Wolf Whistle

by Lewis Nordan

  Gilbert Mecklin said, “It ain’t a rat, Pap, it’s a hellhound. It’s too durn big to be a rat. It’s as big as a collie dog, how’s it gone be a rat?”

  Pap said, “I own no, but that snout felt moughty like rat snout. And I notice it sholy did gobble up that cheese.”

  So Runt left the store, didn’t know why his ownself, just woman’s intuition, he reckoned, except of course he wont a woman, what in the world did that expression mean anyhow, it wont logical. He thought he might just take him a little walk, wont the craziest thing anybody ever done, now was it, take a walk? He mought just take him a little walk down towards the Belgian Congo, nothing wrong with that, mought just do that, see could he run up on the boy’s folks, that’d be all right, wouldn’t hurt nothing.

  He was walking in the mud now, down the middle of the Congo road, Esequeena Street. The rain was falling pretty good now.

  Runt called out, “Uncle.” This was the name he remembered that the child had spoken. “Oh, Uncle.” Sometimes you could just holler up a nigger.

  The streets of the Belgian Congo were not paved, not even gravelled, some of them. The streets were lined with shacks. The only trees were chinaberries, stunted in a ditch.

  He didn’t know which house he was looking for, he just kept on trying. “Oh, Uncle, come out cheer.”

  Nobody was out on the street. Most of the shacks had crumbling chimneys, and even on a warm day like today, white smoke from the cookstoves hung above the chimneys like the smoke was too indolent, too heavy, too oppressed, something another, or maybe just too durn lazy and dispirited to make an escape.

  He said, “Uncle, you here?”

  The rain kept on. Runt was getting pretty wet now, soaking in pretty good.

  Occasionally Runt saw a black face peeking out a window, and then the face quickly disappeared, when it saw his own white face. Nobody wanted to help him. Well, why would they? He might be a bill collector.

  The rain picked up some now. Runt was beginning to smell like a farm, or a world war. These were his wife Fortunata’s frequent accusations, and he carried them with him wherever he went. Runt looked at the rain on his arms, and it seemed to be steaming in the heat.

  Chose him a house, don’t know how he come to choose this one, clapboard so gray it looked like silver in the new rain, don’t know why, just looked like a good place to scrape mud off your boot.

  He hollered out, “Somebody come out cheer.” Now he scraped mud off the other shoe and stepped the first back down in the mud. He said, “Durn,” said this to hisself. He hollered, “Looking for Uncle.”

  Didn’t nobody come out, and Runt couldn’t see nobody neither one, but then a disembodiment answered him, he reckoned that’s what it was, old woman’s voice through the closed door of the house.

  Voice said, “Ain’t no Uncle.”

  Runt spoke with ease to disembodiments. He said, “Where is he at?”

  Voice said, “He daid.”

  Runt said, “Naw, he ain’t dead. He got a boy staying with him.”

  Voice didn’t speak.

  Runt said, “Out-of-town boy, name of Bobo. Sharp dresser, play the fool.”

  Voice didn’t speak.

  Runt said, “Can you tell me where I can find him?”

  Voice said, “I own no.”

  Runt said, “Boy got a piece of white trash mad at him.”

  Voice said, “You?”

  Runt said, “Naw, not me.” Why’d she want to point out a thing like that?

  Runt looked up and down the muddy street, hoping to catch sight of Lady Montberclair’s white Cadillac car, but he knew it was hopeless, she was long gone.

  Runt said, “Does Uncle stay down here?”

  Voice said, “I thank he stay on Runnymede. I thank he farm shares for Mr. Tootie.”

  Runt said, “Uncle don’t stay in the Belgian Congo? He stays on Runnymede?”

  Voice said, “You ain’t gone hurt him, is you?”

  Runt said, “I ain’t gone hurt nobody.”

  Voice said, “He don’t stay in the Belgian Congo, nawsah.”

  Runt said, “Well, okay. All right. Much obliged.”

  Just then, the front door of the house opened up, and a girl about nine years old came out. Behind her, a long, skinny black arm materialized from nothingness and poked out of the dark shack to try to grab her back inside but too late, that little ninny was already out on the porch, sassy, what you talking bout.

