by Brad Watson
-Yes, sir, Frank says.
-No sir! Creasie hollers from the breezeway between the kitchen and garage. -He ain’t staying with me. I’m not like that!
-Well, he says, ignoring her and just looking at him a while longer, I don’t care where you stay, but if you’re going to hang around here you might as well do some work I need done, and jangles his keys and change just like his old papa. And so Frank was on the payroll, such as it was, a dollar a week and sharing the leftovers with Creasie, who always had too much anyway and ended up throwing it out. It was enough for the time being. You couldn’t expect a whole lot more. It was just work and what little bit of pleasure you could find at the end of a day. If Creasie was working late with cooking for the next day, pies or baking a ham, Frank might come over to the Urquhart house and knock on the kitchen door and ask if there was anything he could do, or come fall and winter make sure the fire in the sunporch fireplace was going good, getting the coals so hot he could roll a big round log in there and it’d burn all night, Mr. Earl asleep in a chair across from it after his evening coffee. Then he’d lurk like a ghost in Creasie’s pantry till she was done and walk her back to the cabin.
Even as lonely as she was, it took her a while to find pleasure with a stranger. He was fairly tall, and with a head like a brick, hair kind of squared off on top, and a sleepy, wise look on his face. Not kind eyes but not hard, either, just eyes that would look at her without saying anything, and then turn to the peas and the greens, the pot roast or pork chops, the cold cornbread she brought back from the house. The Urquharts ate well, and so did they on seconds.
-If we they dogs, Frank said one evening, dogs eat well.
-Well Mr. Earl or Miss Birdie neither one much like dogs. Mr. Earl had him a hunting dog but he give it away to somebody. Miss Birdie hates dogs for they smell.
-Reckon that’s why they like the niggers around, he said.
She came to like him. A long and knobby man, knees and elbows as dry as dust and gray as ash, voice like the sleeping grumble of some panther beast.
-Only part of you still wood, she said to him that evening, giving him a squeeze.
He didn’t know what she was talking about and just mumbled, -What you talking about wood, and not much else as he wasn’t a talker.
She said, -Wooden man can’t make no babies.
He looked at her like he might say something sharp then, so she shut up.
Miss Birdie says the next day, -I don’t want you living in sin back there. If that man’s going to stay with you, you ought to get married. It ain’t right.
-Ye’m, we married, she said.
-I mean in a church, Miss Birdie said. And later she heard her saying to Mr. Earl, -Well where’d he come from?
He says, -I don’t know.
-He might be a thief.
-I think he’s just one of them turpentine niggers, come up from Florida to work the trees.
Mmm hmmm, Creasie thought, back in the kitchen scrubbing the stove. A tree spirit, come out of the tree when somebody carves themself a wooden dummy, been cooped up in a little shed and now out and resting free for a while with Creasie. She laughed to herself. She looked out the window and he was out in the yard, standing by a rake and staring back through the window at her. A little chill ran in her. She went back to the stove and when she looked up again he was gone and the pile of leaves he’d raked lying on the ground. She slipped out the kitchen door and ran around the corner and didn’t see him and kept on running, all the way around the house, Miss Birdie’s head popping out a window she just passed and calling, -Creasie! Where are you running to?
-Ye’m, (she would explain after she had stopped, seen him raking way out in the front yard by the magnolia tree, big dry leaves clacking at the rake, and sneaked back into the kitchen, out of breath), I was just chasing an old stray cat out of this kitchen.
-A cat? she says. -What kind of cat?
-Ye’m, I on know, some stray. Some old orange thing, ears nubbed off.
-Orange! Miss Birdie says. -Now I saw an old gray cat slinking around here a while back. What’s all these strays!
-Ye’m, he kind of gray.
Miss Birdie stops and gives her that look.
-Well now was it orange or was it gray? I declare, Creasie, sometimes I think you just make things up whole cloth.
-Ye’m, well I try to tell the truth, but you know them stray cats move pretty quick, like my colors blurs. I think maybe the lectric done messed with my visions.
