“Cold ground was my bed last night Just like the night before—”
Only a phrase from an old song, two lines from a kind of blues, white man’s blues. But he feels better. Even the urge to laugh is gone. He leans forward, gripping his hands together, and looks the Sheriff in the eyes, intense.
“I been laughing, Sheriff. I couldn’t help myself. I come in here laughing to keep from crying. A man don’t get a whole lot of choice what he’s going to do in this world. I come in laughing—I seen some things in my time, Sheriff, some terrible things, I swear to God. But in all of it I ain’t never seen a man shot down right smack in front of me in the broad daylight. Like he was a mad dog—”
“Where are you coming from?”
The Sheriff, he ain’t what you’d call happy, overjoyed about it neither. You can tell from the tone of his voice even if, as soon as he’s talking at you, you gotta cut your eyes away and not be looking at him. You learn that the hard way. You’ve seen it in a dog, even a mean one, how you can stare him down. Don’t let them treat you like a dog. Don’t give them half a chance. And then you can still hold up your head when you walk out. If you had’ve seen the way his face looked, how he looked at that boy Larry when he come to find out there was a killing! But the young one’s got a point too. If you was a cop, you wouldn’t want to take no chances when you run a hot car off the road. Even if you didn’t know it was hot then, not till you had done checked the license plates against the list. If you was a cop—God forbid that—you wouldn’t want to take no chances at all. The big one though, Jack he’s called, he don’t carry a gun. At least he ain’t got one on him now. No holster and no pistol belt. Probably don’t believe in it. Probably fancies he don’t have to. Big man like that, looks like he could yank a tree stump out the ground or pick up the back end of a automobile if you had to change a tire. Big sonofabitch and he ain’t scared of a whole lot, surely nobody, at least nobody he’s run into yet. And if you don’t have a gun and everybody knows about it, then what kind of a man is going to work up the nerve to take a shot at you? It’s like a spell or a charm. What if he don’t kill you? What if he was to shoot and shoot and you just keep coming on like a movie monster or something until you could get your big hands on him and started to ripping the meat right off the bone? It ain’t all that brave, though, not as brave as it looks, though it takes a brave man or a fool to try it in the first place. If you can get away with it, you got the edge on an armed man. Make the man with a weapon feel weak. The Sheriff, he ain’t scared of a whole lot. But one thing, he’s scared of even thinking about that killing out there on the highway. He don’t even want to talk about it. Right or wrong, he don’t care. He don’t like it even a little bit.
“Where are you coming from?” he asks again, not raising his voice.
He’s a patient man for a policeman. No wonder he can get hisself elected.
“I was to hell and gone from here,” the prisoner answers. “Two days ago I was clear on the other side of Chattanooga, Tennessee.”
“Can you prove it?”
“You keep asking me that, Sheriff.”
“I was hoping maybe you spent a night in jail or something. It might help.”
“What the hell do you care?”
And that’s a fair question. A straight one. He’s got no kind of business caring. If he cares about a thing like that, wants it to be so, it’s a bad sign about him. He’s gonna get hurt iffen he don’t wind up hurting somebody else first. Because, you know, a man like that has got a tough job to do. It’s a dirty job and if he starts to caring one way or the other, look out everybody. Duck! Go by the book, that’s the only way. Because it just ain’t true that he can really care or should much about one car thief stretched out dead that he ain’t never even seen and another man sitting in his office that he’s only going to see this once in his lifetime. You can’t care that much. You can’t hope for a stranger. The Lord knows it’s hard enough to give a shit about the people you’re supposed to love. And he knows that too. He’s lived. He’s seen a few things naked in his life. What he must truly care about, even though he may not know it yet, is that boy Larry. That must really be hurting him. More than it ought to. Like he had a stake in the boy. Like he is counting on him for something. Don’t count on nothing, Sheriff, and you won’t get disappointed. Couldn’t you take one look in those eyes and see a killer? One look and see death? Why, sure. Surely you could. And he’s been looking in them eyes a long time. And he never even saw it! And that’s what it’s all really about. What hurts the Sheriff is he has looked into the boy’s eyes this morning for the first time and seen it and at the same time he seen it he knew it had been there all along, the whole time, and he had never even noticed it. He missed it until it was too late. You take a man’s sense of his own judgment away from him, show him for the first time that he can guess so terribly wrong about somebody else, when his whole life depends on that strength, and it’s like cutting the legs off a man. Why, the Sheriff must feel drunk now with his new knowledge! The whole world shifting and reeling around his head. Well, you was a virgin a long time, Sheriff. And ain’t that a crying shame.
