“Rhys had to work. I’m afraid it’s just me today, Rondell.”
He did a lousy job of hiding his disappointment. “And what brings you back, Jack? You’re not looking for another three-dollar haircut, are you?”
I told him I was hoping for a word with Mrs. Wheeler and he led me to her office down a corridor smelling sharply of Pine-Sol, its tiled overlay still damp and shining. He knocked on the door and nudged it open when the old woman told him to come in. “Miss Wheeler, you remember Jack Charbonnet from a few weeks ago?”
“Come in, Rondell.”
“Jack Charbonnet,” he said again. “Used to write for the T-P.”
“The T-P? What is that, Rondell?”
“The newspaper. The Picayune.”
“How you doing today, Mrs. Wheeler?” I said, stepping around Cherry’s large, sweaty form and showing myself.
She was sitting behind a desk with a shopping catalog open in front of her. There were other catalogs on the desk, along with a small lamp, a telephone and an ashtray holding a smoldering cigarette.
“Jack Charbonnet,” she said. “Help me out here, Jack.”
“I came on Wednesday with Rhys Goudeau and got a haircut. We met afterward out in front.”
“You were with Rhys Goudeau,” she said, still not certain. “Come in, young man. Come in.” Rondell Cherry started to leave and Gail Wheeler said, “Isn’t it your boy’s ball game this evening, Rondell?”
“Just about got it done, Miss Wheeler.”
“You don’t want to miss his ball game, Rondell.”
“I won’t miss it. See you tomorrow, Miss Wheeler.”
After Cherry was gone she leaned forward with her forearms resting on the desk. She was wearing another polyester number, this one with a scarf around her neck instead of the usual sweater. Drifts of cigarette ash clung to the front of her blouse and the air above us was blue with smoke. “Them blacks sure do love their sports,” she said, in a conspiratorial whisper.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I glanced out the window before looking at her again. She nodded and cocked her head back as she dragged hard on the cigarette. “Nothing they like better than playing ball.” She exhaled through her nose, the smoke coming hard from her nostrils. “I can put it out,” she said, and showed me the cigarette.
“That’s okay, Mrs. Wheeler. It’s your office.”
“You remember that song ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’? Somebody sang it. My husband Jerry used to change the words. He would say, ‘Smoke gets in my clothes.’ I’d say, ‘You can’t give me a better hint than that?’ He didn’t smoke, you see.”
“When it came on the radio?”
“What’s that?”
“He’d change the words when the song came on the radio?”
“The radio? No, I think that was one we put on the record player.”
“That’s a funny story.”
“Something I like,” she said, “I like that Rhys. I think she’s got a lot on the ball.” She put her hand on the base of the lamp, where the switch was, but she never did turn it on. “What is it I can help you with today, Jack?”
“It’s about Tommy Smallwood, ma’am. I wanted to talk to you about him.”
“Tommy Smallwood?” she said, then gave her cigarette such a hard suck that the end flared and crackled. “You’re going to have to help me with that one, Jack. Do I know him? No,” she said. “I don’t think I know a Tommy Smallwood. Smallwood? That sounds like one of them Indian names. Is he an Indian?”
“I don’t think so. He doesn’t look Indian.”
“Most Indians don’t look Indian anymore, but they’re still Indian. Same with your blacks. Or a lot of your blacks.”
“Ma’am?”
“I’m a man I sure the hell don’t want my name to be Smallwood. It has some negative connotations that could lead to what you might call self-esteem issues, you understand?”
“So you have no memory of ever having met Tommy Smallwood?”
“You see there. You mention it and I like to crack up. Bigwood, I could see. Now I could live with Bigwood.” She sucked again.
“You didn’t meet him?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Well, not to my knowledge, I didn’t. I met you before, hadn’t I, and I didn’t remember. You never can say for sure with Gail Wheeler, whom she’s met and whom she hasn’t met. Am I saying that right? Or is it ‘who’?”
“You said it right.”
“Whom I’ve met and whom I haven’t met,” she said. “I need to buy me a dictionary, that’s what I need to do.”
“Well,” I said, and patted my thighs with my open hands, “I guess I’ll go now and let you get back to what you were doing.”
“You’ll do what?” She crushed her cigarette in the tray and came out from behind the desk. “Listen here, Jack, you got something to get off your chest you don’t have no reason to hold back with Gail Wheeler.”
“It’s a delicate situation, Mrs. Wheeler. Tommy Smallwood’s a powerful man, and he’s a rich man, and I don’t want any legal problems. Besides, it’s not my habit to go around slandering people.”
“Doing what, now?”
“Slandering people. Saying things about them that might hurt their reputations.”
“Of course not. Now what did that sonofabitch go and do?”
“Mrs. Wheeler, let me just say this: If Tommy Smallwood comes around the school, you might want to keep an eye on him.”
“Oh, don’t tell me.”
“The man has problems. He’s a known… well, don’t make me say it.”
Past the dirty lenses I could see her eyes squeeze tight and burn with sudden purpose. “That no-good sonofa… What was his name?”