The look on Miss Birdie’s face then, just mystified, which was just as well, was what you ought to want in white folks, being colored.
Woodpile
EARL LOVED TO get into the Chrysler and head for the coast, Pascagoula, Maurier’s fish camp on the river, take his boat out into the Sound and go for redfish and trout. Fishing was one thing he loved to do to relax. Take Frank along, nigger riding in the boat on the trailer behind the Chrysler. Quick son of a bitch got to where he could catch a Camel butt when Earl flicked it out the window and it zipped back in the slipstream. Frank’d catch it in one big palm and calm as you please take it and get almost half a smoke out of what was left, taking it between two fingers and smiling at him as he smoked it, looking at him as he watched in the rearview mirror as if to say, All right white man, it’s your game but I can play it better than you, up yo ass, all right. So he got to where he would take him out on the boat too, in the mornings, Frank hung over from wherever he wandered off to the night before, some kind of coastal whore, probably white, the son of a bitch. He was a strange and sly one.
Junius said, -Why you want to hire that nigger to work around your place when I had provided a perfectly good electric nigger to do for you? Laughing.
-I wish you hadn’t sold that thing, Papa.
-You couldn’t rig it to rake leaves and mow the grass, I reckon. Wasn’t doing nothing here but sitting in that shed. I’m disappointed in you.
-I’m not a mechanic. You want to give me an electric yard nigger, give me an electric yard nigger, not one rigged up to cut boards in half.
-No imagination, son. It’s like the country, now. We can’t come up with something new to do with all these niggers multiplying like rabbits, we better hurry up and send them all back to Africa, like they should’ve done after the Civil War.
-I don’t think, Earl said, it was or is possible to load millions of niggers onto a hundred thousand boats and ship them all to Africa, contrary to popular belief.
-Well, we could’ve tried, Junius said. -Hitler wouldn’t have ever gone to war with us, would’ve needed our advice on how to get rid of the Jews.
-Well you warm my heart, Papa, Earl said. -And after you naming one of your sons after a Jew businessman.
-You know I don’t mean it, Junius said. -Old Levi was a good man, wasn’t like some Jews, whereas the only good nigger I ever knew was that electric one you had out in your shed. Kept his mouth shut, didn’t complain, worked when you plugged him in, stayed out of sight.
They were out in the backyard drinking lemonade.
-I tell you what, Earl said, things are going to have to change at some point. You had colored boys fighting in the war, fought for their country, came home and still just niggers, here. How you think that sat with them? I don’t see the harm in treating colored people like human beings. I’m not saying treat them like they’re white. But you treat people right and they’ll treat you right, colored or white. Trash is trash, colored or white. You deal with good people, you get good results.
-I tell you what, they shouldn’t have taken them in the army. Teaching niggers how to fight a war? That’s crazy. Hell, they’ll kill us all.
-Well I’m not sure I’d blame them. I was colored, I’d hang every white man I could get my hands on.
-See what I mean, Junius said.
-It’ll all settle in, one of these days, Earl said. -It’ll take a hell of a long time, but one day they will have their piece of the world, and my grandchildren or their children wi
ll be going to school with their grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And whites will be marrying colored. And everybody becoming some kind of light shade of brown. That’s what it’ll be one day.
-I think you have lost your mind.
-It’s the law of nature. Things change slow but they always change. We got some shading going on already, have for a long time, and thanks if I may say so to many fine upstanding white people, present company not excluded.
-I don’t have any nigger children running around.
-I’m sure you put on a rubber every time you visited the woodpile.
-Ease up, son, Junius said. -My woodpile days is over, I expect. I’ll leave it to them boys delivering mail and newspapers to the quarters, such as that, getting their payment in the bedroom.
He drained his glass and rattled the ice in the bottom.
-How about getting up and getting your old papa another glass of lemonade.
-How about you call for one of them murderous niggers works for me to get it for you?
Junius said nothing, just held the glass toward Earl with an impassive, sweaty look on his face. Earl sighed, got up, and took the glass into the kitchen.
