by Brad Watson
-Bait em? How you mean?
-First time I went out with him, he says to watch this. Got his old claw hammer in his right hand, hid behind his back, like. Got a palm full of feed corn in his other hand, going up to the hog and holding out that corn, saying, Here, pig. Hog watch him, saying, I don’t know. Keep saying, Here, pig, walking up slow. Pig finally inch over there, you know. He trust him. Start nibbling the corn out his hand. That’s when he brung the hammer around and hit him hard square in the forehead.
-I be damned.
-Yes, sir, laid him right out. Like to struck me hard as the pig, to see that. I was just a little old young un. I liked to watch them pigs.
-Probably one of them was your pet.
-No, sir, no pet. But I thought they was interesting, you know. They was like a family, playing all the time. Didn’t fuss and fight, like we did. Just scooting around the pen, chasing each other, squealing. Not that old hog, I mean the young uns. Well, they strung up that hog by his heels, was going to bleed him. I snuck up there and look at him, his old tongue hanging out. Them corn kernels there still stuck to it.
-I be damned.
Frank laughed.
-Yes, sir, took me a while to trust my papa again, too, after that. He offer me a extra piece of gingerbread at Christmas, you know, I be looking for that hammer.
Earl looked at him, then laughed out loud.
-Where in the hell did you come from before you showed up at my place?
-South of here. Florida.
-Turpentine, then?
-Sir?
-You a turpentine worker?
-No, sir. My papa was, for a while. I just wander, do yard work. You know, like for you.
-You plan on staying around?
Frank said nothing for an extra beat, his face got solemn. Looking out over the Sound.
-Well, sir, I’d sure like to make me a little money.
Earl reeled in, set his rod down.
-Get me a sandwich and one of those Cokes.
Frank reached into the cooler and brought them out.
-Get yourself something.
They sat and ate for a minute, sipping the Cokes.
-What you got in mind?
Frank appeared to study the question for a while.
-Well, sir, you know how you get me to help out down to the store every now and then, up in the stockroom where you has your cot.
Earl stiffened a little at that. Let it go.
-Go on.
-Well, sir, I know how you cares for Miss Ann, and she off down there with that store in Tallahassee, and you having to travel down there all the time, and I don’t mean to step in where I oughtn’t but I know you worried about her, yes sir. And I thought maybe you put me to work down there for Miss Ann, make sure nobody gives her no trouble. I could work around the store, and keep up her yard same as I do yours here. I’m from Florida, now, Mr. Earl, I know how to get by in Florida.
-I can see you do.
Frank nodded.
-Yes, sir. Now, you know I wouldn’t ever say anything about Miss Ann and yourself, not to nobody.
Earl lit a Camel and stared at him a minute.
-Don’t recall asking if you would.
-No, sir. I’m just saying.
-You just saying.
-Yes, sir.
The boat rocked in the swells. It was quiet, occasional gull creak.
-Damned if you ain’t about either the dumbest or the smartest black son of a bitch I ever knew. Didn’t know better I’d think you were extorting me, here.
Frank shook his head and smiled.
-No, sir. Do what, now?
-Aw kiss my ass. Extortion. Blackmail, call it.
-No, sir, I ain’t—no, sir, don’t say that. Mr. Earl, I’m saying I wouldn’t do that, now.
-Yeah, Earl said. -That’s how they all do it.
Frank shook his head and gave the Mississippi Sound his grave look again.
-I don’t know whether to knock you in the head with this anchor and throw you overboard or pay you a compliment, Earl said.
-No, sir. You don’t have to do neither one.
The two men sat there looking at each other, boat rocking, clouds creeping overhead, gulls laughing and creaking, swells slopping against the bow.
-Well what about Creasie? She tells Birdie you two are married.
Frank drank the rest of his Coke, set the bottle in the boat floor beside his feet.
-Well, no sir, we’re not married, not official. She’s a good woman, now. I can tell she’s set on making babies, though, and I figure she keep on trying she going to get it right one day.