“Where are you headed for?”
“Where the spirit moves me and my feet can take me.”
“Where’s your home?”
“Where I hang my hat. If I had a hat—”
“What line of work are you in?”
He’s tired, tired to death of it. He knows exactly where it is going, where it’s all got to go. Which is nowhere.
“Why don’t you just book me and print me and lock me up and forget about it?”
“I’m trying to make up my mind,” the Sheriff says. “Maybe you did just happen to hitch a ride with a fella that just happened to be driving a hot car. Let’s say that’s so. If it is, I don’t have a whole lot of business with you or time to waste on you. I’ll personally drive you out in any direction as far out as the county line.”
The sun is up good now. Coming in through the window behind his head. Has that old fly give up on it yet? Or is he just resting up a while, saving his strength so as he can buzz and beat his wings on the glass some more? Poor little old housefly, he ain’t going nowhere. Ain’t nobody going to personally drive him as far as the county line. It’s getting real warm in the room. Gonna be a hot one. Sheriff is sweating already. You can see the dark half-moons of it spreading under his arms. You’d think they’d at least have a fan or something. Probably do, but it got busted and they ain’t got around to fixing it yet. Or open a window maybe. He can hear the prisoners upstairs moving around and the banging of plates and cups and spoons. Maybe if he can just get out of this here sweatbox of an office, he can still get himself some hot breakfast and even stretch out a while on a mattress and take a nap before they make up their minds and run his fat ass out of the county.
“That’s thoughtful of you, Sheriff,” he is saying. “Considerate. I wouldn’t have to lose no more time. And time is just about the only thing I got left to lose. The county here wouldn’t have to waste no beans and bacon on me. And, naturally, I wouldn’t be hanging around to testify at a inquest or anything like that.”
That done it. Properly! The Sheriff looks mad now. Gone and got to him. See? Because he’s got his pride, too, plenty of it. And he don’t like to be in this fix. And he don’t like to have to soft-talk and tell a lie. It isn’t easy for him.
“Anything you might have to say wouldn’t make any difference.”
“I don’t think so either,” he says. “It just wouldn’t all be so nice and neat if you know what I mean.”
“Nobody would believe a word you said.”
Now he’s laughing out loud again and letting the words free. The words coming out in the room like a startled covey of flushed quail. Let ’em go:
“You right, Sheriff. Oh, you so right! I know exactly how a stranger and the word of a stranger would fare in a little old dried-up country town like this one here. Even if I was somebody, a lawyer or a banker,
say, or a traveling salesman, even I was Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the Righteous, Who laid down His life even for the likes of me, and I come walking down the highway this morning preaching the Living Word of God!”
Now the Sheriff laughs, surprising him. “You some kind of a preacher or what?”
“Some folks might say so, but not the preachers,” he says. “Lock me up. I’m all through talking.”
The Sheriff, still grinning, shakes his head, truly amazed. Then he lifts the phone off the hook and, turning slightly in the swivel chair so that he doesn’t have to look at the prisoner while he’s talking and so that unless the prisoner is a very good, jailhouse-trained listener, he won’t hear what’s being said, he dials and waits.
“Sheriff?”
“Huh?”
“What you waiting on?”