“Smallwood. Tommy Smallwood.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said. Her mouth started to tremble and she brought a hand up against it. “You were right to warn me. Thank you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She left about half an hour later, picking trash off the ground as she descended the steps. I was parked on the side street, slumped behind the wheel. On the sidewalk she stood gazing at the building, first at the roofline, then at the battered façade and the peeling broadsheets over windows with cracked panes. She flicked her cigarette out onto the lawn where grass had probably once grown and the hedges had leaves. When she brought her dusty little car around to Magazine Street she braked in front of the building and leaned down low in the seat. That look came over her face again.
I wondered if it had something to do with her late husband. Had he always made a point to stand at a window upstairs and wave down at her? Was that a little love game they played?
A truck came up behind her with a sharp horn blast, and she sped off.
I was tempted to walk out in front of the building and have a look for myself, but I knew there was nothing to see that I hadn’t seen before.
Almost an hour went by before Rondell Cherry emerged from the building. He pulled at a fist of keys on his hip, found the ones he needed and locked the doors. He was carrying his lunch pail and a newspaper, and as he started for the bus stop I rolled up beside him and let the passenger window down. He bent low at the waist and his face showed surprise when he saw who it was. “You got yourself a nice ride there, Jack.”
“Can I give you a lift home, Rondell?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine with the bus.”
He walked on and I came up beside him, having to brake to keep the car moving at his pace. “Rondell, I need to talk to you.”
He kept walking. “You need to talk to me?” He stopped and bent over again. “A man in a car like that needs to talk to me? What about, Jack?”
Horns sounded behind me and I said, “I think you know.”
“You think I know what?”
A car sped by me and then another; more horns wailed. “Tommy Smallwood,” I said. “You and Tommy Smallwood. How much money did he give you for the mural, Rondell? However much he gave you I can assure you it wasn�
��t enough.”
“You don’t know me to talk like that, Jack,” he said. “Now you and your fancy car can get on out of here. You’re going to make somebody wreck.”
“It isn’t enough, Rondell. I know Smallwood and it isn’t enough.”
“Go home, Jack. Go home if you know what’s good for you.”
“Listen to me, Rondell. I’m going to park on the next block over. Meet me at the restaurant across from the school, will you? The pizza place…”
“I got me a bus to catch. I got a wife and kids waiting at home.”
“The pizza place,” I said again. “Meet me.”
By the time I reached the restaurant he’d already seated himself at a table by the window. A waitress had taken his order. Presently she brought a couple of draft beers in cold mugs. He sat with his big shoulders slumped forward and his hands folded together. His headphones, silent at last, formed a collar around his neck. A nervous twitch worked at the corner of his mouth. “Ten grand isn’t enough?” he said. “How can ten grand for that thing that’s already ruint not be enough?”
I sipped the beer and tried to communicate understanding in how I looked at him. “It’s not even close,” I said.
“Not even close,” he repeated. “Then tell me how much is close, Jack?”
“A conservative estimate?” I said, silently issuing an apology to Rhys Goudeau even before I provided an answer. “On a bad day when it’s raining cats and dogs outside and the stock market is taking a tumble and there’s talk in the air of an economic recession? Even on a day like that—on the worst of days—in New Orleans at auction that painting would bring at least a million dollars.”
“A million dollars,” he said. He rocked a fist against the table and sent beer tippling over the rim of his mug. “A million dollars? You have got to be kidding me.”
“I said at least a million. It could bring more, maybe a lot more. I suppose you have your reasons, Rondell. I suppose you’ve thought this through. I don’t have a wife and kids myself, but I know it must be hard. Add to that Mrs. Wheeler’s problems and those inspectors coming around and I can’t say I blame you.”
“You don’t blame me, do you?” he said, and his voice cracked. “You think that money’s for me? Jack, you think it’s for me?” He was so angry his hands were shaking. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and removed a business card and slid it across the table. Scripted on the face was the name of a New Orleans lawyer. I knew the name. He’d recently represented a former governor of the state who’d been prosecuted in federal court for peddling influence. “You went to college,” he said, “then you bound to know what a retainer is? That money went to a retainer to make sure Miss Wheeler has herself a real lawyer. I met with the man today. That girl Miss Wheeler’s had working for her—this so-called niece? She might know her way around Lakeside Mall but I doubt she knows it around the legal system. I can’t let Miss Wheeler go to jail. No way.”
“I owe you an apology.”
“You apologizing, then?”
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry, Rondell.”
He lowered his head and scratched one of the scars on top, then he laid his hand flat against his skull, as if to quiet the commotion inside. “You think you and Rhys Goudeau were the first to come around looking for that old painting? You think the first day I met you I didn’t know what you were looking for? What about when I saw her crying? And what about later when she came back and stood in the lobby taking pictures and pretending they were of the light. Of the light, Jack? You must think I’m some kind of ignorant motherfucker.”
“Hey, now, come on, Rondell, that isn’t fair.”
“Rondell,” he said in a quiet voice. “Listen to you. I’m Rondell to you. Why am I Rondell to you and Miss Wheeler isn’t Gail? Rhys Goudeau doesn’t call me Rondell.” He shook his head. “I’m old enough to be your daddy, boy. I ever tell you it’s okay to call me by my first name? I don’t remember telling you shit, Jack.” He took a long swallow of the beer, then raised a hand and called the server over. “I’ll take the ticket when it’s ready,” he said.