  Runt said, “You know a boy name of Bobo?”

  The girl said, “You ain’t posed to be in the Belgian Congo.”

  Runt said, “You know Uncle?”

  The girl said, “You smell like bird dooky, all the way up on the porch.”

  Runt stopped. He said, “I do?” He said, “You can smell me all the way up on the porch?”

  Voice said, “Come back in this house, Doe Rinda.”

  Runt said, “My wife says the same thing.”

  Voice said, “I’m own give you a switchin put you in an inch of yo sorry life, chile.”

  Runt started out, down Esequeena Street, out of the Belgian Congo. He needed a drink, that’s what Runt really needed.

  Runt was walking hard now, slogging through the mud, wringing wet from head to foot.

  Then a thought came to him like a voice. The voice said, You are drinking yourself to death with violent men.

  He missed his wife, who had done left him and run off to Kosiesko in the Nash Rambler, even left all the children behind. He thought about the song The Rider and Blue John had been singing, hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail. He tried to remember how he had fallen into the necessary business of digging graves.

  Happy Hour had done passed long time ago by the time Runt got back to Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro. Red set him up with a free Co-Cola anyhow, he was so glad to see him, sho was.

  Runt woke up Rufus McKay, in the shoeshine chair. He said, “Rufus, do I smell like birdshit to you?”

  Rufus lurched up out of his sleep and sang a few lines of “Pennies from Heaven.” He slept soundly again.

  Red said, “Who told you you smelled like birdshit, Runt?”

  Runt said, “Gal down in the Congo.”

  Red said, “Well, niggers got a keen sense of smell.”

  Runt said, “I got to confess to you, Red, that piece of ridiculous information don’t give me much comfort.”

  Red’s hair was standing straight up. He said, “I ain’t claiming to be no anthropologist. You ain’t never heard me claiming to be no anthropologist, is you? I never made no such claims. I am just merely reporting some well-established scientific facts that I happen to have in my possession. They ain’t no need to snap at me. I just wish you wouldn’t take science so durn personal, Runt. Like the poet said, ain’t no need to kill the messenger boy.”

  Runt didn’t answer, he was thinking about something else.

  Red turned his attention to Solon Gregg. He said, “Solon, you’re mighty quiet, boy. It’s not a good sign in a man.”

  Solon said, “Give me back my durn steel comb.”

  3

  A WROUGHT-IRON fence ten feet tall surrounded the Montberclair property. Through the fence Solon could see a driveway that curved around back and out of sight, and cobblestone walkways lined with ferns. The house itself had an elaborate adobe look to it. Solon thought a whole tribe of Mexicans might as well be living there. To the left stood a fountain with water spilling out of some fool concrete animal’s mouth.

  Solon grasped the bars of the fence with both hands and put his face up to the opening between them. The trees above him were old and big and were hung with long gray beards of Spanish moss.

  There was something just slightly too Mexican about this place, it seemed like to Solon. Seemed like, any minute, somebody might be jumping out at him and jabbering his head off in the Mexican tongue about tortillas and jumping beans, habla-habla.

  He felt the weight of the pistol in his pants pocket, and he put his hand on the heavy mas
s of it, for comfort. It was one thing to pull a gun on a queer in New Orleans and roll him for a blow job and his money and his suit, but Solon couldn’t quite picture himself holding a gun on Lord Poindexter Montberclair.

  He took out his steel comb and raked it once through his hair and tidied himself up a little and felt better.

  Actually, Solon had no notion in his head of robbing Lord Montberclair in the first place. Well, perish the durn thought! He might try to extort a few dollars out of him, sell him a little information, maybe, but he didn’t have no thought of robbing him.

  Solon was in the driveway now, unsteady on the cobblestones. The white Cadillac was not in the driveway, but Lord Montberclair’s little El Camino was, the little red hybrid of car and pickup truck.

  Lord Montberclair surprised Solon. Scared the shit out of him, more like it. He stepped around a bend in the cobblestone path, from behind some big fan-shaped ferns, and said, “Hold it right there, Mister. State your business.”

