by Steve Stern
But on that afternoon following the Seder, the future of my family was hardly even in the running with my major concerns. Besides, with only a minimum of floor space left to accommodate the customers, wasn’t it clear that my own services, marginal at best, were no longer required? What choice did I have but to take up a post out on the sidewalk next to Oboy? From there I could at least keep vigil with the puller until my papa had finished walling himself up alive. And after that we could signal prospective customers to pass on.
Of course I had been a little uneasy around Oboy since the night of our rowboat ride. I was grateful on the one hand that he hadn’t brought it up, which was as good as saying that my secret was safe. But on the other hand I resented that, for him, the event apparently wasn’t worth mentioning. The problem, I suppose, was that I just didn’t know how to read such a character—though I decided the best policy was to settle on distrust. Hadn’t I seen with my own eyes that he was the servant of at least two masters? What functions he performed for Uncle Morris, I didn’t even want to guess. If this so-called puller was making it clear that he didn’t need my company, I could assure him the feeling was mutual. That’s why, when Papa came out in his apron to hand me a fifty-cent piece, asking me to nip around to Segal’s for some seltzer and heart-attack buns, I was glad of an excuse to get away from Kaplan’s Loans.
As I walked down toward the bayou overflow, the afternoon sunshine felt intimate, as if it were getting under not only my clothes but my skin. Dutifully I rounded the corner into the dry side of Third Street, heading straight for the delicatessen, but the clamor from across the lagoon kept distracting me. The Negro flood refugees, having been forbidden from the barracks at the fairgrounds, had made their encampment on the little rise of Handy Park. I could see them, just over the road from where I’d paused to look, beating time on their number 9 washtubs, strumming cigar-box banjos, and presiding over the mounted halves of smoking oil drums. I could see the whole show, or all that I needed to anyway, from my own side of the street, though it was hard to distinguish one voice from another. But then why would anyone want to do that? And besides, my papa was waiting for his pastries; I would be missed if I was away too long. Moreover, after the ferry, it wouldn’t be nearly as exciting just to walk across Third Street here, above the water-line. Though you had to admit that it involved a good deal less fuss.
Jumping over a gutter full of swimming tadpoles that turned out to be wider than it looked, I had a sensation of leaping on board a departing raft. Then I was in the park and surrounded by voices vying for dominion; snatches of howled and rasping lyrics assailed me from all sides. Someone had a mule as hard-headed as a woman, and vice versa, while someone else had nasty habits that high water couldn’t wash clean. One had a boll weevil in his jelly roll, and another was fixing to swap his pillow for the railroad track. There was a preacher on a stump with his thumbs stuck in his armpits like a flapping crow, spouting Pentecost and citing sinners by name: “They’s ol Tyrome don’t think Jesus know he talkin that talk, and Do Funny Weeums, he jus waitin on Mistah Zero, gon give him a thousand-dollah bill.” Behind the preacher a circle of hunkering men, lassoed by smoke, were passing a jar and saying prayers to a pair of yellow dice. They were aped by a bunch of ragged boys gathered around an ashcan lid, tossing knucklebones snatched by a dog half hairless with mange. Broad-beamed mamas balanced clouds of dirty laundry on their heads, cackling evil rumors as they sauntered past: “The gal cain’t have no back-do man ef she ain’t have no back do.” A young girl hollered in her bare-foot hokey-pokey as if the patchy grass were on fire; an old man cooed to a catfish in a hubcap full of sputtering oil.
I moved cautiously among them beneath branches through which the sunlight dropped like doubloons, and told myself I was a bold explorer. I was the first white man to have penetrated these remote parts as far as this settlement. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d welcomed my arrival with gifts: a hog maw in redeye gravy, say, which I would sample with gusto, and to hell with the rabbi’s dispensation. So I was disappointed to remark how, wherever I passed, I seemed to put a crimp in everyone’s good time. There was the woman nursing her child, for instance, who quickly buttoned her bodice over the head of the suckling infant. There was the character with the striped cane and dark glasses, bottle caps on the soles of his shoes, who left off his tap dancing on a bench when I came near. A hefty kid with rolling shoulders, holding a watermelon over his head, continued to keep his audience in suspense—as if whatever might spill out of the melon after he’d smashed it on a rock were not for my eyes.