The Sheriff hangs up. He lights a cigarette. “Me? I’m just waiting for Larry to get back with that certificate.”
“That might take a while.”
“Maybe.”
The Sheriff is dialing again.
“Sheriff?”
“Huh?” He’s getting annoyed now. Messed him up in the middle of dialing and he’s got to hang up and start over.
“You mind if I pick up my box out of the wastebasket?” Cutting his eyes toward the guitar and then away again quickly.
“Help yourself.”
He can’t help grinning to himself while the Sheriff dials again. The young one would probably bust it over his head right about now. The prisoner has been working at it, waiting to get his nervous hands on that box ever since he came in. You got to sneak up on something like that. Work all around it slow and easy. That old buzzard again circling up in the sky like a piece of burnt paper, biding his sweet time. Then the time comes and you pounce. Right time comes along and you can just ask right out and get a straight answer.
He slips out of his coat and hangs it on the back of the chair. Rolls up his sleeves over fat forearms to the elbows. Then moves to lift that box tenderly out of the wastebasket. Not a new scratch on it. Which is a blessing and a wonder, the way that boy was banging it around. Runs his hands up and down the neck and the body of it. Spanish-type guitar with a good woman shape. Real good Spanish guitar a long time ago to start out with. Bought it off a blind nigger in Galveston. Shipping out then in those days, working the Gulf. Been to many a place. Mexico, Panama, Cuba. Oh, lots of places. And that box was always good company. Only seen one just like it and that one a Cuban had in Ybor City down at Tampa and they stayed up all night playing and singing in a bar until the dawn come on and they walked back to the ship, playing and singing right down the street together and right up to the gangway and the last thing he seen was that Cuban standing all alone at the end of the wharf playing and singing while the ship pulled out. Ybor City, now that was a wild place in those days! You could see most everything. And boy you could eat there. All that good Spanish food, black beans and rice and chicken and all those things. Always did like Spanish people. Even Mexicans. Been through hell and high water, flood and fire, ever since then. Got tough old steel strings on it. Like to have nylon like the good guitar players do because it sounds better, though you got to learn to listen to it. Softer, but a whole lot better.
Tuning, he plucks one string very softly, with his ear right up next to the neck. He comes on down—E,B,G,D,A,E again. It’s a way out of tune. He fiddles with it, till it’s tuned as right as it will be. Then he plucks one string. The little sound thrills the drab room. He takes out his pick. (“What the hell is this?” the Deputy asked him when he searched him. “It’s my pick. I use it to pick music on that ’ere box.” “Well, that looks like all it’s good for. You can’t hurt nobody with it and you can’t get nothing for it.” “Can I keep it?” Magnanimous, positively magnanimous: “Why not?”) Wishes he was good enough or anyway learned different so he didn’t have to use it. That Cuban could play gypsy things and you could see the feet stamping down hard the skirts flaring out and the campfire burning and the bright eyes of the dark men in the night even if you had never even been there and never would get there either. Now he takes the guitar to him, hooking one heel over the rung of the chair, with the body of the guitar in his lap, his left hand on the frets and his right hand loosely held to pick or strum, bending his full-moon face, a face as pocked and baggy-eyed and beat up as the man in the moon, right up close to it, playing easy and soft, hardly more than a little hum in the air and his voice so soft it might be coming from a far distant place. The Cubans has got songs. They all got music and songs. And so do we. All different, but all saying the same things, saying the same big things anyway. He plays along and sings a little country blues tune about not owning anything and not being nobody, about being all alone day after day on the open road and sleeping all alone on the cold ground by night with the stars for your blanket and the hoot of an owl or a distant freight train for your lullaby. It’s a true song for anybody, ain’t it? Because we are all alone on that lonesome road. And whether you sleep in a feather bed with a fine woman beside you or you sleep on a hard mattress in a jail, it’s