hellhound on his trail, a hellhound on his trail.
Red said, “No charge.”
Lady Montberclair looked at Red. She said, “No charge for Tampax?”
Red didn’t want to be making change over no box of tampons. He already like to been had a stroke.
He said, “It’s all taken care of.”
Red wished he hadn’t said this. He didn’t want to seem to say that the tampons were on the house. That didn’t seem right. Or that one of these old boys standing around here was buying it for Lady Montberclair, like it was a drink. “Compliments of the gentleman at the end of the bar.” That wasn’t right, neither.
Lady Montberclair said, “But that’s silly, Red. Here.” She placed the half-dollar on the counter.
Red didn’t know what to do. Making change was out of the question.
He said, “Thank you.”
She said, “Is that enough?”
He said, “This is what it costs.”
She said, “Exactly? Is there any tax?”
He whispered, “Lady Montberclair, please.”
She said, “Oh, all right. Thank you, Red. Much obliged.”
Blue John Jackson sang, Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail.
So that was the first thing that kept Solon Gregg quiet for a few minutes, what Lady Montberclair said. It looked like nothing else was going to happen. Even Solon Gregg was finding it hard to speak to a woman who had just paid hard cash for tampons and on her face wore the look of a woman who meant to use them, as advertised.
Solon raked the steel comb through his hair one final time and something, who knows what, a sudden effluvium of Wildroot, maybe, or some unwashed, hair-borne contraband from New Orleans, flushed a pigeon out of the rafters.
Red said, “Solon, keep that durn comb in your pocket, these pigeons got a right to roost here, too.” He took the comb out of Solon’s hand and put it up under the counter with the Kotex and the .44.
Solon had it in his mind to follow Lady Montberclair out onto the porch and tell her he could use a ride into Balance Due in that fine white Cadillac car of hers, if she didn’t mind. It’d be okay with Solon if the niggers out on the porch got the idea that him and Miss Sally Anne were together, friends, you know.
In fact, they might could be friends. Solon was so lonely right now, anything seemed possible, or at least hopeful.
He pictured himself sitting up in that wide front seat with her, big as Ike and twice as natural, and calling her Sally Anne, right to her face, and liking it, too, and then her dropping him off in front of his own house, where his fool wife and murderous children would be watching out the window.
But then a second thing happened that stopped him.
Hole up a minute, spotey-otey, what’s going on here? Somebody else had done come into the bar and gro., whut the hail?—the spotey little colored boy from out on the front porch, po-itch Solon pronounced it, wearing a man’s hat on his head and looking to purchase two cents worth of Bazooka bubble gum, with the comics inside. Just whut in the durn hail?
It was Bobo, of course, who else is it gone be, that durn Bobo, acting on some dare another, double and dee-double and dog. Somebody out on the porch, ain’t no telling who, done bet Bobo a nickel he wouldn’t axe that white lady for a date, since he liked white girls so much, since he’s all time carrying on about a white girl, toting a white girl’s picture in his wallet, axe her Bobo, go on and axe her, you so smart, you such a spote.
Red watched the little nigger go to the wire rack and pick two pieces of bubble gum out of an open box—you had to watch a nigger like a hawk, anybody’d tell you that much, they’d steal you blind, rob your chicken house and your back pocket and your gold tooth in one easy motion, what a nigger’d do—when all of a sudden Bobo turned around and looked right square in Lady Montberclair’s face.
Well, sir.
He said what he said, Bobo did.
The blues singers had already stopped playing. They must have heard the children talking, must have suspected that the boy from Chicago didn’t know no better.
Lady Montberclair didn’t even hear him say it, what he said, or the other neither, didn’t seem like. She just stood there while Red put her already-wrapped-up tampons in a brown paper bag. It took him a minute, his hands were shaking so bad, not from anything Bobo had done, just only from making this bizarre sale to a woman.
Seem like Red didn’t hear the spotey little boy neither. Red said, “Y’all come back,” to Lady Montberclair. Now what’d I say that for, Red wanted to know. The last thing on earth Red wanted was for Lady Montberclair to be coming back into his store again, acting modern.
Lady Montberclair said, “Much obliged,” again. She was on her way out the door.
Everybody else heard it, though, what that spotey little shine did, dared to have did. Runt Conroy sure heard it. Runt heard it and wondered if he could teach his parrot to say hubba-hubba. His parrot couldn’t say a word, only sound that durn retarded parrot could make was a noise like a cash register. Maybe it could learn hubba-hubba.
Gilbert Mecklin heard it, the housepainter, just about the time he was helping his blind daddy come back up the steps. Gilbert didn’t have time to pay it no mind, but he heard it. Heard him whistle, too. Wolf whistle, real low.
Pap said, “Are you sure that’s a hellhound? To the touch it seemed to be built more like a rat.”