Creasie was standing at the stove stirring a pan of fried corn.
-Where’s that lemonade, Creasie?
-Yes, sir, I put it back in the icebox. You want me to bring y’all some more?
-No, I’ll get it.
He opened the refrigerator and got out the jug of lemonade and poured the glasses full. Dropped a couple of cubes of ice in, started back out.
-Mr. Earl, you want any more just holler, I’ll bring it out to you.
-All right.
When he got back out to the lawn chairs, Junius wasn’t there. He saw him lying in the shade of the oak tree over by the creek and walked over. Junius’s hat was over his face, his breathing heavy. He sat down beside him and drank down his glass, sipped at Junius’s. He saw Frank come out of the cabin then and go to the shed, get the fishing gear, and go to the car. Big buck grabbed the boat trailer handle with his bare hands and hauled it over to the car, hitched it, turned and waved at Earl sitting there. Bags already loaded into the car. Earl patted Junius on the arm and said, -All right, Papa, we’re heading out. Get Birdie to drive you home if you don’t want to take the train, now. Junius grunted, went on breathing heavy.
Frank was already sitting in the boat. Earl told everyone he made Frank sit back there, but truth was it was Frank’s idea and he wouldn’t budge from it. He liked it. Said come on up here, sit in the backseat. Thank you, sir, I like riding in the boat. All right then, Earl said, you hang on. I’m not taking it easy just because you’re crazy enough to want to ride in an open boat on a trailer going seventy miles an hour. Yes, sir, I like a little danger, Frank said. Suit yourself, then, Earl said. Pissed him off, first time they drove down like that, and flicking his butt out the window was done in anger. He saw Frank dodge it and try to catch it at the same time. That made him grin. So he kept doing it. Third time, Frank caught it and smoked it the rest of the way down. After that, he rarely missed. Crazy son of a bitch had his own cigarettes, now, too.
Ann’s car was already parked outside the cottage when they drove up to Maurier’s camp, the little Mercury coupe he’d given her, driven up from the Tallahassee store, which he’d had her in about six months. He drove over to the landing, backed the boat in. Frank unhooked the cable and pulled the boat over to the dock while Earl parked under the trees across from the cottages and went on in, waving to Frank. Routine was Frank’d be there next morning at five o’clock to go out on the boat. Ann would sleep in most of the morning, work on her books for the Tallahassee store in the afternoon, when he’d come in from fishing. Then he’d leave the catch with Frank to clean and ice down and they’d go out to dinner. Last day, Maurier would set up his propane kettle and Frank’d deep-fry the weekend’s catch and they’d all eat, Frank right there at the table with them. Even give him a beer. Ann liked her beer, and Earl wasn’t one of those teetotalers cared if anybody else drank, as long as they weren’t a drunk.
She was on the bed taking a nap in her clothes, pale yellow dress riding up over her knees and the toes of her stockings twisted from her shoes. Ceiling fan going full bore and blowing at a wisp of blond hair on her forehead, mouth just parted in sleep. Her eyes opened and without looking over at him, looking up into the fan blades, she said, -Hey.
-Hey, there.
He held back a second, watching her. Sensing her mood as if through air molecules in the room between them. She’d become tired of things being this way. Of only seeing him two or three times a month. He’d said, from the beginning, That’s all you want to see of me, if you take my advice. That’s about what I’m good for, when it comes to being pleasant company. Well then, she used to say, maybe you’re not the company I need to keep. May be, he would say. But you know I can’t leave Birdie, she can’t take care of herself. Then she would pout awhile. For such a good-looking woman, she had a bad pout. Changed her whole appearance. Scared him a little bit. Her brooding light blue-green eyes had stopped him in his tracks when she’d come in the store the first time. Can I help you? he’d managed to say. You can give me a job, she said right back, just the hint of a smile. All right, he’d said, without hesitation. When can you start? Right this minute, if you like, she said. He’d thought about it, said, Why don’t you start in the morning. But you can tell me your name now, if you want to. Ann Christensen, she said. All right, Ann, he said. I’m Earl. I know, she said. This is my store, he said. I know, she said. Stood there staring at each other a minute. Then she turned and walked out. Other girls hated her immediately, of course. Wasn’t six months he got the chance to open the store in Tallahassee and made her manager, that solved that. Except that he found himself driving to the coast every weekend so he could spend them with her at Maurier’s. By that time in love with her in a way he had not considered he was susceptible to. He’d never felt that way about a woman, before. Birdie had been cute, popular, and he realized he’d wanted to possess her, like a car or money. But just the presence of Ann had sucked something right out of him, left him spent and entirely open to something else. It made him feel vulnerable. Made him feel more alive. If he hadn’t already pretty much set himself up by then he might not have given enough of a damn to do it, after that.