  Lord Montberclair had been a captain in the army, served in Korea. He had his pistol drawn and aimed straight at Solon’s head. The pistol was a German Luger, solid black, and Lord Montberclair held it out at arm’s length, with ease. He looked like somebody just itching for an excuse to shoot somebody else’s brains out.

  Looking back on the scene, Solon could imagine it going worse than it did. He could have gone for his own pistol, which would have taken five minutes at least to pull out of the pocket of his blue gabardine pants—the hammer always got snagged in the fabric—and Lord Montberclair, in his calm, savage way, could have squeezed the trigger on that dangerous-looking Luger and shot Solon straight in the face and then blowed the smoke off his gun barrel and walked back up to the house and called Big Boy Chisholm, the town marshal.

  What happened, though, was this. Solon regarded the pistol in his face with mild interest. He placed his finger alongside his nose and blew snot onto the cobblestones, left side, right side, and then wiped his finger on his blue gabardine pants and left a silver streak of mucous in the fabric, just below the lump his pistol made where it was outlined in his pocket.

  The barrel of the pistol that Solon was looking into was like a long tunnel with the meaning of life inside. Deep in the tunnel Solon saw what the queers in New Orleans must have seen when they looked into his own gun barrel, a long permanent darkness.

  Solon said, “Morning, Mr. Dexter. I was about to despair of raising you this morning. I just dropped by with some information, won’t cost you a red cent.”

  The Luger stayed pointed in his face. Solon said, “It’s about your wife, Sally Anne.”

  Lord Montberclair lowered the pistol to his side.

  He said, “Has something happened to her?”

  Solon looked past Lord Montberclair’s face, over his shoulder, as if to say, “Well, I notice she ain’t here and you don’t seem to know where she’s at.”

  Lord Montberclair raised the pistol again.

  He said, “Tell me what you know, trash.”

  Solon did not shrink from the pistol. He raised his hands slowly out in front of him, palms up. He said, “I ain’t trying nothing funny.” He reached around, real slow, with his right hand to his left pants pocket and slipped out the steel comb. Solon always felt better about himself, no matter the circumstances, if he knew his hair was in place. He held the comb up in front of his face for a second to identify it. Comb, that’s all.

  He dragged the comb through his hair one time and then slipped it back in his pocket.

  He said, “I wouldn’t mind setting down with you and scussing this like two gentlemen, Mr. Dexter.”

  Lord Montberclair lowered the pistol a second time.

  He said, “But Sally Anne is all right, isn’t she?”

  Solon said, “Me and Sally Anne are close, I won’t deny it. We’re friends. That’s my deep feeling. I want to protect her like a brother. I wouldn’t think of charging a penny in this world for any information I might have, neither. That’s just the way I am, protective of innocence and beauty, I won’t apologize for it.”

  Lord Montberclair said, “Come on in the house, Solon. Do, please, won’t you? And pardon my manners, please. Uncalled for, quite uncalled for. I haven’t been myself lately. Now just what is the story here? What is going on? Help me get this straight, won’t you, please. Tell me everything you know about Sally Anne. And listen, Solon, I’m sorry, very sorry indeed, about that cowboy business with the pistol, really I am. I shouldn’t have done that. And the name-calling. I didn’t mean a thing by it. Not a thing. My nerves are not good these days, you understand. Truly I haven’t been myself.”

  Solon noticed that Lord Montberclair had not put his gun away. He carried it in his hand with him into the house, dangling down at his side.

  They sat together on one of the sun porches in wicker chairs with cushions decorated in Mexican scenes, adobes and red sand deserts and cactuses and purple donkeys and big yellow suns. The Mexicans made Solon uncomfortable, and there were as many trees indoors as there were outdoors, it seemed like.

  Lord Montberclair brought a silvery percolator full of fresh coffee from the kitchen and set it on a glass-topped table, along with two cups and saucers and containers of sugar and cream.

  This scared Solon for a minute, when he thought that right out of the clear blue sky he might have to drink a cup of straight coffee, without no warning whatsoever. But then Lord Montberclair set out a bottle of brandy as well, and poured a big dollop of it into his own coffee and then offered it to Solon.

  Solon said, “Much obliged to you, Dexter. You are a fine man, a gentleman and a scholar, you truly are.”