She made a notation, put the bill on the table and walked back around the counter.
“I’m sorry, all right?” I said. “I’m sorry for everything today.”
He placed a ten-dollar bill under the saltshaker and picked up his lunch pail and newspaper and hugged them close to his chest. He was staring at what remained in his mug. “You couldn’t know this, you wouldn’t, but I had the chance to play for Eddie Robinson at Grambling State University.”
“Who’s that?”
“He came to see me once on a recruiting trip.”
The statement was so far off subject that I was taken aback and couldn’t think of how to respond. “Eddie Robinson?” I said. “You mean the football coach?”
“He met my mama and my daddy. He sat at the kitchen table showing brochures with pictures of the campus and the weight room and where they practiced. He had this twinkle in his eye. He told Mama she made the best potato pancakes he ever ate in his life. He told Daddy it was okay to call him Coach Rob. We had ourselves a good time.”
“Can I say something now?”
“Let me finish, Jack, then I’ll go. You’ll let me finish?” I nodded and he said, “I remember he was someone who combed his hair just so, and who kept his shoulders straight and up like this here even when he was sitting down. He was young then, but he had a presence. You have what it takes,’ he told me. He looked me right in the eyes and told me that. ‘You have what it takes.’ I was six foot five and two hundred and seventy-three pounds and I wasn’t yet eighteen years old. When he left, the little boys in the neighborhood chased after his car, ran all the way up South Rocheblave. I stood out in the yard and looked at the taillights of his Olds Ninety-eight and got the shivers where I never had them before.” A faraway look came to his eyes and he pushed his beer to the side and leaned back in his chair. “Two weeks later I blew out my knee against Saint Aug and never played football again. Coach Rob said I could come up and be on the team as a manager or trainer but I pouted and hung my lip and made every excuse and never left New Orleans. I would get wasted and show all the brothers the train tracks running along the side of my leg, from where the doctor cut me. I had what it takes, I told everybody. This went on for years. You don’t want to know how many. I was on the damn street, Jack. Then I met my wife and she got me in the Bridge House? You know about Bridge House?”
“It’s a place down on Camp Street.”
“That’s correct. They help addicts and alcoholics there, people who are down on their luck. I ain’t mad at you, Jack. You can’t help it.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m embarrassed, I feel like shit.”
“Telling you about Coach Rob. Like that’s going to make you see I’m somebody that deserves your respect.” He pushed the beer even farther away and when he looked at me I could see that the anger had gone out of him. “You know why you can’t help it? You can’t help it because you never really stopped to consider what it’s like to be a black man in America. You come at me without the benefit of the motherfucking doubt. You think to yourself, Look at this ignorant brother with the mop.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“The words might not be there, but the feeling is. I don’t like the patronizing, you know what I’m saying? You know what else I don’t like? I don’t like some boy nearly half my age calling me Rondell.”
“What if I called you Mr. Cherry from here on out?”
“You haven’t heard a word I’m telling you.” He shook his head, then opened his lunch pail and dug around inside and removed a handful of the tacks Rhys had used to hang the replacement mural. He dropped them in my beer, letting one fall after the other. “I’m going home to my family now,” he said and rose to leave. “What are you going home to?”
“Wait. Please, wait.” I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “At least let me try to explain.”
He stare
d down at my hand until I moved it away. “I got a feeling this is something I’d rather not know about,” he said.
He brushed by me and walked to the door, and I ran outside after him. Something came to me in the moment before I spoke. “You knew we’d taken it out of the building and yet you sold it to him, anyway.”
He took a few more steps before stopping and turning around. He brought his shoulders up in a shrug, the lunch pail dangling from one hand, the newspaper in the other. “What do you expect for ten grand? A masterpiece? Come on, Jack.”
His laughter was lost in the roar of a truck moving past.
When the call came, I was sleeping and lost in yet another dream of Rhys Goudeau. I reached for the phone and glanced at the clock, hardly surprised by the hour. Dreams are fine, especially when they’re the kind I was having, but give me real. Give me the girl who naps on a cot in her office when she should be at home in bed. Give me coffee and a squeaky chair and a voice thick with exhaustion. It was 3:00 A.M., but I snapped awake. For days I’d slept in hopeful anticipation of the interruption, and with a script prepared. I waited long enough to hear her breathing, the delicate silence between each exhalation. “What are you wearing?” I said.
In rehearsal the question was met with rich, heartfelt laughter. She remembered. But tonight the response was the last thing I could’ve imagined. “Jack, it’s Isabel. I’m sorry, sweetheart. You were expecting someone else.”
She was quiet, waiting for me to speak. In times of boredom and stress, I recalled, Isabel had the irritating habit of clicking her fingernails against her teeth, and this was what I heard now. “Jack… Jack, I do apologize. This is so—”
“Isabel?”
“Yes. Yes, it’s me, darling: Isabel Green, your beloved former editor and one-time fuck buddy. And, no, I’m not calling with an assignment, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
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