He loved it, being there with her. Watch her walk around the little efficiency as graceful a woman naked as God put on the earth, as Eve, he had to think, not an ounce of self-consciousness in her, and just naturally beautiful. Maurier had an old swimming pool out under the oak grove beside the river and she’d put on her pink striped swimsuit, a one-piece, and get onto the diving board and dive into the water and come up wringing her hair behind her neck, then shaking it gently out, resting her arms on the side of the pool, and looking at him.
She looked at him now with those eyes, and a salty gust from off the Sound seemed to nudge him toward her, and she said, Come here. And he did.
FRANK WAS SITTING in the boat at the dock next morning at five. Had the gear loaded, ice chest packed with ham and cheese sandwiches from Maurier’s wife’s kitchen, and bottles of Coca-Cola and ginger ale, crackers, and tins of sardines.
-You drive, Frank.
Frank primed the motor, pulled the cord, and got them going away from the dock. They bumped out through the gentle swells and about two miles out Earl raised his hand and Frank motored down and they dropped anchor.
-Going for trout, Mr. Earl?
Earl nodded. -No cover out here. There’s a channel though.
He rigged his own line with a jig and a worm tail and began to cast.
-You can fish if you want to, Frank.
Always a pause after he spoke to Frank before Frank answered. Nothing you could call insolence, just shy of that, and just enough to establish some of his own purchase on the moment.
-Thank you, no sir. Just feel like sitting here today.
-All right.
Pause.
>
-I likes to fish but I don’t really like it.
-You mean to eat it?
-Yes, sir. I grew up on the river and seemed like that’s all we eat, fish. -Well you eat it when we cook it up here.
-Yes, sir, I don’t like to be rude. I mean I can eat it and like it all right every now and then but I don’t hardly care for it no more.
He had one of those rusty sibilant voices, like a hoarse whisper, like he liked whiskey too much, but Earl hadn’t ever seen him drink anything but beer, and he’d given him that. Sat there on the bench seat before the motor like a meditation in black, big squared-off head held at attention to something not here in the boat.
-What do you most like to eat?
Blink.
-Oh I like fresh vegetables, you know. And chicken. I love barbeque.
-Me, too, Earl said, reeling in and casting again, jigging the line. -You like, I’ll get a rack of ribs and you can cook em up on the drum grill.
-Yes, sir, sure will.
-We used to keep pigs awhile, when I was a boy.
-Yes, sir, we did too till a flood come and drowned them. We didn’t get no more after that.
-How old were you?
-I guess about nine, ten years old.
-And had to eat fish the rest of your life after that.
Rusty laugh.
-Yes, sir, near bout.
-I reckon I’d hate it too.
He cast. The swells made slurping sounds against the boat. Light coming up behind a gray cloud cover, darker below with silvery metallic openings. Gulls glided past angling their heads at them curiously. Laughing.
-I never liked hog-killing, he said. -All that mess. I wouldn’t keep a pig now.
-No, sir, I didn’t like it either. My papa had a gun, but he wouldn’t use it on his hogs. He used a hammer.
-A hammer? How’d he do that, put them in a chute?
-No, sir, he just hit em with a hammer.
-I mean how’d he get up on them?
-He bait them with corn.