Though it hurt my feelings, I was beginning to take the hint. So maybe it wasn’t in the best interests of white people to know too much about how the other half lived east of Third. Maybe the natives weren’t as friendly as I’d been led to believe, and the color of my skin wouldn’t necessarily keep me safe. Maybe it was time to turn tochis and run. But the thought of retracing my steps in front of all those inhospitable eyes gave me a sickly feeling in the gut. Besides, now that I’d almost crossed to the far end of the park, the fastest way out was simply to push on.
I picked my way gingerly over the perimeter of the camp, detouring around the lagoon, which was frankly not so picturesque by day. For one thing, the skiffs, a practical enough mode of conveyance, now had to compete with any number of jerry-rigged contraptions. Wallowing rafts made from uprooted hoardings and unpilotable outriggers rammed everything in sight. I saw a delivery boy on a mired bicycle watching the loaves and tomatoes float out of his basket. I saw mounted cops on skittish horses kicking up a spray that left everyone drenched in what looked like minestrone soup. They splashed the washerwomen sprinkling the water with Oxydol and the man in the hip boots who forged on ahead, indifferent to the curses of the old lady clinging to his back.
Then I was out of that jangling park, if not yet the woods. I had reached by an overland route the northeast corner of Hernando and Beale Street, the famous and fabled and so forth, without even the excuse of having followed Oboy. This time I had only my own bulbous nose to blame.
The street was just about as populous as it had been on the night of my boat ride, though the skylarkers were mostly supplanted now by a more commercial element. Here also was the smorgasbord of voices. Where the farmers had set up shop along the curbs, behind their ramparts of vegetables, the smousers were operating out of raincoats and the tailgates of trucks. Someone was hawking “Greasy greens, don’t y’all love em!” and “Yams is what it am!,” someone displaying a tree of red felt mojo bags. There was honeycomb, known as the righteous Tupelo sugar tit, “made by the bee have done fed on the blossom a the gospel bush.” A woman stood on a chair to introduce a product whose results would give the user a bust as generous as her own, which resembled a pair of water wings. A man placed over his head a metal device called the Kink-No-More.
It was like North Main Street, wasn’t it, only with the screws a little looser and the volume turned up—North Main as seen through a funhouse mirror, darkly. And if I knew what was good for me, I should beat it back to my own side of the looking glass. So tell that to my feet, which seemed to have no reverse gear this afternoon. In a minute, however, I would be clear of all the tummel; I would cut over to Gayoso Street and make my way up to Third, having taken a scenic loop back to my father’s shop. But the farther I walked along Beale, the farther I felt I had to walk, as if in order to get out of this mess, I had first to pass all the way through.
I was lurking along steadily enough, keeping close to the fronts of buildings, never turning my head for fear of seeing the heads I might have turned. Having edged around a tamale vendor, I scooted behind some grills displaying ribs like fire-damaged xylophones. Then I proceeded at a fair clip past the theater, a greasy spoon cafe, a saloon or two, a recreation hall loud with the reports of knocking billiard balls. That’s when my forward progress snagged temporarily on what I saw in a show window trimmed in faded black bunting.
Sitting there ramrod stiff in a t
hronelike armchair was a colored gent of untold years. He was wearing a high starched collar gone arsenic yellow with age, a wilted string bow tie, a formal getup ventilated in moth holes that looked like grimy Swiss cheese. Under his flattened chimney-pot hat, behind lopsided spectacles, his eyes were reduced to slots like in a vending machine. His weathered face, which was lightly whiskered and as fierce as a fisted glove, never flinched from its halo of flies. I took account of the awful blue length of his fingernails and the dust that coated his ancient evening clothes; I noted the sign above the window, crudely painted on tin, which declared the place a funeral parlor, and the sign at the foot of the throne: YOUR LOVE ONE PRESERVE FOR ALL ETERNITY. Then it finally sunk in that the old man was a corpse.
