“No, ma’am, she don’t. And she’s still there cause Miss Sophie likes her food so much. I hear Miss Sophie’s planning on going with Ethel to the market every now and then.”
“I bet she is.”
Raymond stepped in through the back door. He looked almost himself, save for the discoloration around his eye. His chest and shoulders were once again tight under his shirt. He kept his hand deep inside his pocket.
“What we all laughing about?” he said.
“We all?” said Mary Royal. “I didn’t know you was laughing again.”
“I laugh just fine depending on what it is I’m supposed to be laughing at.”
The two women shared a look before Lilian went back to her work at the sink. “Well,” said Mary Royal, “it seems your cousin Ethel’s been serving up pig fat to Miss Sophie’s house ever since she got there, proud as punch to be doing it.”
Raymond thought a moment, then gave in to a smile. “Now that’s funny. See? I’m laughing.”
“Oh, is that what that is?” Mary Royal tried to peer around his back. “What you got there, Raymond?” His mother turned her head from the sink as Raymond brought out a piece of metal attached to a thick strip of wood — the metal curling at the end, the wood with straps and buckles up the side.
“I had Silas work it up,” he said. “It don’t dig into my wrist so much now. Looks good, don’t it?”
“It does,” said Mary Royal, “if I knew what it was.”
“You know what it is. Help me get it on.”
He handed her the harness, such as it was, and laid his dead hand and forearm on the table.
“Make sure it’s tight, up to the elbow,” he said. “You see what I mean?”
She wedged his hand up into the curl of the metal, set his forearm on the wood, and then notched each of the straps until she saw the skin spread out and whiten underneath the leather.
“Tighter,” he said, wincing for a moment as she drew each strap a single hole deeper.
“It’s going to leave a mark.”
“Good.” He pulled his arm away, twisted it at the elbow, and stared at the harness with pride. “That ain’t moving at all. You see that.” He shook it out; the metal and wood remained fixed on his arm. “Now I’ll show you something. Move yourself back.” Mary Royal glanced over at Lilian again, and Raymond said, “Just move yourself back.”
Mary Royal slid her chair toward the wall and Raymond, leaning over, placed his arms wide across the tabletop. He hooked the curled metal under the edge and lifted the table two feet off the ground, then set it back down.
“You see that? All the weight’s in my shoulder and my muscle. You just hook it under, settle it in, and bring it up. And there ain’t nothing my hand can’t do it ain’t done before. Pull on it. Try and move it. See? See how firm that is on me? And I can lift a table or boxes or crates. I even tried a barrel down with Silas and it come up easy, no pain in my arm or back. And now no one can look at me and say I can’t do what I always done.”
Lilian had a cloth and was wiping her hands. “Well, that looks fine, Raymond,” she said with as much encouragement as she could muster. “And the doctor says you’d be okay with it?”
Raymond’s breath showed his irritation. “Mama, the doctor ain’t no engineer and all he cares about is the pain. If I say I ain’t got no pain, then I got no pain. And when I take it off I ain’t feeling strain in any part a me.”
“You mean when you take it off after picking up one barrel and one crate,” said Mary Royal. “Oh, and one table here. You ain’t feeling pain.”
She saw the beginnings of his anger and thought he might bust out through the door — he had done it enough in the last week — but he just kept looking at her.
“I ain’t going to bite this time, Mary,” he said. “I ain’t going to show you my anger ’cause I ain’t got any. I got this.”
“And that’s enough?”
“Why you doing this?” he asked more gently than any of them expected. “Why the two a you sitting here not seeing what I’m doing? Or what I’m trying to do. It ain’t perfect. I know it.”
“Do you?”
“Here we go …”
“I’m just saying —”
“I know what you saying. You think I don’t know? I got a piece a bent metal bolted to a hunk a wood that’s digging into my arm. I know that don’t bring my hand back. I know it don’t make my headaches any less. And it sure as hell don’t stop me from wanting to find those boys and beat them ’til they bleed. But ain’t nothing’s going to do that so I got this harness instead. And if it don’t work out, well … then it don’t work out. And I’ll know it then, long before either a you two.”