-You want that?
-Mr. Earl, he said, I can’t afford no babies, nobody knows that like you.
-I know it, Earl said. -I can’t afford you to have no babies, either, know what I mean.
-Yes, sir. Frank smiled a wan smile. -I guess I just as soon Creasie didn’t know nothing about it.
-Go like you came.
Frank nodded. -Yes, sir, I guess that’s about it.
He sat there watching a gull while Earl finished his sandwich and drink and watched him. Earl felt like he’d never seen this joker before in his life, like he’d just winked into his boat there beside him out of the air. What am I thinking, he said to himself. Big son of a bitch could break my neck and take this boat to goddamn Cuba, if he wanted. But that’s not what he wants. Just wants a better job. He shook his head and pitched the empty Coke bottle into the water.
-Cover, he said.
-Mr. Earl, Frank said.
-Yes, goddamnit.
-If you was to pay me a little more than what you paying me now, I think I could get by down there in Tallahassee, now. I wouldn’t ask but I been there, and it cost more to get by.
-How much more then do you figure it costs to get by?
-Well, sir, I guess I’d be doing at least two, three times the work I do here, and quality work, too. And it cost more just ever way you look at it. Say fo’ times what I make here I figure I can get by in Tallahassee, yes sir, that’s about all it take.
Earl stared at him a minute, then looked away, speechless. In a little bit he reached over the bow and hauled up the anchor and laid it in the boat at his feet. Motioned with his arm for Frank to crank the motor, get them going. Frank hesitated, then nodded, turned slowly to the motor and gripped the pull cord. He held this station for a long few seconds, then gave it a snap pull and set it firing, phlegmatic, then a baritone pushing them up and out into the Sound.
A MAN COME into the store one day to take his order on Tweedies and says, -Say you know I was in Conway, Arkansas, the other day and saw this thing, man had a hardware store and out on the porch had this nigger dummy working an electric saw, and I stopped to see it. Said he got it from you. I said I was going to be calling on you this week, what a coincidence.
-What’s the name of the store? Earl says.
-What?
-What’s the name of the man’s hardware store. I’m going to buy that nigger dummy back from him.
-What for? says the salesman. -What use you got for it in a women’s shoe store?
-I’m not going to use him in my goddamn store. It’s my dummy and I want it back. My father sold it without asking me.
-Well don’t tell the man I told you where it was.
Drove up there the next Friday evening, arrived the next morning just as the man was opening his store and setting Oscar out on the porch along with a radial-arm saw and fixing his hand to the handle.
-Yes, sir, how can I hep you this morning? Earl standing there below the porch steps with his hands in his trousers pockets, tired and a Camel in his lips.
-That’s my nigger you’ve got there, I’m afraid.
Man just straightened up and looked at him oddly.
-You from Mississippi?
-I am. My papa sold you this thing without asking me. I’d like to buy it back.
-Well, now, I don’t know. This thing’s pulled in a lot of business for me
, here. Sides, this is what it was made for! Mr. Urquhart said you own a ladies’ shoe store. -Yes.
-Well, sir, not to be disrespectful, but I can’t see you got much use for this fellow in a ladies’ shoe store. -Never mind why I want him back. I just said he was mine and was sold without my knowledge or permission. I understand you paid good money for him, now I’m offering to pay good money to get him back.
Man stood there blinking in the early sun for a minute, squinting at him. Hand on Oscar’s arm as if to hold him back, to quiet him. Oscar grinning as ever in the morning light, as wide-eyed and oblivious as ever, ready to work if need be, ready to sit forever if need be, waiting in the dark on some shelf if need be. There and not there.
-Well, sir, the man said slowly. He’s worth a lot more to me than what I paid for him, considering the business he brings in. I sell him back to you, I’m going to want to get me another one. First off, bound to cost more to get another one these days. Second, I wouldn’t count on being able to find another one, if I was to try.
-What did you pay Papa for him?