  Solon told Lord Montberclair what he knew. He emphasized that this information was absolutely free, it wouldn’t cost Lord Montberclair nothing, not a red cent.

  Solon didn’t leave out the part about how Sally Anne was dressed. He apologized profusely for having to mention such things, the sturdy cotton duck of the trench coat against the flesh of her bare calves, the wide bare V at her throat and chest.

  When he got to the part about the child Bobo riding in the front seat of the car with Sally Anne, Solon grew cautious. This whole thing could backfire on him.

  He said, “I know Sally Anne must of had her reasons, good reasons, too, for inviting that buck up in the front seat with her. I didn’t question that part one minute, no sir.”

  Lord Montberclair was red-faced from coffee and brandy. He wagged his head slowly from side to side.

  He said, “I don’t know, Solon. I just don’t know.”

  Solon let the silence hang between them for a long time.

  Solon said, “I hope you won’t feel no compellsion to pay me nothing for this information.”

  Lord Montberclair looked up now, as if he had not heard.

  He said, “I didn’t know that you and Sally Anne were close.” He shifted the Luger in his lap.

  Solon didn’t care much for the way this sounded.

  This was a tricky business, no two ways about it.

  Solon said, “Close? Weil, now that’s a good one, ain’t it? You’re not only a smart man, Mr. Dexter, you’re comical, too. Close? Me and Miss Sally Anne? Are we talking about the same two people? Whoo! That’s a good one, all right. Me and Miss Sally Anne—close friends! Now that’ll be the day, won’t it! Wake me up for that one, I want to see it my ownself!”

  Lord Montberclair said, “You said you were close. You said she was like a sister to you.”

  He was switching the Luger’s safety catch on and off, on and off.

  Solon said, “Oh, I see what you mean, now I see the mistake here. I done misspoke myself. I done left a false impression, if that’s what it seem like I said. Sho did.”

  Lord Montberclair said, “Are you close or not?”

  He shifted the Luger from one leg to the other, clickety-click with the safety.

  The strain of this interview was beginning to wear on Solon now. He sensed that he was out of his element, and that
there was no money in the venture in any case.

  He said, “Miss Sally won’t hardly speak to me, Mr. Dexter. Won’t look in my direction.”

  Lord Montberclair said, “I distinctly heard you say you were close friends.”

  Dexter drank straight out of the bottle of brandy now.

  “You said she’s like a sister to you. That’s what you said.”

  Lord Montberclair was very nervous. He was flipping the safety on the trigger guard, on and off, on and off, click-click-click-click-click.

  Solon was astonished to find the truth coming out of his mouth before he could stop it.

  He said, “I got me a sister in St. Louis, Mr. Dexter, baby sister name of Juanita, call her Neat, run off and married a nigger pimp and set up for a ho and broke our mama’s heart, you can imagine, called me up one day and said she’s about to die she’s so happy, she’s so much in love with this nigger pimp, and she’s so glad to be out of Mississippi, she said she’s got this little nigger baby, little boy, and me his onliest uncle in the world. Onliest woman in the world I’d die for, Mr. Dexter. I miss her so much I want to die sometimes, so instead, I go down to New Orleans and roll queers, killed one of them, maybe, I don’t know, probably did if I could remember it, and all I’m thinking about is, What’s done happened to me, what’s going to come of me, too proud to go see my own little sister and my own baby nephew, what’s ever going to come of me?”

  Lord Montberclair said, “So you were lying. You’re not close to my wife.”

  Suddenly Solon was able to lie again, and his life became more manageable.

  He said, “No, I just meant she put me in mind of Juanita, my little Neat, my own sister. That’s all, that’s all I meant to say. Not that Miss Sally Anne is married to a nigger pimp. I didn’t mean that.”

  Lord Montberclair stopped clicking the safety of the pistol. He seemed satisfied.

  He said, “You’ve suffered other troubles as well, I understand. Something about a fire? One of your children injured? I’ve been meaning to ask about the tyke.”

  Solon was astonished at what had just happened. He almost never thought of Juanita. What in the world got into his head to tell all that stuff about Juanita?