“Mary Royal ain’t saying you don’t know that, Raymond.”
“Mama, I can’t be done. I can’t sit here with a lame hand and feel sorry for myself.”
“No one’s saying that.”
“Not yet they ain’t. But I’m saying it. I ain’t got no time to be no angry or thankful nigger when Mr. Jesler decides to throw me some work so he can feel better about himself. I got to show it don’t make no difference.”
Mary Royal said, “Even if it does make a difference?”
“Mary” — he choked back his frustration — “I don’t know what you want me to say. You been telling me I can’t sit back, I can’t give in.”
“But you giving in just the same if you say it ain’t no different. It is.”
Lilian said, “What about Silas’s brother? He did all that training. Negro police no different than the others. He’s got a badge now.”
“Mama, please. I ain’t talking to Silas’s brother. We been through this. There ain’t nothing he can do when it comes to white boys. That badge he got is for Negroes, plain and simple. He try to arrest a white boy, policeman or not, they’ll do him worse than me.”
Mary Royal said, “I ain’t talking about that.”
“No, Mary, I know what you talking about. That newspaperman. Well I ain’t talking to him again. That’s the last person I’m talking to.”
“I never said that, Raymond. That’s in your head, not mine.”
“Then what is it you want, Mary?”
“It ain’t what I want that’s important,” she said.
“Oh, really? Mary … if you saying I got to make some kind a point, show everyone —”
“I’m talking about getting yourself up, Raymond, getting in on what Mr. Abe and the store is doing. Nothing else.” She was glad he was finding his way back, glad to hear his frustration, but his eyes had dimmed again, and she thought maybe some of that was on her. “This family’s been with Mr. Abe and Miss Pearl close on twenty years. Twenty years, Raymond. He’s feeling bad right now? Good. Let him. Then he needs to make it right by giving you a part in it. I ain’t saying you got to make some kind a stand. No one’s saying you got to take that on. This is our family and theirs. Nothing bigger than that. And he don’t have to tell no one else — make some kind a point — just us, but you got to get your share, your percent. You got to make him see that. This ain’t about being no angry or thankful nigger. This is about being the nigger that earned it.”
Raymond continued to look at her, his eyes empty. His head ticked once, then twice as if he might answer. Instead he pursed his lips and turned to his mother. “I don’t know what she wants me to say to that.”
Raymond’s mother wiped the cloth against the counter. “Not for me to say.” He watched as she set the cloth on the edge of the sink and brushed out her hands.
Raymond said, “And what you think Calvin’d say about it, Mary? You think he’d say, ‘Time to get your own, boy.’ Or maybe he’d just tell me to strap on that harness and get back to what I do. You think Calvin’d say that? You thinking maybe he’d say that?”
“I’m thinking maybe you was done with your anger,” she said. “Setting it on me don’t help no one.”
“I ain’t angry with you, Mary. I ain’t.”
“Fine, but
you think Pawpaw’d understand any of it? Understand what position Mr. Abe’s in right now? There’s an advantage here and you got to take that. It don’t make me happy to say it, Raymond, but Pawpaw’d never see it that way and you know it.”
The cloth fell to the floor from the edge of the sink. Raymond reached down and picked it up with his good hand and laid it on the table.
Mary Royal said, “Mr. Abe knows how he found his way up, how he stepped out a Yamacraw and took what he thought was his. You got to help him remember that and let him see this ain’t no different. And when he does, all this gets put behind us. Your hand ain’t the reason, Raymond. Your hand just what happened. And you got to help Mr. Abe understand that.”
Mary Royal was a few minutes later than she said she would be. No, Raymond was having no trouble driving the truck. Mary Royal mentioned the harness and the way Raymond was managing the gears. It was just that she had lost track of time, but they would get it all back to normal just as soon as she was coming in on her regular schedule.