At that moment it helped to remind myself that I was still on earth, in Memphis, just the other side of Fourth Street. But at that moment “the other side” had uncomfortable connotations. It put me in mind of what my grandpa called sitra achra, the place where the soul goes after death. It was also the place from which—if certain things went unsettled (such as the burial of mortal remains)—the soul might return to rattle your dishes.
I stumbled away from the mortuary window and got as far as the middle of the block, where I stopped again beside a corkscrewing blue-and-white-striped pole. Adjacent to the pole was a shopfront with a Coca-Cola sign reading MAMBO’S TONSORAL PARLOR. There was a string of red lights around a plate-glass window across which prices had been scrawled in soap:
Harcut & Shav 20¢
Conk & Lektrik Massaj 20¢
Hot Towl & Bay Rum 10¢
Inside, the barbers, in white smocks with military creases, wielded their clippers as if they were conducting a symphony of flying black fleece. Behind them was a long shelf of tonics and pomades in bottles like an oriental skyline. There was a row of basins with blue-tinted mirrors in which you could see the whole shop reversed; you could see my own pale puss off in the distance, looking out at myself looking in. High on a wall was a flag-draped portrait of President Roosevelt, and next to it a stenciled sign warning No Dozen Playin Aloud. There was a blacking stand in the corner where an elegantly turned-out character sat in a raised tubular chair. Kneeling at his feet, a kid in a floppy cap was giving his two-tones the once-over with a chammy cloth. Even from where I stood, you could see that, as he worked, the kid was jabbering away.
With the benefit of hindsight I understood that this had been my destination all along. I took a breath and opened the door to the barbershop, stepping in before my better judgment could intercede.
Everybody froze. Scissors stopped in mid-snip, razors stalled in nicked chins from which blood refused to flow. Patrons lowered their newspapers and raised their brows. Like resurrecting mummies, they unwound steaming towels from their faces. Everyone was staring in bafflement, including the shoeshine boy, who’d swiveled about to reveal himself as none other than Lucifer, the moonlighting navigator. But even that was small comfort to me now. So what was it made me think that white boys didn’t stroll into colored barbershops every day?
I wanted to tell them to relax, Harry Kaplan ain’t exactly John Dillinger, but the best I could muster was a feeble grin. So confusing was their reception that I found myself waiting for someone to tell me why I was there. Seconds passed before I remembered that the explanation was mine to give. Odors of hair oil and rose water stung my nostrils till I almost reeled; I closed my eyes and saw a missionary trying to offer a reason why he shouldn’t be made into soup. Then it came to me, albeit slowly, that my journey had in fact had a purpose from the outset. I had come all this way, hadn’t I, just to settle accounts, to fork over the return passage that I still owed the twins. In lieu of finding my tongue, I shoved my hand in my pocket and produced my papa’s ink-stained fifty-cent piece.
I stood idiotically in the middle of the shop, holding up the coin as if I thought it could deliver me from any tight spot. Only its spell-breaking properties seemed to be defunct. But just as I was wondering if this general paralysis might endure until the coming of the Messiah—kaynehoreh!—Lucifer turned back toward his client long enough to crack his cloth in a final flourish, then stood up and recollected me out loud.
“Mistah Harry from the pawnshops!” he declared to my limitless relief, doffing his cap to fan his bright face as he shambled forward. “Well now, as I live and breave, this indeed a most pleasant suh-prise.”
His eyes goggled as he snatched the half-dollar, proving its authenticity with a chomp before dropping it into a yawning pant pocket. There was a breathless second, then a clink as the coin hit bottom. This was apparently the signal for the barbershop, satisfied that I wasn’t quite a stranger, to resume its suspended activity.