all the same, you sleep alone. You sleep alone and you die alone. Nobody knows where you come from or where you’re going to. And we’re all strangers, the song says between the strict simple lines, here on a tossed and whirling piece of rock lost in a black sky. We’re all strangers to each other and to ourselves. We don’t belong nowhere. And ain’t that sad. And ain’t that a crying shame. But, wait a minute, don’t go off blowing your nose and feeling sorry for yourself. Because a sad tune makes you feel happy. And you can think about all the good things, all the good things around you that will be here long after you’re gone and was here too long before your daddy looked at your mama in a certain way. You can think about trees and stars and stones and cold water and sweet milk and the sun and the song of a bird. You can’t even call up all the good things there is. All you can do, the sad tune is telling you, is rejoice, rejoice for the gift of that little wink of light you call a lifetime. It’ll be too late if you wait till you’re old and gray to find out. Sing a sad tune and inside you something happy starts to happen like a bunch of little children playing ring around the rosie right around the broken rose of your heart.…
Even so, lost in his song and the exegesis of it, he’s got one trained ear cocked over to the Sheriff and his conversation, half of it, with what seems to be a sergeant at the State Police Barracks. Some people say you spoil things, doing two things at once. You don’t have to. That’s something about being a human being. You can do two, three, four, a dozen things at one time. Be here, yonder, and everywhere. Ybor City and the Taj Mahal in the moonlight and never even leave a room. Different from a machine that can do only one thing at a time. So he’s playing and listening.
“Hello, Sergeant, this is Sheriff Jack Riddle down at Fairview.… Fine, thanks. How you? … Yeah, that’s how it goes.… Listen, we picked up a hot car for you this morning. State plates Dog 71143. Registration Number 883620. Two people in it. Driver Anthony De Angelo, address Hotel Madison, Brooklyn, New York. Other one’s a vagrant. Name of—Ike Toombs.… Yeah, double o. No address.… Yeah, we’ll have prints and the rest of it for you later on this morning. Meantime give me a call if you get anything, huh? De Angelo’s got eight hundred dollars in cash in his wallet and a gun.… Right!”
The Sheriff hangs up and swivels around again. As he does, Ike Toombs puts away his pick and strikes a loud, last, minor chord with his right hand. Puts the box down, leaning it against the wall.
“Looks like you already made up your mind.”
“Just checking. Routine,” the Sheriff says.
“You know something? I figured I’d be out of here by now.”
“You may yet.”
“You was asking me about my line of work.”
“That’s right.”
“Well,” he says with a fat, soft smile. “I don’t do a whole lot of anything unless I have to. Work don’t agree with me, see? I tried it once. C
ourse when I need a little money—and everybody needs a little money now and then—I sing for it.”
“Pass the hat?”
“I told you I don’t own a hat. But that don’t stop me. I strum on this little box and I sing songs. All kind of songs. Happy, sad, funny, every kind. Sheriff, I bet I know songs you never even heard of.”
“They all sound about the same to me.”
“Don’t that go to show you! I picked you for a singing man yourself.”
And now he picks up the guitar again and plays out loud and sings out with all his voice:
“Some folks ’preciate a singing man.
Some folks can’t, but other folks can—”
Stops and his hands go slack on him and his fingers feel stiff. The song dies at birth as the sound of the siren screams up the driveway toward them. The Sheriff, angry as a hornet, is up off his chair and around the desk and over to the window, looking.
“Damn if that boy don’t love the sound of that sireen,” Ike Toombs says cheerfully.
Larry Berlin comes walking in the office wearing a great big grin, for some reason known exclusively to God and himself, waving a piece of paper. Which the Sheriff snatches out of his hand and ascertains to be the official death certificate dutifully signed, sealed, and delivered. That’s how it all ends up—a piece of paper for the filing cabinet. And eventually for the closet. A piece of paper to yellow in silence and neglect and dust. Dust … It will outlast all of them unless the old place burns up or something. And even then, in all that confusion, somebody will probably risk his neck to save it.
Evening Performance Page 50