Pearl brought her upstairs — she might have slipped her arm through Mary Royal’s just to show her how much she had been missed — and asked her if she could set Malke’s hair the way she herself liked it, with maybe a wave or something in the front. Pearl said the girl was still a bit shy about going out and maybe if she had a more presentable look she might not feel so self-conscious. Mary Royal agreed and Pearl was glad for that. There were several new dresses to choose from and, once they finished with the nails, Pearl knew Malke would see the improvement at once.
When Jesler pulled up twenty minutes later — with the hair dryer he had borrowed from downtown and the boxes of shoes for Malke to try on — Raymond stepped down from the porch and said he’d be happy to move it all inside. Jesler had seen the truck. He had prepared himself as best he could but the first moments were awkward nonetheless. He stood there by his open door and asked Raymond if the arm was better — saying it with more hope for himself than for Raymond. When Raymond told him, no, the arm was done — he’d put this harness together — Jesler asked to take a closer look and Raymond deferred. He said he could take everything in through the back door, if that was what Mr. Jesler wanted, and Jesler told him not to be ridiculous and to come in the front.
Inside, they heard the women upstairs — Malke was sounding less enthusiastic than perhaps Pearl had been hoping — and Jesler laughed it off unconvincingly as he led them through to the kitchen and the plug for the hair dryer. He couldn’t help but keep looking at the harness and asked Raymond if he was planning on wearing a sleeve or something over it, not for the appearance, of course, but for the comfort, maybe some padding. Jesler thought it might be digging into the flesh and Raymond said calmly that it was nothing to worry about, no different from the braces some of the other boys back from Europe were wearing, even if he had worked it up himself. But a sleeve was a good idea. Keep it out of people’s faces. Jesler poured himself a coffee — more than a few drops spilling over the side, who knows why — and said he thought that sounded like a plan. Good to have a plan. And Raymond, knowing that Mary Royal might just tell him that this was his best and only chance, said that plans were a good idea, plans all around, and asked if the store was still having trouble with the folks from down at the port because, if it was, he wanted to know what they were planning on doing about it.
Jesler leaned himself back against the counter. The heat had jumped again today and he was suddenly feeling it at his neck. “The boys down at the port?” he said. “That’s not for you to worry about, Raymond. I think you’ve had enough to do with them, don’t you think?”
“I ain’t talking about my arm, Mr. Jesler.” Raymond continued to speak with remarkable restraint. “I’m talking about the store. And the future.”
“The future? Well … I think that’ll be fine. Don’t you worry. We’ve just got to make sure you’re feeling one hundred percent.”
“I told you I was fine, Mr. Jesler. It ain’t my health that’s a concern. They trying to squeeze more money out a us? More a them extras?”
Jesler heard the us like a taunt chiming in his ears even as he saw the stillness in Raymond’s eyes, the gaze of a man in the right. Jesler thought to himself that he had never seen that look in a Negro before. He said plainly, “They know what they have, Raymond. There’s not much you can do about that.”
“And what is it they have?”
“A Jew,” Jesler said sourly.
“Ain’t never stopped you before.”
“And it’s not going to stop me now. It just makes things a little more difficult.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
Still the echo of that us, us, us as Jesler thought to take another sip of the coffee but the cup was already tepid in his hand. He set it down. “But that’s not what this is about, is it? It sounds like you don’t want to be stopped, either.”
“No, suh, I don’t.”
Jesler couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he had let his guilt harden into self-damning, but it made this exchange far more palatable than he could have imagined.
“No one’s ever owed anything, Raymond, you have to know that. I’m sorry for your arm, I truly am, and that’s on me, but that doesn’t mean you have to concern yourself with other things. That’s just the way it is.”
Raymond remained perfectly still. “That’s twenty years we ain’t shown no concern for other things, Mr. Jesler. It ain’t my arm we owed for.”
Jesler wondered what it was to have this kind of courage. Or was it simply an unimpeachable certainty? Either way he felt the edge of the counter digging into his back. “And what is it you think we’re talking about here?”