The spotlight was off me, and Lucifer and I were almost as good as alone. At least that’s what I felt, or how else would I have found the gumption to remind him, “That’s um, let’s see,” strewing hair around the tiles with the toe of my sneaker, “forty-five cents change I still got coming.” But Lucifer was already a step ahead of me, chattering as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“Ordinary, this here four bits get you a mess a ferryboat rides,” he assured me, selling the point with his keyboard’s worth of teeth. “Onliest thang bein we done retire from that partikler enterprise.” In the barely perceptible shift of his eyes, I could imagine the hasty abandonment of the skiff, the hotfooted exit pursued by the oilskin man. “Now, do you woosh to make a sportin investment, they’s this popular game a chance what am the current fashion.” He paused for a between-you-and-me sort of look. “An I just might could see my way clear to advise yo venable self all about it.”
I kept wagging my head like I knew what he was talking about, though I hadn’t a clue—something to do with a game called policy and the way that it was related to your dreams.
“Dream you flyin, put yo smart money on numbah five. Now say you dream you done lost yo left leg, numbah two is yo man, tha’s the numbah to remumbah. Lose yo right leg an play the combo, one two three. Wet yo bed, tha’s a lucky seven.” By this time my jaw had begun to hang. “Wake up with a worry mind, put yo wage on numbah nine. Tell ol Swami Lucifer yo dream an I tells you what to play. I got some power…”
While I was still trying to grasp the concept, Lucifer promised me beginner’s luck and the surefire benefits of his proven expertise. Then he remembered that he had first to collect his book of tickets. They were over at a place called the Baby Doll Hotel, where he had anyhow some pressing business to conduct. I was about to tell him thanks all the same but I’d never been much of a gambler, when he turned to the gent who’d stepped down off the blacking stand. As he helped the man into a box-back sport coat, taking a whisk broom to the shoulders, Lucifer tossed an offhand remark in my direction: “Come on along do you like.”
Here the spiffy customer made a fussy inspection of his pocketwatch. “Yassuh,” chimed Lucifer, “it gone time on-the-money fo to carry you to yo pointment in the lap a glory.” Then, ceremoniously presenting his client’s straw hat, he began to back toward the rear of the shop, beckoning the man the way you’d encourage an infant to take its first steps.
When they’d disappeared through the curtained doorway, I waited for conversation to stop again, but Lucifer’s recognizing me seemed to have done the trick. The place was still humming, though not necessarily about yours truly. And while I didn’t want to push my luck by outwearing my welcome, neither was I anxious to return to the conspicuous anonymity that awaited me back on Beale. Not to mention the reception I could expect at Kaplan’s when I turned up without the pastries or the fifty cents.
Hurrying past the garrulous barber chairs, I ducked through the curtain into a storeroom lit only by its open back door. Immediately I was face to face with the boy whose aggressive silence announced him as Lucifer’s unidentical twin. With his head wrapped in a bandanna that pinned back his ears and practically hid his eyes, he was pushing sawdust around the floor with a long-handled broom. He pushed with the same delib
erateness that he’d applied to his boat oar, like somebody swabbing the deck of a ship that’s been otherwise abandoned by all hands. A little flustered, I raced out the door and across an alley, stepping over a trampled wire fence to catch up with Lucifer. Though his client turned, the wise guy was much too busy with his come-on to acknowledge my tagging along. He was promising the man (whose stiffness suggested he’d already had an earful) that it was soon to be Christmas in April. It was coming up get-down time. I coughed once or twice to let him know I was there.
We were kicking through a rubbish-filled back yard where a rusty clothes wringer, half sunk in mud, did a poor impression of a wishing well. There was a foul-smelling wooden privy on top of which sat a featherless rooster, like a weather vane come partially alive. A clothesline, strung from the outhouse to the porch of a narrow three-story building, sported an array of ladies’ bright waving scanties. They bussed your cheek as you stooped to pass underneath. With Lucifer still arm-in-arm with his client, we mounted the tilting back steps. Through a screen door we entered a passage that was dense with a stew of odors. Dry rot, boiled meat, and cat spray were what I recognized, but what I didn’t recognize, I somehow associated with sin. All along the dim passage Lucifer kept insisting that his man was about to think he was dead or dreaming. “Gon think you the Lawd High Muckamuck a Fanny Land.” Then we rounded a staircase at whose foot was a bamboo curtain, which the wise guy flung dramatically apart.