Gilbert said, “Well, it’d have to be a moughty big rat to get mistook for a hellhound, Pap.”
Rufus McKay heard it, in his sleep, and sat up real sudden in the shoeshine chair and sang, “Pardon me, boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?” and slumped back down and slept again.
The pigeons moved about on their perches in the rafters, restless.
> Solon Gregg heard it, too, the man of flames.
Solon said, “What did you say?” Speaking to the spotey colored child.
He said this slow and deliberate and mean.
Probably nobody in Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro. knew that history was about to be made, well, I mean, how could they?
One of the pigeons in the rafters, bout that time, he took himself a good long shit, oh boy, felt good, whew, cleaned his old bird-guts right out, sho did. He turned to another pigeon, sitting up in the rafters with him, he say, “You sleep?” Other pigeon said, “Naw.” Pigeon say, “Look at that child, the little nigger, the one what got him two pieces of Bazooka in his hand.” Second pigeon say, “Uh-huh.” Pigeon say, “That boy, now he’s surprised, he surprised he-ownself, you better believe it.” Second pigeon say, “Is?” Pigeon say, “That boy he thank he most be talking to he-ownself, just loud enough, you know, to satisfy the dare.” Second pigeon say, “Do?” Pigeon say, “Look like to that little spote somebody be reading his mind.” Second pigeon say, “Maybe I was sleeping after all. I ain’t shore I’m keeping up with this conversation.”
Solon stepped between Lady Montberclair and the door, blocking her way out.
He said, “Hole up, Miss Sally, jess one minute, tell we get something straightened out cheer.”
Lady Montberclair could not get past without touching Solon, so she stopped.
Solon said to the child, “Why don’t you jess wipe that grin off your face, boy, and tell us yore name?”
The child said, “Huh?”
The front porch cleared off, blues singers and children and all.
Solon said, “Don’t you know how to talk to a white man?”
The boy said, “I own no.”
Solon said, “Yew own no.”
Red was watching all this from behind the counter. His white hair was sticking up like chicken feathers. He said, “Solon, let me pour you a little taste, son, you bout to need a little taste, ain’t you?”
Lady Montberclair said to the boy, “Come on here with me, Junior, walk out to the car with me and get in the backseat, I’ll drive you home.”
Solon kept the door blocked with his body, and so nobody moved. He said, “I don’t thank so. Not tell this here boy tells me his name.”
The child said, “Bobo.”
Solon said, “Bobo.”
The child said, “Yeah.”
Solon said, “Yeah.” Solon said, “Where-bouts do you live, Bobo?”
The child said, “Chicago.”
Solon said, “Chicken in the car and the car won’t go, that’s the way to spell Chi-car-go. Right?”
Bobo said, “Huh?”
Solon said, “That’s two hubs and yeah, Bobo.” He said, “Where do you stay?”
Bobo said, “Uncle.”
Solon said, “Listen here, Bobo. I want you to apologize to my friend here. I want you to apologize to this here white lady.” He motioned his head in the direction of Lady Montberclair. He said, “I want you to say ‘I’m sorry’ to this here good-looking white lady in her raincoat.”
Lady Montberclair said, “Bobo, you go get in the car, right this minute. I mean it. I’ll drive you home.”
She pushed her way past Solon Gregg, out the screened door, and so then Bobo slipped through, too, in the instant of daylight between Solon and the door, and flew down the porch steps and jumped in the front seat of Lady Montberclair’s Cadillac.
Lady Montberclair got in the car in a hurry and didn’t wait for directions, she just drove away, towards a section of Arrow Catcher called the Belgian Congo, or sometimes just Niggertown. That’s where she thought Bobo must be staying, she didn’t catch on right away that Bobo’s uncle lived out on Runnymede.
As the Cadillac pulled away, Solon turned back to the other men in the room. He said, “Settin up in that-air front seat like Cock-of-the-Roost.”
Solon said, “Did you hear him out on that front porch, bragging about white women? Seem like I heard him say he was carrying a pitcher of a white woman in his wallet. Did anybody else hear him say that?”
Red’s hair stood up straighter and more electric than usual. He said, “Well, now, welcome home, Solon, welcome home from the big N.O., boy, the Big Easy, the Land of Dreamy Dreams. Tell us all about it, son, have a little taste of Old Charter with the boys, Solon, why don’t you now. Let me crack you open one of these half-pints, do you some good, settle your nerves. Still Happy Hour, so the Co-Colas are free.” Happy Hour was early in the morning at Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro.
Gilbert Mecklin, the housepainter, took out his half-pint again and uncapped it and chased down a snort of Four Roses with a little bit of Co-Cola. Gilbert had heard that New Orleans was below sea level and that all the graves were above ground. He said, “What about them durn graves, Solon? How do they dig a durn grave above the ground, is what I’d like to know. I never did understand that. Runt, you ought know something about this, in your line of work.”