He paused.
-I paid fifty dollars.
-I’ll give you a hundred.
-Mr. Urquhart, this nigger’s already made me at least five hundred dollars in business.
-I’ll give you two hundred cash, then. You’re not on the highway, here. You’ve already got all the new business from this thing you’re going to get. It’s just decoration now and I’m offering to make it seven hundred dollars you’ve made from him, which gives you a profit of something like twelve or thirteen hundred percent on your investment. I don’t know about the hardware business, but in the shoe business we don’t usually get returns like that.
Man stood there blinking.
-I don’t have all day, Earl said, lighting another Camel. -I got to get back to Mississippi by this evening.
-WHAT DID YOU want to go and do that for? Birdie said.
-It belonged to me.
-Well we sure don’t have any use for an old colored dummy you’re going to let sit and rot out in the shed.
-It might be valuable one day.
-Well that’s not like you, to say something like that. It’s of no use to you now, and that’s what I’d expect you to say about it.
-So it makes no sense.
-It doesn’t seem to, to me.
-Well then all right it makes no sense. Humor me this once.
-For two hundred dollars? That takes a heap of humor, Earl.
-Humor me. If I want to keep an electric nigger dummy in my shed, then let me do it and leave me in peace. Some things a man does he can’t explain and doesn’t care to.
He went out to the car, reached into the backseat and pulled him out, hefted him limp and wooden onto his shoulder and carried him out to the shed and set him against the wall there while he unlocked the hasp on the door. When he’d opened the door, he walked in and struck his Zippo and looked around, saw the empty spot on the high shelf where he’d kept it before Junius sold it, clanked the Zippo shut. He went back out, hefted it back onto his shoulder, and took it into the shed and pushed it up onto the shelf. In the dim light he reached up to straighten the head on the shoulders, to rest the hands in the lap. He turned the feet so they pointed straight ahead where they hung there. Stood there to catch his breath, then light a smoke.
-What say, Oscar? he said, his eyes adjusting to the darkness in the shed so he could just see the black face with the white teeth, the painted whites of its eyes, in the glow of the cigarette. -Welcome home, you yellow pine son of a bitch.
He went inside and picked up the phone and dialed a number and Junius answered.
-Papa, I have that nigger dummy back out in my shed.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
-What’d you go and do that for?
-It wasn’t yours to sell, that’s what for.
-The hell it wasn’t. I’m the one found it.
-And you gave it to me. What I still don’t understand is why you all of a sudden up and stole it from me. You never gave me the money you got for it, by the way, and now I’m out two hundred dollars for it.
-Goddamn, son, I didn’t pay but twenty!
-To hell with that. What did you get for it?
-I don’t remember. Broke even, maybe.
-You’re a liar, you got fifty, which means you made thirty dollars profit on my property, which means you owe me that plus another hundred and seventy dollars.
Junius scoffed. -I’m not responsible for your lack of common sense. And I’m telling you I think that thing is bad luck. You better get rid of it.
-I never knew you to be so superstitious. I’m keeping it, I don’t give a damn if you like it or not. That’s my electric or dummy or whatever nigger out there, and you keep your goddamn hands off of it, now. In fact, I’m locking it in there, so don’t even think about stealing it again.
-Stealing! Goddamnit, I don’t give a shit if you keep it or not, then. But if you ever bring that thing out in my presence I’ll shoot the son of a bitch full of holes on the spot.
Junius hung up. Earl, laughing to himself, went back outside and lit up again. Stood there in the evening on what he’d made into a fine little fiefdom of his own in the flattened land, the brief plains between Mercury and rolling pine woods and farmland north, smoking, thinking it’s not so bad old Earl you got a good woman for a wife and you got healthy children and a good business and another woman who loves you willing to take what’s just her share, and here you got your own goddamn electric nigger out in the shed, to boot. Now what can you hold up to that, you old pig-eyed son of a bitch.