“All them new boxes coming in, and me picking them up, driving them all around to places just as new. Some a the Negro fellas down at the docks, them union boys, telling me how no one up north’s getting to know anything about that. And I tell them that ain’t none a their concern, that they come and talk to me before they talk to anyone else. And they all know that’s the truth.”
Jesler said coolly, “Well that’s the job, Raymond.”
“Paying the right man at the right time also part a the job, ain’t it, Mr. Jesler?”
“As I said, I’m sorry for that —”
“A Mr. Thomas at the Morning News also sorry about it.” Jesler nearly flinched. He hadn’t seen this — not by a long stretch — and yet here it was, laid out in front of him, though just out of reach. He felt the blood leave his cheeks. “And you’re inclined to talk with Mr. Thomas?”
Again Jesler saw the look — clear and firm and with no hint of a threat. He had no answer for it.
Raymond said, “You know how you come up from Yamacraw, Mr. Jesler, what you done and who done things for you. I’m just wanting to be there when you talk with them Irish at the port so they know we can straighten this out. And they know that I’m a part a it. That’s all.”
Jesler said nothing. He found himself looking at the harness and knew it would be there — always — to make this point for them both.
The small anteroom off Harry Cohan’s office broiled without windows, less humid than the hallway but musty nonetheless, with the scent of stale tobacco and a woman’s perspiration in the air. The taste settled at the back of Jesler’s throat along with a quick draw on his cigarette. Cohan’s girl sat at her desk, smoking as she typed, her fingers like darting eels along the keyboard. Every few minutes she tapped out her ash to read through what she had written — then, just as quickly, clack, clack, clack.
Jesler stared across at the line of filing cabinets. He guessed the important papers were in Cohan’s office but there was probably enough inside these to shake down half of Savannah’s businessmen. Raymond stood by the door, his sleeves rolled down, his frame like a fixture against the wall.
Cohan greeted Jesler with too much friendliness. The large, thick body nearly filled the doorframe as Cohan’s hand squeezed tightly around Jesler’s, his other rising to clasp the shoulder
in a gesture of false camaraderie. Cohan told his girl to hold his calls. Jesler said Raymond would be coming in with them. Cohan’s smile — a practiced flash of yellow and gums — remained fixed.
“Well, I didn’t see you there, boy. Sure. Come on in. See what we can talk about.”
Cohan settled himself behind his desk. A glass of iced water sweated on top of a small safe and he took a sip.
Jesler said, sitting, “No more trouble with the depositories? Break-ins have all been resolved?”
“Break-ins …? Oh, yeah. Sure. Everything’s okay. What is it I can do for you, Abe?”
Cohan kept a second-rate portrait of an old-time soldier hanging behind his desk, sash and ribboned medals, with his hand resting easily on a sheathed sword. It might have been Savannah in the background but it was all open land and streamlets — someone’s idea of low country and marsh. Jesler thought a bit of sweat on the brow would have made sense — all that wool and leather — but the man had a rosy hue in his cheeks and a crop of perfectly combed curly black hair at the top. A colonel, maybe … O’Shea or O’Donnell … and Jesler recalled Major Raphael Moses, a son of the Confederacy, a Jew with all the trappings, and wondered where he might be hanging these days.
Jesler said, “You can understand how I’m taking a considerable interest now that I’ve got more at stake out here.”
“I can. That makes sense.”
“Raymond here has been doing my driving. Down to Jacksonville, maybe as far as Miami by next month.”
“Well …” Cohan shot a quick glance over at Raymond. “That’s some serious responsibility for him, isn’t it?”
“It is. We’ve had some growing pains, naturally, some miscommunication.”
“I imagine that can’t be helped.”
“Water under the bridge, Harry … Anyway, Raymond’s as reliable as they come and I don’t expect I’ll ever have cause to worry about him now that everything’s fixed in place. He’d certainly never give me any reason. Would you Raymond?”
Among the Living Page 16