Runt Conroy had dug a few graves in the Delta, there was no doubt about that, guilty as charged. He dug graves before there was machinery to dig graves with, when it was only a pick and shovel and zinc buckets on a rope to haul out the dirt.
It was odd to Runt, though, that until right now, this minute, grave-digging had never seemed like a morbid occupation. Never a thought about who was going in the hole, or what would happen to them once they were down there.
You’d think it might have troubled him from time to time, preparing final resting places. He had known some of the occupants of those graves, too, plenty of them, over the years. These weren’t faceless corpses to Runt, they were citizens of Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, his hometown.
He dug his own mama’s grave, not too many years ago, with a backhoe. She died of a broken heart because Runt was such a failure in life. No woman could live long in the knowledge that her son was the gravedigger and town drunk in the sorriest little podunk excuse for a town in the sorriest state in the nation. That’s why she died, who wouldn’t?
That’s what the funeral parlor director told Runt before his mama’s body was washed and prepared for burial. The funeral director’s name was the Prince of Darkness, nobody could account for just how this came to be so. The Prince of Darkness was a mean little baldheaded man and had been called by this name since he was a child. All those years with this name might have had something to do with his personality and choice of occupation.
Dr. Hightower, down at the free clinic, said, “Don’t believe it, Runt, your mama didn’t die of a broken heart, the Prince of Darkness is a madman, there is no telling what that baldheaded old fool is going to say next, your mama died of an aneurysm, plain and simple, and the Prince of Darkness ought to be locked away forever for saying such a durn thing.”
But Runt halfway believed the Prince of Darkness anyway. Broken hearts made sense to Runt Conroy.
Still, there was joy in life, in the face of death. Runt loved to dig a grave on a backhoe.
The backhoe was a huge machine, enormous, and the sound it made when the shovel, the bucket it was called, engaged the face of the planet with its teeth and dug in and leaned back on the stabilizers and heaved back on the cranebar and erupted from the earth full of dirt and caused the engine to strain and diesel fuel to blow out of the exhaust manifold like a fire-breathing dragon and to sound like a tornado coming through town. But that was not the way Runt thought about it. It was not power and fire that Runt Conroy thought about when he considered a backhoe.
The backhoe was operated from the driver’s saddle by a series of tiny yellow levers with little black balls on the tips. Pull one—just a touch, just the smallest hint of movement with your fingertips—and the stabilizers, the “stabs” they were called, lowered into place beneath the big machine, and the machine lost substance and weight and became like musical notes from a xylophone rising up into the air, accountable to no one, ascending from the ground upon the stabs, as if those tons of steel beneath Runt’s steel saddle we
re as light as air, lighter, as if the machine were a hot air balloon rising up over a deserving town, and Runt could imagine that he dangled beneath its substancelessness in a wicker gondola, in a completion of silence, a mote on the ambiguous breeze.
But today, suddenly, when Gilbert said this to him about graves in New Orleans, something ended for Runt, some innocence, or blindness, fell away from him, and Runt Conroy suddenly knew what he had not known before, that he was all alone in the world, that we all are, and because he had put off knowing this simple fact for so long, he was also as defenseless as a child against the random and irrelevant terrors of the solitude as well.
Maybe this is the reason Runt believed that he had to follow the spotey child in the white Cadillac into the Belgian Congo and lay eyes on the floor where he walked and on the roof that sheltered his head.
Runt said, “I got to be going.”
Red said, “You got to be going?”
Runt said, “Yeah, I’m taking off.”
Red said, “It’s still Happy Hour.”
Runt said, “I know.”
Red said, “You ain’t mad at me, are you?”
Runt said, “Naw, Red, I ain’t mad, I just got to be going, is all. I’ll be back.”
Red said, “So you’re saying you just got to be going.”
Runt said, “Right.”
Red said, “And you ain’t mad.”
Runt said, “I ain’t mad.”
Red said, “You’re a rambling man, am I right, Runt? You’re like the Robert Johnson tune. You’re a rambling man.”
Red considered Runt his best friend, him and Gilbert Mecklin. Red said that Runt Conroy and Gilbert Mecklin, the crazy housepainter, were the two best friends a man could ever have. Red said he couldn’t stand it if Runt was mad at him, or Gilbert neither one.
Runt said, “Now you’re talking, Red. I’m a rambling man. That’s it, that’s all.”
Red said, “Don’t never leave me, Runt.”
Gilbert Mecklin said, “He ain’t mad at you, Red, course not. He won’t never leave you.”
Pap Mecklin said, “That hellhound’s snout felt a lot like a rat.”