Wisdom
SHE COULDN’T HELP thinking that if they’d had babies, if they could have had babies, Frank might have stayed. Lord knows she’d tried, but nothing took. Began to seem like he was like a mule, some concoction of a beast not able to reproduce itself. But it settled in finally that it had to be her, and most likely something to do with the potion Aunt Vish had given her before, after Mr. Junius, to get rid of what he’d put in her.
One day she’d walked out into the untended pasture behind her cabin and sat down beneath a solitary oak in the middle of the field. There was a crow sitting in the top of the tree, started calling to another crow over in the woods. Crow was saying, What! What! Other crow comes back, What! What! Don’t nobody know what, Creasie grumbled. A big rumble followed down in her belly, and she pressed it with her fingers, lay on her back. She put her hands on her breasts beneath the scratchy blouse she wore and pressed them, wondered if she’d ever nurse a child, nestle a child of her own into her bosom. The crow hopped down a few branches and cocked its head at her. He stretched his head up and called again to the other crow, other crow called back. Then he cocked his head at her again, said, Rrraaack. She felt a muscle or something rise up beneath her hand and turn over, go back down.
Sunday she asked to have the afternoon off, told Frank she was going to visit her aunt, and caught a ride into town with Mr. Earl, who dropped her off near the ravine. He said he’d pick her up again at five. She watched him drive off, then walked on in. Down past the old Case house, down the dirt road, which turned into the steep trail down to the creekbed, and it was good to be back in with the trees and wild shrubs, all the viny green. She came to the narrow clearing where the old cabins were and went all the way to the end, to the last one nearest the creek. Aunt Vish was sitting on her front porch in a rocking chair with her eyes closed, rocking. When Creasie stopped at the base of the steps, Vish said, -I smell somebody works for white people.
-Just me, says Creasie.
-Mmm hmm, what you want now, girl.
-Nothing. Just want to ask you something.
Vish just kept on rocking. After a while she said, -I got all day but I don’t know why you want to take it.
-I can’t have no babies, looks like, Creasie said. -I been wondering about that potion.
-Mmm hmm, Vish says.
-What was that potion you giv
e me?
-Did what you wanted.
-Yes’m. How good did it work?
-Did what you wanted.
-Ye’m. But what all did it do, besides that?
Vish opened her eyes, put the toes of her ragged old shoes onto the porch boards and leaned forward, looked at Creasie. She leaned to one side and spat snuff juice off into the dirt.
-Potion can’t do but one thing at a time, she said then. -You want a remedy make a baby go away, that’s what it gon do. You want one make the babies come, then that’s another thing. Herb you taken might taken too good. That happen, I can’t do nothing about it. Risk you take.
-You didn’t tell me.
-Can’t give a body wisdom, Vish said. -You get that on your own.
-Can you give me some of that baby-making potion, then?
Vish looked at her a minute, then nodded.
-I can give you whatever you want, child. What you gon give me?
-Ma’am?
-What you gon give me, child! You never give me nothing for that remedy.
Creasie didn’t know what to say.
-I’m sorry, Aunt Vish. I thought, it being me—I didn’t know I was supposed to pay you for it.
-Didn’t know! What you think, I live on air? You getting paid, ain’t you?
-Ye’m. I’m sorry. I can pay you now. I can pay you for the baby potion, too. Me and Frank wants some babies.
-Say he does too.
-He wouldn’t mind. She only partly lied. Hadn’t said anything to him about it.
-Vish sat back and stared at Creasie a long moment, saying nothing, then closed her eyes and rocked some more.
-I can give you anything you want, child, but I expect that potion done took too well with you. She opened her eyes and spat and looked at Creasie long and from afar again. -You bring me something from the white folks’ house, I’ll think on it, see if I can come up with something.
-What you want me to bring?
-Use your brain, child. You’ll think up something old Vish can use.
Creasie stood there a minute, neither of them saying anything.
-I could use some new pots and pans, Vish said then.
-Yes’m. It might take a while.
-Like I said, I got time.
